by Carl Goodman
‘I tell you what,’ she snarled, ‘you come here and have a sniff. You see if you can smell what I can smell. Either do that or get police and fire crews over here right away.’
‘They’re already on their way,’ the operator assured her quickly. ‘The doors should hold. How’s the air in the room?’
She could see smoke creeping under the door. The operator was right, she knew that, but the front door seemed to be burning more rapidly than it should. ‘Not good, I think they’ve hosed my door with something. I hope to God it’s just mine.’
‘We’ve got three engines and four ambulances that will be with you in just a few minutes,’ the operator said. ‘Can you raise the alarm?’
‘I think the fire alarm has been tampered with.’ The air was starting to thicken, as if a black fog were rolling in. Eva started coughing again.
‘The doors will hold,’ the operator insisted. ‘Just keep calm.’ Tongues of flame licked suddenly from the sides of the door to the hall.
Eva made a sound, somewhere between a scream and a curse. ‘Fifth floor,’ she yelled at the operator, ‘and no, the doors won’t hold if some bastard has chucked acetone over them.’ The door started to burn.
‘I’ve got three minutes to your location,’ the operator told her. ‘Stay near the floor, cover your mouth—’
She had to drop the phone. Sudden heat, a cloud of black smoke billowed into the room. She knew how fast fire moved. She understood it; she’d seen the training videos. Experiencing it first-hand was another thing entirely.
She had to get out. The doors would not hold. The smoke would kill her before the engines arrived and the firefighters could get to her floor. Maybe she could climb down to the flat below from the balcony. She looked towards the window. She had to try. Eva ran to unlock the door that opened onto the tiny balcony, but then she stopped. Smoke was already forming a thick blanket on the ceiling. This is what they want.
Eva dropped to the floor and tried to think. When she opened the door to the balcony the sudden in-rush of air would fuel the fire. She would be forced out. Maybe she would be able to climb down the balcony, but even if she did the contents of the flat would be torched. That was what they wanted. Maybe she would live, maybe she would die. Either way the evidence would be destroyed.
Like hell. She ran to the furthest corner of the room, dropped down to the floor again and hyperventilated. Smoke stung her lungs but she managed a dozen deep breaths. Then she ran into her bedroom, dived under the bed and dragged the box out. Her eyes burned. The acrid stench of accelerants made them water so badly she couldn’t see where she was going. Down to the floor. Crawl. Drag the box. Up to the window. One more time.
She ran back into the living room and wrenched the laptop from its docking station. Back to the corner of the room. One more step, Eva thought as the layer of black smoke that already enveloped the ceiling sunk towards her. She shoved on the balcony door.
Behind her a whoosh of flame as the fire ingested new fuel. She ran out onto the balcony just as a tongue of flame licked out for a moment, then she felt the backdraft as fresh air was sucked into the room. The windows cracked. Even from the other side of the room the heat was becoming intense.
Thick clouds of black smoke started to broil through the open door to the balcony. From somewhere she heard a scream, and then shouting. In the street below fire engines slewed to a halt. She saw a dozen firefighters dash from the vehicles towards the building. In her flat the furniture burned. The balcony was no safe haven. The fire would consume it too in the next few minutes.
She had to climb.
Barefoot and wearing only a pair of knickers and a T-shirt, Eva did not want to do that. The drop terrified her but she knew now she had no choice. It’s not that hard, she tried to convince herself. You can do this. She dragged the box and the laptop closer to the metal railing of the balcony. Then she swung her leg onto it and clambered over.
Hold on! As if she needed to remind herself. Five floors. Straight down onto a stone pavement that would stain beautifully if she smashed her head open on it. Eva lowered herself down until she hung like a child on a climbing frame, desperately trying to find the balcony of the flat below with her foot. She swung. Out for a moment, her leg thrashed and kicked in empty air. Her hand slipped on the smooth metal of the railing. She dropped another couple of inches and her stomach cramped with fear. Then her foot hit something, cold and hard. She found herself suspended between two balconies, feet on the railing of one and hands grasping the bottom of the other. She didn’t know how to get any further.
A cloud of smoke descended from above. The sheer speed of the fire was terrifying. She tucked her head into her chin for a moment, took a breath, and then looked over the stone floor of the balcony above her. She could reach the box. Eva put her arm through the railings, grabbed it and dragged it through. It didn’t take much to drop it onto the balcony below.
The laptop though, that would be more difficult. More deep breathing, the heat was becoming unbearable, but at least it was above her, burning upwards. She put her arm through the railing to grab the laptop but this time the heat seared her arm. She dropped it. Again, she told herself. She looked up, over the edge of the balcony, shot her arm through the gap and in one fluid gesture grabbed the laptop. Pulled it through. Swung it towards the balcony below. The window above her finally shattered as she did so. Thin shards of broken glass flew over her, shimmering and sparkling in the light of the flames. A sudden deafening crack as something else broke, a metal pipe perhaps, something that finally succumbed to the heat. The noise was so loud it made her flinch.
The laptop slipped through her fingers.
She looked down as it clipped the balcony and then spun out into space. She almost tried to grab it but then the cold-hot fear of falling overcame her, and she could only watch as it tumbled towards the pavement. Ten metres per second squared, something in the back of her head told her. The laptop shattered like a glass goblet when it hit the ground.
Fear, anger, rage, terror, she couldn’t decide what to feel the most. The heat from above was unbearable now. Her hands felt like they were burning on the metal of the railing. She had to let go, but her feet were still balanced on the railing of the balcony below. A fifty-fifty chance. She would either fall onto the balcony or she too would tumble down to the hard concrete pavement. The metal above was too hot to hold. Eva prepared to take her final gamble.
Another crash. The balcony door burst open. A man in a tawny uniform rushed through and grabbed her by the waist. She felt herself being dragged by arms she had no desire to resist, manhandled like a sack of potatoes, almost thrown onto the ground and passed to another firefighter. ‘You okay, miss?’ the second man yelled.
Her hands stung. She looked at them, but they were not burned. Eva nodded as they dragged her away. The last thing she saw as she looked over the balcony was the shattered remains of the laptop, scattered across the pavement below.
Chapter Twenty-One
One of Moresby’s men questioned her. His name was Daniels, she remembered that much. He stood by the ambulance and seemed nervous. ‘I should wake him up, ma’am,’ he said, not quite knowing where to look. He meant Moresby.
She had a foil blanket wrapped around her shoulders, but she had nothing to cover her legs. She didn’t care. She didn’t give a damn. Somebody had tried to kill her, again, but this time she had an idea of who that might be. It was just a name, a coincidence from an old, dredged-up investigation that Warren Muir had hoped would pay for his place in the sun, or his pub in the West Country, or his fucking retirement home for all she knew. Eva seethed. It wasn’t just that they had tried to kill her. They had put everyone in her apartment block at risk too, and she didn’t even know her neighbours. Razin’s fault, Hadley’s fault, and hers as well, she admitted to herself. She wanted to punch something, anything, but she knew she couldn’t afford to let the façade slip. ‘Let him sleep’ was all Eva said to Daniels. ‘He’ll find out soo
n enough.’
The paramedic in the ambulance planted her hands on her hips. ‘I’d really like to get you to hospital so you can be examined by a doctor. There could be damage we’re not seeing yet.’
‘There isn’t,’ Eva told her. ‘And that’s not going to happen. I’m not moving until I get confirmation from the fire officers they got everyone out.’ She turned to Moresby’s constable. ‘You couldn’t see if someone at the station could find me some clothes? I don’t think my wardrobe made it.’ Daniels went to make the call. ‘And a phone,’ she said as he turned away. ‘More than clothes, I need a phone.’
Afterwards, Eva went to the station. She had not waited for Daniels. Still dressed in her T-shirt, knickers and a silver blanket, she ignored the stare of the desk officer, padded up to the incident room and buried the metal box she had rescued from under her bed in a filing cabinet. Then she hid the key to the filing cabinet in her desk. It would have to do, she decided. It was the best she could manage right now. With any luck whoever had set the fire would think the box destroyed, assuming they had guessed she had it in her flat in the first place. Maybe they had simply wanted to kill her. Maybe that would have been enough.
Eva sat at her desk and stared at the wall. Fuck. Another minute or so and the smoke would have overcome her. If she had not woken up at that moment she would have suffocated. At least the fire officer had confirmed there were no fatalities. The ambulances had taken a few people to hospital with symptoms of smoke inhalation, but nobody had been seriously hurt. She had hitched a ride to the station in a squad car because she literally had nowhere else to go. Everything she owned had been destroyed, and now the laptop was gone too.
The sight of it shattering as it struck the pavement came back to her. Perhaps that didn’t matter though, she thought as she switched her gaze to the phone on her desk. The laptop had held a disc image of another computer’s hard drive and that computer still sat in an evidence locker. If she could get another copy then she could use the password on it. The trouble with that, she thought as she toyed with the idea of picking up the phone, was it would require somebody to gain access to a guarded evidence locker under false pretences. It was possible, she knew that, because somebody had done that for her already, but the idea of having to ask a friend to put herself at risk for her yet again pressed down so hard it felt it would crush her. When she thought about alternatives though, Eva realised she had no choice.
She picked up the phone and dialled a number she knew by heart. The first time around it didn’t connect. After six rings the other end went to voicemail, so she hung up and tried again. That happened the second time too, so she tried a third time. After four rings someone answered.
‘If this is a sodding sales call—’
‘Tisha,’ she hissed, ‘it’s Eva.’
A slur. ‘Eva? What’s up?’ Leticia North seemed confused, but so would anybody at four-thirty in the morning. The sound of her voice, though. It was good to hear a real friend again. She had known Tisha from her very first day at MPCCU. Another computer science graduate, they had hit it off immediately. Tisha and her cornrow hair and the constant complaints Eva had to put up with every time she had it tightened. Tisha knew her. She even knew most of the truth about Colin Lynch. Of all people, Eva did not want to drop her problems on Tisha, because she knew Tisha would do whatever she could to help. And yet that was exactly what she was about to do.
‘I’m in trouble,’ Eva admitted. She told Tisha about the fire.
She heard Tisha gasp. ‘Jesus Eva, are you okay? Was it Lynch’s men?’
‘No,’ she said, but then realised she was answering the wrong question. ‘I mean yes I’m okay, but no it was nothing to do with Lynch.’ She didn’t want to have to explain about Semion Razin. It was not the time. ‘It’s another case and it involves Hadley. Tisha,’ she said, hardly daring to speak the words, ‘the eGPU worked. I got the password.’
‘So it bloody well should have,’ Tisha said. ‘It was stacked. I loaded it full of processors myself.’
‘But the laptop didn’t make it. I dropped it as I was climbing down the balcony.’
The silence from the other end of the line said that Tisha had grasped the problem instantly. Eva waited for her to respond. ‘You need me to make another disc image.’ It didn’t sound as though she were asking a question.
She had known Tisha would understand immediately. ‘Is it possible?’
‘Anything is possible,’ Tisha began.
Eva finished for her. ‘But whether it’s probable or not is another question.’ An old joke they had once shared. It felt as though it had come back to haunt her. She kept waiting.
‘I’ll need to get back into that evidence locker,’ Tisha said. ‘I can’t take a laptop in. The guard won’t let me. Half the stuff in there is supposed to be sealed.’
‘I know it’s one hell of an ask.’
‘It’s not that,’ Tisha told her, ‘it’s just practicalities. I can sneak a phone and a flash drive in though,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’ll find an excuse. You don’t just want me to use the password on the original computer?’
‘Christ no,’ Eva said, ‘I don’t want you anywhere near that data. It’s freaking toxic.’ She hesitated. ‘If you can get it could you stick the flash drive in the post?’
‘To where? I thought you just got burned out of house and home?’
‘To the station,’ Eva said.
‘Is that a good idea?’
She licked her lips. ‘Do you still have any of those envelopes?’ She meant something she knew MPCCU had recovered from a drugs bust a couple of years previously, a piece of ingenuity on the part of a dealer that had the entire unit bemused at the simple audacity of it.
Tisha laughed. ‘What, the ones with the forged HMRC logo and “private and confidential” plastered all over them? I can get to them. You’re right, nobody in their right mind touches letters from HMRC.’ She laughed again. ‘I miss you, you idiot,’ Tisha told her. Eva could hear the next question coming. ‘Are you sure you’re alright?’
Her shoulders slumped then. Eva rested her head in her hand and clutched the phone, hard. ‘Not even close,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not supposed to be here, this isn’t me. I was being fast-tracked for a DI role in cybercrime. It was going to be a technical job. I didn’t mind doing the rotations; I knew each of them would only last a few months. Then Lynch came along and now Hadley has me by the throat.’
‘You’ve got to get out.’
‘I can’t,’ Eva gasped. ‘Hadley is using me. He knows he has something over me. I can’t get out while he’s on my back. And now there are people actually being murdered and I’m supposed to stop it. How the fuck do I do that? I’m not a real DI. Oh, I passed the exams but anybody with a brain could do that. Real DIs come with years of experience on the job, not a couple of years as a DS and a computer science degree,’ she snarled. ‘Somebody is trying to kill me and Hadley doesn’t give a shit. You know what he’s like. If I’d burned to death tonight he would have just brushed his collar and moved on.’
‘He’s a piece of work,’ Tisha agreed. She took a breath. ‘But you can fix Hadley.’
‘Maybe,’ Eva admitted.
‘You can,’ Tisha insisted, ‘you know you can. Harris, you are the most remorselessly logical person I’ve ever met. I’ve seen you with a problem dozens of times. You never let go of it. You’re dogmatic, you’re a pain in the arse and you’re more than a bit mental, but you never give up. Trial and error. There is nothing else, no better solution. You keep trying, you keep making mistakes, you fall on your arse but you get right back up and eventually you get it right. Listen to me.’ Eva stared at the phone. It seemed to be blurring for some reason. Smoke still in her eyes, she assumed. She had to wipe them. ‘Listen to me. I can get you another disc image,’ Tisha said. ‘I’ll do that, I promise. What about this bastard who set fire to your flat?’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Eva whispered. ‘I’ll have him soo
n enough.’
‘See? Bloody remorseless. So that’ll be two down. And this other killer?’
‘Killers,’ Eva corrected her.
‘Close?’
‘Closing.’
‘See what I mean? You might not have years on the job but you’re smart and tenacious. I know you can take the knocks, we all know that, Christ knows we’ve seen it.’ Tisha paused. ‘But Eva? It’s time to start throwing some punches of your own. Look, forget the envelope. I’ll set up a link to a secure server outside of the EU and you can download the disc image from there. It’ll need some black hat stuff to cover the trace-route but that’s not a problem. You’ll have it by mid-morning, I promise. But you’ve got to nail that bastard. You cannot have him on your back for the rest of your life. Hit him where it hurts,’ Tisha told her. ‘Burn him. He deserves it. You know you can.’
She gripped the phone. ‘I will. Thanks Tisha,’ she added. ‘You’re right. Two down, almost. Two to go.’
‘Do you know what you’re doing next?’
‘Yes,’ Eva told her. ‘I know exactly what I’m going to do next.’
* * *
Flynn burst into her office just before six. She wore a tracksuit and no make-up, and she stared at Eva. ‘You do know this has got to stop? Pardon my French boss, but this is getting out of fucking hand. What did you do to this Lynch guy that has him so pissed off?’
‘I got him killed,’ Eva said before she could think. Hearing Tisha’s voice again had made her careless.
Flynn seemed nonplussed. ‘Well, that would probably do it. Come on,’ she told her as she held the door open. ‘I’ve got a spare room and something you can wear. You can grab a few hours sleep while I explain to the DCI why the station owes you some new clothes.’
Tiredness and shock threatened to overwhelm her. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind? I could do with some sleep but I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.’
Flynn tossed her hand dismissively. ‘Stay as long as you need. Seriously, it’s not a problem. I’m sort of between boyfriends at the moment, so it’s not like you’re interrupting anything.’ She frowned. ‘DCI doesn’t need to know that though,’ she told her.
