Hunter Hunted

by Jack Gatland

  Billy’s eyes widened. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘No wonder he got so pissed when we said that Kendis was a potential terrorist.’

  Anjli took a sip of her own drink. ‘Your friend,’ she said, ‘the one that gave you the tip about Baker gunning for us. Do you trust him?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘Do you think he told you everything?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Billy looked around the bar, stopping at the wall beside them, a wall that earlier that day a barman had indicated to, when mentioning a car that had been waiting outside at the time of Monroe’s attack.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s still in a coma,’ he muttered. ‘And I can’t believe we’re still considering Declan.’

  He raised his glass.

  ‘To Belgrade.’

  ‘I’m not doing this bloody code words thing with you,’ Anjli muttered.

  But she raised her glass all the same.

  After work, Declan had driven home to Hurley On Thames, spending what felt like a good hour in the shower and finally changing out of his suit. The problem with one-night stands was the lack of a change of clothes, and Declan had already decided that a wise thing to do in the future, if things continued to progress with Kendis, would be to place an overnight bag in the car's boot for those unforeseen occasions.

  Although today’s unforeseen occasions eclipsed a single overnighter with a childhood sweetheart.

  After showering, he’d spent a couple of hours in his father’s secret study; he still hadn’t cleaned out the room yet, and so the office area was still the equivalent of a modern day priest hole, created behind a fake wall and with a doorway hidden behind a slidable bookshelf. He still didn’t know why Patrick Walsh had gone to such extremes here, but that someone had broken into the house two days earlier and stolen his father’s iMac from the living room made him think that there was gold of some kind in the room; and not just a strange USB drive with a passcode cypher that now rested on the desk with WINTERGREEN written on it in his father’s handwriting, the name of an apparent Detective Sergeant that once worked with his father, but who no longer seemed to exist in current records.

  There was something more going on here.

  He’d spent a good hour working once more through his father’s crime wall; photos of suspects and post-it notes with names and locations on, all linked with red string. He’d gone over this wall many times over the last few weeks, and each time he found something new, a different rabbit hole to fall down. But today his attention was distracted, and he moved to the bookshelf where he’d found another book, a fake one like the one he’d found that housed the WINTERGREEN USB drive. This one was The Count of Monte Cristo, and inside it was close to two thousand pounds in twenty-pound notes. Declan didn’t understand why his father would have such an amount squirrelled away, and the recent revelations that Patrick Walsh had been less than clean returned to his mind.

  Was this dirty money that Patrick was too scared to declare?

  Closing it and placing it back on the desk, he continued to search for more clues, before moving back to the fake book and removing some notes, placing them into his wallet. Funds were funds, after all.

  He’d been looking for something, anything that could help him work out why Monroe was targeted; the attack could have been from friends or allies of the Delcourt family, Danny Martin or even the Byrnes in Birmingham, and that was only a list of people that had a problem with Monroe resulting from the last couple of days. He had decades of people hating him, as Derek Salmon had shown. And if it had been a long-term grudge that had caused the attack, then surely Patrick Walsh, one of Monroe’s oldest friends on the force should have known about it. And, fastidious and organised as he’d always been, would have noted it down in a journal or file somewhere.

  But there were a lot of journals and files in this room, and over the last few weeks Declan had been through them all, most of the time with Jess beside him.

  There was another option though; earlier the previous day, before everything happened in Beachampton, Billy had met with an informant who had told him that Charles Baker was hunting the Last Chance Saloon, and it seemed convenient that Monroe was attacked the same day they passed the news. But that didn’t quite pan out right, as Billy had also been told that Declan was the primary target, so why would they attack Monroe? And this wasn’t a beating, like the one that Declan had once had at the hands of the man with the rimless glasses outside his Tottenham apartment a couple of months earlier. This had been an attempted murder. One that needed to be solved before whoever had done this heinous act tried to finish the job.

  Declan had decided that he’d be spending a lot more time next to Monroe in the next few days, in case the attacker returned. That said, Doctor Marcos was a suitable, and often creatively vicious defender. Declan felt sorry for any attacker who arrived while she was on guard.

  At around ten pm Declan was feeling wiped, his eyes starting to unfocus with the strain of so much paperwork passing his vision and the lack of sleep the previous night; partly due to the events of the evening and partly because of the monstrous hangover he’d woken up with, and with a yawn and a stretch, he went to bed. He wasn’t a young man anymore, able to lose an entire night’s sleep as he crammed for exams, or working a case that required constant attention and he knew that it’d be easier to work through these files in the morning, filled with coffee and with a better idea of what was going on following a night’s sleep.

  This plan was stopped however by a frantic Lizzie who called around ten thirty.

  ‘You okay?’ Declan asked, sitting up in the bed that he’d only just climbed into. ‘You don’t usually call this late.’

  ‘It’s Jess,’ Lizzie replied. ‘She was supposed to be back an hour ago.’

  ‘She’s probably lost track of time, Lizzie,’ Declan rubbed at his eyes. ‘We’ve all done it.’

  ‘I’ve tried calling her,’ Lizzie replied. ‘She’s not picking up the phone.’

  ‘Not picking up, or the phone’s going straight to voicemail?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Lizzie was angry now, and her voice was rising.

  ‘If it’s the latter, she could be in a place where the signal’s not good,’ Declan replied calmly. ‘She might not even realise.’

  ‘And if it’s the former?’

  ‘Look, Liz,’ Declan leaned back against the bed’s headboard. ‘She’s a smart, intelligent girl, and she’s had self-defence classes given to her by the best police instructors since she was six. She knows how to look after herself. There’s probably a simple explanation to this.’

  ‘The simple explanation is that she’s bloody well grounded.’

  ‘That’s your right as a mum, but just remember, when you yell at her, you did far worse at her age.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’m scared, Dec.’

  ‘And I understand that.’ Declan looked at the time on the phone. ‘Listen. If Jess doesn’t return by eleven, call me again. I’ll get the entire bloody police force out looking for her. But if you don’t give her some rope, she’ll always pull against what she has. She’ll probably come back in half an hour and she’ll have an explanation that answers everything.’

  Lizzie reluctantly agreed and ended the call. Declan laid back in the bed and turned off the light, but couldn’t sleep, waiting for a second call that confirmed the worst; that Jessica Walsh was missing, and it was all Declan’s fault.

  But the phone call never came; Jessica had obviously come home late and faced her mother’s wrath; and happy to stay out of that particular family squabble Declan eventually slept fitfully through the night, waking up just before seven in the morning. He’d showered, shaved and dressed, grabbed some toast for breakfast and was on his second coffee, preparing to leave when the doorbell went.

  Nobody called at seven thirty in the morning.

  Suspicious and walking to the door, Declan stopped.

  What if this was the same person who attacked
Monroe, now attacking Declan?

  He paused by the door, peering through the fisheye peephole. Surprised, he opened the door.

  Trix was standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Alright, Declan?’ she asked.

  9

  Surprise Visitors

  Declan stared at the young woman standing on his front doorstep.

  ‘You’re bloody kidding me,’ he said, looking around to see if anyone else was around who could have seen this early morning visitor. ‘I thought you’d be locked away by now.’

  Trix shook her head. ‘I was being forced to do those things,’ she said. ‘But, when it all ended, they gave me a lifeline, a way out.’

  ‘So what, you want your old job back?’ Declan almost laughed. ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

  Trix stood on the doorstep silent for a moment.

  ‘So, we can do this,’ she said. ‘You can be a prick and be all holier than thou, or you can get off your bloody high horse, let me in and we can talk about Monroe.’

  Now it was Declan’s turn to stand silently.

  ‘What do you know about Monroe?’ he eventually asked.

  ‘Ask me inside.’

  ‘What are you, a bloody Vampire? Get in,’ Declan moved to the side of the doorway, allowing Trix to enter past him. ’So what do you know?’

  ‘More than you might think. I’ve been keeping tabs on you,’ Trix explained. ‘For someone in Whitehall.’

  ‘Charles Baker,’ Declan answered for her. ‘Let me guess, he’s the one who sorted your sentence out?’

  Trix paused, as if unwilling to confirm this, before nodding. ‘Like him, I was being forced to do things by Pearce. But unlike him, I didn’t get away with things, so rather than going to prison, I’m working off a debt,’ she said. ‘Surveillance. Similar to what I was doing when I was under Pearce, to be honest, but I’m Security Service now.’

  ‘MI5?’

  ‘More a bastard offshoot. I was listening to you all the way through the Angela Martin case, and—‘

  ‘You can’t have been,’ Declan interrupted. ‘Jo Davey swept the office for bugs every day. We found all of them.’

  ‘Yeah, you found the bugs, but I wasn’t talking about those,’ Trix sat down on the sofa. ‘Any chance of a coffee? I’m parched.’

  Declan looked as if he was going to shout, but eventually, after a silent count to ten in his head, he nodded and walked into the kitchen. Trix carried on, speaking through the doorway.

  ‘You’ve got laptops and computers in your office, and they all have webcams, microphones, yeah?’ she said. ‘Before you found me out, I’d put a backdoor into the server and executed a command that allowed me to operate any of these remotely.’

  ‘That’ll piss Billy off,’ Declan shouted back. ‘The server’s like his bastard child.’

  ‘I know,’ Trix grinned. ‘It’s why I did it. I wanted a challenge, and the Met and City Police systems are usually so shit.’ She stretched her arms. ‘I couldn’t turn the cameras, like physically move them, and I could only hear through the laptops and webcams when you were near one of them, but I could pretty much get the gist of most things.’

  Declan emerged from the kitchen, a black coffee in his hand.

  ‘You watching last night?’

  Trix took the mug. ‘Got any milk and sugar?’

  ’No.’

  ‘Fair dues,’ Trix leaned back. ‘And yeah, I was.’

  ‘Why?’ Declan sat in an armchair facing her. ‘Nothing on TV?’

  ‘I told you, I was working off the debt,’ Trix leaned forward, sipping at the coffee. ‘I was told to upload a file. And, because of that I was online, so to speak.’

  ‘What do you mean, upload a file?’ Declan leaned in to match Trix, his tone of voice darkening. ‘Was it you? The file that Monroe had?’

  Trix pulled back at this accusation.

  ‘Yes, but hear me out,’ she cautiously replied, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a phone. Showing it to Declan, there was a single text message on it.

  flick the switch

  ‘That’s the go order,’ she explained. ‘I was told by my boss that when this message arrived, I was to remotely ping a file to Monroe’s laptop. No idea who created it, and I didn’t see what the contents of the file were, just the name. Kendis Taylor dot pdf.’

  ‘Was it supposed to freeze the laptop?’

  Trix shook her head. ‘No. It was an upload, nothing more. From what I could work out, some other outside source created it. Monroe was supposed to read it, and because of what it said, he would most likely distrust Taylor. You know, in case she came to you with any wild claims.’

  ‘So you have no connection with Rattlestone?’

  Trix paused. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because we think they made the file. Care to confirm or deny?’

  Trix sighed. ‘Look, I don’t work for them, but I know them. Have done for years. Pearce Associates often used them,’ she admitted. ‘Security, off the books things, things like that. And I know that they’re connected to Whitehall somehow.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Above my pay grade.’

  ‘You don’t have a pay grade.’

  Trix grinned. ‘Yeah, fair point.’

  Declan thought back to the conversation that he’d had with Kendis the previous day. With the concerns that she had, he understood very much why someone would want her credibility questioned.

  ‘And the attack?’

  ‘Nothing to do with me, I swear,’ Trix replied. ‘I was just to upload the file and drop out. But someone, not Whitehall sanctioned, was doing another op at the same time, and whatever they did to the network to jam it, well it kinda froze my systems before it fully loaded my file, locking me into the network. I was trying to exit the bloody thing when Monroe started talking.’

  ‘Talking?’

  Trix nodded. ’I had his laptop camera on at the start, but watching him staring at his screen meant he was effectively staring at me, so I’d disconnected the visual. He’s a scary-looking bugger.’

  Declan nodded at this. Trix continued.

  ‘The other webcams in the office were all facing away, but the microphones were on. I heard him speak, and reconnected the visual to see what was going on, but he wasn’t at his desk anymore. His voice was faint, in the main office, away from a microphone and I had no way to record, so I held my phone to the speaker on my computer. Because of that, I only got part of it, but I got enough.’

  She pressed the screen of her phone, moving to the Voice Memo app. She pressed the start button and a voice, faint and distant, could be heard.

  ‘If this means anything to you, it’s nothing personal.’

  Declan froze. He recognised the voice that spoke through the speaker.

  The voice of the man with the rimless glasses.

  ‘So this is how it ends, eh laddie?’ Monroe again.

  ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

  Trix turned off the voice memo. ‘That’s all I got. There’s a lot of crashing about afterwards.’

  ‘I need that,’ Declan reached for the phone. ‘This proves who attacked Monroe.’

  ‘Does it?’ Trix pulled the phone away. ‘Think about it. All I have is dialogue, and faint at that. It could be anyone. It could be you.’

  ‘Me?’ Declan sat back in the chair. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s why I’m here,’ Trix placed the half-drunk mug of coffee on the table. ‘There are people out there who are seriously out for you.’

  ‘Rattlestone.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Declan sat silent while he processed this. ‘And killing Monroe is part of that?’

  ‘That wasn’t part of what I was doing,’ Trix admitted. ‘But yeah, you’ve made a lot of enemies who’ll go that far to hurt you. They’ve been waiting for you to slip up, and now they’re taking matters into their own hands.’ She shifted on the sofa. ‘From what I could hear through the laptops, yo
u were on the run after Derek Salmon’s death. Someone in the office told you to take the train because there was a tracker on your car.’

  Declan nodded. ‘I kept off the grid until Beachampton. What of it?’

  ‘Billy, probably thinking that he was helping, remotely turned off your car tracker, just in case,’ Trix replied. ‘But it was a day pass of sorts. Twenty-four hours.’

  Declan thought for a moment. ‘And how does this affect me?’

  ‘Christ, you’re dense. Let me explain it so you might understand. I only get an hour a day when I can get away without being followed by other departments,’ Trix explained. ‘They all watch each other as much as outside threats. Anyway, I came here yesterday, same time. You weren’t here.’

  Slowly, Declan understood.

  ‘I was—‘

  ‘Don’t lie,’ Trix smiled. ‘You had your phone on you, and I tracked the cell towers.’

  ‘Christ, Trix—‘

  ‘I know you were in Putney,’ Trix continued. ‘But nobody else does, yet. What they know is that you were in a car that couldn’t be tracked.’

  ‘Billy and Anjli spoke to a wine bar,’ Declan replied slowly as he worked through the revelation. ‘They sent me an email about it. The barman said that a man in a grey Audi parked outside Temple Inn on the night. And that the gate guard didn’t question him when he entered because he thought the man was me.’

  ‘Bingo,’ Trix nodded. ‘There’s no proof you weren’t, unless you dob in the woman you had an affair with that night to be your alibi. Who might also be rumoured to be a terrorist, and therefore an unreliable witness.’

  ‘You mentioned the cell towers.’

  ‘That just proves your phone wasn’t there. Not you.’

  Declan rose now, pacing. ‘Monroe finds a report, left on his laptop that states that Kendis is a terrorist, with a UK handler. Then a man, pretending to be me, attacks him.’

  Trix rose from the sofa to face Declan, glancing down at her watch. ‘Baker wanted Kendis to be ruined, but he didn’t want her dead. That’s not his style. He also didn’t hate Monroe enough to do that. But here’s the thing. Adding what happened to Monroe to what I was doing? It was genius, but had to be done by someone who not only knew that Rattlestone had created the file, and that Baker was having me upload it. It became a moment of opportunity, to not only go for you and the Unit, but pin this on Baker.’