My fingers suddenly felt tingly, singing with a strange urge that wouldn’t go away even when I curled my hands into fists. Trying to fool myself that I was acting nonchalantly, I idled over to the desk, running my fingers over the smooth satiny surface of the wood. I let my hand pause beside the mouse, drumming a rhythmic pattern with my nails on the desktop. The computer chair was pulled slightly out from the curve of the desk and turned a fraction to the side, towards me, like it was an invitation to sit down. It was too tempting.
Taking one more glance at the closed office door, I slid neatly into the seat and flicked the mouse. Instantly the screen flickered to life.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
It was locked. I pursed my lips as I thought about what Alexander might have set as his password. I doubted it would be anything too difficult – so few people had access to his computer, just him, Zane and Samuel. Never me, never anyone who didn’t make it up the stairs. I was actually surprised that he’d left it here at all. But not enough to be suspicious, not enough to stop. Letting my fingers rest on the keys, I thought for a moment more, then decided to start with the obvious. I tried ‘Alexander’, ‘Cardiff’, ‘Samuel’, even ‘Zane’. Nothing. I didn’t know why, but I was sure it would be a name. I even tried ‘Bancroft’. Thankfully there was no limit to the number of times I could try. If I locked the thing permanently it would be rather obvious that I’d been prying where I shouldn’t.
I was almost ready to give up, when I typed in ‘Elizabeth’. Password incorrect. I smiled wryly. There was no way Alexander would have that as his password. Just for the hell of it, I plugged in ‘Lizzie’. To my astonishment, the log-in screen disappeared and Windows began booting up. Alexander’s wallpaper flashed onto the screen – a silver Celtic cross against a blood-red background – then a host of icons popped up on the left-hand side. I stared at the folders, all titled innocuous things like Accounts or Documents. Intrigued, I rolled the mouse over one entitled simply GE, but that wasn’t what I’d logged on for, and I let it be, firing up Internet Explorer instead. The programme loaded quickly, and I typed in the EBC News address. It took a while to load – even Alexander couldn’t get around the strategic government throttling – but eventually the headlines and images appeared across the page. It wasn’t hard to find what I was looking for: it was the lead story.
TERRORISTS TARGET WELSH BORDER.
Underneath the huge bold headline was a picture of the wall. It was hard to tell if the image was taken from the English side looking out, or the Welsh side looking in. I supposed it didn’t really matter. The main focus of the picture was a huge ‘U’, gouged out of the concrete maybe ten feet across as its widest point. The photographer had a good eye for layout. He’d captured the way the road ran off into the distance, nothing now obstructing its path except for a wide crater at the base of the wall.
Well, I had at least one of my answers. The proof before me was indisputable. We’d succeeded in biting a huge chunk out of the GE and their border. Eagerly I turned to the article, keen to read the EBC report, biased as I knew it would be.
My hand guided the mouse across the beautiful walnut finish of Alexander’s desk as I scrolled down, shifting an old, but mint condition, copy of a luxury car magazine out of my way as I read the bitter, twisted words of the reporter. Is this what he’d say if he weren’t censored? Was it what he really believed? Probably. I snorted, skimming the rest of the article, not wanting to read his delusional drivel. I nudged the mouse again, easing the magazine out of my way, thinking maybe I’d have more luck with a different news site – unlikely – when there was a loud clatter as something dropped down off the desk.
I jumped, hissed out a swear word as I dived under the desk, searching for whatever had made that nasty crunching, clattering sound.
“Don’t be broken,” I beseeched it. “Oh, hell.”
My hand curled round the remains of a phone. Alexander’s mobile. It must have slid under the magazine because he’d never have purposely left me with this, not in a million years. Scrambling the bits together, I emerged to survey the damage. The screen was still in one piece but the SIM card, battery and back cover had sprung loose. With fumbling fingers – I really didn’t want another reason to be in Alexander’s bad books right now – I slotted everything back together and switched it on.
“Come on, come on,” I begged it. It took several painful seconds, but eventually the provider’s symbol flared onto the screen. Seconds later the phone fired up properly. Running my fingers across the touch screen, I sighed in relief. It was fine.
Then I sat back in Alexander’s plush black leather computer chair and surveyed the room from this, his throne. Empty. Completely empty. I was utterly alone.
My eyes went back to the phone, one finger running the smooth length of glass, inadvertently causing the electronic keypad to spring up. I gazed down at the numbers, trying not to do what I knew I was about to do.
In Alexander’s office.
On Alexander’s personal phone.
Stupid. Beyond stupid. But a promise was a promise, and I had promised. Not thinking any further than that, I let my fingers drift over the keypad, tapping out the number I’d somehow memorised despite myself.
He answered after just one ring.
“Hello?”
“Mark?”
“Lizzie.” My name came out on a breath. He didn’t say it like Samuel, who made it almost musical, but I liked it nonetheless.
“Yeah,” I breathed back. “Hi.”
“You called. I didn’t think you would.”
“I promised,” I reminded him.
“You did,” he agreed. There was a pause that I wasn’t sure how to fill, then he went on, “I thought about you this morning.”
“You did?” My stomach did a strange flip-flop. I shifted in the chair.
“Well, yeah. Haven’t you seen the news? Someone blew up the Welsh border last night.”
“And you thought of me?” My voice was high-pitched, tight, while my mind raced. Had they somehow got DNA from the bomb? The car? Had the police released my name, my face? Automatically I looked to the door, waiting for Alexander to burst through it and tell me it was over. I was over.
The door remained closed.
“Well, you’re the only Celt I know,” Mark laughed down the phone.
“Oh. Right.” Relief crashed through me. It must have bled down the line because the silence was instantly deafening.
“You… you weren’t involved, were you? Lizzie?”
It took a moment to make my lips work.
“What?” I whispered woodenly. That was the best I could do. If I said one more word I’d give myself away.
Apparently I had anyway.
“Jesus Christ, Lizzie!” Mark’s voice was suddenly so loud I had to jerk the phone away from my ear.
“Mark—”
“They talked about it, on the news. The men they suspect might be involved in this. They’re dangerous.” That was the understatement of the year. Mark gave me a moment to consider this, then continued, much more quietly. “What are you into, Lizzie?”
Tears gathered in my eyes. To stop them falling down my cheeks, I closed them. I couldn’t answer him; didn’t want to confess – to me or him – exactly what I’d got myself into. Or how deep.
Distant yelling on Mark’s side of the line made me blink my eyes back open.
“Bollocks,” Mark muttered. The word sounded funny in his clipped English accent.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m at work,” he explained.
“Oh.” I thought about that. “On a Saturday?”
“Overtime,” he explained. “Look, Lizzie,” he started.
“If you have to go—” I mumbled at the same time.
We both paused, then Mark sighed.
“I do,” he said. “I have to go. But—”
“But what?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
Another sigh.
/> “These people they’re talking about in the media, Lizzie, they’re not the sort of people you want to be involved with.” That I knew. Irrefutably. “You need to get away from them.”
“Mmm.” I made a non-committal sound, knowing that was impossible. Mark seemed to hear what I couldn’t say.
“I’m serious. No matter what promises they make to you, you aren’t safe with them. I,” he took a deep breath. Let it out. “I could help you.”
“No, you can’t,” I said at once, because it was absolutely true and Mark needed to get that. Helping me could get him killed.
“I could, Lizzie. I mean, I know I’m a low-level worker here, but I could ask someone, someone might have connections. They could get you out.”
Right. If any of the men Mark worked with at the Defence Department caught a look at my face the only thing they’d do is shoot me.
“I’m marked,” I told him.
That made him pause.
“I could protect you,” he offered at last, a little more hesitantly. “If you… if you were willing to give information, to tell them about what you’ve witnessed, they’d be lenient. They might even give you a visa. They—”
Inform on Alexander? There was no surer way to end up with a bullet in my brain. And what about Samuel? He hated traitors. Despised them. I never wanted him to look at me the way he’d glared at that man down in the basement. No, I wouldn’t do that to him.
“No, Mark.”
“Just hear me out—,”
“No.” Then, before he could speak again, “I have to go.”
I didn’t wait for him to say anything back. I pulled the phone from my ear and disconnected the call. Then I shut the thing off and hid it back beneath the magazine.
And I tried very, very hard to put the whole conversation right out of my mind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Why are we here?” I asked, craning my neck to look around me. “Are we scouting?”
Three weeks had passed since the bombing and in all that time I’d barely left the Bancroft Road address. Alexander had had no more jobs for me and Samuel had kept well away. I’d unwillingly spent most of my time with Zane, taking stock or helping to update the books in the basement. I had no more contact with Mark, purposefully or just through lack of opportunity I wasn’t quite sure. He’d scared me with his offer. Could I…? No – I stopped that thought right there – as I did each time it crossed my mind, which was often.
Then this morning Samuel had come for me, taken me for a ride. We were parked in a residential street in a neighbourhood I’d never been to before. The houses were terraced, little red boxes with tiny front gardens in various states of disrepair. Most of the cars parked against the curb had clear signs of not having moved for a long, long time.
“We’re not scouting,” Samuel replied.
“Oh.” I waited, thinking he would explain. But he didn’t.
“Are we making a delivery?” I guessed.
“No.”
“Are we picking up?”
“No.”
I looked at him, exasperated and amused. “Are we visiting your grandmother?”
He cracked a smile for half a second.
“No.”
“Okay,” I sat back and stared ahead, watching a cat lick its paws on the roof of a Nissan Micra with four flat tyres and no glass in any of its windows.
“Lizzie, do you ever wonder what we’re doing here?”
I looked at him, incredulous. He smirked wryly.
“I don’t mean here,” he pointed to the street scene outside the windshield. “I mean… what is it we’re trying to do?”
I blew out a breath, not sure what to say. We’d never had a real conversation before, not like equals, and I didn’t know if I knew him well enough, could trust him enough, to speak the truth.
“Are we chasing a pipe dream? Bombing the wall, the Home Office building… we’re snapping at the government’s heels like an irritable terrier, but we’re not making any actual progress.”
Samuel rubbed at his forehead and I snapped my mouth closed, realising I wasn’t supposed to contribute, just listen.
“And Alex doesn’t really want change. He’s making money hand over fist, cashing in on every dirty deal that just didn’t exist before. You know he’s trafficking people now, bringing Celt girls into the country, smuggling them in then selling them off to rich English tossers?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t known that.
“Sometimes I think I should just get the hell out of here, head back across the border and see what I can make of myself back in Cardiff. I’ve still got contacts there. Christ knows there’s not much keeping me in London. I mean, I thought we were trying to achieve something, but I’m just deluding myself.”
He turned to stare at me, green eyes burning into mine, a carbon copy of Alexander’s and yet completely different. There was life in Samuel’s stare: humanity. Warmth. I held his gaze, my mind reeling. Why was he telling me this, confiding in me? It was dangerous; for all he knew I’d turn round and spill to Alexander, who would not be pleased. He wouldn’t want to hear that Samuel was having second thoughts; that he wanted to leave. Nobody left Alexander.
I wouldn’t tell – I owed him more than that – but it was a big risk to take.
“You have contacts in Wales?” I asked hesitantly. I’d trained myself not to ask questions – not real ones, personal ones – but I was curious and Samuel had never treated me like his brother did, with his fists. And a churning nausea had cemented itself in my gut at the thought of Samuel leaving. He was my only ally at Bancroft Road; he was… No. He couldn’t leave me.
“Cousins,” he said quietly, running one hand through his thick brown hair, leaving it tousled and untidy. “They’re smugglers, they bring things over from France, sometimes Germany. I reckon they’d set me up, but Alex would—” he broke off.
“Alex would?”
But Samuel didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to – I knew how it ended. Alexander would kill him, and the cousins.
“There’s another option,” he said on a sigh. “A big player in Cardiff. He’s a ruthless son of a bitch, but he knows what it means to be Welsh.”
I wasn’t quite sure what Samuel meant by this. Did he think Alexander had lost sight of that? I was tempted to ask who the big wig was, but common sense prevailed.
“What’s it like there?” I prompted, my voice barely above a whisper. “Wales. Is it like here?” I gestured to the rundown street in front of me that was practically synonymous with the rest of London outside the Zone, “Or is it like… like the north?” Like Scotland. My home. A country ruined, where it was everyone for themselves and survival depended on what you were willing to do. Like steal food from a small child or stab a sleeping man to death for the coat he wore. Like leave your daughter in a cold, empty, damp-stained flat while you searched for something better. I shook my head to chase that memory away and focused on the man beside me.
Would he leave me too?
Samuel sighed. “It’s…” He shook his head. “It’s a mess. Cardiff’s not too bad, it’s being held together by the gangs.” My eyes widened. That didn’t sound good to me, but then I suppose if you were in one of the gangs… “But outside of the city? Yeah, it’s bad. Really bad. People are starving; no one’s safe, not even in their own homes. “That,” he huffed a laugh, “that was why I came here, you know? I was going to make it better.” He shook his head derisively, then fixed his eyes on me. “You should leave too, Lizzie.”
“What?” I asked, confused by the sudden change of direction the conversation had taken.
“You should leave, head back to Scotland.”
“I can’t,” I croaked.
There was nothing for me in Scotland. No family, nowhere to go, no one to help me. Only bad memories. And, of course, there was Alexander. I’d been warned often enough what he’d do to me if I ever tried to get away. North of the wall would not be far enough. I doubted Mars would
be.
“It would be better for you there,” he insisted. “I could help you to get out.”
“No,” I whispered. It was quiet, but final.
Samuel sighed. “Lizzie, if you don’t get out, you’re not going to survive much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alex’s going to kill you.”
I gaped at him.
“Don’t be…” But my denial died, because it wasn’t ridiculous. It was a cosh I’d been living under for so long I’d almost forgotten it was there. Somehow I’d made myself comfortable, balanced on my razor-sharp tightrope. Samuel’s words were a rude awakening, a sharp shock of cold water on my face, reminding me of what I’d always known: my life hung on Alexander’s say-so. I closed my eyes. “How do you know?”
“Alex wants you do to another job. The kind of job you don’t come back from, the martyr kind. I’ve talked him out of it for now, but you’re living on borrowed time, Lizzie.” I stared at him, aghast. The words I’d overheard in Alexander’s office suddenly took on a new, horrifying meaning. “You were never meant to come back from the border.”
A thought occurred to me.
“That’s why he sent Cameron instead of you.”
Samuel nodded gravely. That was why they’d found us; that was why they’d been ready, snipers in place, dogs in situ. It would have been cleaner, easier, to have the bombers captured – dead, so we couldn’t talk – than to risk us making a frantic dash back across the country and leading the GE to Alexander.
My tongue suddenly felt too big for my mouth.
“Did you know?” I asked thickly.
“No.” I turned my face away from him, disbelieving, but he grabbed my chin and yanked it back. “No,” he repeated.
“Then why did you give me the phone?” I smiled ruefully as his eyes tightened defensively.
“I knew Alex was planning something, but he didn’t tell me what. Lizzie!” He paused, because I’d twisted my head away from him again. Reluctantly I met his gaze. “I’m telling you the truth.”
I considered him. His eyes blazed with sincerity, his jaw was clenched. It was a face it was difficult to doubt. But then, I knew Alexander’s web of treachery spun many layers.
Bombmaker Page 14
