by Abi Silver
‘Why did you call Toby?’
‘What?’
‘Toby Barnes. You contacted him without telling me.’
‘I’m not sure I even remember now. It was weeks ago and things were stalling with the project. I thought he could help get them moving again. And he’s a nice lad, young, ambitious, very malleable, open to new ideas.’
‘And Juan Herrera?’
‘You wouldn’t let us in through the front door to audit your data security, I thought the back might be left open.’
‘Oh my God. It was you. All along it was you.’
‘Now you’re being overly dramatic.’
‘It was you who kept delaying things, putting the date back. It wasn’t Alan or the lawyers. It was you. Why would you do that?’
Peter finished his drink and put the glass down on James’ desk. He patted his belly twice. ‘I might have used my influence to advise caution once or twice,’ he replied.
‘I thought you wanted progress. We were on the journey together. I trusted you.’
‘You think you’re such a fantastic champion for the car industry. Frankly, James, you’re a royal pain in the neck. Always getting in the way of what was necessary. For an entrepreneur, you really don’t like moving with the times, but you can’t see it. And you carried a lot of the others with you. I was merely contemplating possible, less rigid alternatives for your company’s future. Toby was one of them. That’s all.’
James stared at Peter. He reached across the desk. Peter flinched. Then he picked up Peter’s glass and moved it onto a coaster.
‘Still keeping up the pretence that you were, somehow, doing the right thing, defending the moral high ground,’ James said. ‘I know about the data which was deleted from the EDR. Why did you do that? Why did you remove evidence that pointed to my innocence?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘That car coming the other way. It was deleted from the EDR. I suppose you thought that if I was in prison, you could steal my company. Was that it? Were you in cahoots with Bruce? Two children died on that road.’
‘Now you’re straying into fantasy,’ Peter said. ‘I didn’t delete anything. What a ridiculous, slanderous idea.’
‘Someone erased material from the EDR. It wasn’t Juan, I hardly think it was your expert; that leaves you, and you’ve just admitted you wanted me out of the way. And you had ample opportunity. My solicitor told me the EDR was removed from my car well before the court application.’
‘You were the one who rang me up and asked me to help make sure the investigation came to the right conclusion.’
‘That was before I knew you were mounting a takeover of my company.’
Peter stood up and leaned over James.
‘This conversation is demeaning to both of us,’ he said. ‘I have always acted with the interests of the Department of Transport and the public firmly in mind. I will only say this once more. I did not delete any material from your car’s EDR. And I warn you, if you repeat your horrible accusation, I will sue. It’s going to be hard enough for me to find another position after all your public, self-serving pontification.
‘And don’t get all moralistic with me, either, about the Layton children. In government, decisions are made every day which have far-reaching consequences and affect millions of lives of ordinary people, quite often condemning them to death. And what do we all do? Sob into our handkerchiefs, wave our hands theatrically, pretend they’re random acts, unconnected with us, because the link isn’t so obvious.
‘So you’ve got caught out this time because you were personally involved and you can’t handle it. That’s what this is really about. My advice to you is to leave it alone. You’ve been lucky. Accept the hand you’ve been dealt this time and move on. You know, better than most, the long-term benefits of your vehicles. Those two deaths, sad as they are, are merely a drop in the ocean. Will you forgive me if I leave now? I think if I stay any longer, I may say something I really regret.’
75
JUAN WAS SCREENED by two overflowing cocktails when Constance and Judith entered the lounge. He swooped towards them with a wide grin, handed them each a drink and instructed them to stay put, while he sourced another for himself. As Juan returned with two more glasses, Constance found herself alone with him, Judith abruptly steaming off in the opposite direction.
‘Did I interrupt you?’ Constance asked.
‘Interrupt? You? Never.’
Constance pointed at the drinks. ‘You have two.’
‘Ha! No. Shhh! They’re both for me. I think James asked the barman to make them very small. He’s probably worried about his carpets. I would be. So I have to double up. You’ll see. Try it.’
Constance eyed her cocktail suspiciously.
‘Have you been to this house before?’ Constance asked, and Juan frowned. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It just sounded a bit like you were still being the lawyer,’ he said, ‘asking questions, and I thought this was supposed to be a party.’
‘OK. I was only going to say how lovely it looks with the lights outside and all the colours in here. I came once in the day and it seemed so stark and cold. Sorry. It’s never that easy to switch off, I suppose.’
Juan drained one glass and moved the second to his lips. His eyes wandered to Martine, who was chatting animatedly to Jeremy and Will at the far side of the room.
‘If you want to go and talk to Martine, that’s fine with me,’ Constance said, following his gaze.
‘I’m happy with the company I have here,’ he said. ‘Why do you think I want to talk to Martine?’
Constance took a large gulp of her drink and noticed, for the first time, that a faint scar ran across Juan’s left cheek, ending at his top lip. She mused on how it might have been inflicted; an unfriendly pet, a nasty fall, a flashing blade.
‘There’s one more thing I have been thinking about, since the court,’ Juan said.
Constance felt her joy at being out for the evening evaporating. And Juan had berated her for talking shop. She lowered her drink.
‘It only came into my head this afternoon, since I talked to James and Toby about deleting data from the EDR. I don’t have any “proof” – is that what you say?’
‘Wait a minute. You deleted data from the EDR?’
‘Not me, and I don’t know it was deleted. I can’t be sure. But there was nothing on there about the other car, coming the other way. Mr Bukowski.’
‘And James knows this?’
‘He believes it was Peter, the guy from the government. The one who gave me the EDR. Especially because he kept calling me and Toby and trying to get us to tell him stuff, before the crash. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘I was thinking again about why James’ car might have crashed. It’s not very likely, but you asked me to tell you about anything. James always says, in public, that it’s not a risk at all, in all his meetings with the other guys but, privately, he has me working on it. Just me. No one else. James understands it’s a really big risk.’
Constance found herself leaning in towards Juan and the pungent aroma of vanilla he was exuding was more welcome than she wanted to admit.
‘What risk?’ she asked.
‘Hacking,’ he said. ‘James’ car was the old model, far less secure. It could have been hacked.’
‘Is that difficult to do?’
‘You need to know your way around a computer and understand the software controlling the cars, but it can be done. You just find a way in, usually through an internet connection, like the GPS or stereo. Once you’re in, you can migrate to any other parts of the vehicle that are computer-controlled.’
‘Would it need to be someone near the car?’
‘No. You can sit with a laptop a hundred mile
s away and do it, if you know how. Of course, it’s easier if you can see what you’re doing.’
‘And what happens when you hack the computer?’
‘Anything. You can take control of the brakes, the steering, the acceleration.’
‘The driver loses control?’
‘Of whatever part the hacker takes over.’
‘Why did James stick with his older car, if he knew it could be hacked?’
‘Toby says he loves that car and, look, just because a car can be hacked by a very determined person, doesn’t mean it ever will be. All our home computers can be hacked, our phones, but it doesn’t stop us all using them.’
‘Yes but the consequences aren’t the same.’
‘Agreed. Look. I’m just doing what you asked. I don’t know that’s what happened. But it would explain the crash.’
Constance nodded slowly, the gears of her mind turning slowly around.
‘I see that,’ she said. ‘But who on earth would want to hack James’ car and why?’
76
JAMES WAS still seated at his desk when Judith knocked and entered, all in one move.
‘Lovely party,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you joining in?’
‘I am trying,’ James replied. ‘But things keep coming up. Are you intending to drag me along or did you want a private audience?’
‘The latter, I’m afraid, but I promise not to be too long-winded.’
James motioned to her to sit down.
‘I can’t deny you anything,’ he said. ‘I owe you, and Constance, so much. I doubt many lawyers, many people, would have tried so hard on my behalf.’
‘I’m curious about Toby, your “marketing assistant”?’ Judith began.
‘His mother was my partner, business partner, Imogen Walsh.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘She died, too young. We were skiing. It was just like that actress; she fell and hit her head, said she felt fine, went back to the hotel for a rest and never woke up. He found her – Toby. He was ten years old.’
‘How did he come to work for you?’
‘Imogen and I were fifty-fifty partners in the business. Under the terms of our agreement, I could have bought her shares for next to nothing, but it didn’t feel right. Her husband – he was already her ex-husband by then, I should say – arranged for them to be held on trust for Toby. Toby went to live with him in Kent, and when he finished school and was looking for work, he asked me if I would take him into the business.’
‘That’s good of you.’
‘Not really. I was thinking about it only today. I haven’t been very nice to Toby, although Imogen would probably have been harder on him. He wanted to help, to be part of SEDA. It isn’t just a job for him, it’s a connection to his mother. I’ve treated him more like a secretary, running errands, booking rooms. I finally took him to a meeting a few weeks back and he really surprised me, rose to the occasion, researched things before we went, was focused and articulate when we were there, wrote up a plan afterwards – not that we’ve been able to implement it yet, if we ever will, now.
‘But I misjudged him. Just because he didn’t have qualifications and because he wasn’t quite like his mother. She was a…a very extraordinary woman, let’s say. He also came under considerable pressure in recent weeks to…betray me and he remained loyal. He’s impressed me, after all.’
‘So will he be your successor?’ Judith asked.
James grunted. ‘I think I have a few years in me yet. Not quite the dinosaur they make me out to be. Was that all? As you say, I have other guests.’
‘I thought I saw Peter Mears in here?’
‘You know Peter?’
‘Only by reputation.’
‘He came to tell me he’s lost his job. Said it was because he supported me.’
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘He said the Bill won’t happen any day soon and it’s all my fault. You disagree?’
‘I know one or two government lawyers, and I put some feelers out. I discovered that your friend, Peter, was known to be more opinionated and vociferous than he likes people to believe. It’s often easier to deliver a bitter pill if you can pretend it’s prescribed by someone else.’
James was silent.
‘And I also heard they were planning to let him go, but not because he backed you. He wrote some papers maintaining it would be a simple process to determine fault if autonomous vehicles crashed. The Ministry had been relying on them to shape policy. He was also a staunch supporter of the hybrid. And I heard that he’d been trying to acquire information illicitly from manufacturers. Just a whisper, that last one.’
‘I asked him if he’d deleted data from the EDR, which would have exonerated me, data showing the car coming the other way,’ James said. ‘He denied it, of course, only after hinting it might have been the right thing to do. Sanctimonious prig! But he made it clear he would sue me if I repeated it.’
‘Why would he delete the data?’
‘He told me he didn’t like me, said he wanted to groom Toby to take over. That would have been easier if I was in jail. And looking back, after the accident, he pressed me to admit it was my fault – me, personally. That data showed it wasn’t, so he hid it. The more I think about it, the more I believe the whole thing may have been staged, the roadworks, the traffic light, just to get me out and he’s trying to dress it all up now as being for the public good. I know it’s far-fetched but I’ve watched House of Cards. I know that anything is possible if you have enough influence!’
A drop of perspiration ran down the side of James’ cheek and he crossed the room, ferreting around in a cupboard until he found a bottle of water. He poured himself a glass and drank it down.
‘It’s unlikely that Peter would arrange for your car to crash, even if he could,’ Judith replied. ‘The impact on the industry of any accident involving one of your vehicles was always going to be huge, especially at this critical stage. It would be a very brave – or a very stupid – man who would plan an accident now, even one that was carefully choreographed. From what I’ve heard, Peter does not strike me as either brave or stupid. Erasing data afterwards is less fantastical but, presumably, you have no proof?’
‘Smarmy bastard. All the times I took him and his wife out and he was planning my demise.’
James returned to his chair, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
‘Would you like me to say anything to Inspector Dawson, about your…concerns?’ Judith asked.
James ran his hands across the surface of his laptop and focused on her again.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘I’m not able to think clearly about this yet. No, thank you. I’ll sleep on it in any event.’
Judith walked towards the door, then she returned and sat down again.
‘Can I ask you one further question?’ she said. ‘You don’t have to answer, but it will haunt me forever if I don’t ask it at least one more time.’
‘I couldn’t have that happen, could I? Not when I am so tremendously in your debt.’
‘What do you really think went wrong on October 10th?’
James smiled sadly.
‘Understandably, you and Constance have suspected me of holding things back but, truly, I’m still not certain. And I’ve looked at the film many times, I can assure you. I see it in my dreams as well as in many of my waking hours. Most likely the temporary traffic light sign was positioned in such a way that VERA didn’t read it, failed to notice it. We’re already working on that, like many other manufacturers. And then, when it was necessary to move over to the other carriageway, with so little time to spare, VERA had to choose; she was suddenly on the trajectory to hit that car with the Polish workers – five of them – so she swerved away.
‘If the family had stayed in the central reserve they would have been saf
e. VERA would still have missed them. Perhaps she should have anticipated they would move forward, try to cross to the far side, that children would behave impetuously.’
‘A human driver might have.’
‘Possibly. That’s another area we are focusing on.’
‘So this was one of those accidents that will still happen in the future?’
‘If we can perfect the issue with the road signs, the likelihood of something like this happening again is very low. Predicting the impulses of a human child correctly – I challenge you to find any system that can do that.’
Judith finished her drink and stood up again. ‘Interesting, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘that now you seem so sure that VERA was in charge all the time – right up to the moment of impact – when you couldn’t remember just a few days ago. Of course, that would be consistent for a man who “always drives in autonomous mode” and would also explain why you couldn’t bring yourself to plead guilty.’
James was no longer smiling.
‘I suppose if you really believe that your cars will change the world, you might be able to justify to yourself lying on oath, on this occasion. It was only a “white lie” after all, saying you couldn’t remember. Or perhaps what you said just now was a slip of the tongue,’ Judith continued. ‘You must be very tired. I’m going back to the party.’ She stood up slowly. ‘This has been a very enlightening but not entirely satisfactory conversation.’
‘If I could turn back the clock and do anything to prevent those children being hurt, you know I would,’ James said.
Judith handed him her empty glass and glided out of the room.
77
AS JUAN disappeared off to the kitchen in search of more drinks, Toby approached Constance and, lurching against her heavily, he mumbled that he needed to show her around the garden. Constance squinted out into the night, stifled the comment that it would be difficult to see anything in the dark that they couldn’t see from the lounge, but Toby was most insistent, and she was forced to comply. Once he was certain they were out of earshot of the house, he began to speak.