He removed her other hand from beneath the tangle of sheet and blanket at the exact moment Stella appeared in the office doorway, bringing with her a smell of smoke and burning.
“Out,” she barked, and Jess eased herself up from the bed, her legs impossibly long.
“Cheryl for the girl,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “And Sting for the boy. Or Bonnie for the girl and Clyde for the boy. Or…” Her voice wailed in protest as Stella shut the door on her.
North heaved his legs over the edge of the bed, his skull filling with blood. Pain screaming out through his eyeballs as he swung himself around, all the while attempting to ignore his shrieking bones. He allowed his fingertips to graze the bandage.
Thought of the New Army ambulance which drove Peggy away into the unknown.
Peggy’s notebook.
The rending noise of the jacket.
Falling.
“It didn’t go that deep. It’s clean and I put a stitch in it,” Stella tossed a bundle of clothes laid over a bent elmwood chair towards him. “It won’t be that kills you. And I’m adding the costs of the new outfit to your bill by the way.”
“What will it be then?” North eased himself into a long-sleeved black jumper as she pulled at a chain and the dusty roller blind snapped open – streetlights glaring in through the narrow grimey window.
“Me – if you mess around with Jess.”
Gingerly he pushed his legs into the jeans, pulling them up his legs and over his hips. “I don’t chase tornados.”
“But do you set light to houses?” Stella’s arms were folded across her considerable chest. “Do you kill no-marks?”
North shook his head. “Not my style.”
She was staring at him. Hard.
“If you didn’t burn down that house and kill Jimmy, that means someone else did. Whoever you’re up against, Michael North, isn’t messing. Ned had no street-smarts. People like you and me though, we know how to get through. And this isn’t the way.”
North thought about everything he’d done to survive. The Army. The Board. The sins and crimes. Enemies he killed before they killed him. Those he killed because he was told to kill. He didn’t know what Stella did, but he was guessing – bad things. It was in the eyes. Always. Right at the back.
She had him all worked out too. At least who he used to be, but he wasn’t that man any more.
Honor was in London in the arms of the man he had failed to warn her against. If she wasn’t cold and dead already. Her chutzpah on the park bench as she smoked the cigarette and waited for him. Stretched out in the bath scrabbling at the hands of an assailant who wasn’t distracted by her beauty, someone who hadn’t seen her as anything but a job to be done. A line to be drawn. The memory stick they risked her life for that he lost in the deep blue sea. Peggy’s notebook in ashes.
“Give it up, North. This isn’t your fight and it only ends one way.”
He smiled at Stella. Not the courteous smile he spent on strangers. Not with the easy charm he used on easy women. But the smile of one pal to another. Stella came looking for him when she didn’t have to. Not for ten grand. She rescued him when she could have left him to lie on the ground and die there. There were no silk-ribboned medals in it for her. But you didn’t leave a friend, wounded and bleeding out in the field whatever the cost to yourself. You went the distance. Risked everything. Regretted nothing.
“Can you get Fang over here?”
Chapter 51
Fang arrived with a Yoda backpack, and North had a moment’s conscience. However fast she coded, as Honor said, she was only a child – her nails bitten to the quick. Would she understand what he needed? Because he wasn’t sure he did.
“Cute name,” said Jess and the younger girl scowled. But Jess was made of stern stuff. “What does it mean?”
“It mean…” Fangfang’s pigeon Chinese ticked like a home-made bomb North decided, “…moron-people who need big favour from smart people best not ask stupid question.”
As she pulled out her Macbook Air, she snapped her fingers in the direction of Jess. “Diet Coke. Ice. Crushed. Lime slice.”
She drew her chair into Stella’s desk, her eyes already focusing on the screen, and Jess’s mouth opened in protest, but her mother gestured for discretion.
Extracting a bottle from one of the boxes stacked around the walls, Stella poured out a lemonade. She set it down in front of Fang with a bright smile, before using her open palm to slap the top of the shining head. “On the house,” she said.
Jess smirked as a glaring Fang rubbed her head. North figured she got hit round the head more than most.
She pointed at the wall scrawled over with names and numbers and obscene art. “Old school, huh?” she said and snickered. “Chalk? I didn’t know they still made it.”
Stella looked as if she was contemplating slapping Fangfang harder this time.
“Fangfang,” North said in warning. He needed them all on the same side. “Jimmy the Sniff said the New Army took Peggy away.”
Fang’s eyes shrank down to black points at the mention of Peggy.
“But he’s dead and we have no proof.”
“Jimmy the Sniff was a liar and an addict, remember,” Stella said from the shadows where she’d retreated to a bentwood chair, her arms folded.
But the New Army was also the plaything of JP Armitage who was Peggy’s financial backer.
Plus, the New Army could accommodate, feed, guard and keep as many people as they wanted under lock and key. And the Board had to put the missing somewhere. They had to put Peggy somewhere. It was worth a shot.
Fangfang’s fingers hit the keyboard all in a rush. North glimpsed code, then a spinning globe, a blue ball bouncing from one city to the next – Newcastle to the Azores, onwards to Bogata, up to Sacramento, out to Christchurch and into the heart of the Ukraine. The girl sat back in her chair, the tips of her gold sparkling feet pushing against the floor this way and that, while she played Candy Crush on a mobile phone he hadn’t even seen appear. When the ball stopped bouncing, an IP address emerged on screen – North had to guess it was nowhere near the basement bar in Newcastle.
Fang pulled up her Tor browser, decoupling the searches from those curious enough to come looking for her, as North’s hand went to his jaw. The rasp of stubble, as she brought up map after map. Laying one over the other. Coming together to form the UK. Dots appearing across the country. Dozens of them. All of them New Army bases.
Stella was behind him.
“The Good Lord giveth and the Good Lord taketh away,” she said. She sounded cheerier than she had all morning.
Fang stared at the screen, flicking between the dots, the camps and headquarters, miles from each other.
“There’s more than a hundred,” said Fang, and for the first time she didn’t sound happy with her efforts. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Now we narrow it down, kiddo,” said North.
But they couldn’t.
Chapter 52
Five Hours Later
Stella was still with them, stretched out on the truckle bed, her arms crossed behind her head and her eyes closed, but Jess had been dispatched to bottle up, and get ready for opening.
Fang accessed the camps’ running costs. North didn’t want to know how. They saw no change from one month to the next. No “special provision”.
She accessed their power and water consumption and the three of them crawled over the figures. Some were high, some were tiny, dependent on the size and purpose of the camp and the number of troops they supported, but there was no discernible shift in the figures in the last month. The only surprise was the size of the Army. When North left, he calculated it stood around 80,000 troops. The New Army was currently closer to 300,000. Enough to go to war.
North’s fingers gripped the desk as he stared at the chalked wall. The suspicion of a headache was beginning to creep up behind his eyes. No purple pills, he reminded himself. He willed it away. What was he doing? H
e was up against the Board. He of all people knew what that meant.
They were nowhere.
“We start over,” he said.
Stella groaned, swearing under her breath, as he walked towards the chalk wall.
The pain in his skull came again – Bruno’s face, flames – as he picked up the chalk stump from the filing cabinet, using a grubby J-cloth to wipe away Jess’s pictures. The girl had both a filthy and creative mind, he decided. Peggy Boland, he wrote. Honor Jones. Ned Fellowes. Jimmy the Sniff. Dates. Times. The names of the missing that he could remember. Bunty Moss. He drew arrows between JP and Honor, between JP and Peggy, between JP and the New Army, Peggy and the New Army. Fang broke out a game of Fruit Ninja, cutting and slashing all-comers.
He lifted the cloth again to create more space, and a cloud of chalk dust rose from the rag.
“Don’t!”
North turned at the distress in Jess’s voice.
Her face was white under the freckles as she dumped a tray loaded with drinks down on top of a box, the door open behind her. “Ned said leave it up there.”
Leave the wall?
“I know we have to wipe it soon, and start over, but not yet. Not today. ”
North turned back to the wall. He’d already scrubbed off a good half of the obscene cartoons and graffiti. Stella had copied down a credit card number of a regular, but she’d been indifferent otherwise.
Why would Ned tell Jess to leave it?
“Ned was a barman,” said North. “He worked here?”
“He made the best White Russian I ever tasted.” Stella sat forward, her forearm resting on her bulging thigh. A tattoo of a hooded cobra ready to strike coiled around her arm.
Breasts. A hanging man. Copulating couples. Letters. What had he wiped away? And what was still left?
North moved his head one way and then the other, letting his eyes sweep over the wall. Nothing made sense. He tilted his head to stare at the column of tiny numbers, some of them with dots between them, written from top to bottom in the furthest corner. With a scrap of chalk, he copied them down in a horizontal line from left to right putting the dots between them, breaking the numbers up into four distinct groups. He stood back from the wall.
“This is an IP address. IP – Internet Protocol. It’s how computers communicate.” Behind him, he sensed Fang break off from her game. “Ned said the missing had their electronic communications shut down the same way. Accessed with the same password. Maybe the same operator on the same machine handled it all? This one.” He pointed at the numbers. “I think this is the IP address for the machine that shut down everyone’s electronic communications – including Peggy’s.”
Fang was already typing-so fast he barely had time to absorb where she was. A registry. A search box. Entering the IP number. Spooling through a form – UKTelecoms. A list of what looked to be communications companies. She pinged between the companies – apparently comparing numbers of subscribers and reviews – before plumping on U&MeMobile. Mid-sized. Poor reviews.
“What’s she doing?” Jess whispered in his ear.
“I’m guessing she’s trying to get a geographical fix on the computer.”
“Can you do that?”
“Absolutely not, but I don’t think anyone told her.”
A low hum of office calls unspooled from Fang’s laptop – a background of tapping phones calling, a gentle hum of conversation as she moved from an audio-sharing file on to a company website, sliding up and down a list of staff and their responsibilities.
Fang caught the paintbrush tip of a black plait between her blue-wired teeth, and reached for her mobile. She tapped her glass, and Jess reached over to the tray to hand her a bottle of Diet Coke complete with a striped straw topped with a pink parasol which was speared through a green cocktail cherry. Fang raised her middle finger in silent thanks.
“This is Jenny from the Met Police Liaison.” Fang swung her body away from the distraction of Jess to squint into the mid-distance. “Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to today?”
Fangfang’s voice was velvet. No Geordie accent. Middle-class. Middle-England. Optimistic and upbeat. The kind of voice anyone would want to keep listening to. Fang pressed mute, ate the cherry, stuck the parasol in her hair, put her mouth to the straw and blew a tornado of bubbles into the coke as she opened up LinkedIn and half a dozen social media sites.
She pressed unmute, and the bubbles died back to pop and drown in the caramel-coloured froth.
“Well, Jean-genie.” The voice again. Thirty-something. A quiet authority. Charming. “Could you please put me through to Law Enforcement Liaison? Remind me who it is again.”
Her small fingers danced over the keyboard and the face and details emerged of Caroline Lane. Caroline had been in the job at U&MeMobile three years. A shaggy haircut. Dark roots. Divorced. A pug dog. A fan of Wine O’Clock.
“Hey, Caroline. Jenny here from Met Police Liaison. We’ve got a problem, and there’s going to be a real stink when it gets out.”
Silence.
“Let’s just say one of our senior officers is for the broth pot. Between you and me, he’ll go down for this. I can’t go into detail, but we’re talking grave misuse of the IP request process. Grave.”
Silence.
“Yep – unbelievable. No authorisation. I shouldn’t even be telling you this Caroline, but he’s tracking his ex-wife’s every move. Cameras in the house. The phone. He’s all over her laptop. I need you to fax me through all the requests which have come in this week – all of them – so our guys can figure out which of them aren’t in the system.”
Silence.
“No, not the usual number. We can’t risk it getting back to him. Again strictly between you and me, he’s got ‘friends’ everywhere. Funny handshake brigade.
“I knew you’d understand. We take this kind of thing very seriously, Caroline. Internal affairs says this has to be by the book. Okay the fax is…” she read out a fax number on a page North hadn’t even seen her pull up. “You’re a sweetheart. I’ll let you know how it goes. His poor ex, I tell you. I feel so sorry for her.”
North opened his mouth, but Fang held up her palm to silence him. Artist at work. It took 45 seconds before the faxes came through. Fangfang rifled them – one after the other till she found what she was looking for. Something from the child exploitation team. She copied across the document. Changed the IP number at the top of the Met Police request to the IP address that Peggy’s password change came from.
New screens.
New internet service provider. UKTelecoms. Stella was standing next to him.
“I could make a serious amount of money with this kid,” she said. “Only there’s nothing to spend it on in prison except for pot noodles, and I’m watching my figure.”
Fang hissed at Stella like her granny had hissed at North the day before. This was getting serious.
The voice again. “Jenny here from Met Police Liaison. Can you put me through to Law Enforcement Liaison? Remind me who it is again. Yep that’s right. Actually would you put me through to his secretary please?”
There was a pause.
“Yes I hope so. This is Jenny from Met Police Liaison would you be good enough to put me through to Bob? That’s right Met Police Liaison. Tell him it’s urgent. Thank you so much.”
There was a pause as his secretary told him the Met was on the line.
“Hey, Bob,” The voice shifted down. Still charming. Carrying a promise for bald, chubby Bob Larson, married, a six-year-old girl and a baby on the way. At UKTelecoms for seven years. Photographs of a beaming Bob in a dinner jacket.
“Nice to talk to you again, Bob. We met at that thing last year – I’m sure you don’t remember.”
“Yep. That one. I got a lot from it. A great bunch.” Fang stuck two fingers in her throat and made as if to vomit over the desk.
She shifted into third gear. Niceties over. More authority. “I’ve a request for an IP Subscriber Identification h
ere and I hate to put this on you, but it’s way past urgent.” She gave a laugh. Self-deprecating, but used to her own way.
North was standing behind the 14-year-old geek. He could see the chewing gum behind her ear peeping out from under the plait. The parasol in the blue-black hair. But he was hypnotized. Was she Fangfang? Was she Jenny? She sounded like she was Jenny. She also sounded like she’d done this kind of thing way too often before.
“I can’t wait that long, Bob. This guy’s filth. You don’t want to know what he’s doing to these kids and we’ve almost got him. Give us a location and he’s ours.”
“He’ll move on, Bob. That’s what he does, and these kids’ll never be the same. I’m looking at a photo here and the girl is six if that. You don’t want to see the expression on her face. We want him off the streets.”
“You are a shiny star. I’m sending in a memo to the Chief Constable saying so. I’m faxing the request as we speak. Sure I’ll hold.”
Fangfang allowed herself a glance in his direction, her hand over the mouthpiece. “God’s truth. You frighten me,” North said, and Fang’s black eyes went back to the screen, grinning at her reflection, at her own cleverness, bright blue braces making it ghastly in the green glow cast by the screen.
There was a beep and Fangfang clicked to open the fax Bob had sent. “Thanks, Bob.” For the first time, she sounded like herself.
National Defence Force: Otterton Training Camp. Proud possessor of a computer which had changed the passwords of 33 missing people including Peggy Boland. Bob had done Jenny from Met Police Liaison proud.
Fang typed the details into Google Earth to pull up a 3D satellite picture of the New Army camp. She spun the image, tilted it, magnified it then put her finger smack bang over it before she looked up at North.
“You still here, moron-person?” she said. “Go get Peggy. Or shall I do that too?”
Chapter 53
SUFFOLK
3pm. Thursday, 9th November
The group therapy session in the overheated lounge wasn’t going any better than her one on one with the psychotherapist earlier. Honor ran her fingers over her chopped-about head. It felt matted and uneven, her scalp raw in places. According to the incident report, she hacked off her own hair in the hotel bathroom with a steak knife, and blonde silky hanks of hair falling into a blinding white sink came back into focus, bleeding from what used to be her memory. A slim dark-bearded addict opposite, his upper body shaking, spared her a spasm of a smile as she sank lower in the uncomfortable chair.
Killing State Page 24