“No, it wasn’t like that. We met at Legends, and when I found out he was struggling with his degree, I thought I’d give him a little help. But he wasn’t impressed. Told me he’d rather fail than cheat.” Steve shrugged his shoulders. “I just don’t understand some people.”
“He’s an admirable young man,” replied Jonathan. “You could learn a thing or two from him about ethics and morals by the sound of it. It strikes me that you move in some pretty dodgy circles with your line of work. How do you sleep at night?”
This time it was Steve’s turn to vent his anger. He took a swing at Jonathan’s chin with his fist. Jonathan grabbed his arm easily as it flew toward him and twisted it behind Steve’s back.
“If you want some rough play, young man, I’m sure we can arrange something. But you’ve got to work for it first. With your contacts in this shady surveillance business of yours, I’m sure you could find out who rigged the cameras that took those photos. I suggest you and I sit down and think of a way to find them. If you want to impress John, that’s the best thing you can do right now.”
Chapter 19
THE MOTORCYCLE courier had been parked in the grounds of Lincoln’s Inn for over an hour. The winter chill was beginning to make him shiver, despite the thick Gore-Tex layers he was wearing.
Through the earpieces inside his helmet, he could clearly hear the conversation in Miles Torrington’s law offices fifty yards away. The picture quality of the microcamera secreted in Dominic Delingpole’s glasses was less successful.
As he peered at the small video monitor cupped in his gloved hands, the courier adjusted the digital antennae mounted behind him. The only motorcycle parking bay that had been available to him was just on the edge of the reception range for the microtransmitter. As a result, every ten or fifteen seconds the picture on the screen in front of him either broke up or froze. There was no way he could move the bike closer to Miles’s offices without drawing attention to himself. His client would have to make do with substandard pictures. At least the sound from the microphones also hidden in Delingpole’s glasses was crystal clear. It was even in stereo.
DOMINIC WAITED until Harrison and the inspector had left his office. Then he turned to Miles.
“As if I could ever forget why I book you to do my advocacy—that was a good reminder. I don’t think he’ll be hurrying back here any time soon.”
Miles took a short bow before he crossed to his desk and opened the top drawer.
“Please never hesitate to praise me, dear Dominic. You know how I love an appreciative audience. And the judges in court these days are such prissy prigs. You know I have a certain fondness for the older ones. At least they enjoy the sport of the courtroom.”
Miles reached into the drawer and retrieved the battered laptop from its hiding place. He put it on the desktop alongside the rucksack in which it had arrived. Dominic felt a frisson of excitement as he wondered what Simon’s laptop might reveal.
Miles opened the lid of the computer and turned to Gemma. “Well, young lady. What’s all this about?”
Gemma carefully removed the manila envelope of security-camera photographs from the rucksack and placed it alongside the laptop.
“I’ve brought two things for you to see. Mr. Delingpole has already seen these.” Gemma indicated the envelope of security-camera photographs. “And I’ve also got stuff to show you on Si’s laptop. John’s managed to hack into it and reckons he’s found some major evidence of blackmail. He’s found a file of names and contacts, including those of a junior minister in the Department of Health and a European Member of Parliament. Despite the things we’ve discovered about Si in the last few days, we still can’t believe he’s a blackmailer. So what we think is….”
Miles held up his hand, and Gemma stopped in midsentence. “I am forgetting one vital matter. Please don’t say any more, young lady.” Miles picked up the phone on his desk. “Harrison? Could you pop up with the scanner, please?”
Miles turned to Dominic. “After what our inspector friend said, I think it would be wise to take precautions.”
A moment later the door opened, and Miles’s clerk entered the room with several pieces of electronic equipment in a large sports holdall. Placing headphones on his head and taking a looped wand similar to the one used by security staff at airports, he began moving around the room. As he passed by the Chesterfield where Dominic was sitting, he stopped and shoved the headphones partially from one ear.
“Mr. Delingpole, sir. Would you care to stand up, please?”
Dominic stood, and Harrison slowly passed the detector up the left side of Dominic’s body. As he reached Dominic’s shoulders, he paused before carefully holding the detector to the side of Dominic’s head. After a few moments, he put the detector down on a table and removed the headphones.
“Excuse me, sir, would you be so kind as to remove your glasses and put them on the table?”
While Dominic took off his glasses, Harrison removed another handheld device from the sports holdall and put it on the table alongside Dominic’s glasses. After just a few seconds, an image from the camera mounted in the bridge of the glasses appeared on the device’s screen.
“Good God, Delingpole, how long have you had those?” Miles strode over to the table and picked up the spectacles. He waved them around in the air to confirm they were the source of the pictures on Harrison’s security detector.
Dominic sat back down and stared at the screen. He knew precisely what had happened. The glasses had been in the parcel Gillian gave him when he arrived at his apartment the day before. He had assumed that his optician had sent them. Dominic felt his stomach turn over at the thought that he had been bugged since yesterday when he first put them on. What had he revealed? And more importantly, who was receiving the video?
Harrison took the spectacles from Miles and snapped off one of the arms. Immediately the image on the screen went blank. He carried the glasses over to the window to examine them in the fading afternoon sunlight. “Sophisticated bit of kit, sir. We’re not dealing with small-time operators here. Short range, though, certainly for the video. I’d say the snoopers are nearby.”
Dominic and Miles jumped up as a motorbike engine roared into life outside. They crossed the room to join Harrison at the casement window and watched a battered Honda 1300 in the courtyard below. It spun around, sending a plume of black smoke into the air, almost collided with another courier motorbike, and then cut around the security barrier and sped off.
“There he goes,” remarked Harrison. “The antenna’s mounted on the back. Should have spotted it earlier, but I’ve been up to my eyes this afternoon. Bit unsubtle of him. We’ll have the license plate on the cameras. Though he’s probably going to ditch that bike as soon as he can. I’ll let Harry down at the Met Police know, just in case they can catch him for a worn tire or something.” Harrison drew the blinds and turned to Miles. “The room’s clean now, sir, but keep these closed while you’re looking at stuff. In case they’ve got a lens out there.”
Harrison handed the detector to Dominic. “Take this. When you get home, check all your rooms. And your car. And be careful what you say on your cell. Best if you switch it off when you’re not using it. That way they can’t track you.”
Then he packed up the rest of his equipment and left the room.
Dominic carried the detector over to the Chesterfield sofa and collapsed onto it. He was weary and more than a little dejected over this latest turn of events.
Miles walked across and sat down beside him, putting a comforting arm on his shoulder. “Don’t worry old boy. We’ll take care of you. Wonderful man, Harrison. Don’t know what we’d do without him.”
Dominic gave a wan smile to his friend. “I feel like I’m under siege all of a sudden. Just a few days ago, I was nothing more than a provincial lawyer….”
“And you still are, Dominic.” Miles leapt up and strode over to the open laptop on his desk. “Don’t brood. Best thing we can do is get busy.
Now, we’ll look at this laptop in a moment. Then we can work out our plan of action. Whoever’s behind all this has clearly got money, resources, and connections. We don’t know who they may have bought off. That means there aren’t too many people we can rely on at the moment.” He paused and shook his head chidingly. “Dominic, what have you got me into?”
THE COURIER drove his motorcycle into the underground parking lot off Parker Mews, a short distance from Lincoln’s Inn, killed the engine, and dismounted. Opening one of the panniers, he took out a replacement license plate and a small screwdriver. From the top box he removed a white crash helmet to swap with the black one he was wearing. He put a high visibility vest on over his black Gore-Tex suit. After switching the license plates, he removed the digital antennae and placed the black helmet in the top box. It was the best identity change he could manage in the circumstances. At least when he drove back out again, the police would be less likely to connect him with the bike that had entered the parking lot.
Then he waited for his client. It had been a frustrating afternoon, and he was unhappy to be delivering substandard goods. He could wave good-bye to the balance of his fee, but that was nothing compared to the dent to his reputation. If he had known more about the target’s security awareness, he would have used a different surveillance approach.
His musings were cut short by the arrival of a black Mercedes with tinted windows. The car drew alongside him and a door opened.
“Get in.” The courier heard a woman’s voice from inside the car. He had heard it only once before, when she had called to ask him about his experience in eavesdropping. The voice had a soft Irish accent, edged with authority. “Give me your report.”
The courier climbed into the empty rear seat, and the car descended to the next level down in the underground parking lot. The woman parked but left the engine running.
She switched on the courtesy light and studied her face in the rearview mirror. Her cheekbones were high and strongly defined, her eyes a vivid emerald green. She reached for a handbag on the passenger seat beside her and pulled out a lipstick. With great care she redefined the edges of her thin lips. She surveyed her handiwork for several seconds, before dropping the lipstick back into the bag. Then she turned and stared directly at the courier in the back of the Mercedes.
“What do you have?”
Although her voice was calm and almost lilting, her left eye twitched involuntarily every few seconds. He tried to avoid staring as he gave his report.
“The bug was discovered. They had scanning. I’ve got some stuff, but the picture quality’s not great. The students have got a laptop belonging to Simon Gregory. We need to get it. My guess is that they’ll leave it at the lawyer’s offices. But it’s going to be tricky, given what the lawyer’s people seem to know about surveillance. Perhaps—”
“No matter,” the woman interrupted. “Give me what you have.”
The courier placed the data card in her outstretched gloved hand. They sat in silence for nearly twenty minutes as she reviewed what had been recorded. The pictures flicked past on a small monitor set into the dashboard of the Mercedes. The woman spooled rapidly through some of the material, slowing it from time to time to view sections. Finally she reached the end of the recording.
With the picture frozen on the screen, she sat back for a few minutes, staring through the windshield at the gray concrete wall of the parking lot.
“Disappointing.” The woman began to gather her belongings, not looking at the courier. “But all is not lost. We have a data expert who is working on this. We can find out what those students know. You don’t need to do anything further. Wait there for one moment please.”
The woman got out of the car and closed her door carefully. The courier watched her walk a short way up the exit ramp. She pulled the fur-lined collar of her black knee-length coat up around her neck. He saw her reach into her pocket and pull out what looked like a mobile phone. Then she stopped and turned to look at him for a few seconds.
Her gaze returned to the device in her hand. She pressed a few buttons. The doors on the Mercedes locked. Somewhere within the ventilation system, there was a faint click and a valve activated. The engine revved to high speed, and exhaust fumes began to enter the passenger compartment.
The courier grabbed the door handle and pulled it hard, but it did nothing. He threw himself toward the front of the car and tried the driver’s door, but that too was locked. Frantically, he punched at what looked like the central locking controls. All the controls inside the car were deactivated.
He could feel his throat tighten as the exhaust fumes began to penetrate his airways, and he tried to take shallower breaths. He stretched out on the backseat of the car, bent his legs, and then kicked with full force at the side door. It remained firmly closed, sealing in the poisonous fumes.
Scrambling into the front seat of the car once more, he wrestled with the flaps of the air vents. He was powerless to stop the relentless flow of fumes into the cabin.
THE WOMAN watched the courier’s desperate struggles grow weaker as his body succumbed to the poisonous air inside the car. Only the muffled sound of his coughing penetrated the thick glass. It took several minutes until the movements in the car finally stopped.
The woman waited a few moments longer before she walked back to the car. The courier lay slumped on the backseat. She pressed a button on the remote control in her hand. There was the faint click of a valve somewhere inside the car. The engine revved again. This time the ventilation system pumped the exhaust fumes out of the passenger compartment.
Holding her nose delicately with her left hand, the woman unlocked the back door of the Mercedes, and opened it carefully. She reached in tentatively with her right hand and felt for a pulse on the neck of the motionless courier. After several minutes she was satisfied that he was dead. She closed and locked the door and started to walk away, up the exit ramp of the parking lot. As she did, she reached into her pocket for her cell phone and made a call.
“A failure, sadly. Although it’s likely the target list is out there. I’m returning now. We need to discuss our damage limitation strategy. Could you arrange a cleanup operation please? There’s one more person I need to deal with here. Let me know when it’s done.”
She paused for a moment, listening to the voice at the other end.
“No, do nothing with the students for the moment. We may glean more from them through observation. The one in hospital remains a risk. But he has police protection now, so our job is made a little harder. As for the Delingpole man, given our time pressures, perhaps we should use more persuasive methods with him.”
Chapter 20
SAMANTHA HAD finally succumbed to sleep. The hospital staff had found her a room in the nurses’ hostel, and she slept for over five hours. A nightmare finally woke her. A nightmare in which Simon was telling her she had failed as a mother and was the reason he had taken an overdose. Waking in a pool of perspiration, she lay still in the darkness, allowing her racing heart to calm down.
She reached for the small bedside shelf and peered at her cell phone. It was five in the morning. The hospital day would be starting in less than an hour. Samantha curled up into a fetal position and pulled the bedclothes tight around her. She would allow herself another five minutes, she decided. Five minutes more in this safe cocoon of warmth.
HALF AN hour later, showered but still wearing the same clothes from the previous day, Samantha stood outside Simon’s room. She watched her son through the window as he slept. The tube in his throat had been removed, and he looked peaceful compared with just a few hours ago. A police officer was on duty by the door. There had been a shift change, and she chatted with the officer for a moment. The senior nurse, who had been checking Simon’s monitors, emerged from his room. She turned to Samantha, gently took her hand, and squeezed it comfortingly.
“We think he’s turned the corner, love,” she whispered. “He’s still got a long way to go, but he’s off th
e danger list for the moment. Why don’t you pop in and sit with him for a little while? If he wakes up, he won’t be able to say much. His throat will be very sore from the intubation.” She gently released Samantha’s hand. “Then you must get yourself out of the hospital for just a few hours. Young Simon’s going to be staying with us for a while yet. Why don’t you get some things to busy yourself with in the days ahead? Do you have work to do?”
Samantha shook her head. Following Richard’s death, she had received a small insurance payout. When she invested that, together with the proceeds from the sale of the house, it had given her a small independent income to live on. Now she worried whether their first-floor apartment in a creaking Georgian building would be suitable for Simon. What if he was left physically disabled from the overdose? What if she had to pay for long-term care for him? Once again Samantha felt very alone.
She thanked the nurse for her kindness and went into Simon’s room. She settled herself in the chair alongside his bed and reached across to gently stroke the fringe of hair lying on his forehead. He stirred, and his eyelids flickered open. His unfocused gaze met her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mum.” Simon’s hoarse, almost inaudible whisper caused tears of relief to form in her eyes.
“Don’t try to speak for the moment, Simon, darling. They told me that your throat would be very sore.” She continued to brush his forehead with her right hand. With her left hand she squeezed his arm gently.
“I’ve got to speak to John. Tell him to look under my bed. There’s a large envelope there. Tell him it’s the envelope.”
Simon’s eyes closed. It seemed that even the effort to speak had been too much for his exhausted body. Then his lips moved one more time. “It’s the envelope. Tell him it’s the envelope.”
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