The Society

by Karen Guyler

  “Hey, Mr President.” Luke’s joke on first meeting Josiah had developed into a codename between them.

  Josiah laughed his loud guffaw. “You should talk to the big boss, tell him I deserve a raise for my important sounding name.”

  “Question for you, why would your tribe bump off a middle-aged expat?”

  The slightest of pauses. “We did?”

  “Query heart attack until I found an injection site.”

  “I can’t confirm or deny—”

  “I’m outside, only need a minute.”

  Josiah burst out of the building and strode around the corner, Luke gave him a few seconds then followed.

  Josiah looked Luke’s suit and shirt up and down as he approached. “Man, you look rough, off the peg today?”

  Luke gestured at Josiah’s large checked trousers. “If I ever wear a pattern like that, I’ll agree with you.”

  Josiah patted his afro. “You don’t have the style.”

  “Absolutely, I don’t. The name Antonio Castillo mean anything to you?”

  “Your corpse?” Luke nodded. “One of ours?”

  “US citizen, moved to London, changed his name to Tony Banks. Something not quite right about his situation. His brother, still State-side, had a number if anyone came looking for him. When I did, I’m guessing he called.”

  Luke held back what Tony Banks had instructed The Society to do, Josiah was a true patriot, and he’d call in everyone he could on this if he had a ghost of an inkling. Luke didn’t need all those investigating bodies muddying everything. The trail was already hard enough to follow.

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  Josiah shook Luke’s hand. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers? You’ve gone native.”

  Josiah adopted a shockingly bad Cockney accent, “Gotta blend in, mate.”

  “Best change those trousers then.”

  While Josiah got to work, Luke let himself into Eva’s house. The new cameras he was trialling were easy to install—four in place in less than ten minutes—leaving him time to check what had piqued his interest in his walk around last night, even before he’d understood he wasn’t looking at a burglary, but at a search gone badly.

  He used the walking stick on the upstairs landing to pop open the loft hatch and pull down the ladder. The suitcases and boxes, stacked with an engineer’s precision, had been discounted in the frantic search that had tornado-ed through the downstairs. So why go up there and not look through anything? Luke stepped around the stacks. On the joists up against the neighbours’ wall was his answer. A safe, door left open. Luke brushed aside the spilled chess pieces and board to pull out the only paper inside it.

  The folded sheet showed a copy of an old photo, pre-digital. At one end of the row of smiling people, he recognised a much younger version of Eva’s husband. In the centre, was that? Could be, but the fold had worn away some detail, he’d need to check. It could be a lead.

  Time to make that call.

  He folded the photocopy into his inside jacket pocket, put back everything he’d disturbed, and let himself out of Eva’s house before he rang the number.

  “Yo, yo, yo.” Castillo had been watching too much Breaking Bad, Luke almost hung up.

  “It’s your English friend.”

  “You shouldn’t be calling here.”

  “What did I tell you about not using that phone number?” His silence confirmed Luke’s hunch. “You didn’t remember your promise to me.”

  “You were pointing a gun at me, I’d have promised you anything you wanted, stop you pulling the trigger.”

  “Why did you give up your brother’s location?”

  Castillo huffed. “Aw, shit, it’s no big deal. It was Antonio’s idea, tell ’em I got his location, get them to give me the big pay-out.”

  “Why now?”

  “It’s important he said, to take care of business.”

  To pay Luke’s fee for carrying out the hit Banks ordered? He was all in on this.

  “Did you get it?” Luke asked.

  “No man, any day now.”

  “Yet you gave up your brother’s location.”

  “I ain’t dumb, I only told them London, they don’t get more till they pay up.”

  They were more organised and had weight beyond that suggested by the burner phone number Castillo had used, dead as soon as Banks was.

  “When I said don’t call the number, I meant don’t call the number. You trying to rip off big hitters, it comes with consequences. Your brother died.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’ve got nothing to gain by lying, Westminster morgue in London can confirm.” Luke hung up.

  21

  Every parents’ nightmare didn’t have to be Eva’s.

  Lily. Eva forced her face to relax. “My husband managed to get here? He wasn’t sure he could.”

  The receptionist delivered her bad news with a smile. “I’m afraid I can’t say, data protection.”

  Eva switched her weight to her good leg, wincing at the tightening of her damaged tendon, the stiffness she could feel puffing out the surrounding tissue. “I’ll need confirmation from you it was my husband, Charles Buchanan. If you’ve let Lily go with her biological father, I’ll have to get the police involved because she’s the subject of a court order.”

  Eva’s biggest lie got her a hurried call to the Head of Pastoral Care, a large lady who fussed and worried at the boundaries of protocol until Eva asked to use her phone to advise the court that the school was in contempt.

  “I can put your mind at rest, Mrs Buchanan.” Eva let the mistake slide. “It was Lily’s uncle who picked her up.”

  Lily’s non-existent uncle.

  Eva clamped her mouth shut on her scream.

  Using Lily to get to her was far more controlled than handing her poisoned cake. But using a child, her child. Eva swayed, gripped the counter.

  “Which one?” Her question squeaked out. “Can I see the footage?” She nodded at the camera above her.

  More boundaries intervened, but the head must have felt something for her distress. She swung the visitors’ book around, pointed at the penultimate entry. “Bernard Stel. . .Shrel, he has terrible penmanship.”

  It was all in the ‘B’, winking at her, the B of Buchanan. Eva hung onto the counter, anchoring herself beneath the surge of relief. Charles had got away and made sure Lily was safe.

  She hobbled out into the darkening daylight and the uncertainty of how to find her family. Charles would have his and Lily’s phones off, with Lily’s GPS tracking disabled. How, how? And then she had it, one chance, a teeny tiny possibility.

  Eva held her breath while the PC in the internet café searched. No matter how she wriggled on the hard seat, she felt she was twisting her knee. She logged into the email address she and Charles had used when they got married. The password—Iloveyou4ever—always used to make her smile. Today everything was harder.

  Surprisingly few junk emails had accumulated in the inbox, nothing received today. Eva clicked into the spam folder, into drafts. The last one had been her asking if he wanted to invite anyone else two months before their wedding.

  He hadn’t remembered.

  Never suppose, her father’s voice instructed her. She knew that. Charles was apparently good at this, whatever this was. Maybe he watched spy thrillers when she worked late, the false name, his paranoia over smartphones and their microphones, their GPS tracking. Maybe he just hadn’t got onto a PC yet. She left the tab open and clicked into her personal email.

  Nothing there from him.

  One from Per, worrying about not being able to reach her, congratulating her on the success of the ball. He apparently didn’t watch YouTube.

  ‘You’re just like Mathias, Eva, making the impossible, crazy dream happen, how proud of you he’d be. I’m so proud of you.’

  Per, wish you were closer. Would it be so crazy to go there now? He’d invited them, the
y’d simply be a few weeks early. The break would do them all good.

  Eva sipped her peppermint tea, willing the zingy mint to ground her, stop her charging out of the café because where could she go? This was her best, only, shot at finding them.

  No family, no home, no Every Drop, everything she cared about stripped away. But not one by the other, that tiny nagging she shushed whenever it raised its voice to be heard over the shouting of her to-do lists, it hadn’t been a prophecy. Her work hadn’t taken her from Lily and Charles like her father’s had taken him from her.

  Daddy, what would you do now?

  Her fingers were typing his name, the entries loading almost before she realised. Mathias Janssen. Could Google resurrect him enough to guide her? Eva clicked straight into the first entry, which loaded so fast it didn’t give her the necessary warning.

  It was there, filling the screen, filling her world as it had for the first few years he was gone, but never enough to fill the Daddy-shaped hole in her heart, her life. Her shaking fingers touched his image on the monitor. The photo of his last moment that had won a Pulitzer and every other award on the planet. Her hero, her daddy, scooping up a terrified child, holding her close as if she were his daughter, turning his back on the maelstrom of shrapnel an exploding building whirled around them, taking the force of man’s brutality to man. Choosing to save the life of a stranger instead of coming home to her.

  Daddy. The photo blurred as it always did, as if Eva had never cried herself dry over and over for the rest of primary school and at secondary school at night alone in her room. She swallowed, reached for the mouse.

  Then saw it.

  She double tapped the cursor over his hand where he clutched the little girl to zoom in over his four fingers. A turquoise band, sun-faded and grubby but unmistakable. She fingered her own brighter, newer-looking bracelet, a time link between them.

  In that moment, he’d been thinking of her.

  Eva closed her eyes.

  “Mummy, that lady’s sad.”

  Be polite, don’t talk about people in front of them, the little girl’s mother’s shush was loaded. Eva wiped at her face and smiled at the girl sitting on her mum’s lap a couple of terminals down.

  He was still teaching her, her father. She remembered he’d stopped in his rucksack packing and drawn her into a hug when she’d asked once why he had to do his job, why couldn’t someone else? Just for a little while so he could watch her in the nativity play at school.

  “Because, my little Evie, everyone else is running away from the bullets. I’m the only one running towards them.”

  “You shouldn’t run towards bullets, they’ll hurt you.”

  “That’s true, but the bullets I run towards are words, photos, recordings of phone calls. Nothing that can hurt me.”

  “Promise?”

  He’d squeezed her tighter. “Love you, lilla gumman. Want to fight this zip with me, help me close it?”

  Eva had laughed, “Silly, Daddy, I’m not an old lady.”

  She closed the browser down. Running towards the bullets, Daddy, I can do that.

  And she knew where to start.

  22

  The non-descript building that stole her husband away nearly every day didn’t look more dangerous to Eva than it had any other time she’d been there. No one around that shouldn’t be, so far as she could tell.

  The entry keypad was the same as she remembered; she entered his code. The panel bleeped green.

  She let herself into Charles’ hallowed space. The story doesn’t start when you become aware of it, you need to go backwards for the origin, her father’s words that had wrapped themselves around her all the way there dissipated now like so much smoke wafting away.

  This was point zero; his office and adjoining lab had to be Charles’ origin. So where would she find something to explain why he believed they were in danger?

  She used his desk phone to call first his mobile, switched off and voicemail deactivated, then Lily’s, waiting for her to pick up. “Hey, sweetheart, it’s Mum. Can you and Dad come and meet me? He’ll know where I am from this number. I’m waiting for you. Love you.”

  It could be a while before Charles turned on Lily’s phone and then they had to get there. Eva had all the time she’d need. She started her search with his desk and the stacks of journals, but nothing didn’t belong in his neat, orderly organisation.

  “Where, Charles? Where would you hide anything?” Her look around his office stopped on the door to his lab. No, that was sacrosanct. He would only allow himself and his precious science in there.

  Which left the bookcases. Shaking out each book and returning it just so should have been calming, therapeutic almost, but it didn’t get close to chipping away at the knot in Eva’s insides. She rolled her shoulders, the stretch of tendons and muscles tightening, screwing up on themselves. No relaxing until she held Lily again.

  Surprise waited at the end of the second shelf of trying, wedged at the back hidden within the pages of an A4 notebook, a mobile. Eva turned it over in her hand. A basic phone, like his regular one, but grey instead of black. She switched it on, looking at the office door: its entry keypad had let her in with the code she remembered from years ago. He was a creature of habit. She tapped in the pin he’d always used for his phone and it opened its secrets to her.

  She redialled his most recent call, ‘Tony Office’.

  “Hello.” The woman’s voice was tiny, apologising almost for answering.

  “I’m trying to reach Tony, can you put me through, please?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “When can I call back?”

  “No, you can’t, he died, Tony died.” The woman’s voice choked.

  Maybe Charles wasn’t so paranoid after all. “What happened?”

  “He had a heart attack at home, he was—You can speak to one of the other partners.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Eva disconnected and redialled, mimicking Charles’ RP pronunciation.

  “Hello, I’m the PA of Charles Buchanan.” She paused, giving the woman time to acknowledge him, recognise his name, anything. Nothing. The silence stretched. “We’re all sorry to hear about Tony. I wondered if you knew anything about the funeral arrangements yet.”

  “No, no, it’s all too soon.”

  “I’ll call back another time. Again, deepest condolences.”

  Eva hung up and studied the calls list. Two calls to Tony over the last two days. Nothing before then.

  She thumbed through the sparse list of contacts. Nancy with two London landline numbers and a mobile, one London number for an Aleksandr, the Russian spelling, Duncan, Hunter—Hunter? That was an unusual name, could it be Hunter Malone?—Rory, Ted, none of the names meant anything to her, who were they to Charles?

  She pressed the call button for Nancy but, before it connected, she heard the sound she’d been hoping for. She turned the phone off and slipped it back in its hiding place, limping to the window looking for the cab that had pulled up. But the car outside wasn’t a black cab, didn’t have any taxi signs on it.

  The driver and passenger got out, one car door clunking closed, followed by the other. No need for stealth; the neighbouring units, an advertisement agency and a photographers, had closed for the night. The men looked around, one heading in her direction, one the opposite way round the building.

  It’s not safe there, Charles’ exclamation in a quiet street mocked her now. She scrabbled at the keypad into his lab ante-room. Please don’t have changed this one either. Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. Eva pressed enter.

  Green light. Shoving the door open, she threw herself inside and forced it closed.

  The office door burst open.

  The lab ante-room door clicked shut.

  Eva charged past the bunny suits of protective clothing. A slam behind her as the man crashed into the door, hammering on the safety glass.

  She heaved the lab door open, rushed inside, letting it close on its automa
tic closer. She winced as the man shot out the entry pad to the ante-room door, thumping on it, then shooting at the safety glass, when it wouldn’t open. Didn’t matter how much shooting he did, her opening the lab door had activated the airlock, he’d have to wait thirty seconds for the system to reset.

  Thirty seconds.

  The guy fired into it enough times she hoped he’d emptied his magazine while she hurried to the bottom end of Charles’ kingdom. She slapped at the green button on the wall to release the fire exit door. Then she saw the driver, turning, realising he was looking in the wrong place for Charles’ lab, sprinting towards her.

  Outside Eva would have had a chance, always go for the getaway, she’d heard it bandied around MI6 enough times. But right then she couldn’t run anywhere, couldn’t reliably walk even.

  She had more chance in the lab, if the door shut in time to keep the running towards her driver on the outside.

  The fire exit closed over a laugh coming from behind her. The lab door had released.

  “Now we get to play Jurassic Park, I’m the velociraptor and you’re the kid.”

  The lab where Charles cooked his chemical formulations, made individual substances bend to his will in concoctions that behaved like magic, was like a kitchen. He had his hi-tech housed in chrome and white, with the lab benches set out in long rows. She understood the guy’s reference. A tiny thanks to Charles for opting for such a big lab for just him and his occasional assistant, the space gave Eva half a chance.

  The man’s slow footsteps teased down the row of lab benches in front of Eva. “Except I’m way smarter than an extinct dinosaur. Plus I have a little twenty-first century help.”

  If she could get up to the top and reach the lab door before he realised her plan, she’d have another thirty seconds to put some distance between them.

  “Let’s play a better game.” He was enjoying this.

  A crash of breaking glass from where she wanted to get to made her freeze. Eva crab-scrabbled up her row, stealth abandoned now as another crash got closer to her.