G. Moffat - Blindside

‘How did it go last night?’ the man asked.

Raines put his hand on the newspaper and turned it to read the headline on the front page about the crash. The man waited.

‘He was on that.’ Raines tapped the photo under the headline. ‘Stark, I mean.’

‘That won’t be the end of it. You know that, right?’

‘Of course I know.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘Nothing. I mean, it’s business as usual. I’ve got my meeting with the… investor tomorrow.’

The man looked at Raines for a long beat, leaning back in his seat.

‘You know if that’s the way you want to do it I’ll go along with it. So will everyone else. But it’s risky.’

Raines snorted.

‘Like it was all fun and games up to this point.’

The man held his hands up.

‘I’m just saying, is all.’

Raines remembered another man doing the same thing in very different circumstances. A British field medic in an operating theatre at the camp in Afghanistan. The man’s hands covered in Matt Horn’s blood. His hands up like he was giving in, letting Horn go. Raines didn’t care much for surrender. Made that plain to those medics.

Raines looked at the man across the table.

‘We can’t stop now,’ he told the man. ‘And I don’t want to anyway. I’m owed. We all are.’

The waitress came over and they ordered breakfast, Raines staring at the photograph of the downed plane on the front page of the newspaper.

Now they’ll really come after me hard, he thought.

Bring it on.

Nobody was talking.

Cahill tried Scott Boston again at the Secret Service in Washington. Couldn’t get his call taken. Boston dodged him every time.

It was the same for Tom Hardy’s contacts. They had all clammed up. Not that they had been talkative that morning. But it was worse in the afternoon. As though a communications smart bomb had been detonated. Don’t talk about Tim Stark. It was working.

Hardy even tried to see if he had could get anything via their contacts in the British Government. Same story.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ Cahill told Hardy at four-thirty. ‘Clear my head.’

Hardy watched him go. Didn’t say anything. Knew that there was nothing that would calm Cahill.

Cahill sat on a stool by the window of a cafe on Buchanan Street. A teenager walked by nodding his head in time to music on his iPod, oblivious to all around him. He had long hair and wore a vintage AC/DC T-shirt advertising a tour from 1984. The kid wasn’t old enough. Probably bought it on eBay. He reminded Cahill of Bruce, CPO’s resident ethical hacker and IT director. Bruce had a quite astonishing collection of rock band tour T-shirts. All of them purchased at a gig on the tour. Cahill couldn’t remember the last time he saw Bruce wearing anything to work other than jeans and a tour T-shirt.

‘Yo,’ Bruce answered when Cahill called him.

‘It’s me.’

‘Boss. What’s on your mind?’

‘Can you run a check on the names Tim Stark and John Reece for me?’

‘Sure. Are there likely to be flags on the names already? I mean, if I run a search will it come back at us?’

‘They’ll be flagged.’

‘Uh…’

‘I kind of want it to get back to us.’

‘I get it.’

Bruce paused.

‘You want me to check it out on any, eh, official sites?’

‘No.’

‘Good. When do you need it?’

‘I’ll be back in the office in ten minutes.’

‘I’m on it.’

What Bruce meant by ‘official’ sites was law enforcement sites. And not the publicly available ones. The ones that required hacking. Cahill was wary of that. The firewalls and security systems on those things were good. Bruce was better, but the risk of accidentally tripping up was too great. Even being on such a site was a serious criminal offence.

Sometimes such an approach was necessary. This time, Cahill thought that staying on the right side of the law would be enough.

Cahill walked back to the office and straight to Bruce’s room.

Today’s T-shirt — ZZ Top.

‘Old school,’ Cahill said, pointing at the T-shirt.

Bruce puffed out his chest.

‘Best live band I ever saw,’ he said.

Bruce started playing an air guitar and making a noise with his mouth roughly approximating a ZZ Top riff. Cahill thought he recognised it, though he was no fan.

‘“La Grange”?’ he asked.

Bruce stopped his elaborate air guitar histrionics.

‘You the man, boss.’

Cahill nodded.

‘Results?’ he asked.

Bruce turned to one of five computer monitors in his room and tapped it meaningfully with a finger. There was an archived news story from the States about an FBI investigation several years ago. Stark was mentioned as one of the agents.

‘Okay,’ Cahill said. ‘Why are you showing me this?’

‘That’s all I can find on the guy,’ Bruce said, sweeping hair behind his ears.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Archives. Old stuff. Nothing recent at all. I’d normally expect something to show up even if it’s a simple Google search, you know. But this is it. I mean, unless your man is a schoolteacher from Manchester with a Facebook page extolling the virtues of bondage?’

Cahill said nothing.

‘Coz that’s all I got,’ Bruce went on. ‘Strictly weirdos and normals.’

‘What does that tell you?’

‘That there may have been some kind of recent effort to hide your boy’s activity. Law enforcement types usually show up somewhere.’

Cahill looked around the room. It was exceptionally clean and organised. Most people assumed from Bruce’s external appearance that he was a slob, expecting his workspace to be littered with McDonald’s wrappers and empty Coke cans.

Nope.

‘You want anything official looked at now?’ Bruce asked.

‘No. Thanks, Bruce.’

Cahill went back to his office and slumped in his seat. He stared at the paperwork in front of him but found it hard to concentrate. He knew that his singular nature was both his biggest strength and weakness — his inability to change his focus once he had zeroed in on something.

And he had zeroed in on Tim Stark now.

It was after six that night when Irvine and Kenny Armstrong got back to Pitt Street. The sun was falling, painting the sky orange. A streetlight above them buzzed on and off.

They had been to the three previous crime scenes and taken a tour of the areas where drug dealing was now most prevalent, stopping only for a quick sandwich over lunch. Irvine realised how much things had changed since her days in uniform. It seemed that the territories changed every few years as new dealers and gangs took over.

There was a note on Irvine’s desk telling her that a uniformed officer had called to identify the girl in the river as Joanna Lewski — pronounced Leff-ski. A Polish immigrant and known prostitute. She showed Armstrong the note.

‘That’s one of the uniforms who found the girl today,’ he said, looking at the name on the note. ‘I’ll set up a meeting with them tomorrow. Get the full story.’

Irvine nodded.

‘Have you made a connection between any of the victims?’ she asked.

Armstrong was sitting across the desk from her. Most of the staff had gone home for the night and the place was nearly empty. Irvine saw a light on in Liam Moore’s room, but the boss was nowhere to be seen. Never was after six.

Armstrong stretched in his chair.

‘Other than the fact that they all died of overdoses and that the drugs were the same, no. Why?’

Irvine opened the file for the third victim and took out a set of photographs. The first one showed a young man lying curled on a mattress on a floor. His skin was pale, his lips blue. The room he had died in was bare other than a mattress on the floor. It was stained and dimpled where the springs had gone.