The Mello Code

AN: Apologies for the slow updates. It's gone a bit busy with Yule here. :p



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Mello sat with his feet up, eating chocolate. He smiled as Matt turned to look at him. The redhead frowned. "What?"



"I just enjoy watching you work." Mello nodded towards the surveillance equipment, which was now in bits on the table. They were in the Greater Manchester police headquarters, in a room provided for them to work in. "It's the only time I see you get intense and actually concentrate on something, when you have a new toy to take to pieces."



Matt rolled his eyes. "Any other time you'd be bored stupid and telling me to hurry up."



Mello began to speak, but his mobile phone rang and so he made do with bobbing his tongue out. "Hi Hal. What's up?"



"You're frightening the Mancunians, Mello, what are you doing up there?"



Mello laughed. "Am I really?"



"A shark has just swam into a little shoal of fish and you're wondering why they're worried about it." There was a smile in Hal's voice. "So far I've had the Home Office on twice and the Home Secretary has asked to be on standby. No doubt you will be receiving visitors up there soon. Senators or whatever you have in Britain."



"Member of Parliament. Has it really gone that political?" Mello smirked at Matt, who watched him quizzically. "Got to love them, haven't you?"



"Mello, two questions: is this entirely necessary and have you remembered the basic rules of classification regarding your childhood home?"



Mello pulled the phone away from his ear to pull at face at it. He growled back into it. "Hal, I'm not a fucking idiot, ok?"



"I'm well aware of that. Don't get snapping at me, I've never had to deal with the British before. I'm just the hired heavy, remember. The fact that I'm sitting in a frigging office dealing with cabinet offices is your fault."



"You're more than a hired heavy, Hal." Mello blew a kiss down the phone. "We love you for your calm diplomacy..."



"Do you want a birthday present?"



Mello grinned. "I'm getting a birthday present?"



"Answer my questions."



"Possibly and yes. Actually definitely, in order to determine the possibly. I bet they're tracing this call."



Hal sighed. "Not with the scramblers that I've got and I'm willing to bet that you've got. Ok, that's understood, M, I'll speak to you later."



Mello blew another kiss into the phone. "Bye bye, Hal." He hung up and contemplated the situation. It was frankly amusing that the British were so jumpy. It meant that the people who were supposed to be running the country didn't know the location of Wammy's House. Mello knew from the records that at the intelligence agencies of at least fifteen countries suspected or knew definitely that Wammy's House existed. Most didn't know its name. The Japanese certainly did, unless their police agency had been too stupid to inform its own government. Mello concluded that, unless the police officers who had visited during the Kira case had only reported to Yagami, then the Japanese authorities had to know. Any intelligence agency worth its business surely monitored their own officialdom. The behaviour of the British though was enough to deduce that the Home Office did not know that Wammy's House was on their own soil. Yet someone somewhere had to know, because the institution certainly hadn't been subject to the inspections and evaluations that other British children's homes had. He chewed on his chocolate and grinned. It was conclusive proof that the left arm of the state did not know what the right arm was doing. As far as the Home Office were concerned, a Letter had just appeared out of the blue in their country and was investigating something which, by default, had to be huge. It must feel to the Home Secretary that Britain had been caught sleeping. "Heh!"



"What?"



"Nothing. Tell you later." Mello didn't doubt that this room was bugged. That's what he would do if he was the Chief Superintendent, if only to find out why this case was big enough to attract the attention of one of the Letters. Now Mello faltered. The answer could well be that it wasn't. "Right, Matt, what have you got so far?"



"Have we got past 'ooooh, I enjoy watching you work' and into 'hurry the fuck up, I'm bored'?"



"Yes."



"What are your options?"



Mello frowned. "I'll tell you the plan when you tell me what else you've learned."



"No. I want to match what I can tell you to one of your options."



"I can match that!"



"I won't tell you fuck all then."



"That's a double negative." Mello reached out and grabbed Matt's collar. "Talk."



Matt swung around until he was facing his husband. "Ok, I'll tell you what your options are. Option one, you arrest the owner of the car and question him on something big and scary. You'd have trouble getting a charge of espionage to stick, so you'd talk vaguely about matters of national security. That couldn't stick either in reality, but what does it matter. Britain's in the top four worst offenders on Amnesty International's evil states of human rights abuses and between Kira and the War on Terrorism before that, there's no civil rights left in this country anyway. Watari has a word in the right ear and someone goes missing forever." Mello released his collar, but Matt remained where he was standing. "Either way, you get to question him and find out what the fuck he was doing listening where he was. Ditto whoever owns the computer in Winchester, because they were the one actually listening. Option two, you ask Manchester to inform the car owner that the car is ready for pick up, but you don't replace the equipment. We bug the individual when he turns up, then listen to see what gossip we get when the dude realises that the boot is empty. Option three, we return the car with the equipment intact, then shadow the suspects until we can work out who they are and who they're working for. The latter on the basis that no-one important enough to cause damage to the institution in the way that we're fearing is likely to be living in Manchester." Matt raised his finger as Mello made to speak. "Oh and option four, whatever you're going to come up with to make it look like I'm not clever enough to have deduced your plan."



Mello blinked slowly. "Finished?"



"Dunno. Just give me a moment to think."



"Yes, you've finished." Mello leaned forward and kissed him. "You keep doing this. I like it." He grinned. "But back to the plot, what have you learned?"



"It's home-made. Really expensive parts, but nevertheless it's home-made."



"Precisely what I thought you were going to find out." Mello snapped off a strip of chocolate. "But yes, you did miss my plan." He smirked and headed for the door. "Pack up your toys and come on. We're going to the land where boys can smoke and happiness reigns." He watched Matt hurriedly repack his bag and dash to his side. Mello informed the duty officer at the desk that they would be back and that the room shouldn't be disturbed in their absense. The officer tried to detain them while she made a phone call, but Mello waved dismissively and marched towards the door. Matt sauntered along in his wake, already slotting a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips. Once they were in in the street and around the corner, Mello glanced at him. "Are we bugged, baby?"



"Nope."



"Check anyway." They both searched pockets, bags and clothing, but found nothing on either of them. "Better to be safe than sorry. Let's take a walk.



"A what?"



"Walking. It's when your feet move and there's not an accelerator under either of them." Mello set off down a side-street. He looked back. "It's also an effective way to talk without being overheard. Come." He clicked his fingers and pointed to the empty space beside him. Matt drifted into it. "Besides it's exercise." He shrugged. "And you can smoke. Matt, have we got a case?" He moved onwards, his husband keeping pace.



Matt's surveyed him with a sidewards gaze, a flash of green beneath the orange of his goggles. "Why are you asking me?"



"Because my mind is spinning. I'm going round and round with this one and, to be frank, I'm starting to do my own head in." Mello ate chocolate as he walked. "I did promise to tell you if that was ever the case. I'm not going mad. At least, I don't think so, but I'm not used to indecision and right now I'm indecisive. I keep swinging between two worst case scenarios and they are both causing me to freeze in the middle, which isn't good."



"Right."



Mello waited but nothing more was forthcoming. "What does 'right' mean? I can't read you, Matty, you're closing down again."



Matt looked at him properly and blinked. "You really are getting flustered, aren't you?"

"No." Mello frowned. "Regardless of this conversation, I will make a decision. I just want to give you the opportunity of telling me that I'm making the wrong one."

He gestured sharply. "Don't make any cracks about me always making the wrong decision. That wouldn't be helpful."



"Is this just about the case or your code in general?"



"The case."



"Only these are the questions you've also been considering about the Mello Code." Matt exhaled smoke into the freezing air. "In fact, if you're honest, about your whole life. You're so afraid of failing that you haven't yet stopped to ask yourself who the judge and jury are; nor what the thing is that you get to win or lose."



"Very philosophical, Matt, but still not helpful."



Matt flicked ash onto the pavement. "I'd have said it's the heart of the matter."



"What's this got to do with that car back there?"



"Everything." Matt paused as they passed a couple of people walking towards them. As soon as they were out of earshot again, he continued on. "Mello, your brain is one of the sharpest in the world. It intimidates me and I've seen it first thing in the morning."



"When?"



"I've seen you make connections that have left me seriously impressed. I just don't mention it in case you get big-headed." Matt smirked. "Shove a load of facts and figures in front of you and you smash through them like Mega Mario, then you retain the information afterwards. You can pluck things out of the air which usually turn out to be right. Your instinct is spot on. I can't believe I'm making you blush."



Mello looked up sharply. "You're not. The air is cold on my cheeks."



"Yeah, bollocks." Matt threw his cigarette butt into a drain and lit up again. "Ok, you might not always reach the endgame that you were heading for, but you probably give it the best shot that could have been hit in the circumstances. Is that maybe the problem? Your own past genius is Hell of a legacy to live up to. Do you look back on Kira and wonder if you could ever do anything to match that again?"



"This is going so far off subject I can hardly see the point on the horizon."



"I don't think it is." They turned another corner to find a canal. The city over the bridge seemed quieter even than the side-streets that they had traversed. Mello led them onto the tow-path. Matt continued. "I'm going to be frank with you. You're always criticising yourself for being too emotional, but I think that's what keeps you human. You have the sort of genius that makes me surprised you can get up off your bed. Your sheer energy is even more incomprehensible when viewed from that perspective. But you wanted to be number one and you wanted to wow the world. You already missed out on the chance to be the youngest L ever, because Near was insidiously two years younger than you. Instead you want to surpass him. It took L years to build up his code, you want to do it in seconds. You're coming from a different place as well. L probably didn't know he would be so awe inspiring when he started out. He just dealt with the job in front of him and his code just happened holistically around him. You are staring at the finished product and trying to recreate it in one foul swoop." Matt shrugged. "It doesn't work like that. You deal with each level as it comes, hoping that you unlocked all the cheats along the way; you don't attempt the final boss without working your way to it."



"But I'm just talking about this case, not the whole code."



Matt shook his head. "If you weren't talking about your detective code, then you wouldn't have to ask me about the case. Why are you losing confidence in yourself?"



"I'm not. I know I'm brilliant." Mello uttered a self-effacing half-laugh. They were passing under a bridge. The brickwork rose sheer before them into an archway far above their heads. Mello pushed Matt against the wall and kissed him hard. "Stop trying to be Yoda and just give me a straight answer."



Matt smirked at him. "Missing the point you are, Mello. Deep inside you the answers lie. Search yourself. What say you?" Mello sighed, staring at him until Matt laughed. "Am I right so far?"



"Yes, Matty, you're very insightful. Now if I could just direct that wonderful incisive intelligent towards the question..."



"You shine so bright, angel. You burned out after Kira and if you never do another thing in your life, then that was enough. You've always rushed in where angels fear to tread, so why are you holding back now?" Matt grabbed Mello as he made to step away. "No, stay here, you're warm." He pulled him back against his body. "What's the worst thing that could happen in you investigating this?"



"It might just turn out to be a car theft."



"And...?"



Mello blinked. "That's hardly worthy of a Letter, is it? Near wouldn't have touched it."



"L completed over 4000 cases before Kira pwned him. I grew up being groomed to succeed him and I could only name perhaps four of those cases off the top of my head. You want a case like Kira over and over again until it kills you. I'd rather you solved smaller cases and got to stay with me until we both grow old and die in our beds." Matt shrugged. "As unlikely as the latter seems. I solved the case of my life a couple of months ago. I just forgot to mention it. Want to hear about it?"



Mello rolled his eyes. "I can never work out with you whether you're talking sense or just babbling for something to say."



"I was in the newsagents and the woman in there couldn't find her glasses. There was a queue of people, because it was lottery day, and she needed to check something in the delivery book. She kept apologising. I looked across and I saw the glasses on the shelf behind her. I pointed it out and she said thank you. Case solved." Matt flashed a smile. "Ok, not a very big case in the vast scheme of things, but at that moment in time, it was huge in that woman's life. She gave me a free lollipop."



"Babbling."



"No. It's all a matter of perspective. You've set off at a dash, trying to make a running jump to the highest platform. You need to do your time to get there. That's all."



Mello growled. "Don't you think I did my time? I worked my tits off at Wammy's. I walked into Hell and back going after Kira. Now..." He sighed and faltered.



"Now the world owes you a living." Matt raised his hand and cupped Mello's cheek. "You're right, it does. If there was any justice in the world, you'd already be L, but you already made some brilliant observations on that score. You realised that you can't be L, you can be Mello and that's better. Woot! You won the Mello Code, which I'm personally buzzing at working on. But L wasn't competing when he started up. He was doing the cases that caught his attention. Why are you competing? Stop looking at L and Near. Look at the world. That's what L did. Near just looks at a screen and it all comes to him. How boring is that?"



Mello's mouth opened and closed. "How does boring come into it?"



"Having cases hand-picked for you?" Matt shook his head. "Let's fail occasionally. It will be an experience. L picked cases that were interesting to him. He flew around the world and did whatever the fuck he wanted. Near largely sits in a room, playing with his toys and letting information come to him. I'd rather follow in L's shoes, but you're hankering after Near's life. You'd be so fucking bored if that happened to you. One more thing that you haven't considered. Who's looking at the portfolio? You solve a case, your name is in people's minds. Right now, I'm known as a pwnage glasses finder in the newsagents. Right now, the Chief Superintendent of Greater Manchester police will think of Mello over L, because he's met you. Can't we just have a life where things happen and we don't have to evaluate its greatness every step of the way?"



Mello shook his head. "You were the one talking about cases being worthy of me."



"I changed my mind."



Mello smiled. "Ok, I'm feeling a bit better about it."



"Have we got a case?"



"Yes." Mello blinked. "Everything points to someone listening in Wammy's. That's a case."



"So what are you going to do about it?"



"Investigate it."



"Yay! Can we go inside now?" Matt beamed at him. "Come on, go, go, go! Case to solve."



Mello hugged and kissed him. "What we going for?"



"You tell me."



"Legally or illegally?"



"Which is quicker?"



Mello laughed. "What's that got to do with it?"



"Because now I've talked you off the ceiling, I'm going to put you back up there. You have two days to solve this case and get us home. It's December 10th. That gives you the rest of today and tomorrow, because we're travelling back on the 12th if it kills us."



Mello rolled his eyes. "It doesn't matter about my birthday, if we're still..."



"Mello! If this isn't solved in time for us to travel back on the 12th, at the latest, then you're a loser and I'm not working on your code anymore. I'll go and see if Near has something for me to do instead."



Mello narrowed his eyes at him and pulled out his phone. A few seconds later, he spoke into it. "Hal, baby, I need you to check a wall for holes."



It took several hours before they were sitting in a room watching a camera feed from the interview room next door. Chief Superintendent Bennett himself was watching with them, while a couple of CID officers spoke to the owner of the car. Mello affected confidence, which, he startled himself in observing, he actually felt. He sat with his feet up on a small table, licking his chocolate bar and enjoying the moment. CS Bennett was evidentally ill at ease. He kept glancing at his watch, then staring at the screen as if willing his own detectives to be brilliant. Mello wondered vaguely if the officers knew that they had an audience. He supposed that they did, which meant that they would be nervous too and would probably miss something. Beside him, Matt appeared thoroughly bored, staring up at the row of tiny windows high above their heads, as if wishing he could leap up and snag a cloud to carry him out of there. Mello had no doubt that Matt wasn't missing a single word, gesture or nuance of body language. Matt's genius was in appearing to notice nothing, whilst taking in everything.



The interview had been going on for an hour. The moment the owner, Navinder Singh, had sheepishly asked the duty officer if anything had been taken from the boot of his car, he had been arrested. It had taken an hour and half to find him a lawyer and another hour for discussions to reach this point. The surveillance equipment did belong to him. He was a detective in his own right. They were tools of his trade. No, no-one else would know how to use it. He had no idea why it was in Hampshire. His own cases were all local to the Manchester area. The furthest afield he had ever been, during an investigation, was across the Pennines into Yorkshire. He had not been receiving transmissions during the time that his car had been stolen.



Mello mused on the multitude of detectives present. The suspect himself, freelance and small fry; the state-sanctioned officers interviewing him playing it by the book; then himself and Matt, bigger than anything that this station had ever welcomed before. Younger than all the others too. He smiled and bit off a chunk of chocolate. Three camps, each calling themselves detectives, none of them like the others. The couple from CID were asking questions now, produced by Matt, concerning the creation of the listening station. The redhead sighed heavily, rolled his eyes and took out his PSP. Mello reached across and held down the 'audio' button, muting the game. Matt did not look up at him. It was an ominous sign. It probably meant the latter stages of nicotine withdrawal. Mello stared at the screen in front of him. "Call a recess. He's lying and I need to brief them."



"Are you sure?" CS Bennett appeared worried.



"Quite sure." Mello fixed him with a stare. "Would you prefer me to interview him?"



CS Bennett shook his head. "As you can see, my people are the finest officers in..."



"Yeah. Call a recess." Mello turned to his husband. "Go and have a cigarette. You got anything to say to them or am I good to..." He paused frowning. "I'll come with you. Bennett, have them meet me in here. We'll be back soon." He stood and marched out, trusting that his orders would be followed. Bennett was too much of a government tool for them not to be. Matt slouched to his feet and trailed after the blond. Once clear of the room, Mello turned and smirked at him. "All very pedestrian, isn't it?"



"Yep."



Mello lightly punched Matt's arm. "So, at what point did you lose the will to live?"



"About ten minutes in."



Mello laughed. "Yeah, I'd have had him squealing like a pig by now. Though my methods shouldn't be watched by police officers. They're doing a decent enough job considering that they have to obey the law. Am I right in my deduction that he's lying?"



Matt was staring at the door dead ahead. There was daylight. Cars passed by on a rain-soaked road. "I'll let you know post-cigarette."



"Yes then."



"He didn't make the equipment." Matt muttered, his lips already closing around his cigarette and his lighter ready in his hand. They pushed open the doors and stepped out into the street. It was still raining. "I fucking hate England."



Mello blinked. "We could have gone anywhere in the world. When we were coming back from Japan, I wanted to go to America and you were adamant that you were going back to your flat in England. We could be in Paris, Amsterdam, Moscow, Barcelona, Rome..." Mello stared at a lorry approaching down the main road and pulled Matt out of range of the resultant spray. "Instead we're in Manchester."



"It was mostly to get my stuff and grab some sleep in my own bed." Matt faltered, remembering with a chill of dread what had happened in that bed at that time. He took a heavy drag on the cigarette. "We could move now."



Mello's eyes widened. "After I've got the house just as I wanted it? Are you mad? I've got plans."



"Involving Rome?"



"Involving the garden." Mello scowled at him. "We're not moving. Why is the suspect lying about making the equipment?"



Matt shrugged. "Covering up for someone?"



Mello closed his eyes. "I meant what is your evidence?"



"I have to have evidence?" Matt exhaled. The air was so cold that it was difficult to see where his smoke ended and the condensation from his breath began. "I planted a couple of false bits of information in the questions and he answered them as if they were truth. He's pretending to know how it works." Mello was staring at him. "What? You know I did."



"No, I asked you to submit some questions, but I purposefully didn't want to know what they were so that it didn't affect my own observations." He bit into his chocolate. "It makes sense that that's what you did."



"So why are you staring at me?"



Mello's shoulders sagged. "It's like getting blood out of a stone. Matt, give me details! I want to know what you asked."



"The first one was about the memory chip in there. I had them make reference to a mother board, but there is no mother board. The suspect told us that he converted it out of an old computer. The second was operational. I had them discuss the live feed and he stated that he monitored it. It's not a live feed. It's packages. You caught the one about a wall acting as a conductor, because you looked at me."



Mello grinned. "Actually, I caught all three. Heh." He chomped contently on his chocolate. "I'm so good." Matt flashed him a look which spoke volumes. "What's that for? You think I'm missing something?"



"No. I'm just re-evaluating my deadline. Instead of two and a half days, can you make it two and a half hours please? I'm getting really sick of standing in the fucking rain, because you can't smoke fucking anywhere in this Godforsaken fucking city." Matt glowered at the traffic. "And I'm aching everywhere. I just want to go home, have a cigarette in every room in my house and then have a hot bath."



"Oh, come on, Matty. I'm wet too."



"Mello, you would be the first to whinge if they banned chocolate from being eaten indoors and put little pictures of diabetics on the wrapper!" Matt snapped. "Fucking Presbytarian fucking Prime Minister in the fucking House of fucking Commons."



Mello sighed. "To be fair..."



"Don't you dare mention passive smoking."



Mello held his hands up in surrender. "After this, we'll do something you want to do, ok? I admit it's been very Mello-centric since we got here." He flashed a smile. "Hey, baby, fancy that? We'll find an arcade or something?"



"We'll find the fucking carpark and drive home."



"Is this just because you had a couple of hours without a cigarette and it's raining?" Mello asked, reaching out to touch Matt's arm. "Or something more? You're bored?"



Matt finished his cigarette and lowered his chin below the level of his jacket collar. "How close are you to wrapping this case up?"



"I'm 5% certain that that isn't our man. I also have an inkling on where the next lead is. If I'm right, then we can go home."



"Is that an L 5%?"



"Yes."



"Good." Matt opened the doors of the police headquarters. "Let's get it over with then."