by Chris Ryan
She was lost in thought, her pale eyes staring through the window, the condensation on which she had wiped away with one hand. She clearly hadn’t noticed Sam; he waited for the doors to close and the bus to move off before speaking.
‘Clare,’ he said softly. ‘It’s me.’
He felt her body jump and put a reassuring hand on her arm. Never had he seen such alarm in someone’s face. Her skin, already limpid, went white; her eyes bulged.
‘Sam!’
She looked around, as though expecting to see someone else there, but then dragged her attention back to him. She looked frightened now. ‘I had to tell them,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry. They threatened me…’
In front of them a drunk started to sing. Most of the other passengers looked at their boots.
‘Forget about it,’ Sam muttered. ‘Look, I need your help.’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’
She shook her head nervously. ‘I can’t, Sam. I can’t have anything more to do with this.’
One of the passengers in front – an old woman with a hard, nosy face – glanced round at them. Clare bowed her head again. ‘I just can’t,’ she repeated.
The bus came to a halt; a few passengers left, others embarked. A harassed woman with two kids jostled towards Sam, staring at him in a way that suggested he give up his seat. He didn’t. They sat in silence.
‘We need to get off,’ Sam said. ‘We can’t talk here.’
‘I can’t talk anywhere.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘You’ve got to leave me alone.’
His hand was still on her arm. He squeezed it. ‘No one’s followed me,’ he reassured her. ‘I took care.’
Clare looked around again. ‘How do you know nobody’s following me?’ she demanded.
He couldn’t answer that. Instead, he stood up and pulled on her arm. There was a little resistance, but she gave way in the end – not through enthusiasm, he realised, but because she knew she didn’t have much choice. They shuffled, arm in arm, to the double doors. Sam could feel her trembling with anxiety.
When the doors opened next, only a couple of people got out. Sam waited, choosing his moment carefully. Only when he heard the hiss of the doors about to close did he move. He tugged Clare sharply – so sharply that she tripped slightly. The closing doors caught his arm, but they made it on to the street and if anybody had been intending to follow them, they wouldn’t be able to now.
The bus drove off just as Clare angrily pulled her arm from Sam’s wrist. ‘What are you playing at?’ she raged.
They were in a busy, suburban street just outside a rough-looking pub. A couple of passers-by glanced at them, clearly thinking they were having some kind of domestic. Clare stomped off, but Sam kept with her. They walked in silence for at least a hundred metres. In the end, though, as he knew it would, Clare’s curiosity got the better of her. She stopped in the middle of the pavement and looked angrily at him.
‘Did you find it? The training camp?’
He nodded.
‘And did you… the red-light runners… did you…?’ She seemed unable to formulate the words ‘kill them’.
‘I found my brother.’ Sam sidestepped the question.
Her lips thinned. ‘Is he okay?’ she asked, a bit calmer now, her Irish lilt a bit softer.
Sam shrugged. ‘He got away, if that’s what you mean.’ He pulled the laptop from under his jacket. ‘He left this. I can’t get into it, but I think it might have some answers. Seeing as you’re looking for some answers too, I thought you might help me with it.’
Clare hesitated. Her eyes narrowed. ‘That bastard came to my flat again, Sam. Just waltzed right in. He knew you’d been to see me. God knows how, but I couldn’t deny it. How did he know, Sam? Was someone watching you that night?’
‘I don’t really know. Look, do you know someone who can help us with this?’ He grinned. ‘Most of my friends would try to open it with an MP5.’
‘A what?’
‘Never mind. Are you going to help me?’
Clare glanced around, as though searching for a way out. But she didn’t run. She looked at him helplessly. ‘My sister,’ she said in a defeated kind of voice. ‘Her son, he’s a kind of… whizzkid. Nerd, actually. Sits in his room all day with the curtains closed. He could probably…’
Her voice trailed off.
‘Where do they live?’ Sam demanded.
‘Not too far from here. We could get a bus.’
‘We’ll get a cab,’ Sam said shortly. ‘Come on.’
It was a scant twenty minutes later that Sam was putting a ten-pound note into the hand of a cabbie. They were in a residential street that was almost indistinguishable from the one where Clare lived. Only once the cab driver had driven away did Clare lead Sam towards one of the houses. It was a gentrified-looking place: two stories and an elegant pathway with black and white tiles in a chequer pattern. Clare turned to him. ‘His name’s Patrick,’ she said. ‘He’s sweet, but he’s a bit of a… a teenager, if you know what I mean. A bit… Just go easy on him, that’s all.’
‘I’ll be good as gold,’ Sam murmured.
Clare led him up the path and rang on the doorbell, while Sam lurked a metre or two behind her.
It took a minute for anyone to answer. When the door opened, a kid stood in the frame. He was thirteen, maybe a bit older – Sam had no talent for judging such things. His hair was lank and he had whiteheads on his forehead and cheeks. Fuck, the kid had a face like a pepperoni pizza. He stank of BO and sly wanks. He was probably in the middle of a crafty hand-shandy when they had arrived. That was probably why he was in such a foul mood. He looked at Clare about as enthusiastically as he might look at a door-to-door salesman.
‘Hi, Patch,’ Clare said brightly.
‘It’s Patrick,’ the teenager replied.
‘Mum in? Dad?’
He shook his head.
‘Mind if we come in?’
Patrick looked over her shoulder at Sam, appearing to measure him up. ‘He your boyfriend?’
An awkward pause. From behind, Sam saw her put her fingers lightly to her hair. ‘This is Sam,’ she replied. ‘Can we come in please, Patrick?’
The kid shrugged and stepped aside.
It was warm in the house. Warm and quiet. The kid shut the door and then loitered uncomfortably in the hallway, too gawky to look directly at his aunt or her guest. ‘Actually, Patrick,’ Clare said, delicately, like she was tiptoeing, ‘it’s you we came to see. We need some help. Sort of a computer thing.’
Patrick did his best to pretend not to be interested.
From under his jacket, Sam pulled the laptop. ‘Forgot the password,’ he said. His voice sounded a bit clumsy in his ears. He wasn’t used to talking with children.
Patrick looked at the laptop, then up at Sam. ‘No one forgets their password,’ he said.
‘Please, Patrick,’ Clare interrupted quickly. ‘It would be a real help. Can you get into it?’
Patrick shrugged again. It looked to Sam like this was a default action for him.
‘Yeah,’ he droned grumpily. ‘Probably. Just load the BIOS and repartition the…’
‘Tell you what, mate,’ Sam interrupted him. ‘Why don’t you just do it?’
‘Sam!’ Clare whispered; at the same time Patrick, looking offended, spoke.
‘I’m busy,’ he retorted. He turned petulantly and headed towards the stairs.
Clare gave Sam an annoyed look, but he ignored it. He strode towards the teenager and put a firm hand on his bony shoulder. ‘Tell you what, Clare,’ he announced. ‘Why don’t you give me and Patrick a couple of minutes?’ Clare looked unsure of herself, but with a meaningful glance from Sam she disappeared along the hallway and into the kitchen. Sam spoke to Patrick in a low whisper. ‘Here’s the deal,’ he said. ‘Either I go up into your bedroom and make a quick list of all the websites you’ve looked at in the past few hours and show them to your aunt, or you stop acting like a twat and help us out.’
Patrick managed to look, if anything, more surly. ‘Deal,’ he replied.
Minutes later, the three of them were in his bedroom. It was quite a big room, but still managed to be dingy by virtue of the musty, unwashed smell. Two computers sat next to each other, both of them whirring; Patrick glanced guiltily at them, then up at Sam who had to stop himself from smiling. He and Clare took a seat on the kid’s unmade bed, while he took the laptop from them and sat on the floor to open it up.
Patrick’s pallid face glowed in the light of the computer screen as his fingers tapped the keyboard deftly and speedily. There was no sound in the room; just the faint clack of the keys. Sam found himself holding his breath. A nervousness at the pit of his stomach.
Time seemed to stand still. He could feel Clare occasionally looking at him. He ignored her.
The clacking stopped. The glow on Patrick’s face dimmed and a confused expression came over him.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sam demanded.
Patrick pretended not to hear. He just stared intently at the screen.
And then the light returned, illuminating his acne-ridden face just as it had done before. He smiled, then turned to the two adults sitting on his bed.
‘Done it,’ he announced.
He tried very hard not to look pleased with himself as he stood up and nonchalantly handed the laptop back to Sam.
FIFTEEN
The screen was blue. A couple of familiar icons shone in the top left-hand corner. One of them was yellow and shaped like a folder. Underneath, in rounded white letters, were the words RED LIGHT RUNNERS.
The two adults exchanged a look.
‘What was the password?’ Sam asked distractedly.
‘“Max”,’ the kid replied.
Sam’s stomach knotted.
‘Not a very good password. Should be longer, have a few numbers in it…’ Patrick looked offended that nobody seemed to be listening to him.
‘Let’s go,’ Sam said, closing down the computer and standing up. As he walked to the door, he was aware of Clare fishing in her bag and pulling out a tenner.
‘Give my love to your mum,’ she said, handing the note to her nephew. Patrick grunted. He didn’t show them out.
Sam didn’t speak until they were on the street. ‘We need somewhere private,’ he said. ‘Somewhere to read this. Is there a hotel near?’
Clare shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Probably.’
They hit the pavement, Clare having to trot in order to keep up with Sam. It didn’t take them long to find a hotel – the Abbey Court in a residential road called St James’s Gardens, a shabby, converted house with rooms to rent which reeked of curry. They were eyed suspiciously by an immensely fat Pakistani woman who demanded payment for the night in advance and clearly didn’t believe the pseudonym that Sam gave off the top of his head. The room itself was far from comfortable. A TV in one corner, a lumpy bed with a floral bedspread in the middle. As a hotel room, it was the pits. For their purposes, it was absolutely fine. They sat together on the edge of the bed as Sam cranked up the computer. Using a single finger he entered the password to be greeted once more by the blue screen. He directed the cursor on to the folder, then double-clicked.
A window opened. It contained more icons, perhaps twenty. Each one was labelled with a name. Sam stared blankly at it. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, more to himself than to Clare.
Her hand brushed against his as her fingers searched out the mouse. She directed the cursor to one of the icons at random, then clicked it. A short pause and a grinding from the laptop’s innards. Then a document appeared.
There was a photo at the top, a young man with shoulder-length blonde hair. Beneath the photograph, laid out neatly and stretching far beyond the bottom of the screen so that Clare had to scroll down to see it all, was a startling array of personal information. His name, of course – Paul Harrison – and his address. But also his sexual orientation and a list of known previous girlfriends. His parents’ address and telephone number. His national insurance number. A list of three official police cautions. Parking fines. His Tesco Clubcard number. His likes and dislikes. Every car he had ever owned. Every job he had ever had, and the wage he had been paid. A graphic of his signature. His closest acquaintances – their names and addresses. A link to his Facebook profile and a list of all his ‘friends’. His credit card numbers and certain purchases that he had made. His bank account numbers and security details. Three e-mail addresses and their passwords. The IP address of his computer and the most popular websites visited from that address. Films he had seen, TV programmes he had watched. Music he listened to.
The list went on. Sam and Clare read it in silence. Neither of them commented out loud on the one word that had screamed out to them more than any other. It was written in brackets just beside the subject’s name. It read ‘DECEASED’.
Clare got to the end of the document long before Sam and impatiently closed down the window, immediately opening another. A different picture, different details. Still the same ominous label after the name: ‘DECEASED’. She browsed through more of them, spending less and less time on each one, until finally she brought up a document that made her catch her breath.
‘Bill,’ she whispered in shock. ‘It’s Bill.’
The photograph of Clare’s contact stared out at her. He had black skin with patchy, tightly curled stubble and a gappy smile. Like all the others, he was deceased. But they already knew that.
Sam stood up. He didn’t know what to say or what to think. Jacob was something to do with these red-light runners, he accepted that. But what? And if they were dead, what did that have to do with his brother?
They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them.
But he didn’t know what he should believe. He stared out of the window. It was beginning to rain and the drops slid down the pane, lit up by the streetlamps beyond.
‘Sam.’ Clare’s voice was unsure of itself. ‘I’ve found something else.’
He turned and approached her.
‘Look at this,’ she continued, spinning the computer around on her lap so he could see it. ‘His e-mails. He’s only sent them to one address, each time with one of these documents. There’s only one contact here – the person he’s sent them to.’
‘What’s his name?’ Sam demanded.
‘Alexander Dolohov.’
Sam’s brow furrowed. He had never heard the name before. ‘Any more details on him?’
She turned the computer back towards her and started fiddling, but as she did she shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she murmured. ‘His name and his e-mail address. That’s all.’ She looked up, bright eyed. ‘You could e-mail him!’
Sam shook his head. ‘No way. If I want to talk to this guy, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’
‘What if he doesn’t want to talk to you?’
Sam sniffed. ‘I guess I’ll just have to turn on the charm.’ Clare clearly heard the tone in his voice and didn’t reply. Sam looked at her with his eyes narrowed. ‘Can you get someone to track him down?’ he asked. ‘Someone from your paper?’
‘I could do it myself,’ she said.
Sam shook his head. ‘The Firm are on to both of us,’ he said. ‘If we start sniffing around we’ll alert them. Nobody but us knows about this laptop. Let’s keep it that way.’
‘I could ask someone, I suppose…’ She sounded uncertain as she pulled out her mobile.
‘Not with that. There’s a phone downstairs, in reception. If you’ve got someone you can phone, do it from there.’
Clare appeared to think for a minute. ‘All right,’ she decided finally and with a heavy sigh. ‘All right, I’ll do it. Wait there.’
‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I’m not going to do
a runner you know.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
She shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
They were eyed by the suspicious receptionist as Clare made her call. Sam hovered nearby, just out of earshot as she mumbled privately into the phone to some faceless colleague, then left the number of the hotel. The receptionist was clearly trying hard to listen to the conversation, but Clare was talking too discretely for that. ‘It’ll take an hour or so,’ she told him as she hung up.
Sam nodded. He turned to the receptionist. ‘Let us know if we have a call,’ he instructed and was repaid with a nondescript gesture. Sam considered being more forceful, but decided against it. ‘We’ll be in our room,’ he said brusquely.
He and Clare left the reception and climbed the stairs back to their room.
Neither of them noticed the man on the other side of the street, an umbrella protecting him from the rain, his eyes firmly fixed on the door of their hotel.
*
They say that the darkest hour comes just before dawn. For the young Kazakh man in a small village in the southern part of that huge country, it came a lot earlier than that. He lay in his bed, fast asleep, blithely unaware that his snoring could have woken the dead. Or even that he was only a squeeze of a trigger away from joining them. The trigger in question belonged to a fully loaded AK-47 and, at that precise moment, the cold steel of the weapon was about to be pressed into the fleshy part of his cheek.
His eyes shot open. He gasped. In the darkness, silhouetted against the silver moon that beamed through his open window, stood a man. He couldn’t fully see his face, but he could tell he was big; and he could tell that the man was holding the weapon in one hand. The other was up towards his face, one finger pressed to his lips.
‘Shhh…’ he said quietly.
The young Kazakh man started to tremble. He tugged his thin sheets a bit further up his body, but his assailant pulled them away again revealing him to be naked apart from a pair of rather unfashionable underpants. The stranger bent over, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him out of bed.