Failsafe Query

by Michael Jenkins

  The Russians’ trick of teasing Jane out had worked. ‘I want them to hurt her and find out where this woman Melissa is,’ Natalie shouted. ‘Make it happen.’

  Boris nodded and gave the order over his microphone direct to the ground commander. The CCTV operator had also hacked into the internal house cameras, providing images in each room of the house.

  Natalie’s interrogators began their brutal interrogation of Jane in the kitchen, all of it vividly captured on the CCTV screens and audio system. Jane was forced to adopt a stress position, standing on tiptoes with her hands against the wall. Every time she began to crumple from the strain of the position, she was beaten with a baton across her back and shoulders. Natalie heard a horrible crack as the team leader’s baton smashed into Jane’s left shoulder with agonising force. Bright red blood was dripping from her eye sockets: two large fissures had been prised open by the interrogator, who had grabbed her from behind to rip her eyes apart and gouge the sockets. Natalie breathed deeply as Jane eventually passed out in unbearable agony, which was heard, seen and felt by everyone in the control room.

  It was obvious to Natalie that Jane had been highly trained to resist interrogation and she decided early on to order her men not to bother with the soft stuff. Wet affairs, ‘mokrie dela’ to her Russian friends, and brutality were the only way forward in Natalie’s mind, and she really didn’t have any patience for messing around. But Jane hadn’t yet given any information away.

  It was only a single tweet that Melissa had sent to her police friend from the safe house in Southwold. Even with the location services in the ‘off’ position on her iPhone, this was enough for her location to be traced using the hidden metadata which had been analysed using supercomputers by the Russian cyber team in Fleet Street. This had led Natalie directly to Jane and the safe house.

  Natalie saw Jane’s slumped body on the kitchen floor, jumped up and marched across to the microphone. ‘Wake her up and give her the SP17 now,’ she demanded. I need results quickly, for fuck’s sake.’

  The CCTV operator zoomed in on the syringe the team doctor was holding. He placed the needle directly into Jane’s spine and depressed the plunger, releasing the drug straight into Jane’s nervous system.

  ‘Now she’ll talk like a banshee,’ Natalie said with delight, pacing up and down the ops room. She had ordered the doctor to insert a small amount of scopolamine, known colloquially in Colombia as ‘The Devil’s breath’, and made from the borrachero tree. This truth serum worked within an hour on ninety-five per cent of recipients.

  Two hours later, Natalie watched as the doctor injected a second dose. The convulsions began in seconds.

  For Jane, life was over all too quickly.

  Chapter 19

  Côte Vermeille, 17 April 2016

  Sean chose an old-fashioned hotel to conduct his operations in Port-Vendres, a curious seaside town that was a deep-water commercial port but also had a fishing and yachting harbour. He purposefully avoided any large hotels with nosy hotel managers, CCTV and distinctive security measures. He had arranged for Billy Phish and the dogs to stay at a small gîte in the hills to the west, which would allow the dogs plenty of space to roam.

  Sean took Melissa for a walk along the bay at Port-Vendres and started to explain the next phases of his mission. She seemed a little more at ease with Sean now and walked close to him along the coastal promenade. It was a brilliant summer’s day with the sun glinting off the dark green ocean as the haze on the horizon weakened. Sean breathed the air deeply, reaching for his thoughts. He wanted to elicit everything possible from Melissa’s mind. He was competent enough at gaining the trust of people, and remained convinced of his power to reveal the starkest of intelligence. He just needed time to develop a rapport with Melissa and to nurture her trust during periods of time alone together.

  Melissa was dressed in a full-length, floral maxi dress as they strode slowly along the bay. To others looking on, they could easily have been lovers. Whilst he found Melissa to be feisty and irksome, there was also a deep intelligence to her – and a grounded personality that he liked. He revealed some of his thoughts to Melissa. ‘It’s difficult to say what has happened to Alfie right now,’ he said quietly. ‘In fact, it will take me a bit of time to get a real lead but I’m bringing in a few experts to help.’

  ‘Who?’ Melissa asked.

  ‘My old team from some time ago. But I also need you close so I can quiz you on Alfie and, in particular, about anything you haven’t yet remembered that might be vital.’

  ‘My memory is bloody good you know – I haven’t missed anything, if that’s what you mean.’

  She turned towards the ocean and stood silently by the handrail overlooking the rocks. A few youths were scrambling on the rocks and an elderly man took some photos of the bay. She turned abruptly and looked Sean right in the eye. She paused, then spoke abruptly. ‘Why do you keep looking at me in that way, Sean?’

  Sean was shocked by the question and froze for a moment. ‘What way?’

  ‘The way you have since the first time we met – do you fancy me?’

  ‘Why on earth are you asking me that?’

  ‘So we can get the decks cleared straight away – and there is no ambiguity. Looks to me as if we’ll be here a while and I don’t want any confusion going on.’ She was straight-faced, and Sean sensed her wanting to take control of the situation – again. She was hard-nosed and testing.

  ‘This really isn’t the time to discuss such matters and, anyway, I’m here to do my job – nothing else right now.’

  ‘You haven’t answered.’

  ‘For crying out loud – no.’

  ‘Good,’ Melissa said. ‘Just so we’re clear on all this.’

  ‘Excellent – we now know where we stand Melissa. I’ll do my job, and I’d be bloody grateful if you can help me with that.’ Sean was riled, and he knew she had struck a nerve. He turned to compose himself, intrigued by her unexpectedness.

  ‘I’m still angry, and ready to fight these bastards, but I feel much better being here and being involved. Even if you are a pain,’ she said, purposefully easing the tension she had created. ‘I want to be a full part of this and I’ll get stuck in too – I’m a bloody good investigator you know.’

  ‘An investigator of sorts,’ Sean said sarcastically, pushing back at her. He was encouraged by the honesty and trust that she had unknowingly begun to cement. ‘Anyway, are you sure Alfie didn’t say anything to you? Anything that seemed tenuous? I just think he would have given some sort of clue to you. Can you try to rack your brains over this and go through all your conversations and journey with Alfie step by step?’

  Melissa nodded, as if to concede, ran her hand through her hair as the sea breeze lifted and turned her back to the sea, leaning gently on the rail. ‘Do you really think I haven’t been doing that already? Of course I have, and I’ll keep doing so. Who are you working for though, Sean? I don’t understand who is who any more.’

  ‘I work for the government, Melissa, and for people who I believe will do the right thing for us and the country at large.’

  ‘But is that MI5 or MI6?’ Melissa asked.

  ‘It’s not as obvious as that; there are many blurred lines in these kinds of ops.’ He felt that he had better not tell her the full deal and closed that part of the conversation down quickly.

  He remembered the occasion when Jack had briefed him on Melissa in detail. She was indeed a shrewd investigator – but hadn’t always been so corporate and precise. Her days at university had seen her asked to leave quietly as the Vice-President of the Student Union for surreptitiously obtaining university financial documents, days that had also seen her wear a skinhead haircut and undertake endless days of campaigning against university fees. By all accounts, she had become a wild child away from the sobering mind of her conservative mother and her father, a captain in the Merchant Navy. The university didn’t know it at the time, but she had broken into the Vice-Chancellor’s office lat
e at night and found the password to his computer in an open drawer. She wanted to have the inside track on accommodation fees and to hold the university to account with the information her stealthy investigation had yielded. She had also found evidence on the VC’s computer of salacious relationships with two academics – and she let him know it. Suffice to say the final negotiations went her way and accommodation fees were reduced for the first year and frozen for a further two.

  Sean was astonished at her gall and stealth. It was her father, by all accounts, who had teased her away from university – perhaps, Sean thought, with an enticement by the VC – and then into the corporate world of investigations. He had managed to get her to change her dress and hairstyle, and got her a break by landing her a junior research role in a publishing house in London – courtesy of his best man. It worked. She grew into life and gradually, through her immense dedication to work, moved on to journalism in Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and a year-long stint in Lebanon, where she helped unearth a serious terrorist plot being hatched in the Maghreb. That was the case that had landed her the job with the prestigious Global Bureau of Investigative Journalism based in London. Sean knew she had guts and that she would be a hard nut to crack in order to obtain the information he needed. He liked how authentic she was.

  His thoughts were again brought to a sudden halt by Melissa. ‘How do you think you will find Alfie then?’ Melissa said nonchalantly. ‘What’s the plan?’

  Sean decided to answer this one. ‘Well, I work best when I put myself in the mind of the person of interest – to try and unlock the way their mind works. You know – where he would hide his secrets, how he would do the deed, that kind of stuff. You can do a lot by trying to act as the poacher despite being the gamekeeper. My work is about solving puzzles and mysterious problems – and gathering intelligence in many different ways – and then solving the bigger puzzle.’

  For some reason Sean couldn’t fathom, Melissa took Sean’s arm. He didn’t resist.

  ‘This doesn’t mean anything, by the way,’ she said. ‘I used to do it with Alfie too. Just friends in a mad world.’

  Sean began to understand her. She put on a good act of defiance, but also had moments that showed her sensitive side too. These small touches and vocal resistance revealed much as he continued to build and nurture her trust. He felt himself being drawn in, but was guarded against her prominent appeal.

  As they walked along the promenade, Sean smirked when he thought about Melissa’s past but then found himself being drawn back to the question of Dominic Atwood. Who exactly was he protecting? Why on earth was he so obsessed with these files? Sean didn’t know – which is why he decided not to trust anyone or to reveal his full hand to anyone quite yet. But he did feel he owed Melissa more explanation about Alfie, deciding he had no option but to tell her the truth now.

  ‘Melissa, this will be quite a shock. But I feel you need to know now.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘It looks like Alfie has been murdered. Killed in the cottage.’

  He steadied himself, concerned about her response. He watched her retreat with a pang of sorrow as she turned to look into the choppy bay. Sean saw her eyes welling up. She took some deep breaths – before putting her arms on the promenade wall and breaking down.

  Chapter 20

  Côte Vermeille, 17 April 2016

  ‘It helps you think, I know,’ Billy Phish said as Sean sat in the kitchen of the gîte, watching him pour two large glasses of red wine.

  ‘Quite a tonic for quite a day,’ Sean said. He tossed a wad of cash across the table to Billy Phish – an early reward for a successful search at the cottage.

  ‘Where’s Melissa?’ Billy Phish inquired.

  ‘Back at the hotel – too much detail for us to talk about this evening, Billy. She’ll be OK for now.’

  ‘Bit dodgy mate. Is she savvy enough?

  ‘Oh, she’s very savvy – and very precocious,’ Sean said. ‘I told her she’s to remain in the hotel and stay in her room for a couple of hours until I return.’

  ‘You have a bit of a soft spot for her, don’t you?’

  Sean scrunched his face at Billy. No words were needed.

  Billy Phish nodded, wisely not pushing his thoughts further. He lit his pipe. ‘What else has been happening then? Any news?’

  ‘Liz arrives tonight with her forensics kit and she’ll start at the cottage first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Fair play to her – she’s never let us down, eh?’

  ‘Indeed. Hopefully her forensics will help us zoom into the sites we’ll need to search, instead of it just being the whole of the Pyrenees, as it is right now.’

  Sean laid out a huge map of Languedoc on the table, together with an A3 piece of paper showing a flowchart in pencil of the steps he wanted to pursue.

  ‘My hunch is that they got rid of him somewhere in the hills of Languedoc or even high up in the Pyrenees,’ Sean said, pointing to the map. ‘My gut tells me they wouldn’t want to get rid of the body altogether – and might want to keep a record of exactly where they left him. More than likely he was buried.’

  ‘I think you’re bang on – I’d say the moors too,’ Billy Phish chipped in. ‘Easy digging.’

  ‘Exactly. But I need to make sure they haven’t just tipped him over the cliffs or taken him out of the region entirely.’

  ‘Well, the vapour dogs will show us where he went – of his own volition or not.’

  Sean needed a clue. He needed to find which area to concentrate on. Was it the cliffs and the sea? Or was it the vast expanse of the Pyrenees? Or had they killed him and taken him miles away out of the region?

  ‘I think it would have been too risky for the killers to travel on major roads with a dead body in the car. So they wouldn’t have moved him too far out of the area.’

  ‘You’re right mate. And I’m guessing they wouldn’t just get rid of the body over the cliffs, just in case they needed to return to it at any point in the future.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Sean asked.

  ‘Well, if I was them, I’d just want to hide the body carefully and not disrobe him. That would be bloody hard work too if they were burying him.’

  ‘Maybe, who knows? We don’t really know who the hell it was who had been tipped off about what he was going to do.’

  ‘I reckon it was the Yanks myself – always involved somewhere and always cocking it up,’ Billy Phish said.

  ‘Could be Russians though,’ Sean replied.

  ‘No, they’re always last past the post and last to wake up, mate.’

  ‘We’ll see – doubtless someone was going to be totally shafted once Alfie released his files. But I wonder who and what was so important that they had to kill him to stop all this?’

  ‘Just wait until Jugsy turns up with those big ears,’ muttered Billy Phish. ‘He’ll have us caught and jailed unless we keep him off the booze and away from any women within ten miles of here,’ he joked.

  ‘He’ll give us a grin, I grant you that – but hopefully he’ll also give us some clues to work on,’ Sean said.

  ‘It’ll be great to have him back here on a job, mate. I bet his nose is even redder than ever with all that red wine he drinks. Remember that time in the Yorkshire hills? Jugsy had the whole bar singing, drank the hotel dry and stood on a wet patch shouting that he had solved the entire case from his imagery analysis. Bloody great fun, mate.’

  They chatted for a while and drank more wine, interspersed with the occasional pensive silence.

  ‘I’m thinking of bringing in Larry too if it gets to the stage where we can’t find Alfie.’

  ‘Bloody great. Not just Jugsy but the nutty Italian geologist too. Jeez, this will turn this job into a laugh a minute with that pair, mate.’

  ‘Well, he’s the best we have on geology and chemical analysis and you know he’s helped solve a lot of cases. So, he’s in. If I need him.’

  ‘True, very true, my friend. B
ut why are all these global experts all bloody nutters?’

  ‘Have a look at yourself Billy – you’re one of them,’ Sean responded. They laughed.

  Sean talked through how he would use Jugsy to analyse key areas from his air-imagery analysis – based on how far the murderers might be able to carry a heavy body from a vehicle they had used to undertake a body deposition. It was a vast area that they had to narrow down – and then allow Mike to do his wide-area cadaver-detection work. If it was the cliffs, they could use Mike in a boat to try and detect the deposition area and then use tidal flows to analyse where the body might lie. Billy Phish suggested that the map analysis they were about to do would help them to identify hot spots across a wide area of the peat and forested Pyrenean hills where the potential deposition sites might be. They would look to identify the key areas where vehicles could access and park, and which in turn gave walkable access to remote areas suitable enough to carry the body to and to dig with some cover from being viewed. Billy Phish explained how these areas would generally be well away from well-defined tracks that would have unwelcome footfall that could lead to someone spotting the body or the disturbance of turf.

  ‘You know what, Billy, I think we can do this. I just need to get in their minds as to how they would have planned this.’

  ‘The Yanks you mean?’ Billy Phish chuckled. Sean discussed the ease of digging in the peat and high forested hills and also the ease with which ground disturbance would disappear quickly as the soggy tufts began to knit together again after having been replaced.

  Sean began to draw vehicle routes on the map. He drew circles around the junctions and placed a numbers of crosses that might be potential parking spots for a vehicle on the hill and along the cliffs. He continued analysing the potential routes, knowing the killers would have to have visited the exact area first. They would not have been so slapdash as not to bother with a reconnaissance of the routes they would take, and to look at the best burial sites to dig in.