by Alex Caan
Zain pulled into the underground car park of St George’s Wharf, having explained to the security who he was. He didn’t tell them who he was visiting. They saw his badge, and rang in his number to the central Met switchboard that verified all police officers were where they were supposed to be. The two security men had hardened faces and eyes that suggested they had been around a bit. They might prove useful later, Zain thought, if he needed some more perceptive information on the Leakey set-up.
Zain waited for the hazmat team to arrive. How he would explain them away or sneak them in unseen was beyond him. He would play it by ear when they turned up. He walked out of the car park, headed to where the wharf was.
The flats were jutting glass, cutting into the London skyline and carrying price tags over seven figures. With the River Thames to one side, there were restaurants, bars and even a hairdresser on the complex. It reminded him of Kate Riley’s home, the enclosed fortress she had shut herself up in. St George’s was too open and accessible for her, no doubt.
She must be reading his thoughts. His phone rang, the caller ID telling him it was her. Zain checked she was connected to his secure app.
‘Boss, I’m at the Leakey apartment building. About to go and see his wife, just waiting for pest control.’
‘Pest control?’
‘PCC Hope got DCD involved, they’re sending me a team.’
‘More people know then. Information is supposed to be sacred, especially in an investigation like ours.’
‘You can trust me. After the last time . . . I’m embarrassed how I behaved.’
‘I wasn’t accusing you, Zain.’
‘Still. I think I just need you to be sure, and hear it from me.’
‘What’s their ETA?’
‘Any moment now. You’re right though. Trying to conduct a subtle investigation into this is going to be pretty tough.’
There were two beats of silence on the other end. Zain saw a clipper bouncing on the waves of the Thames. The wind picked up around him, as rain spat at his face. He closed his eyes against it, welcoming its coolness and the feeling of being cleansed.
‘I think that is the sensible approach, given the circumstances,’ said Kate.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’ve just finished up with the post-mortem.’
‘Before you carry on, I think we should control the details we share across the app.’
‘I thought Michelle secured it?’
‘She did. I think it might have been breached though. PCC Hope knows everything we do. I’ve asked her to ghost it and create a replica with different encryption, use something that is even more secure.’
‘Ok. When Michelle clears it, I’ll send you what we found during the post-mortem. All you need to know is that the hazmat team, well, just follow their advice, OK?’
Zain was sure nothing they had shared was a secret from PCC Hope. The fact Zain knew about the hack into their app should make him sit up though, realise that Zain was no idiot, and that his time of spying on his own team was pretty much coming to an end.
Unless the new app got breached as easily. Or was he just being paranoid? Maybe it wasn’t the comms but something more old-fashioned: human intel that PCC Hope was squeezing? They were a much bigger team now, with dozens of bodies working for the PCC, and random officers would be assigned to Unit 3 while they dealt with this investigation. Any of them could have let the name slip.
‘I’m not wearing a suit,’ he said.
‘I have a duty of care towards you, Zain. I would recommend you take every precaution you can.’
Duty of care. Zain couldn’t help feel something inside soften at the thought of Kate feeling protective. He bit it back, wanted to ask her what exactly they were dealing with, but until Michelle sent them the new app he wouldn’t put that sort of information out into the open.
Kate signed off, and Zain got a text through from the hazmat team. At the security gate the two guards were bewildered, staring at the team dressed in their white plastic outfits with plastic helmets. Zain decided to go with the description he had already used.
‘Pest control,’ he said lightly.
The security guards exchanged looks, then waved them through.
Chapter Nineteen
The Leakey’s lived on the twelfth floor. The security guards had let them use the lift reserved for goods and contractors doing work, allowing Zain and the two hazmat members to go up discreetly.
‘I’m Jake Sands, this is Emilia Crake,’ said one of the team when they were alone in the lift. Zain refused their offer to suit up, despite Kate’s pep talk. Somewhere deep inside, the damaged part of him was hoping he would get infected just so he could sue Hope. Irrational whispers, his constant companions, he tried to drown out.
‘The wife is going to be distraught anyway, if I turn up dressed like you frea— Dressed like you, it will make it impossible to get any sense out of her. You search the apartment; I’ll say you’re forensics. I’ll deal with her. If she opens the door and she’s got plague all over her face, don’t worry – I’ll run faster than you straight out of here. Deal?’
They weren’t impressed. He needed to stop being facetious, but he couldn’t help himself. Tiredness had pretty much switched off any civil neurons in his brain. Not that they did that good a job at transmitting most of the time anyway.
Outside apartment 1201, Zain stopped. He felt a flicker of anxiousness, but then put it away. No Category A deadly diseases were airborne; you needed some sort of contact with bodily fluids to catch them, or something needed to come into contact with your bloodstream. He had to hold on to that certainty for now at least. With Kate tied up in hospital, too much was sitting on his shoulders for him to let his usual doubts get in the way.
He breathed in, and knocked.
*
DS Rob Pelt was watching through eyes that were blurring because he had seen so much footage. And he was only watching footage that was suspect.
‘It’s like a constant stream: people in masks, cloaks, disembarking from tubes and buses and just messing around. I don’t get it.’ He heard his Mancunian accent coming through stronger than normal. Unlike the rest of the team, he’d managed some sleep, so was alert at least. He had sent DS Stevie Brennan home after the hospital to get some rest, but didn’t like to think how tired DCI Kate Riley and DS Zain Harris would be.
His role in Unit 3 was primarily to organise the SOCOs, check CCTV and, most importantly, to liaise with other agencies, especially Met stations, to source personnel and resources. Those bodies on the ground would be vital if this case turned out to be as complex as they thought.
Michelle Cable was in the zone, engrossed in some computing stuff he wouldn’t even begin to understand. And actually he didn’t really care to. He took whatever Zain and Michelle told him as fact; they knew what they were talking about. Or at least they sounded like it.
‘What you working on?’ he asked.
‘Security. Zain thinks our comms app has been hacked.’
‘How does he know?’
‘It’s an instinct, he’s not sure.’
‘Ah yes, that well known scientific principle of instinct. Brother to the other well-known scientific fact, gut instinct. Too right.’
Michelle ignored him, furiously tapping away on her keyboard instead. Rob went back to his laptop. He’d asked Michelle to project his laptop screen onto a bigger computer monitor, so he had a clearer view while he still kept the convenience of driving through the laptop keyboard and touch mouse he was used to.
He stretched his legs under the desk, and stretched his shoulders and back. A massage from a date a couple of nights before had left him extremely sore. He thought she’d dislocated his spine at one point. It had seemed kinky when she suggested it, but in practice it was one of the most agonising experiences he had ever had.
He thought again about Monica. She was always on his mind. Four months, his longest relationship by far. And she had changed him.
Given him a religion in some respects. He realised the rest of the team were getting bored of his vegan preaching and his campaigns for animal protection, but he didn’t care. They were probably pissed their vacuous little himbo had developed something solid to cling to.
The screen filled with more masked figures, all of them indistinguishable from each other. This was going to be impossible. He didn’t even know what they were looking for, and searching these images made him aware just how much they didn’t know and how much they needed random luck to make headway in this.
‘OK I think it’s done,’ said Michelle. ‘I have a new comms app, and this time, nobody is cracking it.’
She pressed a few keys, and Rob felt his phone buzz. Message from Michelle.
‘Should I open attachments from suspicious contacts?’ he asked. She gave him the sort of look she probably reserved for her children. Rob heard voices heading their way, and looked up to see Justin Hope with a man he didn’t recognise. The man had grey hair and was dressed in a smart dark suit, a raincoat over one arm and a panama style hat held between thick fingers.
The two men headed towards the lifts, PCC Hope leading. The other man seemed to be searching for something, or someone, momentarily locking eyes with Rob, but more interested in checking the empty desks around him. Rob went back to watching his videos, but couldn’t shake off the idea that the man was looking for Kate or Zain. And whatever exactly it was that he wanted with them, Rob wasn’t sure either of them would be happy about it.
Chapter Twenty
Anya Fox-Leakey sat poised, regal almost. At any rate, unmoved. She was sitting in a cream armchair, by an unlit fire. Zain was sitting across from her in its matching pair. He imagined Anya and Julian having warming Scotch on cold evenings, as flames cracked logs. She was barefoot, her soles resting on a cushion. He stared at the toenails, they were unpainted, but clean and cut neatly. She caught his lingering gaze, looked curious.
‘Can I get you a drink? Or one for your colleagues?’
Jake and Emilia had been a bit of a shock to Anya; she wanted to know what they wanted. Zain said it was standard if someone was missing; they would be doing a cursory examination. She asked him if he had a warrant. Zain told her that they weren’t searching the flat; no one was under investigation for any crime; repeated that it was just a cursory examination. And yes, he did have a warrant for that. Hope had rushed him one through; they weren’t taking any chances with this. Time was already way ahead of them, and they needed to catch up fast, or risk something apocalyptic.
‘No, we’re fine. Thank you.’
‘Have you found Julian?’ she asked. Zain didn’t reply at first, then he showed her pictures of the shoes and the jacket that Julian had been dressed in. Anya stared at the images, with deliberate concentration. ‘They match items he has in his wardrobe. Are they his? I couldn’t say, although I do generally buy most of his clothes.’
Anya was blonde with clear blue eyes, and sharp cheekbones. There were lines around her eyes and mouth, soft markers of her age, which was possibly somewhere in the early forties. Julian was forty-seven according to the official HR file they had managed to access from DFID.
‘Where did you find these?’ she said, handing Zain back his tablet computer.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Leakey . . .’
‘Please, either call me Anya or Mrs Fox-Leakey. I kept my maiden name after I married.’
‘Of course, Mrs Fox-Leakey. Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you that it’s not the best news. We found a body in St James’s Park this morning. Those items of clothing are what the deceased was wearing, and we found ID that belonged to your husband.’
Zain hated breaking death to families. It was the worst news you could give to someone, especially when it was unexpected. This was different, though. She seemed so unaffected he almost relished telling her, trying to push her for a reaction of some sort. She seemed to be taking it calmly. Her face remained impassive, her eyes deep in thought. Only a slight frown crossed her forehead.
‘I don’t understand, DS Harris, shouldn’t we be sure it’s him? Have me identify the body?’
That was her first thought? No trauma at possibly being made a widow, or asking what happened to her husband? Her first thought was about police procedure?
‘We thought we could spare you the pain.’ It was true to a point. Zain didn’t add that the face was unrecognisable, that in essence there was nothing viable to identify. Kate and Dr Kapoor were working on a 3D reconstruction, trying to get it as life-like as possible so they could email it to Zain for Anya Fox-Leakey to confirm. In the meantime, Jake and Emilia would be looking for something they could do a DNA match on.
‘I think the pain is more acute sitting here not knowing?’
‘I apologise, Mrs Fox-Leakey. An ID is not possible at the moment.’
Anya stayed silent, staring into the unlit logs, as though mesmerised by a fire that wasn’t there.
‘How bad is it?’ she whispered. ‘I’m not a fool. The fact you won’t let me see him, there must be a reason? What’s happened to my husband, DS Harris? And what exactly are that forensic team doing in my apartment?’
There was a note of hysteria creeping into her voice, which Zain tried to calm. He needed her to stay focused, and not have some sort of delayed breakdown to hearing about her husband. Although her original lack of emotional response was already giving him that feeling again. The one he was warned about taking too seriously. The one he had developed back in GCHQ and SO15, where paranoia and suspicion and second guessing were used to fill in any gaps of information.
Her husband was potentially dead, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that the lack of ID meant it wasn’t pleasant and the body was probably in a disturbing state. Sure, hysteria was in her voice now, but Zain would have expected some type of upset previously. Unless she hated him. Although the rich might process things differently to normal people, he thought. Was that it? She sounded like she had breeding. Her children were away at boarding school; they had their permanent home in a Dorset village somewhere. Zain had painted a picture of the Leakeys already, and he couldn’t help the judgements that were forming in his mind.
Who had the money? Was it his or hers? His salary was not enough to pay for a riverside crib like this, and she said she was a home maker. What the hell did that mean, anyway? Was she a housewife, or did she build houses? The sodding rich, he thought.
Zain bit back his venom. He heard Kate’s voice in his head chiding him. She had that polished accent, her New England roots always coming through. It was accentuated when she spoke to her mother. Her American accent came out then without any form of adjustment. Zain didn’t know why she felt the need to disguise it so much in her work life.
He wondered what she was doing. There hadn’t been any updates since he’d spoken to her earlier. Zain had no idea how long the blood tests would take, when would they know what had infected Julian Leakey, and whether or not Kate and Dr Kapoor were carrying it.
He looked hard at Anya Fox-Leakey. He didn’t like her coldness, and he was determined to find out exactly what her secrets were. They could impact on too many people if she kept them to herself.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kate was wondering how PC James Alliack was doing. He had been a mess back in the park and she didn’t like to think what state he was in now. She dialled Professor Gerard using a laptop.
‘Not great,’ he said, his image slow on the Skype chat. ‘He tried to escape the isolation unit he’s in. He keeps demanding to speak to his wife, and becoming hysterical. We’ve had to sedate him, I’m afraid.’
Kate felt for him. A new baby, a life he was only really just beginning. No wonder he was in pieces, thinking how it was all going to come to an end. Sedation was probably best for him. The not knowing would drive anyone mad.
The throbbing in her head was growing worse. She asked for some paracetamol, which was supplied via a first-aid box already in the cabin. They had bottled
water and snacks to keep them going. The air was being recycled, pumped into the room cold, and she was feeling the chill now, dressed in only her plastic suit. Kate removed her latex gloves to take the tablets.
‘Can I take your temperature?’ asked Dr Kapoor.
Kate stopped mid swallow, then gulped down the paracetamol. Nothing like a medical professional to give a loud echo to your panic and worry. She knew how things worked, knew the containment and quarantine was a total overreaction. You didn’t get Category A infectious diseases or pathogen-driven viruses by sitting next to someone or touching them. She remembered a lecture where she was told that unless an Ebola patient vomited directly into your mouth, or bled into an open wound, you were unlikely to get it just from being in close proximity. The nurses who got infected did so because they were cleaning up the diarrhoea, stomach contents, plasma and blood of those that had severe symptoms and a protracted stage of the disease.
Fighting through her logic though was the scene she kept recalling. The burst pustule, the blood hitting her face, hitting Dr Kapoor’s face. Particles of it might have entered her mouth. She remembered a metallic taste, the iron stronger in memory recall than it probably was in reality. It was how the brain worked, its mechanism for defence amplified dangers and negative experiences to prevent you from being in harm’s way. And she hoped that’s all it was.
Except the headache was still severe.
Dr Kapoor took out a digi-thermometer.
‘Woah,’ said Kate. ‘That’s not the same one as you used on the body?’
‘We do learn about the transfer of diseases in medical school,’ said Dr Kapoor, and she inserted it into Kate’s ear.
‘I hope my ear doesn’t suffer the same fate as Julian Leakey’s,’ said Kate.
Dr Kapoor left it in for a few seconds, until it beeped. She removed it and showed Kate the reading. So, she definitely had a fever to go with the headache. It was nothing though. Probably tiredness, coupled with being out in the freezing cold all morning, and the stress of the whole situation.