by Tim Ellis
‘Let’s hope so.’
The door opened.
Mona’s lip curled up. ‘What a nice surprise.’
‘Hello, Mona,’ he said. ‘We’ve come for Sunday lunch.’
‘Is that right?’
He edged closer. ‘Are you going to let us in?’
She pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
‘Why not?’ Rae chipped in.
‘Because you have a hospital gown on.’
‘I’ve just come from the hospital.’
‘And you didn’t have time to get dressed?’
‘Someone was . . .’
Tom squeezed her arm.
‘Someone was “what”?’
‘. . . Trying to kill me.’
Mona smiled, but her eyes were humourless. ‘Ah! So, you did a stock-take of the available places you could hide from a sniper with a rifle, and you were left with my place?’
His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘It’s on the news, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it’s on the news. It’s not every day that we have snipers shooting through hospital windows at patients in the quaint holiday resort of St Augustine, and a car chase through the town that breaks so many laws and statutes that I think you’ve recorded your place in the Guinness Book of Records.’
‘Are you going to let us in, then?’ His voice sounded desperate.
‘I let you in, the gunman comes round here and shoots up my house, my car, my neighbours’ kids and dogs. No, I don’t think letting you into my house would be a good idea.’
‘We have nowhere else to go,’ Rae said.
‘And that’s my problem how?’
‘You’re a police officer.’
‘It’s Sunday, I’m on a day off.’
‘The gunman is dead,’ Tom said. ‘He was in a car accident, and the car blew up with him inside it.’
‘That might be the case, but I have the feeling he was merely the first of many gunmen coming after you two. You’re trouble, Tom. In fact, you’ve always been trouble. Trouble is your first, middle and last name. And she’s trouble as well . . .’ She pointed at Rae. ‘I let you into my house and I just know I’ll be lucky to get out of it with my life in one piece . . .’
‘Did you know the FBI are operating in your area?’
‘Don’t try and wheedle your way in by lies and half-truths. Somebody would have told me . . .’
He turned as if to go. ‘Okay, if you’re not interested in what’s happening in your own town – we’ll be on our way.’
‘I give you a coffee, you tell me everything you know, and then you find someplace else to get yourself killed?’
‘Sounds like a fair deal.’ He knew that once they were inside, she wouldn’t be so heartless as to throw them to the wolves.
‘And you loan me some clothes?’ Rae said.
Mona laughed a genuine laugh. ‘I’m flattered that you think my clothes would fit your skinny body.’
‘You must have something with elastic in it, or maybe that’s shrunk in the wash.’
She looked at Tom and said, ‘Your friend has no social skills, does she?’
‘She’s young.’
Mona stood to one side and they shuffled past her into the living room.
‘I know how Tom takes his poison. What about you?’ she said to Rae.
‘Just normal coffee with no sugar in it.’
Once she brought the coffees in and they were all sitting down she said, ‘Well?’
He told her everything that he’d told Special Agent Nelson Brock.’
‘And the FBI are operating out of the Cadiz Winery?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe the Captain knows and he just forgot to tell me.’
‘Nobody knows. Who’s to say the Captain isn’t in on it.’
‘No . . . I don’t believe it. Something like that couldn’t happen in America, and certainly not under our noses for over sixty years.’
‘That’s one of the reasons why they’ve got away with it for so long – nobody believes it could ever happen. Well, it is happening. You’ve seen the numbers of children that go missing and are never found – it’s like an epidemic.’
‘You think this is really happening?’
‘They keep trying to kill us,’ Rae said. ‘Well – me anyway. They’ll do anything to stop their dirty little secret from getting out.’
‘Hardly a little secret,’ Tom said.
‘So, now that he’s told you,’ Rae said. ‘Can I get some clothes. I’m sure you don’t want my naked butt on your sofa.’
‘You’re not wearing any pants?’
‘No.’
‘You could have said. I would have covered the material with a sheet of polythene.’ She stood up. ‘You’d better come through, and you start commenting on the clothes in my wardrobe and I’ll kick your skinny butt outta here.’
Tom was left on his own. He stood up, went to the window and peered out. His bright yellow Nitro was sitting right outside like a locator beacon, and it was a wreck. God knows how much it was going to cost this time to put right. The insurance certainly wouldn’t pay out if he told them what had happened. In fact, he’d be lucky if anybody would ever insure him again if he tried to make a claim.
‘What do you think?’ Rae said, twirling round in a baggy blue-patterned dress as if she was on the catwalk. ‘Mona’s got some really nice clothes.’
‘You think so?’ he said.
She pulled a face and stuck her tongue out.
Mona was standing right behind her, so he tried not to laugh. ‘I think it’s a million percent better than a green hospital gown.’
‘With my butt on show to anybody who cared to look?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Thanks, Mona,’ Rae said and hugged her.
‘Yeah. It definitely looks better on you than it ever did on me.’
Rae also had on shorts and a pair of old white trainers. ‘As soon as this is over, I’ll wash everything and give it back to you.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘Oh! Have you got a tablet?’
‘Nope. Laptop is the best I can do.’
‘Can I use it to access my emails. I’d just received an email in the hospital when that bastard tried to kill me.’
‘Sure. I very rarely use it.’ She disappeared for a while, and then came back with an old heavy laptop.
‘This is an antique, isn’t it?’
Mona held out her hand. ‘If you don’t want to use it . . .’
‘No, I’m sure it’ll do just fine for what I need to do.’
‘I am glad.’
Rae plugged in the laptop and waited while it booted up.
‘So, what’s your next move, Mr Rockford?’ Mona asked him.
The corner of his mouth creased up. ‘I was thinking of lying low here for a couple of days.’
‘Think again. I don’t have any room for two of the FBI’s most wanted.’
Mona’s phone began to ring.
‘That’ll be Gubner.’ She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, Mason . . . Who else would ring me on a Sunday afternoon to tell me about something that I’ve been watching on the news? . . . No, I’m not coming in. You know my feelings on Tom Gabriel . . . That’s exactly right – a has-been who needs to stop pretending to be a teenager and retire gracefully . . . No, I don’t want you ringing me with updates. I’m sitting here watching it on the news like normal people . . . Yeah, see you in the morning.’ She replaced the receiver.
‘So, that’s what you really think of me?’
‘You heard it directly from the horse’s mouth.’
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Rae said.
He and Mona stood hunched behind Rae looking at the screen.
‘Have you got a printer?’
‘Yes, but it hasn’t got an ink cartridge in it.’
‘Great. Oh well, you’ll just have to look at what Lillian Taylor has sent me on the computer scre
en.’ She turned to Tom. ‘Remember she was going to break into a university laboratory over the weekend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, she got in tonight. Remember the English are eight hours ahead of us.’
‘And?’
‘She put the dry-cleaning tags under a microscope and this what she found.’ She brought up a blow-up of the “1” from the pink tag with the number 1171 on it onto the screen. ‘This is what she says in her email:
As I expected, the answer was hidden in plain sight. Some of the vertical and horizontal strokes on the numbers that comprise the laundry marks contain miniature numbers and letters, which are known as microcode. This raises a number of questions, not least: Who put them there? What do they mean? Here’s what I’ve found:
From the dry-cleaning tags:
5242XN9085
IRY27VX2355605X7D23
2YRS42X4561
I also found microcode on some of the vertical and horizontal strokes from the Rubaiyat code:
8X32505683EX3K
X4423546X28V806X7543822025849345V
We (a friend who is studying cryptology at the same university) think that the X is a separator between words. He (my friend) input the code into a piece of high-level decryption software, but even with the code from the Rubaiyat, there’s not enough of it to identify any patterns.
Do you have any more?
Lillian Taylor
‘We don’t have any more, do we?’
‘Not unless the Rubaiyat itself contains microcode.’
‘Did you find it in my apartment?’
‘Didn’t you hide it?’
‘Why would I?’
‘No, I didn’t find it. The Broken Circle have probably got that as well as everything else of yours.’
‘It’s hardly my fault.’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘The magnifying glass!’ Rae said.
He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s probably what it was used for.
‘Did he use it for writing or reading the code through?’
‘I guess we’ll never know. What I do know though, is that this microcode probably contains the names of the eleven members of The Broken Circle.’
Mona interrupted. ‘If that’s true, then it’s no wonder they want to kill you.’
Tom sat down again. ‘Well, without any more code, it doesn’t look as though we’ll ever find out who they were.’
‘I suppose I’d better arrest you two then,’ Mona said.
‘Arrest us!’ Rae said. ‘What for?’
‘Well, if the killers are dead – as you say, then you’re the only ones who can tell the authorities what happened.’
‘Have you been listening to what I’ve been telling you?’
‘What, so you think you can just go back home and forget today ever happened?’
Tom screwed his face up. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do now, but being arrested isn’t part of the plan.’
‘You’ll be safer in custody.’
‘Oh, you mean like Senator Raeburn and Doc Ratchet?’
‘That won’t happen.’
‘Damn right, because we won’t be in custody.’
‘Well, you can’t stay here. And you need to move that yellow wreck from outside the front of my house. It’s like a neon sign that says: Here I am! Come and get me.’
‘Yes, I agree with you on that. You’re sure we can’t stay here?’
‘Positive. If I don’t take you in . . . I think we both know how that’ll look to the Captain.’
‘Can I borrow your cell, Mona?’ Rae asked.
She went into the kitchen, came back and handed it to her. ‘You’ll be wanting to borrow my rabbit next.’
Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t know you had a rabbit, Mona.’
Rae and Mona gave each a knowing look.
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Tom Gabriel.’
Rae keyed something into Mona’s cell and pressed it to her ear.
‘Who are you calling?’ Tom asked her.
‘That paperboy has left three messages for me to call him.’ She dialled the number.
‘It’s Butterfly. If all you’re after is . . . And you followed her? . . . Interesting. Okay, I’ll come up there . . .’ She looked at the clock on the wall – it was three-thirty. ‘Let’s say six o’clock . . . Where? Mojo’s Tacos at six o’clock. I’ll see you there then.’
She ended the call.
‘What?’ Tom said.
‘Ronnie Paterson – the paperboy – said that a woman has left two bunches of flowers at the place Samuel Kopec was killed.’
‘And?’
‘And he followed her home.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mmmm! Maybe he wasn’t at Porpoise Point just to meet with the FBI.’
‘You think he might have met this woman as well?’
‘Why is she leaving flowers at the place he got murdered? Okay, let’s leave Mona to enjoy the rest of her Sunday afternoon.’ He stood up and hugged her. ‘Thanks for your help, Mona.’
‘I still think you’d be safer in custody.’
‘We can’t rot in custody for the rest of our lives. Sooner or later these people would get to us.’
‘You’ll move the wreck?’
‘Yes. I’ll dump it somewhere, and we’ll catch the bus like normal people. Have you got a bag, or something similar for Rae.’
‘What do I need a bag for?’ Rae asked. ‘I’ve got nothing with me.’
‘There are two items in the Nitro that we probably need to take with us.’
‘Two items! Oh, you mean . . . ?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t even want to know,’ Mona said as she followed them to the door.
Rae gave Mona a hug. ‘Thanks, Mona.’
‘Yeah.’
They ran to the Nitro, climbed in and set off towards Route 1 and the Vilano Causeway over Hospital Creek and the Tolomato River.
He parked the Nitro in a multi-storey car park on East San Carlos Avenue, and then they caught the bus to Vilano Beach.
‘Mona’s dress suits you,’ he said as they walked up the beach arm-in-arm carrying their shoes.
The sun was probably at about eighteen minutes past the hour, but was noticeably sinking towards the sea. The sand scrunched between their toes as the waves washed over their bare feet and splashed up their legs. Seagulls were screeching and diving, and they watched as a blue heron entered the water like the spear of Achilles and came out with a fish in its beak.
‘It’s lovely here,’ Rae said. ‘Maybe we should both retire.’
He squeezed her forearm. ‘I have the feeling it’s a bit too late for that.’
Eventually, they reached Mojo’s Tacos at five to six and decided to sit outside in the evening sun.
Ronnie Paterson was waiting for them, riding up and down the boardwalk on a skateboard.
‘You drive people crazy doing that, you know?’ Tom said with a frown etched on his face.
‘Yeah – I know. Who are you?’
‘Police. I’m here to arrest you. Anything you say . . .’
Rae elbowed him. ‘Take no notice of him. He’s the ex-policeman I was telling you about.’
‘You look hot.’
‘Thank you. Should we eat first, and then you can take us to where this woman lives.’
‘Sure thing. I’d much rather eat tacos than the rubbish my mum makes me eat.’
‘That’d be healthy food?’ Tom said.
‘Yeah. It’s rubbish.’
‘I can vouch for that.’
The waitress came up to the table, filled up Tom’s mug with coffee, but Rae and Ronnie asked for a Pepsi each.
Thinking that it might be his last meal, he ordered two of the shredded beef and salad tacos, two Mexican chicken tacos, two black bean tacos, two flaming beef tacos, two chilli-rubbed baby back rib tacos, two . . .’
‘Hey, I’ll order my own,’ Rae said.
‘And me,’ Ronnie agreed.
He took a swallow of coffee. ‘Those are for me.’
Rae gave a laugh. ‘You’re a pig.’
The food arrived. They pounced on it like famished vultures, ate their fill and belched in appreciation.
‘You’ll have to push me in a barrow,’ Tom said.
‘You’re a pig,’ Rae said.
‘I think we’ve established that already.’
He paid, and they followed Ronnie across the Coastal Highway, up Gardner Avenue to an apartment block on the corner of 2nd Street and Surfside Avenue.
‘Number 17,’ Ronnie said.
‘You stay here,’ Tom said.
‘But . . .’
Rae squeezed his shoulder. ‘Just in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘Trouble.’
They walked up the stairs to the first floor, found Number 17 and knocked. The name, typed on a piece of card in the nameplate was: Julia Monreal.
The door opened.
A pregnant Spanish-looking woman in her mid-thirties with long black hair and a flat nose said, ‘Yes?’
Tom showed his ID card. ‘Tom Gabriel. I’m a private investigator.’ He indicated Rae. ‘And this is Butterfly Raeburn from the St Augustine Record.’
‘I’ve been reading the serialisation – very interesting. What happened to today’s report?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To talk to you about Samuel Kopec.’
She paled significantly. ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’
‘Please,’ Rae said. ‘You’re our last hope. We know about the flowers you’ve been leaving on the beach at the place where he died.’
She began crying.
Rae put an arm around the woman’s shoulders and led her inside.
Tom followed them in and shut the door.
Once they were sitting in the living room, Julia Monreal said, ‘He told me never to say that I knew him to anyone.’
Rae comforted her. ‘I promise you, whatever you say to us will go no further.’
‘There’s nothing I can tell you.’
‘Is it his child?’
‘Yes. If it’s a boy we’re . . .’ She began crying again. ‘There’s no “we” anymore, is there?’