Richard hesitated, then knocked on the door of the ‘main man’, Gil Sykes, who for the purposes of their little unit was ‘big boss number one’.
‘Can I have a word?’
Gil looked surprised, but gestured Richard to come in and sit down. ‘Sure, what’s wrong?’
Richard grinned. He couldn’t help himself. He knew this was big with a capital B and felt justifiably proud of himself. Gil raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow and tucked an invisible strand of wayward bob back behind her ear.
‘Nothing’s wrong. I’ve solved it. I know how to find the kraken. How to kill it.’
He expected applause; instead she looked at him as if he’d gone mad.
‘Kraken? Isn’t that some kind of sea monster?’
‘Well, yeah. But not this one. I mean that’s what Paul de Freitas called it but I think it’s a ship or maybe a submarine. I know it’s stealth technology and I know the thing he was trying to hide was a device for tracking it. Finding it, even though it doesn’t have a proper signature. You see …’
‘Richard, what the hell are you talking about?’
For the first time he began to worry. ‘Dave gave me this thing to solve? After Paul de Freitas and his minder were killed. They found two bits of code, see, hidden in the BIOS. I worked through the layers, realised one was a list of names and the other was another level of one of Paul’s old games.’
‘De Freitas … right?’ A small glimmer of light seemed to dawn. ‘There was something on the bulletin …’ Gil closed her eyes for a moment as though accessing the information she had vaguely registered.
She opened her eyes and studied Richard. ‘You’d better show me what you found,’ she said, ‘and bring me up to speed. Did Dave say who this was for?’
‘Sure, he said it was a rush job. I’ve been on it twenty-four-seven. It’s for Commander Hale?’ The name had meant nothing to him, but he assumed it must to her. From the way her shoulders suddenly stiffened, Richard figured that it did. But he wasn’t sure now that was a good thing.
‘Have I done something wrong?’
Gil shook her head. ‘Go back to your station, get everything ready for me. I just need to make a couple of calls. And Richard, don’t worry. You’ve done nothing wrong.’
It was another two hours and close on seven o’clock when Abe got the call. They had what they needed to close the net on Hale. Abe was back on the payroll. Officially.
He sank down on one of the uncomfortable kitchen chairs at Hill House and felt relief flood through him right down to his toes. He’d been undercover before, but not like this. Not able to tell even those men he’d served with for so long that really, he’d not left in disgrace; not let the side down and he felt that the rumour-mill had told exactly that story.
Abe Jackson is out of control.
Abe Jackson finally flipped.
To make sure he knew the message was for real, they’d had his commanding officer make the call and Abe had never been so relieved or so glad in all his life to hear that particular voice.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘We close the trap. Abe where the devil are you?’
He told them, still anxious after all this time of trusting no one that he was walking into a noose of his own making. Hesitantly, he voiced his concerns, knowing they’d be understood. He’d sent men into deep cover operations, seen them when they’d returned, unable to accept that even their closest friends were still just that and not some agent sent to trick and deceive. He knew this was a normal anxiety, but analyse it all he liked, he found it hard to shake.
A slight sound made him look up. Lyndsey stood in the doorway, the blanket draped around her shoulders. She looked better. Wide awake and the tense pinched look gone from her face.
‘Who was that?’ she asked as he closed his phone.
‘The cavalry, I hope,’ he said. ‘And I’ve told them to bring food.’
She smiled. The first proper smile he’d seen on her face. ‘Good. I’m starved. Is that coffee?’
‘Yeah, hope you can drink it black. The kettle works. You feeling better?’
She nodded. ‘I’m feeling … OK. Yes, I’m feeling like I’m going to be all right.’ She smiled again, a little awkwardly this time. ‘Not sure how long that feeling will last, so make the most of it.’
‘Hold that thought,’ Abe told her. He filled the kettle and poked the jar to free up the hardened granules. ‘This isn’t over yet, but I do believe the end is now in sight.’
FORTY
Fitch and Joy had dropped Bridie’s two employees at the De Barr hotel, leaving them with a corporate visa card and permission to take a few days’ holiday and to hire a car, do as they pleased so long as they stayed put that night.
They then drove off to Peverill Lodge and Rina Martin to await Tim and Mac’s arrival.
Tim and Mac had gone straight to the de Freitas’s house. They arrived to find the place had been searched, hurriedly and messily and a back window shattered by whoever had been there.
The music box was still in the bedroom, knocked to the floor but otherwise ignored.
Tim was waiting for him in the Big Room.
‘You found it then?’
‘Yes.’
Tim turned back to take another look at the massive window. ‘This is an amazing space; I bet the view is phenomenal in daylight.’
‘Dizzying,’ Mac said. ‘You can’t see the garden at all. It’s very odd. Just sea and sky. Lydia said she felt as though she was shipboard.’
‘So you’d not see anyone coming across the lawn until they were almost on you,’ Tim mused.
‘I suppose not. What are you thinking?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet.’ The light was behind them, much brighter in the room than outside where the darkening sky promised a stormy end to an overheated day. He could see his reflection in the window, feet and legs below the knee cut off because of the sunken aspect to the room. His reflection strengthened, grew more solid by the minute as the clouds rolled in off the ocean, foreshortening the view so that there was the momentary illusion of the entire world coming to an end just beyond the window.
‘We’d better go,’ Mac said and Tim nodded, glancing back once from the top of the steps.
‘I’d better call Rina to tell her we’re on our way.’
‘Do that.’ Mac hesitated about where to put the music box, finally wrapping it up in a carrier bag with the chocolate he’d bought earlier and tucking it into the boot. What, he wondered, was the appropriate way to transport something that looked so banal but which had probably already cost lives? As he climbed into the driver’s seat, Tim was talking to Rina and jotting down a number on a till receipt he’d found in the glove compartment. Mac waited, leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes. He daren’t add up all the hours he’d been driving today, but figured if his car had been an HGV then he’d probably be well overdue for a rest.
‘Abe Jackson has been trying to get hold of us. He couldn’t get through and neither could Rina. New SIM cards,’ he waved his phone. ‘She was worried sick until Fitch got there and explained. I think we’ve got more white-flag waving to do.’
‘I have chocolate in the boot,’ Mac said. ‘Never let it be said I’m not prepared. So, what now?’
‘I’ll call him, he’ll tell us where to go.’
Mac had not been to the children’s home since it had been closed for repair. He had driven past on quite a few occasions, noted the builders’ lorries coming and going, but, situated at the end of a long and sweeping drive and therefore out of sight of the road, he’d not seen it during the rebuilding process.
At the top of the drive a man in the uniform of a military policeman signalled them to halt, then peered into the car and waved them on.
‘Seems like they know us already?’
Mac nodded. ‘What’s a redcap doing here?’
‘Isn’t that what Abe Jackson was?’
A black van and two cars were parked
just outside of the front door and Mac pulled up behind them. Other uniformed officers and some in civilian dress carried equipment into the house. All of the downstairs lights seemed to be on.
‘Ookaay,’ Tim said slowly. ‘Now what?’
Abe Jackson came out to meet them. Lyndsey Barnes at his side. Abe looked confident and in control, in his element. ‘Glad to see you,’ he said. ‘Come along in.’
They followed him into the kitchen. That too seemed to have been invaded. A woman with a neat blonde bob and a very nervous-looking young man sat at the kitchen table, with a laptop in front of them and a pile of papers close by. The woman nodded in their direction but Abe made no attempt to introduce her. ‘This is Richard,’ he said. ‘Richard cracked Paul’s code. Now all we’ve got to do is gather the pieces together.’
He looked pleased. Mac just felt mystified, though he was now getting used to that state.
‘Pieces?’ Tim said.
‘I’m one of them,’ Lyndsey told him. ‘But Richard solved my bit, so really they don’t need me for that any more. Then there’s Paul and Edward, Ray, Lydia, Ian and two other poor bastards that got killed for something they probably didn’t even know they had.’
Mac fetched the music box from the car. Richard seized it, staring at it as though it was some holy relic. ‘The one in the game. My god, do you know how much some people would pay for this?’ He had the grace then to look embarrassed. ‘I mean, people who play Eventide. I …’ He gave up and handed it over to Gil who opened it.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘If it was something obvious,’ Mac pointed out, ‘then Lydia would have seen it.’ He opened the lid and poked around inside. The card with the owl on it was still inside. Paul’s message was scrawled across the back. ‘For your treasures’.
‘Get it examined,’ Gil said, handing it over to one of the people Mac had seen unloading the van. ‘What else is on the list? OK, I’ll rephrase that. Who is left on the list still capable of telling us what their object means?’
‘Ray,’ Lyndsey said. ‘We have to find Ray.’
‘Not at work, not at his flat and his phone is switched off. Lyndsey, do you have any idea?’ Mac gathered from the tone of Gil’s voice that this question had been put before.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been thinking and there was this friend he had from when he was a school kid. Ray was at boarding school and Toby was his best friend, but I don’t know where he lived. It wasn’t round here, Wiltshire somewhere …’ She cast an anxious look in Gil’s direction. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘There’s bound to be something in his flat,’ Gil said. ‘Write down anything you can think of. We’ll track him down.’
‘What about Edward?’ Mac asked.
‘A rosebush,’ Richard said rolling his eyes. ‘I mean, a frigging rosebush.’
He remembered where he was and looked apologetically at Gil. ‘It was called Peace, that’s all I know.’
‘There are rose beds at the de Freitas’s house,’ Mac said. ‘Can Edward shed any light?’
‘So far, no. We’ll check out the house again.’
‘You know,’ Tim said. ‘I think you’re looking at it all wrong.’
Gil frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Paul was a player as well as a designer, wasn’t he? And games are all about misdirection. Look, this Hale, he told us that Paul ironed out the kinks in the design. He got the tracking thing to work. Now I don’t know a lot about this sort of technology, but presumably it was computer controlled. Presumably it’s like a programming thing as well as an engineering thing?’
‘Maybe a new chip set,’ Lyndsey speculated. ‘Maybe a combination of those things.’
‘Right.’ Tim was feeling his way. ‘Look, if I want a trick to work then I have to dress it right. The actual pay-off for the illusion might be pulling a card out of an envelope that’s been sitting all the way across the room for the past half-hour, right? And the fact is, the card’s been in my possession right until the very last minute, yes? But I have to misdirect, to add frills and fancy bits so that anyone watching, even if they’ve an idea of how it’s done, they’re going to be caught up in all the peripheral frills.’
‘And your idea is that most of the objects are just peripheral frills.’ Gil frowned, but nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, how do we tell the difference?’
‘Think about it,’ Tim said. ‘The only people Paul was really likely to trust with something this important are Lydia and Edward and Lyndsey and Ray and maybe not even Edward. No offence, but what Paul was into was way over Edward’s head. It wasn’t what he did.’
‘You think Lydia would understand?’ Gil asked.
Tim nodded thoughtfully. ‘Lydia kind of puzzles me,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t seem to do anything specific, but everyone agrees she’s important. It’s like she’s the glue, the core element of the trick, the bit you don’t see because you’re so busy looking at the fancy stuff.’
‘Which is why he wrote this from her perspective,’ Richard nodded agreement. ‘So all we need really is Lydia’s thing, which we have in the music box and Lyndsey’s which we’ve got and Ray, who’s got the missile launcher.’
‘The what?’ Mac queried.
‘That’s what it looks like.’ He struck his forehead dramatically. ‘God, I’m so stupid! You’re right. Spot on. The only things Lydia used to kill the kraken in the final scene were the missile launcher thing and Lyndsey’s bit of paper and the music box. She stuck the missile launcher on the music box and she fired Lyndsey’s paper rolled into a tube.’
Gil nodded. ‘Right, so if that’s true, that cuts down a little of the complications. But we still need Ray.’
She leaned back in her seat and surveyed them all. ‘I suggest that those that can, get some rest. We reconvene tomorrow, eight a.m. Here. We need to draw Hale back out into the open, force a move.’
She got up and left the kitchen barking orders at people, asking questions of others. Mac felt he’d been summarily dismissed. ‘Home?’ he said.
‘Home,’ Tim agreed.
FORTY-ONE
It was very late by the time Mac delivered Tim to Peverill Lodge but the Martin household was still up and in an odd, almost celebratory mood. Matthew was relishing his moment of glory and from what Mac could gather, had been telling and retelling the tale of how he and Rina facilitated Abe Jackson’s escape so many times it had already taken upon the aspect of legend.
It was now up to Tim and Mac to provide an adequate sequel; Mac found himself unequal to the task, too tired to really care and with so many facts now buzzing around his head that he wasn’t sure he could get them straight.
‘Why don’t you stay over tonight?’ Rina asked. ‘Unless Miriam’s expecting you?’
Mac shook his head. ‘At her sister’s,’ he said. ‘But I think you’ve got a houseful as it is.’
‘Fitch is taking the couch in my office and I’ve fixed up a camp bed in my room for Joy. I don’t like the thought of you walking round the headland tonight or even down from the main road. Not after all that’s happened.’
‘In which case, I’ll say yes. Gratefully.’ He looked over to where Joy sat close beside Tim. ‘You sure the camp bed will get used?’
‘I think I’ll insist on it tonight,’ she said. ‘But I think Joy will get her way soon enough. My question is,’ she added mischievously, ‘will Tim know what to do with her? He is a little naïve, you know.’
Mac almost choked on his tea. ‘Rina, you should be ashamed.’
‘So,’ Fitch demanded. ‘What’s the next move?’
‘Find Ray, figure out what he’s hiding, put the word out to Hale that it’s all in one place and to come and get it, I suppose.’
‘Easy then,’ Fitch agreed. He got up and stretched. ‘Look, I think we should all get some rest now. It’s been a long day and something tells me tomorrow might be no better.’
FORTY-TWO
Mac drove to Hill House the
following morning, very conscious of every car he passed or that passed him but there was no sign of Hale or anything else untoward.
Abe Jackson was in the kitchen when he arrived. He seemed intent on providing breakfast for the entire crew. There was no sign of Gil, Richard or Lyndsey.
‘Feel like a spare part,’ Abe explained. ‘Thought I’d do something useful.’
‘Lyndsey?’
‘Gone to fetch Ray. They tracked him down to a place in Wiltshire. Gil’s gone with her. Richard is still asleep, so far as I know and everyone else is busy, busy, busy. One good thing though, they came well supplied.’
He flipped eggs expertly and then dished them on to large serving plates. ‘Give me a minute. Or better still, grab that toast will you?’
Mac followed him through to the dining room with a stack of toast and a dish of butter. The place had been transformed. CCTV cameras covered every inch of the grounds and computer systems blinked at him from every available space. Abe cleared a gap amongst paperwork and set the dishes down beside crockery and serving plates. Mac added toast. A chorus of approval followed them from the room.
‘They say an army marches on its belly,’ Abe said. ‘I’m assuming the geek squad does the same.’
He sighed, seeming at a loss now his hands were empty. ‘No Tim?’
‘No, he’s spending a little time with Joy Duggan. He couldn’t see what we might need him for this morning and I’m afraid intrigue and cloak-and-dagger is no contest compared to Joy.’
Abe laughed. ‘Can’t say I’d disagree. I’d happily be elsewhere now. It feels like I’ve done my bit and now I’m surplus.’
‘I was under the impression there was to be a briefing,’ Mac said, seating himself at the kitchen table, remembering what this place was like when the usual residents were there. Thinking of George and Ursula and the drama this house had already seen.
‘Events rather took over,’ Abe said. ‘Lyndsey managed to talk to Ray early hours of this morning. Scared the life out of his friend’s family when the police knocked at their door I expect, but better safe … She’s got some clout, that Gil woman. Apparently Ray was planning on leaving this morning, didn’t want to put his friends at risk and when Lyndsey disappeared, he’d feared the worst. He went to his friend Toby, not knowing where else to go, then got in to a panic in case the bad guys came after him there.’
The Power of One Page 20
