by Robson, Roy
H tried not to breathe a sigh of relief.
Thank fuck for that. They’re not on me. I’ve still got time.
H gulped his coffee and thought for a bit while Graham busied himself with his clothes and hair. Yes, he had some time, but how much? There was the phone, but would John find it? Most importantly, there was a brave and beautiful young copper out there in severe danger. At best. What were the chances of him finding her under his own steam, even with the help of John, and maybe Ronnie? He would have to put Miller-Marchant, useless as he was, in the picture. It was his only option, and it was better than nothing.
‘Graham, listen. I’m being serious now. I’ve been doing a bit of rooting about on my own. Amisha’s been taken. I don’t know who’s got her, or why, but I think she’s in terrible danger. I can’t talk to Hilary, so I’m telling you. We’ve got to get her back, and I shouldn’t think she’s got much time.’
Time. One way or another, it’s all about time now.
72
On his train into Victoria Graham sparked up the tablet. He had almost no choice now; his old love of surfing of the digital waves had been wrecked by the compulsion to check in on Joey Jupiter’s blog on an hourly basis, just in case he and Hawkins were once again under the cosh. He needed to keep up with the latest instalments in his public humiliation - everyone else did.
Looking at the shattered, hulking figure slumped on his sofa before he’d left for the station he’d felt a twinge of…what was it?...not affection, exactly, but fellowship in suffering. That was it. He and Hawkins were in this together, whether they liked it or not. And, though he knew that the big man was not exactly a keen follower of Jupiter’s blog, or of any blog if it came to that, he felt that he’d been treated with a little more respect than usual during their surprise morning get together.
Up came the page, the dreaded page. Graham saw with relief that, for this post at least, Jupiter had found a new theme:
THAILAND TRICKS
It is with alarm that this blog has learned of the recent, shameful shenanigans of Lord Timothy Skyhill, that bastion of the establishment and our public life. Until now there has been barely a blemish on the great man’s record, making him an unusually upstanding public figure in this day and age. Not for him the excesses or perversions - be they financial, sexual or otherwise – of other lords of the realm, politicians and banksters.
But His Lordship’s recent ‘business’ trip to Thailand, though it appears to have involved neither the provision of backhanders to corrupt officials nor a spree with the ladyboys, has cast him in an altogether darker light. It turns out that Lord Timothy is, to use the parlance of the criminal fraternity, a ‘nonce case’. Though reports of his adventures in the tropics have been carefully handled by the authorities in both Thailand and the UK, we have it on good authority that Lord Timothy was caught, on more than one occasion, going at it hammer and tongs with the young ‘uns.
This regrettable episode raises a number of important questions: Is His Lordship to be allowed to get away scot-free with these crimes? Are we to see a full and transparent investigation into the facts of the case? Are there more where Lord Timothy came from? Are there no depths to which the powerful men who govern our country will not sink?
We have become accustomed to the fraud, the shady deals, the tax loopholes, the screwing of us all for every penny they can get, the orgies in the corridors of power. Must we also become accustomed to this? Are our schoolchildren even safe on their tours of the mother of parliaments? We should be told.
73
The masked assassin understood his orders clearly. Find and execute Harry Hawkins immediately, and with extreme prejudice. The order meant there was no need for secrecy, or fake accidents, in fact no need for any kind of sophistication. Just find and kill, job done. The orders had come through at 5am. It was now 7.
Ronnie and Olivia were chatting in the kitchen when the assassin made his entry, via the drainpipes, into the bedroom Ronnie had been sleeping in.
Olivia passed Ronnie a piping hot cup of builder’s tea and two slices of generously buttered toast.
‘Thanks love. Anything from H?’
‘He’s sent me a couple of texts, each time from different phones, letting me know he is ok. Other than that I have no idea what he’s up to.’
‘Well, he’ll be in touch when he’s ready, when he needs us. I have no doubt about that’, Ronnie said.
The masked assassin was good at his job and had memorized the picture of his intended victim. He enjoyed his work and had never missed a target. He crept along the corridor and made his way towards the voices, the silencer already secured to the gun in his right hand.
The cup fell from Oliva’s hand and smashed to pieces on the floor as he entered the kitchen. Ronnie swivelled on his kitchen stall, and stared straight down the barrel of a gun. The assassin surveyed Ronnie’s face and knew he wasn’t the target. He would have to kill them both, of course, but he needed information.
His voice had the measured, neutral tone of an old-school BBC newsreader.
‘Where is Hawkins? You have ten seconds to tell me before I kill you both.’ He didn’t waste time in commencing the count.
‘9…8…7’
Olivia was in shock. H’s work had never been brought home like this before. Being in the line of fire was a new experience for her.
‘We have no idea where he is’, said Olivia.
‘6…5…’
Ronnie thought quickly.
Have to stop the clock - give us a chance.
‘4…3….’
‘Wait’, said Ronnie. ‘If we knew we’d tell you, but we don’t. He’ll be calling us in ten minutes. We’ll talk to him. Find out where he is. It’s the only way you’ll find him.’
The assassin considered the option. Almost certainly lying, he thought, but he had the time.
Ronnie had turned ten seconds into ten minutes.
The assassin held his gun up.
‘Do not speak. If the phone does not ring in ten minutes I will kill you both.’
Inexorably the minutes started totting up. Five, six, seven.
Ronnie concentrated on the intruder, hoping for a moment’s lapse, a turn of the head. No one could stay 100% focused for 10 minutes. Except, perhaps, a trained assassin with a 100% success rate.
But Ronnie stayed focused.
One moment, just one moment.
Sometimes, in life, there are moments of coincidence, and Olivia and Ronnie would later reflect on them. Some people call them fate, or providence, or maybe even destiny. Or perhaps sometimes you just get damn lucky.
The phone rang. It was Olivia’s mother calling for an early morning chat. At the split second the assassin turned his attention to the phone Ronnie was on him. With the gun knocked out of his hand he didn’t add up to much.
Ronnie secured a vice-like grip and smashed the assassin’s head into the wall, swung him round with maximum force and smashed his head onto the edge of the sink. He’d forgotten nothing of his army training. He repositioned his hold and watched Olivia wince as he applied the coup de grace. As neck snaps go this one was pretty straightforward. Ronnie released his grip and the dead assassin slumped to the floor.
Olivia answered the phone.
‘Hi mum…er, can I call you back in half an hour?’, she said.
74
Amisha’s stomach reflexes forced the water from her body. The coarse brown bag was lifted from her head and she flickered back to life as the light penetrated her eyes.
‘Let me ask you once more,’ said her interrogator, exuding a gentle charm, ‘how did you manage to find and access those files, and who have you passed the information on to?’
Amisha coughed and gasped for more air, some of the water still seeping out from her eyes and ears, her chest heaving in its desperate search for oxygen.
She was close to talking. To saying almost anything her captor wanted. But after only five breaths the sack was once more placed over
her face and once more the water poured forth. As it entered her respiratory system the panic gripped her as she became unable to breathe. Her brain triggered its primal, powerful, irresistible response, a response of pure dread, the “God help me I’m drowning” response. It was as if she was being submerged at the foot of Niagara Falls, unable to fight its awesome powers and reach the surface.
The process had been in play now for 15 minutes.
Sack on. Twenty seconds of water. Sack off. Questions asked to which she could not respond whilst she gulped five or six life giving intakes of precious air. Sack on. Twenty seconds of water. Sack off. More questions…
God help me, when will it end?
The voice of her tormentor had started to sound oddly reassuring. She was at breaking point.
‘Take your time, my dear. We have plenty of it,’ he said as he lifted the sack once more. Again the reflex vomiting, the return to full consciousness and her body’s desperate intake of the maximum amount of oxygen in the minimum amount of time.
‘What do you want?...’ she managed to force out before the sack was replaced, suffocating, overpowering all her senses. The water poured in as Amisha again lost consciousness. Her tormentor was not ready, just yet, to allow the young girl her moment of release. He was enjoying himself far too much for that.
The process continued for a few more minutes, enough for a further 4 rounds.
‘Now, my sweet, where were we?’
Amisha had been made aware of waterboarding during her training. Its effects on human physiology and psychology, its ability to panic the brain into saying almost anything the torturer wanted to hear. She now understood the difference between theory and practice.
‘Oh, yes. How did you manage to access those files? Who helped you?’
‘Nobody... helped... me. It... wasn’t... that difficult,’ she said.
‘Come come now, you managed to access some of the most secure files in existence. You really managed to do that all by yourself?’
‘Yes,’ said Amisha.
‘My my, you are a smart young lady. Smart and beautiful. We’re going to have such fun, you and I.’
Her tormentor’s loins had been stirring for some time. He couldn’t help but notice the contours of her fine figure as the water had soaked through her shirt. But that was for later. The first order of business for today was to find out who her accomplices were, and what they knew.
‘Suppose I believe that you are a very bright young lady and managed to access all those files on your own. The next question is why, and have you passed what you found on to anyone else?’
Amisha doubted she could withstand another round of near drowning but something deep within her refused to give. She found an ounce of courage, the very last ounce she had.
‘Nobody. I sent them to nobody.’
‘Oh dear. Then why did you find it necessary to completely wipe your hard drive. I’ve checked the whole thing. All traces of your access gone. Very clever, not many people, including officers of the law, actually know how to do that so effectively.’
The torturer’s phone rang and he answered the call. She heard some mumbling but couldn’t make out anything distinct. She looked about her. A small, windowless room. Could be anywhere, anywhere at all. The balding man with the soothing voice was fiftyish, short, plump and very sweaty. The fact he was making no effort to conceal his identity told her all she needed to know about her future prospects - torture, rape, death. Not exactly the career path she’d signed up for when she joined the Met as a bright eyed, eager young graduate.
‘Oh it seems I’m going to have to leave you for a little while. I’ll be back soon to conclude our conversation.’
Her tormentor left Amisha alone to consider her plight. But her torments didn’t leave with him. The lights in the small, windowless room flashed on and off with punishing regularity - pitch black, bright lights, pitch black, bright lights - whilst white noise smashed into her brain like two particles obliterating one another in an atom collider. She was being mentally broken down.
How long had she been here? Five hours? Five days? How quickly she had lost track of time.
She understood the torture techniques being applied, but understanding did nothing to soften their impact. She would break. She knew she would break. The question that reverberated through her mind was not whether but when; would she break before H found her, would she give H up before she was killed?
She knew H would be looking, frantically tearing up the streets of London in a way only he knew how. If anyone could find her in time it was her partner. As the lights flashed and the chaotic, formless noise assaulted her senses she tried to cling to that hope. It was the only hope she had.
75
Amisha was nothing if not resourceful. As she lay tightly strapped on the inclined board, the only piece of furniture in the small room that was her prison, and would most probably be the place of her death, she knew there was nothing she could do physically.
But mentally was a different matter. She made a huge effort to block out the noise and think back, across the sequence of events that had led her to where she was now. From the deep dive into the Dark Web to the moment she realised she’d been tumbled; from the desperate race against time to garner as much information as possible to the wiping of her hard drive; from the second they’d broken into her flat to the struggle; from being bundled into the waiting car to the journey and her imprisonment.
If she got a moment’s opportunity, a fleeting half chance, she would be prepared. As aware as she could be of where she was and why and how she’d got here. As desperate as things looked, Amisha was still holding out for life.
She recalled the moment H had arrived with news of his hunches. At first she wasn’t sure, although she’d come to appreciate the fact that H’s hunches were usually spot on. She thought there may have been one or two people involved, but a child abuse conspiracy at the heart of the establishment, involving the House of Lords, one of the most venerable and upstanding institutions in the world? It just wasn’t credible. Was it?
There was no way, no way a group of powerful people in the UK could get away with such a thing. Her parents had always told her what a wonderful, civilized place Britain was. Its institutions were incorruptible, matured over centuries to limit naked power and protect its citizens. Things like this happened in third world countries, in corruption filled post-communist hell holes, in countries run by tin-pot dictators. But not here, not in the mother of all democratic parliaments, not in Great Britain.
Amisha had studied Computer Science at Cambridge and joined the Met to work in their specialist IT security division. But she had been bored and asked for a transfer so she could work in the real world of gangsters, where people still spoke to each other. Reluctantly the Met agreed. As a consequence, over the last year or two, everyone had forgotten just how advanced and skilful she was in matters of technology and online security.
And then H had turned up, urging her to go deep in the darkest recesses of the web.
Time to put those skills back to use.
She started with the police IT systems she already had access to. Within half an hour she knew H was really onto something. She checked and cross-checked multiple references to all those in the picture H provided, and soon knew who they all were. She was surprised to find that at some time they had all been questioned by someone in authority or other but all the interviews were marked ‘Top Secret’ and she didn’t have access. A pattern was emerging - every time one of them had been in contact with police the investigation had been closed down. Quickly. She made multiple attempts to access the top secret files. She knew every attempt was logged and monitored but was confident it would be days before the cumbersome plods of the Met had the wherewithal to investigate the failed attempts further.
She resurrected the old user IDs she used when working for the Met security division, where her main job was to locate and entrap terrorists, paedophiles and the like, and she quick
ly started to make contact with the scum of the earth.
As she typed, her brain cross-referenced every name, every comment she found that connected to the information on the police systems. She had written some unique pattern-matching software while at Cambridge and also had access to the Met’s advanced software used to encrypt and de-encrypt software keys. She employed them to their maximum ability and marvelled at the high level of expertise she still had at her command.
She sat mesmerized, focused, rigid with attention as she put out fake messages to draw people into her world, ran responses on her software and went deeper into the web. She accessed the most sickening images she had ever seen and held her disgust in check.
She had reached a website with a chat room that she was now certain was used by many of the co-conspirators in the photo. Maybe she was even talking to one of them.
Think Amisha, think. However clever these people think they are they are creatures of habit. They make mistakes.
She found a highly secure messaging porthole, and the secret database that stored its messages, a database that would be filled with incriminating emails.
That’s it. Have to access that database.
For three hours she worked using every tool at her disposal, and ran an automated script that collated all the information she had and generated thousands of passwords. She drew on her knowledge of the conspirators, police software, her own software, her keen intelligence and her intuition. After several thousand attempts to gain direct access via the administrator password she almost screamed with joy when the message flashed on her screen: ACCESS GRANTED.
I’m in.
76
Amisha gritted her teeth and forced herself to concentrate, to block out the noise and the flashing light.