Savage Games

by Peter Boland

  “Just information.”

  “You’re taking an awful risk talking to me,” he said dramatically. “I have my men outside. Very nasty men.”

  “Well, they’re not much good outside, are they. See, that’s the thing, you say ‘my men’ but I get the impression they’re not your men, they’re your dad’s. First, I thought they were to protect you from any lowlifes you might encounter, like me. There must be a lot of them in Wellington properties and each time one of them gets chucked out on the street, I guess that makes them a risk. There’s the odd chance someone might want to even the score with the son of the man who’s made them homeless. Hence, all the security around you. That’s not their only job, is it? They’re here to supervise you. Make sure you do what you’re told. I guess your old man still pulls the strings.”

  “You’re still taking an awful risk talking to me. If he finds out you’re here, we’re both in trouble.”

  “Did you kill Jenny Hopkins?”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. “No, I did not.”

  “Then why did you visit her, contribute to her care home bills, even though your dad pays you a pittance?”

  “How did you know…?”

  “You were keeping an eye on her, weren’t you? Making sure nobody believed her stories about your father killing her daughter.”

  Ben snapped, “You haven’t got a clue about Jenny Hopkins, have you?”

  “Then set me straight.”

  Ben paused, thought for a moment, then said, “I liked her, that’s all.”

  Savage gave a fake laugh. “Oh, come on, you expect me to believe that? That you had a soft spot for your dad’s stage assistant from a magic show he did years ago. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “You do know who my father is, what he’s like?”

  “Yeah, I think he kills people for fun.”

  Ben stared down at the floor. Nudged a discarded Elastoplast with the toe of his smart Oxford shoes.

  “You’re scared of him, aren’t you?” Savage said. “Did he kill my friend, Dave Mosely? He used to live at Tivoli Gardens, found dead up a tree in Dead Maids Wood, until it got cut down.”

  Ben remained silent.

  “I know you paid off the guy to cut the tree down…”

  “I was just following my father’s orders.”

  “That’s what they said in Nazi Germany.”

  Ben turned to Savage. “Listen, do you think I enjoy this, do you think I want to be part of my father’s twisted empire? Going around pretending to intimidate people. I’m not that kind of person.”

  “So leave.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Savage knew the answer. If he left he’d get nothing. His family would be destitute, out on the street. But that wasn’t the main reason.

  “I’m terrified of my father. Everyone is. You know they call him Keyser Söze round here? You know, the villain from The Usual Suspects.”

  “I know that movie well,” said Savage.

  “Remember that scene, when Keyser Söze’s family are held hostage, guns at their heads? Keyser Söze shoots his own family rather than submit to the hostage-takers. Well, that’s what my father is like. If we walked away, knowing what we know about his operation, he wouldn’t just kill me, he’d kill my wife and my daughters. And I’d do anything to protect my family, they’re all I care about.”

  “Ben, you don’t know he’d do that,” said Savage.

  “I do know that, he’s done it before.”

  “What?”

  “He killed my sister.”

  Chapter 44

  Savage thought they’d done their homework on Ben Wellington. Clearly they hadn’t.

  “You had a sister?” Savage asked. “I thought you were an only child?”

  “I was,” Ben replied. “Until my father had an affair with Jenny Hopkins and they had a child, she was called Jackie.”

  “Jackie was your half-sister?”

  “Yes. At first, I didn’t know about her. Jenny reached out to me, without my father knowing, introduced me to my half-sister. Being an only child, I loved having a sister. She was a lot younger than me, of course. I liked being the big brother. Used to go see her all the time, until my father had her killed. Ran her over in the middle of the street.”

  “Was he behind the wheel?”

  “Don’t know, probably not. Likes to keep his hands clean, probably got one of his thugs to do it. Of course, he completely denied it. I felt terrible. Awful. Still do, that my father could do that to his own flesh and blood. Least I could do was look after Jenny, make sure she was okay.”

  “She didn’t blame you?”

  “Yes, she did. Didn’t want to see me. Hated me because I was my father’s son. But I persevered. Had to. I owed it to her. Swore I’d look out for her, even if she hated my guts. Soon we became friends, until my father ended her life too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So you see, Mr Savage. I’m in a no-win situation. I have to do these vile things because otherwise my family will end up like Jackie and Jenny. And I can’t let that happen.”

  “I can help you.”

  “No one can help me. I’m stuck with this wretched life of constant fear. I’m used to it.”

  “I’ll put it another way, I can take your father out of the equation. Put him away. He’d never know you had anything to do with it. No one would know.”

  “Put him away?” Ben chuckled. “Not good enough. My father needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. No one’s safe until that happens. Not me, not you, not my family and not the people unfortunate enough to be living in his properties.” Ben stood up and called to his children. “Five more minutes, girls.” He sat down and turned back to Savage. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Just give me one more bit of information.”

  Ben took a deep breath. “What do you need?”

  “His underground gambling ring. Bizarre games in the forest, underground torture chambers, fights to the death et cetera. We thought it was run over the dark net. My IT expert couldn’t find it anywhere.”

  “I’m not involved in any of that. He doesn’t trust me enough. Just makes me round up suitable candidates to be in his strange betting shows. I know it’s international. Big billionaire players from around the world. Very secretive.”

  “That’s what we figured. The uploads don’t appear anywhere in cyberspace. And there’s no sign of how he communicates with them.”

  “Maybe you need a better IT guy.”

  “Believe me, I have the best, and it’s not a guy it’s a girl.”

  “Like I said, I have no idea about all that. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” Ben Wellington stood up, leant over the handrail. “Okay, girls, time’s up.” Groans of disappointment flew back at him from the pool edge. He turned back to Savage. “There was one thing I kept hearing when he was setting this all up. Got him all excited.”

  “Yes?” said Savage.

  “Decentralised network.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Back in her room, Tannaz had used the hotel’s printer to run off various Google images, which she’d Sellotaped to one wall. An impromptu evidence board of what they had so far.

  Savage walked in the door to see Tannaz stepping back to admire her handiwork. “Looks a bit pathetic,” she said. “They always look a lot more impressive on TV.”

  Savage had to admit, there wasn’t much to go on. There was the map from the Forestry Commission showing the dotted GPS locations of every tree in Dead Maids Wood. Next to that, to represent Wellington’s betting ring, was a shot of a full-size roulette table, seen from above. Alongside it, she’d stuck a gruesome image of some
body hanged in the Sea of Trees in Japan, the man’s face was pixelated out, signifying the suicides at Dead Maids, if that’s indeed what they were. Above these were the names of the deceased who’d been found at Dead Maids. Each name printed on a single sheet: Dave Mosely, his son Luke Mosley, the nurse Sylvia Sanchez and the hiker Samuel Thwaite. To the left of these was another sheet with Jenny Hopkins’ name, and on the right, sitting alone, was a screen grab of Monty Python’s Michael Palin in a red checked shirt singing the ‘Lumberjack Song’.

  “Don’t tell me,” said Savage. “Michael Palin’s supposed to represent Joel Diplock, the guy who cut Dave’s tree down.”

  “Yeah.”

  Above all these names, as if sitting at the top of the pyramid was the blurred and grainy bloated face of Simon Wellington, enlarged and copied from the Internet.

  “I think this is the sorriest-looking evidence board, I’ve ever seen,” Tannaz remarked.

  “Any evidence is good evidence, no matter how sparse.”

  “See, if this were TV or a movie, it’d now cut to a montage of us wracking our brains, writing stuff down then screwing up bits of paper, and having heated debates and looking moody while pointing at our evidence wall with pens, and drinking endless cups of coffee. Then suddenly one of us would look to camera. The montage would stop, and one of us would announce a breakthrough.”

  Savage chuckled. “Yeah, I can’t see any of that happening. I still don’t get any of this, or what the connection is, apart from Wellington bumping off people who had dirt on him, which then begs the question, why kill them in such a bizarre, overt way?”

  “Maybe sending a message to his rivals?”

  “He doesn’t have any.”

  “How did you get on with Ben Wellington?”

  Savage filled her in, recounting everything he’d said word for word.

  “Wow,” said Tannaz. “Wasn’t expecting Jenny Hopkins’ daughter to be Ben’s half-sister. I suppose it explains a lot—I’ll have to do a print out of that with a red line going from Ben to Jenny. Ben and Jenny’s, like the ice cream. Hey, I made a pun.”

  “Yeah, not a very good one,” said Savage.

  Tannaz threw the Sellotape at him. Savage caught it, started to pick at the end with is fingernail. “I think we might have an unlikely ally in Ben Wellington,” he said. “The guy’s a totally dedicated father. Would do anything to protect his family. Feels the biggest threat to their safety is his own dad. Terrible state to be in.”

  “I suppose he could be lying.”

  “Can’t see why. He’d have to be a hell of a good actor.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to get your trust. So he can tell his father what we’re up to. I mean, you’ve let the cat out of the bag now. What’s to stop him blabbing to Simon Wellington about us? Talking to him was a bit of a risk, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but one we could afford to take. Ben Wellington bribed that forestry worker; we’ve got something on him now, so he has to be careful. He did give us one other bit of information about the betting ring, he said something about a ‘decentralised network’, does that mean anything?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Decentralised network.”

  Tannaz dropped enough f-bombs to flatten a city and started violently punching herself in the head. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, idiot!” she screamed.

  Savage grabbed her wrists to stop her giving herself concussion. “Tannaz, stop it, calm down.”

  Tannaz snatched her hands away from Savage’s grip.

  “Tannaz. Remember our little SAS mantra—Breathe. Recalibrate. Deliver.”

  She sat on the end of the bed, took in a lungful of air and let it out slowly.

  “Now tell me. What’s a decentralised network?”

  “It’s so simple. I am such a moron.”

  “Look, stop berating yourself. Just tell me.”

  Tannaz stood up and grabbed a marker pen, started drawing lots of little boxes on the wall.

  “Er, isn’t that a permanent marker?” asked Savage.

  Tannaz shot him a venomous look.

  “Okay, doesn’t matter. There goes my deposit.”

  She linked all the boxes with lots of little lines. “Imagine all these boxes are computers, servers and printers. When they’re all connected up it’s called a network. That’s what the Internet is, just on a massive scale. Millions of devices all linked up, so they can share stuff. A network that covers the entire world. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “The software on all these different devices allows them to talk to each other.” Tannaz drew a little ‘s’ in each of the boxes to represent software. “That was the dream of the Internet—free, open access to information. Everyone linked up, no boundaries. Sharing stuff. All good. The trouble is people like me. Hackers. I can hack computers and servers on this network, and get round security, exploit all these links.”

  Tannaz drew a little curly haired stick figure, presumably herself, with little arrows coming out of her body, going into the computers.

  “So it’s the age-old dilemma of the Internet: access versus security. How do you have complete freedom over a network to do and say what you want, without people like me or the authorities sticking their nose in?”

  “Don’t know,” said Savage.

  “You create your own network.” Tannaz started drawing a circle of boxes off to the right of the one she’d already drawn. Inside each box she wrote a ‘d’. Savage shuddered for whoever was going to have to clean it all off. “D for decentralised network,” she continued. “Completely separate from the Internet. Also known as a peer-to-peer network because it runs on people’s smartphones and laptops, there are no servers, just personal devices making up the network. Not any old Tom, Dick and Harry can join it. You have to be invited. Totally private. That’s what Wellington’s using for his little betting ring. That’s why we can’t find it.”

  “How do you get onto it?”

  “We can’t. A decentralised network has its own bespoke software. Someone has to give you the software to put on your device. A highly bespoke encrypted software.”

  “But you’re a brilliant hacker.”

  “Thanks, but I still can’t get in. Look at this.” She slipped the hotel room’s key card out of her back pocket, held it up in front of her. “This lets me into my room. Now imagine you come along and try to break into my room with your little pouch of lock picks. Doesn’t matter how brilliant you are at picking locks. It’s not going to work because—”

  “It’s a completely different system.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  “So is there a way to get on it?”

  “Maybe. It’s a big maybe. Each member of Wellington’s international betting ring will have been given this software at some point, to put on their device. We get one of those devices I might be able to copy it, crack the encryption, and hopefully get us in. Trouble is, we don’t know who’s on his little betting network.”

  “We do know one person.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon Wellington.”

  Chapter 45

  A few days later, Savage called Ben Wellington to ask for one last favour. When he was certain that Ben couldn’t be overheard by his father’s goons, Savage asked him to snatch his father’s phone, and get it to them, so Tannaz could crack the encryption.

  Without any hesitation, Ben Wellington refused. No amount of persuasion would make him do it, and Savage could understand why. If he got caught he’d be signing his family’s death warrant. But he did give them something else, almost as good.

  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with religious regularity, Simon Wellington was chauffeured from his mansion in the outrageously posh town of Esher in Surrey, to his outrageously posh club in London—the Cygnet Club in Mayfair. He’d spend all day there, sipping
brandy, reading the paper, having lunch, and then snoozing the afternoon away in a wing chair, until his chauffeur picked him up at four p.m., before rush hour properly started, and ferried him back home. Ben told Savage that his father’s alcohol-induced afternoon snooze would be the best time to lift his smart phone.

  There was just one problem.

  Like all exclusive gentleman’s clubs that had been established over two hundred years ago, getting in was virtually impossible. Becoming a member was virtually impossible too. Even if you had money, that was no guarantee. You had to know the right people and be from the right family with the right heritage. Simon Wellington had neither, which meant the only other option was that he had some dirt on someone at the club and had bribed them to get in.

  “That’s the only drawback to our plan,” said Tannaz. “Getting in.”

  Tannaz had managed to get hold of the schematics to the building. Savage was poring over them on her laptop screen. “It’s not the getting in. It’s the staying in. I’ve no doubt I could get in through the delivery entrance, do the usual, show up with a fake delivery et cetera, et cetera, but after that, trying to get close to Wellington, I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

  “Ben Wellington says he takes his snooze in the library.”

  “Yep.”

  “What about if you pretended to be a waiter or something?”

  Savage smiled. “That sort of thing works in movies, not in real life.”

  “If the only way to get in is be a member. Why don’t I hack their system, put you on the membership?”

  “It’s not that kind of place. These old clubs still use ledgers and fill in membership applications with ink and quills, probably…”

  “And a sorting hat.” Tannaz laughed.

  “Don’t laugh, that’s not a million miles away from the truth. We’re talking old-school tradition here. Arrogant, rich, entitled people that belong there, and know they do.”

  “So how do we get in and stay in?”

  Savage paced the hotel room, decided to make a cup of tea. He filled the kettle and flicked the switch to boil. “You know, there was this one woman my wife used to work with. Would come in late every single day. Never ever got told off or disciplined. Used to drive my wife nuts.”