Cut to the Bone

by Alex Caan

  And that man in the bathroom. He was so nondescript, so ordinary, like millions of men in offices. If Zain had to pick him out of a line-up, he’d fail. Yet he had set his mind reeling. Zain hadn’t spoken to Kate about it. She would have insisted he do things properly, bring the man into the office. Scare him away.

  ‘How you getting on?’ he called over to Michelle.

  ‘Slowly,’ she said. ‘Just waiting for his network to release his cell tower positions.’

  Zain scrolled through more pages of data on Jed Byrne, and MINDNET. The same self-glorifying pieces about the YouTube stars and their power. Eventually, after scrawling through what seemed like hundreds of articles, Zain found something of interest.

  He checked the directory for internet sites. MINDNET’s website was protected, ex-directory, no ownership details available. He next checked Ruby’s personal website. This was registered to her. He then recalled she had a number of sites, and so did Dan. So did the other stars tied in to MINDNET.

  Zain checked their websites; most of them were personally registered, until he hit one that wasn’t. He checked the name the website was registered to. It wasn’t MINDNET; it was a firm called DORF Finance.

  Zain did a search for them, and found they were a subsidiary of something called KANGlobal. DORF acted as the accountancy arm, the glorified petty cash tin, really, for KANGlobal, referred to as KNG in its abbreviated form.

  Zain checked for KNG. They were an international conglomerate with interests in a number of ventures. Their primary sources of income seemed to be conservation research and sustainable exploration. Drilling down further, he realised that they were in fact a mining company, with a focus on oil and minerals, with operations across the world. Specifically West Africa.

  Zain checked in with Lideo. It had a record of every company in existence, or so it claimed, with a breakdown of their last financial statements, if known, and who was behind them. Zain used the PCC login details.

  He scanned through for MINDNET, which listed Jed Byrne. Then checked KNG.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ he said, reading through the skeleton details. Detailed under the entry for KNG was a list of companies they had control of.

  ‘What is it?’ said Michelle.

  ‘MINDNET. They’re owned by one of the largest conglomerates in the world.’

  Zain turned back to the KNG links he had found. The company was listed as being run by a board, a list of names. They didn’t mean anything to him. He checked Wikipedia for some of them; only a couple turned up. Professional board members, previously with banks.

  ‘Damn,’ said Michelle, interrupting the cogs that were making links in Zain’s head. ‘Karl Rourke was home when he said he was.’

  ‘Why would his wife lie?’

  Michelle shrugged, turned back to her screen.

  ‘Still doesn’t explain what he was doing at Windsor Court,’ he said.

  The image of Rourke with the files. The shredded contract. The dumped paperwork.

  Zain started to see a pattern in his head. He needed to speak to Riley. And he really needed to speak to the mysterious MINDNET employee.

  Chapter Eighty

  Kate took her shoes off at the door, enjoying the blast of heat as she walked deeper into the house. Her mother was in the lounge, watching a film she had watched numerous times. It was always the same. She liked to watch films she knew well: she could keep track more easily if she knew what was meant to happen.

  Kate felt an instinct to make contact. Kiss Jane on the head, touch her hand to her mother’s face. In her head, the gesture was so easy. In the room, the few metres between them were full of invisible walls. She had no energy to surmount that level of emotional barbed wire tonight.

  Ryan was in the kitchen, washing his hands. His jacket was already on.

  ‘Coffee before you go?’ she said.

  ‘You know I swapped coffee for camomile tea,’ he said.

  ‘Just a quick chat? Please?’

  Ryan nodded, and sat down with his hands in his pockets. He reminded her of someone, but she pushed the thought away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Is it ever going to be enough? Just saying that?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘She just worries about me. And I do too, about her. All that gets me through is knowing you’re here with her. I’ve had a day that just makes me want to quit, and if I had to think about her with someone . . . well, I need you. That’s what I’m trying to say.’

  Kate reached her hands across the kitchen table, hoping he would meet them with his own. He didn’t, kept them deep in his jacket. He started to bite his lip, though. He was at least affected by the gesture.

  ‘Will it be so bad if we stop?’ she said. Yes, she thought. For me it will be.

  ‘I don’t know. I quite like the benefits package,’ he said, only half maliciously.

  ‘I wonder if she heard us? I’ll try to come home earlier more often. And the spare room is yours.’

  ‘I get it, no more knowing each other in the Biblical sense. You don’t have to make it so obvious,’ Ryan said.

  ‘So you’ll stay?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need some time. It’s not so easy. Her condition . . .’

  He unsheathed his hands, let them fall on top of hers. Kate felt the atoms in her rise up to meet his touch, the familiar desire. She swallowed, hoping the gesture would send a signal to her brain. Ryan was now in a different box, only to be recalled as friend and carer.

  ‘I thought she was managing on her own?’ said Kate.

  ‘She is. The cell phone you gave her – so simple, why didn’t we think of that before? She calls me if she gets overwhelmed.’

  Kate had given Jane a mobile. It enabled her to go shopping, for walks, to appointments. An app on it gave away her location wherever she was. In her pocket was a letter and next of kin form, in case the dementia reared up. The mobile was always unlocked; Kate and Ryan both had their details in the contacts list.

  ‘How did she get it? The prosopagnosia, I mean?’ he said.

  Kate felt winded by the unexpected question. She had asked Ryan never to broach the subject. Was this his trade? Secrets from her past in exchange for a commitment to her future?

  ‘That word is so clinical, meaningless. Prosopagnosia. How does it say what it is?’ Kate heard the thickness in her voice, the pain, self-pity. ‘What it means,’ she went on, ‘to say that my mother can’t recognise faces. Not even mine. Her own daughter? That I have to wear a blond wig, because I stupidly changed my hair colour. That I have to wear scarlet when I approach her, because she panics and thinks a stranger is in the room if I don’t. And as if that wasn’t punishment enough, she’s now going to suffer from dementia?’

  ‘I thought the specialist said it was temporary? Just a side effect of the face blindness?’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I hope that is true.’

  ‘How did she get it, Kate? If you want me to stay, I want to know. Let me help you. To do that I need the truth.’

  Kate looked at him, the sincerity in his eyes. Could she trust him? She hadn’t trusted anyone for so long, not with this. And yet, she left Ryan to look after her mother. Maybe she had no choice but to trade now.

  ‘She was attacked. By my father.’

  ‘Jeez,’ said Ryan.

  ‘My father, he was involved with politics. Man of integrity, power. Impeccable public image. Only behind the scenes, he had corruption running through him like blood. He took bribes to help pass laws, backhanders to sway local politics. A phone call in the middle of the night, and some lowlife the cops had spent years chasing would walk free. And when I joined law enforcement, he tried to use me. He told me what he wanted from me. I mean, he pulled strings, got my career moving. Only so he could manipulate and use me.’

  ‘Let me guess. You refused.’

  ‘He made me sick. When I found out what he had been doing. He thought it would be genetic, that I would be like him. Bastard. I went along f
or a bit, got to know what he was up to. Turned evidence for the FBI, was their star witness in the end. He got sent away. But before he did, he hired someone to deal with me. I can’t prove it, but I know it was him. Only I wasn’t home, and they attacked my mother. Beat her to an inch of her life.’

  Kate stopped, her breath catching. She would not cry, not ever, not because of him.

  ‘We had to go into witness protection. In case they came back for us. And my brothers, they took his side. They said my mother was attacked by someone I had messed with, someone I had arrested. They called me a liar, said I had betrayed them and our father.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Ryan. ‘How did you keep all this to yourself?’

  ‘I have to. I’m trusting you with my life, Ryan. With my mother’s life. I chose not to stay in hiding in America, living a half-life. I came here, took a new name, and I relaunched my career. Officially, me and my mother are in witness protection in Key West still. Nobody knows I’m here. Nobody I don’t trust, anyway.’

  That was all she would share. That seemed everything, but it was just a sketch. There was no need to reveal who she had been. Kate would keep her birth name, Winter, a secret from Ryan. For now at least. With a name like that, she would be too easy for him to trace. To find out who her father had been.

  There was silence between them, as Ryan poured them whisky.

  ‘Well we’re both British now,’ he said, clinking glasses with her. ‘Although I think this stuff is Scottish.’

  It seemed late when Ryan left.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ he said at the door. ‘For now.’

  The street looked like a film set. It was empty. Dark.

  Zain rested against one of the stone lions on Montague Place. They were a pair that guarded the back entrance to the British Museum. Trees shone under a moon that reminded him of a communion wafer. He thought of his Catholic grandmother competing with his Hindu grandmother and Muslim grandfather. Zain smiled at memories of that tug of war.

  A few yards away were Russell Square and Southampton Row. Zain loved these corners of London. When everything seemed to stop, as though the soul of the city was resting.

  He checked his phone. It was ten minutes past nine. He shivered. Cold breathed up his trouser legs, down the back of his jacket, around his ears and against his nose. He stamped a couple of times, started to pace between the statues.

  He waited an hour. That was reasonable, right? London could hold you up in its arteries, like blood clots, delay you. An hour was OK to be late. He should have driven here; he could have waited in his car.

  Someone else drove by, slowly. Zain felt hope, but the car went past, and a woman was driving.

  Another half hour. Zain checked his phone. His father had called. He should call back.

  Zain waited until 11 p.m., then gave up. Two hours was enough. The man wasn’t coming. Zain felt something bitter inside him. He needed to know what the man had to say. Thoughts started to turn into phantoms. Had the man been caught out? Were Byrne and Anderson involved now? Was the man being dealt with, held somewhere? Or had they simply threatened him to keep quiet?

  Zain walked into the traffic rush of Southampton Row, towards Euston. He waited at a bus stop outside Age UK, got on the number 68 and headed home.

  He was worried, wondering why the man hadn’t turned up. And more interested than ever in what exactly MINDNET and KNG were hiding.

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Kate sat drinking black coffee, letting her eyes adjust to the dimmed lighting and the plasma screen in front of her. Harris was explaining to the team what he had found. He was wearing a blue shirt – royal blue, she thought. Why did she know that? A memory, a present for her father? A sudden hit of sadness, over quickly.

  ‘So I did some searching on the net, simple stuff, got a link between MINDNET and KANGlobal. They call it KNG, which makes no sense. Until you realise most of their mining licences are in the Congo.’

  ‘Is it a secret?’ said Kate.

  ‘You see, the more I researched, the more I think it is. Companies are usually easy to find information on. Take Unilever or Glaxo or L’Oréal. A bit of research and you know what companies they own, who their board members are. MINDNET, I couldn’t find any link to KNG. It was by accident, and then only on one site did I find them linked officially. I checked, and the web page hadn’t been updated by Google’s search bots for over eight months. What I saw was a cached version of the page. The current website has the link between MINDNET and KNG removed.’

  ‘Someone has deliberately had it removed?’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, or so it seems.’

  ‘Why go to the trouble? Why is KNG such a big deal?’

  ‘I’m not sure. What I do know, mining in the Congo, it’s like testing on animals or using kids to glue trainers. It’s one of those areas that’s murky, full of corruption and greed and sheer terror. Firms involved in that part of the world have a lot of ethical question marks over them,’ Zain said grimly.

  ‘Ethical question marks someone like Ruby Day wouldn’t be OK with?’ said Kate.

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Stevie. Her arms were folded on the table in front of her. ‘I saw Ruby’s videos, the ones of interest. She made one on animal testing. She said she would name and shame any company sending her anything that had been produced using those techniques.’

  ‘So she was ethically aware?’ said Kate.

  She knew people called it instinct, but in reality it wasn’t. Just the brain pulling bits of evidence from drawers of stored information, and making sense of them. She felt it now, something falling into place, something that would make sense in a law court.

  ‘Yes. There was something about Fair Trade in another video. It’s just hit me,’ said Stevie. ‘I didn’t pay attention at the time, but now you’ve said that. She kept going on about Divine chocolate and some coffee brand. And it was all about Fair Trade.’

  ‘Fair Trade, animal rights? She was more than just a pretty face,’ said Rob.

  ‘Don’t be facetious,’ said Stevie.

  ‘Just stating facts. She had depth, then. A conscience.’

  ‘Don’t fall for the glossy face and soft voice,’ said Stevie. ‘She had issues, and she put it all out there. To help others. And I believe her. Stars do it after they’re famous, and I think they’re after the column inches. Ruby started it when she only had a few people watching.’

  ‘This is fucking ridiculous. But it’s starting to make sense, right?’ said Zain.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked.

  ‘KNG. My big reveal. What I was leading up to,’ he said.

  Kate swallowed her cooled coffee; she had a sense she would need the caffeine hit today. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘I checked in with a pal of mine, at Inland Revenue. Wanted to make sure I had it right. And he confirmed that MINDNET and KNG are linked. KNG syphoned off a load of money into MINDNET; investments which they weren’t taxed on.’

  ‘Greedy fucktards,’ said Stevie.

  ‘Clever, greedy fucktards,’ said Rob.

  ‘It gets better. I asked him what the link is between the companies. Why were KNG interested in a lightweight media outfit like MINDNET? And he said he’d look into it.’

  Zain moved his fingers over his tablet. He pulled up a list of names, and focused in on one. ‘Innocuous, right?’ he said. ‘Just random names?’

  Kate stared at the plasma screen on the wall and tried to see a pattern, or find something familiar about them. She couldn’t; there was no relation to anyone she had dealt with so far in the case.

  ‘Until I do this,’ said Zain.

  He tapped and a red circle appeared around one of the names. He tapped again, and there it was. Two images flashed up on the screen. And Kate knew then that they had something.

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Stevie Brennan felt the raw emotion in the air. Palpable. That was a good word for it.

  Mike and Laura Day were like actors, left without a script, f
orced to ad lib. Only they had nothing left to say.

  Mike hadn’t shaved, his skin was greasy and whiteheads were dotted around his face. He was wearing calf-length shorts and a T-shirt. Laura had her hair tied back, the classic not-washed look. She was wearing a loose jumper, and pyjama bottoms.

  When Stevie spoke to them, they seemed to take forever to understand and reply.

  ‘Why was Karl Rourke here?’ Stevie said. It was blunt, but she had to cut through the sheer human misery she was faced with. ‘We saw him on CCTV, entering and leaving. The night Ruby disappeared.’

  ‘I called him,’ said Laura. ‘When we couldn’t find Ruby, I tried him. In case he knew where she was.’

  ‘Why would he?’

  ‘They used to be close, when he represented her. I think that stayed, even after she moved to MINDNET. I was reaching out, hoping he could help.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I told him we were going to call the police. He told me to wait until he got here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Yet you did as he asked?’

  ‘It was a strange time; my head wasn’t here. Mike was out looking for Ruby again. I needed someone to tell me what to do. I can’t explain it. I wanted to curl up in a corner and cry, because I knew, even then. I knew . . .’

  Laura trailed off, and her eyes filled up.

  ‘What did Karl do when he got here?’ said Stevie.

  ‘He told me to call the police. That was all.’

  ‘Why was it OK then? Why not when you spoke to him on the phone?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Laura.

  ‘Did he do anything else? When he left, he seemed to have a file with him?’

  ‘He had a look around Ruby’s room,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t remember a file.’

  ‘And he didn’t fill up trash bags with paper statements from Ruby’s room?’