The Talion Code

by Catriona King

  It was the next alert that really made him pay attention, especially coming so soon after the rest. Someone was searching scientific copyrights as well, and the searcher’s I.D. was the same for all. Damn! They must have discovered his hack on the algorithm. But how the hell? The man swore loudly for a minute then he threw back his head and started to laugh. What did it matter? They’d never trace the hacks back to him; he’d covered his tracks so well a NASA satellite couldn’t find him. If he was gifted at one thing in this life it was IT; at least he’d inherited something from his dad.

  His amusement ended when the implications of the find hit home. The police might not be able to trace him, but they could stop his operation before it had finished and he definitely couldn’t allow that; he still had one more thing to achieve. He thought hard, considering the ramifications of the police discovering what he’d done. He’d thought that he’d kept things well under the radar; the odd traffic snarl up and bank malfunction and a factory death far away from Belfast, enough to worry conspiracy buffs but not enough to alert the police. Maybe messing with the light aircraft had been a step too far? If it’d caught the cops’ attention then it obviously had. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, calming his panicked thoughts.

  OK. What if it had made them pay attention? What would the cops do next? Notify the air authorities and GCHQ definitely, but they would need weeks to be sure before they did anything. The last thing the government would want would be to start a panic that there were terrorists in the machine.

  He nodded, reassured. He still had time, but just to be certain he needed a Plan B. As the perfect idea crystallised he smiled. It was going to be a busy twenty-four hours.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 3.30 p.m.

  The last woman in the world that Craig had wanted to see halted the C.C.U. lift’s ascent from the garage at reception and stepped elegantly inside.

  “Why, Superintendent Craig. How nice to see you.”

  It was very far from nice to see Agent Jennifer Somerville but he’d known GCHQ would send someone and he supposed that it was better the devil you knew. The detective pressed the button for the tenth floor again and stared straight ahead, feeling the lift musak sapping his will to live. Someone really needed to tell the building supervisor that the hits of the ninety-fifties weren’t the way to go.

  Somerville spoke again, in an amused tone.

  “Perhaps you don’t remember me? Jennifer Somerville. National Crime Agency.”

  Craig answered without turning. “How could I possibly forget you, Agent Somerville. If that’s still your name?”

  “It is, and I’m Jennifer, please. I feel like we’re old friends now.”

  The lift stopped and Craig went to exit, then he stopped, his good manners making him wait for the brunette to leave first. As he held open the squad-room door for her he commented dryly on her words.

  “More companions of necessity than old friends. Forgive me if I say I wouldn’t be unhappy if we never met again.”

  “Tsk, tsk, Mr Craig, your manners are slipping. Besides, I’m only here because you asked, or rather a member of your team did. A Mr Ash Rahman.”

  She curled her tongue aggressively around the name as if all eastern names warranted suspicion. Craig bit back what he really wanted to say and doggedly stuck to the facts.

  “I tasked Mr Rahman with calling GCHQ. I’m presuming they called you-”

  “Immediately. Et voila, here I am.” The pleasantries over Somerville headed for his office. He headed her off at the pass.

  “Oh, no. Not this time, Ms Somerville. If you need to speak to Ash privately there’s a vacant office further down.”

  He pointed towards the back of the lengthy floor, to a room they fondly referred to as ‘The Monk’s Cell’, because it was so cold and sparsely furnished. Then he crossed to Ash’s desk.

  “GCHQ have sent a NCA agent to talk to you, Ash.” He scanned the floor for someone else who was free. “Don’t worry, I’m sending Andy in with you so she doesn’t try to tie you in knots. Take your photocopies with you, please.”

  Ash’s colour paled to match his name and Craig practically had to prise Andy off his chair, but a minute later they were both in the cell with Jennifer Somerville and Craig beckoned his remaining staff members into his room.

  “OK. The C.C.’s been informed about Ash’s find and he’s happy with the approach we’re taking.” He saw Rhonda’s blank look. “If anyone doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Ash can explain. Meanwhile we still have a murder to solve and we’re no further forward on that.” He turned to see Davy picking at his nails and Rhonda chewing furiously on hers. “Davy. What’s the status of those death searches?”

  The analyst glanced up through his hair. “Both done and broken down as you asked. I gave them to Liam ten minutes ago.”

  He was impressed.

  “OK, good. Liam, how far have you got?”

  Liam gazed at him sceptically. “Give me a break. I’ve only had ten minutes!” He smiled mischievously. “But now you’re back we can split the work.”

  If he was hoping to wind Craig up he’d failed. The detective answered “Yes, fine” then thought for a moment before turning back to Davy again. “How about all the CCTV?”

  “S…Sorry, chief. Nothing new. We’ve been through everything. Cameras in the Titanic Quarter, traffic cams, number plate recognition on mobile patrols. The only thing we’ve got is Jamison’s car leaving the Quarter at around ten on Friday night, about an hour after Guthrie was supposed to have died.”

  “So we can’t rule Jamison in or out. Damn.” A faint hope rose in his chest. “Has Andy been through all the footage?”

  Davy answered in a tired voice and it suddenly occurred to Craig that they’d been working for eight days straight. “Half of Belfast’s been through it, chief. Fitzhenry, Andy; Annette even got Terry Mallon to have a look. All we’ve got is that the blurred man is definitely the one Fitzhenry saw and according to Andy he isn’t Jamison, but he is the same man that bribed Mallon outside the Odyssey on Friday night.”

  Three days in and they had bugger all. It suddenly occurred to Craig that he hadn’t seen Annette for hours.

  “Anyone know where Annette is?”

  Liam raised a finger. “Gone home. There’s nothing for her to do till we’ve got through these lists.”

  Craig nodded. “You’re right.” He glanced at the row of faces. The only person who didn’t look exhausted was Rhonda and she’d just been learning the ropes. “OK, it’s almost four so I want everyone but Liam to go home early and get back here tomorrow at eight, bright-eyed and raring to go.” He raised his voice so that Nicky could hear. “You too, Nick.”

  Davy hung behind as the floor emptied. “You need me to s…stay, chief. At least till Ash gets out of Guantanamo. I can help you and Liam to sift through the death lists.”

  “Thanks, Davy.” He poured some fresh drinks. “We’d better get to it then, before Lewiston finds some way to spring his client.”

  An hour later they had a shortlist of three possible names and Ash and Andy still hadn’t reappeared. It was time to mount a rescue, so Craig beckoned Liam to follow and they headed down the floor. One knock and a fast entry, designed to catch whatever Somerville was doing wrong, left them disappointed. There wasn’t a thumbscrew in sight. She was nodding in apparent interest as Ash laid out his path to discovering the five digit code, albeit with her coat wrapped firmly around her and a faint blue tinge to her lips. Even Andy was looking enthusiastic, leaning over to look at the printed sheets. Still, enough was enough so Craig nodded the two men to leave and then held the door open pointedly until Jennifer Somerville took his hint. He marched her down the floor.

  “I hope you got everything you wanted, Agent Somerville. Mr Rahman is a very talented analyst.”

  She halted mid-march. “Very.” Her eyes narrowed. “Fascinating how he managed to spot the hack, isn’t it? It was almost as if he already knew that it was there.”


  Ash’s pallor returned and he wobbled so much Liam thought he would have to scrape him off the floor, but Craig was having none of Somerville’s spooky tricks.

  “Oh no, you don’t. Mr Rahman brought his findings to me in rudimentary form days ago and he continued his research diligently until he was sure he had a case, which then went immediately to GCHQ. If you try to make something of the fact that he’s of Asian descent then you’d better check me out for being half-Italian or…” As he searched for something potentially contentious about someone else Liam stepped forward menacingly.

  “How about me having family in the Republic? Is that suspicious enough for you?”

  The agent tried to make light of her implications, raising a hand in peace. “I was only joking, gentlemen.” She gave a weak laugh. “Goodness, but you’re a touchy bunch in the police.”

  Craig pointed her off the floor. “Keep your jokes and be thankful that Ash spotted this before something else happened. Now go back to your spymasters and tell them if they don’t act on this information now then the consequences will all be theirs.”

  They could hear her muttering all the way to the lift. Liam waited until its doors had closed before giving a loud guffaw.

  “That’ll teach her. Suspicious -”

  Craig turned to Ash. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Ash. Well done on your find, but it’s time to call it a night.”

  Ash had recovered enough to shake his head. “I’ve more digging to do on the algorithm’s background.”

  Davy chipped in. “And now we’ve narrowed the list to three names I need to set up s…searches to run overnight.”

  Andy’s contribution to the discussion was a pathetic. “Has Rhonda gone home?”

  Liam slapped him on the back, almost knocking the slight D.C.I. off his feet. “Face it, man. You were her slave for the night and nothing more.”

  Craig left the agony uncle to offer his rather dubious comfort and returned to his office to scrutinise their shortlist of names.

  Chapter Ten

  It was eight o’clock by the time they left the floor. Progress on the algorithm search had been slow, but an inspired call to the Head of Copyright at home, which, after he’d ranted about being disturbed and unwound his eight-year-old son from around his legs, and Craig had taken the phone to explain that Ash wasn’t some random computer geek out to steal original work, had actually borne fruit.

  Ash had been granted the keys to the kingdom, to wit, a temporary log-on for the largest IT copyright facility in the world. Craig had wondered whether asking for the whole world hadn’t been slightly grandiose, but after Ash had recited the full text of the proverb ‘For the sake of a nail the shoe was lost’, he’d been persuaded that IT was one of the few things that was truly international.

  As it happened, Ash and Davy had eliminated the rest of the world except Europe by the time Liam had started rubbing his stomach dramatically, and had narrowed down the search to Western Europe by the time the D.C.I.’s thick forefinger, drawn across his throat with accompanying sound effects, had conveyed his increasingly urgent need for food.

  Craig smiled. “OK, I can take a hint. Half-an-hour for something to eat then we’re back to work again.”

  The five men left the squad-room whirring and beeping with the analyst’s searches and parted company with Davy at the street door. Liam stared at him quizzically.

  “I’m meeting Maggie. S…Sorry, but I promised and I am supposed to be on holiday.” He gestured at Ash. “There’s nothing to do until the computer coughs on the names tomorrow. Call me if you get anything new on the copyright.”

  He wandered off down Pilot Street to be met by Maggie in her new sports car. Liam shook his head exaggeratedly.

  “Slacker.”

  Craig snorted. “He’s not even supposed to be here, and you’d have gone home hours ago if I’d given you half a chance.”

  As the group decanted to the James Bar for sustenance Katy was answering the front door of her mother’s house on Stockmans Lane to a takeaway delivery, and readying for an evening spent planning the wardrobe for her cruise. She carried the takeaway bags into the kitchen and opened the first container with a quiet groan.

  “They’ve sent fish curry instead of chicken, Mum. I hate fish.”

  Maureen Stevens smiled. “You don’t just hate it, dear, you’re allergic to it, remember? You came up in a terrible rash the first time I gave you cod.” She placed a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll take it. You can have my beef.”

  Katy shook her unruly curls, freed from their blow-dried strait jacket for the night. “No, we should get what we paid for. I’ll nip down and change it while you set out the rest. I won’t be five minutes.”

  She hurried out and five minutes later she was making the return trip from Belfast’s Stranmillis Road, with a hot chicken curry in her car boot. As she idled at the Balmoral Avenue lights, readying to drive down the steep slope onto Stockmans Lane, she noticed a man staring at her from the car to her left. When he saw her glance round his stare became a smile, and, as Katy smiled back in reflex and the lights changed allowing her to pull away, what happened next was a blur.

  They would never know what had saved her from dying instantly, just that in that moment some survival instinct had kicked in. Had she pulled away faster or slower would it have mattered? Perhaps she could have held the steep slope with a better grip? Whatever the reason was, as her car gathered speed that had nothing to do with its accelerator and her brake refused to bite no matter how hard she pressed, her neighbour’s car pulled in front of her and Katy knew that only one action could stop her smashing into it and killing them both.

  Time is a funny thing. How something that takes only seconds can seem to be taking hours. Scientists would quote Einstein and relativity; the religious might attribute it to God, but whatever it was each of Katy’s actions seemed to occur in slow motion. Her desperate grip of the wheel, her hopeless foot pumping on the brake, but through it all she registered the man still looking, only now with a much wider smile on his full lips.

  She swerved hard left, praying to a God she believed in but couldn’t name that the car’s steering mechanism still worked. There were cars in front and to the right so she turned the only way she could, straight into the inert obstacle that stood there, knowing only that her car had finally stopped and her chest hurt before a searing pain shut her eyes.

  ****

  The C.C.U. 10.p.m.

  By ten o’clock they were all fading, a fade that no amount of carbohydrate could address. They needed rest and recuperation and Craig had only left a possible nine hours for that, before they had to be up and in their showers and then heading back to work. He rose from behind a desk at the front of the open-plan floor.

  “OK. Let’s call it a night, everyone.”

  The other three ‘everyones’ glanced up blearily from their desks. Liam and Andy weren’t about to give him an argument but Ash was made of stronger stuff, despite his wraith-like build.

  “Five more minutes, chief. I’ve almost got it.”

  Craig shrugged. “OK. Liam and I will tidy up while you finish.”

  Liam was just gathering his energy to object when Craig’s finger pointed to a mess of discarded paper at his feet and then at Nicky’s chair sitting ten feet from its home, reducing him to a grudging “OK.” If Nicky arrived tomorrow to an untidy office there’d be hell to pay for the rest of the week.

  Liam wasn’t sure what made him jump first. His mobile and desk phones ringing at once or the sight of Ash springing from his seat in a victory dance. He silenced one phone by banging a fist on his jacket pocket and the other by stabbing at ‘divert’. Let the night shift answer the calls and tell them in the morning; he had a Monday night to salvage, what was left of it.

  Craig smiled at the pogo-ing analyst and as Ash finally stopped jumping up and down he waited to hear what he’d found out.

  “I’ve got it, chief. The algorithm belongs
to a company called Ramsays Ltd.”

  “Who are they?”

  Ash shook his head. “Don’t know yet. Some limited company. I’ll run it through a company house search.”

  “Not tonight. Set it running and go home.”

  A few clicks later the analyst nodded and the men walked wearily to the lift. As the doors slid shut behind them the phone on Craig’s office desk began to ring.

  ****

  Monday is a strange day, its tenor changing according to your age. For children it spells the end of fun and the start of a week of homework, and in schools without a uniform the start of the five day ‘I’m cool’ catwalk display. Monday night, depending on whether or not their day has gone well, can be an angst ridden prelude until tomorrow, or the brakes-off, one-day-down coast to the end of the week.

  For parents Monday begins the working week, whether that work occurs at home or out in the big bad world. The end of two days leisure with the family and the first eight hours of a forty hour grind. That’s if you were lucky; in Craig’s team forty sometimes became ninety and a weekend off was a fantasy, making Monday night a pit stop spent kissing goodnight to your loved ones, before sleeping and rising to do it all again.

  But this week three of the murder squad were having very different Monday nights. One was spending theirs writing a victim impact statement for the P.P.S., after an argumentative meeting that had lasted all day. A statement fuelled by hatred so strong that Jake McLean swore that if the courts didn’t give him justice then he’d get it himself through the barrel of a gun. If Craig could have read his sergeant’s thoughts he would have thought him unfit for duty, but Jake was smart enough to keep his anger well hidden from his boss.