by Emma Jameson
Who was that I saw you with?
Mark: My mates. So they say.
Gert: Mariah mentioned them. No-Hopers.
No answer. At 6:19, Gert asked,
How did you meet them?
Mark: Xuanzhang.
Tony recognized the name as one of the dark web’s many anonymous marketplaces. What he didn’t know about the hunt for modern cyber criminals was a very thick book, but some of the larger illegal cohorts were familiar to almost everyone in law enforcement. It wasn’t surprising that a gifted young programmer like Mark would sample the dark web. Even nine-year-old Henry had confessed to checking out the “deep web,” that vast semi-private layer between the surface internet, accessible to anyone, and the dark web, the digital underworld hidden behind walls of encryption.
It seemed that Gert, despite her somewhat naïve manner, recognized the name Xuanzhang, too. She’d texted back,
I don’t think working for the NH is a good idea.
Mark: Mariah hates them. Says I have to choose.
Gert: Are you in trouble?
No answer. At 7:58, Gert asked,
Tell me. Are you in trouble?
Mark: Mariah is. It’s OK. I won’t let anything happen to her.
Tony passed the phone back to Gert, who tapped the screen, presumably to close her text messenger. The flash went off again.
“Sorry! I’m a bit nervous,” she said, returning the mobile to her ugly crocheted bag. “I don’t like those No-Hopers. I kept at Mark about them. He admitted they were dealing Spice and weed. That some of them traded credit card numbers and personal data as a sideline. But mostly they did contract work he wouldn’t talk about. For companies. For private individuals, too.”
“So they say. They act like low-rent hooligans,” Cedric said. “I never saw them do much except shoplift and crash shelters for free snacks and Wi-Fi. I barred them from Saint Benedict’s, full stop. Said if I caught them trying to conduct so-called business under this roof again, I’d ring the City of Westminster police. Or inform on them to somebody like you,” he added, looking Tony in the eye.
Tony sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
Gert, who was squirting Purell on her hands for no apparent reason, looked up. “Did I miss something?”
Cedric attempted a modest shrug, but his smug grin gave him away. “I’ve served in shelters and soup kitchens for twenty years. Three kinds of homeless folks come through my doors. Those who are mentally ill and compelled to roam. Even if they have a place, they won’t stay there. Then there are those who’ve been knocked down by life once too often. Maybe by drugs. Maybe the drink. Maybe by something so bad it blotted out part of their soul, like a total eclipse blots out the sun. Last but not least is the grifters. Grifters always got a story. Who wronged them, how much they’ve suffered, and how much it’ll cost to get them out of your face.
“At first, I thought that was you,” Cedric continued, still grinning. “But you don’t have a sob story about the wicked old Council, or your kids stealing your pension, or how you need bus fare to Dunstable. And you carry yourself like a man who’s unafraid. Walked into this place like you owned it. That makes you a copper, I reckon.”
“Well done.” Tony abandoned his put-on Welsh accent. “Former copper. Private detective, now.”
“Oh! Dead posh, aren’t you?” Gert sounded delighted. “Could you really infiltrate the No-Hopers? I mean, no offense, but have you seen them?”
“I’ve seen some blokes around, dressed in black. Girls, too, with dark makeup and a funereal aesthetic, as it were.”
“Blue or purple hair. Lip rings, nose rings. Tongue studs,” Gert said. “Not one of them older than thirty. Except for the leader, Aaron, and he dresses young.”
“They favor the anarchy symbol,” Cedric put in. “You’ll see it painted on their coats or sewn on their messenger bags. The letter A with a circle around it.”
“I’m familiar,” Tony said. “And I understand your skepticism. But as for infiltrating them—you might be surprised. Sometimes a harmless old git can wander in where a more appropriate young person is taken far more seriously. And therefore, is at greater risk.”
It was pure coincidence, not suspicion, that led to Tony’s last clue of the day. He had departed Saint Benedict’s with the intention of walking to the Leadenhall building. As Tony the homeless man, he would enter via the parking garage, take the stairs to the floor where his Lexus was parked, open the boot, chuck in bits of his costume—that risible bucket hat in particular—retrieve his coat and wingtips, and ride the lift up to the Hetheridges’ sublet condo. He’d done this so many times, one could reasonably have expected someone on One-oh-One’s security staff to have stopped him, especially on the long walk from the street up to the Lexus, and inquire what a homeless man was doing wandering about the garage. But despite what Tony assumed were active CCTV cameras with menacing red lights burning steadily, no one ever seemed to notice his questionable behavior. One-oh-One’s management policed the semi-public atriums with religious zeal, but seemed less interested in secondary points of entry.
It was his thought about the CCTV cameras in One-oh-One’s garage—were they cost-cutting dummies?—that caused Tony to halt and retrace his steps. Just because he’d taken the Keene case off Cecelia Wheelwright’s hands didn’t mean he should assume her agency had done a thorough job of requisitioning footage. The café Gert had mentioned in her text, Anatolia’s, was familiar to him. Hadn’t it been in the news around Christmas?
Yes, it had. Something about an armed robbery, or at least a violent altercation. The mention of Anatolia’s and the timing of the disturbance was probably mere coincidence, but like Hannah Keene, Tony refused to believe coincidences existed. He decided to wander into Anatolia’s and check the position of their CCTV cameras.
“I know, love. It’s hard to trust. But at some point you’ll have to.” A familiar voice cut through the chatter of Londoners and tourists, most of whom were on their way out of the City. After the close of business, it would be a virtual ghost town until the financial markets opened the next day.
Tony spied Gert inside one of Britain’s iconic red phone booths, the kind that still adorned everything in the tourist shops, from commemorative plates to men’s boxers. Though pay phones had all but disappeared from modern life, the phone booths were too well-loved to give up. BT had repurposed several of them into Wi-Fi hotspots. Thus Gert was using her own mobile, but the booth provided both relative privacy and a signal boost.
“What about the photo?” she asked as Tony moved closer, pretending to examine a flyer advertising a flat to let. “Did you run it through FaceFinder?”
She paused to listen as Tony’s eyes moved over the flat’s details, unseeing. So Gert’s genial incompetence while locating her mobile had been a put-on. And those accidental flashes had been a shrewd way of checking into Tony via facial recognition software, much of which was available for free online.
“See?” Gert’s tone suggested she was pleased with the answer the person on the other end gave. “This could be your moment. He told me he’ll keep turning up in Westminster, day after day. He’s not giving up, kiddo.”
Gert fell silent listening for so long, the words of the flat advertisement actually penetrated Tony’s brain.
Lovely double bedsit, inclusive of all bills. Mattress and wardrobe provided. £300 per week. Deposit of £4500 required. No pets. No time-wasters.
With rates like that, Saint Benedict’s won’t be closing its doors anytime soon, he thought. The final insult, “No time-wasters,” was so outrageous, it nearly made him miss Gert’s parting words into her mobile.
“All right, love. Friday at the Horse Guards parade. Twelve sharp. Don’t stand me up!”
Smiling, Tony inserted himself into an amorphous tour group, drifting along with them until he was halfway home. In a matter of days, unless he was very much mistaken, he’d finally meet Mark Keene in the flesh.
Chapter Ten
Paul did ta
ke PC Kincaid out to an early lunch, not because he was in any mood to obey DCI Jackson, but because he didn’t know what else to do. His alternate plan, writing a thermonuclear letter of resignation and posting it on Twitter for the world to see, was a little too final. Hadn’t he told his mates this might happen? Hadn’t he practically introduced himself to Kate, that very first day, by mentioning the career albatross around his neck?
Maybe I thought I could ward it off by talking about it. The way talking about what you want seems to guarantee it never comes to pass, he thought.
It was pushing two o’clock. PC Kincaid had long since returned to the Yard, eager to crack on with his first trainee assignment—tackling the phone calls on Paul’s afternoon to-do list. That meant Paul could stay right where he was, a booth opposite the telly in a Weatherspoon’s bar. They were doing two-for-one pints, the better to delight tourists and day-drinkers. He was on his fourth, which meant he’d seen the inside of the men’s room more than once and his head was beginning to hurt. He’d never make a proper drunkard. He always started feeling poorly long before he got well and truly hammered. Which was too bad, because getting hammered was the only socially-approved masculine way to process disappointment—make that shame—of which he knew.
Kyla should be home tonight, he reminded himself. Maybe I can cry on her shoulder.
Except he wouldn’t. She’d think him weak. He didn’t like to admit that to himself, but it was true. Emmeline would have commiserated with him a bit before switching to tough love, which for her meant one of two things: taking positive action, or changing the subject. Emmeline would consider excessive moping weak, but she wouldn’t judge him for failing to conquer within his chosen career. She’d tell him he gave it a shot, and that was more than most people did, when the going got tough. Whereas Kyla….
Truth is, I don’t know what she’d say, Paul thought. But I can’t help thinking she’d see me as a loser from here out. If I leave the MPS, or accept whatever downshift I’m given, I’ll have to convince her it was all my idea. That I’m in charge.
The game on the telly was bollocks; the color commentary, colorless. As usual, when the TV screen failed him, Paul turned to the smaller one on his phone for comfort. He was scrolling through Twitter, watching animal vids and liking the pithier comments, when his phone buzzed. Incoming text.
Detective Bhar. A friend gave me your number. We’ve never met but I feel as if I know you. Something dangerous is happening. I want to tell the police, but must be discreet. Can’t go the usual route. My friend said you’re accustomed to delicate situations. Please call so we can arrange to meet.
The message came from an unknown number. Paul sighed. The trouble with being a smart-alecky piss-taker was that payback always lurked around the corner. Every day he said or did something that enraged a PC, DC, DS, or higher ranked officer who swore vengeance. Now that he was in career purgatory, the word was probably out. Knowing that no detective, especially one in need of a win, could resist the offer of a juicy tip, one of Paul’s esteemed colleagues had no doubt sent him the text. If he bit, Mendelsohn would probably answer with, “Oi, Pepe Le Pew! You got Prince Albert in a can?”
He texted back one word—Crimestoppers—followed by the official tip line number.
Almost immediately came the reply:
One person died this morning. More will die if I can’t find a way to pass on what I know without becoming a victim too. BTW it wasn’t a car bomb. It was a group of hackers. The No-Hopers.
That reference to Ford Fabian’s murder got his attention. None of his colleagues would use the privileged details of an ongoing investigation in a wind-up. He took a final sip of his lager, exited, and staked out a corner between the pub and a Waitrose. Then he rang the number, which picked up on the second ring. The caller didn’t speak.
“Detective Sergeant Paul Bhar,” he snapped. “You called me. What do you know about the death of Mr. Fabian?”
“Hi. Um. Listen.” It was a woman with a posh accent. “Here’s the thing. I need to talk to you in person.”
“Why not now?”
“You could be recording this.”
“I’m not.”
“But how do I know? I have to take care. If you publish what I say and release the tape as proof, I’m dead. Full stop.”
Paul sighed. The bloody lager had started his headache, and this phone call was exacerbating it fast. “You have me mixed up with the press. I’d need a warrant to record this call,” he said, leaving out the fact that recording conversations for personal use was perfectly legal.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” the woman said. “I know you worked with Lord Hetheridge and his new wife.”
“Why not call one of them, then?” Paul asked, enabling an app. Now he was recording the call, just in case.
She sighed. “Look. I can’t give you proof the No-Hopers killed Ford Fabian. But I can tell you how I know they did it. I can also tell you why. But I want to meet you face to face. If I’m risking my life, you owe me that much, don’t you?”
The small hairs on the back of Paul’s neck stood up. Ever since he’d first glimpsed a black dog—the dog that had turned out to be Sir Duncan’s—he’d been jumpy, prone to letting himself get spooked over little or nothing. Unkind people suggested it was because of the knifing he’d suffered last October, a wound that could have been fatal. Kate had flat-out told him that until he faced down another physical threat in the field, he’d be oversensitive, fearing danger beneath every shrub.
“Where did you want to meet?” he asked. “Dark alley? Abandoned warehouse?”
She made a little sound of amusement. Clearly, her fear of being killed hadn’t snuffed out her sense of humor. “I was thinking of somewhere very public. People, CCTV cameras, security guards. Like the V&A.”
She meant the Victoria and Albert Museum, a huge, world-class repository of art that Paul, like many Londoners, hadn’t visited in a dog’s age. As far as safe spots to meet, the V&A certainly ticked the boxes. Admission was free, too. London was one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it made loads of art available to all.
“I can be there in twenty minutes by Tube,” he said. As one final test, he added, “Just let me call this in to my guv. If you don’t want me to bring DS Hetheridge for some reason, there’s a trainee who’d love to take notes.”
“Don’t call it in. And don’t bring anyone else. I mean it,” the woman said firmly. “I’ll freely give you the information. I can’t go on if I don’t tell someone. But I’m not ready to die. Hear me out, Detective. Give me five minutes. If you think I’m a liar, walk away.”
“Fine. The museum is gargantuan,” Paul pointed out. “Where will I find you?”
“Go to the café. Beyond the dining room, there’s a courtyard. A bit of lawn where the artists and Uni kids congregate. I’ll be there.”
“Text me your picture so I’ll know you.”
“No. Just be there. I’ll know you.”
“At least tell me what you’re wearing.”
“Black,” she said, and rang off.
Though admittance to the V&A was free, there was a suggested donation for patrons with means. Paul dropped a couple of coins into the Lucite collection box and headed for the café. During the short walk from the South Kensington station to the museum, his headache had eased. Maybe, just maybe, Ms. Posh Voice would turn out to be the real thing. A repentant hacker, or maybe one of the killer’s ex-girlfriends. Past lovers with axes to grind made the best snouts.
“That will be 40p,” the girl at the café cash stand said, looking at Paul as if he might be an alien. Everyone else in the queue had trays laden with sandwiches, slices of pie, and bags of crisps. He had a pint bottle of chocolate milk, which he fully intended to drink, once he was sure his lager had settled.
The V&A’s dining room was full up. The crowd, unremarkable: pensioner couples; battalions of uniformed schoolchildren; mums and babies and toddlers.
Outsid
e, in the sunny courtyard with its round reflecting pool and carpet of grass, the teens and young adults had self-segregated. Paul saw giggling girls, morose boys, artists with sketchpads, couples, loners, and a handful of mobile addicts who lurked in the shadows, the better to see their screens. He quickly realized he was the only adult male, which made him instantly uncomfortable. A lone man in business attire among scores of teens wasn’t a good look. The only other grownup was a black-habited nun, seated on the reflecting pool’s stone lip and sipping a bottle of water.
Can’t be.
As if reading his mind, the nun’s head turned. Even from where he was standing, he could tell she was fully made up, including carmine lips. In her extravagant black and white wimple, she looked like the understudy of Maria in an especially glitzy Sound of Music revival.
Might as well get this over with, Paul told himself, marching toward her. It was on his lips to greet her by saying, “You look ridiculous.” Then he recognized the face inside the wimple and stopped dead.
“Oh, my,” he said. Except he didn’t say “my.” And the word he did use, seemingly hurled in the face of a woman of God, made even the most jaded teens stop talking and stare.
“Hello, Detective,” said Lady Isabel Bartlow, half-sister of Sir Duncan Godington.
Chapter Eleven
“Baiting me with a dog wasn’t enough?” Paul demanded. “Now he’s sending you to do his dirty work?”
“Oi! Mate! Shouldn’t be shouting at a nun,” one of the sullen teen boys said.
“Say the word and I’ll report him for you,” one of the girls added.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Lady Isabel gave the pair a resplendent smile. “This gentleman’s a policeman. I’ve never felt more safe. I know it’s a public courtyard. But would you and your friends mind giving me and the detective a little space? Even though I’ve no right to ask?”