Loose Ends (The Acer Sansom Novels Book 2)

by Oliver Tidy

  *

  She spent another couple of fruitless hours trying search term after search term and some of the lesser-known search engines before her labours, the meal, wine and excitement of the previous evening – not to mention her sleepless previous night – began to take their collective toll. Sansom had spent periods looking over her shoulder to her mild irritation and others slumped in an armchair.

  ‘This is pointless. There’s nothing here,’ she said, ‘or there is, but I just can’t find it. I’m tired. I need to go to bed. I’ll go into work in the morning. Look up some colleagues and have a quiet chat with them.’

  Sansom could see that she was all in and made no attempt to push her.

  ‘Do you mind if I keep looking?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ she said, getting up and stretching. ‘What will you do tomorrow?’

  ‘If it’s all right with you, just wait here. I don’t see that there’s anything to be gained by me going outside the front door yet – only risk.’

  ‘I agree. Of course you can stay here. Hopefully, I’ll have something when I come home.’

  He made a face that indicated that he hoped so too.

  ‘Thanks again for the meal. It was very good.’

  ‘You paid for it and it’s the least I can do. No word on Mrs Tallis, I suppose. You would have told me, wouldn’t you, if you’d heard anything?’

  ‘Sorry. The office have left several messages, but she hasn’t responded. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Keep trying, that’s all. If we don’t hear anything from her tomorrow maybe we should phone the local police and ask them to call round to her home.’

  She bid him an awkward good night and left him to her laptop. As he sat punching keys in the silence he heard a shower running and realised that she must have an en-suite arrangement. He fought down the images of her using it. She was not unattractive but he had Eda. He heard the water cease, the shower door open and close. He imagined her in there towelling off her nakedness and punched the keys a little harder.

  *

  When she emerged early in the morning the sofa-bed and bedding were already neatly stowed. Sansom was dressed and in the kitchen.

  ‘Coffee?’

  She shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I have someone in mind that I want to try to catch early. If I hang about here, I might miss him. I’ll get something on my way.’ She looked about to say something else but didn’t.

  ‘What time will you be back?’

  ‘No idea, but give me the mobile number of the phone Mrs Tallis left and I’ll keep in touch.’

  Looking at the phone he noticed with irritation that the battery had died. She took it from him, turned it over and handed it back.

  ‘Try the drawers in that unit.’ She indicated a large dark wood and glass affair against the far wall. ‘There should be a charger in there that will fit it.’ She scribbled down her own mobile number. ‘I’d better get going. Call me when you’ve sorted it out.’

  *

  She must have had a thing for mobile phones. He counted five in the drawer along with the accompanying knot of cables that could be used to charge them. By the time he’d found and untangled the one he needed she was long gone.

  Sansom began charging the phone, turned it on to call the reporter and was confronted with a request for a PIN code. He swore out loud. He spent the next half hour trying to bring to life each of the remaining phones in the drawer, only to be confronted by each one making a similar demand. He looked around for a landline, but there was none. He sat, the better to think. He woke the laptop with a prod of the idle mouse and the intention of sending her an email and was amazed at his own ability to recollect his own email address and password.

  Logging in, he was faced with an inbox boasting over two thousand messages. Like some buried strongbox, it hadn’t been opened in a long time. A quick glance showed that the anti-spam software wasn’t doing its job. He ignored the Inbox and went to Compose, then switched back to Google to search for the newspaper she worked for. He trawled through the email addresses that were made available in the ‘contact us’ link. She was not listed. He tried a couple of different routes but each proved unsuccessful. He swore out loud. He tried in vain to find her email address on the laptop but was denied access to any programmes or cyber avenues that looked promising. He swore again. He slumped, frustrated in a way that only non-compliant technology could make him.

  He marshalled his thoughts. It didn’t take long. He couldn’t contact her. She couldn’t contact him. He swore out loud. He’d had mobile phone issues before, important ones in Turkey. He hadn’t learned from them. He’d had all the previous evening to think ahead and sort it out. He’d failed to prepare and usually that amateurishness ended one way – badly. He swore out loud. He could see only one option open to him. He must go out, find a payphone, call her mobile, give her his email address and return to a vigilant watch on the Inbox.

  He had no change. He ferreted about her flat and accumulated a few pieces of silver. He had no doubt, the way his luck was going, that he would have to do some searching to find a working public phone that actually took cash. He tucked the piece of paper with her number on into his trouser pocket and pulled on his coat, cap, scarf and sunglasses. He hesitated at his treasure box and decided against taking the pistol. He’d be gone a matter of minutes. He was looking for a phone, not trouble.

  He was confronted with his image staring back in the full-length hallway mirror and, preoccupied with feelings of looking faintly ridiculous, had already hurried out of the front door with both feet on the carpeted corridor before he realised he had no key to get back in. The devastating realisation of this fact was accompanied by the cruel sound of the front door closing behind him with a soft mocking tut.

  ***

  18

  As he stared at the reinforced security door with a numbing sense of his own stupidity, he heard the handle of one further along the corridor being rattled. Snapped out of it, he moved off for the stairwell praying that whoever was leaving would take the lift. Standing in the bleak echoing concrete space, he listened with a small sense of relief to the gentle hum of machinery and electrics coming to life.

  He’d seen enough of her front door to understand that he wouldn’t be getting back in without explosives, cutting equipment or a key. He wondered at how things could go from so good to so bad so quickly. And then, with a hint of uncharacteristic self-pity, lamented that this seemed to be the story of his life lately.

  He shook himself free of that unhelpful emotion and decided that he should follow his original plan of making a call to Susan. She wouldn’t be impressed, but he was confident that she’d respond positively. It would simply be a matter of him hiding out, waiting for her to return and let him in. It sounded simple and, given the turn of the morning’s events, that caused him further anxiety.

  He decided to behave like any other London citizen going about their anonymous business and made his way down the stairs and out on to the pavement. As soon as his feet had made contact with the flagstones and a second door had locked securely behind him – another one that he had no way of getting past without a key or an access code – he felt his senses prickle and his heart rate quicken. The thought crossed his mind that this must be what it was like to be an agoraphobic. He started walking. Moving people attracted less attention than those rooted to the spot looking lost and forlorn in a ridiculous disguise.

  Direction was unimportant. He was on a main road. Either way and he should find a phone soon. But of course he didn’t. He walked for several minutes without sighting even a vandalised installation. He felt in his trouser pocket and was a little relieved to feel paper money. It wasn’t much but it might be enough. He remembered driving through the small village square near the New Forest and his good fortune at being able to buy the use of a mobile phone from a schoolgirl. He didn’t see any children playing in the streets where he was now. He didn’t blame them.

  He understood tha
t he was nearing a shopping district. That should mean more people, which was both good and bad. He saw signs advertising a small indoor arcade of shops coming up on his side of the road. He went in. There was a bank of telephones along one wall. He prepared for the worst, but found one that appeared to be in working order and would accept real money. He lifted the receiver, listened to the dialling tone as one would listen affectionately to one’s own baby sleeping soundly, and fed it. He punched in her number. It rang seven times and went through to the answer-phone. He hung up and swore. His change rattled out at the bottom and a passer-by looked in his direction. He took the money and crossed to a nearby bench. He had four small coins left. Under the circumstances, leaving an answer-phone message seemed pointless. He had no idea of where he could tell her to meet him; where he could hide and wait for her.

  He gave it two minutes and tried her phone again. The public telephone charged him all his remaining change to leave another answer-phone message. He stopped just short of smashing the handset to pieces on the surrounding metalwork. He decided to go and find her.

  Sansom used a bookshop and his free browsing rights in the miniature mall to discover the location of the offices of her newspaper in the city. He was not totally unfamiliar with the major landmarks of the capital and felt that he could get himself to the street where she worked on foot in under an hour. He already had an idea for getting a message to her.

  *

  Susan brushed aside questions about her day’s absence with excuses of women’s problems. It seldom failed to cut short any enquiry, well-meaning or otherwise, especially from male colleagues. Locking away her handbag in her desk, she first did some printing and then went in search of the political correspondent. She found him at his desk eating out of cellophane and drinking out of cardboard.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Graham.’

  She sat in a nearby vacant chair.

  ‘You’re looking for me?’ he said, with genuine surprise.

  ‘Actually, yes. I want some background on a government advisor. If anyone knows anything about him, I’m guessing you do.’

  ‘Contrary to popular opinion, flattery will still get you places. I wouldn’t have thought that HM advisors were your line of country.’

  ‘They’re not usually. I’m doing a piece on a Minister,’ she lied, ‘and this chap keeps turning up in the background. Trouble is, I can’t find out anything about him except his name.’

  ‘Go on then. Try me.’ His ego clearly enjoyed the position that his knowledge of the political landscape put him in. Susan would owe him something if he came up trumps.

  ‘Francis Smith.’ She laid a glossy black and white photograph on top of his untidy desk.

  Graham Wells spilled scalding coffee down his shirt-front and got to his feet quickly for a fat man. He dabbed at his cream shirt with his handkerchief, scowling, whether at the staining of his clothing or the pain of the burn Susan could not determine. It was probably both.

  It was neither. The image had shocked Wells into the spillage. Francis Smith was as off-limits as they came these days – highly influential and protected by the creation of a position in a new anti-terrorist department during Bishop’s time in office. It was a department that Bishop’s replacement had not felt the need to worry about too much – or had been instructed to leave well alone. There had been rumblings of dark dealings involving this department – almost a carte blanche for anything that involved ‘homeland’ security. It was a desperate sign of the desperate times that where the threat of suicide bombers and other heinous terrorist acts existed even the free press were inclined to turn something of a blind eye. They were all in it together, after all.

  Journalists like Graham Wells knew about Smith because Smith had made it his business to inform them, to a minimal degree. Smith and some of the older hacks still around had known each other on and off through political dealings and campaigns that spanned decades. The Smith of then wasn’t the Smith of today. A one-time humble security advisor to a previous government, Smith had been elevated to become ‘somebody’ with the changing of the guard and the advent of increased threats of terrorist atrocities. At this increase in his fortunes he had taken the unusual step of having off-the-record ‘chats’ with certain of his old acquaintances in the journalistic brotherhood whose bread and butter reporting might one day come to involve Smith’s department’s sphere of influence. The message had always been the same: you don’t seek to make headlines or even the most tenuous association with anything that you print citing me or my department. He hadn’t added ‘on pain of death.’ He had come across as altogether more serious than that and Wells, for one, had not doubted the thinly-veiled threat from a man who boasted that he had the authority to have the Queen of England herself arrested and confined indefinitely if he felt it necessary. In return, Smith would do the decent thing and throw the odd titbit to the slavering pack, which he did when it suited him and his aims. It was a boat that Wells, for one, had no intention of rocking. He had a comfortable life in his middle age and there were many other things to write about without risking the unknown but undoubtedly unpleasant.

  And now here was Susan Manson, showing rather a lot of nyloned leg and just a little too much diverting cleavage, pouting across from him, waiting patiently for the benefit of his finger on the current-affairs pulse. Susan, who had a reputation for limiting herself to the more sensationalist aspects of the news culture that had lamentably engulfed and fuelled the state of tabloid Britain – and on this broadsheet, a bastion of serious news reporting since its creation over a century before, for God’s sake. For a serious newsman like Wells it was a repugnant sign of the times.

  He could either bring her a little into his confidence or he could feign ignorance. The thought occurred to him that maybe she was lying about her reasons for being there. So he decided to lie back. ‘Yes, I know the name. But he sort of disappeared off the scene when Bishop fell from grace. I don’t think he was ever particularly important or influential – just a suit milling around in the background milking the government cash-cow. Do you know what independent advisors can bill the government for an hour of their time? It’s obscene. I see him around Westminster occasionally but never ‘“with”’ anyone important, if you know what I mean? Sorry. Look, leave the picture with me and I’ll ask around. How’s that?’

  Why was he lying to her? she thought. Surely, the great Graham Wells – a legend in his own liquid-lunchtime in some of the old local watering holes – wasn’t afraid of discussing a lowly government advisor. Or perhaps he was. She understood that for Sansom, and anyone who strayed into his orbit, Smith was a dangerous element, a rogue and destructive meteorite. But for Wells? Perhaps Smith was someone to be afraid of if one was in the know. Perhaps Wells didn’t want to become even marginally involved in anything Smith. Perhaps she was just letting the whole Ludlumesque conspiracy thing cloud her thinking. Whatever his reasons, Wells didn’t want to discuss Francis Smith with her and she knew that ‘leaving it with him’ would be a complete waste of time. She was dismayed.

  They agreed to give him the rest of the day – for her, as a special favour. She hated having to suck up to the old school tie brigade that still held out in certain positions within the paper. But such was life.

  *

  When Susan had safely departed, Wells drummed his fingers on his desk absently in thought. He picked up his mobile and scrolled through his phonebook until he found the number he was looking for. He thought again and put the phone down. Then he picked it up and called. As the phone rang, it was, he reflected, not for the first time in his career, prudent to retain all one’s contacts, regardless of where life’s different paths took people. One just never knew when a number might come in handy. Besides, a quiet word to the wise in the ear of an old acquaintance might encourage him to be favoured with some exclusive little bit of news when the time came.

  Smith’s cautious greeting drifted down the line.

&n
bsp; *

  Smith thanked the caller with promises of a head start on his rivals next time he had something worthwhile. Wells reflected that he’d done the right thing and was pleased to see that he still had almost half of his sandwich left. He turned his full attention over to it.

  Smith’s train of thought chugged out of the station and quickly gathered momentum. He typed in a search term on his keyboard. Why would this woman, a journalist, be interested in him? He skimmed her reporting history. Professionally speaking, he was not her cup of tea. The first red light went on. Combinations of possible scenarios whirred around in his mind. He noticed that she had done a piece on Sansom recently – the second red light was illuminated. He saw that she also had expressed great sympathy when singling out the mother of one of Sansom’s ‘victims’ – Tallis. Mrs Tallis was still unaccountably off the radar – neither hide nor hair had been seen of her since she was logged at the roadblock. And then Smith read about the journalist’s connection with the man whose throat had been slit in his London home and the third and final red light blazed brightly. If she hadn’t written under her maiden name he’d have been there a lot quicker. Still, it was nothing conclusive. His kind of reasoning rarely could be. So many of the decisions he had to make were based on gut instinct and abstract professional judgement – something that he had grown to trust above all other forms of intelligence. He called up two of his operatives. Better to be safe than sorry.

  *

  Sansom’s progress to the street of Susan’s offices had been uneventful. He had managed to snatch moments of enjoyment from his freedom, the historic setting and his surroundings. No one was paying him any more attention than anyone else. He’d picked up a copy of Metro and with this tucked under his arm he felt he was making a good job of passing himself off as just another Londoner going somewhere and nowhere.