Robert Young - Gatecrasher

‘What is it?’ Her tone was sharp now, irritable. She was out of patience.

‘I know what was stolen in the break in.’

For a second Campbell was probably as surprised as she was at the outburst. Neither spoke. Long seconds passed in silence. Would she bolt? Run to the boss? Think this was some kind of threat or blackmail?

‘And I think I know why,’ he said, laying the rest of his cards on the table.

A pause. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

She was biting. He could hear just an edge of intrigue in her voice.

‘Your boss may be involved.’

Each breath felt agonisingly long, tortuously drawn out as he waited. Each heartbeat took an hour as his words hung on the airwaves.

‘Sarah?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Will you meet me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘To talk. Its extremely important.’

‘No. What do you mean, that-’ she paused ‘he may be involved?’ She obviously didn’t want to mention her boss whilst standing in the office where she might be overheard.

‘The break in, what was taken. He might be behind it.’

‘How? I’m afraid I don’t follow you.’

‘Sarah, I can’t explain everything now. It would be easier if we met. I need to show you something. I just — I need you to look at it, maybe tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’m way off. Frankly I’d be delighted if you did.’

She went silent again and once more the doubt crept over him. Perhaps he was pushing too hard now. Perhaps she just thought he was an insistent journalist trying to fool her into giving him the story he wanted. Or maybe she’d just been keeping him on the line whilst she called somebody over to listen in. He opened his mouth to speak again, fighting the urge to shout, to beg, to plead with her to help him.

‘Where?’ she said.

Wednesday. 6.30pm.

It was dark when he got in the door to his flat and a little cold so he set the kettle to boil and trotted through to his bedroom to change out of his suit into jeans and a sweater. Looking around the room he thought that his room looked a little different — more untidy? — than he remembered leaving it. No, he thought. It was always a mess and he was tense and paranoid. Of course that was how he’d left it.

He didn’t really know whether Sarah would actually show up to meet him. He had let her nominate a neutral venue as a gesture designed to demonstrate that he could be trusted. She was suspicious of him; that was obvious. Whether she believed his cover story about being a journalist but simply suspected his motives, his journalistic integrity, or whether her mistrust ran deeper than that he couldn’t know. He could have been anyone of course, and she a lone woman asked to meet with a strange man… what else could he expect her to be but suspicious of him?

By agreeing to her terms of time and place he hoped that he had given her some small cause to trust him. To grant him at the very least the benefit of the doubt. But would she even show up at all? He had fretted over that since ending the call. It was a gamble, he’d known that, and until she actually showed up, he wouldn’t know if it had worked. Again the paranoia had him seeing her turn up surrounded by company officials and police, pointing an accusing finger at him from the doorway.

He checked the memory stick again; still hidden, still invisible. He switched on his laptop computer again and made another cursory check that there was no trace of the data that he had accessed on the stick itself just as he had on his PC at work, eager to remove any trace at all, to leave no trail.

As he shut the machine down and began to pack it back into its tough leather case the shrill sound of his doorbell cut through the silence of the flat and he could almost feel the sound of it reverberate through his chest.

Nervously he went to the door and peered through the fisheye. He was surprised to see a woman standing there. Wrong doorbell? He pulled open the door and found himself staring into the blue, blue eyes of a pretty young woman.

She said hello but Campbell’s eyes were paying more attention than his ears. Her golden hair was scraped back from her forehead and arranged in an elaborate twist, which left a spray of hair falling away from her head like flowers in a vase. She wore fitted black trousers and a tailored shirt with large collars that was unbuttoned halfway down. Underneath the shirt, which clung to her slender frame, the pinstripes tracing its shape, was a plain black top cut straight across the chest.

He quickly snapped his head back up and looked her in the eye again hoping she hadn’t spotted it. In his confusion he almost asked her if she knew Sarah but stopped himself.

‘Hi. Can I help you?’ he said and tried to make it sound breezy, nonchalant.

‘Hope so,’ she said and flashed a dazzling smile at him. He nodded at her to go on, aware that speaking now would almost certainly result in him saying the wrong thing. He told himself to relax.

‘I’m having a bit of a nightmare actually. There’s this guy who’s been following me since I got off the bus up the road.’ She hooked a thumb back over her shoulder in no particular direction. ‘I thought I was being a bit mental at first you know, paranoid. But then I started walking along this road and he kept following,’ she explained, embarrassed that she might be overreacting. Campbell peered out into the street but could see little past the hedge in his front garden.

‘I’m really sorry. Would you mind if I just came in for five minutes or something until he goes away? I know it probably sounds silly…’

‘No, no. That’s not silly.’ He tried desperately to think of what to say. He was reluctant to let her in and get involved in this, not when he was supposed to be heading out to meet Sarah. But he couldn’t just leave this girl alone, scared and asking for his help. And the longer he stood there, the more awkward he began to feel. ‘Of course,’ he spluttered finally. ‘Come in. Please. Come on — ‘

He stopped, frowning as the girl stepped backwards and from the side of the door appeared one of the burliest, most threatening looking men Campbell had ever seen.

‘ — in.’

‘I thought you were never going to ask,’ said Keith Slater as he clamped a huge hand over Campbell’s shoulder and thrust him roughly back inside, sending him sprawling onto his back. ‘Close the door Angie,’ he called over his shoulder and stepped into the hallway.

Wednesday. 10.30pm.

‘Drennan, its me.’ The accent was clipped and well spoken, the delivery abrupt.

‘Ah, good morning.’ A breezy, self-assured tone, or a valiant attempt. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘We still have a situation. Imagine my shock to hear that you’ve made a spectacular mess of things once again.’

‘Imagine,’ replied Drennan flatly.

‘I take it that the matter is being dealt with?’

‘Naturally.’

'The security cameras in the building happened to suffer a systems failure the very same evening. Just a small one though. No one will have even notice that. A frame or two lost from the recording, though those in the East didn't need to know that. I figured I'd let them spend time worrying about each other than what they were asked to do. Keep them occupied.'

‘How considerate of you. Would you like to avail me of the very latest information?’ The other man clearly had the upper hand despite Drennan’s cool responses. He didn't always talk like this, just when he wanted to rub Drennan's nose in shit. He knew his questions would have to be answered.

‘Delighted. The, um, real annoyance to which you no doubt refer is in hand. The Barrel-Maker turned up cold in a hospital in south west London and he’s been identified but I’ve spoken with somebody and I’m making that go away…’