One Life Remaining (Portal Book 2)

by Mark J Maxwell

  ‘Twenty-three perimeter matches so far,’ Taylor said. ‘Do you want to filter on clothing?’

  ‘No,’ Drew said. ‘He may have changed. Take a team off the clan’s monitoring. I want all matches for the suspect backtracked and discounted manually.’

  At the end of the tunnel they ran up a flight of stairs, threw open a set of doors and paused on the other side.

  ‘Taylor,’ Drew said, ‘are you seeing this?’

  They stood on the fringe of a shopping centre’s food court. The vendors were housed in small units, serving everything from pizza to sushi. Green plastic seating on the mezzanine overlooked the floor beneath. Louisa stood on her tiptoes and scanned around. There were scores of people with black hoodies and falsefaces.

  ‘We have thirty partials so far,’ Taylor said. ‘Sense coverage is limited.’

  ‘Highlight them for us,’ Drew said.

  Louisa accepted the optical augmentation from the NCA Subnet. The matches were surrounded by a glowing red aura, both on the mezzanine and the floor below.

  ‘We’ll cover more ground if we split up,’ Louisa said. ‘I’ll take the mezzanine?’

  Drew nodded and set off down an escalator. Louisa instructed her MET ID to broadcast within a three-foot radius. The nearest glowing figure was queuing for a burger. She could see the contours of a man’s features through his falseface. She tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, sir. I’m Detective Inspector Bennett, Metropolitan Police. Please remove your falseface.’

  ‘I know my rights,’ he replied. ‘I don’t have to show you anything.’

  He was with two other men, their faces similarly covered. They sniggered and nudged each other. She looked around, exasperated. There were at least fifteen other matches on the mezzanine.

  This is taking too long. She reached up and yanked down the net. The man underneath looked to be around twenty, with an acned complexion and overly gelled black hair.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that!’

  But Louisa was already running. She didn’t announce herself to the next man either. She pulled down the net, then moved on. At one point she crossed a walkway over the lower level and looked down. She spotted Drew. Like her, he was yanking down hoods and falsefaces.

  One of the matches stood in a group of five men by a fountain and when Drew moved to grab his hood he stepped back out of reach. The man’s friends moved to surround Drew and one of them shoved him against the fountain. Drew caught the edge and narrowly avoided ending up in the water.

  ‘Do you need help?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘No,’ Drew said. ‘It’s not Godfrey. Keep looking.’

  Louisa paused for breath. She’d made it to the far side of the food court, leaving a behind string of irate young men and women. She was about to head down an escalator to Drew when she caught sight of a red glow leaving through a nearby exit. A sign above the door indicated it led to a tube station.

  ‘I’ve spotted a match heading for New Street Station,’ Louisa said. ‘I’m in pursuit.’

  Three of the four turnstiles at the concourse were out of order and the single operating barrier had built up a queue of people. The red glowing figure had just passed through and was heading for the escalators.

  ‘Metropolitan police!’ Louisa shouted. ‘No one move!’

  Most of the crowd in the concourse, the glowing man included, spun to look at her. He backed away, then turned and ran.

  ‘I think I’ve found Godfrey,’ Louisa said. ‘He’s heading for the platforms.’

  Louisa vaulted the turnstiles. She ignored an outraged cry and kept going. She’d lost sight of the red glow. Ahead, two sets of escalators led to separate platforms. She picked one at random, shouting for people to move as she flew past.

  She emerged onto the platform. A train had just pulled up and people were crowding around the doors, waiting for them to open, the red glowing figure amongst them. Louisa placed a hand on her holstered pistol. ‘Everyone, get do―’

  A heavy weight slammed into her side. She hit the tiled floor of the platform with a grunt, the air knocked from her lungs. A station security guard had rugby tackled her. He grabbed her wrists and attempted to force them behind her back. Louisa tried to tell him she was a police officer, but she couldn’t catch her breath. The train doors opened.

  ‘Nobody move!’ The cry echoed around the platform. Three men in dark suits rushed for the train carriage with weapons drawn. ‘Down on your knees! Hands behind your head!’

  The passengers not using by falsefaces gaped at the armed men. Then they all placed their arms behind their heads and awkwardly lowered themselves to their knees. An officer moved forward and one by one pulled down the falsefaces.

  ‘That’s him.’ She heard Drew’s voice as Jamie’s freckled face was revealed.

  ‘I’ve got another one, officer.’ That from the security guard who’s full weight still pinned her.

  ‘Thanks,’ Drew said. ‘I’ll take her from here.’

  Louisa sighed in relief as the guard levered himself off her. She rolled onto her back, gasping for breath.

  Drew leaned over her, a wide grin on his face. ‘Need a hand?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Louisa rotated her right shoulder and winced as it popped, inhaling sharply. Her bruised ribs took the opportunity to jab at her. The rail guard had apologised profusely once he found out who she was. Apparently fare evaders, or jumpers as he called them, were a growing problem since falsefaces became commonplace. At least the ache in her shoulder helped distract from the growing implant sensitivity. Her optical implants had been active for hours now and the throbbing heat at the back of her eyeballs had spread to her sinuses. The cranial implants itched now too. She tried not to scratch her scalp. It wouldn’t help.

  On the screen before her Jamie Godfrey sat with his brief and Drew in an interview room. They’d taken Jamie to Charing Cross Police Station for questioning, the NCA not having a custody suite of their own. Jamie’s solicitor, Kevin Mathews, had been provided by Multiverse, who retained the services of one of the cities’ largest law firms.

  ‘Mr Godfrey,’ Drew said, ‘why did you run from myself and Detective Inspector Bennett when we arrived at the Multiverse office?’

  ‘I didn’t run,’ Jamie replied. ‘I went for an early lunch.’

  ‘So you noted in your statement.’ Drew glanced down at his terminal. ‘Why then did you attempt to board the train at New Street?’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling well so I decided to work from home for the day. The next thing I knew I had a bunch of guns pointed at me.’

  ‘Are you still feeling unwell?’ Drew’s concern was an inch away from mocking. ‘Should I fetch a doctor?’

  ‘No, I’m feeling much better now.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  Mathews spoke then. ‘Officer Carter, my client has cooperated fully and so far you have failed to provide reasonable grounds to justify his continued detention. I must insist you do so, otherwise I will be forced to demand my client’s immediate release.’

  ‘We believe Mr Godfrey is a member of a Multiverse clan calling themselves the Sons of Babel,’ Drew said. ‘They’ve been proscribed by the Home Secretary. Membership is a criminal office under the Terrorism Act.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mathews said, ‘you made your suspicions abundantly clear when you arrested him. But Officer Carter, do you have any evidence linking this Multiverse clan to my client?’

  ‘A player with Mr Godfrey’s Multiverse ID exited the clan’s realm and then entered Multiverse’s own private administration realm.’

  ‘Show me the server logs,’ Jamie said. ‘I’d very much like to the evidence.’

  Drew pursed his lips. The Multiverse ID supplied by Ed did indeed belong to Jamie, however GCHQ found no trace of the ID in Multiverse’s logs for the clan’s realm. ‘Your colleagues believe the server logs may have been tampered with.’

  ‘So?’ Jamie countered. ‘It still doesn’t prove I did
anything.’

  Drew clasped his hands together on the table and rubbed his thumbs together. Jamie met his steady gaze with a smug smile. ‘Let’s talk about your parents.’

  Jamie’s smile slipped. ‘What about them?’

  ‘Your father murdered your mother and then committed suicide. Is that correct?’

  ‘Obviously you know all the details.’

  ‘It must have been hard for you to come to terms with losing both your parents in such a way. You must have felt very alone, and very angry.’

  Jamie didn’t respond. From the look on his face Drew was the sole focus of any anger he felt.

  ‘It’s not a great leap to assume the leak was behind your father’s motivations,’ Drew continued. ‘If it wasn’t for Portal, your parents may still be alive.’

  ‘Officer Carter, I must protest,’ Mathews said. ‘I fail to see what bearing this has on the allegations made against my client.’

  ‘Here’s what I think.’ Drew leaned forward. ‘You wanted to get back at Portal for what happened to your parents. You created the clan. You have the technical knowhow and the wherewithal.’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘You created the clan and then you recruited its members,’ Drew persisted.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve been behind the clan from the start.’ Drew jabbed a finger at Jamie. ‘You set them up as a terrorist cell. You recruited them to strike back at Portal for what happened to your parents. You ordered the Portal bombing.’

  Jamie slammed his palms down on the table. ‘No!’

  Drew leaned back and folded his arms. Jamie was breathing heavily, his face contorted.

  ‘Officer Carter,’ Mathews said, his calmness all the more pronounced following the ruckus. ‘I’d like a break to confer with my client.’

  Drew gave a terse nod. ‘Fine. Interview suspended.’

  A MET officer entered and escorted out Jamie and his solicitor.

  Louisa shared Drew’s frustration, but in her experience only the very young or emotionally damaged could be bullied into any kind of compliance during a police interview, and any brief worth his salt would step in long before that happened. Bringing up the death of Jamie’s parents was always going to upset him. It didn’t prove anything.

  ‘He’s not budging,’ Drew said as he joined Louisa in Custody Central. ‘If we can’t link him to the clan he’s going to walk.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how I found out about Jamie,’ Louisa said. ‘Even if I did, it wouldn’t do any good. My guy didn’t exactly use official channels to obtain Jamie’s Multiverse ID. Do you want to introduce illegally obtained evidence? Mathews will laugh in your face.’

  Drew nodded, then glanced away.

  ‘Has GCHQ found any mention of him in the clan’s history graphs?’ Louisa asked, keen to steer the conversation away from Ed.

  Drew shook his head.

  ‘Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jamie’s convinced he’s untouchable. We need to find a chink in his armour. There may be an angle we can use from the GCHQ briefing.’

  After Jamie’s arrest, Drew demanded Multiverse open up their servers. Tom Shrewsbury had complied, and GCHQ spent hours trawling Multiverse’s databases and logs for all references to the Sons of Babel.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Drew scratched at two-day old stubble. ‘GCHQ is confident Multiverse’s systems have been thoroughly sanitised of any references to Godfrey.’

  ‘I’ll admit, it’s a risk. If it backfires he could clam up even more.’

  Drew laughed weakly. ‘We can’t do any more damage at this stage. Let’s give it a shot.’

  *

  ‘You developed a popular Multiverse mod while you were still at sixth form college,’ Louisa said. They had reconvened Jamie’s interview, this time with both herself and Drew present. ‘Once you left school you were headhunted by Tom Shrewsbury, and within a year he promoted you to lead developer. Very impressive for someone so young.’

  Jamie draped an arm over the back of his chair and yawned, widely.

  ‘We had GCHQ take a look at the Multiverse servers,’ Louisa said. ‘You’ve heard of GCHQ, haven’t you?’

  Jamie flexed his shoulders. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They found something very interesting. Multiverse’s backups synchronise every hour, on the hour, with the game’s central servers. It’s for disaster recovery, I believe. This morning there was an unscheduled synchronisation. Now, if someone was attempting to cover their trail by altering the server logs, that synchronisation will have ensured the altered logs were propagated to the backups. The unscheduled synchronisation was executed moments before you left your desk.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’re obviously an expert on the company’s systems.’ Louisa smiled. ‘Perhaps though, you aren’t aware of the server deltas. They’re a recent addition to Multiverse’s disaster recovery plan. It seems someone in Multiverse imagined a scenario where, perhaps by accident, the central server became corrupted. The corruption could then spread out to the backups as part of their scheduled updates. The recovery strategy involves taking hourly snapshots of changes to the central servers over the previous twelve hours and storing them independently. That way, the company’s data wouldn’t be lost by an accidental, or malicious, update to the central servers.’ Louisa let what she’d said sink in. ‘Were you aware of this recent policy change?’

  Jamie swallowed. ‘I might have heard something about it.’

  ‘GCHQ is trawling through the deltas as we speak. Even if someone removed data from the central servers, it will still be present in the deltas.’

  Jamie opened his mouth, but before he could speak Louisa stood. ‘I believe we’ll suspend the interview now. We can resume after GCHQ has finished.’

  *

  ‘Do you think it will work?’ Drew asked when they arrived back at Custody Central.

  ‘Maybe. He knows more than he’s letting on.’ Multiverse had recently rolled out disaster recovery. The problem was, the deltas currently only recorded changes in player profile data. Nothing else.

  ‘We’re running out of time,’ Drew muttered.

  We are, but not for the reason you think. Louisa couldn’t be sure GCHQ revealed everything it knew at the briefing. Jamie might have left a trace behind. Something that would lead GCHQ to the clan. For all she knew GCHQ was zeroing in on the clan’s location right now.

  The custody officer joined them. ‘Sir,’ he said to Drew, ‘Mr Mathews wants a word.’

  Drew grinned. ‘That didn’t take long.’

  *

  ‘These server deltas you mentioned,’ Mathews said. A terminal rested on Mathews’ lap and he twirled a stylus between thumb and forefinger like a majorette’s baton. ‘You’re confident they will implicate my client?’

  ‘I leave the technical stuff to the experts,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Indeed.’ Mathews’ mouth turned up at the edges. ‘In that respect we are the same. But if I were to contact Multiverse, it would be a simple matter for them to verify if the clan’s access logs were present in the deltas.’

  ‘Mr Mathews, we both know Jamie is involved with the clan. How will it play out for Multiverse when the clan kill more innocent people and the public discover one of Multiverse’s employees is a member?’

  Mathews clasped his hands together. ‘During the last NCA press briefing most of the media enquiries revolved around the dangers of Multiverse gaming and the adverse impression it has on the minds of its players.’

  ‘I refused to answer those questions,’ Drew said. ‘Our investigation isn’t concerned with the effects of Multiverse’s games.’

  ‘Of course. At any rate their claims are baseless.’ Mathews waved his stylus as if conducting an orchestra. ‘Nothing more than pop psychology and hyperbole. If at the next briefing the NCA can convey to the media the superlative contribution Multiverse is ma
king to your investigation, it would be…helpful.’

  Drew stared at Mathews. ‘That could be arranged.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Mathews slid his stylus into a jacket pocket and stood. ‘I need some time with my client now. I imagine we’ll be ready to resume forthwith.’

  Drew turned to Louisa after Mathews left the room. ‘What just happened?’

  ‘I think he just agreed to throw his client under a bus.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I guess he knows which side his bread’s buttered.’

  ‘He’s taking one hell of a risk, isn’t he? What’s to stop us going to Jamie and telling him what Mathews said?’

  ‘Nothing. But if Mathews can get Jamie to talk are you going to stand in his way?’

  ‘Sneaky git.’ Drew shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t want him as my brief.’

  Louisa could only nod in agreement.

  *

  As soon as Drew announced the commencement of the interview Jamie spoke up. ‘I want a deal.’

  ‘What my client is attempting to convey,’ Mathews said, ‘is that we wish certain assurances to be made before he divulges any information pertaining to the Sons of Babel.’

  ‘No deals, no assurances,’ Drew snapped. ‘Once we confirm your client is a member of the Sons of Babel he’ll be charged with membership of a proscribed terrorist group and assisting in an act of terrorism which led to the deaths of four people.’

  Louisa bit her lip, willing Drew to keep calm. The last thing she wanted was for the interview to turn into another shouting match. This time, however, Jamie reddened and sank back into his seat.

  Mathews sensed the change in his client too. ‘Perhaps we need another few minutes to con―’

  ‘I don’t know anything about the bombing,’ Jamie blurted out. ‘I swear!’

  ‘If that’s true,’ Drew said, ‘then you need to tell us everything you know. We’ll make sure your cooperation is noted in the file we forward to the CPS.’

  Jamie looked over at his brief. Mathews nodded. Jamie took a deep breath and blew it out. When he spoke again he’d regained some of his composure. ‘Okay, I set up the clan in Multiverse and sent out the invites, but I’d nothing to do with the bombing.’