“Panda, the Chinese connection?”
Alexei nodded. “They’ve been cyber pals for quite a while now and Freddie is showing disturbing signs of wanting to spread his wings. Although he recently celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday, this is a man who in many ways is still a child. I suspect he’s barely left Acacia Road, never mind the wider world of South London. But this may be about to change. Panda has been persistent with invitations to visit and these siren sounds are starting to get through.”
“Visit China?”
“I’m afraid so. One of the country’s most brilliant hackers defecting to the enemy! If he accepts, Gudrun will go ballistic, because China, with its hordes of frighteningly clever people, is now the west’s main commercial rival.”
“In that case I’d have thought they would have plenty of native talent. Wouldn’t need to lure people like Freddie to their shores.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. China is still pretty much an enclosed society, with a fiendishly difficult language. Someone like Freddie, born and bred in one of the countries they’re trying to infiltrate, would be like gold dust.”
“How close do you think Freddie is to accepting?”
“Impossible to say. He’s known no life beyond the confines of his computer screen, so even a trip to Calais would be like going to the moon. But from the tone of his chat it seems he’s tempted. His Premier League betting programme is doing reasonably well and he’s starting to think of spending some of the proceeds.”
“Okay, but what can we do about it?”
“Maybe nothing. But there’s one avenue that might be worth exploring. Mrs Jenkins. Freddie’s mother.”
“She’s not Mrs Ricketts?”
“Apparently not. You could perhaps find out why.”
“I could?”
Alexei nodded. “It’s time to move from the electronic to the personal. Meet our targets in the flesh. Freddie’s a computer geek who’s scared of personal contact, so going straight for him would probably not be a good idea. But his mum seems to be pretty normal. More than that, she’s obviously worried about her son.”
“You’ve been in contact?”
“So far only by email. Freddie and I have been ‘together’ electronically now for quite a while, so I think Mum’s beginning to view me as a possible girlfriend. Someone who might tempt him away from his unhealthy lifestyle.”
“What’s been your reply?”
“Cautious. I’ve explained I’m very busy and - to dash any hopes she might have in that direction - that I already have a partner. A much better approach - especially now that you have time on your hands - would be for you to meet Freddie’s mum. See what you can find out.”
I nodded. “How do we arrange that?”
“I email Mrs Jenkins, plead being up to my ears in work, but that my partner - you - might be able to squeeze in a meeting. As someone on the register of Freddie’s chums, you’ll already be known to her by name.”
“Okay. I’ll take on mum. Any other jobs I could be doing?”
Alexei nodded. “Freddie has his hacker claws mainly into four large companies. I think we should build up dossiers on these. Find out all we can about them. Start with the Companies House website, then... well, it’s up to you.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I saluted.
“And get your gear over to St David’s Square, Docklands, soon as you like. We’re now partners.”
17
DOCKLANDS. NOVEMBER
Moving in with Alexei was all I needed to banish those post-sacking blues. My Richmond pad was let furnished, so ‘my gear’, as Alexei put it, amounted to little more than basic toiletries and some changes of clothing. Once installed, I was able to turn my attention to the possibility that Freddie Ricketts might not always want to spend sixteen hours a day in front of his computer screen. If Panda had his way, he might be persuaded to see something of the outside world. Like China. Which would cause something of a panic with Stockmann.
In view of Freddie’s aversion to humans in person, I agreed with Alexei that our best approach was via his mother, Mrs Jenkins. Megan, as she now insisted we call her.
Megan’s emails to Alexei had started about a month previously, hesitantly at first, but, as their friendship grew, with an ever more pleading tone. Her son was a ‘difficult personality’ and she would welcome any hints Alexei might have in dealing with him. I could sympathise with the poor woman. To have Freddie, now a grown man, permanently at home doing something weird in a darkened room, must be a nightmare. The fact that Asperger’s was a well-known condition did not make it any easier. It was a disability that could not be cured, only managed. Megan clearly needed help with that ‘managing’.
Alexei had sympathised, but excused herself by ‘being snowed under with work’ - which was not far from the truth. Instead, she said that her partner, Max, was prepared to see what he could do. In case Megan did not twig who I was, Alexei added that I was Freddie’s ‘cat man’.
The only living thing Freddie really related to was his tabby cat, Cobber, so as his ‘Cobber correspondent’ I came highly recommended. Megan Jenkins jumped at the offer, emailing me direct as ‘Dear Cobber-boy’ and suggesting we meet at her local for a pub lunch. She added that the place was actually not that ‘local’ for her, but the nearest with decent food. So how about the Railway Pub, just off Streatham Common, at 12.30 next Friday? That was in a couple of days.
Although car-less, I declined Alexei’s offer of her little red Boxster. I was happy enough navigating the snowy slopes of Val Fornet but not the confusing sprawl of South London, with unknown parking problems at the other end. Besides, I was in no hurry, so settled on the rail option, which, after a number of changes, eventually dumped me at Streatham Common station.
The Railway Pub stood - surprise, surprise - opposite the railway station, in a three- storey brown stone building. I was less concerned about how the place looked as by the fact that we had forgotten the most basic rule in setting up a meeting: how to recognise each other. I had spent the journey trying to conjure up images of Megan Jenkins. Her name suggested she might come from Wales. The fact that she had a son of twenty-five should make her age late forties or early fifties. Beyond that, I had little to go on.
The interior of the Railway Pub was nice and bright, with light wooden tables and chairs, but I scarcely noticed, concentrating as I was on acting the idiot who didn’t know whom I was looking for. It worked, because within thirty seconds I espied a little old lady in a corner waving at me.
“You must be Max,” she gushed, getting up and extending her hand.
I gathered my wits and was able to respond. “Megan! Good to see you.”
My confusion was caused by the fact that she was much older than I’d anticipated. The lady greeting me looked to be in her seventies, but with a son in his twenties that seemed scarcely possible. Maybe he was adopted. Maybe a hard life had taken its toll and she was only in her sixties. I was about to find out.
I discovered that the place was famous for craft beer, so decided to try its Five o’clock Shadow, purely on account of the crazy name. At over 7% alcohol this was potent stuff, but I was not driving and if necessary could sleep it off on the way back. Megan was less adventurous with orange juice. For food we both settled on fish and chips.
With ordering out of the way I got down to business.
“I gather you’re worried about Freddie?”
Megan shrugged. She was a round-faced little lady, well wrapped up in a thick coat and grey scarf, even though the pub was nice and warm inside.
“Worried? When have I not been? Forever worried because he spends the whole day - every day - at that stupid computer of his. Now I’m starting to worry for the opposite reason: that this Panda fellow may take him off to China. Freddie is still in many ways a baby. Can’t have a clue what or where China is. Probably thinks it’s near our local Tesco.”
“Do you know anything about this man who calls himself Panda?”
&n
bsp; “Not a thing. But I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Panda! I ask you!”
If I’d been wrong about Megan’s age, I also appeared to be wrong about any Welsh connection. Her voice was pure ‘Sarf London’.
“Has Freddie always been like this?” A silly question perhaps, but I knew next to nothing about Asperger’s. Were you born with it or did it manifest itself as you became older?
“He was always a strange little boy,” she replied. “At first I couldn’t work out what was wrong. He was teased at school, which made him even more buttoned up. Eventually I was told he wasn’t sick or anything like that, just a little different. All he needed was love and everything would be okay. Love and looking after. They didn’t tell me he would need looking after more or less forever.”
“Is there no one else to help you?” This was my coded query about a possible Mr Ricketts. Or Mr Jenkins.
Megan shook her head. “My other two kids left home years ago. Now with families of their own, so too busy to help poor old mum with number three.”
“Ah... so Freddie’s not an only child.”
“He was really. After a gap of nineteen years it never entered my head I’d have another one. Thought I was long past it. My husband, Clive Jenkins, passed away in his fifties, leaving me a little lonely, so when Len Ricketts came along...”
“But he didn’t stay?”
Megan shook her head. “When he heard I was in the club again he was shattered. Scarpered pretty smartish. Leaving me holding the baby. Literally.”
“But you’re Mrs Jenkins, not Ricketts?”
“Always been Meg Jenkins. Len and I never married. All I have to remember him by is a young man, who’s...” she trailed off, close to tears.
“A young man I’ve heard described as one of the half dozen cleverest computer whiz-kids in the country,” I said, in an effort to cheer her up.
“Far too clever, that’s the problem. Got himself into hot water with the authorities. Only eighteen at the time.”
“But nothing came of it,” I said, remembering what Alexei had told me.
“Not directly, perhaps. But it was very stressful. Questions, questions... all the time questions. For almost six months. In the end they decided Freddie hadn’t done anything. At least, nothing they could prove. But it drove him back into himself. I’d been starting to hope he might become, well... almost normal, but the ‘investigation’, as they called it, was a real blow. Since then he’s hardly moved out of his bedroom. And his computer. Too scared, I suppose.”
“But now it’s possible he might venture out of that room of his. And that also frightens you?”
Megan sniffed. Wiped her nose with a hanky. “I’m just a silly old woman. Don’t know what to think any more. Why can’t Freddie find himself a nice girl from Streatham? Even a nice boy? Folk do such funny things these days. But this Panda fellow! I couldn’t look after Freddie if they took him off to China.”
“May never happen,” I said soothingly.
I could see the way things were going. If Freddie accepted the offer to visit China, Gudrun would be on the blower to us within seconds, with the reminder that Stockmann was paying us good money to ensure Britain’s prize hacker behaved himself. Which was bound to mean keeping him at home. If that proved impossible, we’d be expected to nursemaid him on his holiday and make sure he caught that flight back to Blighty.
With the choice of either bailing out of our Stockmann agreement - and with it losing two thousand a month - or becoming Freddie’s travel companion, I found myself saying,
“If Freddie did take up Panda’s offer, I might be able to find the time to go with him.”
“Oh, Maxie! Do you think you could?” Her face lit up. She looked ten years younger - down to what must be her real age, somewhere in the sixties. “You’d be my hero!”
I felt embarrassed. My reason for the offer was not altruism, but filthy lucre: the possibility of losing Stockmann’s money. I had also been less than honest in implying I had a steady and important job. In reality I was an unemployed bum, who would be out on the street had it not been for my two guardian angels: Gudrun with the cash and Alexei putting a roof over my head. The prospect of being able to earn my keep as Freddie’s China companion was therefore rather attractive. It was a country I’d never visited. And looking after Freddie could surely not be that difficult.
The rest of our meal at the Railway Pub passed in a glow of euphoria - at least it did for Megan Jenkins, who began to look like the attractive young girl she must one day have been.
Once over my initial ‘heroics’ - Megan’s word - in making the offer, my euphoria began to wane. China was no doubt an interesting country, but how much of it would I see or appreciate with someone like Freddie in tow? A man I’d never met: and was never likely to meet if he maintained his monk-like seclusion in suburban Streatham. Because, let’s face it, none of this Panda nonsense would ever come to pass.
18
VAL FORNET. FEBRUARY
It soon become obvious that staying with Alexei in Docklands was not going to work. In London I was not qualified for any well-paid jobs and not prepared to do the menial stuff. My world, the one where I had the experience and contacts, lay across the channel in the Alps. Losing my position with Snow Supreme could not have come at a worse time, because all the major contracts for the coming season had by now been signed. But beggars can’t be choosers, so I had started looking for any crumbs that might still be around to feed desperate souls like myself.
I finally struck lucky with an old mate, who had been let down at the last minute for a manager to run Jimmy’s bar in my old haunt, Val Fornet. The job came with an ‘apartment’, a fancy name for what was no more than a ‘bedsit’. Ski resorts are expensive, so accommodation for the workers tends to be on a par with sailors in a submarine. I did not complain, being fortunate in finding anything at such short notice.
However, there was the problem of Freddie Ricketts. Alexei and I were being well paid to monitor this rumbling cyber volcano, which we could do in the usual way with emails and Facebook. But if there was an eruption, such as Freddie deciding to take up Panda’s offer of a visit to China, we would be expected to leap into action. How could I do this if tied to a job in the Alps?
I had felt obliged to email these facts to Gudrun, who did not like the idea of me emigrating for the winter, but at the same time realised that I could hardly be expected to loaf around in London on the off-chance that Freddie might decide to go walkabout. In the end I undertook to abandon my job in the Alps should Freddie decide to cut loose. This was not something I was happy about, but I had little option: cross my fingers and hope nothing would happen.
Christmas in Val Fornet was great. Almost like old times, except my job was less interesting. Likewise well into the New Year. Then, on the 12th February - I still remember the date - came the dreaded email. Freddie telling me that I could look after Cobber, the cat, while he was in China.
This was not a request. He was according me a great honour, so my acceptance was taken for granted. In order to wheedle my way into Freddie’s good books, I had waxed so lyrical over his pet that I had won the cat-minding vote over his mother. There appeared to be no doubts about his proposed trip, the word ‘if’ being conspicuously absent.
It was a situation that demanded the greatest diplomacy. My first reply to Freddie expressed astonishment and delight that I was to be permitted the guardianship of his fabulous feline. In fact, I would be using every trick in the book to try and dissuade Freddie from going abroad, but in order to retain his confidence I had to play along with the charade of being his ‘Cobber chap’.
A couple more emails revealed a chink of hope. Freddie’s departure was not imminent. Although we had been cyber pals for months, Freddie in the flesh remained an unknown quantity. Apart from being a maths genius, we’d had him down as rather dim, but this was an opinion we might have to revise, because his actions now were eminently sensible. He told us he
couldn’t depart at once because he had no passport. Getting one and then having it stamped with a Chinese visa would take a while. He then discovered that this did not really matter, as winters in China were cold, except in the far south, while summers were wet almost everywhere. Best tourist seasons were spring and autumn, so mid-April had been pencilled in for the big adventure.
This meant I could probably last out the season in the snow. And it gave us about two months to come up with a plan to control our cyber king. Alexei and I felt the situation was getting beyond our pay grade, so we sought advice from Gudrun, who emailed back that she would make a flying visit to Val Fornet the following week. For ‘consultations and hopefully some skiing’, as she put it. Alexei, who had already booked a week with me in March, was up to her ears in work and felt unable to ask Morgan Durlacher for more time off. Which left me to host Stockmann’s mystery woman on my own.
19
Mid-February is pretty much high season in the Alps; not as hectic as Easter perhaps, but conditions should be perfect, the sun beginning to give some real warmth, but not enough to wreck the snow. I wondered whether Gudrun would have problems finding accommodation at such short notice, but should have realised that if money is no object the word ‘problem’ disappears from the dictionary. At all events, she announced her arrival for the following Wednesday and, after picking up a rental car from Geneva airport, should reach Val Fornet at around 6pm. She was again booked in at the Glacier and suggested I come round to her hotel at about 7pm unless she advised a delay. We could then have a drink, dinner and a chat, preferably at the Glacier, as it would have been a long day for her.
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