(Jonathan Roper Investigates Boxset

by Michael Leese

  “Sounds like a very good plan. The papers have already been all over the links between the various victims. I’m guessing you don’t want to add anything to what has already been reported?”

  Mayweather said. “Definitely not. I’m just grateful that no one has picked up on the MoD angle yet. How is that going?”

  “Quite slowly. But that’s not down to the military coming over all secret squirrel. They’ve introduced us to the main contacts and been pretty open. The trouble is that it is very, very complex. Good for geeks, annoying for detectives hunting a murderer. If you have time I could tell you about miniaturisation techniques, GPS enhancement protocols and Artificial Intelligence applications. I’ll keep pushing.”

  As she watched him walk out Mayweather had a flash of inspiration. Something was telling her that she needed guidance on what sort of technology was made by the two companies that had been targeted.

  What she needed was a contact who could help her. Who better than the head of MI5. The woman was already aware of the police investigation, perhaps she, or one of her people, could provide her with an ‘idiots’ guide’ to what was involved. It must be important to have captured her interest in the first place; now it was time to find out what might be behind this.

  ◆◆◆

  As the two police officers had hoped, the story of the two drug deaths went down well with the media. The big headlines became even bigger. The new story-line was running on websites within minutes of the details being issued by the Press Bureau. News organisations outside the briefing circle simply picked the story up and credited the veracity to those that had been briefed. It was enjoying saturation coverage by the beginning of the peak evening period.

  One of those who saw it was a still unnerved drug dealer. When he read the details, he was even more alarmed. He was one of those people who can normally rationalise their criminal behaviour. In his case he was simply an entrepreneur making a living providing people with stuff they wanted. He boasted that his drugs were always of the best possible quality.

  In truth, he was a chancer and not a brave one. He was certain it was his drugs that had been used in the deaths, it was too much of a coincidence that a complete stranger had turned up demanding such an unusual combination, and reasoned that it would be best for him if the police arrested the man as quickly as possible. He had read with keen interest the suggestion that officers would be able to overlook potential criminal activity if they got information that led to an arrest. He debated it for a while longer when it occurred to him that there might even be a reward in it. That would be very handy.

  He rang the hotline number provided in the story and when the phone was answered began talking. Within an hour he was sitting in the offices of the Special Investigations Unit, recalling his encounter with the man who had bought the drugs. At first, he had tried to portray himself in a positive light, but before long he was admitting that the man had badly frightened him.

  “There was something weird about him. He was very cold, if you know what I mean,” he said to DI Cleverly. “He told me that if the gear was no good he’d be back and I wouldn’t like that. In my line, you get a lot of people talking like that, but this geezer meant it. He wasn’t the biggest bloke I’ve ever seen, but he looked well hard.

  “The thing I keep thinking about is when I told him to be careful with the doses. Some people get carried away and take far too much too soon. But he just gave me a funny look and then laughed in a strange way.”

  An hour later, after Cleverly felt he had extracted every scrap of information from the dealer, he put the man with a police artist and he went off to assign a team of officers to visit the nightclub and check CCTV on the premises. Hopefully, it was on a digital machine and they could get a copy of the night in question emailed and go through it with the dealer. That was assuming they had kept it. He had to hope for the best. Getting a picture would make all the difference.

  He sent two of his best people to the club and was glad he had. They reported that on arrival the manager had been very unhelpful, muttering about warrants. His people had suggested to the man that if he refused to help, they would have no choice but to have uniformed officers in the place every night. Their job would be to question every single person trying to get in or out. They would be especially vigilant about searching for drugs, since it was a drugs' tip that had brought them there in the first place.

  The manager had quickly caved in and provided a copy of the recording they needed. In the early hours of the following day a very frustrated Cleverly admitted defeat. The dealer had picked the man out easily enough, but somehow all the cameras had of him was the back of his head.

  It was like he knew exactly where the lenses were and how to keep out of shot.

  Chapter 26

  The Cabinet Secretary might have wanted to slow things down but behind the scenes at GCHQ things were moving at a fast click. What was happening owed less to a security sweep, than it did to an increased drumbeat.

  When you ran a secretive organisation dedicated to electronic counter-surveillance, it would be negligent not to think that other organisations, countries and people might be keen to steal your secrets. You also had to consider those working on the inside who might, one day, be working on the outside. Add in those determined to feed disinformation into the machine and you had a heady mix that needed a lot of protection.

  GCHQ security took pride in their work, very little of which they could share with the outside world. But you could be certain that it featured a very big firewall, maybe a lot of firewalls, all connected to the digital equivalent of a loud alarm bell. A signal to mount a major counter-offensive was not lightly undertaken. But once started it promised to be far reaching.

  As part of the sweep Roper and Hooley were granted new and improved access. The argument being that Roper needed more background information about the material he had seen and his current access didn’t allow for that. What Roper had, also went for Hooley, which in his case, the DCI reflected, made no difference at all. Now he just had more complex things to try and decipher.

  Analysis was not his forte. Not because he didn’t get it, his years as a policeman had taught him to revere cold, hard evidence above all. His idea of an intelligence report was to guess the IQ of those villains who used Facebook to boast about their criminal activity, then wondered why the police turned up to arrest them.

  Although he had only been in Cheltenham for a few days he was already yearning for something like a nice simple murder. He knew it wasn’t to be. He was just going to have to let Roper take the lead and follow up as best he could.

  “What’s the biggest difference now that we have been given new access?” he asked.

  Roper was so intent on what he was reading that it took three more attempts to get his attention. Hooley had to keep prodding as the younger man kept getting drawn back to the information displayed on his screen.

  For some odd reason, this behaviour reminded the DCI of himself when he was handed a nice, cold, pint of lager: a sense that all was well with the world, if only for a few moments. He shook his head to clear the image. How shallow was he to be thinking about booze when they were up against such a tough puzzle?

  Planet Roper reported in. “This tells me where all the information I have been working on originated. It turns out we’d just been looking at reports of reports, or even worse, a highlighted summary. Now I know that the information about the militias and the Australian drug situation were lifted from communications that took place on the Internet.

  “You’d already highlighted issues with the Somali information. Now I have found out that the core information was drawn up by a CIA operative who was working with a transcript of an interview with an arrested pirate. But the transcript wasn’t done at the time; it was weeks later. That tells me it might not be reliable for all sorts of reasons. Maybe the person providing the details was lying. You just can’t tell.”

  Hooley did a double-take. “Is it even legal?
I’m no prude, and information is information, but you surely need some legal basis to be operating from. How else can you arrest people and charge them?”

  Roper shrugged. “How will anybody know. Officially, GCHQ doesn’t take information in that way so logically we can’t be breaking any laws. I have spoken to some of the other analysts here and they are cool about it.

  “I think it will be fine. Look at the militia situation. The Americans could have obtained that under anti-terror legislation and then shared that with us on national security grounds. Our far-right parties have been showing signs of becoming more organised in recent months and that could have a seriously destabilising effect. Especially if they started working together on both sides of the Atlantic.”

  Hooley wasn’t convinced but also realised he was in danger of creating a red herring. They had to deal with the here and now. He said. “I’m going to park that. From what you just said, you now know that you were never provided with all the information you needed. Instead, you were sent edited versions that sent you off in the wrong direction. I think your theory about being manipulated is looking more and more on the money.”

  Roper didn’t answer. He’d retreated back into his semi-trance state. Hooley wasn’t really surprised. Now that the evidence of someone trying to feed him disinformation was mounting, he had a lot to think about.

  Ironically, what looked like an attempt to sideline him was actually placing him back on centre stage. He suspected that whatever Roper finally came up with, and he knew he would get to the bottom of this, was going to have a profound impact on the way GCHQ worked.

  Just thinking about that made his throat dry. It was time for tea, plus cake for Roper. He didn’t bother asking what he wanted. In this mood, he ended up eating and drinking what was placed in front of him.

  Walking back with supplies, Hooley was thinking about the differences and similarities between the people at GCHQ and his own unit at Scotland Yard. At first glance, there was little in common. In reality, both were fighting crime and terrorism - they were just using different tools.

  He was sitting at his desk mulling this over when Roper interrupted his thoughts by saying very loudly: “I’ve had sex, you know.”

  When the DCI was a young boy he was very partial to comic books like the Dandy or Beano, reading them avidly every week. One of the comedic standbys would be the scene where someone was surprised while they were having a bite to eat, or drinking something.

  The victim would either receive a powerful slap on the back, or see something that shocked them. Either way the result was the same. The speech bubble would contain the word “gnmph” and the victim would spray the contents out of their mouth. Until this moment Hooley hadn’t realised this also happened in real life. Luckily, he managed to hit the carpet rather than his keyboard.

  Gingerly wiping his mouth, he looked around furtively to see who was looking at them, relieved when he realised this had apparently gone unnoticed. He glanced at Roper and saw he had returned to his reading after making his unexpected statement.

  Hooley began to wonder if he had somehow misheard. At first his inclination was to totally ignore what had been said. He could still recall his excruciating embarrassment after his wife persuaded him to have “that” conversation with his son. The 12-year-old had listened patiently to his fumbling explanations before saying “Our school lessons on sex are much better.”

  As the afternoon wore on he got over his embarrassment, and started thinking about what this meant to Roper. They’d never really spoken of it, at least not in depth. Hooley was under no illusion that he was a master of relationships and would never tell someone else how to live their own life.

  Just before they were due to go home, he decided he couldn’t leave it as it was. For Roper to have found someone was a huge thing. He struggled badly with personal relationships, despite being keen to have friends, or even a girlfriend. As one of his few mates he knew he owed him the courtesy of taking an interest.

  He tossed a crumpled sheet of paper on to Roper’s desk to get his attention. “I know I’ve been saying no beer until answers, but life is too short. Do you fancy calling in for a drink at the Kings’ Head on the way back, then we can go for a curry?”

  Chapter 27

  As he downed his pint he admitted to himself that if he was going to talk to Roper about sex he definitely needed a drink. He had hoped the pub would work as a place to discuss the momentous event, but there was a loud, and raucous, hen evening getting under way. Hooley shuddered to think how it would go if the women heard Roper talking about his private life.

  Roper was still sipping at his own half-pint of lager so he might as well use the delay to his advantage and order another one. Out into the harsh light of the real world, his plan to talk to Roper was looking less straightforward. He decided it was down to fate. If they got to the restaurant and found it full he would have to leave it for another day: if not, well there was always lager to soothe the way.

  Arriving at the curry house the manager welcomed them with a warm smile. It didn’t look like he was going to be saved by circumstances.

  “It’s so good to see you. Most of our regulars are staying at home tonight. I don’t know why. We are only normally empty like this in the week before race week when everyone is keen to save up a bit of money.

  Since neither Hooley nor Roper was a betting man, they looked blank. Realising they hadn’t followed what he was talking about the manager said. “It’s the big racing festival. Most of Ireland comes here for it, the Gold Cup is the main race of the event. I’m sure you’ve heard of that. Even I go and place a bet. Once it gets going we get all sorts in here, especially people from the bigger stables who usually have a tip for us.”

  He realised what he had said. “A tip and a tip, don’t you see?”

  Hooley nodded vigorously. He thought he did but also suspected that Roper was a tip short of comprehension and about to start asking questions that no one would be able to answer. He gestured for Roper to sit down and said. “I doubt we’re going to need the menus since we both know what we want to eat.”

  “Of course,” said the manager. “I’ll bring your order over when it’s ready.” He stepped back as a waiter glided up with Hooley’s beer and a water for Roper. He placed both drinks and left them to it. The DCI took a gulp of his beer and then decided to slow down: he was already two pints in credit, this needed to be his last.

  He looked around and saw there was no one nearby. Taking a breath, he asked. “This afternoon, at GCHQ, did you tell me that you’ve had sex?”

  Roper nodded.

  “I know these things are private but I wanted to tell someone and you are the only person I can tell. She’s a very nice girl and works at GCHQ. She came up one day and told me to look at SpyBook. It’s a sort of GCHQ version of Facebook for people like me.”

  “But I thought you didn’t like all the social media stuff?”

  Roper nodded. “Not the normal stuff. All people do there is shout. But at GCHQ there are all sorts of versions aimed at people who work there. SpyBook is invitation only and everyone knows that you must be polite and not nasty.

  “This girl sent me a link and I was able to join and saw that she had sent me a message. When I read it, it said she liked me and wanted to know if we could meet for coffee. After that we met up loads of times.”

  Hooley couldn’t help smiling. Trust Roper to find himself being asked to join something so that someone could ask him out. But he thought that was probably the ideal way to do it. If the girl had asked directly he would have run a mile.

  From what Roper said it seemed they had a lot of interests in common, including finding it hard to make friends. It was the woman, Sam, short for Samantha, who had suggested they had sex.

  “We wanted to do it properly so we both read up about it and got help from the advice team. We chose a date and then it happened. I didn’t know what to expect but it was brilliant.”

  Despite himself Hoole
y couldn’t get embarrassed. Although Roper was talking in a very matter of fact tone, it was clear that the pair had made a deep connection. He really hoped something would come of it. It was oddly touching that they had been so careful to get advice and made a detailed plan.

  “So why haven’t you introduced me to this lady since I came down? She sounds like someone I’d be delighted to meet.”

  “She’s not here and hasn’t been for a while.”

  Hooley feared the worst. Had the relationship foundered already? He hoped not.

  Roper hadn’t noticed the worried look and carried on. “Sam wants to travel for a while and the chance came up to go and work with intelligence services in Canada and the USA. She left just before you came down and won’t be back for two years.

  “She says that if we are still together after all that time then we will be together forever. I haven’t spoken to her in ages because we agreed she needed time to settle in but I’m hoping to do a video call this weekend and find out how she is getting on.”

  Hooley took his time in responding. The truth was he was very happy for Roper and hoped it would work out well. For anyone else it might have seemed a strange way to have a relationship, separating immediately after consummating it, but Roper was not normal people. And he was prepared to bet Sam wasn’t either. The thought of Roper having little Ropers made him laugh out loud.

  He explained it to Roper. “I was thinking that if you had children your house would be full of people asking questions. Lots and lots of questions. It made me laugh to think of you having to answer them. It would certainly make up for some of the stuff you’ve asked me about in the past.”

  Roper was having none of this. “It’s far too soon to be talking about children. I haven’t thought about it and neither has Sam. Perhaps I should ask her on the video call?”

  “Perhaps take your time before going down that path,” Hooley was careful to keep his voice neutral, he didn’t want Roper to think he was laughing at him for being so presumptuous. “From what you’re telling me you’ve found a girl, or she found you, who you can relate to. As you know, I’m no relationship expert, but I would just enjoy what you have for now. There’s no need to take it any further just yet.”