by Emma Jameson
Perhaps for the first time, Kate had an eager student. Usually Paul had to do something silly, like pretend the stacked mats were mattresses and he was a princess troubled by a pea, before he could get down to business. This time, he put on his gel gloves, took thirty seconds to center himself, and came out fighting with a judo throw.
Kate blocked it with her hip. Not because she’d expected such an attack, but because her muscles knew all the moves. Paul, however, was determined to bring her down. Keeping his hold on her despite the block, he refused to release his grip. In a real confrontation, Kate would have kneed his groin, broken his fingers, or both. In a training session, she needed to make a less agonizing point he’d remember.
She shifted her hip as if to wriggle free. This changed her center of gravity, allowing Paul to throw her. No sooner had she hit the mat on her back then he was pressing the advantage, trying to pin her. She kicked wildly. He took the bait, freezing her leg by digging his fingers into the fabric of her leggings. That made an opening between his body and the crook of his arm. With cool precision, she slipped an arm through, leveraged the grip with her other hand, and pulled the elbow until he groaned. Blindly, he tried to escape, allowing her to pin him in a classic judo submission.
“Crikey,” Paul muttered when she let him up. “I just don’t have the killer instinct.”
“It’s not about that. At least, not this time.” She waited for him to ask for explication—in general, frustrated students listened more closely to advice they themselves requested—but he was too stubborn to speak.
“Look. Your blood’s up. Let’s do strikes and takedowns. Krav Maga, baby.”
“Is that the one where if I can’t pull your arm off and beat you to death with it, I’m allowed to run away?”
Kate chuckled. “You’re always allowed to run away. Sometimes anything else is suicide. C’mon. Roundhouse kicks. I brought a padded vest so you can really show me what you’ve got.”
Paul did far better when permitted to wear himself out attacking her. She didn’t take it personally, even if some of his ire really was directed toward her. She had far more respect for anger sublimated into martial arts practice than she did for whinging and pouting. After almost an hour, they were both sweat-drenched and in need of tea. So they hit the showers, switched from gym kit to professional garb, and popped into the nearest café.
The waitress seated them by the window. She passed over two paper menus. “Tea?”
“Yes, please,” Kate said. “Is there a lunch special?”
“Soup and sandwich. All veg on gluten-free bread or turkey and provolone on wheat. Comes with tea. Cake is extra.” She indicated the café’s glass case, which was loaded with a seductive variety of slices: yellow, angel food, devil’s food, German chocolate, orange crème, and coconut with red maraschino cherries crowning each piece. Funny how you could spend an hour practicing deadly hand-to-hand and make up the caloric balance with one dessert.
“We’ll get to cake soon enough,” Kate assured the waitress. Her wardrobe from her twenties was gone; as long as she could still do up the zips of her current crop of trousers, the occasional slice of double chocolate or toffee spice would be hers. “I’ll take the turkey sandwich with tomato soup.”
“Same,” Paul said.
They sat without speaking until the tea pot arrived. “I’ll be Mum,” Paul muttered, and poured for them both.
“Those roundhouse kicks looked good today,” Kate said, accepting her cup. “If another tosser with a knife crosses you, he’ll be sorry.”
“Not sure I could do it under pressure.” Paul placed the teapot back on its trivet. “When I got knifed, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Instead of kicking the weapon away or knocking him down, I probably would have fallen on my arse. Had my leg grabbed in mid-kick or something.” He sipped his tea. “Can that happen? You go for a big kick and the guy just catches your ankle and drops you?”
“Sure. Tough enough guy or a weak enough kick, absolutely.” Kate shrugged. “It’s an all-or-nothing move. Good to have in the arsenal. Not foolproof. Even a shooter isn’t foolproof.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s why Kyla’s so afraid. I raised the idea that I’m potentially in danger, without any assurances for her to cling to.”
Kate said nothing.
“It makes sense.”
Kate once again allowed herself to contemplate the many cake slices on offer.
“What? Geez. Just say it.”
“Next you’ll be telling me my mother has a smooth forehead.” Kate smiled at Paul, who looked thoroughly miserable. “Listen. Mostly I have no opinion. I will correct you on one factual point. Kyla didn’t ask for an assurance that you’d be okay. She was talking about herself. She’s afraid for herself. And considering how she got in bed with Sir Duncan once, metaphorically speaking, maybe she has good reason. Who knows what he shows you once you’re in the inner circle.”
Paul made an exasperated sound. “You don’t like her. You want to think the worst of her.”
“Maybe.” Kate shrugged. “Anyway. If I was out of bounds with her back at your flat, I’m sorry. Consider me contrite. While you’re in a bad mood, I might as well crank it up to eleven. I talked to the guv after he assigned you Kincaid.”
“Oh.” Paul blinked. “Go on.”
“The top brass doesn’t think you have a future in field work. Since you were a golden boy in training, they want to send you back to Henden as an instructor.”
“Right. Well. It could be worse.”
Kate steeled herself, then said all in one breath, “And I’m on track to be promoted to DI.”
Paul’s face split in a grin. “Hah! Well. They’re not all asleep at the wheel upstairs, are they? Good on you! Wait till I tell my mum. She loves to hear about women succeeding in a man’s world.”
Kate took a moment to soak that in. She wanted to tell him he was her best friend in the world, and she’d do anything for him. She even wanted to beg his forgiveness for shouting through the loo door at Kyla, who in Kate’s opinion was a bony piece of work who deserved far worse. But she couldn’t slobber all over Paul in a café. If she did, it would be a complete break with the traditional rhythm of their friendship: insults, one-upmanship, and encouraging one another’s rebellious impulses.
“So anyway, as your friendly neighborhood future DI,” she said, “I’ll give you a scoop. AC Deaver was serious about protecting us. He’s already put a team on dissecting Lady Isabel’s story, word by word, and fact-checking every claim. Her accusation about the No-Hopers killing Ford Fabian falls under my purview. So. Of course, you’re not meant to dig into anything regarding Sir Duncan. But how do you fancy helping me by digging into the No-Hopers? In a very appropriate, supervising TDC Kincaid, fully-deniable-if-it-touches-on-Sir-Duncan way?”
Chapter Fifteen
The morning had started in the best possible way, in Tony’s view. How could the rest of the day fail to follow suit?
He began by giving the tireless Mrs. Snell the day off. The poor woman was tormented by her position as his agency’s sole employee, which currently consisted of dusting, rearranging office furniture, and wishing the phone would ring. Mrs. Snell wasn’t designed for sloth.
Seating himself behind her impressive Louis XV-style writing desk, surrounded by unread English classics chosen by the condo’s owner to attractively fill the built-in bookshelves, he opened his secure laptop and checked his emails. As he’d hoped, several of his pending queries had at last borne fruit.
The email from his daughter Jules’s boyfriend, an IT consultant and hacker named Steve Zhao, was written in bullet points. As he read, Tony found himself seeing Steve’s cheeky grin and hearing the words in Steve’s bass voice.
Hiya, Lord H.,
Mariah Keene was seen in the company of some fringe cracktivists, i.e., hackers who pick a cause and cyberattack it, last year. But based on her digital footprint, her skill level was never higher than a script kiddie, if that. Must have had a
boyfriend there, or just been looking after her twin.
Mark Keene is the real deal. I knew him from chat rooms as “Rain Man” and “Sheldon Britannia.” He never said or did anything to make me think of him as a “black hat,” i.e., a cybercriminal. He also seemed agnostic about ethical behavior and would probably commit crimes if he saw a good reason. One of those people who flails around in real life and soars online. He went dark when his sister died.
Peter Keene’s IT guru “Dr. Optics” is Aaron Ajax. As hackers go, he’s a bit of a joke. If you recognize his real name, it’s because he trespassed on the roof of the Shard a few years back and parachuted off the top. Got off with a warning. Tried to arrange other Urbex stunts but no luck. You’re the sleuth, not me, but I can’t help but wonder: do you think Mariah was doing some kind of stunt rehearsal for AA when she died?
I can’t prove it in a court of law, so don’t ask me how I know, but Peter Keene was being blackmailed last year. I would never dig into encrypted private financial records, but it came to me in a dream that PK made no strange payouts, created no shell companies, and liquidated no assets. I think the blackmailer may have been AA, and maybe his price was the “Dr. Optics” gig. Should this email go astray, I trust any law enforcement official will realize I am a notorious deceiver and will be of no use in any future investigation.
xoxo
SZ
Tony smiled. Like many digital wizards, Steve was in love with his own cleverness. Despite the inherent danger of sending the information by email, he apparently couldn’t resist, phrasing the dodgy bits in ways that would sound ridiculous if read aloud in court. To give Steve his due, it would probably work, if push came to shove. But if he didn’t learn to control his ego, someday he was sure to overstep. In the meantime, Steve’s willingness to ferret out information had once again proved invaluable.
The next email he opened was from an old friend now working in Specialist Crime & Operations. Unlike Steve Zhao, the man providing the information was a humorless lawman who didn’t entrust his career to a cheeky disclaimer. It came from ed7389403@gmail and contained only the barest answers to questions Tony had asked in person. Perhaps it was arrogance, but they’d served in the trenches long enough to believe they understood the rules well enough to occasionally break them. There was no greeting and no signature, only the following:
-Possession of pornographic materials featuring minors
-Solicitation of pornographic photos from minors online
-Charges never brought, caution expunged
There it is, Tony thought. What Peter Keene was holding back. Criminal accusations of pedophilic behavior. I did warn him I’d find out. If he’d simply told me he was being blackmailed around the time he introduced his children to Sir Duncan, I might not have gone so deep.
Pushing away from the desk, Tony leaned back on the chair’s back legs. Part of being a detective was hammering raw facts into a sort of vessel, then filling up the vessel to see if it held water. What stories could he weave from what he’d learned thus far? Which, if any, had the ring of truth?
After a time, he eased forward again, front chair legs thumping against the parquet floor. Something, some essential piece, was still missing. Probably only Mark Keene could supply it, if Tony could convince him to talk.
I still have a little time before I’m due at the Horse Guards parade, Tony thought. Perhaps Gert and Mark will be there. In the meantime, I can look into Aaron Ajax.
According to the enhanced public records searches that Tony, as a newly-minted PI, was permitted to access, Aaron Ajax was thirty-eight years old. His mug shot after parachuting off the Shard was boyishly exuberant; the moment Tony saw it, he remembered the news reports, most of which had been openly sympathetic to BASE jumpers. Ajax was thirty-five at the time, but looked younger, with tousled brown hair, blue eyes, and a lopsided grin. Or as Bright Star’s headline had declared, Shard Scamp Sparks Sympathy: Brave Brit Thrills the World.
Ajax had clearly enjoyed his fifteen minutes. The tourists in and around the Shard had cheered as he drifted to earth, his parachute cheekily emblazoned with the white, red, and blue of the Union Jack. The image had proved irresistible in the court of public opinion. Although the City police dutifully brought charges, the trial amounted to a gentle slap on the wrist. Ajax was merely cautioned against future stunts and complimented on his patriotic parachute.
Further digging provided Tony with a thumbnail sketch of Ajax. A lifelong Londoner, he’d left school at age sixteen to marry his teenage girlfriend, who was pregnant. Two years later, they divorced. Mrs. Ajax had died of breast cancer before the age of thirty, and her obituary made no mention of an ex-husband or child. In Bright Star’s profile, Aaron Ajax had lied about his age, claiming he was thirty, said he’d never been married, and opined that he couldn’t imagine bringing children into an overpopulated, inequitable, polluted world.
Did Mrs. Ajax lose the baby? Did they surrender it for adoption? Tony wondered. It probably didn’t matter. That was the trouble with prying into private lives; every new bit of data felt relevant, but often amounted to mere gossip.
Having concluded the “Shard Scamp” portion of his life, Aaron Ajax had disappeared from public view, and indeed, the public records search, for a few years. He’d never held a job, so far as Tony could tell, nor had he returned to school via a route like Open University. He wasn’t registered as disabled or caring for a relative, and had drawn jobseeker’s benefits for the last decade.
Until Peter Keene took him on as Dr. Optics, the IT image guru, Tony thought.
For his first real job, Ajax had physically transformed himself. While Peter Keene’s reelection website made no mention of him, Tony spied Ajax in a staged photo taken at Peter’s campaign headquarters. As Dr. Optics, his hair was cropped short and he wore the obligatory loud suit and outré specs of an image consultant. He was also grinning, just like in his mug shot.
Yet Steve said in his email that as hackers go, Ajax is a bit of a joke. To all appearances, he’s simply drifted about, having adventures, since his teens. Why suddenly give up his benefits and his open schedule for a day job? And one with a politician’s long hours and life-in-a-fishbowl quality.
In the staged photo, Peter’s hand was lifted benevolently; the kindly young Earl, working for the good of the people. His reelection staffers looked more or less insanely pleased to be involved in the campaign, waving at the camera or giving the thumbs-up. Ajax wasn’t waving, but his left hand was held close to his body, thumb and inner fingers curled, pinky and forefinger sticking out. Most coppers had at least a nodding acquaintance with certain hand signals. This one, often used to indicate “respect” between rappers and rockers, had another common meaning: Anarchy.
Tony pondered that, then checked his watch. Not enough time to research the No-Hopers, assuming he could dig up anything. He’d expected Steve to provide more, a sort of gang profile, as it were, but perhaps things didn’t work that way anymore. The members favored black, displayed the anarchy sign, and squatted wherever Wi-Fi could be found until the shopkeeper kicked them and their laptops out into the street. Probably any collective of people that truly believed in anarchy didn’t have bylaws, official literature, or a website that laid out a cohesive worldview for the public to contemplate.
He looked over the rest of his email, searching for anything relating to Sir Duncan. Sure enough, AC Deaver had sent a link to Heathrow security camera photos. As a former detective and current consultant, Tony still had access to parts of the MPS database. He logged in, offered his PIN and security token, and studied the images.
Is it glare from the screen?
Blinking, he angled the laptop differently and looked again.
Perhaps I need my specs.
He fished them out of a pocket. Half-glasses on his nose, he worked his way through ten of the hundred-plus images provided. Then he rang the assistant commander’s personal mobile.
“Is that Tony?” Deaver sounded surpri
sed.
“Michael. The man at Heathrow isn’t Godington.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I’m reviewing the CCTV images of a man passing from a VIP lounge to his private aircraft. He’s the correct height, right sort of hair, right sort of clothes and manner. Sir Duncan is always gracious to his fans. But this isn’t Sir Duncan,” Tony said firmly. “His upper lip is too full. His hairline is too low. No widow’s peak.”
Deaver sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any room for doubt?”
“No.”
“Very well. I’ll speak to McGrath at MI5. He’ll obtain the necessary warrants. Only….”
Tony waited. The silence stretched out for several seconds.
“If you’re wrong about this, and we enact intrusive searches, only to find that was Godington and he is in Brunei….”
“I’m not wrong,” Tony said. “But I understand it’s your neck on the block, not mine. Perhaps Box 500 has an agent in Brunei? Someone who can confirm that the man visiting under Sir Duncan’s name is a double?”
“Yes. Shouldn’t take more than twenty-four hours. That would be more prudent,” Deaver said. “I should tell you, Truro’s chief hasn’t located Lady Isabel. She booked a first class rail ticket to St. Ives but never boarded. That means Godington may be in London and she probably is, too. You need to be careful when out and about, Tony. And so should Kate.”
“No worries on that score.” He strove to sound casual. In truth, he was angry—angry with Deaver, for his solemn and believable assurances, angry with Heathrow’s security for failing to see the difference between a lookalike and one of Britain’s most famous faces, and angry with himself for not demanding a look at the images the night before. When he felt this sort of anger bubbling up, there was fear beneath it—real fear. An emotion that had to be contained carefully, lest it become the biggest danger of all.