by Tomas Black
He beamed and was about to say something when someone called her name.
“Svetlana Milova. Is that you?”
She looked up and her heart sank. “Baz.”
Vasily (Baz) Kulik was a scrawny, pale-faced little man with a crooked nose and long greasy hair. He walked over with a casual swagger, grinning broadly. When he spoke, it was with a slight accent that betrayed him as Eastern European.
“Well, well, well. Look who it is. The wonder kid. You working or hiding out?”
Stevie didn’t speak but stared up at Kulik’s grinning face. She was deciding how to play this. Her eyes moved down to his waist and the chain that hung from his belt. It looped down to his thigh before disappearing into the pocket of his tight, dirty jeans. Stevie knew that on the end of the chain was a slim, razor-like knife. She’d seen him wield it on more than one occasion, usually in a fit of rage. The results had not been pretty.
“Friend of yours?” said Jeremy, looking at Stevie with some concern.
“Hey, no one is talking to you, frat boy,” said Baz. “Shut the fuck up.”
Jeremy turned and looked up at Baz. Stevie could see what was about to happen and gripped Jeremy’s hand underneath the table, willing him to be quiet. Jeremy remained seated, but she felt his fist clench. He had no idea of the violence this evil little man could inflict.
“I’m working. You being here is not helping.”
“Sure, sure. If you say so.” He looked over his shoulder as if checking who was in the cafe. “People weren’t happy with you running out on us. Upset a lot of people. Then someone said you were here in England. I said, no. Not Svetlana. She’s solid. We are best friends. She wouldn’t run out on her friends. But here you are.”
Stevie had never been friends with Baz Kulik. The guy was a psychopath. But that didn’t stop him from telling everyone that she was his girlfriend. Anyone who said otherwise usually ended up on the end of his knife. In truth, they had worked together in a hackers commune, back in Kiev, where they wrote computer malware and viruses and sold them to the highest bidder. One of those bidders had been Vlad Abramov.
“As I said, I’m working, Baz. I can’t talk here.”
The door to the cafe opened, and Kulik looked over his shoulder again. “Gotta go, babe. We have a lot to talk about. I’ll be seeing you around.”
Stevie let out a sigh of relief as Kulik swaggered over to the counter. He stopped to talk to a big man waiting by the door. The man looked in their direction and nodded. Stevie noticed a long scar down the side of one eye.
CHAPTER FIVE
A DCI Calls
It was six in the morning, and Drum was running. A light rain had fallen during the night, giving the London pavements a fresh, earthy smell. He looked up at the brightening sky and across the river to London’s financial centre beyond. In a few hours, the offices in the buildings opposite would fill with City traders and billions of pounds would flow through the financial arteries of Great Britain.
Drum ran the short distance to the end of Butlers Wharf on the south side of Tower Bridge where he kept an apartment above his office. He crossed the pedestrian footbridge at Tea Traders Wharf onto China Wharf, where he continued his run along the embankment of Bermondsey Wall. In the distance, the towers of Canary Wharf rose above the grey morning mist. He breathed deeply, pushing his body to keep up the pace. The dulcet tones of Sergeant Charles Renshaw sprang to mind through the pulsing thump of blood in his veins: soldiers don’t jog, Drummond, they fucking run!
His phone buzzed. He stopped to catch his breath before answering. He smiled when he heard the voice on the end of the line.
“Are you having a heart attack or is this your idea of phone sex?”
“Fern … lovely to hear from you.” He bent over, coughed, then straightened and took a deep breath, trying to slow his breathing. He looked at the time on his phone. New York was five hours behind the UK. “You’re up late. Must be one in the morning.”
Alex Fern, previously of London’s National Crime Agency, had left to work in New York almost a year ago. It was Phyllis Delaney who had sown the seed of the idea. He’d grown close to Fern in the short time they had worked together, and she had saved his life on more than one occasion. But the case they had worked on had taken its toll, and they had decided to put their relationship on hold. And now, after nearly eight months apart, he was missing her.
He heard her sigh. “I can’t sleep. It’s always this way when I’m between assignments. And anyway, I miss you. Are you still flying over next week?”
He hesitated, remembering the call from Delaney the day before. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the assignment had been her idea all along.
“Drum, you there?”
“Sorry, Fern … about next week.”
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re not coming? I’ve made plans—just the two of us.”
Drum could hear the dejection in Fern’s voice. “Something’s come up—a last-minute assignment. You know I’d come if I could. I miss you, Alex—”
“It better not be another woman.”
“C’mon, Alex. It’s nothing like that.”
“Is she Russian?”
The voluptuous figure of Moretti slipped uninvited into his thoughts. “No, definitely no Russians involved in this case.”
There was a pause on the line. “Ok, I’m going to bed. Catch you later.” She hung up.
That went well, thought Drum. He pocketed his phone and continued at a light jog back to Butler’s Wharf, crossing back over the footbridge at China Wharf, and stopped off at a small coffee shop on Tea Traders Wharf that opened early to catch the City workers heading into their offices. The barista, a young Spaniard called Manny, waved as he entered the shop and started to prepare his coffee. He was nothing if not predictable.
“Morning, Manny.”
“Morning, Ben. How was your run?”
“Getting better.”
Manny smiled. “Saw you on the news the other day. Looked like you had a lucky escape.”
“Right, you could say that.” He tapped his card and grabbed his coffee. “See you later.”
He strolled back along Butler’s Wharf towards Tower Bridge. The early birds were now flooding into the City. His office was a corner property, just below the south casement of the bridge, styled to resemble the Victorian warehouses that had once stood there with supporting, wrought-iron beams and bare brick walls. The property had been his father’s idea, back when the entire area was being redeveloped from the working docks. It had proved to be a good investment for Drum. The offices of Security Risk Dynamics occupied the ground floor of the premises and were the hub of Drum’s consultancy; his apartment occupied the upper level, reached from inside the building by a wrought-iron spiral staircase. His father had said it wasn’t homely and only shop keepers lived above the premises, but it suited him and was convenient for the City where he conducted most of his business.
Drum pulled open the plate-glass door to find Alice at her desk in the small reception area of the office lobby. Since joining his small enterprise last year, Alice had completely transformed the business. Her administrative skills were second to none—not to mention the experience she brought to the business from almost a lifetime spent working for the intelligence community. She was more than just his office manager, she was his mentor and confidant. In the short time Alice and William had been together, he had come to accept her as one of the family. Then Omega happened.
“You’re in early,” he said.
“Morning, Ben. Oh, you know … trouble sleeping on my own these days. The apartment seems empty.”
Drum nodded. It had been six months since William had died. They said it was from a respiratory infection, but Drum guessed it was related to what the GRU agent had given him. He wasn’t the same after that fateful night. Alice had made sure that those responsible had paid the ultimate price.
Drum sighed. He missed his father too. He and William had grown close since h
e had left the Army. Drum felt their remaining time together had been cut short.
“Here, take my coffee. I’ve not had time to drink it. Take a break while I head upstairs and shower.”
Alice gratefully accepted the coffee, still hot and steaming. “Thanks, Ben.”
He walked through the reception area to the private staircase that led to his apartment and made his way up. He smiled when he got to the top and surveyed the place. His father always referred to it as an army barracks. It was a spartan affair. A double bed occupied a corner of a spacious lounge and there was an adjoining modern kitchen-diner which Drum rarely used. The rest of the apartment was taken up with wardrobe space and a large wet-room.
He dumped his track-suit in the wash and took a long, hot shower and thought about his conversation with Fern. Their long-distance relationship wasn’t working, and he felt they were slowly drifting apart.
He dried himself off and dressed in the charcoal-grey suit he’d worn the day before and a clean white shirt. Like most of the people that now worked in the City, he’d long ago abandoned wearing a tie. By the time he made it downstairs, Alice was waiting for him in his office.
“Coffee was nice, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Invoicing or Projects?” asked Alice, as she sat facing him on his office couch, sorting through several manilla folders by her side.
“Projects, I think,” said Drum, staring absentmindedly out of the window. He watched a small pleasure boat motor by, its horn sounding a baleful wail which echoed off the giant casements of Tower Bridge as it disappeared beneath.
“Problems?” said Alice, giving him a quizzical look.
“Fern called.”
Alice smiled. “She must be missing you if she called you this early.” Alice put her folders down and rested her manicured hands on her lap. “What did she say?”
Drum leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Not much. Pissed I’m not flying over next week.”
“The McKinley assignment,” said Alice, picking up a manilla folder. “Can’t it wait a week?”
“That was my suggestion, but they seem to be in a hurry for me to start.”
He thought about his meeting with Moretti, then remembered the device she had given him. It was still in his pocket. He pulled it out and held it up to the window. It swirled and changed colour in the bright morning sunshine.
“Oh, that’s pretty,” said Alice. “What is it?”
He handed it to her. “I’ve no idea. Francesca Moretti gave it to me at our meeting. She received it in the post from persons unknown. It’s somehow related to the case.”
Alice stood and moved to the window. She held the object up and watched, mesmerised, as the crystal became transparent, revealing its inner core which turned with the light, changing from gold to silver, metallic red to metallic green.
“It’s phototropic,” she mused.
“Meaning?”
“It likes the light. It may utilise some sort of photoelectric effect—like a small solar cell.” She closed her hand around it. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I have an army friend who trained as an electrical engineer. Thought I’d show him. In the meantime, keep it in the safe.”
Alice slipped it into her jacket pocket and returned to the couch. “So … it looks like the McKinley project is a goer.” She picked up the folder. “Is this in London?”
“No, Cambridge,” said Drum.
“Oh, will you be dropping in on Stevie?”
Until then, it hadn’t occurred to him to contact Stevie. He hadn’t heard from her in a while. But it was term time, and she probably had her nose to the grindstone—or so he hoped. Like Alice, Stevie was dropped in his lap, much to the dismay of Fern who saw her as a distraction. And, like Alice, she had proved herself to be a boon to the business and a loyal soldier once she was free from Vlad Abramov. The arrangement was that she worked for Drum as a computer analyst on a part-time basis on the understanding she could finish her masters. She had impressed him with her ability to grasp the fundamentals of computer forensics and data analytics, all of which were in demand from the financial companies across the river.
“I suppose I should,” he said.
“Of course you should, she’d love to see you. And I’m sure she’ll be able to provide you with support for the project.”
“I wouldn’t want to disrupt her work during term time,” said Drum, thinking that Alice might have a point.
“Oh, tsk, tsk. She’ll be happy to do it.” Alice stood and moved to the window, staring out at the river beyond “Will you be staying up there?”
“I suppose. Although I could commute back. It’s just a few hours into Liverpool Street. Why?”
Alice turned to face him, a look of dejection on her face. “It’s just that I’ll be all alone in the office. And to tell you the truth, Ben, there isn’t a great deal for me to do when you’re out on assignment. At least when William was around, he would stop by or meet me for lunch. And with Stevie gone, well, I’m just talking to myself most days.”
Drum’s heart sank. He stood and hugged her. “I’m so sorry, Alice. I’ve been thoughtless.”
She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. “Oh, tsk, tsk. It’s just me being silly, that’s all.”
“Rubbish, I take you for granted. Don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t taken charge of the business.”
“Really!”
“Of course. Hey, why not come with me? I’m sure it’s you that Stevie would rather see. We’ll just up-sticks and move to Cambridge for a month.”
“Really!”
“Sure. We’ll get a temp for the office. I’m sure you’ll be able to sort that out.”
Alice’s face brightened. “Of course. I’ll get straight onto it.” She gathered up her paperwork. “Don’t worry about the invoices. I’ll sort them out later.” And with that, she was out of the door and back at her desk phoning around for a temp.
Drum had barely started work on the McKinley assignment brief when Alice poked her head around the door.
“Sorry, Ben, there’s someone to see you.”
Drum raised an eyebrow.
Alice came in and closed the door behind her. “It’s the Plod.”
“The Plod?”
Alice gave Drum a business card. “A DCI Chambers from the City of London Police.”
He looked at the card. “Better show him in, Alice.”
Drum stood and moved from behind his desk as DCI Chambers entered his office. He judged the man to be in his early forties. His thick, dark hair was swept back and peppered with steel-grey at his temples. While not as tall as Drum, he looked well built beneath his suit.
Chambers flashed his warrant card. “Ben Drummond? DCI Chambers, City of London Police.”
Drum held out his hand, and Chambers gripped it in a firm handshake. “Please take a seat. How can I help you, DCI Chambers?”
Chambers turned to find Alice still standing there.
“My office manager,” said Drum.
“Can I get you some tea, DCI Chambers?”
“Er, no. Thank you. I won’t be staying long.” He moved over to the couch and sat down, straightening his jacket as he did so.
“Right then,” said Alice. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Chambers pulled a small notebook from his pocket and flicked up a few pages. “I understand you met with a Francesca Moretti yesterday morning.”
Drum regarded the man. He had excellent dress sense and an expensive taste in shoes, which were made from good quality leather and hand-stitched. His suit was of light wool and tailored so the cut of his jacket provided him with more room on his left side. And the knuckles of his hands had seen recent action.
“Yesterday morning,” said Drum. “Yes, I did.”
Chambers waited for Drum to continue but, when he did not, he pressed on. “And what was the nature of your meeting?”
“We had breakfast.�
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“Er, would you like to elaborate?”
Drum thought he could drag this out all morning and so he cut to the chase. “It was a business meeting. Ms Moretti’s company has engaged my services.”
“Doing what exactly?”
Drum gave him the standard answer which was partly true. “I audit computer systems. Can I ask what this is about, DCI Chambers?”
“All in good time, sir.” He looked at his notebook. “And what time did you leave Ms Moretti?”
“Around nine-thirty.”
Chambers looked at his notebook again. “I see. And did she give you anything?”
“Did she give me anything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Like what?”
“I was hoping you could tell me, sir.”
There was a knock on the door and Alice pushed her way in carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. “Thought you might like some tea, anyway,” she said, placing the tray on Drum’s desk.
“DCI Chambers was asking me if Francesca Moretti had given me anything.”
“Really!” said Alice, pouring the tea. “Like what?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” said Chambers, “but it’s pertinent to our investigation.”
“And what investigation would that be?” said Alice.
Chambers rose from the couch and pocketed his notebook. “Ms Moretti was found murdered in her hotel room at around nine-thirty yesterday morning.”
CHAPTER SIX
Mei Ling
Drum woke early the next morning after a restless night pondering the fate of Francesca Moretti. The news of her death had come as a shock, delivered, as it was, in a deadpan manner by DCI Chambers. The visit by the City of London policeman, so soon into the investigation, was also a surprise. Alice was the first to conclude it was not a coincidence.
“Best dressed policeman I’ve ever seen,” she had commented. “And his suit has been tailored to conceal a weapon—probably a Walther PPK or a Barretta.”
He always deferred to Alice’s expertise on weapons. And while it wasn’t unusual for plainclothes police to carry a gun these days, it was rare for it to be concealed. Chambers was looking for something: And did she give you anything? The device that Moretti had given him factored into the equation for reasons he didn’t yet understand. And given the suspect nature of Chambers’ true identity, he and Alice had thought it wise to keep that fact to themselves. In the meantime, he set Alice the task of conducting a background check on the man.