A Cursed Place

by Peter Hanington

  ‘I’ve freelanced here and there.’

  ‘Where?’

  The American laughed and looked at the assembled hacks.

  ‘What is this? Some kinda inquisition? Do you want me to go print off my resumé Mr Carver and you can just have a read of that?’

  ‘If that’s easier for you than remembering where you have or haven’t worked before … then sure.’

  Staples shook his head.

  ‘You know what? I get the feeling you don’t like me too much and I have this rule ’bout not drinking with people who don’t like me.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  Patrick arrived in time to catch the very end of the exchange. Observing the pair he was unsure which of the two was studying the other more intently. Dan left, taking a few of the other hacks with him. William watched them go before picking up his cocktail and walking to the bar. Patrick followed. Carver flagged down the barman and pointed at his undrunk drink.

  ‘This is a brandy glass isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right sir.’

  ‘Then please will you empty whatever that is in there down the sink and put a brandy in it instead?’

  ‘Of course, a single or double?’

  ‘Take a guess.’

  Carver turned to Patrick.

  ‘So that was Dan Staples?’

  ‘Yes. What did you think?’

  ‘I think your gut instinct was right. He’s lying.’

  73 Table Stakes

  THE CHERRYWOOD HOTEL, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

  Fred had seen more than his fair share of start-ups pitching to investors down the years. Christy Newmark’s pitch was among the best. He wondered how many times she’d practised this in front of a mirror before standing up in front of this roomful of suntanned, blazer-wearing venture capitalists. He didn’t have to wonder so hard about other aspects of the presentation – or its main influences anyway. Gone was the blue sweatshirt, she was wearing a lemon coloured, knee-length dress and bright red lipstick. The new look suited her. Clever also to have the launch at the Cherrywood, where the men whose money Christy wanted to access would feel most at home. It seemed to Fred that she and her partner had spent the pump-priming money well – not just front of house with a swish presentation followed by the tasting menu – all eighteen courses – from Silicon Valley’s current favourite chef in the Cherrywood’s ballroom, but also on the behind-the-scenes stuff. The important stuff. Her smartest idea, a game-changing idea in fact, had been to buy access to food delivery phone lines across America and several other major territories in Europe, North Africa and the Middle and Far East. Fred could pay her no higher compliment than to say that he wished he’d thought of this himself. With that much data, given a little time there was no limit to what the right voice recognition algorithm might come up with. His first present to Christy had simply been turning up – when people saw Fred Curepipe arrive, pick up a Cloud Chancer prospectus and take a seat near the front, the room began to buzz. His second present came when, just after she’d finished speaking and asked if there were questions she could help with, Fred raised his arm.

  ‘Yes, Mr Curepipe?’

  ‘So what are the table stakes for this next round of funding Miss Newmark?’

  ‘We’re asking for two point five million from each primary investor sir.’

  Fred nodded.

  ‘Fine, well if any of these other ladies and gentlemen decide they don’t want to sit at the table then I’ll be happy to make up the difference in return for the appropriate percentage of the whole. Is that acceptable?’

  Christy smiled.

  ‘Of course. Thank you sir.’

  Fred might as well have taken the VCs’ pocket books out and written the cheques himself. Everyone was in.

  After she’d finished shaking hands, and while her team were busy taking people’s money, Fred asked Christy for a quick word. They walked through the ballroom and out into the kitchen, which was alive with activity.

  ‘I can’t stay to eat.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘But I wanted to say well done, genuinely well done. I always knew you were a talent, but I wasn’t sure about your company. Now I am. Buying yourself access to that amount of voice data, in the places where you’ve picked – it’s smart. More than smart.’

  ‘Thank you Fred.’

  ‘I might have some material that you can road-test that new software on pretty soon, if you’re interested.’

  ‘Of course I am. Especially if that’d be helpful for you.’

  ‘It could well be.’

  74 The Cookbook

  THE HEADLAND HOTEL, HONG KONG

  Patrick put his bags in the boot of the taxi and climbed in alongside Carver, who had kept his bag with him, holding it on his lap.

  ‘So where’s this place with rooms and great food then, William?’

  ‘Mrs Wang’s.’

  As soon as he’d established that the driver knew the place, and having given the man some advice on the best way to get there, Carver opened his kitbag and started rootling around. He brought out one of the new phones he’d bought at the airport, unboxed it and dialled McCluskey’s mobile number. She answered immediately.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I’m on a new burner phone, in a cab with you-know-who. Can we talk on this?’

  McCluskey sucked at her teeth.

  ‘How urgent is it?’

  ‘Pretty urgent.’

  ‘Fine then, let’s go for it. You-know-who has bollocksed up the fax machine thing anyway. What can I do for you?’

  Carver told McCluskey that he needed her to check something out for him, someone in fact.

  ‘He goes by the name Dan Staples, works mainly for something called the Colorado Guardian.’

  ‘Never heard of the paper but his name rings a bell.’

  ‘Yeah, for me too. Have you got everything you need there to run the rule on him for me?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll call you back in an hour or so. This phone?’

  ‘I can probably get to a landline if you think that’s better.’

  ‘At the hotel?’

  ‘No, you were right about that place – hot and cold running surveillance in every room. We’re moving.’

  ‘Good man, call me from the new place then.’ She paused. ‘Have you had a chance to put an ear over you-know-who’s back catalogue of interviews yet?’

  ‘Not yet, that’s next on the list. I’ll tell you ’bout it when we speak.’

  ‘Magic. Take care.’

  The phone went dead. Patrick had overheard most of the conversation.

  ‘I’m sorry about screwing things up with McCluskey and the fax machine.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I’ll set you up with those interviews as soon as we get to Mrs Wang’s.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about my phone, I guess we’re assuming that’s bugged too?’

  ‘Bugged and trackable and being watched by every other device it gets close to. McCluskey explained it to me. Every piece of tech you can think of is talking to and collecting data from every other device … your smartphone, laptop, watch, car, even some of those modern toasters are at it apparently. She told me about an American guy that the cops tracked down with the help of his insulin pump. Anything that’s got Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, they can use. It’s enough to give you bloody nightmares.’

  Patrick’s thoughts turned to Eric and what had seemed at the time like a rather paranoid rant about how the authorities were somehow managing to anticipate his and his fellow protestors’ every move. He got his phone out and offered it to Carver, who shook his head.

  ‘No. Keep it. Switch it on now, while we’re on the move and get any numbers you need …’ He reached into his bag. ‘… punch them into this …’ He handed Patrick the second burner phone he’d bought at the airport. ‘… we’ll leave your phone stuffed down the back of the seat of the cab. Watching you driving around Hong Kong all day an
d night might give someone something to think about.’

  The rooms that Mrs Wang rented turned out to be just one room that had belonged to her son – now grown up and working in Canada. It seemed obvious to Patrick that the only person she would have agreed to rent it to was Carver. When she saw William standing in the line, queuing up for a corned beef bun, the elegant, white-haired woman handed the waiter pad to an assistant and came hurrying round the counter to greet him.

  ‘Car-ver-ah.’

  ‘Rosamund.’

  ‘I woke up this morning with a powerful feeling you would come. Even though some tall boy …’ she spotted Patrick sitting at a nearby table, surrounded by luggage. ‘… that boy there …’ she pointed, ‘… told me you were dead.’

  ‘Dead? No. Not yet.’

  Mrs Wang had kept her son’s room just as he had left it. There were posters of scantily clad Cantonese pop stars and red Ferraris on the walls, a small white Formica desk with an anglepoise lamp and one double bed. Patrick looked around.

  ‘Are we supposed to share that bed?’

  William shook his head.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Mrs Wang is fetching us a blow-up mattress, you can sleep on that.’

  ‘Right.’ He surveyed the floor space. There wasn’t much of it. He’d been transported from the lap of luxury to the sweaty armpit of reality and Carver had only arrived a couple of hours ago.

  ‘No time to waste. Set up your laptop so I can get listening to those interviews of yours. After that, you can go down and fetch those corned beef buns that Rosamund’s rustling up for us …’ Carver sat down at the white desk and got his reporter’s notepad out. ‘… and some tea. Milk and three for me.’

  Carver listened to Patrick’s collection of interviews, now and again skipping forward thirty seconds when he felt he’d got the point, sometimes listening to the same section two or even three times. It took him over an hour and several cups of tea before he was done. He closed down the file, removed the memory stick and handed it back to Patrick who was sitting on the edge of the bed waiting to hear William’s judgement.

  ‘You did well getting so many people on the front line of so many different protests to talk to you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Now our problem is that you got so many different people, involved in so many different protests to talk to you …’

  Patrick grinned. ‘… and in so much detail.’

  ‘Yeah, well …’

  ‘Listening to it all together, it comes across like …’ He scratched his head. ‘… have you ever heard of the Anarchist Cookbook?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it was well before your time. It was a handbook for assorted troublemakers back in the good old days. It scared the pants off the police and politicians for a while. You could be banged up just for having a copy in the house.’

  Patrick looked at the memory stick in his hand.

  ‘You think this is like that?’

  ‘Kind of … a sort of digital addendum. Whoever it is that’s bugging your room and watching McCluskey …’

  ‘And Rebecca.’

  ‘And Rebecca, yes. My best guess is it’s the contents of that memory stick they’re interested in.’

  75 Cover

  CAVERSHAM, ENGLAND

  McCluskey stared out of the spare room window. Outside the top, left-hand window pane a spider was dancing to and fro, weaving its perfect wheel. Down at the kerb, just outside her front gate, the black Mercedes that Carver had chased away was back. It was a cold day and a mix of fumes and steam billowed from the car’s exhaust. She’d been down once already to try to confront the driver – tell him to bugger off – but as soon as she reached her front door, the car would drive away. She’d called the local police station and spoken to the desk sergeant, she gave him the car’s registration number and he’d promised to send someone round, but that could take all day and McCluskey guessed the Merc would just scarper as soon as the cops arrived. Or maybe it wouldn’t? The car had D plates – diplomatic licence plates. Maybe that meant it was allowed to hang around, trying to intimidate old ladies? She wasn’t intimidated, she was too busy for that; she checked the time. An hour had passed. She didn’t have loads of information on Staples, but she had enough to make it worthwhile updating William. She walked next door to her bedroom and, crouching down alongside her stripped pine wardrobe, pulled out a jiffy bag that was taped underneath. She chose one of the three burner phones she had left and dialled the Hong Kong landline that Carver had sent her.

  Mrs Wang bumped the door open with her hip and walked in; she had a plastic tray with two bowls of wonton soup on it in one hand and the phone in the other. She passed the tray to Patrick before handing the phone to William with a smile.

  ‘Thank you Rosamund.’

  ‘Who’s Rosamund when she’s at home?’

  Carver brightened at the sound of McCluskey’s thick Glaswegian accent.

  ‘She’s our new landlady.’

  ‘Lucky her. So listen up …’ Carver held the phone halfway between his head and Patrick’s. McCluskey’s voice was loud enough that both could hear clearly. ‘Dan Staples checks out all right when you first take a look. The Colorado Guardian exists, he writes for it, he’s on LinkedIn, Public Square, Twitter and all that shite. He’s even got his own Wikipedia page …’ Patrick nodded. ‘… but that entry of his was the first thing I found that looks fishy. It’s the most carefully curated Wikipedia entry I’ve ever seen. What working hack has the time to do that?’

  ‘So, what are you saying? It’s some kind of cover?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Right, although I feel like I know the name Dan Staples.’

  ‘Me too. I’ll keep digging on that, but there’s one other thing.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘This Colorado Guardian … although it exists, it’s as dodgy as hell.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I mapped their office address …’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘It’s a car park.’

  ‘It’s got a car park?’

  ‘No. It is a car park, a car park is all there is. Look at the website and it looks like a newspaper but it has no base, no physical presence.’

  Carver puffed out his cheeks.

  ‘That’s good work Jemima.’

  ‘It’s a start anyway, I’ll keep looking.’

  ‘Thank you. How are those monster seagulls?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The seagulls. They’re everywhere in Brighton, great big bastards, I got dive-bombed by one once.’

  ‘Sounds terrifying.’

  Carver paused.

  ‘You’re not in Brighton, are you McCluskey?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not. But we’ll have no fuss.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of fuss Jemima, it’s a question of keeping you safe. Viv Fox is missing, we don’t know what these people are …’

  ‘Your line is breaking up Billy … Nope cannae hear you at all now. I’ll ring you when I’ve got more on Staples.’

  76 The Fireman

  THE NEW FALLINGWATER HOUSE, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

  Fred decided to stop off at home before he drove back to the office. Elizabeth was at Public Square and he wanted to do some work without risk of interruption. He sat at his computer and read emails for a while; the message he was hoping to see would be from his Beijing client, but there was nothing from there. He had considered contacting the repairman himself, taking a more direct approach – it was easily done. But it was against protocol, and more importantly his client would think it ill-mannered; the Chinese took things like that so damn seriously. He would wait.

  In the meantime, his emails informed him that he had more immediate problems that needed dealing with. He touched a couple of keys to bring up his map sprinkled with silver lights in various cities across almost every continent. Fred pressed his forefinger against the centre of his forehead. He could feel a migraine building. He reali
sed now that he’d been wrong to think of these lights as resembling stars in some sort of grand constellation. They were less orderly than that. Less stable. Looking at the map again now he realised that each light represented a fire and the people sent to fight it – the fires were small at the moment, but they burned increasingly brightly. Unchecked they could develop into a larger, more dangerous conflagration. He couldn’t directly affect what was happening in Hong Kong, but he had plenty of resources that could play their part. He nodded. It was time to stamp the fires out.

  77 Reading Matter

  WANG’S CAFÉ, CENTRAL HONG KONG

  Carver and Patrick decided to stay in that evening; the long trip from London was catching up with William and he was tired. Plus one of his favourite restaurants in Hong Kong was just downstairs so really what was the point in going anywhere else? They ate in the café.

  ‘We need to find a secure way of getting your material back to McCluskey so she can put an ear over it. Sending it from a white computer somewhere probably makes most sense.’

  ‘I used a place down in Central last time, the King Chung it was called.’

  ‘Right, so we’ll use somewhere else this time round. McCluskey told me to work on the basis that nothing’s secure. Not burner phones, encrypted messenger services, emails … nada. She wasn’t even sure that fax set-up of yours was safe, but she figured that at least it was unpredictable. The people we’re dealing with are good at predicting stuff.’

  Patrick nodded. He had the new phone that Carver had given him on the table next to his plate of stir-fry and now it buzzed into life. It was a text message. William glanced at the name. ‘Who’s Eric? Oh, Eric. Is he that rather intense young guy that speaks for Scholastic? The last interview on your collection of international troublemakers?’

  ‘That’s him, Eric Fung.’

  ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘Well, it’s possible he wants to thank me for correcting some inaccuracies in the way we were reporting the death of a mate of his. But more likely, he wants something.’