Killing State

by Judith O'Reilly

  Fangfang was in some sort of cloud, not one he’d ever seen before, picking her way through. When she got knocked back, she tried again. Different numbers. Different letters. Spooling out the yarn to navigate her way through the maze. JocelynBellBurnell235641. Suddenly she was there. Inside Peggy’s work and he was staring at the same pictures and graphs as those in the book. Only this time there were numbers and calculations attached. And more of them. Lots more. The kid was a thing of wonder.

  “Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulsars. Men got the Nobel Prize – she didn’t. Peggy had a sick poster of her. 235641 – 23 hours 56 minutes and 41 seconds, the length of a sidereal day.”

  North looked blank. It wasn’t hard. Fangfang rolled her eyes.

  “That’s the time taken for the earth to rotate once on its axis in relation to the stars. It’s nearly four minutes shorter than the solar day. We had this joke about what time I turned up for sessions – sidereal time or real time.”

  She made no effort not to look smug.

  “A friend said all her stuff was locked up. Behind some weird password.”

  Fangfang shrugged as if some weird password was nothing to her. “This isn’t regular stuff on the university server. She said she didn’t trust old man Bannerman not to steal it. This is her private vault in the deep web. No one knows it exists ‘cept me and Peggy.”

  Bannerman, thought North. Bitter. Covetous. Reaching for the book. Fury when denied. How far would he go?

  “This is where we stored the work. I number-crunched some of it, because I saw connections her PhD students didn’t. That’s what she said. She locked me out when it was done, but I knew the old password – NGC 1952. That’s her favourite nebula.”

  “Do you understand what’s here Fangfang?”

  “Not all. There’s masses of data.” It was a major concession on Fang’s behalf and she didn’t want to admit it. “All I know is she came up with some algorithm you could write into a smart chip. This must be it. It suppressed the radio interference from any device it went into. If the smart chip was in enough devices, she said it would be easier to pick up the signals from space. The sweet thing was that the algorithm made the device more energy-efficient. Which made it cheaper to run. Everyone would want it, she said – energy companies, utilities, manufacturers, communication companies, people deciding which phone to buy. She was ultra-excited – said she knew someone. But she didn’t want to sell it – she was giving it away to get it out there.”

  Peggy left Honor a clue. Play Hunt the Thimble. She was relying on Honor to find Fangfang, but she hadn’t wanted to leave her work out in the open in case it fell into the wrong hands. Like Walt Bannerman. Did she think Bannerman would want to sell it rather than give it away?

  Everyone would want it. How many devices were there out in the world? One billion.

  Ten billion. 50 billion within five years? All with the same chip. All connected.

  North swung Fang round in her chair. His heart pounded in his chest, frightened suddenly for Peggy, for the teenage girl who sat in front of him, for himself.

  “Who did she know, Fang?”

  “Some guy she called the Pyjama Man. She said he was a creep but it was his kind of thing.”

  Pyjama Man? PJ Man.

  PJ or JP?

  JP Armitage?

  JP who was riding to Honor’s rescue. JP and Peggy knew each other. Had done for years. And JP had commercial interests in communications like he had commercial interests in everything else – including the New Army. Peggy wanted the world to be a quieter place so she could hear the noise from the stars. JP could make that happen. But why hadn’t JP mentioned that he was working with Peggy when Honor was worried? He said he had his own people looking for her and North had taken that as a lover’s gesture to reassure Honor. But maybe he was looking for Peggy because she had something he needed? Something which was worth another fortune. Or maybe he knew exactly where she was?

  The geek girl shrugged. A teenager again. Adrift in an adult world. “But then she shut me out. Said for us to focus on getting me into MIT and that all this was too much of a distraction. Said I could come study with her after MIT.” Her lower lip came out at the memory of it. The sulking child. She’d been furious. He saw the tantrum she’d thrown as Peggy watched. Calm. Waiting for the temper to subside.

  Did Peggy push the child away when she realised it was getting dangerous? That there were those who would corrupt her pure science into something that could wreak damage?

  Someone like JP?

  Honor. The thought of her went up like a distress signal. She was going back to London, straight into the arms of JP Armitage and North had no way to warn her.

  Chapter 37

  NEWCASTLE

  2.35pm. Wednesday, 8th November

  Fangfang hacked the flight manifest but there was no trace of Honor. The Board had to be watching the train station. Watching the buses. Watching the roads in case she tried to thumb another ride. Hire companies. Fangfang crashed the mainframe to pull up the CCTV at the train station. Spooled backwards. He missed her the first time. Had moved on to service stations. Went back.

  On the concourse of the central station, a hunched over figure in ugly shoes and a shapeless anorak, pulled along a huge tartan case. The woman stopped to have a word with the guard. Asking the platform number? Shuffled through the ticket barrier and on to the platform, head down as she waited on the bench, as if she was dozing or daydreaming.

  Waiting as the train pulled in. Gathering herself. Smoothing down the A-line skirt. Lifting the suitcase first – climbing on board.

  The train. Cash. No names. What had she done? Found a charity shop? Bought a case? An old handbag? Changed her walk. Greased down and tied back her hair. Streaked too much face-powder and grey eye-shadow over her face. Playing at looking older just like she did when she was 16. Honor was adaptable. He’d give her that.

  The London train took three hours and she had left two hours ago on the 12.30 service. There was no way he could make it in time even if he stole a car. Honor. Who thought JP Armitage was her best ally and hope.

  The blue light didn’t register though it was on. He was walking away from the Oriental Dragon, back into the City, still considering which car to steal and how fast to drive it down to London, when the police car swerved up on to the pavement in front of him.

  Chapter 38

  LONDON

  4.15pm. Wednesday, 8th November

  From a fast-food café along the Strand, Honor perched on a stool in the window sipping tea and watching the doors of Coutts for an hour before she made her move. As far as she could see, she was the only watcher. She knew the risks, but she was being careful and she was out of money. The charity shop and the single ticket to London took every penny she’d stolen from the pub till. She felt bad as she slid behind the bar and rang in No Sale, stuffing the brown notes into her pockets. But not bad enough to walk away without the money. As soon as she had some cash of her own, she’d send it back with interest and a note of apology.

  She was fast becoming a criminal. It was all North’s fault – he was a terrible influence.

  At least she paid the old dear in Cancer Research for the brown plastic handbag and the tartan case as well as the ugliest pair of shoes she could find. She hadn’t paid for the skirt or anorak just stuffed them into the case along with the notebook. When the little old lady found the donkey jacket hanging without a price tag, Honor thought she’d understand. In an alley round the back of the shops, she’d rolled up the legs of her jeans and stepped into the skirt, pulled on the anorak and the shoes, discarding the rubber boots in a wheelie bin. In a public convenience she’d plastered down her hair with water, and used the testers in Superdrug to do their worst. When she admired her handiwork in the mirrors, plain, dumpy and twenty years older – even she was astonished at the transformation. After that, it was all in the walk and the attitude. Rounding her shoulders. Pigeon-toed. Trodden down. Her name was Monica Je
an she decided, she liked cats and read the Daily Express from cover to cover. She wasn’t worth looking at twice.

  In the train toilet, she rolled down the jeans and washed off Monica Jean’s face. The crimplene skirt, anorak and the been-around handbag went back in the tartan case, which went back on the rack above someone else’s seat. When she disembarked at King’s Cross, only the notebook dangled from her fingers in its plastic bag. A student coming home to visit family, she decided. Casual. Happy to be back in The Smoke.

  This moment though was risky. Three months ago JP set up an account in her name and insisted on putting fifty grand in. She had gone beserk with him, but he’d ignored her protests. Spend it or give it away to charity, I don’t care. We’re going to be married and what’s mine is yours. She never touched a penny. Swore she never would. She’d pay JP every penny back when this was over. Did the Board know about the account? And were they watching the bank?

  She took a breath, pushed back her shoulders, head down, crossing the road on the diagonal as if heading for Trafalgar Square before veering sharply right and into the doorway.

  It was all pin-striped efficiency in Coutts, and afternoon tea in exquisitely thin porcelain cups. She wanted £10,000 “walking around money” – JP insisted. “Pre-wedding expenses.” At the mention of the tycoon’s name, the obsequious account manager couldn’t sign over the money fast enough.

  And later, walking up the Strand close to the buildings, not trusting herself yet to claim the middle of the pavement, convincing herself that North was a grown-up. He could look after himself. It wasn’t as if he was her friend. He was a stranger with a late-blooming conscience. She had one friend in the world.

  Peggy.

  Thinking of Peggy. Wanting her like a drug. Not thinking of North. He was someone from a bad dream and she’d woken up.

  She planned it all out. Bring JP into line and get him to leverage his contacts in the judiciary and police. Go public and make as much noise in the media as humanly possible. JP had the best PR in the business so it wouldn’t be hard. The faked suicide attempt was a smokescreen for these animals to operate behind. It would fall to dust if enough light was shone on it and she would deny it till she was believed. Poor dead Hugh was proof of conspiracy if anyone needed it. His corpse was undeniable. He was a City banker – what was his body doing hundreds of miles away in the sea?

  Honor glanced into a shop window. The reflection of the busy street behind her, tourists and office workers passing this way and that, black cabs and red buses. She’d done it. Slipped back into London city without anyone realising. How long did she have in the open? Not long without protection.

  Her eyes moved from the hustle bustle behind to her own face, to the usually perfectly blow-dried hair hanging limp and greasy. Her face might be clean but the strain of 36 hours was showing. The manager at Coutts was too well-trained to pass comment, but she caught the widening of his eyes at the state she was in. Another rich eccentric – is that what he thought? She paused, looking past the glass at the cloth dummy in the tailored French navy suit and the raspberry-pink silk shirt. Court shoes. A rip-off Birkin bag just big enough for the notebook.

  Convention dictated that she needed to look the part. She’d operated on that principle her entire life. Look like a grown-up. Look like a talented lawyer. Look like an MP going places. Look like a whole person unscathed by her shipwreck of a childhood. In her experience people took you at your own estimation. She was back and she was about to look like trouble for whoever and whatever was going on. They had no idea who they were dealing with.

  The Savoy Hotel was used to wealthy people who didn’t follow rules. Honor Jones may not have carried luggage, but she did have shopping bags and, most important of all, Honor Jones had a great many bundles of cash. It took seven minutes before she also had the keys to Room 107.

  Chapter 39

  SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON

  5.50pm. Wednesday, 8th November

  From her room, she dialled 9 for an outside line and called JP’s private number.

  He was furious. She let him eff and blind for a while then put the phone down on him.

  Perched on the side of the bed, she unscrewed the lid from the bottle of mineral water and poured its sparkling contents into a tumbler. Welsh. Her favourite.

  The second time she rang, he had himself in check. “Honor. Please. I’ve been frantic.”

  She could hear him waving off his PA, shouting to shut the damn door.

  “Where have you been? What were you thinking checking out of hospital like that? And who the hell was this ‘brother’ who picked you up?”

  As he rattled out questions and commands, she sipped the water gazing out of the window at the golden lights strung along the South Bank, and the memory of Ned plummeting from Westminster Bridge slammed its way into her head.

  JP was still talking. Barely pausing for breath in his relief. She let him – enjoying the sound of his voice. The familiarity of the flat Yorkshire vowels.

  She needed JP. Needed his arms around her. Needed to weep into his chest and feel safe – that it would be all right. More than that. She needed what he could do for her. But the last time they were together, she was at a disadvantage – half-drowned, with her wrist slashed and lying helpless in a hospital bed. He’d seen the bloody bandage, her pallor and desperation and he’d shut down in his own horror at the prospect of losing her. He’d barely listened, and what he did hear, he didn’t credit. This time had to be different. She had no intention of meeting him on his territory – not in the City office, not his place in Chelsea, and not the mews. Westminster was impossible. And she wasn’t going back to the flat where she’d almost died. Somewhere public then because she wanted to talk without interruption. That’s why she’d checked into the Savoy after all.

  He drew breath.

  “JP, I will buy you a drink. Not least because after the last couple of days, I need one.

  I’ll see you at the America Bar in the Savoy Hotel at seven. Don’t be late.” He didn’t argue.

  Chapter 40

  NEWCASTLE

  6.15pm. Wednesday, 8th November

  The overwhelming noise in the interview room in Newcastle’s Central Police Station was the buzz of the ancient digital recorder, but outside the room came the banging of far away doors, the occasional drunken yell, and a raucous chorusing of the Blaydon Races.

  That and the ticking. Louder and louder in North’s ears.

  Chapter 41

  SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON

  7pm. Wednesday, 8th November

  The cubes of ice clinked, one against the other, all but drowned in the Tanqueray gin and artisan tonic which JP ordered with ice, no lemon, for both of them. Honor opened her mouth to ask for whisky – Glenmorangie – then closed it again.

  For a brief second she thought of sitting with North in the bar of The Gallows Widow.

  His face as he listened to her. Absorbed. Open. The shape of his mouth. She wondered if he’d left the country yet. She’d been hard on him. But it was better this way. Cleaner. For the first time since she opened the paper and saw Ned’s death, she allowed herself to relax. She was bone-tired, but she was back in the real world. Her world of laws and due process and power. She was finding Peggy this way, not on some mad quest with a psychopathic sidekick, and JP was going to help her do it.

  He held out his heavy-bottomed glass. The drink clear and honest like water. He was relieved, she thought. More than relieved – ecstatic she was sitting in front of him, in a smart suit and a silk shirt. Sane and together. She panicked him with her disappearing act. Of course he believed she tried to kill herself, and who could blame him? Devastated, he presumed she went away to try again. There was guilt on her side then. She’d been cruel to leave like that. To have so little faith in the man she was to marry. She should have given him another chance to hear her out and to believe her.

  The sight of him made Honor want to weep. She was wrong to keep him at a distance. She should ha
ve married him when he asked – certainly the third time he asked. Hadn’t he looked out for her since her childhood – been a better father than her own father, been a better lover than a man half his age. Everything he possessed, he built himself – coming from nothing to have everything. He wasn’t perfect – he had political convictions which verged on the extreme, but she could moderate the worst of them.

  “Drink,” he said. “You look like you need it. I bloody know I do.”

  They sat in the far corner away from the pianist – the notes flying round and over them. What’ll I do when you are far away, she hummed along. Frank Sinatra. Or Bob Dylan. She preferred Bob Dylan – JP would be a Sinatra man.

  “Honor…” JP was calling her back. “Tell me all of it, ” he said, and she forced herself to ignore the flicker of irritation she felt at the order.

  She took it fast but JP Armitage kept up, and she didn’t have to repeat herself or explain any of it. He knew some of it already – Peggy’s disappearance and her meeting with geeky Ned. His death. His eyes widened as she took him through the run in the park. North. Her attacker in the bathroom. North again.

  The pianist stopped wondering what he would do and admitted he was a fool for love.

  JP sat up straighter in his chair at her mention of North’s role in her departure from the hospital, but she pretended not to notice. The drive into the sea. The helicopter. North wasn’t a criminal. She didn’t know what he was, but she didn’t care. There was Ned, and Peggy, and now that poor young banker’s body pulled from the sea. A simple DNA test would prove who it was.