The Mello Code

There was a crash and the telltale shattering of glass. Matt\'s head rose and he dashed out of his own study doorway and in through Mello\'s without really considering the implications. The tumbler was broken just inside. A shard lodged into Matt\'s big toe before he noticed it. He glanced up, noting that Mello was standing facing him, his monitors bright behind him, then Matt bent to pick the glass out of his foot. He exhaled. "I\'m assuming that we haven\'t got a poltergeist."



Mello pouted, turning away to glare at the screens again. "Go back to your games, Mail."



"So you can destroy more of our glasses?" Matt leapt across the debris and limped into the room. "Let me remove the breakables first. Then I\'ll leave you alone."



"It\'s too fragmented!" Mello snapped, leaning on the desk and snarling at the screens. "Just messy!"



"I know. Half of it went in my foot. But your trusty sidekick is here now, so sit down, eat chocolate and tell me all about it." He made it to Mello\'s side and scanned the monitors. There seemed to be no pattern to all that was displayed upon them. One showed his e-mails, more than half from Hal; another showed a world news feed; another was on the Watari MayDay Line where, surprisingly, the whole page was listing \'solved - M\'; another was a housing list; another an image of what appeared to be an audio device; while the final monitor displayed a completed Mah Jong game. Matt glanced at Mello. The blond\'s head was bowed and he was counting to ten under his breath. "I deduce that there have been moments of excruciating boredom in this study."



"Matt. Shut up." Mello\'s head rose again and he grabbed at his chocolate bar, shoving it into his mouth until he had no option but to bite or choke. He viciously tore off a block and let it dangle from his teeth, as he hissed, "What did you call yourself?"



"Your trusty sidekick?"



"Well, you\'re not. You\'re my husband." Mello turned and jabbed a finger into the air in front of Matt\'s face. "Don\'t ever put yourself down like that again. It reflects on me. You are second in line for the L succession. If anything happen to Near and I, it would be your baby. How do you think it makes me feel when you act like you\'re unworthy to lick the soles of my boots?"



"Horny?"



"No!" Mello raged. "It denigrates you and so that denigrates me. Stop it."



"Ok, but I might need a while to adjust to the new world view." Matt lit a cigarette. "Because, ordinarily, you\'d find that incredibly hot. By the way, there\'s someone typing to you in German underneath your Mah Jong game." Mello\'s hands rose dramatically into the air and, for a moment, it seemed like a second empty glass beside him was going to join the first up the wall. Matt lunged forward and wrapped himself around his husband\'s body. "Hey, hey, angel, pretty man, come on."



Mello glared at the monitors over his shoulder. "There was a signal booster in the back of the car! In the boot! Someone was listening! And what did I do? Hand it over to Hampshire Police with the recommendation that they liaise with Greater Manchester to return it to the person it was stolen from!" He reached past Matt to stab the air with a finger. "I told Hal I\'d deal with it, but I didn\'t even properly look! I was just saying it for effect!"



"Mihael." Matt forced him to meet his eyes. "You\'re not psychic. It\'s not your fault. You might be miles above me and Hal, but you didn\'t see either of us rushing to check it out, did you?"



"Hal did!" Mello rasped. "She only stopped because I said I\'d look into it. It was a case, right there, in the palm of my hand, and I just let it go." Hurt flashed into his gaze and Matt rubbed his back. "I didn\'t even see it. I was investigating it and I didn\'t even see it." Matt held him close. "L would have seen that."



Matt shook his head. "I know for a fact that Lawliet would have missed it too."



Mello frowned. "How can you say that?"



"Because if you missed it, then he certainly would have. You surpassed them all, Mihael. It\'s ok to make a little mistake now and again, as long as you go back and make it good. It\'s like Churchill said, \'Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.\'" Matt flashed a smile. "Though I also recall Century\'s response to that."



Mello sagged, closing his eyes tightly before his forehead came to rest on Matt\'s shoulder. "You\'re just trying to pander to me. How can you even try to comfort me? The last time you did that, I viciously assaulted you and nearly threw you over the landing balcony."



"I\'m insane." Matt stated bluntly. "Now come on, sit down and start at the beginning." He walked Mello backwards to his settee. Once the Slav was down, Matt straddled and sat on him. He stretched backwards and hooked a finger around a chocolate bar abandoned on the little table, then brought it to his husband\'s eye level. Mello snatched it off him, staring dejectedly at Matt\'s chest. "So the car which was parked outside Wammy\'s had listening equipment in its boot. Was it switched on?"



"Don\'t comfort me, Matt. I don\'t deserve comforting. I need to sort my head out. I need to concentrate on all this."



"At least let me help you."



"There\'s nothing here that I could give you to do!"



Matt stared at him. "I bet there is. I\'m second in line to L, you know? If anything happened to you or Near then I\'d be..."



"Matt!" Mello\'s hands rose to clasp his own head, the chocolate trapped between palm and hair. "Please?"



"I could at least take on your random internet German bloke at the Mah Jong. I\'m assuming you won the last round."



Mello exhaled, surveying him wearily. The chocolate bar travelled in his hand to his mouth and he sucked a corner. "Yes." He breathed. "I\'ve beaten him three times in a row in fact."



"You see!" Matt beamed. "Your life isn\'t a total failure!" He stroked back the blond hair and, when nothing bad happened as a result, he eased away the hand holding the chocolate and kissed Mello\'s lips. "I can take the game, the house-hunting and the..." Matt frowned. "What were you doing on the MayDay Line?"



"Building a portfolio." Mello\'s gaze challenged him to criticise this.



Matt nodded. "The MayDay Line is where the plebs live. That\'s where the like of me and Deontic and all the lesser mortals solve cases. You never see a sodding great \'N\' there and you shouldn\'t be seeing a big \'M\' there. Not unless it\'s got another \'M\' attached to it, like \'MM\', in which case it\'s me."



"No Matt. It\'s where I belong too. The big cases go to L and the smaller cases go to everyone else. I\'m not L and therefore I\'m with everyone else. That\'s how Watari works."



"But half the things on that list shouldn\'t go to any of the letters at all! Some of them aren\'t even fit for the kids in Deduction class to practice on. From what I could see, you just started from the top and worked down." Matt scrambled off him. "I\'m going to check something." He landed on his feet and wandered across to the control desk, clicking on a tiny admin link that Mello had never even spotted there before. Matt was prompted for a password and entered one. A second screen loaded from which Matt chose a link towards the graphical data based on MayDay Line cases solved. Mello was near the bottom of the list with ninety-three cases resolved. Only one letter was beneath him having solved nothing.



Mello leaned forward. "What the fuck is that?"



"Ninety-three. You\'ve solved ninety-three cases off this list! Mello! This list is beneath you. You had nothing on there last month. I know because I checked, though I did notice that \'MM\' was shooting up the list faster than I was doing them." Matt sighed. "You\'re the one who goes on about class and calibre. Why are you aligning yourselves with us? You have a standard to maintain, Mell! It\'s not about quantity, it\'s about quality."



Mello bit off a jagged strip of chocolate and sucked on it pointedly. Then he murmered, "Who\'s \'I\'?" His gaze returned to the only person below him on the list.



Matt sighed. "\'I\' is It Matters."



Mello blinked. "Who the fuck is \'MM\' then?"



"Mello and Matt."



"What?" Mello sat bolt upright. "I thought it stood for Mariomatt!"



Matt sneered, "Why would it stand for Mariomatt? Mariomatt has got nothing to do with Wammy\'s House and I work for you."



"But you were MM before we got back together."



Matt shrugged, "Well, I wasn\'t taking fucking \'I\' and I\'d already reserved the \'M\' for you."



Mello rubbed his forehead. "So it originally stood for Mariomatt, then you altered it in your head and no-one was any wiser because you reserved the letters without telling them what it stood for."



Matt shook his head. "It\'s understood by everyone that \'MM\' means contacting both of us."



"In your head maybe. For the rest of the world, it\'s understood that \'MM\' is you." He frowned. "So why have I never seen \'I\' on the dialling list?"



"I set it to invisible when I hacked Wammy\'s the first time round and set a forward on it to go to \'MM\' instead."



Mello blinked slowly. "How about Watari bank accounts and things?"



"Set up in MM. I go in every February to move my Christmas and birthday money out of I into MM. That\'s the only time of year I touch the thing."



Mello chuckled. "You really work hard not to exist, don\'t you, Matty? So, presumably, if MM is Mello and Matt then I have joint access to all of your funds." He stopped suddenly and stared. "No wonder they thought I was trying to control your finances! Twat!"



"Your German man says that if you don\'t want another game, he\'s going to find another opponent."



"Tell him that I\'m going to bed."



"\'kay." Matt conveyed the message in the German language. "He says can he add you to his messenger."



"No." Mello edged forward and rose from the settee. He stared at the leaderboard again. "Deontic\'s done nearly six thousand."



"She must get very bored."



"Luigi\'s done four thousand!"



"Ditto."



Mello sighed. "I\'ve had no response from the Americans since I sent my report in." Matt pulled up a browser and searched for an on-line dictionary. He entered \'patience\' and directed it to the monitor at Mello\'s eye-level. "So what am I supposed to do? Just sit here twiddling my thumbs until the world finds out about me? You disdain the MayDay Line, but that\'s just sent out ninety-three calling cards." He rubbed his face. "Right. Focus. What are my priorities?"



"Did you micromanage everything in the Mafia? Or did you, like, have people to do things?"



"It depended upon what it was." Mello raised a hand. "Be quiet now, I\'m thinking." Beside him, Matt nodded, then nipped back to his study for his DS. He sat on Mello\'s settee and switched it on. Mello sighed. "Alternatively, you could look at this with me and see what you deduce."



"I doubt I\'d..."



"Matt! Just look."



Reluctantly, Matt shuffled to the edge of the settee and looked at the monitors. Mello had brought up the e-mail from his contact at Hampshire Police, informing him about the device in the boot of the car. Matt wondered about that. He would have expected any alarm bells, tripped by the association of the institution with anything of this nature, would have been sounded by the Home Office. A regional police department shouldn\'t have the knowledge to inform a second look. Wammy\'s House was a top secret, classified location. Even Winchester\'s chief of police should have thought it merely an orphanage. "Why is he writing to you?"



"She." Mello clarified. "Sergeant Buchariss is a woman. I asked her to contact to me if she had any more questions. She has, but only as a witness. She wants me to go in to make a statement."



"Ouch, messy. But also suspect. Why do they give a shit about a listening device? It\'s not breaking any laws that I can think of, unless Hal\'s doing them for stalking. As far your sergeant should be concerned, it\'s a simple car theft and no longer on her patch. It\'s Manchester\'s problem." He scanned the e-mail down to its conclusion. "Oh, the \'looked after children\' angle. Suspecting a paedophilia ring or something?"



"Matt, do you ever read the news? We have four broadsheets in this house every day. Try reading them occasionally." Mello peeled more foil away from his chocolate bar. "Child was snatched from an orphanage in Norwich last week. Still hasn\'t been found."



"It\'s not an orphanage, it\'s a looked after children\'s home."



"It\'s a fucking orphanage." Mello growled. "And by snatched, I mean that she was literally taken from the grounds."



Matt pulled a face. "Someone\'s head\'s going to roll for that. Reckon it will take down a politician or stop at local authority level?" He considered it. "No, they\'ll just take out the warden. How big is the story?"



"Front page for days."



"Mmmm, politician then. How big is the reward kitty?"



Mello closed his eyes. "Matt, it\'s not a case. Well, it\'s not my case. They haven\'t called Watari on it. How can you be so cold-hearted about it anyway? I\'m telling you that a child has been taken from an orphanage and all you\'re concerned about are the political repercussions and the reward for solving the case. That\'s a child there. Who\'s going to be either dead or scared stupid. And you\'re pushing me off topic. I\'m trying to focus here. I\'m trying to understand why a car was parked outside Wammy\'s House with the means to listen inside it and you\'re..." He grunted an exasperated noise and glared at the monitor in front of him. "It\'s not even like it\'s a serial thing. It might have been a relative of the child. These things happen." He snapped off a square of chocolate but let it dangle between his teeth. He stared at the image of the device on the screen. "Besides, it\'s nothing to do with the thing outside Wammy\'s."



"It might be."



"Where\'s the link? A panicking police officer in Winchester that\'s all. Besides, we don\'t even know if that\'s the case. She might just be very enthusiastic in her job." He swopped the chocolate to the other side of his mouth. Matt noticed that he didn\'t bite into it or suck it. Matt slowly eased the laptop towards himself and searched the name and contact details of the officer in charge of the Norwich abduction. In another tab, he read a news story about it, then looked up the location of the Children\'s Home on streetmap.co.uk. Mello finally spoke again. "That\'s by the by. The device might have just been in the car and it\'s still a simple theft. The owner can verify that. Or it might have been abandoned after listening elsewhere. Unlikely though, as these things are expensive. Or they were listening specifically at Wammy\'s House, in which case is it merely because it\'s a house full of kids and your paedophile ring..."



"Mine?"



"... could be a factor. Or it\'s a specific child known to someone outside Wammy\'s, which is worrying. But worst of all, it\'s a sign that someone out there knows what the institution is. Matt, tell me that you didn\'t contact the Spanish government to tell them what happened to you."



Matt rolled his eyes. "I won\'t dignify that with a response."



"I just know what you\'re like, especially if you have a bee in your bonnet. You\'ve certainly had one about your roots." Mello scowled. "Why would a paedophile need to listen? Why are we even talking about paedophiles?"



The telephone rang. Mello started like a startled deer. Matt raised a finger and stood up. "Shall I tell her that you\'re dead?"



"No, but..."



Matt didn\'t wait to hear the rest of the message. He answered the telephone. "Ohai Hal."



"Is he in?" She demanded.



"I\'m afraid he\'s tied up in a conference call with the President of Latvia and some Baltic minions at the moment. He\'s only just logged into it, so he\'s likely to be an hour at least yet. Possible new case. All very exciting. Can I take a message?" Matt watched Mello sink into a crouch, his head in his hands.



Hal hesitated. "I\'ve just had a visit from a police officer about the car that was outside here. Sergeant Buchariss informed me that she has been trying to contact Mello."



"Yes, that\'s all in hand." Matt calmly replied. "About the device in the boot? Mello was well aware of it. He allowed it to go back to Manchester because he wanted to lure out the suspects. Of course, he doesn\'t tell me much about it, but isn\'t it something to do with what\'s happened in Dickleburgh?"



"Dickleburgh?"



Matt lit a cigarette before languidly clarifying, "Just outside Norwich. Orphan snatched."



Hal audibly gasped, "That wasn\'t mentioned! Mello thinks that someone is planning to snatch children from Wammy\'s House?"



On the carpet, Mello sat down properly, his face in his knees. He slowly shook his head. Matt sniffed, "I dunno. It\'s the inner workings of Mello\'s head, who can tell, man?" He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled it. "Want me to ask him?"



"Can you ask him to call me when he has a minute please, Matt?" She swallowed, obviously impatient for information. "Should I be duly concerned about this? Heighten security more than usual?"



"I would." Matt shifted position. "You can never be too cautious where the little kiddies are concerned."



"Right." Hal was silent for a few seconds. "Right." Matt waited. When he didn\'t speak, Mello glanced up. Matt smirked at him, but the blond didn\'t appear amused. "Matt, while I\'ve got you, what can I get Mello for his birthday?"



Matt blinked. "Huh?"



Hal tutted. "Matt, why is it that I always have to resist the urge to speak slowly and loudly with you? Please just give me some ideas. He\'s a very difficult man to buy for."



"Just shove some money in his account like every other Watari has." Matt shrugged, though he knew Hal couldn\'t see him.



"This isn\'t off Watari. It\'s off me." Hal was drumming her fingers against the desk. He could hear the constant rhythm. "How about music? What kind of music does he like?"



"Mello?" Matt turned so not to meet the blue eyes staring at him. "Mello\'s a rock chick. But he\'s got everything. Trust me." He automatically glanced down at the hard-drive that was dedicated solely for music. "Chocolate. You can\'t go wrong with chocolate."



A pen hit Matt squarely on the back of the head. He turned, rubbing it. Mello mouthed, "What?"



Matt waved at him to be quiet. "Was that all, Hal?"



Hal sighed again. "Chocolate is a bit obvious. He\'s twenty-one, that\'s a significant birthday. I\'d ideally like to give him something he can keep. He likes jewellery, doesn\'t he?"



"Perfect!" Matt nodded. "Perfect idea."



"What though? I\'ve only ever seen him in his rosary and that little bracelet with a cross on it. Does he wear anything else?" The drumming abruptly stopped. "Sorry Matt, I have to go. Catch up with you soon and please ask Mello to call me."



"Will do. Bye." Matt hung up, barely hearing her hurried \'bye\' as he replaced the receiver. "That\'s that sorted then."



Mello glared at him. "You fucking arsehole." He rose from the floor. "What am I going to say when she asks me about the President of fucking Latvia?"



"Tell her it\'s classified information given out on a need to know basis."



"Oh God! Jeevas!" Mello gripped the back of his computer chair. "I could swing for you sometimes, I swear it." He grabbed the chocolate that had been abandoned on his desk. "Get me Greater Manchester on the fucking phone. I need to sort out this bloody mess. Then find out who is leading the investigation in Norwich..."



"DC Alan Price. Take us about two hours to get there. Maybe three. It\'s only A-roads into Norfolk and that\'s only if the roadworks have cleared by the Dartmouth Tunnel."



Mello surveyed him carefully, then bit off a sizeable chunk of chocolate. "Good. Thank you." He stood up a little straighter. "Right, let\'s get this show on the road." Mello waited, typing notes onto a wordpad, as Matt ploughed through the bureaucratic layers of Manchester\'s constabulary. Eventually the redhead held out the telephone and Mello took it. "Hello sir, my name is Mello. I\'m investigating a case involving a vehicle in your possession and I think you are going to want to speak with me."