Single Handed (Gareth Dawson Series Book 3)

by Nathan Burrows

  The screen changed to show the photograph of McGuire and her husband. It was, he reflected, his favourite photograph of her. The nervousness in her face, and the smugness in his. Ronnie looked at her face for a few seconds, imagining all sorts of things—none complementary or even consensual—before he picked up the Nokia phone and pressed one of the buttons.

  This is Annette McGuire.

  She was the only person who had this number. Of course it was her. Despite his disdain, Ronnie could feel himself getting excited as he re-read the message. He tapped out a reply, taking a few moments over it due to the awkward buttons on the phone.

  Have you got the money? There was no point messing about. In Ronnie’s experience, once a mark had made contact they’d already decided to pay up. The only question left was whether this one would pay the full amount. Ronnie fanned himself with a magazine while he waited for a reply. It took less than a minute.

  Yes. How do I know that when I’ve paid you, you’ll go away?

  Ronnie smiled when he thought that thousands of miles away, the slut McGuire was thinking about him. Texting him. He couldn’t help but wonder where she was, and what she was wearing. Perhaps, he thought as his smile broadened, she wasn’t wearing much at all?

  You’ll just have to trust me. I’ll deliver a hard drive with the only copies of the material as proof.

  It was, Ronnie knew, scant reassurance. There was no way she could know whether the drive had the only copies available, not in this day and age. Besides, he had no intention of sending one, anyway. You just never knew when they might come in useful.

  How do I pay?

  Ronnie entered his bank account details and double checked them to make sure they were correct. He sent the message and followed it up with another.

  Text this number when you’ve made the payment.

  He took the phone back to the bed and lay back down. Just crossing the room made him break out in a sweat, and he tried fanning himself again with the magazine, but all it did was move humid air around the room. When the phone buzzed again and he read the message on the screen, none of that mattered anymore.

  Okay. I’ll do it today.

  56

  Gareth sat back in his chair, which squealed in protest.

  “What do you mean, nothing?” he asked Dave who was sitting opposite him staring forlornly at the screen of Philip’s laptop.

  “I mean exactly that, there’s nothing on it.”

  “There must be something,” Gareth replied.

  “If there was, boss,” Dave said, “I’d have found it. That’s what you pay me so well to do.”

  Irritated at Dave’s sarcasm, Gareth retorted.

  “Well, I might move you onto a performance-related pay scale. See how you enjoy going hungry.”

  “Gareth,” Laura said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “if there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.”

  “There should be something, though,” Gareth replied. “Something for Bill Gates over there to find. Who has an empty computer?”

  “There are a few bits and pieces on it,” Dave said, looking down at the screen to avoid Gareth’s eyes. “But it’s all business stuff. Invoices for scuba diving lessons, receipts for stuff he’s bought. But it’s what’s not there that’s interesting.”

  “So what’s not there?” Gareth asked.

  “There’s no browsing history for a start. He’d set his browser to delete the history and cookies when he closes it, but even then there would be traces. Unless he used an anonymous browser like The Onion Router.”

  “E-mail?”

  “No account’s been set up on the computer, so he must have used a web account.”

  “Which you can’t find?”

  “No, Gareth. I can’t.”

  “Come on Dave, I need more than that.”

  Dave looked at him, his eyes dark.

  “Tell you what, boss,” he said, flipping the laptop round so that the screen was facing Gareth, “why don’t you find it your bloody self?” He got to his feet and took a deep breath. “I’m going to Costa. Do you want anything?” Gareth was just about to ask for a latte when he realised that Dave had asked Laura, not him.

  “No, thanks,” Laura said.

  When Dave had left, Laura got to her feet and stood behind Gareth. He felt her hands on his shoulders and she started massaging her fingers into the muscle.

  “You’re so tense,” she said, “and you’re taking it out on Dave.”

  “He works for me,” Gareth replied, wincing as Laura’s fingers found a knot of muscle.

  “You keep treating him like that and he won’t for much longer.” Her arms snaked around his neck and she leaned against him. Gareth closed his eyes when he felt her breasts pressed against his back. “Now stop being all grumpy.”

  “That’s nice,” Gareth said when Laura nibbled his ear, teasing his earlobe with her teeth.

  “Are you going to say sorry to Dave?” she whispered.

  “Nope,” Gareth replied with a smile. When Laura bit his earlobe harder, he winced. “Okay, I’ll apologise. But what’s in it for me?”

  “The moral high ground, Mr Dawson,” Laura whispered. “Unless you had something else in mind?”

  “How long do you think Dave’ll be?”

  “Not long enough, even for you.”

  “That’s a low blow.” She kissed his cheek and stood up. He turned to look at her and saw two red patches on her cheeks that he was starting to recognise before she disappeared into the bathroom.

  When Dave returned a few moments later, he was carrying a cardboard tray with three coffees in it and a packet of muffins balanced on the top. He put a cup in front of Gareth and Laura, and the muffins next to them.

  “Peace offering?” Dave said.

  “Accepted,” Gareth replied, “but I need to apologise for being an arse.” He reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Tell you what, let me get these. How much were they?”

  “Er, well,” Dave said, grinning, “I put them on the company card. Seeing as you were being an arse and all.” Laura started giggling, and Gareth knew he was beaten.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, laughing at the pair of them. “Let’s get back to business. Where do we go from here?”

  “Annette didn’t have any hard drives or USB sticks, did she?” Dave asked. Gareth shook his head.

  “No, she said there weren’t. But he could have hidden them somewhere else.”

  “What would you do, Dave?” Laura turned her attention to Dave. “If you wanted to hide something on a computer so that no one else could find it?”

  “What, activity or files?”

  “Both, I guess,” Laura replied, glancing at Gareth. He looked at her reproachful expression and felt bad about getting shirty with Dave.

  “Okay,” Dave said, his voice brightening. “First off, I would put a copy of TOR onto a USB stick and run it from there.”

  “What’s TOR? Is that the onion thing?” Gareth asked.

  “It’s another network which sits on top of the internet and stitches the participating computers together into a wholly new network,” Laura replied, surprising them both.

  Gareth looked at Laura, frowning. How the hell did she know all that? She glanced at her phone before continuing. “When you use it, your traffic is layered in encryption and routed via a random relay. Have I got that right, Dave?”

  “Spot on, Miss Flynn,” Dave replied with a broad grin. “It's wrapped in another layer of encryption. That's done three times across a decentralised network of nodes called a circuit.”

  “Are you keeping up, Gareth?” Laura was also smiling, and Gareth suddenly felt completely out of his depth. Which he was. He looked again at Laura, and could see that she was trying not to laugh.

  “You just googled that in the toilet, didn’t you?” Her face wrinkled, and she started laughing.

  “Objection, Your Honour,” she said to Dave. “Counsel is badgering the witness.”

  “Sustained
,” Dave replied, also laughing.

  “For God’s sake, you two. Stop ganging up on me.” He grinned at them both. “So, the onion thing on a USB stick. What next?”

  “Well,” Dave replied, “that would mean that I could use a browser safely. And if I can use a browser safely, then I can use it to access secure services in the cloud.”

  “So you could keep everything off the grid?” Gareth asked.

  “Yep, everything. I would hide it so deep no-one could ever find it.” He pointed at Philip’s computer. “Which would mean that my own computer is completely clean.”

  “So it’s a dead end?”

  “Yep. As a do-do.”

  Gareth sighed. That meant that they wouldn’t be able to trace whoever was blackmailing Philip through his laptop. He knew it had been a long shot, but he’d hoped that Dave could find something. An e-mail, perhaps, or an instant messaging conversation. The only thing they had left was the virtual copy of Annette’s computer, but he and Dave couldn’t talk about that in front of Laura.

  “Well, if we can’t find anything on his computer, then neither can the police. That can only be a good thing for Annette, right?”

  57

  Annette waved dutifully at the children on the hire boat as it made its way past her. There were two of them, both no more than six or seven, and they were wearing bulky orange life jackets. Their parents had decided against wearing theirs, so the children were using them as cushions. On the side of the boat was the name of the hire company with a large bluebird logo.

  Behind the wheel, the father was concentrating hard on his duties as captain, although the boat was only twenty feet long and the speed limit on most of the River Bure was four miles an hour to avoid any wash disturbing the fragile environment. The woman with the children raised a hand in greeting before grabbing one of the children as he or she—Annette was too far away to tell—got too close to the edge of the boat. The child shrieked with laughter, causing some nearby ducks to take flight which only caused more laughter.

  She watched as the family made their gradual way along the river, wondering where they were going. It was a day hire boat, so they wouldn’t be going far. Maybe a few miles down the river toward Norwich, moor up somewhere for a picnic lunch and a leg stretch, and then back to Wroxham. Annette would have changed places with the woman in the boat in an instant. A normal husband. A family. A day when the only thing to worry about was where to have lunch and whether there would be a toilet there for the kids.

  As she watched the boat turn the corner of the cut, Annette looked back at her phone. She still had the text message that she had sent R on the screen.

  Okay. I’ll do it today.

  Annette jiggled her thigh up and down rapidly, a habit she’d not shaken since childhood. Gareth used to take the piss out of her for it mercilessly, calling her all sorts of names. When she thought of him, she put her burner phone into her handbag and pulled out her own phone to text him.

  Any news?

  A couple of minutes later, she was rewarded with the phone ringing.

  “Hey, little sis,” Gareth said as she answered. “What’re you up to?”

  “I’m in Wroxham, sitting by the river.”

  “Nice. On the cut?”

  “Where else? Did you find anything?”

  “No, not a sausage. It’s as clean as a whistle.”

  Annette’s heart dropped at the news. Gareth had seemed so sure that Dave could find something that might lead to the blackmailer.

  “What about on my computer? The copy of it that Dave took.”

  “Nothing. I mean, we’ve got the e-mail that you were sent, but Dave can’t narrow down where it’s from other than the general area.”

  “So there’s nothing that can be done?”

  “Not really, unless we go to the police.”

  “No. I’m not doing that.”

  “Laura thinks you should.”

  “I know she does, but then everything will come out, won’t it?”

  “Would that be so bad?” Gareth said. His voice was tender, and Annette knew he was trying his best to help her.

  “Yes, Gareth, it would,” she replied, more firmly than she had intended.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong, Annette.”

  “That’s not how people will see it. You know that. The minute the word gets out that Philip was a paedophile, my life will be ruined.”

  “I’ll be able to take care of any problems. I can speak to Big Joe, Tommy. They’ll get the word out to the locals that if they go near you, we’ll be in touch.”

  “I don’t want you to take care of me, Gareth,” Annette said, “and besides, people will know. I won’t be able to walk down the street without people whispering behind my back. You can’t stop that. And I work in children’s services, for God’s sake. How long do you think they’ll keep me for? The wife of a paedophile?”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line, and Annette knew that Gareth had nothing to say to that.

  “Okay, so we wait,” he said, eventually.

  “We wait for what?”

  “For him to get in touch again. He will at some point.”

  “What’s the point, Gareth? So he sends me another untraceable e-mail. How does that help?” There was another silence in response to an unanswerable question.

  Annette said goodbye to Gareth and put her phone away. She stared at the ducks making their way up the river in search of food and got to her feet. With a last view down the river to the spot where the boat had rounded the corner, she turned and started walking back to Wroxham.

  Ten minutes later, Annette pushed open the heavy doors to a building next to Roy’s of Wroxham. She walked inside, grateful for the air-conditioning. Annette hadn’t realised how hot it was outside until she walked into the cool interior. She looked around to orientate herself and walked across the marble floor to her destination.

  “Can I help you?” a young woman asked as Annette approached. According to her name badge, her name was Susan. She was fresh-faced and full of optimism, almost as if Annette coming to speak to her was the best thing that had happened to her all day.

  “Yes, I think so,” Annette replied.

  “What can I do for you today?” Susan said, hiking her smile up even further.

  “I’d like to make a bank transfer, please,” Annette replied. “A rather large one.”

  58

  “Officer Sukarba, please?” Ronnie asked the sullen-faced policeman behind the desk. He was in the police station in Denpasar where he had been taken the previous week. The policeman didn’t reply, but picked up the phone on his desk before barking into it in rapid Indonesian. He stared at Ronnie as he listened to the reply.

  “Name?”

  “Ronnie Phelps.” There was another exchange on the line, and the policeman put the handset back in the cradle. He stepped out from behind his desk and crossed to a door leading off the waiting room, gesturing Ronnie into the room beyond it.

  Ronnie stepped into the compact room and jumped as the door crashed closed behind him. It was small and windowless, perhaps twelve foot square. The only furniture was a table and two folding chairs, none of which looked particularly robust. The walls were bare cinder block, and a single bulb dangled from the ceiling. The only other thing in the room was a camera in the top corner. As Ronnie watched, a single red light blinked steadily.

  He eased himself gingerly into one of the chairs. It groaned under his weight, but didn’t collapse. While he waited for the policeman, he thought about his next steps. Ronnie had put a bid in on the discussion board for the man in Chester who he thought would be good for a few thousand, and the vendor had told him that there were a few more in the pipeline that he would give Ronnie first dibs on and for a good price. Not for the first time, he wondered who the vendors were and where they got their information from.

  His best guess was either a bent copper or at least someone involved in the legal system. The packs came with a vast amo
unt of information on the marks. As well as the incriminating photographs and videos, there was a dossier with personal information. Relatives, employers, even their estimated worth was included.

  If he could snare the man in Chester, then he would leave Bali for the Philippines. He would have enough money to start over as someone new. All he needed to do between now and that point in time was keep his nose clean, and his urges under control. Not all of them; just the ones that people frowned on.

  Ronnie had been sitting on the chair for about twenty minutes before he heard some noises outside the door. He had been tempted a few moments ago to see if it was open or if they had locked him in. The interior of the room was stuffy and smelt of stale sweat. His, and perhaps its previous occupants. Ronnie glanced up at the flashing red light on the camera. A few seconds later, he realised that it had stopped blinking. Someone had turned the camera off.

  The door creaked on its hinges as it opened, and Sukarba walked in. Ronnie looked at him, not liking the look of disgust on the policeman’s face. He sat opposite Ronnie, the creaking of his chair drowned out by the noise of the door closing behind him.

  “Mr Phelps,” Sukarba said in a threatening tone. “I hope you have something for me?”

  “I do, Officer Sukarba,” Ronnie replied. A little civility probably wouldn’t hurt. Ronnie had no idea if the police in Bali were known as Officer this or that, but he did know that the horrible little man sitting opposite would appreciate the formality. “Do you have something for me?”

  A slow smile spread across the policeman’s face.

  “I might have,” he replied. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

  Ronnie reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. It was stuffed with banknotes. Two hundred and fifty million rupiah, or about fourteen thousand pounds. He watched as the policeman’s eyes lit up.