The car turned into the AC gates, between the uplit stone acorns, and joined the stream of cars rumbling down the drive.
Did the fact of Isadora’s disappearance preclude her from involvement in Teddy’s kidnapping and the corporate fraud on the USB? Or was that a double-bluff, had Isadora gone into hiding to throw everyone off the scent? Her mind struggled to map out all the potential scenarios. If only she had access to one of those crime scene walls from detective programmes, where she could take the tangled mess of her thoughts and pin them down with photos, Post-its and interconnecting lines.
Another thing any good detective needed was a partner. She had to find someone she could trust to help her. Ben was too risky; she still couldn’t be sure how he was involved. Lauren was somehow caught up in whatever Ben was up to, so that ruled her out. The one single name that popped up, the one single person she could risk trusting with what she knew, was Oscar.
The car pulled up at the front steps, she thanked the driver and got out. In the entrance hall, a gaunt-looking Kelly was directing new arrivals to go and wait in their own offices. ‘You’ll be called down to OAK for a briefing once everyone gets here.’
Bella found Oscar alone in their office, staring at his computer screen. He glanced up as she came in, eyes glazed, then looked back at his monitor.
‘Are you okay?’ She walked over to see what he was looking at. His screen was blank.
‘System’s gone down.’
Bella gaped at him. Never had there been the slightest IT blip at OAK. Not during her own time there nor, as far as she was aware, prior to her arrival. She wasn’t even sure where the IT support department was.
With no access to its systems, OAK’s powers were decimated.
The call came through, and Bella and Oscar joined the stream of people heading towards the lifts down to OAK. The lights were dimmer than usual and flickered on and off.
‘I don’t like this,’ Bella whispered to Oscar as they queued for the lift.
‘No shit,’ he shot back. ‘Do you think everyone else is having the time of their lives?’
‘No, I mean if Finn is right that someone at OAK is behind all this, then it feels dangerous everyone being called in here together.’ They shuffled forward into the lift and Bella kept silent while it descended.
When they got out into the hubbub of the atrium and followed the flow of people towards the auditorium she added, ‘Whoever’s shutting down the systems and kidnapping people could have us right where they want us. We’re like rats in a sack.’
Where once efficiency and determination reigned, now the faces they passed displayed panic, confusion and, in some cases, fear. In the corridors, people pushed and barged past like headless chickens.
When Lauren appeared from a side corridor it was a relief to see a familiar and relatively calm face. ‘Hi, you two.’ Her smile was a little forced.
‘What’s happened to the systems, do you know?’ Bella asked.
Before she could answer, a door further up the corridor opened and Finn appeared, looking even more forbidding than usual.
Lauren nodded her head in his direction. ‘He’s the man with all the answers.’
Bella noticed the swarming of people around her had grown more purposeful, with everyone heading down the corridor in Finn’s wake. As they passed an observatory, she looked in and was shocked to see all the screens were blank.
She nudged Oscar. ‘Even down here…’
He looked where she was pointing and nodded.
‘I thought they’d have some kind of backup,’ she said, ‘special servers, a failover system.’
Lauren, walking in front of them, called over her shoulder, ‘They do. They’ve gone down too.’
‘Christ.’
They filed into the half-filled, dimly lit auditorium and found seats.
Bella turned to Lauren. ‘If there are no working observatories and the systems are down, how are they organising the acts of kindness?’ she whispered.
Lauren looked at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for her to work it out.
‘They’re not?’ Bella said.
Lauren shrugged her shoulders. ‘There’s no Plan B for this. No way to mitigate against the whole of OAK shutting down – how could there be?’
Bella tried to picture the impact. Tiny in individual cases, perhaps, but as a feeling, a consciousness leaching across the land… She felt sick.
The noise intensified as every seat was filled, people packed in together on the stairs, standing in rows at the back of the room, peering in through doorways. Finn leapt up onto the stage, his face reproduced in close-up on the big screen behind him. The skin on his temples and cheekbones caught the light, shiny and tight. A blue vein stood out under his left eye.
Bella had a flashback to an incident in her previous job when a colleague had collapsed. The first-aider they’d called had struggled to retain his glee as he put the prone woman into the recovery position and called the ambulance – after years of doling out plasters and paracetamol his moment of glory had arrived. If there was never an emergency, he could never show how essential he was. Would someone like Finn go as far as orchestrating chaos in order to get a chance to take control? His unblinking eyes, staring out into the darkness as he prepared to speak, certainly looked fanatical enough.
‘Isadora Faye is still missing and we have no information as to her whereabouts,’ he said, his amplified voice rich and soft in the vastness of the space. ‘Both OAK and Acorn Consulting technology has been sabotaged and can’t be relied on. Potential evidence as to the whereabouts of Teddy Thatcher and Isadora Faye appears to have been stolen from Teddy Thatcher’s house, we believe by an OAK employee.’ He paused, to let this information sink in. ‘For this reason, I have taken the unprecedented step of calling in every one of our office-based staff. OAK is under attack and I intend to find out who is behind it. No one will leave this complex until I give permission.’
Consternation from around the room. Lauren seemed unperturbed but Oscar’s jaw had dropped. Rats in a sack. Bella had a sudden urge to get out of that windowless room into the cool night air.
‘We have ample resources here to cater for everyone. The cupuli will be organising you into teams to set up dormitories and—’ Finn broke off as he was drowned out by shouted questions.
‘What about my kids?’
‘I need to get home to give my mum her medicine in the morning!’
‘Can we at least phone our families?’
Finn raised a hand and waited for quiet. ‘I understand your concerns. But I cannot risk the safety of anyone in OAK until we find the perpetrators. As you leave this room, you’ll be given a pack. It will show you which group you’re in and where your base is. A cupule will be there to meet you and they will answer your questions.’
At least she, Bella, didn’t have anyone at home waiting for her to come back – not so much as a cat needing to be fed. A few weeks ago, that thought might have prompted self-pity but now she felt relieved. She needed to be able to concentrate on working out what had happened to Isadora and Teddy without any distractions.
Finn called the board members up onto the stage to report on the state of systems and staff attendance from their various departments. One by one they made their reports. Ben alone didn’t appear.
‘Before you leave, I have a piece of unpleasant news to share. You’ll notice that Ben Elliott is not present among his fellow board members this evening. Ben has not been seen for several hours. We are investigating two potential scenarios. One, that Ben is another kidnapping victim. Two, that he is himself one of the perpetrators.’
There were gasps of disbelief.
Finn raised a hand for quiet. ‘We will not rest until we have hunted down and brought to justice the people who have attacked us in this way, no matter who they are. If you have any information on Ben Elliott’s whereabouts this evening, make it known to myself or another cupule at once.’
Chapter Sixteen
S
hobha Sharma scrolled through her list of contacts and pressed ‘Jed, Head of News.’
He answered and Shobha could hear the sounds of the busy newsroom on the tinny speakers of the van. ‘Yeah?’
‘I want to go and talk to that Thatcher woman. See if I can butter her up and get her to hand over whatever this “evidence” is. It’d make a great scoop.’
‘Do it,’ Jed said and hung up.
‘You guys wait here. I don’t want to spook her with the lights and cameras,’ she said to her crew. ‘I’ll call you in when she’s settled.’
She walked up the path to Maggie’s 30s semi feeling like she already knew what kind of stuff she’d find inside. Her top three bets were china shepherdesses, old copies of the Daily Mail and those small round white plastic things that you shoved tea towels into.
The doorbell chimed a loud and elaborate run of notes. No answer. She rang the bell again and tried the handle. It was unlocked. She eased it open and slipped through the gap.
‘Mrs Thatcher? Hello, Mrs Thatcher?’
She felt about on the wall to her left until she found a light switch.
‘Oh shit.’
She stepped back out of the house and ran to the van. ‘You’ve got to get in there now. The house has been burgled.’
To avoid any backlash from the police for disturbing a crime scene, the crew filmed through the open front door.
The camera panned over the drawer of the hall table which had been pulled out and was lying upside down on the carpet, surrounded by keys, pens, string and various other bits of detritus. A couple of pairs of shoes were strewn across the floor. Through the open door to the left the living room was in a similar state.
When the camera shut off, Shobha said, ‘We haven’t interviewed the neighbours yet. We might get something there.’
Ailsa, the camera operator, nodded her head. ‘Okay, let’s do it before the police arrive.’
By this time on a normal evening, Wilfred Perdew would have been in bed with his current large-print biography, his magnifying glass on a chain and a cup of weak tea. His son, Paul, kept trying to persuade him to try audiobooks but they weren’t the same as reading.
Tonight, though, he was still jittery after the incident with the young man at his door. He sat on the bay window seat, holding the curtains open a fraction, watching the activity around the Thatchers’ house. Two women broke away from the knot of people gathered there and walked up the path to his front door. He heard the knocker go.
He hesitated, waiting to see if the knock would be repeated. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t consider opening the door this late at night, but one of the women seemed familiar. The knock came again and he levered himself up from the window seat with difficulty. The woman with the shiny bob smiled warmly at him as he opened the door.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you this late at night.’ She held out a slim, gold-ring-laden hand. ‘I’m Shobha Sharma, West Country Tonight, and this is my colleague, Ailsa.’
That was where he knew her from! The six o’clock news was an old friend to Wilfred, heralding as it did the end of the long day and the approach of teatime. The cast of characters was familiar, from the newsreaders and weather girl down to the newer reporters such as this one.
‘Oh!’ He smiled back at her. This would be something to tell the postman in the morning, and the man at the newsagent. ‘Hello. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Would you mind if we came in?’
Once they were settled in the shabby lounge, clutching cups of coffee, Shobha on a faded burgundy and cream striped armchair, and Wilfred and Ailsa on the settee, which he didn’t usually like to sit on because it was hard to get out of – once they were settled, Shobha got to work.
‘Wilfred. May I call you Wilfred?’ She paused and raised the mug to her mouth. Her beautiful black-ringed eyes watched him over the rim, belying the casualness of her tone. ‘I wondered if you’d noticed anything out of the ordinary going on in the street this evening? Or strange noises next door?’
Wilfred considered her question. ‘I’m a bit hard of hearing so there might have been noises next door. I couldn’t say for certain.’
Shobha nodded encouragingly.
‘But,’ Wilfred went on, wanting to please her, ‘there was something.’
She leaned forward. ‘Yes?’
‘A man. Came round earlier. Wanted to get in the garden.’
‘Could you describe this man?’
Wilfred gave her Ben’s description, which wasn’t much to go on: a youngish, tallish man in dark clothes with a nondescript accent. And a badge – but he didn’t know what kind of badge. Shobha pressed him on what time it had happened, whether he’d come in a car or on foot, where he’d gone after he’d entered the garden.
‘I watched him through the back window. He went over the hedge and then disappeared along the back of Mrs Thatcher’s.’
Shobha cocked her head. ‘Did it occur to you that this man might pose a threat to Mrs Thatcher?’
Wilfred sat back, a grin spreading across his face. ‘More likely she’d be a threat to him. Mad as a box of frogs, she is.’
Shobha chuckled. ‘Well, yes. I interviewed Mrs Thatcher earlier today. She was what we in the trade call a challenging interviewee.’
Wilfred clapped his hands on his knees. ‘I saw it! Yes, I’d forgotten. I saw you and Mrs Thatcher, outside the – err, oh. That’s funny.’
‘What is?’
‘That just reminded me. Acorns.’
‘We were outside the Acorn Consulting gates, yes?’ Shobha encouraged him.
‘That was what was on the badge he showed me. A picture of an acorn.’
‘Ready, Shob?’ Ailsa asked.
Shobha nodded, letting her eyes get adjusted to the glare of the light behind the camera. Ailsa had positioned her so the carved acorn atop the gate post would be picked out in the circle of light.
Shobha saw Ailsa’s fingers counting her down, and kept her face an expressionless mask until she got the thumbs up.
‘Tonight, the mystery surrounding the kidnapping of Acorn Consulting’s CEO has deepened. Earlier this evening we interviewed local woman Maggie Thatcher about the recent disappearance of her husband, Edward Thatcher, also known as “Teddy”. Since that interview, Mrs Thatcher’s house has been burgled. West Country Tonight has spoken to neighbour Wilfred Perdew, who revealed that a man, of medium height, with dark hair, in his mid to late thirties, called at Mr Perdew’s house earlier this evening. This man gained access to Mrs Thatcher’s house through Mr Perdew’s garden.’
She paused. This was it, the golden moment. She’d practised it in her head over and over in the car on the way there. Her intonation, the exact pausing, her facial expression.
‘What we can be sure of is the design on the badge which the intruder flashed at Mr Perdew before entering his house. He has revealed that the logo,’ she paused for a fraction to add to the reveal, ‘was that of an acorn.’ She turned her head and the camera followed her gaze, tilting upwards towards the uplit stone acorn on the gatepost.
‘Is someone at Acorn Consulting involved in the disappearance of Isadora Faye and Teddy Thatcher? We can’t know for sure. What is certain is the mystery continues to deepen here in the village of Halfway. This is Shobha Sharma reporting for West Country Tonight.’
Chapter Seventeen
Rain pattered against the windows. The sound soothed Bella, proving as it did the continued existence of an outside world, where ordinary people were sleeping in their beds at home, not on the floor of the offices of a top-secret organisation in lockdown. She looked up at the clock above the whiteboard. Three am.
Lauren was asleep, her breathing not quite a snore but more than a wheeze.
Bella turned her head on the pillow. Oscar lay on his back on his sleeping mat, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. She could just make out his profile in the grey light provided by the tiny blue LEDs on various pieces of equipment, and the strip of yellow seeping under the door fro
m the corridor outside.
‘I always think this is the saddest time of the day,’ she whispered.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then shifted round to lie on his side facing her. ‘What time?’
‘Three in the morning. It’s something to do with body clocks. I read somewhere that most people die between three and four o’clock.’
They were silent, Bella picturing the lives being extinguished around the globe as they lay there in the semi-darkness. ‘Plus, this time of the day, it’s all about things ending, loneliness, you know,’ she continued, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Lauren. ‘It’s the dregs of a party or it’s being alone and awake when you should be asleep.’
‘And now,’ Oscar murmured, ‘it’s thinking this’ll probably be the time of day I end up dying. Thank you for that.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Lauren shuffled around on her narrow mattress and sighed, before resuming her wheeze-snoring. Oscar dropped his voice even lower, forcing Bella to strain to hear him.
‘You’re feeling maudlin because you’ve not had enough sleep. It’ll all look better in the morning, as my old ma always says.’
‘She sounds like a sensible woman.’
‘Hmm. Flamboyant and unpredictable are words I would use to describe my mother. Sensible, not so much.’
A phone vibrated.
Bella shoved herself up on one elbow. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘Search me, I thought all the phones had been confiscated.’
They both pushed down their sleeping bags and hunted around in the feeble light.
The alert came again and Bella reached over to Lauren’s rucksack. Lauren herself slept on, dead to the world.
Bella fumbled around in the bag, located the phone and motioned for Oscar to follow her. Easing open the door she looked both ways down the corridor. Empty, although she could hear voices at one end. Turning away from the voices, noiseless on bare feet, she led Oscar past the kitchen to a small adjacent storeroom. Opening the door, she shooed him in, ignoring the perturbed look on his face. When the door closed, they were in darkness, standing very close between the racks of catering packs of food and cartons of UHT milk.
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