‘He’s not here. He’s taking some quiet time, you know, away from things.’
‘Ah,’ she said, hanging her leather jacket inside the cupboard and putting on a blue apron. ‘Religious retreat. He say he is going on one.’
‘Yes, the retreat in America, I think,’ said Helen. ‘You probably know Mister Werks’ tastes better than we do. We’ve not met him yet, unfortunately. Have you worked for him long?’
‘Four years I work here,’ said the old woman. ‘Every other day.’
‘It’s a clean flat,’ said Helen. ‘He can’t have many visitors, no parties or dinners.’
‘He is good man now,’ said the cleaner. ‘No parties, no girls. No mess.’
‘Really, I heard he enjoyed that kind of life? We were told to make sure all the sofas we buy have an anti-stain coating for alcohol.’
‘First three years, yes. Always mess to clean up. Ash on floor. Wine on floor. Stupid girls. Some of them from Russia, the kind that ask for money, giggling and saying rude things, thinking I cannot understand. Not now. No more stupid pretty girls. Mister Werks asks me to pray with him when I come here, sometimes. We kneel by window. He has clean life and clean flat.’
Spads experienced a moment of regret listening to the cleaner’s tale. Simon Werks was one of the few people Spads could have confided in concerning his personal religion. Perhaps Spads could have got the dead billionaire to understand the fundamental truths behind the universe. Saved him from wasting his time on the same fatuous teachings his mother seemed obsessed with. Werks had made many worthy contributions to the uplift of humanity. If only he had believed, perhaps God would have stepped in and saved the billionaire just as Spads had been saved. Keep me as the apple of thine eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.
‘You pray with him?’ Helen sounded sceptical.
‘It is true, here…’ Lenochka grabbed Spads by the sleeve and dragged him along the corridor to the large window overlooking Hyde Park, pulling him down in front of the tall pane of cold glass. ‘Like this.’
It was looking out the window in that brief moment that Spads had his epiphany. There was a red bus driving down the road in front of the park, the ninety-nine to Woolwich High Street. Flashing along the digital billboard along its side a shop assistant made a phone out of his fingers and the logo of the phone shop being advertised rolled into place, along with a cartoon speech bubble reading ‘Call John.’
‘John 9:9,’ whispered Spads. The preaching tones of his mother surfaced in his head. Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” But the Son of God kept saying, “I am the man.” Spads shivered with the power of the revelation. Simon Werks couldn’t be saved. But his contribution could still be honoured. He can be avenged. This is the test I have been given, to find the killers behind Werks’ murder. You test those who are righteous and examine the deepest thoughts and secrets. Let me see your vengeance against them, for I have committed my cause to you.
With her apron on, the old woman smelt of chlorine and lavender, but Spads no longer cared. He had been shown his path. It all made sense. If he had been locked up in a super-max prison on the other side of the Atlantic, incarcerated with all those meathead bullies and psychopaths in that human zoo, he couldn’t have been deployed as a servant of the universe.
‘He is American, but he is good now,’ said the woman, as if the residual memory of superpower rivalry was still embedded deep in her soul. Americans could be good, if they tried hard. She got up from her knees. Spads did the same.
Helen made a doubtful noise as the old woman waddled off to drag all the buckets and dusters out of the cupboard. Spads’ colleague motioned back toward the office with a graceful flick of her head, resting her back against one of the sofas. ‘Check you’ve got all the data and we’ll make a last pass for anything we’ve missed.’
‘I am the man,’ said Spads.
‘You the man,’ she agreed, cheerfully. ‘So, Simon Werks needed to believe in something more than vast amounts of money. But only towards the end. What does that tell us?’
‘Something bad happened to him,’ speculated Spads.
‘Like what?’
‘Life, I think.’ Life was often enough to confound Spads.
‘No, he used to enjoy his life. There’s something more, that we’re missing…’
Spads looked at Helen, as cute as a button in her expensive, sombre, manga clothes. ‘I think we all need something more,’ he said.
‘There are no atheists in foxholes,’ noted Helen.
‘Is that a saying?’
‘An aphorism. Something my father used to tell me. He was career army.’
‘You have a father?’
‘No, a mad scientist cloned me’ She moved to a tall display table with a miniature raft carved from pale-green jade, a Chinese figure who might have been Buddha sitting in it with a basket of flowers, an attendant and a deer. ‘What you think?’
He walked over to get a closer look. Spads wasn’t sure if Helen was asking what he thought of the jade piece, or the idea she had been spawned in the lab of some mad scientist. ‘Is that Buddha?’
‘No, she’s Ma Gu, an immortal identified with the elixir of life in Taoist scripture. A piece inferior to this sold for two million last year to a Chinese industrialist.’ Helen picked it up, feeling its heft, no longer than a pen, then she opened her handbag and dropped the miniature inside, clinking as it jounced against her Beretta BU-9 Nano sub-compact pistol. ‘This is my something more.’
Spads’ eyes widened. ‘You can’t take that.’
She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Of course I can. Simon Werks didn’t even care about these when he was alive, let alone now. Look how the pieces stand out against the walls and offset his ceiling. These were chosen for the colour scheme – do you have any idea how insulting that is to a real collector? If a Picasso or a Henry Moore figurine had gone better with the carpet, then that’s what would his agents would have bought for the flat.’ Helen pointed to a mottled green jade-faceted vase on a neighbouring display table. ‘A Qianlong-period baluster. Now that’s worth twenty times as much.’
Spads moved in front of it. ‘You can’t steal it. They’ll catch you!’
Helen laughed. ‘Too big to hide on the way out. And they’ve already caught me. Why the hell do you think I’m working for the office?’
Spads gawked at her. It seemed like his day for epiphanies. ‘What if they’ve got concealed cameras in here?’
‘They don’t, I swept for them. But even if there were cameras here, that’s the point of you, Spads, isn’t it? Something substantial to hack. You felt alive when you were kicking down the Pentagon’s firewalls, that much I know. You had to feel good doing that.’
‘The FBI were going to extradite me!’
‘You’re good with systems. I’m good with more physical concerns. Think of the things we could do together.’ She leaned in and gave him a hot, warm kiss on the lips. Helen tasted like Cinnamon. She tasted like manga. A reward for his service or a test? Spads was just about tending towards the former. Question seven – he needs to tell you that you are a radiant woman and that you are enough. It almost made sense now.
CHAPTER SIX – SUSPICIOUS MINDS
Agatha peered through the tiny glass lens built into her door to see who had rung her bell. Nobody ever called on them at the Tower. Certainly not the locals, who wouldn’t even acknowledge a good evening from her as she set off on her nocturnal walks.
Vincent Bouche appeared at the end of the corridor, a cook’s apron with the colourful cartoon figure of a waiter printed on it springing against his knees as he stalked towards the door. He still had the razor sharp vegetable knife in his hand he had been using to slice apples. ‘Anyone we know, madame?’
‘It appears to be Spads. He’s the electronic warfare specialist currently attached to section seven.’ There was a distant excited snaffling from the kitchen as Saucisses scratched at the shut kitchen door. The miniatu
re pig was the only one in the household that enjoyed receiving visitors. As long as they scratched him under the snout, he was content. Agatha was not so easily fobbed off. Nor was her housemate.
Bouche pressed his face to the spy-hole. ‘One of the office’s babies. Not a pretty one. Too much time searching the internet. Bad for his skin.’
Agatha’s friend stepped to the side, out of sight as she opened the door. ‘Spads, I wasn’t expecting you. You should have called ahead.’
‘Wanted to,’ complained Spads. ‘Doyle says it’s Moscow Rules from now on. That means we don’t trust our phones unless it’s an emergency.’
‘Really? I wonder who could have given him that idea? It seems admirably prudent, however.’ Agatha indicated the warmth of the corridor and stepped aside for him to enter. As the man squeezed past, she felt the rim of his coat, locating the missing shape in the fabric. A pea-sized pentagon. She made a subtle hand signal to Bouche confirming their visitor’s identity and he lowered his knife, then she closed the front door. Spads started in alarm as he realized that someone had stepped out as silently as an assassin behind him.
‘Spads, this is Monsieur Bouche, Vincent Bouche. He’s acted as something of an honorary member of the office for decades, so you can be completely candid around him.’
‘I’m not on your social networks or your search engine indexes,’ said Bouche. ‘I am like Les morts, yes? I am like one of Madame Witchley’s ghosts.’
Spads had a look on his face like a startled rabbit expecting to be garrotted for the pot. ‘Okay. I am the man.’
‘You are a baby. But you may learn.’ Bouche turned and headed back to the kitchen.
‘Don’t mind him. Vincent isn’t terribly good around new people.’
‘I understand,’ said Spads. ‘I’m not very good around new people, either.’
‘So much in common.’ Agatha led Spads down the corridor and opened the living room door. Inside was a worn terracotta-pattern sofa in front of a television hanging on the wall, a multi-slot Blu-ray recorder below the entertainment screen, but that was the only free space. The majority of the room was given over to transparent crates of gleaming disks and removable storage drives connected to a pair of desktop computers. The space was made even smaller by the weighed-down shelves that had been erected across every spare gap. She could see from the way his eyes lit up that he appreciated the computers’ custom set-up.
‘Well then, Spads. I presume you’re here with news from the office, although you’re welcome to stay for Vincent’s Moules marinière.’
‘Is that food?’
‘An extremely tasty dish, as long as you enjoy mussels.’
‘My, well… flatmate gets very angry if I don’t eat with her.’
‘Jealously is the least admirable of the seven sins,’ said Agatha. ‘You shall stay for dinner, then. Now, the office…?’
Spads rummaged around in his courier bag, pulling a file of papers out from behind his laptop. Agatha took them from him, and called to Bouche to bring her reading glasses. The Frenchman appeared with Agatha’s spectacles, then left the living room as she speed-read through Helen’s write-up and examined the photographs of Simon Werks’ flat. Spads’ notes on locating a hidden feed broadcasting Werks’ surveillance footage to an external location was a breakthrough she hadn’t been anticipating. No less the welcome for it. God bless the world’s blackmailers. She allowed a smile to settle on her face as she read about the murdered billionaire’s recent conversion to born-again Christianity. ‘You’ll find no atheists in foxholes.’
‘That’s exactly what Helen said.’
‘Of course she did, she’s a clever girl. Now then Spads, have we received permission from ControlWerks to access Simon Werks’ financial records?’
Spads shook his head. ‘They are in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The company says they are private, part of his estate. We need to speak to his lawyers.’
‘Do you need permission?’
‘Banks have a way of doing things. It’s always the same, their protocols. Bank compliance manuals are thick, but static. Staying static is never a good thing. Evolution is.’
He seemed to be speaking in a wider sense than just software, but Agatha bit back her curiosity. ‘Well then, I would say they’re probably asking for it, don’t you think? I would be specifically very interested in any large donations to charity, religious or otherwise, made from Simon Werks’ estate in the last year.’ She handed the file back to Spads. ‘And I would suggest deleting the photographs of the living room tomorrow when you check in at the office.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s where the most valuable antiques are on display. Before and after photos are highly sought after by insurance investigators.’
Spads had the courtesy to blush, confirming Agatha’s suspicions. From the kitchen came the muffled noise of one of The Doors’ albums being played too loud. Bouche only played music that loud when he was sulking. It was amazing; it was as if he could actually sense Agatha extending a dinner invitation to their visitor.
‘I’ll be going back to the office later,’ said Spads. ‘I’m close to completing the IP chain trace for the hidden feed. That should lead us to the missing security guard, Luke Wilder…’
‘Something to keep you and Helen out of mischief, then. Helen a little more than you. I doubt if collecting objects d’art is at the forefront of the our absent security man’s mind right now.’
‘Frank Ludington helped me track down the secret router. You were right about him.’
‘You need to have people around who you can rely on, who you can trust, who will stand well against your back. Especially when you’re working for the office, in our field of expertise.’
‘Is that a lesson?’
‘I believe it is.’
Spads reached for a quaintly analogue paper notepad with a pencil jammed into its spine. It must hold precious content indeed for even Spads not to trust it to his PDA or laptop. Agatha pushed the hand holding the notebook gently back into his canvas bag, but not before getting a glimpse of a list that looked suspiciously like it had been copied from the advice pages of a woman’s magazine. ‘You don’t need to write that down. Simply remember it.’
Spads stared towards her shelves, asking the question that had obviously been nagging him since he entered the living room. ‘Why do you collect so many discs when you can download shows on demand?’
‘There’s a sadness in old television shows, don’t you think?’ said Agatha, standing up and brushing a row of disks labelled M.A.S.H. ‘All those people, tuning in every week to catch the latest episode. Discussing which character they like best with their friends. Blogging about plots and updating their social networking services with ideas of where the stories should head. And then the series are gone. Just a memory, a few lost zeroes and ones on a video-streaming server. Nothing you can leave for your children. Hardcopies lasted for centuries, Chaucer and Shakespeare handed across the generations as a legacy. But who remembers Callan or Kojak? That’s what our world has become, not enough attention or memory left in our crowded world to sing of the Wombles around our tribe’s campfires.’
‘But why record them?’ he said, indicating her banks of humming storage devices. ‘Create an offline mirror?’
‘It’s an almost impossible task, to rewrite and conceal history written on paper pages; even more arduous to tamper with every book at the same time. But after you’ve digitised your memories, why, then there’s only the charge of an electron spin separating Stalin as Monster from Stalin as Saviour. I’m taking snapshots of our humanity, our knowledge, and the value isn’t in what’s recorded. It’s in locating what’s might be erased, or already has been. You think this is a clutter of storage devices, trying to capture the digital river? It’s not. You can’t capture the river, the river is flow. My room here is pure Zen. I’m making use of what is no longer there.’ She reached over and waved her hand through the doorway. ‘Just like the space that
allows us to enter the room. What’s not there is as important as what is.’
‘I so don’t understand,’ said Spads.
‘At the office, most of the work that’s done is absorbing the secrets people no longer care to know, storing them away for a rainy day that will never come. You might say this is the opposite face of that task, preserving the truth rather than merely hiding it. Pro bono work, carried out in way of my penance.’
Spads shook his head, examining the contents of the shelves as if they might help him. ‘ChiPs, Airwolf, F Troop, Daktari, Rising Damp, My Favourite Martian, The Rockford Files.’ He recited the obviously unfamiliar titles like Latin at a Mass. ‘Are they the truth?’
‘More than you might think.’
‘Did God tell you to preserve them?’
‘Actually, it was Frank Sinatra. Let’s just say we both have our peculiar little ways, Spads. In my case, it’s one of the perils of Mister Doyle cancelling my sectioning order at this country’s most secure mental institution.’
‘Doyle. I almost forgot. He asked me to tell you that you and he have an interview tomorrow morning with the head of Greenrock Capital. It’s arranged in his club in London. He’s called William T. McCarley. His fund wants to buy ControlWerks.’
‘So I hear. Fast work indeed. Could you gauge from Mister Doyle how willingly the firm granted the interview?’
‘Doyle didn’t look happy. He never seems happy.’
‘Making people happy isn’t his business, friend,’ said Agatha. She grinned. ‘Let’s see how unhappy we can make your, well… flatmate.’
In the kitchen, The Doors album was rising to a crescendo, Jim Morrison opining on the majority of the children being insane. You’re not wrong, Jimmy. It was time for dinner for three, four if you included their pig. And that was just the guests who were alive.
***
Doyle kept a wary eye on his car’s sat-nav, a piece of twenty-first century high tech intruding on his classic’s dash, checking for a little flash of red on the screen that would indicate an available parking space in the area. The seat next to him still had the boy’s car seat strapped into it, the boot too full of junk to stow the chair and Agatha Witchley hovering behind his shoulder in the back, leaving him feeling far too close to the chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy.
In the Company of Ghosts Page 9