But she saw little point explaining this. Tarkken had a stick so far up his butt, she thought it would probably be visible if he opened his mouth wide enough. He’d made up his mind about Marta, and nothing she said would likely change it.
At least he hadn’t let that dislike colour his interpretation of events today. In fact, aside from their usual bickering, he’d seemed almost… reasonable. And concerned about her safety. Marta had almost laughed when he said as much. Nearly asked if he’d be pleased if she got bumped off. But whatever it was he had against her, he was professional enough to do his job without letting emotions colour things. He’d asked his questions, got the information he needed, and made the right decision - in Marta’s view - based on it. Coupled with the fact that he was going to drive her home, she could almost warm to the guy.
By a fraction of a degree. Maybe.
“Can I get Piotr Kowalczyk’s stuff, too?” she asked, batting her eyelids at the custody sergeant.
He looked like he was about to protest, but then Marta’s father walked up beside her, giving her a broad smile.
“An eventful morning,” he said, as if they’d just been shopping and had witnessed a shoplifter being apprehended by store security, or something else out of the ordinary but inconsequential and categorically not involving them.
“Hold this while I sign our stuff out,” Marta said, an edge to her voice.
She shoved what she’d already collected into his arms then grabbed the things from the box the sergeant had just put on the desk in front of her. She slipped his phone into her pocket, then grabbed his wallet, opening it to see two hundred pounds in cash lined up inside it, the notes crisp and new. She didn’t know if the thought that he’d taken it out of the bank she was paying in to for him, or the idea that he might have earned it from one of his new friends was worse.
“I’m taking this,” she said, removing it and shoving it into her pocket. “So you aren’t tempted to go to the pub again.”
“But that’s my…” he started to protest.
Marta silenced him with a look. “I’d think long and hard about what you’re about to say before you let the next words out.”
For once in his life, Piotr was sensible and remained quiet.
Marta moved them away from the front desk and deposited their stuff on the floor so she could sort through it. She put her bag over her shoulder, transferring the cash and her phone into it, while Piotr pulled on his jacket, sorting his wallet and various other bits and bobs into its many pockets. Marta reached for his phone to give to him when she saw her father’s new drug dealer friend being brought through, a smug grin on his face.
He’d been repulsive enough before she’d known his EHPL association. Now, she could barely stand to look at him.
She wondered for a moment why they were being let go. If the Met thought they had links to the EHPL, then surely they were dangerous and needed to be off the streets? But then she recalled Tarkken’s words.
It’s about taking out Nick Gillespie.
An idiot like the guy smirking at the custody sergeant right now wouldn’t have the brains to organise and coordinate an attack like the one at St James’s Park. But he might just be exactly the right sort of stupid to lead the police to someone who did.
Marta slipped the back off the phone she’d bought for her father, retrieving the tracker she’d stashed inside it. She’d have to get a new one for her father and find an opportunity to hide it on him again, but it was worth not knowing where he was for a couple of days for this chance. She handed the phone back to Piotr, then, with the tracker hidden in between her two forefingers, she walked right up to the guy at the desk.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s your name?”
He turned to her, eyes tracking up and down as if the only possible thing she could want his name for was so she knew what to call him in bed.
“Ethan,” he said, actually going as far as to lick his lips.
Marta shoved him, hard, using the opportunity to slip the tracker device into the breast pocket of his jacket. She felt the entire room tense, several officers making moves towards her, so she stepped back out of Ethan’s space, jabbing a finger at him.
“You stay away from my father, Ethan,” she said, letting the anger she’d been feeling slip into her voice. “You don’t go anywhere near him.”
Ethan just smirked as a hand closed round Marta’s upper arm, pulling her away. She turned, expecting it to be an officer ready to escort her out of the building, only to see Tarkken with a look like thunder.
Oops.
“Let’s go,” he said, his accent twisting the English words into strange new shapes, steering her towards the front entrance.
Out on the car park, he marched her over to a large black car with tinted windows, the driver sat in the front scanning through the news on his phone. Once beside it, Tarkken let her go, stepping back out of her personal space.
“Are you a complete idiot?” he snapped, back in his own tongue now they were no longer being watched.
“No,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Let me deal with someone who is, and then I’ll explain.”
Piotr Kowalczyk stepped out of the police station behind them, beaming at them both.
“You’ve got to keep your eye on this one, my friend,” he said, addressing Tarkken as he wrapped an arm round Marta’s shoulder. “She’s trouble when she wants to be.”
“That is rich, coming from you,” Marta said, extricating herself from his embrace.
“Not still angry with me, moja córka?” her father said, pouting.
“Furious,” Marta said. “So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll head back to the lovely house I found for you, apologise profusely to the lovely people who live there, and then spend the rest of your day filling in job application forms.”
She watched him consider refusing and decide against it. It wasn’t exactly enthusiasm for his new life, nor was it deep gratitude for everything she’d done for him. But it was a start.
“I’ll make this up to you,” he said.
“You will if you want me to continue speaking to you,” Marta said.
Piotr nodded, but he shot a sly grin in Tarkken’s direction. “I knew you had a young man.”
“He’s not my young man,” Marta said.
“Are you embarrassed that you lied to me, or are you embarrassed that you’re dating a police officer?”
“Funnily enough, Dad, the only thing I’m embarrassed about is that I got arrested this morning. Because of you.”
“We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said with a shrug.
“Yes,” Marta said. “We were. But do you know what increases the chances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Making friends with criminals. Why don’t you go home and have a long, hard think about that while you’re finishing some of those job applications, okay? I’ll call you later to check in.”
And have a little chat with you about the EHPL.
She thought he might protest, but he must have sensed the knife edge of her temper, and decided to live to annoy her another day. He even managed to look slightly sheepish as he waved goodbye.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Marta let out a strangled sound of frustration and anger.
“I should have just gone with the others to the Olympia. Should have just left him to it.” She turned back to Tarkken, only to be met with a look of barely suppressed fury. “And I see you’ve remembered that you don’t like me.”
“I just put my neck out for you in there, and you repay that by behaving in an… uncontrolled fashion?”
Marta could tell he’d wanted to say worse, but being in a public place limited his vocabulary as well as his volume. The tentative understanding they’d reached in the interview room had evaporated.
“I was perfectly controlled, thank you very much,” Marta said. She stepped closer to him, intending to keep their conversation between them, but Tarkken’s desire for discretion was
clearly outweighed by his desire not to be anywhere near her, because he immediately stepped back. “Do you really think I wanted to be up in the face of a guy who wouldn’t know personal hygiene if it slapped him? I was just using my fake but justifiable anger to get close enough to slip a tracker into his pocket.”
Whatever Tarkken had been about to say died on his lips. “A tracker?”
Marta gave him another sweet smile. “I’d hidden one in my father’s phone so I could keep an eye on where he’s going. It’s how I knew where to find him this morning. Well, my father can now go wherever he pleases and I’ll be none the wiser, but our new friend Ethan is unknowingly beaming his location to me. Which means, as long as he continues to wear that jacket without putting it through the washing machine, or checking the pocket, we can figure out exactly where he’s going.”
Tarkken stared at her a long moment without speaking. Then, eventually, said, “I think the danger of him washing it is minimal.”
Marta thought he might have even been a little bit impressed.
“So,” she said, allowing herself to feel a little smug about it, “I’ve got our guy’s movements covered. What else can we do to assist the police investigation?”
Any hint of positive feeling vanished from Tarkken’s expression.
“There is no ‘we’,” he said. “I appreciate that little bit of quick thinking there, but you can hand over the details for how to track the device to me, and I’ll take it from here.”
“What, you don’t think I’m stupid, but you don’t think I’m smart enough to play with the big boys, either?”
“I think you’re a civilian.”
“You think I’m a security issue waiting to happen.”
He actually bared his teeth, like a cornered animal. “Marta, it’s my job, not yours.”
“I know that,” Marta said, frustration threatening to overwhelm her. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
Marta straightened her back, ready to argue her case, but a police car pulled in to the station car park behind them, a timely reminder of exactly where they were.
“Fine,” she said, tempted to follow it up with ‘I don’t need yours either’ and flounce away, head held high.
But she just knew the Underground would be baking hot, and the thought of sitting on a crowded, dirty train was intolerable. Unlike Asha, Marta couldn’t name the make and model of the car just by looking at the passenger door, but she knew expensive when she saw it. Expensive meant good air conditioning, so she just glowered at Tarkken and got in.
After the world’s most awkward car journey, they arrived on her street. Marta grabbed her things and got out of the car. Tarkken got out too, turning to her.
“Are you going to give me that tracking information?” he said.
“I thought you didn’t need my help?” Marta said, walking away from the car without looking back.
Petty. So petty. But so satisfying, too.
She waited until she heard the door shut, the engine start and the car drive away before she stopped, turned, and made a very rude gesture in the direction of the retreating vehicle.
“Asshole,” she muttered, walking towards the side alley that lead to her home.
Mouse gave Marta a plaintive howl as she stepped through the second door into her living space. She was curled up in the mess of Marta’s bedsheets and had a very aggrieved look on her face.
“I know, I know,” Marta said, heading for the kitchen. “I missed dinner time. But in my defence, Mouse, I was arrested.”
She pulled out the cat food and poured some into Mouse’s bowl. Mouse sauntered over, giving the food a long sniff before deeming it acceptable. Her eyes were still narrowed when she looked up at Marta, a definite ‘about time, Human’ in her expression.
Immediate priorities taken care of, Marta headed straight for her bathroom. Stripping off her clothes felt like peeling off a layer of filth. Stepping under the hot jets of the shower was practically orgasmic. Marta selected her nicest fruity body wash and scrubbed herself from head to toe, then shampooed her hair twice before working her expensive conditioner into the body and ends of her hair.
Feeling refreshed and somewhere close to comfortable again, she towelled the thick of the moisture from her hair and pulled on a bath robe. The mirror revealed her eyes to be a little baggy, her skin a little drawn, but nothing desperate. A good night’s sleep and twenty four hours without having to deal with a crisis would fix it. A touch of moisturiser had her feeling close to her usual self.
Food. The last ingredient to feeling something like normal. A decent meal to chase the last remnants of crappy vending machine coffee from her taste buds. She pulled out her phone, checking the tracker app briefly - Ethan was home and therefore not doing anything of interest to Marta - before ordering food in.
Mouse leapt up into her lap, her claws digging in to the exposed skin of Marta’s legs as she looked for the optimal position for petting. Marta scratched behind her ears.
“I’d get used to being abandoned for hours on end, if I were you, Mouse,” Marta said. “I think things are going to continue to be a bit unpredictable for a while.”
She glanced at her phone again, wondering whether she should message her father with a reminder about staying in, getting his job applications done.
No, she decided. She was his daughter, not his mother. She could only present him with the options, it was down to Piotr to choose the right one. She’d done everything she could.
Besides, she had bigger problems. Much as she didn’t like Tarkken, she had to admit that Cael didn’t strike her as the sort to hire someone less than competent for a job. If Cael’s appointed Head of Security was sniffing round EHPL members, then he had to have some suspicions that something was up. And if those bigoted idiots were planning something, then that put Asha in danger.
If Tarkken was too stupid to accept her assistance… well, there was nothing stopping Marta doing a little investigating of her own.
Shifting Mouse out of her lap, Marta headed to her bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Just as she finished dressing, her dinner arrived. She served it up, then headed into her office, pulling up the tracker app on one of her many screens so she could keep an eye on Ethan. Then, fuelled by takeout and indignation, she loaded up her various ghost profiles on the top social media websites and started searching.
Marta enjoyed social media for the memes and the cat pictures, but if you knew where to look, you could find some real cesspools. White supremacists, religious extremists, conversion therapists… And muddled in amongst them, the latest face of Human hatred - those against the Intergalactic Community. It was here that she lurked, following the links from group to group, trying to discern the difference between the talkers and the doers. Tarkken probably had AI to do this sort of thing for him, but sometimes Marta thought it took a Human eye - or at least a non-artificial one - to really get an in depth understanding of something.
And over the next hour, that was what she tried to do. She joined groups, read posts and comments, searching through the hate and vitriol for something useful. Her eyes were burning when the app tracking Ethan’s location pinged to say he’d moved.
Marta cast a glance at the screen, expecting him to stagger to the nearest off licence, but he moved far too quickly for that. He’d got into a vehicle. Marta watched his little dot move for twenty minutes, finally coming to rest at what looked like a reasonable house in a reasonable neighbourhood. Pulling up the internet, she found the address and had a look at it on a map.
It was a large property - not quite stately, but getting there. Like most places in the area of London, it wasn’t set in huge grounds, but it had some. Marta searched for the address, trying to find who lived there, but came up empty.
Marta’s business was in security systems. People… not really her thing. But it just so happened that she knew someone who found people for a living. And unlike Tarkken, Marta wasn’t avers
e to asking for help.
She pulled up the Forum, opened her private messages and sent one to Disquord.
Kotka: Busy?
It only took a moment for him to reply.
Disquord: Always. But, for you, I can be available. Need something?
Kotka: Your expertise. I can’t afford to pay you. Can I owe you a favour?
Disquord: Sure. What’s the job?
Kotka: Not a job. This is personal.
Disquord: Family shit?
Asha was Marta’s family every bit as much as Piotr was. More so, even.
Kotka: yes.
Disquord: Then you don’t have to owe me anything :)
Kotka: Might want to let me explain what’s involved before making statements like that ;)
Disquord: explain away…
Marta’s hands hovered over the keyboard. What to explain, what to hold back. She wanted to believe she could trust Disquord, but she also didn’t really know him. She typed out the beginnings of sentences, deleted them, started again, only to delete them again, before typing out a question.
Kotka: What do you know about the EHPL?
Marta rested her finger on the enter key a long moment, then hit it.
Chapter 6
THE SPLITTING HEADACHE FOLLOWED TARKKEN IN to the next day, almost bad enough to persuade him that a second visit to Doctor Mannoran was wise. Breakfast and some pain killers later, he’d talked himself out of it. The pulse behind his left eye had settled to a low throb. Ignorable, if annoying.
He headed for his office, doing a slight double-take as he entered the security hub, the absence of activity still surprising to him. He missed it, he realised. As much as it could be a pain trying to stay shallow in the emotions of his employees, he missed the energy of other people working around him. The small space of the security hub felt cavernous without them.
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