The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  Dietrich?

  She glanced over her shoulder. But it wasn’t Dietrich.

  Simon Carlyle stood in the doorway. Momentarily started, Louisa began to ask what he was doing here, but then he raised his arm and she saw the gun in his hand. It was pointed straight at her.

  The sound of the wind faded away. She looked directly into his eyes. They were ice cold. His mouth was set in a determined line. She swung the shotgun around, knowing in her heart she wouldn’t be fast enough. She saw his intention flare in his eyes a split second before his hand twitched and she flinched, helpless, as he pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The thunderclap tore through Louisa’s eardrums but dissipated as quickly as it erupted, leaving a muffled roar in its wake.

  Her eyes were still fixed on the gun in Simon’s hand. She was finding it difficult to form coherent thoughts, like they were trying to swim to the surface of her consciousness through a thick miasmic fugue. Time slowed. A thin tendril of smoke drifted upwards from the gun’s muzzle before being caught by the wind and whipped away. Simon lowered the weapon to his side.

  She didn’t feel anything. Any second now. Any second now and the pain will come, fast and hard. She closed her eyes and willed it away, hoping against hope she could remain blissfully anaesthetised until she faded into unconsciousness.

  A hand gripped her shoulder and shook her. She found herself staring straight into Simon’s beautiful brown eyes. They radiated concern. He was saying her name. It took a moment to realise she could hear him.

  ‘Louisa.’ Simon cupped her cheek. ‘Louisa, are you all right?’

  She looked down at her front. No blood. Had he missed? Dietrich appeared behind Simon, peering into the barn. He shot past her without a word and disappeared from view behind the trailer.

  Where is he going? Simon stepped around her.

  There was someone lying on the ground. A pair of legs stuck out from behind the tractor’s large back wheels. The shotgun was a dead weight. She shifted her grip on it and took a step forward, then another.

  Kane Shepherd lay on his back, staring sightlessly skywards. Death had refused to afford him a restful repose. His face was contorted by his final throes. One arm was outstretched, reaching towards a handgun lying a few feet from his splayed fingertips.

  The bullet had torn through the center of Kane’s chest. Blood continued to seep from the exit wound in his back, spreading across the concrete. Kane had died instantly. A lucky shot. Or maybe a good shot.

  Simon was standing over the body. He appeared unaffected, thoughtful almost. How can he look so calm after just having killed someone? Louisa opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing here. What the hell was going on, but she found herself unable to voice thoughts.

  Dietrich appeared from around the far end of the tractor. He purposefully strode over to Kane and booted him in his side.

  Simon sprang forward and pulled him away. ‘Dietrich! What are you doing?’

  ‘He killed my dog!’ Dietrich’s face twisted in grief and he covered his eyes with his hands. ‘He killed Tor, Simon.’

  Simon rested a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘Ah, I’m sorry Dietrich. I really am.’

  The scene had taken on a dreamlike quality. Simon, gun still in hand, consoling a distraught Dietrich while Kane lay dead beside them. Louisa felt like a spectator in a dramatic work, a farce perhaps, given the nature of the players. She took out her mobile phone. ‘Simon,’ her voice came out a whisper. She tried again. ‘Simon.’ He looked up. Louisa eyed the gun in his hand. ‘We have to call this in, okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said softly, ‘I know.’

  Dietrich sniffed and wiped his eyes. ‘Screw him. I have twenty acres of heathlands on my estate. Just say the word and nobody will ever find him.’

  Simon smiled. ‘No, Dietrich mate. Thanks for the offer, but his employers will come looking for him, and they’ll come straight to you. I’d rather not have you involved.’

  Louisa had spotted a police station in the last village she passed through before reaching Dietrich’s cottage. Northumbria Police. They could be there within half an hour if she called them.

  Wait a minute, what employers? ‘Simon, I thought Kane worked for you, for Portal, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ Simon said, ‘actually the reverse might be closer to the truth.’

  Louisa frowned at Simon’s cryptic response. Her thumb hovered over the call icon on her phone. Once CID arrived they’d all be cautioned, separated and taken down to the station. She had to call it in, right? She wasn’t seriously considering—

  God dammit!

  Louisa pocketed the phone. ‘Right, I want you to tell me everything you know, Simon. About Kane, about my homicide investigation, the Portal breaches, everything.’

  Simon considered her request, then nodded. ‘All right, but let’s head inside first. I could do with a drink.’

  Louisa eyed Kane’s body.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Simon said, ‘he isn’t going anywhere.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Simon sank into an armchair beside the fire. Dietrich went into the kitchen and Louisa sat once again on the sofa. The fire was dying and Simon stared into its glowing embers. Simon’s blasé attitude from outside had been replaced by a somber silence. Is he replaying it all in his head? Trying to work out if he could have handled it differently? If somehow he could have avoided taking Kane’s life?

  Louisa shivered. In the heat of the moment she’d tried to bring the shotgun to bear on Simon, but pointing a weapon at someone and pulling the trigger were two very different things. She was thankful she hadn’t needed to find out what she was capable of.

  Dietrich returned with three glass tumblers and a bottle of Hennessy. He poured out generous measures and handed one to Simon. Louisa refused when he offered her a glass. She wanted to keep herself sharp for when Northumbria CID arrived. Dietrich had no such reservations, downing his glass in one and then pouring himself another before joining Louisa on the sofa. Simon cradled his glass in both hands on his lap, but made no move to take a drink, despite his professed thirst outside.

  Neither Simon nor Dietrich seemed in any mood to talk, so Louisa broke the silence. ‘What was Kane Shepherd doing here, Simon? Who is he?’

  A confused look registered briefly on Simon’s face, as if he’d forgotten where he was. Then he frowned. ‘Kane Shepherd started working in Portal a year ago. Not long after Adam died and Benoit took over as CEO. No-one knew where he worked before that. A few casual enquiries I made to other large tech corporations at the time drew a blank. His arrival introduced a change to the company’s management dynamic. Anyone who wanted to speak to Benoit suddenly found they had to go through Kane first. He had no official title, but the techies jokingly referred to him as “God’s Proxy”. Even so, I never had much personal involvement with him myself, at least not until two days ago when we spoke in the office.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Claire Harris. I didn’t know who she was then, but I lied about not recognising the wound on her neck. For that, Louisa, you have my apologies. I was aware of Adam’s research project and the subsequent deaths of those involved. Adam sought me out when it became apparent what was happening. He was keen to…contain the situation.’

  ‘What did Adam ask you to do?’

  ‘For some it was a simple matter of paying off their relatives to keep quiet. But the majority of the test subjects were destitute. Their remains were removed and disposed of.’ Simon saw the look of disapproval on Louisa’s face. ‘I’m not proud of my actions, but Adam assured me the project was terminated and it would never happen again. That’s why I was so pissed off when I saw your scans. I was on my way to Benoit for an explanation when Kane showed up. It was as if he knew exactly where I was headed. He told me the problem was being handled, and I should keep myself out of it and my mouth shut. He also reminded me of my involvement with the cover up of the earlier fat
alities. The bastard knew I wouldn’t say anything to anyone. If I did they’d offer me up as a sacrificial lamb to any subsequent enquiry. None of it would stick to Portal or Kane.’ He paused. ‘And then the professor died.’

  ‘Professor Keenan?’

  Simon nodded. ‘I recognised the name from the R&D team which ran Adam’s failed research project. Keenan was in the project up to his neck, so naturally I assumed he was involved in its successor. News of his death shook the company. Even more so than the breach, in some respects. Not so much because he was an employee, but because his death was VANS-related. Fatalities involving VANS are rare, but not unheard of, and always the fault of a pedestrian, or cyclist, or another manual driver. The problem here was both vehicles were under VANS control. Failsafes are built into VANS to prevent that sort of situation from manifesting, so naturally the board feared it was the result of another Portal breach. It ended up on my desk. I submitted a request to the MET to get access to the sense logs of the accident, and then I saw you, Louisa. Have you seen the sense footage yourself?’

  Louisa winced at the memory of the crash. She remembered running after the professor’s car and then…nothing. She shuddered. The next thing she recalled was sitting on the tarmac. ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘You’re lucky to be alive. Initially you were the focus of my team’s investigation. Everyone wanted to know why you were chasing after the professor’s car. I had an inkling of course, but I kept my suspicions to myself. You found out about his involvement with Claire Harris, didn’t you?’

  Louisa nodded. ‘His previous company manufactured the synthetic neurons found in Claire’s brain during the post mortem.’

  ‘I thought so. While my team were looking into the VANS diagnostics I took another look at the sense logs. Guess who else I spotted at the scene?’

  ‘Kane Shepherd.’

  Simon couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘Yeah, how did you know?’

  ‘I saw him there myself. Do you think he caused the accident?’

  ‘I don’t know. My team drew a blank on how the crash happened. They’ve called in VANS’ original developers and they’re taking apart the source code line by line as we speak. If Kane caused the crash, he left no trace of his actions. That in itself shouldn’t be possible. Everything in Portal leaves a trace, believe me. I decided to switch my full attention to Kane. I put out feelers with a few ex-colleagues from the MET. Some still work there. The rest landed security-related consultancy jobs in the private sector like me or in the civil service. One of the civil service guys got back to me within the space of a few hours.’ Simon paused then. He stared down at his drink, looking like he was fighting the urge to down it.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said to stop asking questions about Kane Shepherd. If I valued my health, that was. Kane was ex army. He left the service ten years ago. Afterwards, he did a stint as a security contractor, or gun-for-hire, to you and me. He worked for a while in Afghanistan after the Yanks pulled out and then later in Iran. Basically anywhere where the country had gone to shit and private security firms were actively screwing the local governments through lucrative service contracts. It wasn’t just governments, either—any companies who won reconstruction contracts were willing to pay top dollar for experienced mercenaries to protect their workers. Then three years ago he decided to fight for his country again. He was recruited by MI6.’

  ‘MI6? But, they’re foreign intelligence. If he works for them then what’s he doing here in England?’

  ‘Beats me. But if he had GCHQ’s backing it sure would help to explain the trouble I had trying to make sense of Kane’s Portal history. After the professor’s death I dug a little deeper into his Portal activities.’ Simon caught Louisa’s disapproving look. ‘Don’t worry, Detective, I kept within the bounds of the law. Kane was a Portal employee, so when he joined the company he agreed to waive all privacy rights afforded under the CSCA. There’s an oft-overlooked clause in our employment contracts which grants Portal the rights to access the Portal history of its employees for the purposes of product development and quality analysis. Anyway, it proved to be of little use. His profile history was clean.’

  ‘What do you mean, clean?’

  ‘I mean his activity was practically zero. Every day he got up, drove to work and then went straight home. It was like he hadn’t lived since he arrived in London. But then I checked out his geo-tags history. He wasn’t tagged for places where I knew he had been. Like the scene of the professor’s accident. According to Portal he wasn’t there, he was back at the office.’

  ‘Was he using a forged profile?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I mean, if you query the sense logs, there’s a match for his profile at the accident, but his own profile has no record it. And if you can stop your profile recording what you’re doing, it would be like it never happened. You’d be practically untraceable. It wouldn’t surprise me if MI6 took an interest in Portal for that very reason—so they can carry out operations in any city Portal is rolled out to under a veil of complete secrecy.’

  Could Kane have really been working for the intelligence services? As far-fetched as it sounded, Simon made too much sense for there not to be at least some truth in what he was saying. It would certainly explain why Kane was Red Flagged.

  ‘Jesus,’ Louisa whispered. ‘You’ve just killed a MI6 agent. Aren’t you worried?’

  ‘Hell, yes. But we don’t know for sure he was here under MI6’s direct authority. Also they’re not likely to cause a fuss over his death in case the media get wind of their involvement. I doubt MI5 would be too happy about MI6’s encroachment on their turf, either.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s assume for a minute you’re correct and Kane was working for MI6. What are you doing here, Simon?’

  ‘I was following Kane. I hadn’t a clue you’d be here as well, Louisa. I saw him coming up behind you. He raised his weapon. He was going to kill you, so I—I did what I had to.’

  Simon turned the glass in his fingers, studying the liquid as it swirled around inside. Was he telling the truth? It came down to her gut instincts again. She wanted to trust Simon, but how much of the need was down to her feelings for him? Back when Simon had been her boss she would have trusted him with her life. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure.

  A thought occurred to her. ‘How did you know Kane was here if you couldn’t track him using Portal?’

  Simon grinned. ‘I went old-school. I put a tail on him. It’s funny, everyone is so focussed on being tracked using technology, they forget to look over their shoulder. When I learned he was leaving Portal’s network boundary it piqued my interest. I called off the tail and tracked him myself using his mobile phone signal.’

  ‘How did you manage that? Portal doesn’t own any of the other mobile network operators. They’re independent.’

  ‘Kane made the mistake of having his mobile active at some point whilst he was within Portal’s network. As part of the deal with the government, we allow access to other mobile networks from inside Portal, but your initial connection takes place through Portal. We install a piece of software onto every foreign device requesting a new connection. It routinely pings Portal’s servers with the device’s MAC address and location. It’s all legit. We originally set it up to allow third-party devices to access Portal’s services. We just never switched off the automatic deployment of the program. Whatever Kane was using to mask his location within Portal, once he switched on his mobile, I knew where he was.’

  And Kane knew where I was. She’d purchased the phone with her Portal wallet. Then she had activated her new SIM card and called John while she was still within Portal’s network. Kane could have been following her using her mobile. So much for thinking you’re smart for going off the grid. ‘But why would Kane be following me?’

  ‘My guess is he was attempting to cover up anything that could expose the research project. Claire Harris’ death has the potential to do exactly that. The professor is gone, so there�
��s no risk to Portal from him. You’re the only one preventing Claire’s story from being buried. He was here to kill you.’

  Join the queue. She smiled wryly. ‘Kane isn’t the only one who wants me dead.’

  For a moment Simon’s mouth hung open, then he blinked. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Have you heard of someone called Victor Korehkov?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I have.’

  ‘He runs a gang based out of Brixton. Korehkov’s a fairly recent addition to the London gangland fraternity. Two nights ago he assassinated three senior members of the Clothwell Syndicate. Then he came after me.’

  ‘Now them I have heard off.’ Simon wagged a finger at her. ‘Kane may have been behind Korehkov trying to kill you. Getting his own hands dirty would have been a last resort. Using a third party sounds much more like MI6’s operating style. You said Korehkov took out three Clothwell bosses? How did he manage to pull it off?’

  ‘With the help of a piece of technology called a Stealth Mask. It allows the wearer to record a forged profile on the sense logs.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Simon muttered. ‘Where did he get that?’

  ‘Kenneth Barry.’ Louisa saw the recognition in Simon’s eyes. ‘You know him then?’

  ‘I know of him.’ Simon eyed Dietrich. He paused, considering something, then continued. ‘He was on our shortlist of suspects for the Portal breach. He had the knowhow and the capability to carry it out. I didn’t know he could subvert sense strips as well. I need that tech going mainstream like I need a hole in the head.’

  ‘If it’s any help, I don’t believe Ken was behind the Portal breach.’

  Simon raised his eyebrows, then frowned. ‘But you think you know who might be behind it, don’t you?’

  Louisa nodded. ‘Ken was given a message by the person I believe responsible for both the hacking of my Portal profile and the Portal breach. He calls himself White Hat.’