by Holly Watt
‘I’ll pull in one of Foreign team to put together a thousand words on the politics of Libya. Alice can do a piece on refugees,’ Dash added. ‘And we’ll start getting video to splice something together from Casey’s footage from the camp.’
‘What are the legal implications of all this?’ Salcombe broke in.
‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Dash. ‘We’re fine with Oliver Selby, I would say. Casey saw him shooting with her own eyes, and there’s the recording. So we can run him on the first day, and take it from there.’
‘And you can’t libel a dead man anyway,’ Ross pointed out.
‘What?’ Dash looked at him.
‘From what you’ve said’ – Ross shrugged – ‘they’re not fussed about killing, these guys, and I can’t see that Josh character letting him back out of there. Selby will know all about their modus operandi, and they won’t want him trundling back to London knowing how they do everything. Plus they’ll be on the run, the three of them. It would be a hassle to get him back to Algeria, and why would they bother? It will be a shallow grave somewhere in Libya for Selby.’
‘And Selby brought in the Trojan horse, which will piss them off even more.’ Dash was nodding. ‘You’re right. They’ll cut their losses there. Spot of summary justice.’
‘Vigilante.’ Ross’s smile had no humour. ‘Just not down a dark alley.’
They were so casual. Casey squeezed her nails into her palms. She thought about Selby, taken out and shot in the back of the head. Just the latest in the long line of deaths at Euzma. But this death was hers.
‘I’m going to grab the lawyer.’ Dash barrelled out of the room. ‘And get graphics working on a decent map of Libya.’
‘I’ve got to check today’s front once more.’ Ross followed him.
There was a brief silence after they’d left the room. Casey powered up a laptop that Hessa had provided, and glared at her mobile. Ed’s phone had been abandoned in the Hilux, and the matron at St Thomas’ said he couldn’t be disturbed.
Robert was reading through the transcripts, eyebrows raised. Casey was typing like an automaton. After a few minutes, Robert began tapping away too, pausing occasionally to check a fact with the room. Hessa was putting together a timeline, running in and out of the conference room.
‘I don’t mean to interrupt, Casey’ – Peregrine was staring at a grid of letters – ‘but do you know any of the names we’re looking for? It would be helpful. Work backwards.’
‘Milo Newbury.’ Casey felt the tears stinging her eyes suddenly. ‘Oliver Selby.’
‘Ah.’ Peregrine was scribbling again. ‘Yes. Jolly good.’
‘We need more clues,’ said Toby, in the end. ‘We need more.’
Casey moved round the desk.
Toby was typing long rows of numbers into his laptop, churning algorithms.
Casey read the numbers out loud.
‘511734, 12375, 11852.’
There was a long pause.
‘What do they mean?’ she said into the silence. ‘What’s the pattern?’
‘We don’t exactly know yet.’ Peregrine spoke unwillingly.
‘Are they all like that?’
‘There are symbols too.’ Toby gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘You said the flights went in and out of Algeria, didn’t you? It would be helpful if you could make a list of the dates, when you think it would be most likely that someone was out at Euzma. When was Milo Newbury there, for example?’
‘October,’ said Casey. ‘And we left Oliver behind, out there. We can cross-ref the Djanet flights to the diaries.’
‘OK.’ Toby calculated. ‘OK. In that case, I think this little arrow symbol probably indicates one of their visitors. And that makes . . .’
He stood up, scribbled on a whiteboard.
Milo Newbury: 55364, 33204, 23463, 34754
Oliver Selby: 431055, 53153, 42426, 1223
‘Always assuming’ – Peregrine shook his head – ‘that this Rory character didn’t make any mistakes with his own codes. And amateurs always do.’
‘Why isn’t it all groups of five numbers?’ Casey asked him.
‘I don’t know yet.’ Toby was doodling smiley faces around the codes. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Write all the numbers with that symbol up on the board, Toby,’ said Robert. ‘There has to be a pattern.’
‘And we have to break it,’ said Casey. ‘It’s the only way to find out who else was out there. There has to be a way.’
46
Dash came back into the conference room. It was nearly midnight.
‘Time to bugger off, Casey,’ he said.
‘Where do I go?’ She looked forlorn, standing under the strip lighting.
‘Ah, well.’ Dash rolled his eyes. ‘Hessa had an idea.’
The Post had recently installed a prayer room – ‘multi-faith,’ HR said proudly – a few doors down from the conference room. The newsroom had only identified its location after someone from Commercial was caught in a compromising position with the art director. It was the heavily Muslim IT guy who had discovered them, unfortunately.
‘At least she was on her knees,’ said the head of HR wearily. ‘You bunch of idiots.’
Somehow, although most of the shops had closed for the night, Hessa had got a mattress delivered to the prayer room.
Casey’s eyes filled with tears as she took in the pillows and the pretty duvet cover. It looked almost cosy, despite the institutional grey carpet. Hessa had even managed pyjamas, and a toothbrush.
‘It’s so kind of you, Hessa. Thank you.’
‘Hessa’s pulled together some clothes for tomorrow.’ Dash shook his head. ‘God knows how at this time of night.’
‘I mugged the fashion cupboard,’ Hessa grinned. ‘And swiped the beauty samples too. Cressida’s going to be spitting tacks.’
‘Miranda’s going to stay in a hotel,’ said Dash. ‘I think she’s probably much less of a focus for them – they may not even know she exists. But she’s booked in under Hessa’s name just in case. Vadim’s clinging on, by the way.’
‘Oh God, I hope he’s all right.’ Casey could barely stand. ‘But I can’t leave them working on the codes. We’ve got to keep going.’
‘You’re to call it a night and that’s an order,’ said Dash. ‘Hessa’s organised security for you too. I wouldn’t have thought of it, but she was worried.’
A small, tough-looking man was standing next to Dash. Another ex-Army type, Casey thought. They were everywhere.
‘I’ve just got a few more words to write,’ Casey said, peering beyond him into the conference room.
‘Polish it up in the morning,’ said Dash. ‘I mean it, Casey. Go to bed.’
She could see the slump in Peregrine’s shoulders as she said goodnight.
‘It could be a fairly simple transposition cipher, with an element of substitution,’ Peregrine explained. ‘With your Mr Joshua Charlton adding in a few little quirks of his own, too.’
He was trying, clumsily, to cheer her, Casey could see.
‘We’ll keep working at it,’ promised Toby. ‘We won’t stop.’
He was writing endless formulae, barely looking up. His keyboard pattered like rain as she walked to the prayer room.
As Casey closed the door to her little sanctuary, she could barely remember her own bedroom. It seemed a thousand years since she had left London. She thought of Ed, tucked in his hospital bed. Take care of him, she almost prayed, in the little holy room at the heart of the paper.
And then, because she always would now, she thought of the refugees out in the nowhere. Praying that, one day, the world would care. Praying for the bombed-out schools and the burned-out hospitals, and the sons who never come home.
And one day, there is no tomorrow.
A mother and father leaving everything behind, only to face the worst. And a nameless lost girl, a girl she watched die for a story.
Casey lay down on the unfamiliar mattress, and pulled the unfamiliar
duvet over her head, and tried to sleep.
Casey jumped awake in the night.
There weren’t any windows in the prayer room. It felt like a tomb.
Something . . . There was something on the edge of her consciousness . . . Something . . .
She climbed off the mattress, and scrambled back to the conference room.
‘None of those number groups starts with a number above five,’ she said.
They looked up, wearily.
‘We know,’ said Toby. ‘And the second number is usually quite low too. But then it becomes more chaotic.’
‘“Most still, most secret, and most grave”,’ quoted Casey. ‘It’s from Hamlet. Mostgrave. That was the name of the company they used for the jet. It must have been a sort of joke.’
‘Hamlet?’ Peregrine raised an eyebrow.
‘There was only one book in the palace,’ said Casey. ‘Shakespeare. The plays. Five acts.’
Toby pushed himself back in his seat, eyes flicking from side to side. ‘So the numbers . . .’
‘They would use Arabic or Roman numerals,’ said Peregrine. ‘Surely.’
‘Rory might not,’ said Casey. ‘That might make it too obvious. It might be act, scene, line . . .’
She trailed off, mind whirling.
‘And then syllable,’ tried Robert. ‘Or word.’
‘It might work,’ Toby’s head jerked up from the screen.
‘Rory was laughing about it,’ said Casey. ‘Those plays, he said someone had left them there. It made him smile. It must have meant something.’
‘And it was what he had to hand,’ said Robert.
‘We need a copy of Shakespeare.’ Peregrine hurried off in the direction of the Books department. ‘They’ll have a copy over there, I’m quite sure of it . . .’
‘Or’ – Toby rolled his eyes, and turned back to the laptop – ‘we could just read it right here.’
It took him only a second to find the plays.
‘Which one?’ Toby was asking, as Peregrine puffed back into view.
‘I don’t know.’ Casey’s eyes clouded.
‘Well, only thirty-seven to pick from,’ said Peregrine. He was clutching the complete works. ‘Depending on whether you include The Two Noble Kinsmen.’
‘We absolutely should’ – Robert suppressed his smile – ‘include The Two Noble Kinsmen.’
‘Rory was reading Macbeth,’ said Casey. ‘We could start with that.’
‘Act five,’ deciphered Peregrine, ‘Scene five . . . and then try line thirty-six.’
‘“Within this three mile may you see it coming”,’ Robert got there first.
‘Mile.’ Casey felt that surge of relief. ‘Mile . . . The fourth word in the line.’
‘Act three,’ Peregrine went on. ‘Scene three. Line twenty.’
‘“Thou may’st”,’ Toby stumbled over the word. ‘“Revenge – O slave!”’
‘He’s counted “may’st” as one word,’ Peregrine concluded. ‘Mile-O. That’s it. Milo.’
A quick smile of triumph, and they hustled on to the next word.
‘Word three: “With a new Gorgon: do not bid me speak”,’ Toby got there first. ‘Then fourth from “Those that we bury back, our monuments.”’
‘“Shall be the maws of kites”,’ agreed Peregrine. ‘Newbury.’
Peregrine brought out a silver hip flask in triumph.
‘What about Selby?’ Casey tigered on.
They worked it out slowly.
‘O. Liver. Sell. By.’
‘Well done, Casey.’ Peregrine put his hand on her shoulder. ‘We weren’t getting anywhere.’
Suddenly laughing, Casey felt the room blaze with excitement.
‘We’ve got to do all of them,’ she begged. ‘We’ve got to get every last one.’
‘We will,’ Toby grinned at her. ‘Give us a chance.’
They swallowed their coffee, went back to work.
‘Act five,’ read Casey. ‘Scene one, line one seven three.’
They counted, swiftly.
‘But that scene doesn’t have a hundred and seventy-three lines,’ said Peregrine.
‘“Good night, good doctor”,’ read Toby. ‘And then that’s it. They exeunt.’
He rolled the word around his mouth.
‘But it must be,’ said Casey.
‘He might,’ Peregrine’s mouth sagged, ‘have used different plays at different times.’
‘Fuck.’ Toby’s eyes widened. ‘Fucking hell. This is going to take for ever.’
‘I suppose it was a game too, for them,’ said Peregrine. ‘Not just an aide-memoire.’
Robert had his head in his hands.
‘It never occurred to me,’ he said, ‘that these people might actually get bored out there.’
‘People get bored everywhere,’ said Casey drily. ‘You’d be astonished how boring a war zone is, most of the time. And then a mortar lands.’
‘Casey.’ The chief reporter took charge. ‘Go back to bed. You’re shattered. And we need you to be awake tomorrow.’
‘I can’t.’ But she was staggering.
‘You can.’ Robert pushed her to the door. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Before you go, did he have any other favourites?’ Peregrine looked hopeful. ‘Did any of them quote anything?’
‘I’d focus’ – Casey stumbled out of the room – ‘on the tragedies.’
Instead of going back to his flat, Dash had slept on the small sofa in his office. He woke at dawn, with a crick in his neck. For once, in the early morning light, the offices looked positively rosy, the dawn light giving an odd magic to the grey desks.
Dash stood in the dawn and telephoned Arthur, not caring that it was before 6 a.m. There had been no developments in the hunt for the M4 shooter. The police had identified the flat from where the shot had been fired, and nothing else. The door to the flat had been kicked in, a window smashed. No fingerprints so far.
‘What have we got?’ Dash asked, marching into the conference room.
Peregrine and Toby looked serious, and shattered. The conference room was littered with Red Bull cans and coffee cups. Peregrine was still boycotting the sandwiches.
Briefly, they explained the code.
‘We’ve got a list of some of the names,’ said Toby. ‘Casey cracked the cipher. But we’re not sure of all of them. And some of the names aren’t quite right, either. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere near a criminal standard of proof, not using these diaries.’
‘Right,’ Dash translated. ‘You mean that we’re going to have to get these names to cough to it, or we’re not going to be able to run the story.’
‘That,’ said Toby, ‘is exactly what I mean.’
Peregrine tugged worriedly at his eyebrows.
‘Fine,’ said Dash. ‘Give me the list.’
They handed it over: nine names.
‘I thought he told Casey that there were thirty or forty who had gone out there,’ said Dash, reading down the list. He read one name, read it again, whistled.
‘That’s only so far,’ explained Toby.
‘There may have been more anyway,’ said Peregrine. ‘The diaries have several pages missing.’
‘We haven’t worked them all out yet. And, of course, we’re only getting names and surnames,’ Toby went on. ‘No other information.’
John Smiths are almost impossible for newspapers to track down; Casey would have been able to find a Peregrine Courtenay within thirty seconds.
Dash looked up at them both. They were staring at him.
‘You’ve seen who’s on this list?’
They both nodded.
‘Alexander King Slay,’ Toby nodded. ‘Sometimes, it’s like that. Not completely clear. Rory used homophones half the time. Sometimes the last number seems to refer to a syllable, sometimes it’s the whole word. We’re having to guess the plays too, unless we can work out more of the pattern. We think Hamlet is the key for King Slay. So we assume he meant Kingsley.�
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They looked at the list again.
‘It’s just a matter,’ Peregrine said delicately, ‘of which Alexander Kingsley he means.’
47
Casey woke to a tap on the prayer-room door. After six hours’ sleep in her small sanctuary, she felt alive again.
She opened the door. Miranda was standing there with the bodyguard and a coffee.
‘All the trimmings,’ said Miranda. ‘You’re alive then.’
‘Matthew.’ The bodyguard introduced himself again. ‘No problems last night. No problems at all.’
Behind Miranda the newsroom was warming up.
They hugged for a long time. As she pulled away, Casey forced a smile on to her face.
‘You’ll be OK,’ said Miranda firmly. ‘It will be all right, in the end.’
Casey nodded. Miranda had a huge black eye.
‘That looks amazing.’ Casey examined it.
‘Isn’t it great?’ said Miranda. ‘Tom will be terminally unimpressed. But the good news is that Vadim is clinging on, just about. It’s incredible what they can do in these hospitals.’
‘Unlike in Salama,’ said Casey. ‘But I’m so glad about Vadim.’
Gulping coffee, she scrambled down to the unlovely showers in the basement. Then she dressed hurriedly, barely noticing the clothes Hessa had raided from the fashion cupboard.
‘Considerably more chic than usual,’ Miranda whistled at her.
‘That cupboard is only in extremis,’ Dash warned. ‘Cressida’s the one person I am scared of.’
He had been waiting for them in the conference room, bouncing a tennis ball against the wall. Toby and Peregrine had gone to the hotel next door for a couple of hours’ sleep. Janet had brought in some croissants.
‘You need to eat something, love.’
Now Dash pushed the list of names towards them.
‘We always knew they might be big names.’ Miranda refused to be cowed. ‘The sort of person who can drop six figures on a trip down to Libya – they were always going to be major players.’
‘I know,’ said Dash. ‘But how the hell are we going to break Kingsley?’
