by Joe McNally
‘I have tried it and I don’t. Pen and paper works for me.’
‘Fine. Get scribbling.’
‘Key question, or at least key question number one, why steal Jimmy’s body? What was this guy afraid the police would discover? He hears through Mister Sherrick’s bugged watch our conversation about the police exhuming. He gets on to Watt and probably Kilberg, and the body’s gone that night. What did he think the police would find?’
‘At that time, nobody knew about the bugs, did they? Maybe that’s what he was trying to hide.’
‘But why? You said the recordings would run through a maze of different networks in hijacked PCs.’
‘That was an assumption. That’s what I would have done.’
‘And you were right, or at least going by the bug in Mister Sherrick’s watch. So finding the bug in Jimmy was no certainty. They were planning to exhume because they accepted what I told them about Jimmy’s suicide message being faked and about him being a technophobe. But what would the chances have been back then of finding a bug implanted in his collarbone, and even if they did, this guy knew they couldn’t use it to trace him.’
‘But think of the information he was getting through Jimmy and Watt and Kilberg and then, after Jimmy’s death, through his dad after Watt conveniently delivers this Christmas gift from a dead son. That would have been of high value,’ Mave said.
‘But that source was never going to last, was it? Between the grave robbing and the house burning he’d surely have realized that the police would guess he was listening in somehow.’
‘Ahh, but they didn’t, did they? You did. Otherwise the bug would probably still be in the watch.’
‘Nah, I know the sergeant is no Sherlock Holmes, but somebody on the case would have worked it out.’
Mave stopped typing and turned to me. ‘Eddie, how many cases do you think the cops are working on? It’s the same with them as with anyone else in a job, out of sight out of mind. Once your man the sergeant walks out of Mister Sherrick’s flat, he’s thinking of the next call or of heading home for his tea or his holiday in Benidorm or something. You figured it out because it’s a hundred percent for you. It’s on your mind constantly.’
I nodded and drank some coffee.
‘And also, because you’re pretty smart…sometimes.’
‘Cheers.’ I raised the mug. ‘So why am I not smart enough to figure out why the body was stolen?’
‘It has to be the bug. If the police do another autopsy and find the bug, they know it’s murder.’
I was far from sure. ‘So this guy’s a tech genius, right? You warned me about that at the start. He’s somehow got that bug into Jimmy’s collarbone. He’s hacked his email and planted an order for cyanide. Watt, who’s much more tech savvy has actually ordered the cyanide and somehow got Jimmy to take it. Kilberg said Watt was with Jimmy that night, the night he died.’
‘But Kilberg spun you some tale about Jimmy wanting to be sure, not wanting his father to find him and all that guff. Watt’s put the cyanide in his drink or something, then strung him up. Very probably with Kilberg there to help him. After you start nosing around, they decide they’d better go in and clean up a bit in case they’ve left any traces.’
‘But they haven’t cleaned up enough for whoever’s their boss and he sends them back to burn the place down. Drink your coffee, will you? It’s a waste of hot water.’
Mave smiled and picked up the mug. ‘You going to nag me for the next however long I’m here?’
‘Yes.’ I picked up my pen again. ‘Turn your screen off. Bear with me for ten minutes while I think aloud. Butt in anytime.’
She closed the PC down. The faint buzz from it and the sound of the cooling fan stopped, and for a few moments we sat in perfect silence. I doodled and speculated. ‘Okay, let’s assume it was the bug he was trying to protect. He’s pretty sure he can’t be tracked through this network maze, but what if there’s a maker’s mark on the bug? These things must be pretty specialized.’
‘What his main challenge would have been was battery power. It takes some strength to drive that signal out. Even the one in the watch would have struggled, I’d have thought. I’d bet it was one of those chunky jobs with a fat case?’
‘It was pretty big. Hung loose on Mister Sherrick, that’s for sure.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘The watch? I dumped it in a boiling kettle at his flat.’
‘You told me that, but didn’t you take it with you after that?’
‘I gave it to the sergeant. Told him it had been in an accident.’
‘Can you get it back?’
‘Probably.’
‘And can you get me the bug they took out of Jimmy?’
‘I’ll ask.’
She pointed me to the phone. ‘Ask now.’
I sent Mac a text asking him to phone me on the landline. He called within two minutes and he was still in cooperative mood. ‘Can I ask why you want the bugs?’
‘I know a man who knows a man.’
‘And how long will this man want them for?’
I glanced at Mave and just guessed, ‘Forty eight hours.’
‘And he’s a discreet man?’
‘Very.’
‘I’ll call you back.’
Mave said, ‘We need to nail the communications, here. Will you buy a couple of pay as you go phones for you and me, and advise Mister McCarthy to buy one too?’
‘I’ll go and get them now.’
‘Shops’ll be closed, Eddie.’
‘All night supermarket.’
She shook her head in what I took to be disapproval, and I said, ‘Welcome to civilization.’
47
Next morning, I met Mac in a quiet off road area in Lambourn Woodlands. He handed me what I took to be an evidence bag. It looked empty. I opened it and saw tiny items with very thin labels attached.
‘Any word on Watt’s autopsy?’ I asked
‘They’re doing it now.’
‘Checking for bugs?’
‘That’s the brief.’
‘If they find one, I might need to see it too.’
‘Eddie…’
I waited, but he’d decided against saying whatever it was. ‘Mac, out with it.’
‘This is evidence, critical evidence. Sara Chase took an awful lot of persuading that this was a good idea. If anything happens to them, the case, whatever comes of it in the end, could be worthless. If Sara hadn’t been so impressed with your prediction about that bug and if I hadn’t known you for so long-’
‘Mac, don’t worry. Tell Ms. Chase this might knock weeks of foot-slogging and thousands in costs off the investigation. My guy would cost a fortune to hire to work on this. He’s doing me a favour, and these sorts of things are like jewels to him. They’ll be safe. I promise.’
‘I take it he doesn’t need to know the circumstances surrounding them? We can’t have any prosecution prejudiced in that way either.’
‘Stop worrying. Without this guy, I very much doubt you’ll have anyone to prosecute.’
He sighed and laid back on the headrest. ‘I must be going soft in the head.’
‘You have mellowed a bit, lately, I’ll say that. Maybe you’d better see your GP for a check-up.’
‘You’re a funny man, Eddie Malloy.’
‘Others say that to me too, but I never hear anybody laughing.’
Mave held the bugs under the desk lamp. ‘They’re different,’ I said.
‘Completely. The one from the watch looks straightforward. This one from Jimmy looks to me like it’s got an RFID chip bolted on, and its own battery source. I don’t suppose you have a loupe lying around?’
‘As in?’
‘The little magnifying eyepieces jewellers use.’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Did you get those pay as you go phones?’
‘I did. But I doubt you’ll see much through them.’
‘Ha ha. Power one up. I want to speak to my Vod
afone man.’
Twenty minutes later we were ready to leave to meet Mave’s contact. ‘Eddie, no offence, but you’re only taxi driving here, this guy won’t see anyone else but me. He wants you to drop me off five minutes’ walk from the meeting place.’
‘How well do you know him?’ I gave her the warning Mac had given me about the evidence.’
‘The guy’s solid, Eddie. I’ve used him before and I’ve helped him out with a few home projects. But he’s a nervous man with a family to feed and a good job to protect.’
‘Fine. Just checking he’s not the type to have been got at by whoever’s running this scam, given that all of you seem to be in the same business.’
‘His nerves wouldn’t stand it. Most of what he does he could charge fortunes for, but he gets his kicks from geeks seeing how good he is. When he works something out and explains it to you he beams like a kid at Christmas.’
I dropped Mave off not far from Newbury Racecourse. ‘How long do you think?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know. I’ll call you, but don’t hang around here.’
‘Home, James.’ Mave said, when she got into the car an hour later looking pleased with herself.
‘What’s the news?’
‘The bug in the watch was just a bug in a watch. Straightforward. The bug fixed to Jimmy Sherrick’s collarbone had its own battery, a GPS unit, a transmitter and a receiver.’
‘In something the size of a postage stamp?’
‘My guy was drooling. He said he’d love to meet whoever put it together.’
‘Me too. Any clues on that? I mean do these geeks have their own sort of hallmark?’
‘Nothing. Not a thing.’
‘What’s the point of the GPS? Why would he want to know where Jimmy was all the time?’
‘Plenty reasons, maybe. Especially his position in a race, how fast he was going, how he rode it.’
‘He couldn’t know his position unless all the other jocks were fitted with GPS as well.’
‘Who’s to say they weren’t?’
I rubbed my face with both hands then thought of Bayley Watt’s habit of doing that when he was tired. I looked at Mave. ‘What about the receiver? Does that mean he could tell the bug what to do, maybe control the volume for recording, or switch it off?’
‘It was nothing to do with the recording side. It was programmed to activate another chip.’
‘What, like something Jimmy came into contact with, like another bug?’
‘No. It was very close range, probably another implant.’
‘Inside Jimmy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Like what?’
‘He couldn’t tell, but he reckons once the chip had done its job it would have been set to migrate to another part of the body, through the bloodstream.’
‘Done its job? You make it sound like some kind of rocket launcher.’
‘Effectively, that’s exactly what it was.’
Mave was beaming, excited, it was unlike her.
I said, ‘You look as if you’ve caught some of your friend’s enthusiasm for all things tiny and technical.’
‘I think I know what the signal was launching, as you put it.’
‘What?’
‘A cyanide capsule.’
48
By the time I got home from Exeter races the following evening, the same electronics that had been implanted in Watt had been found in Kilberg: a transmitter and receiver. Tests were being done on the stomach walls of both corpses to try to find out if the cyanide release had begun there. The police had agreed to leave the transmitters with me, and Mave had spent the day trying to break through the web of feeds that had taken the recordings back to whoever was behind this.
I dropped my kitbag beside the desk and looked down on Mave’s chestnut hair and coffee-stained blue mug.
Dusk had long fallen and, as ever, only the PC screen lit the area around the desk. I clicked the lamp on. ‘Let there be light,’ I said.
‘Let there be enlightenment,’ Mave replied.
‘Is there?’
‘No. Just confirmation that this guy must have spent a long time planning this, a hell of a long time. I thought there’d be a couple of thousand hijacked PCs passing this stuff along, but the way he’s structured it, we might be talking tens of thousands.’ She stopped typing and pushed the wheeled chair away from the desk so that I had to move aside quickly. She stood and smiled at me and put an arm around my shoulders, walking me toward the kitchen. ‘Anyway, darling, how was your day?’
I laughed and pushed her away. ‘Get off, you crazy woman!’ I was pleased to see her back to herself.
‘You know, I’m really concerned for you given the lack of women around here,’ she said.
‘Winter keeps them away. They can’t stand the cold down here in the valley.’
She settled at the kitchen table while I filled the kettle. ‘What about the groupies at the races?’ she asked.
‘What groupies?’
‘Come on. Plenty women are attracted to men who do dangerous things.’
‘Yea, like motorcyclists who dress in black leather and are covered in tattoos. What chance have we in pink silks and bruises?’
‘You need to open your eyes, Eddie. You’re a good looking fella. Now that cut’s beginning to scar over, you have that dark and deadly look about you.’
‘Stark and deathly, more like. You want some coffee?’
‘Please.’
I sat opposite Mave and slid a yellow mug toward her. She drank, then pushed hair from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Any winners at Exeter?’
‘I rode a third, then nearly got carted in the handicap hurdle. Unplaced in the Bumper.’
‘A fairly typical day, then?’
‘Pretty much. What about you? Where to next?’
‘I’ll wait until you get your doodle pad out and we’ll do another brainstorm.’
‘At least I had Bayley Watt right. I knew he was capable of running, but no way would he commit suicide. Nor Kilberg. He was too far up himself to do his body any damage.’
‘Except he’s let somebody else do it damage. He’s had three devices put under his skin. The transmitter, the receiver and the cyanide capsule.’
‘But all they thought they were getting was a cancer cure, or at least the chance of a cancer cure. Carrot and the stick. That’s why there’d be no need to blackmail Jimmy. They’d have offered him the cure. He had nothing to lose.’
‘Correct,’ said Mave.
‘I think we’ve started the brainstorm. Do I need my pad and pen?’
‘If you must.’
I got them and returned to the table to doodle and think.
‘Write these down,’ Mave said. ‘Cyanide. Blackmail. Implants. Bugs. Computer genius. Paedophile…what else?’
‘Ringer. Horses. Racing. Betting. Trainer. Vet. Jockey. Hair loss. Muscle loss. Cancer-’
‘Hair loss?’
‘I told you after that ride out with Watt, I spent half an hour googling. He used to have very hairy wrists, to a point where he couldn’t wear a watch. The hair was almost gone. And his body looked soft, as though muscle was turning to fat. Kilberg was looking the same, though he was much smaller than Watt.’
Mave had begun nodding before I’d finished. ‘Ever heard of Alan Turing?’
‘The Bletchley Park guy, a code breaker or something, wasn’t he? Didn’t they recently pardon him for a conviction?’
‘They pardoned him for being gay. He was a computer scientist, and cryptanalyst, the first really big name in the field to get public recognition. In the early fifties, homosexuality was a criminal offence and he was found guilty of indecency. The court gave him the option of probation if he would agree to hormone treatment to kill his libido. There was talk of doing it using implants, but he ended up with a course of hormone injections of oestrogen which left him impotent and with a condition called gynaecomastia: development of breast tissue. Turing was found dead two years
later and the verdict was suicide by…what?’
‘Cyanide?’
‘You got it.’
‘Jeez!’
‘What else?’ said Mave.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Think of the hormone treatment, and what happened to Watt’s hair and his muscle.’
‘Hormone implants.’ I said.
Mave watched me. ‘That’s the cure the blackmailer implanted. They thought they were getting cancer treatment, he was feeding them oestrogen. Impotence. That’s why none of those photos had been opened since July.’
‘Genius.’
‘He’s bordering on it.’ Mave said.
‘Not him. You.’
‘Idiot is what I am. I should have pulled all this together much sooner. Much, much sooner.’
‘Don’t be daft. If I couldn’t and the cops couldn’t…’ I tailed off as I watched her face, and I smiled. ‘I’m not comparing apples with apples, am I?’
‘This time, unfortunately, I suppose you are.’
‘And it puts my mind at rest with Jimmy, too. I saw no signs of softness in him. It must have been just the bug and the cyanide.’
‘Must have.’
I stood. ‘Celebratory drink?’
‘Go on, then.’
I poured whiskeys while Mave kept talking. ‘We’re on a roll, Edward, let’s keep going.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘This guy implants oestrogen. What does that tell us?’
‘He has a conscience.’
‘Correct. And maybe some history of being abused.’
‘From the computer work he’s done, what age range would you guess at?’
Mave made a whistling noise and swilled the whiskey round her glass. ‘Tough one. Most people with that kind of talent and that kind of appetite for work would be young. Teenage to mid-twenties. But there are quite a few second and even third generation guys, people with the foresight back in the early nineties to realize what the internet would bring.’
‘What about that knowledge of Alan Turing, would that point to someone older?’
‘Turing was a shot in the dark for me. He might have triggered this somehow, but it would be a sloppy assumption right now.’
