The Society

by Karen Guyler

  She shrugged. “Your funeral.”

  Eva hoped CJ was reading her silence as nonchalance, unconcern, not the chorus of what was she going to do that was actually hammering through her mind. She tried to pretend he wasn’t studying her, not squirm beneath his gaze.

  He placed the pick gun on the worktop beside him. “What’s the job?”

  “I want you to open a URL for me.”

  “A URL? You don’t need a hacker for that.”

  “This isn’t anything run of the mill.” She paused, he hadn’t been happy when she’d mentioned their name before. Saying it now might get her thrown straight out, or worse. Mustn’t think about the ‘or worse’. “I’m trying to get in touch with The Society. Before you say no,” she cut him off, probably about to say exactly that, “you should understand that they’re after Charles and, if they get him, well that’s the end of your paydays.” She glanced around the room. “What’s the time?” Looked CJ deadpan full in the face, “only you can’t afford for me to be late for my check-in.”

  “When?”

  “What’s the time?”

  “Ten past four.”

  “Fifteen minutes. Name your price.”

  “I have all the money I need.”

  “Great, what don’t you have?”

  “I’m set.”

  Now what? She’d been convinced money would sway it. She fought down the urge to panic. She couldn’t let him read any weakness in her lies, her anger that he was wasting time.

  “Okay, I’ll go elsewhere. You need to untie me.”

  He held her gaze. She tried to keep it blank, to not panic that this could be a life and death decision. Lily.

  He walked out of the kitchen.

  “You realise we won’t be replacing your front door, don’t you?” A last try.

  “No battering ram’s getting through that.”

  Eva laughed, forcing it to sound less like hysteria, more like she was driving this. “A battering ram? You think we’re amateurs?”

  He sauntered back in.

  “They’re on their way already,” Eva ad-libbed, “my back-up, and the one you need to be worried about is the one who used to study IEDs for the military. He loves a big bang.”

  “IOU for me to do what you want, if you call them off.”

  “I’m not making any calls until you untie me.”

  “I can make you, you’re forgetting I have the upper hand.”

  “Do you?” Eva smiled sweetly. “Charles said you’re good, but enough that you know my code word for everything’s okay and the one to blow this place wide open? That’s pretty impressive.” Eva faked a yawn, though her heart was hammering so fast she was surprised he couldn’t see her rocking to its beat. “Untie me, I’m leaving.”

  “An IOU.” CJ insisted.

  “Untie me.”

  He bent down behind her and snap, snap, her legs were free. “IOU.”

  Taking a gigantic leap into places she didn’t want to be, Eva agreed. “You have two requests only, I have one veto.”

  CJ considered. “Fair enough. Two requests, one veto. It’s their details on the paper you had on you?”

  Eva nodded.

  He picked it up from the worktop, ran up the stairs and she heard the fast keying of someone who’d used keyboards for most of their life. Silence, more tapping.

  She stood up slowly, the effects of the sedative almost gone now. She focussed on the sound of him typing as she walked upstairs, if he was occupied, he couldn’t knock her down them.

  “You called your people off?”

  Eva held up her bound wrists. “I’ll need to use your phone.”

  “I have other fail safes around this house if you act out any stupid ideas.”

  “Why would I do that, you’re doing what I want.” She held her wrists out and he snipped the cable ties off her. He pulled a mobile out of the many drawers and handed it to her. “Don’t make me use another one on you.”

  Eva went through the charade of a raid-pausing conversation until she reported in, once she’d left her current location, with her broken mobile voicemail. A crazy message if anyone thought to look for it, if she was never seen again. At least there was a record of where she’d been.

  “They’re talking to me.” CJ gestured at one of the screens on his desk. She’d have to take his word for it, the scroll of text covering most of the page was gobbledygook to her. “What do you want them for?”

  “To find out who instructed them to kill Charles Buchanan and Eva Janssen.”

  CJ typed, interpreted the answer. “They’re asking if you have a job for them.”

  “Did you tell them what I said?”

  He typed again, “there, twice. . .same response.”

  “Try this, I want to buy out the contract on Charles Buchanan and Eva Janssen.”

  CJ consulted the screen’s response. “You can’t afford it and it’s not their way.”

  Their way? They killed people, now they were clinging to ethics?

  “How do I stop them murdering my husband and me? I’m listening.”

  CJ typed as though he was trying to break the world speed record. “They’ll give you a task, acquit yourself well, and they’ll consider cancelling the contract.”

  “What do they want me to do?”

  “Find out who killed Hunter Malone.”

  “Do I have their agreement that Charles and I are safe while I do this?”

  CJ typed. They watched the screen. Who was on the other side reading it, holding her and Charles’ lives in their hands?

  The screen flashed blue then black.

  CJ shrugged, “guess that’s a no.”

  45

  This time being on the outside of CJ’s house was a relief, the long walk to the bus stop a chance to think about what Eva had learned. And not think about what she’d agreed to.

  It was the Sherlock Holmes question: if you eliminated the impossible, even just the improbable, whatever remained was the truth. Therefore, if The Society wanted to know who killed Hunter Malone, they hadn’t. Unless it was a test to see how resistant to scrutiny their safeguards were. She could second guess this for ever.

  Eva got on the bus, tapped her Oyster card at the console and climbed to the top deck. She sat in the front where Lily used to pretend she was driving, as if that could make her materialise beside her. Eva smoothed the fabric of the seat next to her, remembering the patterns Lily used to see in it—Lily, where are you?

  Eva closed her eyes, her fingertips on the fabric grounding her in her painful here and now. I’m finding you, baby, I’m coming.

  Being back under the SIS umbrella loosened controls, changed priorities, so when Eva made it to her desk, the email she’d wanted from the police was already waiting. The e-fit of the man who’d attacked her stared out at her from the monitor. It surprised her, the rise in her heart rate. His likeness couldn’t hurt her. And she’d hurt him back. He didn’t look quite like that anymore if the amount of his blood that had splashed over her was anything to go by.

  Eva searched for the phone number she needed. It was a precarious tightrope between how she wanted to help Gordon and Nora by finding out about the charm school, in case that was what had cost Eric his life, and pursuing her own agenda, in case it was that. They weren’t tangled together exactly, but they intersected.

  She dialled the number.

  “Eva? I didn’t expect to be speaking to you again.”

  “Nor me you, and you’re still in Moscow, you must really like it there.”

  Beatrice laughed. “Or they’re punishing me. Jobs in this Embassy aren’t exactly on the list of cool assignments.”

  “But still the most interesting?” Eva remembered Moscow had been Beatrice’s first choice of posting and she’d studied very hard to make herself the best candidate.

  “Indeed. What brings you back to SIS?”

  “I’m consulting on something, I’m sending you an e-fit, can you see if he was anywhere near Moscow before th
e Hunter Malone assassination?”

  “Interesting. Sure, fire it over. Is he a suspect?”

  “If not for that, for a murder here. Do you have any leads on the ground?”

  Beatrice blew out frustration. “Not really, all we’re finding is smoke and mirrors, which makes me wonder. There’s an official state investigation. We all know that means nothing, but the word is that they’re appeasing the Americans.”

  Which meant they weren’t behind it.

  Eva pulled out the file Gordon had given her – he was right, Eric had sourced little on the charm school, but he hadn’t known Charles. Eva grabbed paper and pen and brainstormed what she knew about his connections to the USA. He’d told her he’d interned there in the summers during his first degree, spent time there during his PhD, but he went just about everywhere in the world all the time to attend academic conferences.

  She set the SIS search function loose to worm out details it would have taken her days to cross reference while she went to make a drink.

  Gordon poked his head into the kitchen.

  “You want one?” Eva asked, dropping a teabag into her mug.

  “Heading out for a meeting, how’s it going?”

  “I might have something, a little sideways, but it’s looking promising.”

  “I have news for you.”

  “You found them?”

  “Not quite. Charles knocked out the man you saw unconscious in the hangar. Only he got on board the plane, no hostiles involved.”

  No hostiles. Eva rolled that around in her mind. No hostiles, no trafficking ring, no assassins. Tension leaked out of her, Lily was safe with her father. But Charles knocking Luke out, commandeering the plane—Charles making them take off without her?

  “Are you certain? Could Charles have been under duress?”

  Gordon shrugged. “No one else was seen anywhere near the plane. Of course he could have been contacted remotely, but it’s unlikely, where’s the duress?”

  So she was going down the right route.

  Back at her desk her search had given her the titles of all the conferences and symposia Charles had attended since he qualified, the titles of which were beyond her or sounded as boring as hell until she got a rogue result. Double checking her search instructions showed her it wasn’t the system at fault, but her knowledge of her husband. Charles was a chemical engineer, with the world to choose from. Why would he attend a psychology conference in London every year?

  Psychology, he didn’t even rate it as an academic field. So if not what, then who? She set the system searching, watching it flick through the new parameters she’d set.

  When the phone rang, she answered it almost absent mindedly.

  “It’s Dario, thought you’d want to know they sacked me.”

  “What? They can’t do that.”

  “Apparently Vaishali can, I’m undermining her authority, not following her orders.”

  “Every Drop’s not the military, we value everyone’s opinions.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Eva felt the pain of betrayal sharpen inside her. “How did you upset her?”

  “She wasn’t upset, she was, it was weird, it was more like she was terrified. I’d told her I was going to see our pipe suppliers. Things are getting worse at Tirupudur since they dismantled the aerial network but at Seitu, where it’s intact, things aren’t as bad. It’s probably a wasted trip, but I wanted to rule it out.”

  Eva should have been watching it, shouldn’t have abandoned the people she’d sworn to help. Pressure pushed at her, another weighty priority to juggle. She massaged her temples around her bruise. The dull residual ache from whatever sedative CJ had used on her was blooming into a full-on stress headache.

  “I’m really sorry, Dario.” She should have been there to look out for him. “Leave that with me, I’ll go. There’s a whole procedure Vaishali must follow. It’s on the employee pages, protocols, termination plans, numbers of employment law specialists. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

  Time only to talk herself out of the urge to get on the phone to Vaishali when the system told her it had completed its new search. The cursor blinked at her, waiting for her next instruction.

  One man had met Charles away from the psychology conference, a dinner reservation for two. CCTV confirmed it, both men had arrived at and left the restaurant separately. Eva clicked onto the public-facing profile of Professor Louie Steinman, gripped the mouse.

  He was older, maybe some margin for error there in a looser chin, under-eye bags, age-spots and a thin halo of white hair. Eva closed her eyes to check her memory, opened them looking directly into the Professor’s eyes. No doubt at all.

  46

  Eva shuddered, she was safe. It wasn’t him. She looked again at the photo of Professor Louie Steinman on her computer screen, past the mild-mannered professional façade. In his eyes, even in the pixels, albeit watered down, she recognised the same cold brutality she’d seen in the man who killed Nancy Seymour and tried to kill her.

  Eva’s desk phone made her start like a gun had gone off beside her.

  “Eva, Beatrice from Moscow. Got an ID for you. Your e-fit was pretty accurate.” Eva wasn’t surprised, she’d never forget that face. “Brett Steinman entered Russia on a tourist visa two days before Malone’s assassination.”

  “He used his real passport?”

  “He went to the US Embassy twice. I pulled a favour; he has dual nationality, British and American. I’m waiting for their CCTV footage to see if it was him, if he rigged the car then.”

  “In the Embassy compound?”

  “None of us were in crisis mode, clearly we’ve become too complacent behind our walls. We’re all looking at threats outside them, none of us expect it to be one of our own. I’ve got a request in for the street footage near the Ambassador’s residence but the Russians like to watch anything we’re interested in first so it takes time. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  Eva paged through Louie Steinman’s university profile. A public lecture at 7:30 pm was more than she’d dared hope for. She knew where he’d be and how to get close to him, somewhere his neanderthal of a relative wouldn’t be. And she had an in through Charles. She shuddered. She couldn’t rely on Beatrice in Moscow turning up anything on CCTV quickly enough to confirm what they suspected. And Eva was sure The Society only dealt in absolutes. It wasn’t as though Professor Louie Steinman could hurt her in a public lecture hall. Eva could handle an old man.

  She climbed the stairs to Nora’s office and knocked. No answer. Should she bother Gordon with it? She’d give him the choice. But he didn’t answer the knock at his door either.

  If she went now, she’d have the chance to take care of another of those heavy priorities first.

  “You can’t see Mr Mills,” the middle-aged woman wasn’t even trying for reasonable, “without an appointment.”

  She held up one finger on Eva’s reply and coughed before she picked up the ringing phone. While Eva got Mrs Hyde, the caller got Dr Jekyll.

  “Pipemaster UK, trademaster specialist, we value every customer. How can I help you today?”

  Eva took her chance to dive through the side door that must lead to the warehouse. The vastness of the space beneath bright lights was surprising. It stored a sober rainbow of black, grey and white pipes brightened by orange on one side.

  As she stepped away from the door, the MD appeared as though she’d triggered an alarm. “Mr Mills, Eva Janssen, CEO of Every Drop.” She injected enough authority into her introduction that he would never guess she was jeopardising her future by being there.

  “You should make an appointment.”

  “I shouldn’t have to be here at all.”

  Long sideburns and hair poked out from beneath his white hard hat. Dressed in a god-awful brown checked shirt and an orange hi-vis vest, he could have walked right off the pages of a magazine’s homage to the seventies. He gestured at a rack behind her, frowning at her boots.
“Health and safety.”

  Eva put on a bright blue hard hat. “I’ll take responsibility for my toes.”

  He held out his clipboard. “Care to sign to that effect?”

  She grabbed it and did.

  He took the clipboard back and checked. “There’s nothing wrong with our pipes. You need to be looking at the supply.”

  “We are. I’m just here to understand. Other agencies use your pipes for water transportation in the developing world?” He nodded. “And they’re all manufactured in the same way.”

  “Same as it’s always been done.”

  “Can I see what we buy?”

  He looked at her inadequate boots but led her to a run of thin black pipes that filled the centre racking. “Water pipes that get buried have a greater diameter but suspending them we’re limited by the weight factor, water’s heavy.”

  “Remind me how these pipes differ from the regular ones.” It had been at Every Drop’s inception that they’d struck the golden idea of using the space above the slums to get the water in.

  “The material is thicker, more rigid, the pipe diameter narrower and the span shorter, overlapping joins wider.” He slapped his hand against the pipe at his waist height. “These aren’t for you lot though, haven’t had the compound added.”

  “The compound?” Eva forced a laugh. “I’m the Chief Executive Officer, not the Chief Operating Scientist.” She plucked a title from her imagination. “Remind me.”

  “To stop them getting brittle under the UV rays. Fearful sun out there. We dip the pipes in it before they’re shipped out. No one complaining about that, are they? We’re following your regulations.”

  “No, no, that’s fine, that part of it.”

  “You might want to think about selling it on, no one’s got sick from your pipes. Only thing that’s different from everyone else’s orders is your compound.” He winked at her. “We might have to charge more to add it, seeing as it’s a desirable element.”

  “It sounds like our scientist in charge needs a bonus. Which one was it, who instructed you?”