by R J Bailey
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last.
‘For what?’
‘Last year. Giving you up.’
‘Jesus, they’d have found me sooner or later. I’m sorry I involved you.’
He pushed me away, holding on to both my shoulders. ‘So we’re both sorry. But that’s not why you’re crying now.’
I sniffed and composed myself a little. ‘No.’
‘This isn’t the Sam I know of old.’
‘No. She’s M.I.A. for the minute.’ I thought of Freddie’s comment, about how she loved me but didn’t like me at the moment. It stung harder than I had imagined, now I’d had time to digest it. ‘It’s Jess . . .’
‘You have news?’
‘Not exactly. Well, yes. Look, I need to see Jordan. I need his geeky brain.’
‘Yeah, I think he brought that one in today. Come with me.’
The lad was sitting in his office out the back of the hangar that housed mostly Italian cars in various states of undress. He smiled when he saw me and turned down the music that sounded like the mating calls of a couple of angle grinders. Jordan had suffered some oxygen starvation at birth, which left him with a slight defect and an arm that didn’t always play ball, but he knew his way around a computer in a way I couldn’t comprehend.
While Jack fetched me a coffee, I explained to Jordan about Saanvi, Snapchat, the iPhone 5S and Connie Farnham, the policewoman.
‘There might be something on there,’ said Jordan, in a tone that suggested he didn’t hold out much hope. ‘The computer guys the cops use are pretty good at this game. But if your woman could find out if they have used something like Dumpster or FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery to look for .nomedia files.’
‘Would Snapchat keep the images? You know, stored in some giant mainframe in Greenland?’
‘Hold on.’ He tapped on a keyboard with his good hand and the screen filled with rows of tiny writing. When he read his voice was slippery with the sibilance his condition sometimes lent his words. ‘This is from its terms and conditions. Listen to this: “You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sub-licensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods.” ’
‘Wow.’ That seemed to cover all the bases. It said: everything you do on our site is ours to keep forever and do with as we like. ‘What’s your point?’
‘The point is . . . why would you have to grant all those rights to images that don’t exist?’ Jordan said.
‘So they do keep them?’
A shrug. ‘Who knows? They say not. There’s 700 million messages a year. That’s a lot of storage.’
‘But?’
‘I’m just sayin’, is all. Maybe some get kept.’
‘Could you hack them?’
He chuckled at the thought. ‘Hack Snapchat? Fucksake, Sam, I’m not that good. You’d need . . . you’d need more resources than I’ve got and even if you got in, how would you find a couple of images among 700 million?’
‘I guess.’
‘Your best hope is that they are still on the original phone.’
I stood up and did some stretching. I needed some exercise. It had been a while since I’d had a good run or lifted any weights. Jack came back with the coffees and a Coke for Jordan. I drank in silence and they were wise enough to let me.
I was at a loss what to do next. One thing kept me together: Jess is out there, even if she has got a tattoo that says ‘Poobag’, and she misses me. That thought kept me breathing.
‘Look, there is the possibility she posted somewhere else. There is a piece of kit called IAR. That’s Image Approximation Recognition. They say it was developed by GCHQ but I think that’s just bollocks. But if you sketch a version of the image, then feed it into the web, it comes up with all approximate matches.’
‘Jesus.’
‘So this friend of Jess’s, could she do a sketch of the photo?’
‘Like an identikit?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m sure Connie could get a police artist to talk it out of her.’
‘Thing is, it doesn’t work with common set-ups. A selfie, for instance. I mean, there’s how many photos of people grouped together grinning into a phone camera? But maybe someone showing their foot? You’d only be down to millions, not billions.’
‘So still a needle in a bleedin’ haystack?’ said Jack.
‘Needle in a field of haystacks,’ Jordan admitted. ‘But worth a try.’
‘Anything is worth a try,’ I said, trying not to sound quite as despondent as I felt. ‘Can you do this?’
He shook his head. ‘No. You need a lot more crunching power than I’ve got. And my guess is the cops won’t have the time or the manpower. Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘No, it’s good you did.’ Another ray of light, another sliver of hope.
‘And if you do get an image, you can get it scanned for metadata. There’s often info hidden in the photo.’
‘Such as?’
‘Where, when, what phone.’
‘You mean like co-ordinates?’
‘Yes. There might – not always – but there might be a GPS tag on there.’
‘So if we do get a picture, we could tell . . .’
‘Exactly where it was taken, yes.’
The ray of light exploded into a supernova.
I have a favourite tree on Hampstead Heath. After a run, and before a swim in the lido or the Ladies’ Pond, I usually sit and stare at it. I used to jog along the canal at Islington, but I’d rented that flat out. When Paul died – when Paul was murdered – I abandoned Chiswick because of all the ghosts. Something similar happened at the canal. I could no longer bear to be in the flat alone. I was always waiting for the sound of her key in the door, a blast of tinny music, the request for a fiver or tenner. Jess should have been everywhere, but she was nowhere. It was like someone had taken a bite out of my soul and spat it out somewhere I could never retrieve it.
So I moved to a few streets away from Freddie, a two-bedroom apartment in a modern block on Highgate Hill. The rent was scandalously high, but then so was the rent the agency was charging for my place. It evened out.
The morning after seeing Jack, I sat on the bench looking at my tree, waiting for my heart rate to drop. It stood alone and remote in the centre of a triangular plain of grass, which was still glossy from the spring rains. The backdrop was of lush oak and plane trees and could have come from a Gainsborough. My tree, in contrast, was as white as sun-bleached bones.
My phone rang. It was Connie, getting back to me after I had reported on my conversation with Jordan. She came straight to the point. ‘There’s nothing on there. No .nomedia file.’
‘You sure?’ I asked.
‘I got the Hi-Tech Crime Unit boys to look at it. I told them there was suspected child pornography on there. That always gets their attention. If anything was on there, they’d have found it. Nothing.’
‘How can that be?’
‘They said young Saanvi had downloaded an App called Scourge that made sure nothing was left to find. It takes out all your history, leaving no trace. Paedophiles love it apparently.’
And schoolkids with nosy mothers, no doubt. ‘OK, thanks. Any luck with the text she sent?’
‘That’s going to take longer to get a result.’
‘Well at least the country code tells us where she is.’
‘That could be a false flag. SMS texts can be routed in all manner of ways.’
Of course they could. ‘But you’ve asked Sweden to co-operate?’ Sweden had surprised me. Matt liked his places warm. Like in the 30s. But he also had a thing about Swedish women. Maybe he and Laura had split up and he’d gone fishing in colder waters.
‘We have. But it takes time. They have to conta
ct the MNO—’
‘The what?’
‘The Mobile Network Operator. It can determine which tower it came in to and which tower it came out of. But there are hoops to jump through before we can access carrier records. I’m sorry. We’ll keep pushing.’
I hung up and stared at the lonely tree once again. It looked as if it had died in an instant, a lightning strike flaying it of leaves and bark. Its ivory branches reached up to the heavens as if they were arms thrown up in agony. Why was it my favourite tree? Because of what it reminded me of.
Me.
TEN
Zürich
‘You want me to do what exactly?’
‘Get into Telia’s Swedish records and find out about the text message. Hack Snapchat and see if those two photos of Jess still exist. If not use IAR to try and locate duplicates on other servers. All the details you need are in that folder.’
Colonel d’Arcy twirled a Mont Blanc pen the size of a fat cigar around his fingers. ‘I thought your wonderful Scotland Yard was on to this?’ The tone suggested he thought the Met anything but wonderful. But then a man in his business wouldn’t approve of any cops. It was in his interest to suggest people were better off going private.
‘There’s a lot of heel-dragging going on.’ Jordan had been right. The thought of putting a whole team on the IAR programme searching for a tattooed foot had been blown out of the water faster than a Trident missile in launch mode. ‘I don’t think finding Jess is a priority. It’s a domestic. If Matt had taken her to join ISIS we’d get a lot more press and a lot more sympathy.’
The latter was in short supply outside my immediate circle. Most of the people who commented on the @findjess account that my journalist friend Nina had set up in the aftermath of the kidnapping – which is what I thought of it as – considered it all my own fault for being an absent parent. The Daily Mail had run a lurid piece about the life of a female bodyguard, as they insisted on calling me, and how it was incompatible with responsible motherhood. I was told by a producer on Crimewatch that I didn’t have a sympathetic face or manner. Fuck you, I said. Possibly proving her point.
‘That is a tall order,’ said the old man, rising creakily to his feet. He went to the window and looked down at the city. I hoped he wasn’t going to give me his virtual tour of Zürich again. ‘And expensive.’ He turned, pointing the pen at me like a dagger. ‘Even if it’s possible. I don’t know about these things. I’m still getting to grips with Morse code.’ He gave a laugh like a rusty saw.
I suspected he was as tech-savvy as I was cyber-ignorant. But it was a useful pretence. And anyway, he was a prince at outsourcing appropriate skills. ‘But of course you know a man who does know about such things?’
The Colonel nodded. ‘Several. As I say, none of them cheap. There are risks involved.’
‘How much?’
‘Risks?’ he asked.
‘Money.’ I didn’t care about risks.
‘I don’t know. Not off the top of my head. I suspect there would be no firm quote. The price would depend on how long it takes and the number of people needed to mount an attack on these corporations. It could be very high.’
He was making it sound like I was going to fund D-Day. ‘But I’ve got more to come from the Monaco retrieve.’
‘Oh, yes. Of course you have. Once Keegan gets paid from the insurance company and he pays me. But that could be . . . a while.’
‘Can you advance me?’
The returning smile was weary, as if he was hearing the question for the millionth time. He probably was. The answer had the dog-eared feel of an old paperback. One that had been left in the rain. Then pissed on by a passing dog. ‘I do believe there are very reputable banks and lending houses in this city. I am sure they would accommodate you.’
I got up. Another wasted airfare. ‘Stick it up your arse, Colonel.’
He laughed at that. ‘A very English response. Don’t be in such a hurry, Sam. Let’s consider our options.’
He walked from the window and sat back down, put on a pair of frameless glasses and opened the folder I had brought him. He looked down the first page. ‘It’s not much to go on.’
‘It’s all I’ve got.’
‘Give me a moment. I need to consult Henri down the hall.’ Henri was his son.
The Colonel left the room and I crossed the Plain of Deep Pile to the window, taking in the view across to the lake. I heard my phone buzz in my bag. I ignored it. Probably Tom. I’d spoken to him once, just to tell him where the hire car was. I had probably been a little hard on him. His heart was in the right place. As was, Freddie would doubtless say, his cock.
I wondered if I had shot myself in both feet there. I liked Tom, he had a good, solid feel, both physically and emotionally. Freddie and Nina hardly ever agreed on anything, apart from the fact I needed to take myself in hand. But they both agreed Tom was good for me. What was bad for me was not even knowing where Jess was. Maybe those internet trolls were right. I should just accept the situation. That Jess was being raised by her father. Just move on.
To kiss boys in nightclubs and get tattoos?
But who was I to say she wouldn’t have done that anyway? I was hardly a Tiger Mum. I never helicoptered over Jess like Saanvi’s parents did with her. Perhaps Jess would have jumped the rails anyway – they were pretty bent and twisted what with one thing and another. But I couldn’t do ‘just move on’. I had panic attacks when I realised I couldn’t picture Jess’s face or imagined her changing into a young woman without me being there to witness it.
The Colonel swept back into the room, a box file under his arm, Henri trailing behind. Henri was in his twenties and dressed like an accountant. Which is more or less what he was, although it was likely the business would be his one day. Assuming the Colonel really was mortal. ‘Henri, tell her.’
The son had a voice so soft I had to lean forward to catch the words. ‘We have someone who’ll do it. A German.’ He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back up his nose. ‘Goes by the name of Gorrister. Not his real name, I suspect. But I am afraid he wants ten thousand up front.’
‘Dollars?’
‘Euros,’ said the Colonel.
‘Shit.’
‘He is worth it,’ said Henri. ‘In my experience he gets results. We usually use him for accessing financial records that others would rather were . . . kept under wraps, shall we say.’
The Colonel sat and opened the box file. Then he turned on his computer. ‘I just need to check a couple of emails. Thank you, Henri.’
After his son had left, he began tapping at his keyboard, his face immobile as he read the screen.
‘He’s a nice young man. Henri, I mean. Is he your designated successor?’ I asked, although I couldn’t imagine the words ‘One day, son, all this will be yours’ coming from Colonel d’Arcy’s mouth.
‘We’ll see.’ The Colonel’s eyes flicked up, as fast as a lizard’s. ‘He hasn’t enjoyed quite the life we have.’ Too soft, was that what he was saying? ‘An MBA from Lausanne Business School is not quite a stint in Iraq or Algeria, is it?’ the Colonel confirmed. ‘But, don’t worry.’ He gave his wheezy laugh. ‘I’m not going anywhere for a while. Now give me a moment.’
In other words, shut up. Eventually he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘So, the good news is, I can advance you the money for a job.’
‘Not another retrieval?’
‘No, this one is right up your street. I mentioned it last time you were here, but it wasn’t greenlit then. PPO needed. Client has to be in Luxembourg for an emergency board meeting. Client lives in New York. And is afraid of flying.’
I remembered now. ‘So what am I meant to do? Row across the Atlantic?’
He put his head to one side and gave me a quizzical look. I suspected he thought I should be more grateful. ‘They’ll come by sea.’
‘Not that much of an emergency then.’
‘The fear of flying dictates the transport. It means time will be
of the essence once the client reaches this side of the Atlantic.’
‘Why do they need a PPO?’
‘Well, apparently there are parties who would rather the Luxembourg meet didn’t take place.’
‘What kind of parties?’
‘The unpleasant kind.’
‘The armed and dangerous kind?’ I asked.
He showed me his palms in a what-can-you-do? gesture. ‘You could say that.’
‘Surely the client could bring their own home-grown muscle?’
‘Apparently not.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Even if I liked being an armed guard – which I don’t – I’m not licensed to carry a weapon in France. And I won’t be approved in the current climate.’ Nor, it went without saying, with my SIA suspension. ‘I don’t want to end up doing five years in a French prison because I had to carry a pistol. Just on the off chance there’ll be trouble.’
‘That’s not your problem. We have a FITLO.’
A FITLO was yet another of the acronyms the world of close protection loves. Firearms Trained and Licensed Operative. ‘French?’
‘Hungarian.’
I had a mental flash of a bullet-headed thug like Bojan, the Serbian who once tried to stab me in what was his idea of a fair fight (although only he had a knife). ‘Who is he?’
‘George Konrad.’
Europe is awash with gorillas with guns. They were mostly hitmen. That was where the easy money was. Offing someone’s rival for cash, no questions asked on either side except who, where and how much? But the real thing, the FITLO, was a rare bird, because his or her job was to stop the hit. Some did it because it was morally more attractive than mere assassination, others because it was more of a challenge. And then there was the financial benefit of it being a less crowded field. ‘George Konrad? I don’t know him, do I?’ I asked.
‘Unlikely. He’s good, so I am reliably informed, and that’s all you need to know.’ His eyes flicked to the screen. ‘Very good, so they say. You’ll be in charge of driving and choosing the route. He’ll be there in case a situation arises.’