‘Then, about a month ago, something weird happened. The Met gets a comprehensive file on a paedophile ring downloaded to their secure data files. The Met’s security is Fort Knox — I mean it’s airtight. But she downloaded these files direct to the most secure part of their system.’
‘Using the Megan Ward alias?’ Rickman asked. Hart and Foster stood rock still, their attention completely focused on Miller’s account.
‘She was calling herself NorthStar, then,’ Miller said. ‘But the signature — the way she used the system, was the same as our minor-league scammer.’
‘So, what changed?’ Rickman asked, thinking small scams to gang-busting — it didn’t sound right.
‘You ask me, she found a cause,’ Miller said. ‘Paedophiles are about the most sophisticated computer criminals I know. They know how to manipulate the internet, they know the law and they know how to cover their tracks. But she bypassed their security like it wasn’t there. Hell — she bypassed the Met’s security system like it wasn’t there.’ There was awe and respect in Miller’s voice. ‘She sent us complete date-stamped images of the two chief suspects’ computers. Then she cleared every brass farthing from their bank accounts. Two days later, one of the big children’s charities received an anonymous donation — a large six-figure sum — which matched this missing money to the last decimal place.’
‘Couldn’t their lawyers just claw it back again? Foster asked.
‘That was just it,’ Miller said, with an incredulous laugh. ‘We couldn’t trace it back to either of the accounts. It just appeared out of nowhere.’
Foster leaned back a little and said, ‘Huh!’ It was an expression of surprise and admiration.
Rickman shook his head. ‘What I meant was, if she had that kind of expertise to start with, why wouldn’t she make use of it? Strip a bank’s assets, or blackmail a big insurance firm?’
There was a silence at the other end of the line and it wasn’t difficult to imagine the Jamaican give a shrug before answering, ‘Banks and big commercial interests have a lot of resources. Mess with them, they’re not gonna let it go — hence the small scams — and if she pushes the odd paed our way, well . . . we’re hardly gonna bust our balls chasing her down.’
It was an odd kind of morality that condoned one criminal act as irrelevant set alongside greater transgression, but Rickman had seen it time and again. Petty crimes committed by informants: theft, muggings, benefit fiddling and drug pushing quietly ignored because their intelligence was too useful to lose. Deals made with criminals who turned Queen’s Evidence against their bosses. Selective amnesia. Noble cause corruption. Which was a charge that he could have levelled at himself, and not so long ago. He knew that what he had done was wrong and that it was illegal, but he did not regret it for one moment, and he would do it again in a heartbeat.
Chapter Twenty-three
‘Nathan. Listen to me. We want to help. Nathan?’
The voice came from far off. Nathan Wilde didn’t know how to get there. He used to live in that place, but now he was lost, and he didn’t know how to get back. They were staring at him. Every one of them in that room. In that other place. It was like looking at a play on a stage. It was real and yet unreal, the players intangible. Too far off to touch. But the bizarre twist was they were watching him, the actors intent on their audience of one. Staring. At him. Into him.
Can they see? Can they see what I did? Panic rose in him like a surging flood.
The room was large and light. Tan carpet tiles, cream walls. Steel-frame table against one wall. Five armchairs in a loose circle. The psychiatrist, the psychiatric nurse, two others — a man and a woman, youngish. Probably students. He had already forgotten their names. Blinds on the windows. No curtains. The faint hum of traffic beyond. Or maybe it was the buzz of beetles’ wings. He caught a movement off to his left, turned to see, but it scuttled out of sight.
Oh, God, they’re in.
He pulled his feet up onto the chair, then leaned across and dragged the table away from the wall.
The psychiatric nurse intervened. ‘Nathan. You don’t need to do that.’ She spoke loudly, like he was deaf or stupid.
‘It’s okay.’ The psychiatrist watched Nathan calmly. ‘Let’s see what he does.’
He dragged the table a few more inches, leaving a space all around. Then he crawled from the chair onto the tabletop.
‘Okay, Nathan,’ The psychiatrist repeated, ‘If you want to sit there, that’s fine.’
She smiled at him with her thin lips and he thought, What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you smiling at? He stopped. They can hear you. They know what you’re thinking. Nathan wasn’t given to voicing his opinions of others, and the notion that they had heard this minor rant appalled him. He felt heat creeping slowly from the neck of his T-shirt up to his cheeks until even his ears felt hot. He looked anxiously around the circle, but they were unmoved. No offence taken. The actors watching the audience, wanting a reaction, discussing him like he was a character in a TV show and they’d missed the odd episode. Playing catch-up, not quite following the story.
‘His mother found him hiding in his wardrobe.’ The psychiatric nurse. She was short and plump. She lowered her voice now, as though afraid that he would hear.
The psychiatrist looked at him. Into him. ‘Why did you hide, Nathan?’
He looked from floor to walls to the faces of the people. He caught fleeting glances of the bugs, translucent, almost invisible. He heard the buzz and thump of their bodies against the windows. The bugs. I was hiding from the bugs.
‘All the electrical equipment in his room was disconnected,’ the nurse continued.
They all looked at him as if waiting for an explanation. I told you why. They’re here! Why don’t you do something?
‘The plugs were sliced from the wires.’
‘Nathan,’ The psychiatrist said. Her voice was warm and low, but she wasn’t built for warmth; her body was thin and angular, her face empty of any sympathy. ‘Were you afraid of the electricity?’
Not the electricity — the BUGS! He checked the ceiling. If you didn’t watch it, they came in through the light cables. He looked down at the floor. It was alive with them. Oh, God! His eyes grew wide with horror. I looked away for a second — one friggin’ second —
They massed on the carpet, a shimmering torrent of silver-backed creatures. They flowed around the doctor, the nurse and the other two, a torrent of silvery shapes, dividing and reforming into a single shining stream. They didn’t want the others. They wanted him.
A low moan escaped him and he wrapped his arms tight around his legs. His breathing was irregular, fast, coming in short panting bursts. He looked right and left. Behind him. At the ceiling again, ready to bat them away if they got to him. He heard the little hooks on their feet catch in the carpet fibres, the faint metallic scratch as they tried to climb the steel tubing of the table legs.
‘He threw all of the plugs out of the window.’ The nurse was relentless, her voice a low mumble against the increasing static roar of a million bugs, pale as crystal, transparent as glass. ‘Then he threw his computer keyboard and mouse out after them,’ she finished.
The psychiatrist hadn’t taken her eyes off him the whole time. Reading my thoughts, Nathan thought.
‘Do you know who I am, Nathan?’ she asked.
‘Psychiatrist,’ he said, embarrassed to have forgotten her name. Then a thought occurred to him and he chuckled. ‘Spychiatrist.’
‘You think I’m spying on you.’
He frowned, irritated. ‘It was a joke.’
She nodded. ‘Can you tell us why you’re afraid?’
A shape skittered left of his field of vision and he flinched.
‘What do you see, Nathan?’
‘You don’t see them?’ He stared at the steady stream of flat, discoid creatures flowing around their feet and over their shoes and his eyes widened.
She made a pantomime of checking with the others. ‘W
e don’t see them. What do they look like?’
He shook his head. Horrible.
‘Nathan.’ The psychiatrist waited until he made eye contact. ‘Why can’t we see them? Wouldn’t we see them if they were real?’
Why couldn’t they? It only took a moment — he saw the answer with blinding clarity. ‘You’re not infected.’
‘By what?’
‘The BUGS!’ he yelled. The shimmering flow shuddered and retreated a second, before surging again, in a second wave.
‘It’s all right, Nathan,’ the psychiatrist soothed. ‘Everything is all right.’
He looked at the swarming mass of creatures beneath him and gave one short bark of laughter. ‘I’m under siege, here!’
‘Where did they come from?’
A loud buzz made him yelp and wave his arms around, but when he looked again, there were none flying. Not in the room. It was just the buzzing in his ears. It was worse when he was tired. He was tired now.
The psychiatrist waited for Nathan to steady himself, then she asked again, ‘Nathan. Where did they come from?’
He stared at the psychiatrist, and then past her to the other three; the actors seated calmly in their armchairs, waiting for their audience to respond, while around them the floor seethed with movement.
‘Warlock sent them after me. He infiltrated the network. Warlock is like, some kind of hackmeister. I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s there, and then he’s gone. He’s, like . . . I don’t know . . . He — he’s a . . .’ He tried to remember how he had described Warlock to Doran. ‘A phantom. That’s it. I tried to take him on, but he was way too powerful. Too many back doors, secret passageways — too fast — too clever. He infected the system with a virus. It — the virus — it mutated to make a superbug.’ He used his hands as though placing the information like packages on a shelf. ‘The superbug reproduced.’ He stopped, his emotions almost overpowering him. ‘Now, they’re . . . everywhere.’
‘And now you’re infected?’ The psychiatrist said.
Nathan took a breath and let it out in a long juddering sigh. She understood. ‘Yes.’ His lips moved, but he made no sound.
‘Are they in your blood, Nathan? These bugs?’
He shook his head. The effort of concentration and vigilance was exhausting. He lifted his hand wearily and rippled his fingertips over his scalp, tracing the path the creature took.
‘Do you have a listening device in your brain, Nathan?’
For a moment he didn’t quite grasp what she was saying. Then he clenched his fists in anguish. ‘No. NO!’ Hadn’t she been listening to a word he said? He spoke fast, trying to block out the regular click click click of the bugs’ feet gripping and slipping on the tubular steel legs of the table.
‘It’s not a metaphor, it’s a bug. Like a beetle — or — or maybe a woodlouse.’ His head ached and he could feel the bug moving around inside his skull, squirming from layer to layer of the cortex, seeking out his private thoughts. Broadcasting them to these strangers. He put both hands to his head, trying to stop it.
‘I’m sorry,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘I’m trying to understand. How could something as big as a beetle get inside your head?’
He was tired of explanations. Tired of keeping the creatures at bay. Afraid to close his eyes for fear they would rush him.
‘Nathan?’
Oh, God. He brought his hands down, rapping the tabletop to punctuate his answer. ‘It’s light energy and digital pulses. It’s virtual.’
‘Which is why you disconnected the electrical equipment.’
‘Yes.’ Thank God — yes . . . ‘I thought the infra-red was safe. No connection.’
‘Your infra-red keyboard and mouse?’
He nodded, near collapse. ‘It shouldn’t have been possible.’ His skin twitched as he listened to the millions of glassy bugs looking for a way in. ‘The one in my head. It jumped the gap on an infra-red carrier wave.’ A spasm convulsed him and he said, ‘I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.’
* * *
Dr Jane Pickering sat at her computer, her notebook next to Nathan Wilde’s case notes which lay open on the desk. It was eight-thirty p.m., and she could hear the bucolic tones of Beethoven’s Sixth faintly from the sitting-room below. She knew that a glass of Merlot was poured, waiting for her, next to the paperback she had started the night before. She sighed and looked again at the screen.
‘Patient agitated, insomniac, delusional, but not delirious,’ she wrote. ‘Possible amphetamine psychosis. Mr Wilde has one previous admission for amphetamine poisoning.’
‘Elements of paranoid psychosis,’ she continued. ‘I believe he thinks we can read his thoughts — that these “bugs” are after him.’
Her fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard. ‘He explored different meanings of the word “bug” in his narrative, viz: virus/bug — bug/beetle — bug/microchip — bug in the system. On one occasion, he called me a “spychiatrist”. This play on words, together with the paranoia, giving a possible alternative diagnosis of schizophrenia.’
She hit the return key twice and began a new heading in bold type. ‘Recommendations: Droperidol as sedative.’ She knew that this would be effective whether the delusions were triggered by drugs or psychosis. ‘Accelerate renal elimination of the amphetamines by acidification of urine with ascorbic acid for two days. When his system is detoxified, we’ll talk again.’
She hit the return key once more, followed by the caps lock. ‘BE VIGILANT FOR SIGNS OF DYSPHORIA. AS THE AMPHETAMINES WORK THEIR WAY OUT OF HIS SYSTEM THE PATIENT MAY BE A SUICIDE RISK.’
She pressed control S simultaneously to save the work, and was about to shut down, when another thought occurred to her. She found the passage relating to a tentative diagnosis of schizophrenia and added, ‘Patient indicated that he may have unintentionally hurt somebody. Recommend further exploration when the patient has stabilised.’
Chapter Twenty-four
The pavements glistened with recent rain and the air was chill and damp, but the showers held off on the drive to the park. Foster had received the call on his office landline only ten minutes earlier. She had demanded his mobile number, then given instructions.
‘Grant Avenue,’ she said. ‘At the edge of Wavertree Playground.’ This marked her as an outsider: since the land was gifted to the city in 1895 by an anonymous benefactor the park had been known as ‘The Mystery’. It had survived the great sell-off of the eighties and speculators’ bids in the new millennium almost unchanged, except for the new sports hall and pavilion at the north end.
Megan told him to leave his car facing the junction with Smithdown Road, as close to the junction as possible, which meant that she intended to make her escape in the opposite direction.
‘If I think you’ve brought company, the deal’s off,’ she said. ‘If you’re wearing a wire, deal’s off. Try to stop me leaving—’
‘Let me guess,’ he interrupted. ‘Deal’s off?’
‘We should get along fine,’ she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
Technical Support traced the call to a public phone box in Lime Street Station.
The surveillance team held back further than was the norm. It was agreed that Foster would stay in touch by mobile with Will Garvey who, as the most experienced in surveillance, was lead officer.
Megan contacted Foster again as he got out of the car. He put Garvey on hold, knowing that Technical Support would already be triangulating the connection, placing her call within a five-yard location.
‘I see you have the box,’ she said without preamble.
‘Man of my word,’ he said, tucking the shoebox carefully under one arm and scanning the street, his eyes sharp, but his posture relaxed, almost indolent. He saw a woman hurrying from her car to one of the terraced houses that lined one side of the avenue, facing the park. Inside the railings, walking away, a man exercised his dog, his shoulders hunched against the cold, the dog
some way behind him, moving stiffly, like it had an arthritic hip. No glint of binoculars, no tell-tale movement at the windows of the houses.
‘Cross the street diagonally left.’ There was no trace of nervousness in her voice; it had the same warmth and quiet control as before. ‘There’s a steel bollard allowing access to the park.’
He found it immediately: a narrow gap in the six-foot-high spiked iron railings, a hangover from the Victorian era when parks were locked and patrolled at night.
‘Go onto the path and walk until I tell you to stop.’
He did, keeping the phone clamped to his ear, wondering where the hell she could be hiding in this flat, open landscape. A clump of trees fifty metres away, maybe, or the electrical substation twenty metres further on. She could just as easily have been huddled in one of the thirty or more cars parked, near-side wheels on the kerb, along the length of the avenue. The park was unlit, but moonlight silvered the footpath, reflecting coldly from the rainwater that stood in puddles here and there.
‘Okay, you can stop.’
He turned full circle, and when he faced the railings again she was striding towards him across the street. He checked the side road opposite. No sign of a silver Audi TT. He made a pantomime of ending the call, holding his phone up for her to see, surreptitiously opening up the line to Garvey again.
It was definitely her. Sara’s sketch was a close likeness. Megan had cut her hair a little shorter and she looked a little hollow around the eyes, but Sara had captured the delicate nose and full lips, as well as something subtler — a solemnity of expression that was born from something deep and painful.
‘Are you alone?’ she asked.
Foster looked around him. ‘You see anyone?’
She satisfied herself that she didn’t before saying, ‘Open your jacket, please.’
He unzipped his Berghaus, awkwardly juggling the box and his phone.
‘Now the shirt.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you? It’s freezing!’
She raised one eyebrow but said nothing. She stood back from the railings, well out of reach, every nerve ending alert to the possibility of danger; she watched each car that passed from the corner of her eye until she was sure it wasn’t a threat — if a cat sulked by against the walled gardens of the terraces, Foster thought she would see it. He sighed, unbuttoning his shirt and shivering involuntarily in a gust of wind.
SEE HER DIE a totally gripping mystery thriller (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 2) Page 15