Black List

by Will Jordan

  Alex said nothing, because he could think of no response to such an outburst. Such was the thinly veiled hatred in Dixon’s voice and the vitriol in his words, he was left genuinely shocked by it. He’d always sensed it on some level, but to sit there and listen to the man openly berate and belittle him was like a slap across the face.

  His boss let out a sigh, his mask of professional detachment returning, and surveyed him for a long moment as if pretending to agonize over what to do. They both knew he’d decided what to say long before Alex had walked into his office.

  ‘There’s going to be an official discussion about this,’ he said. ‘I’ll let the people in HR know, and we’ll set up a meeting for later in the week.’ Already he was typing out an email to start the process. ‘I suggest you take some time to think about what you’re going to say, because a lot of people will be reading the transcript.’

  Alex slumped back in his chair, feeling like someone had just driven a fist into his gut. Official discussions with Human Resources on the case made it pretty obvious where this was heading. Dixon had clearly always resented the fact that he’d been obliged to take on a convicted criminal – even a rehabilitated one – and for some time now had been looking for an excuse to cut him loose. And Alex had handed it to him on a plate.

  Alex could almost imagine his glee as the angry email arrived in his mailbox.

  Glancing up from his computer, Dixon motioned towards the door. ‘You can go now.’

  Mike King was waiting for him as he shuffled back to his desk. ‘How did it go, mate?’ he asked, his expression caught between sympathy and amusement.

  Alex didn’t even spare him a glance as he picked up his coat from the back of his chair and shuffled out, broken and defeated.

  *

  That was it for me – the beginning of the end of what was laughably called my life. Burning bridges and all that.

  I suppose if I’d been braver, I would have marched back into Dixon’s office, pinned him against the wall and told him to shove his crappy job up his patronizing arse, told him that he was a pathetic, narrow-minded prick who was only one step higher up the shit pile than me. I would have told him that, unlike him, I’d at least got to fly before I crashed and burned.

  But I didn’t do any of those things. I just went outside, smoked a cigarette in gloomy silence, shuffled around the showroom floor until 5 p.m. and slunk out of the building with my tail between my legs.

  I’d like to say I did this because I was taking the moral high ground, because I wouldn’t stoop to Dixon’s level, but that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is, I did nothing about it because I knew deep down that he was right. He was a petty, vindictive arsehole, but he was right about me.

  I was at the bottom of the pile, and maybe I didn’t have what it took to climb higher.

  So I let it slide.

  Story of my life.

  Chapter 3

  Stirlingshire, Scotland

  He was running out of time. It wouldn’t take more than a minute or so for his pursuer to catch up with him.

  Just long enough to do what he had to.

  The post office at the edge of the small village of Gargunnock in Stirlingshire had long since closed for the day, its windows dark and its doors locked, but that didn’t matter to him. The bright red post box fixed into the wall outside was all he needed. He knew it would be emptied first thing in the morning.

  Bringing his car skidding to a halt beside the low building, Arran Sinclair hauled the door open and scrambled out, a crumpled envelope clutched in his hand. He’d barely had time to scrawl the address on the way here.

  It was a cool, breezy night typical of late springtime in Scotland, the moon obscured by thick ribbons of cloud. The gentle rustle of tree branches in the night breeze was a deceptively serene counterpoint to the urgent thumping of his heart as he fixed a stamp to the envelope.

  Pausing a moment by the mailbox, he looked down at the letter and felt the hard plastic shape within. He had made a mistake taking on this task, he realized now. It was beyond his abilities, and he knew that sooner or later he would pay the price.

  His only hope was that the recipient of this letter had more luck than himself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ he said quietly, stuffing the letter into the mailbox.

  That was when heard it. Above the rustling of leaves, the sigh of the wind and the thumping of his heart was another note. A rumble, loud and urgent. A car engine at high revs, heading his way.

  It was time to go.

  His brief mission complete, Sinclair jumped back in his car. Ten seconds later he was roaring down the twisting country lane out of the village, heading for the main road to Stirling about five miles distant. Overhanging branches crowded in close to the road, forming a natural tunnel of sorts that reflected the bright beams of his headlights.

  The narrow, unpredictable road would slow the vehicle following him, the steep river gorge to his right acting as a deterrent to all but the boldest of drivers. Sinclair almost smiled as he pressed harder on the accelerator, knowing there was a long straight coming up. He’d grown up around this area, had learned to drive here and knew every bend and corner of this road like the back of his hand.

  He held the advantage over the car following him.

  No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than he saw something on the bend up ahead, something that made his heart leap and adrenaline surge through his veins. Straight away he slammed on his brakes and turned the wheel hard over. Tyres skidded on slick tarmac and the low metal crash barrier at the edge of the road swung into view as the car fishtailed.

  Sinclair tensed up, bracing himself for what was coming.

  The crash barrier at the edge of the road presented little resistance, buckling and shearing apart under the impact as the car slammed into it. Pitching over the edge, the car flipped straight over on its roof, rolling and crashing down the steep brush-covered slope to the fast-flowing river far below.

  By the time it hit the surface, the chassis had been reduced to a mass of twisted and buckled metal. With nothing buoyant enough to support it, the wreck quickly filled with icy cold water and disappeared beneath the surface within a matter of seconds, leaving only the wreckage-strewn slope behind as testimony to the violence of its final moments.

  And in the post box at the nearby village, unseen and undetected by the vehicle that had passed by less than a minute earlier, a single letter waited to be collected.

  Chapter 4

  It was raining by the time Alex finally made it home that evening, a heavy ceiling of sombre grey clouds having descended on the capital during the afternoon. Not heavy, drumming rain, but that vague misty stuff that clings to hair and skin, and soaks through clothes more effectively than the average monsoon.

  The train station from which he’d disembarked along with all the other weary commuters was about half a mile from his flat, leaving him with the none-too-pleasant prospect of a run through the rain in a jacket that was wholly inadequate for the task. Using the takeaway pizza box he’d picked up on the way home as a makeshift umbrella, he scurried up the street to the grey four-storey apartment block that he called home.

  It didn’t make much difference. By the time he was done fumbling around with his keys to get into the main stairwell, he was more or less soaked to the skin anyway. The pizza box was also rapidly disintegrating into a sodden mess, which did little to improve his mood as he trudged up two flights of stairs to his landing.

  The flat he’d been renting for the past year or so was certainly nothing to look at, he reflected as he pushed the door open with one foot, ignoring the pile of letters that had accumulated behind it. Most of them were circulars anyway – charity appeals and solar panel brochures that he had no interest in.

  Typical of low-rent single-bedroom places in the western suburbs of London, it was small and cramped, designed with simple utility and efficiency in mind. A talented interior decorator might have made the modest living space
appear cosy and homely, but Alex wasn’t such a person. The furniture was mostly cheap Ikea flat-pack stuff that never seemed to go together properly, the kitchen cluttered and untidy, the sink filled with unwashed dishes.

  Dumping the pizza box on the kitchen counter, Alex peeled off his jacket and undid his work tie, gratefully discarding both. One way or another, he didn’t imagine he would need his work clothes much longer. Not if Dixon had anything to say about it.

  Aware that he was dripping water on the carpet, he retreated to the bathroom for a towel to dry himself. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.

  With light brown hair now dripping with rain water, grey eyes that betrayed not a hint of colour, regular features that were neither handsome nor ugly, and a physique that was beginning to lose its youthful vigour as years of junk food and lack of exercise took their toll, Alex’s appearance was about as average and unremarkable as they came.

  He had seen only twenty-eight years of life, yet he felt and looked ten years older at that moment. His face was drawn, his eyes ringed by dark circles of fatigue, his jaw coated by a light dusting of stubble. He’d barely slept in the three days since his meeting with Sinclair, his restless mind endlessly turning over their tense conversation, wondering what might have been.

  He’d refused his friend’s offer, of course. As much as he might have wanted to turn back time and reclaim the life that had been taken from him, this wasn’t the way to do it. One spell in prison was more than enough for this lifetime.

  So they’d parted ways without reaching an agreement, each unhappy and disappointed in the other. Sinclair’s parting words, delivered with a hint of pity that had stung Alex deeply, had been to wish him luck with the rest of his life.

  Gratefully leaving the mirror, he returned to the kitchen, opened the fridge and helped himself to a can of beer. He’d lost his appetite for the sodden mess that the pizza had become, but the alcohol would serve him better.

  Flopping down on the couch, he cracked open the beer and took a long pull on it, grimacing as the gassy mixture settled on his empty stomach. With the rain still pattering off the window and the orange glow of street lights permeating the room, he allowed his head to tilt back and let out a long, defeated sight.

  He’d refused Sinclair’s offer, done the rational thing and stepped back from something that could land him in prison for life this time. He’d made the only decision a man in his position could, as he’d told himself countless times already. So why did he feel so shitty about it? Why did he feel like he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life?

  Not for the first time, his friend’s words echoed in his mind.

  If you want to go back to selling TVs and living in some shitty flat, that’s your choice – I can’t stop you. But think about what you’re giving up. I’m offering you a chance to do what you were born to do, what we both know you want to do. Isn’t that worth risking everything for?

  Alex took another pull on the beer, wishing he had something stronger in the flat. If ever there was a time to drink himself to sleep, this was it.

  On impulse, he reached down, feeling around underneath the couch until his hand brushed against an old shoe box. Lifting it out, he flipped the lid off and set the box on his lap to inspect the contents.

  Alex could hardly call himself the sentimental type. He’d never been one for hoarding keepsakes or mementos, but even he still kept some photographs from his younger days, unsorted and faded but still usable. Forbidden as he was to own a computer, these old photographs were about the only reminders he still had of a time when his life had been very different.

  Many were childhood pictures showing him unwrapping presents at Christmas or dressed up for Halloween, and later when he was a school kid with bad hair and a worse attitude. But the one he was most interested in at that moment was sitting on top of the pile. He knew this because for the past two nights he’d gone through the same ritual.

  Taken ten years ago, not long after he’d started at university, it showed Alex seated on a worn leather couch in his student flat, bottle of beer in hand, flanked by two other young men similarly armed. The first was unmistakably Arran Sinclair. Even back then, his trademark unruly blonde hair and infectious grin were very much in evidence, and in truth the face staring back from the photograph looked little different from the man Alex had met three days ago.

  Things just seemed to come easy to Sinclair. He was tall, good looking and possessed a confident, easygoing charm that was rare in one so young, and men and women alike had instinctively seemed to warm to him. He’d certainly never lacked for female attention during his time at university, which was partly why Alex had first made a point of spending time with him.

  The second man was less well endowed. A short, stocky Norwegian with a fleshy face and long dark hair tied back in a simple ponytail, he was grinning at the camera with the unfocussed eyes of a man who had already overdone it. Then again, Gregar Landvik never did know when to hold back, Alex thought with a grim smile.

  The three of them had hooked up in that chaotic, frenzied time that accompanied the start of a new term, and despite their differing backgrounds and personalities had quickly become firm friends. Alex couldn’t rightly say what brought them together, but somehow they just seemed to gravitate towards each other.

  Later the three students had applied their considerable talents to the world of computer hacking, eventually forming a group of like-minded individuals which they named Valhalla 7. Their work brought them great success for a time, but also exposed differences between them that were ultimately to destroy the group.

  But in that picture, none of those things had yet come to pass. The three men grinning back at Alex were young and happy, filled with optimism and excitement about the great adventure that lay ahead. He could scarcely imagine what that felt like now, and couldn’t help wondering what his younger self would make of his life today.

  ‘Glad you’re not here to see it, mate,’ Alex said, draining his beer.

  He was just getting up to retrieve another from the kitchen when he spotted something over by the front door. A hand-addressed envelope was mixed in amongst the charity appeals, utility bills and marketing crap.

  Alex paused, frowning for a moment. Who the hell still sent letters in this day and age? Even his parents were tech-savvy enough to connect with their friends online.

  Intrigued, he knelt down to pick it up, and immediately felt his heartbeat quicken. He’d recognize Arran Sinclair’s jerky, chaotic handwriting anywhere. The poor quality of the penmanship suggested it had been scrawled in a hurry, but if so, why had his friend chosen such an old-fashioned way of contacting him?

  More interesting still was the bulge of something hard inside the envelope. Clearly it contained more than just a missive from his friend, and judging by the weight and dimensions of the object, Alex had a fair idea of what it was.

  Wasting no time, Alex tore open the envelope to reveal its contents, and his suspicions were proven correct when a digital memory stick fell into his hand. Smaller than the key fob for a car, the unassuming little storage device was capable of holding up to 50 gigabytes of data. Enough to carry tens of thousands of books, hundreds of hours of high-definition video or just about anything else one could conceivably need to store.

  But with no computer, Alex had no way of knowing what this one held.

  Slipping it into his pocket for now, he unfolded the crumpled letter, hoping that his friend had imparted some useful information. However, what he saw only deepened his concern.

  Keep this safe. Don’t tell anyone about it. I’ll contact you when I can.

  Arran.

  Hardly comprehensive instructions, Alex thought with a flash of irritation. Given the timing of Sinclair’s letter, it seemed logical to assume it had something to do with the job he’d been offered, but why entrust such a thing to a man who had already refused to help?

  And yet, Sinclair wouldn’t have done something
like this without good reason. The question was, what did the memory stick contain that was so important?

  Sinking onto his couch once more, Alex stared at the inconspicuous little storage device as if he could discern its contents simply through focussed determination.

  There was only one way he could find out what was so important about it, and that involved breaking the terms of his parole.

  He shook his head, frustration at his own impotence mingling with a growing concern for his friend’s safety.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Arran. What have you got yourself into?’ he asked aloud.

  Even as he did so, he knew he wouldn’t find any answers here.

  Chapter 5

  Three days.

  That’s how long I held out. Three days of going through the motions of my daily life, waiting with growing concern for Arran to contact me. Three days of turning over all kinds of possibilities in my mind. Three days of nervous anticipation that found no relief.

  The memory stick felt like a lead weight in my pocket, kept with me at all times just in case someone broke into my flat while I was out.

  Dixon’s threatened meeting with Human Resources came and went. I sat through it more or less in silence, hardly even aware of what was happening around me. All I could hear were words like ‘poor performance’, ‘unreliable’ and ‘questionable future’.

  In truth, part of me was hoping they’d just fire me and save us all the aggravation, but I suppose they had to go through the motions. We all had to.

  *

  By the evening of the third day, Alex had finally made up his mind. There had been no word from Sinclair, and no indication that his friend would come to relieve him of the unwanted burden of the memory stick. One way or another, he needed to know what was going on.