‘We can’t go into specifics,’ replied Brocklehurst.
Blake closed his laptop.
‘I can’t fix a problem unless you tell me what it is.’
Dana looked to Brocklehurst. He stayed silent.
‘Our biggest issue is the one we flagged up at the outset. The proprietary code you developed to trawl the dark web. We’re getting anomalies that don’t make sense and frankly won’t until our engineers can review the code.’
‘The deal was to independently verify the findings. Are you saying that can’t be done?’ asked Blake.
‘You won’t release your code?’ interjected Dana.
‘Would you ask Coca cola for their recipe?’ replied Blake.
Brocklehurst leant forward, all smiles.
‘Of course not and that wasn’t the deal. Never hurts to ask, though right?’
‘We’d like some time to consider, undertake a peer review which means taking a break,’ offered Dana.
‘That’s it?’ asked Blake.
Brocklehurst smiled and got up. He leaned across the table and stretched out his hand.
‘It is. Though I’m sure you’ll be back up and running in no time.’
Blake got up and shook the offered hand. Brocklehurst turned to Stephanie and did likewise. She shook it.
‘Miss Sommers, a pleasure as always.’
Stephanie looked from Brocklehurst to Dana and back to Blake as they gathered their things and left the room.
Blake slipped his laptop into his messenger bag.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Stephanie.
‘Politics,’ replied Blake.
‘What do you mean? I thought they were behind this? Happy with the results.’
‘It’s not the results they don’t like. It’s who they implicate.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Let them do their reviews. We’ll carry on.’
‘And if they pull the plug?’
‘The core code is my IP, developed under license. If they don’t want it, I can take it to any number of law enforcement agencies.’
‘Who do you have in mind?’
‘Interpol. Should have gone with their offer in the first place.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Misplaced sense of patriotism.’
‘Never took you for the type.’
‘As I said, misplaced.’
Stephanie paused.
‘When I got your call, I thought...’
Blake looked at her.
‘Never mind.’
‘We both need some space.’
‘Still?’
‘Still.’
‘Give me a lift home?’
Blake considered it for a moment.
‘Lead the way.’
Stephanie held the door of the conference room open for him. Blake felt his heart jump. Only God could have conceived of perfection like hers. She tilted her head the same way she had done six months earlier when he first realised he was in trouble.
Blake pulled over to a stop outside Stephanie’s block.
‘I still have some of your stuff. You may as well come up and get it.’
‘I have to pick Sara up.’
‘It’ll only be a few minutes.’
‘Okay.’
They entered the building.
Blake watched Stephanie’s lithe figure climb the stairs ahead of him. She looked back and smiled and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to resist temptation. It was just so easy compared to all the complications and the history that weighed down his relationship with Julia.
Stephanie unlocked the door and she and Blake stepped in.
Immediately she turned around and draped her arms around him. Blake became rigid.
‘Please.’
Stephanie placed her head on his chest. Blake smelled her hair and closed his eyes. Stephanie looked up at him.
‘I’ve missed you so much.’
‘We can’t do this.’
Stephanie began unbuttoning his shirt.
‘I know.’
Blake placed his hand over hers.
‘We can’t.’
Stephanie simply stepped back and unzipped the back of her dress and let it fall away. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her figure was as he remembered - irresistible. She moved back and held out her hand. Blake stood firm.
‘I’m late already.’
‘Never stopped you before.’
Stephanie turned and walked into the bedroom. Blake watched her every step, wrestling with himself, briefly considering just turning around and walking out. Instead he loosened his tie and followed her in.
Sara stood at the college gates. She checked her watch. It was four in the afternoon. She looked up and down the busy road. A figure leant against the wall a few metres down and looked up nonchalantly. She tagged him for a homeless man, but his posture said something different. The homeless didn’t lean casually on walls and he was looking directly at her. She turned away and put him out of her mind.
Her phone beeped. She read the message from her dad.
‘I’m running late. You okay to make your own way?’
Sara shook her head at the message. She tapped out a reply.
‘Come on dad, not again.’
Back in the apartment Blake smiled and typed.
His response appeared on Sara’s phone. An emoji with its tongue sticking out followed by a ‘Love you too.’
Sara typed ‘Love you too’ and hit send.
Blake pocketed the phone and moved to the bed removing his jacket.
Sara stepped into the busy street. The shops were open for another hour or so. She decided to take the opportunity to see if the top she had her eye on was on sale. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford the full price, there was always something satisfying about bagging a bargain. She couldn’t explain it. Her mum said it was because she had nothing when she was little before they became her parents. Whatever it was she was a natural spendthrift, especially when it came to buying for herself.
She walked with the flow of people towards the shopping centre. Something niggled at her and she turned to look behind. Mr. Homeless was behind her walking in the same direction.
Blake laid his jacket across the back of the chair, he unbuttoned his shirt as Stephanie slipped under the covers of the bed.
Sara picked up her pace. She stopped to look in a shop window. She angled her line of sight so the window reflected the street behind her like they did in the movies. The man was nowhere. She shook her head to herself. Paranoid. Then just as she began to look away, he appeared in the crowd of faces walking towards her.
Blake’s phone buzzed. Sara’s name and picture flashed up. But Blake’s attention was focused elsewhere. Across the room, Stephanie could hear his phone but she ignored it instead slowly guiding him to her. A sharp intake of breath as she took him inside. Slowly they built up a rhythm, his phone buzzing in the background for a few more moments before abruptly stopping.
Hours later, the bedroom darker, tinged with the orange light of a dying sun, Blake slipped his arm carefully out from under Stephanie, not wanting to wake her. He sat for a moment on the edge of the bed. He looked at Stephanie’s sleeping form, shook his head and exhaled heavily.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he whispered to himself.
He retrieved his jacket from the floor and took out his phone. There were three missed calls from Sara. Blake dialed her number and it went straight to voicemail. He frowned at the phone. He tried her again. Straight to voicemail. His heart thudded a little harder before he got it under control. He slipped the phone into his pocket, got dressed, took a last look at Stephanie’s sleeping form and left.
Blake unlocked the door to his apartment, threw his keys on the sideboard, slipped off his coat and stepped into the sparse empty open-plan lounge-diner.
‘Sara?’
No response. He checked his watch. 6.30pm. He dialed Sara’s number again. It rang and th
en went straight to voicemail.
‘Hi, you’re through to Sara. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you. Thanks!’
‘Hey, I thought you’d be here by now. Call me.’
Blake hung up. He fixed himself a coffee and called Julia.
Julia picked it up immediately.
‘Hello.’
‘Hey. Is Sara with you?’ Blake asked.
‘No. Weren’t you supposed to pick her up at four?’ said Julia accusingly.
‘Change of plan. She was making her own way here.’
‘Had your hands full?’ after a moment of silence.
‘Just call me when you get through to...’
Julia closed the connection before he could finish his sentence.
Blake powered up his laptop. He brought up a map and a profile of Sara. His fingers flew over the keyboard. A stationary dot appeared on the map outside the college. The time read 4pm. Blake scrubbed the timeline forward. The dot moved along the street - then winked out.
Blake was confused. He scrolled back and forth. He shook his head and brought up another window with a Raanstaad Logo front and centre. He typed, lines of code filling the screen.
A message flashed up. ‘Estuary Communications - intrusion package initiated.’
Blake’s phone range. It was Julia.
‘I called her phone. She’s not answering. She always answers.’
‘Calm down. I’m coming.’
‘I’m calling the police.’
‘No. Julia. Don’t…’
Julia clicked off. Blake closed the laptop, slipped it into his bag, grabbed his keys and coat and hurried out.
Julia opened the door, her eyes were red. Blake stepped in as Julia ended a call on her phone.
‘What did they say?’ asked Blake.
Julia shook her head and walked through to the lounge.
‘She’s a teenager gone AWOL for a few hours. Police protocol means they log it and wait.’
Julia’s voice quivered then broke.
‘We report her missing and they do nothing? She’s a child!’ she said, bursting into tears.
‘Not in their eyes.’ replied Blake.
‘She’s our daughter.’
‘I know.’
Blake pulled open his laptop.
‘What are you doing?’ sniffed Julia, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
‘Finding her.’ replied Blake. ‘I initiated a penetration of the CCTV surveillance company that covers the area around the last place she was at.’
Blake accessed a remote host. Lines of code filled one side of the screen.
His fingers were a blur on the keyboard. A window opened up showing a view of the High Street. Blake continued typing. The video scrolled back until 4pm. The milling crowds moved backwards then froze momentarily before moving forward again.
‘You can track her phone?’ asked Julia.
‘That’s the first thing I did.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Gone.’
‘Tell the police that.’ said Julia, her voice rising.
‘I do that - they’ll shut me down.’
Blake brought up Sara’s profile. He typed in more lines of code.
Facial recognition software kicked in. A few seconds later Sara was tagged. Her body outlined in red.
‘There she is!’ exclaimed Julia.
On the screen Sara turned to look behind her then made a call on her mobile.
‘Who’s she calling?’ asked Julia, looking at Blake, and knowing the answer.
‘Me.’ Blake answered.
‘Why didn’t you pick up?’
Blake ignored her. Julia knew the answer. He brought up another window.
‘Why didn’t you pick up?’
Blake remained silent, the lead weight of guilt at the thought of what he was actually doing at the moment that Sara went missing.
Blake focused on the laptop. He typed code into the window. An algorithm kicked in. Lines started emanating from Sara to other people, the timeline scrubbed back and forth.
A few seconds passed and lines dropped away until there was only one left. It showed a man moving in step with Sara.
‘Someone’s following her.’
Julia’s hand went to her mouth stifling a cry.
Blake closed one window and opened another. He enlarged the face of the man, another window tried to match it at a frenetic pace.
‘This may take a while.’
‘You should have picked up.’
Blake looked up at Julia.
‘You should have been there. Instead you were…’
The laptop beeped interrupting her. A face filled the screen. Blake clicked on the image.
William Straw, fifty-five years old. Previous convictions for kidnapping a minor, sexual assault and child pornography. He had spent the last eight years in prison. He had been released five months ago.
Blake’s heart raced in his chest. Straw was fat and unkempt, his greasy hair slicked back, a bulbous pitted nose below dark bead like eyes and a bloodless slit for a mouth.
His last known address was the other side of town.
Blake typed in a line of code. The screen on his mobile lit up with Straw’s image.
Blake moved to get up, then sat again. He fired off another line of code. Straw’s image became small. Blake continued typing, more profile images began to fill the screen and lines began to form between Straw and the other images. Some lines were thick, others thin. A counter on the bottom started building.
The laptop screen suddenly flashed with ‘RAANSTAAD - DATA BREACH DETECTED’.
Blake typed rapidly and Straw and all the bios linked to his image copied to another window. He entered another command. A copy progress bar appeared.
He fired more lines of code. The unauthorised window changed to green authorised, then flashed red again. The copy hit 100%. Blake pulled a memory card out of the side of the laptop. The red access warning winked out killing all his windows except for one.
Blake typed in one last line ‘kill disk’. He hit enter. The screen flashed and then died. He closed the laptop and handed the tiny memory card to Julia.
‘Hide this.’
Blake grabbed his phone and hurried into the kitchen searching. He spotted and selected a knife and slipped it into his coat pocket.
Julia grabbed her coat too. Blake stopped her.
‘No. One of us has to be here.’
He pulled his wife to him, hugging her.
‘I’ll find her. Bring her home.’
Then he took one last look at her and left.
Julia watched him back the car out of the driveway and speed off. She closed the door and leant on it not wanting to move, knowing that all that existed from now to when Blake came back with Sara was agony.
CHAPTER 7
william straw...the burning house...sara’s screams...
Blake turned the car lights and engine off and let it coast a few metres into a road lined with dark, boarded up houses. Only one dwelling was showing any light. He climbed out of the car, pausing for a second at the sound of a police siren in the distance. Were they going to get there before him? He waited as the sound grew louder then quieter.
As the wailing died away he skirted round the house, keeping out of sight of the windows even though no one would have been able to see out through the filth and hanging rags that had once been curtains. In the yard behind the house two dogs were fighting over the spilled contents of a garbage can, making enough noise to cover him as he tried the back door. It was open. He stepped inside.
The house was silent, Blake pulled the knife from his pocket as he made his way in. A loud rattling noise just a few feet away made him jump. An unpleasant smell threatened to make him gag. Peering through the kitchen door he saw a pot of something vile boiling unattended on the stove. Hefting the knife in his palm he moved on, aware of the thumping of his own heart in the damp silence, checking each of the downstair’s rooms as he went. They were all em
pty. He started up the creaking stairs to the first floor.
All the bedrooms were filled with piles of newspapers, sacks of old clothes and stained mattresses and bizarrely what looked like classic antique furniture. The final door opened onto more stairs, leading towards the roof space. Blake crept forward, pausing to listen after each step.
In the attic a dusty strip light had been left and was buzzing and crackling like a trapped insect. Someone had started to convert the attic into another room at some point in the past but had left it unfinished.
The only fixture in the room was a dormant coal burner, its doors standing open, the stale smell of ashes and smoke clinging to the air. In front of it lay a pile of small shoes and brightly coloured children’s clothes, startlingly clean and new compared to everything else in the house. Blake stared at them for a moment, plucking up the courage to touch them, fearful of what he would discover. Taking a deep breath, he rummaged through them quickly, feeling a rush of relief that none of them looked familiar. With equal care he started to pick his way back down the stairs to the ground floor, back towards the kitchen, where now he could hear the sounds of movement as well as the rattling of the pot on the stove. Knife in hand, Blake moved along the hallway toward the kitchen.
William Straw was not a pretty sight. Fat and sweating over the heat of the pan he still wore a thick jumper under a heavy jacket. Every layer of his clothing was equally soiled. It looked like he had been living and sleeping in the same clothes for a very long time. Leaving the pot for a moment he unwrapped a large, bloody piece of meat on the filthy counter. Pulling out a butcher’s cleaver he slammed the blade into the meat. He raised the chopper for a second blow.
Straw’s head flickered. The hairs on the back of Blake’s neck rose and a shiver made its way across his shoulders with the realisation that Straw was aware of him.
With a speed and ferociousness unbecoming of his bulk Straw rushed at Blake, bringing the chopper down on Blake’s head.
Blake’s combat muscle memory kicked in and his reflexes though dull still dodged the fatal blow and managed a hard-flat palm dig into Straw’s kidney area. It was by no means a devastating blow but to a man with Straw’s muscle tone it was a shock.
The Winter Man Page 7