The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘You’ve all changed your tune,’ Armstrong grumbled.

  The phone on Heddings’ desk started ringing, but the DCI ignored it.

  ‘Does that matter?’ Ramsey said. ‘Dammit, that’s the point of our job, isn’t it? We all have to have that ability, to change the way we think about something if the evidence points that way – until we find the truth.’

  Hask frowned. Something was happening on the other side of the glass window. Police officers were getting out of their seats and he could hear someone out of sight shouting, ‘Hey, you can’t just come storming through here – you have to sign in!’

  ‘I think you should answer that phone,’ he said. Armstrong and Ramsey were still sniping at each other, horns locked, but he’d zoned them out. Who could cause so much ruckus in a police station?

  The answer came through the door before his brain could reach for it. Heddings’ phone stopped ringing and the two policemen finally stopped arguing.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ an out-of-breath constable said as he stumbled into the doorway. ‘He wouldn’t stop.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Heddings’ voice was tight. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’

  There was a moment of silence before David Fletcher, head of the ATD, slapped a large photograph onto the DCI’s desk. ‘Thought you might like to see this.’

  The grainy enhanced image had clearly been taken at night, but the man at the centre was still recognisable as Cass Jones. His hair was longer and he’d lost weight, but it was definitely the missing DI. He was staring up at something, cigarette in hand.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Armstrong asked.

  ‘It was taken outside The Bank at 3.15 this morning. Most of the security cameras in that area belong to The Bank, but we still have one or two left over from the days when it was the MI6 building.’

  ‘He was outside The Bank?’ Hask asked. ‘In the middle of the night?’

  ‘Did he go in?’ Ramsey said.

  ‘No, as far as we can tell, he just stood there for about ten minutes, looking at the building, and then he left.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know where he went, do you?’ Heddings asked.

  ‘No, we lost him.’

  ‘He was looking at The Bank,’ Hask said softly.

  ‘Well, his brother used to work there,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘No.’ Hask shook his head. ‘If he was having a moment of grief, then he’d have gone to Christian’s old house. Grief leads people to treasure personal, not professional, things. He’d have been taking less of a risk as well. This … this is something else.’

  ‘Mr Bright,’ Ramsey said quietly.

  ‘Who?’ Fletcher frowned.

  Hask smiled at the DI. ‘Cass Jones was looking for his nemesis.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was past one o’clock in the morning when the telephone company van parked up outside The Bank. A man stepped out and walked, head down, towards the building, a large computer bag over his shoulder.

  He smiled as he spoke to the smart young woman behind the reception desk and slid over his identification card. She studied it thoroughly before politely returning both it and his smile. One moment. He nodded. He stayed by the counter as she spoke softly into her headset before smiling efficiently at him again. The administrator will be down shortly. The administrator. From his place at the counter he’d seen the name on her screen as she’d looked up the extension: Stephen Bestwick.

  He waited. Bestwick appeared, looking as expected: middle-aged, suit, tie, slightly harried – the look acquired by network administrators across the world. The only difference was Mr Bestwick’s suit was more expensive, bespoke, even, and his shoes were Italian, handmade. He in turn looked at the telephone engineer: thick workman’s boots with traces of muck on them from too much time outside. A uniform that was clean but not overly new. A watch that was hardy rather than expensive. He explained that he needed access to the servers – there were some looping issues; they could cause data damage or transfer speed issues, at worse data loss entirely. Stephen Bestwick listened as he led the engineer into the building. He would need to call and check this work was authorised, of course – company procedure. The engineer nodded himself. Of course.

  Although it was one o’clock in the morning, the building was still busy, though the staff worked quietly, as if unwilling to break the sanctity of the peaceful night. Their feet tapped out a steady rhythm as the administrator led the way to the lift and took them down. He wasn’t surprised; the cool of the basement levels were the best places to keep secrets, and that’s exactly what computer systems housed: flirtatious emails, financial wrong-doings; everything was backed up and locked away. Emptying the trash can on a personal computer rarely deleted any file’s entire existence, and certainly not in a place like this. Everything was stored in case it was needed later.

  Beside him, the administrator had dialled through to the engineer’s supervisor. In the silence the ring tone was loud. The engineer imagined the connection changing direction as he’d programmed it to do at the exchange earlier that evening; he visualised it like a streak of light, racing towards Brian Freeman and Cass Jones. It was Jones who answered, and now his voice was lighter and he spoke with the rising inflection the world had come to expect from any phone-drone, whether based in Mumbai or Glasgow. After a few moments the administrator appeared satisfied. He ended the call.

  The lift stopped gently; no thud of arrival here. The Bank was a smooth operator in every way. For the first time since embarking on this project, the engineer allowed his heart to flutter with excitement and his mouth almost watered at the prospect of exploring – of breaking – the systems in front of him. He followed the administrator, forcing himself to slouch instead of tapping his foot impatiently while he unlocked the door ahead.

  The air inside was cool, and the hum that surrounded them was like the whisper of a calling lover. His skin tingled. He put his case down and then put his hands on his hips for a second and let out a long breath of air, as if disappointed to be presented with so many banks of servers. He opened the case and started pulling out the usual equipment, all company labelled. He glanced at his watch. I hoped I’d be getting home early tonight. Not going to happen is it? He shrugged and smiled again. The administrator looked at the heavy drop-safe laptop in the bag and the flask and sandwich box and then at the engineer before chewing his bottom lip. Is it going to take long? The engineer had been expecting the question; the one thing guarantee-able in this world was a lack of patience. An hour? Maybe more? Hopefully less.

  There was a longer pause and then Stephen Bestwick pulled a business card from his top pocket and handed it over. Call me when you’re done and I’ll come and let you out.

  He waited a full five minutes after Bestwick had left before pulling the chunky laptop from his case, unclipping the false bottom beneath the keyboard and removing the far sleeker model beneath. He tipped out the seven number-labelled datasticks from the empty flask, opened a port, accessed the network and entered the administrator’s username, using the same formula as for Diana Jacobs, with a full stop between first and surname. He slotted the datastick marked ‘1’ into the side and ran the sophisticated dictionary attack stored on it. Within minutes, he had the administrator’s password.

  He sat back for a moment and smiled. For the next hour and a half, he was lost.

  So, everything’s okay now? The lift was as smooth on its way up as it had been on the way down. No issues? The engineer reassured the administrator – while yawning – that The Bank’s system had not been affected by the problems with the lines. Some other businesses in the area had not been so lucky, however; if The Bank had any external offices or servers in the area then they might find they have problems in the morning. But hopefully all would be sorted by then. The team was working around the clock.

  He kept his head down as he walked to the van – not hiding, just tired – as the cameras tracked his every move, even though by the time an
yone thought to double-check his identity all hell would already have broken loose. All the information Cass Jones required was stored on the laptop, and the servers were a ticking time bomb of chaos. All in all, it had been good night’s work.

  He thought of Stephen Bestwick, heading back up to his desk, the engineer no doubt already forgotten. His world was about to collapse. Still, most clouds had a silver lining, and within a month, just when he’d be at his lowest ebb, the by-then very much fired network administrator would receive a letter from an overseas bank which would, he was sure, restore Mr Bestwick’s previous good humour. There were far better ways for Mr Bestwick and his lovely wife Carole – The Bank’s personnel records were comprehensive – to spend their remaining years than as slaves to The Bank. Sitting on a boat in the Caribbean, for one.

  The engine throbbed loudly as he pulled the van back out onto the street. He had customers waiting.

  It was past four in the morning when Maric had knocked gently on the door of the flat. The van and uniform had been left in a car park, as arranged, and he was once again dressed in his expensive battered jeans and surfer-style top. The solid workman’s watch had been replaced by his own Jaeger-LeCoultre and his Converse boots had not one fleck of mud on them. For a moment he’d stood there, looking at them both, and then, after Cass had wondered if perhaps time had stopped and left him in this limbo, Maric grinned. Cass was so relieved that his eyes burned and, for him at least, the corridor filled with gold that evaporated the December cold from the communal space. He was astounded the others didn’t experience it, but looking at how Freeman had shivered as he ushered the hacker in, the brightness had clearly evaded them. Cass had turned his back on it. There is no glow was no longer a mantra he could truthfully repeat to himself, but he wasn’t yet ready to make it his friend.

  After the initial celebrations were done, Cass left Brian Freeman and Maric sipping their champagne and went into one of the bedrooms and opened the slim laptop. Sweat prickled in the creases of his fingers and his heart pounded. He should have been tired, but adrenalin had been pumping through his veins since Maric had left, and right at that moment there wasn’t even a twinge of an ache in his shoulder.

  As the various copied folders filled the home screen he lit a cigarette, ignoring how dry his mouth was. Brian Freeman’s throaty laugh carried easily into the room, but he barely heard it. There was simply him and the computer. He clicked on the first copied file: details of the X accounts. He closed it down; fascinating as they might be, those weren’t what he was looking for. Once he’d found what he needed, Freeman and Dr Cornell could pore over them to their heart’s content, but right now any curiosity over the Network’s cashflow had to take a back seat.

  He searched impatiently through the files. He wouldn’t have much time to act once he’d found where Bright was keeping Luke. He had no doubt the boy would be moved as a defensive measure as soon as whatever magic Maric had worked on the systems took hold. He probably had twenty-four hours, maybe thirty-six.

  He lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the first before stubbing it out in a saucer. The bedroom would stink by the time the owner got back. Hopefully Freeman’s cash would make up for it.

  He found the folder called POTENTIALS and went straight to the fifteenth file: the Jones file. When he’d first looked through it all those months ago at his dead parents’ home, under the watchful eye of his dead brother’s ghost, there had been some strange medical records in there. At the time he hadn’t understood why Luke had had so many medical tests, or why there was a note referring to ‘secondary’ medical records held within The Bank’s employee folders.

  Now he understood: those ‘secondary’ records referred to the boy he’d thought of as his nephew for all these years, the poor cuckoo in the Jones’ nest. These hidden records were for the stolen baby: the real Luke.

  He read them over and over until his eyes blurred, but there was nothing that gave him any clue to the boy’s location. All he could see was a series of dates, and tests with names he didn’t understand. He closed the folder down and gritted his teeth. There had to be something. He tapped the tracking pad, refusing to let his frustration get the better of him. He couldn’t afford to miss anything …

  Just when he was about to hurl the computer across the room in frustration, he saw something, in a secondary folder labelled SUNDRIES, located within a folder that appeared to detail household payments. He almost smiled. Mr Bright was a clever fucker, he’d give him that; even Cass, who had been looking, had almost missed it.

  He stared at the list. The first set of outgoings was called FEES, and at first he thought they were a load of shit lawyers’ costs – then he looked at the dates. The payments had been made over several years, at three points in each in one; the beginnings of September and January and mid-April. The last few payments were for thirteen thousand pounds. He stared at the figures until he could see them in his mind’s eye: FEES. School fees.

  Luke might be only eight years old, but he wasn’t with Mr Bright, so someone had to be looking after him, and now he thought about it, he was quite sure that someone in Mr Bright’s position would have chosen the finest independent infant school. No doubt the child boarded as well. So what did he do in the holidays, Cass wondered, stay behind? He didn’t imagine there would be many other children who lived in the school. It would be a lonely life for a small boy – maybe there weren’t any other children at all.

  His heart ached for the faceless child given away by his own grandfather. He sat back slightly and rolled his injured shoulder. How long had he been hunched over the computer? The lights were still on in the rest of the flat, but the laughter had died down and he was working in silence. He felt like he’d just woken up. School fees, hidden in among staff payments and laundry bills – why? The answer was whispered in his brother’s voice: He doesn’t want the others to know.

  Cass stared at the computer. If he looked anywhere else he’d see Christian’s highly polished brogues, complete with drops of crimson blood. Those last few months must have been terrible for Christian as he slowly became convinced that his son wasn’t his own. That was an example of how different they were: Cass wouldn’t have been able to live with that; he’d have had to go looking, no matter what the consequences. And that was why Christian had charged him with this task from beyond the grave, of course: because he knew Cass would keep going, no matter who got hurt. He wondered if that was why Christian’s ghost had disappeared – he could rest in peace now; it was Cass who could no longer sleep.

  He focused on the numbers again. The termly payments stopped almost eighteen months ago, replaced by a monthly payment of just over three thousand pounds. He frowned. Even if Luke had moved from an infant school to a junior school, surely the fees would still be paid termly? He copied down the account number and then started to work back through the other files, trying to match it with anything that might give him some more information. He itched to speak to Perry Jordan – he had friends who could get access to some of The Bank’s accounts – but that path was definitely closed; if he called Perry, the investigator would have to call Ramsey, whether he wanted to or not.

  He got to his feet and stretched out his cramped legs, relieved to see no evidence of Christian anywhere. His bladder ached and he was halfway to the toilet when his stupidity struck him: there was someone in The Bank who could help him – Brian Freeman’s mole, Diana Jacobs.

  Cass was half-expecting to find Maric and the old gangster asleep in their chairs, but when he walked into the quiet lounge he found the two men hunched over a second laptop. Freeman was copying something down in his uneven scrawl – he might have the brain of an Oxbridge scholar, but his education had been left in the gutter, and he had the handwriting to prove it. Cass waited until he’d finished the current note – looked like a list of companies. That came as no surprise: Freeman intended to make a killing out of this, as untraceably as possible. Leave no trace. That was their motto. He wondered if somewhere alo
ng the line they’d all become ghosts: him, Brian Freeman, Mr Bright. It was just that no one had bothered to tell them.

  ‘You found what you’re looking for?’ Freeman glanced up over the glasses perched so incongruously on his crooked nose.

  ‘Nearly,’ Cass said. ‘I need details of a bank account. I’m pretty sure the company will be Bank-owned – Bright would want control. I wondered if Diana Jacobs would be able to get it for me?’

  There was a pause, and Cass understood why: they’d gone to great lengths not to ripple the surface, and now here was Cass, wanting to drop an anvil into that quiet pool.

  ‘She can do that,’ Maric answered, ‘if she logs in with this username and password.’ He scribbled something down and handed it to Cass. ‘I created a new user. The Bank has an imaginary employee.’

  ‘Won’t it be traceable to her computer?’

  ‘No.’ Maric grinned. ‘Not unless they get someone as good as me to dig around. And there isn’t anyone as good as me.’

  Freeman called the young lawyer, and while they waited for her to call back, Cass paced the flat, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. He guessed this must be how most people felt waiting for a bug test after having unprotected sex. His stomach churned greasily and his skin tingled. If this account number led nowhere, then he was fucked. Not only would he have let his little brother down, but Mr Bright would have beaten him.

  Maric watched him thoughtfully, his casual demeanor the complete opposite of Cass’ nervous electricity.

  ‘You have to learn to care less, Jones,’ he said eventually. ‘And you have to remember that there are many ways to skin a cat. If you don’t find the boy this time, there will be other times.’

  Cass paused in his pacing. Maric was older than him, and had no doubt led a more interesting life, but it was all lived within systems and behind screens. He played with people from a distance. Cass’ life was blood and earth and guilt. It was real.