Cut to the Bone

by Alex Caan

  Her mother may not recognise her face – prosopagnosia was face blindness – but she could make out her emotions. The way her mouth quirked, what emotions were in her eyes.

  ‘I need to speak to you about something. I didn’t want to. I don’t want you to worry, OK?’

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘Promise me you won’t fuss,’ said Jane. ‘Ryan said I should tell you, but I refused. Now, thinking about it . . .’

  ‘Mother, tell me,’ said Kate.

  Jane took a sip of her hot chocolate, letting her tongue work around her mouth, tasting the sugary coating. It was a habit her father had hated. Kate wondered if that’s why she did it with relish now he wasn’t around.

  ‘I was out for my usual,’ said Jane. Her usual was a trip along the high street, or a visit to a museum or gallery, or even a day sitting on a park bench. Anything she could do in the daylight, independently.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Just to Primrose Hill,’ said Jane. ‘It was warm in the sunshine today.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a man,’ said Jane. ‘He asked me if I was your mother. And he asked me about you. Asked how you were.’

  Kate felt as though someone had just plunged her head into freezing water. She started shaking, but tried to still herself. If it had been anyone else sitting in front of her, she would have asked what the man had looked like. Not her mother, though.

  ‘What did he sound like?’ she said.

  ‘It was that broad English accent. I couldn’t place it; it’s the one they all have.’

  ‘So not regional, then?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t say if it was. I couldn’t tell his age. Under fifty, possibly.’

  ‘That’s a big range,’ said Kate. ‘What did he say, Mom?’

  ‘Asked me if I was Detective Riley’s mother. I said yes, asked whom was I speaking to. He said he was a friend.’

  ‘And?’

  Kate couldn’t breathe.

  ‘That was all. He said he was a friend. And then he left.’

  A stranger had just approached her mother, her vulnerable mother, asking about her. Kate’s eyes searched the darkness outside the window through the crack between the curtains again. She wasn’t imaging things, was she? She couldn’t let her mother see her panic.

  ‘You know how it is. Probably someone who doesn’t realise about your . . . situation, was most likely a bit upset you didn’t recognise him.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought, too,’ said Jane.

  It was a common enough occurrence. People who she had met before would meet her mother, and be put out when she didn’t recognise them. Usually her mother was honest, told them, and asked them to explain who they were.

  This man, though, he hadn’t given her that chance.

  He had stopped long enough to send Kate a message. They knew her weakness; they knew how to get to her. And then that over-arching thought. Was this it? Had someone leaked her location? Had her father found her again?

  Fear turned into anger. A familiar anger. When she found out who they were, Kate would ruin them.

  Chapter Ninety-one

  Waterloo Millennium Park was a small area of grass opposite the Old Vic. It was fenced, by trees and metal bars. One side was buffered by the noise of traffic heading down to Elephant and Castle, the other shaded by council flats.

  Zain knew it well, had used it on summer days and early evenings.

  ‘Why didn’t you just call?’ said Zain.

  ‘Don’t trust them,’ said the man.

  They were seated on a bench under a tree.

  ‘I waited two hours,’ said Zain.

  ‘I couldn’t . . . I tried, but I was too scared.’

  ‘Of what? What’s your name?’

  ‘Deep Throat,’ said the man.

  ‘I see you haven’t lost your sense of humour, at least,’ said Zain. ‘I know what you look like; I’ll hack into the MINDNET database tomorrow. Get your name that way. Or you could just tell me. I’m a police officer. You can trust me.’

  ‘Richard,’ he said. ‘That’s all for now.’

  ‘OK, Richard. Why all this cloak and dagger shit? How did you get to my front door?’

  ‘Just followed someone into the building,’ he said.

  ‘Let me go further back. How the fuck did you know where I live?’

  ‘I followed you back, the night we were supposed to meet. I knew your building from there.’

  ‘What about my flat number?’

  ‘Electoral register. I have access to it for work.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work in IT.’

  ‘I see,’ said Zain.

  Fucking databases. They were wrecking his privacy as well. It felt like payback a bit, the number of data hits he’d been authorised to do. And done illegally. Other people’s information felt cheaper than his own; maybe he should respect it a bit more.

  ‘Why couldn’t we just do this at the station?’

  ‘I don’t want it to be official.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Richard’s eyes glared at Zain, his face clearly visible in the artificial light surrounding them. Blackouts in London must have been a bitch, back in the day.

  ‘I’m on a leave of absence, from MINDNET. Two weeks, just annual leave, nothing out of the ordinary. I thought it would be enough time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To tell you what I have to. And then to leave. Hide.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  Again the accusatory staring.

  ‘Have you not seen what they did to Ruby? And that message, at the end of that video, the one they blew her brains out in. That message. “You’re next”. That was meant for me.’

  Kate was awake. She thought she would be awake for ever. How had this happened? She had come to London to get away from this sort of bullshit. And now here she was again. Scared for her mother, spinning wild theories about those who were putting them both in danger.

  Was it her father? Or was this Harry Cain and Jed Byrne? Was Justin Hope involved? Had they paid someone to speak to her mother? Was she being irrational? Nothing had happened. It might just be an innocent conversation. Only, coming on the back of everything, it was just too convenient to be a coincidence.

  Kate sat up, keeping her light off, listening. The house, the heating. She had her bedroom door open. Any noise her subconscious didn’t recognise, she wanted to be jolted awake.

  It didn’t seem to matter, though; sleep was not coming for her tonight.

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Zain felt sweat dripping down his back, even though it was a cold autumn night. He’d only had time to put on his jeans and a T-shirt before he left his flat, hoping his jacket would be warm enough. The excitement of speaking to Richard was enough to keep his blood pumping.

  ‘You think they know it’s you?’ said Zain.

  ‘If they don’t, they’ll soon work it out. I’m not waiting around for them to link it back to me. They know Ruby had someone on the inside. That’s why they posted that threat. And when they find out it’s me, that’s it. I’m fucking dead.’

  ‘I can help you,’ said Zain.

  ‘Not against them. Look at how Ruby ended up. Fuck.’

  ‘Stay. I can get you Witness Protection.’

  ‘I’m here because I owe Ruby. After I’m done, I have a morning flight out of here.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Richard didn’t reply.

  ‘When did you meet Ruby?’ said Zain.

  ‘September. I contacted her online first, asked to meet with her. She didn’t respond, probably thought I was a crazy or perv.’

  Zain wondered if either of these labels might fit. Richard was a mess, unshaven and unshowered. Zain offered him some chewing gum he found in his pocket.

  ‘I called her, got her details from a MINDNET contact list. I took the risk. But said I needed to speak to her in person.’


  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘There’s a lake in Regent’s Park. We met there.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘The truth about Byrne.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Richard put his head in his hands, took deep breaths. His leg started hammering nervously.

  ‘You know about his father?’

  ‘Harry Cain? Yes I do.’

  ‘Cain had a crisis. Felt he’d neglected his son growing up. Fuck, he didn’t even acknowledge him for most of his life. That’s the office gossip anyway. MINDNET was like a bribe, a proof of love, if you like. A father buying his son’s forgiveness.’

  ‘Mine mumbled a sorry when he split with my mother,’ said Zain. ‘I think Jed did just fine.’

  ‘Yes. And MINDNET has done well, even though it shouldn’t. Byrne knows nothing about business. He just loves talking about his success when he’s hanging with his pals in Kensington and Chelsea.’

  ‘Good for him. I’m still not clear, though: what exactly did you tell Ruby? And why did you?’

  ‘I came across something. I wish to God I hadn’t, but I did. And once I saw it, and once I knew for sure, I couldn’t ignore it.’

  ‘What exactly do you do for MINDNET? IT is a vast field.’

  ‘Systems administrator,’ said Richard. ‘I manage the entire network infrastructure. The hardware, software, I purchase it all. I manage the teams responsible for IT services across MINDNET.’

  ‘I’m guessing you looked at something you shouldn’t have?’ said Zain.

  He was always shocked at how trusting people were of their IT teams. These men and women had the ability to access everything you did at work, from emails to your personal drives. And it didn’t take more than a few clicks for them to do it.

  ‘Not at MINDNET. The systems got hit at KANGlobal. DOS.’

  Denial of service. It was usually spamming a website to make it crash, but sophisticated hackers could use web servers to access the protocols internal to an organisation. Crashing the entire IT system.

  ‘It was quite something; we still don’t know where it came from. I was drafted in to help. The senior network manager developed appendicitis.’

  Why didn’t they use an assistant or something?’

  ‘No one there was as qualified as me, or Stella Kapur, their network manager. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but the threat was so severe, they wanted the best.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘It was a fraught forty-eight hours. I was working twenty hours straight, sleeping in the office..’

  ‘No one at home to miss you?’

  ‘I have an ex-wife and kids I rarely get to see. No, there’s no one at home.’

  Zain saw the sadness of it in Richard’s face. ‘So you saved KANGlobal?’

  ‘Yes. But we needed to upgrade their security software. Because the network was so badly damaged, some of the machines had to be manually upgraded. One of those was Harry Cain’s machine.’

  Zain felt expectation course through him. He pictured a stressed Richard in a plush office a CEO like Cain might have. Cain probably barely acknowledged him; men like Richard were minions, there to be ignored.

  ‘The update took a while, twenty minutes or so. Cain left his office, so it was just me. Once the update was done, I got his PA to log in, using Cain’s username and password. He asked her to, wanted me to check everything was working OK. She then got called away, an urgent phone call. She left the office door open, so I could hear her outside. It’s crazy, isn’t it, how something so small and insignificant can change so much?’

  ‘So you were logged in, and left alone with his laptop. Then what did you do?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have. I was in a position of trust. But there I was, looking out of his floor-to-ceiling windows. He has views across London. And I felt some sense of power, and it was like being invisible. I thought, I can do this. I can have a look around the big man’s computer. Curiosity, detective. So I did it. And look where it got me.’

  The sweat had dried on Zain’s back; he was beginning to feel the November chill creep into him. It reminded him of waiting outside the British Museum for Richard.

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘I did some random searching at first. Typing in stupid things, pornographic search terms. Then I started to look through documents marked “personal”. It was wrong, but it was also irresistible. And that’s when I came across documents related to that place.’

  ‘DRC?’ said Zain.

  ‘Yes. Democratic Republic of Congo. The temptation not to look at something marked classified, it was just too much.’

  ‘So you clicked?’

  ‘So I clicked.’

  Chapter Ninety-three

  Zain had persuaded Richard, who was now claiming that his last name was Brown, to relocate to the Duke of Sussex pub. It was at the far end of Waterloo Millennium Green, close to the council estate. It didn’t feel like central London, or a stone’s throw from Waterloo. It could be a washed-out pub on a corner anywhere.

  The pub was ingrained with decades of smoke and cheap beer, giving off a distinctive smell. A masculine smell, sour. Zain thought of his father, the military man. He didn’t smoke and didn’t get drunk. Apart from the day he knocked up Zain’s mother. Worst hangover of his life, he claimed.

  Richard was in the bathroom while Zain settled in the pub’s second room with their drinks. A pool table stood empty in the centre of the room. An old-fashioned jukebox against the wall. This could be a fun night out. Nostalgic, simple.

  Zain missed his phone. He wanted to check his messages, update DCI Riley. Do some surfing while he waited.

  Richard came back soon enough, looking more relaxed. He had removed his outer layers, revealing cords, a jumper and shirt. Zain saw the man clearly for the first time. He was younger than he’d first thought, probably late thirties, early forties. He had a short beard, a bit like Zain’s, dark brown, matching his dark eyes. His hair was cut short, but slick on top, giving him a trendy look.

  Richard sat down and emptied his glass, prompting Zain to get him another beer.

  ‘You sure you don’t want something stronger?’ he said, returning with their drinks.

  Richard shook his head, taking his beer from Zain and supping the top before putting his glass down. ‘I just needed that to steady myself,’ he said.

  Richard looked towards the door leading to the main room before carrying on with his story. The customers in the main room were mainly old men and middle-aged couples.

  ‘It wasn’t all in one place,’ he said. ‘And I got about forty minutes on the computer, before his PA came back in.’

  ‘What wasn’t all in one place?’

  Zain wanted to hurry the man, but he knew this was probably only the second time he had told his story to anyone. The first probably being Ruby.

  ‘The documents were a bit cryptic. They referred to trucks, jeeps. Also supplies, food, steel. It wasn’t anything that jumped out at me. But there was a lot of action over a three-day period. Dozens of emails saved in one folder. Some were short, confirming an action had taken place. Others more detailed, but again they kept referring to logistics. Numbers of vehicles used, supplies being moved around. They were all referring to the “Bunda project”, the “Bunda action”. I Googled on my phone, found it. Bunda is a small village near the Rwandan border. It’s been through every level of hell. The genocide in Rwanda spilled over into it. Then the civil wars. The mass atrocities on its civilian population. I asked myself why anyone would stay there.’

  ‘I’m guessing people have nowhere to go.’

  ‘Yes. And it’s their livelihood. The people were cheap labour for the mines surrounding Bunda. Mines rich in coltan. Do you know what coltan is?’

  Zain shook his head.

  ‘Columbite-tantalite. That’s its proper name. It’s a metal ore more vital than gold and diamonds. Coltan is in practically every electrical device there is. It has something cal
led tantalum in it. That’s what we use. Mobile phones, computers, PlayStations, iPads. Whatever people use these days, it needs coltan chips. And most of us don’t even have a clue where so much of it comes from.’

  ‘The Congo?’

  ‘They say about sixty per cent of the world’s coltan is there. No one knows exactly how much, the place is such a mess. You don’t go in and do geographical surveys. DRC is the third biggest producer at the moment, shipping its dirty gains all over the place. China, India, Europe. All the surging economies and developed countries, using metal picked from the carcasses of the poorest.’

  Zain let his eyes wander around the room. The world was full of depressing, monumental crap. People got screwed over; the system was fucked. What was an individual against all that?

  ‘How is KNG involved?’ he said.

  ‘They own coltan mines around Bunda. It’s their secret little enclave. I found all this out afterwards, not while I was in Cain’s office. What I found there was the name Pierre Sese. He had signed off on something. I did a search in Cain’s files, and found a contract. Pierre Sese giving KNG access to the coltan mines. In return for money, trucks, food, steel, all sorts.’

  ‘A business deal?’

  ‘Of sorts. You see, I found afterwards that KNG bought the mines from Sese at a knockdown price. Less than ten per cent of their value in actual terms. What they gave him on top was what he needed.’

  Zain could guess what Richard was about to reveal.

  ‘You know why he needed all that? To help his militias. They went marauding around the countryside, butchering, enslaving, burning. They killed hundreds, everyone they didn’t like, indulging in ethnic cleansing. It’s all in a UNICEF report, Amnesty too. All official, documenting the crimes they are accused of.’

  Richard laughed. ‘You know there’s a child, the only survivor of a small village. Fifty-nine people died there in one night. Apart from this nine-year-old boy. Jean Paul Motumbo. And they say he’s lucky.’

  ‘Lucky how?’

  ‘He survived. He was hidden in the rafters of the roof, the only one small enough in his family to hide there. He watched as Sese’s men butchered his parents. Jean Paul’s three brothers – twelve, thirteen and fifteen – were in the room. Sese took them, to turn them into killing machines. And they say Jean Paul is lucky.’