Simon Toyne - The Key

‘Arkadian,’ he said, trapping the phone under his chin and shrugging stiffly out of his jacket to try to speed things up as much as he could.

‘I have Gabriel Mann on the line,’ the operator said. ‘He insists on speaking to you. He says he wants to turn himself in.’

Arkadian snapped to attention, grabbing the phone and letting his jacket slide to the floor.

‘OK, run a trace on the call and have a squad car on standby in case we manage to pin him down.’

‘Already done, sir. Shall I put him through now?’

‘Yes.’ The line clicked and his ear flooded with the background sounds of a busy environment. Somewhere public, a bar probably. ‘This is Arkadian,’ he said. ‘How can I help?’

‘Sorry to ruin your evening.’

Arkadian glanced up at the empty kitchen doorway and heard angry stirring coming from beyond. ‘Don’t mention it. Where are you?’

‘Somewhere much safer than jail. Listen, I need to ask you something. Have you been to visit Liv or my mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘And while you were there, did you talk to Liv?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she say anything about leaving?’

Arkadian frowned. ‘No. She’s not going anywhere. They’re keeping her in for observation.’

He heard a weary sigh on the end of the line. ‘She’s gone,’ Gabriel said. ‘She left shortly after your visit.’

‘She can’t have done. I’d have heard about it.’

‘Why? She wasn’t under arrest, and you’re on leave.’

Arkadian flashed back through his visit. He remembered how small and vulnerable she’d looked in the bed as he got up to go. Then he realized something. ‘I returned her bag to her,’ he said. ‘Forensics had finished with it, so I used it as an excuse to go and see how she was. It had her passport in it.’

‘How quickly can you get hold of passenger lists from the airport?’

‘I’d need a warrant.’

‘Oh, come on, we need information, not a robust chain of evidence. Can’t you pull some favours?’

‘If she wants to leave the country, that’s up to-’

‘She left the country because she’s in danger. I broke out of jail for the same reason. I was set up. There was someone waiting for me in a cell. I can give you a description, but I bet he’s not there now and I doubt he’ll show up on the roll call. The guard took me right to him. It was an inside job. The Citadel’s woken up. It’s making a move to silence us, which means Liv’s in danger and so’s my mother, just like before.’

Arkadian felt a twinge in his arm as he remembered the last time Gabriel had issued such a warning. He had been right then, and Arkadian had the bullet wound to prove it.

‘It’s up to you,’ Gabriel said. ‘Do what you think’s best. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.’

The sound of the bar cut off and Arkadian listened to dead air for a few seconds. From the kitchen he heard the sizzle of something juicy hitting a hot pan, then the phone clicked and he was automatically patched through to the tech guys. ‘Any luck?’

‘Not a chance. He was using an Internet phone. Very hard to trace, impossible to pin down quickly.’

‘He’s going to call back in ten minutes, might that help?’

‘Not really. He could use a different phone, a different server, a different IP. Even if he used exactly the same setup, you’d have to keep him talking for a couple of hours to give us even a fighting chance. Internet calls can be routed anywhere in the world.’

‘OK. Do it anyway.’ He hung up and stared down at his jacket lying crumpled and abandoned on the floor, a symbol of the nice evening he’d had planned. He thought of Liv and the way she had watched the priest during their meeting. He’d sensed her fear — and now he knew why.

He opened the contacts on his phone and scrolled down looking for the name Yun Haldin. Yun was an ex-partner of his from way back who had quit the force to start his own firm. He now employed a large number of former cops and had contracts to run perimeter security at both local airports.

‘You finished, or you going to go hungry?’ his wife called from the kitchen, where the sweet-and-sour aroma of garlicky stew floated out.

Arkadian’s stomach growled loudly in answer to his wife’s question.

He found Yun’s number and pressed the call button.

Gabriel exited the Skype application and Googled a travel comparison site. He entered details for flights from Ruin-Gaziantep (any) to New York (any) then looked around at the evening crowd as he waited for the information to load. He was sitting at a large table next to a group of tourists with his body angled to give the impression he was with them.

He swept his eyes across the room, looking for anything or anyone out of the ordinary. There were so many people tapping away on phones it was no wonder the Internet was slow in here. His eyes lit upon a TV screen in the corner of the bar broadcasting CNN with the sound muted. On screen a reporter was standing outside Ruin police headquarters. The picture cut and he found himself staring straight at his own mugshot.

He rose quickly from the table, scrutinizing his phone as an excuse to keep his head down as he moved towards the exit. Hardly anyone in the bar was watching the TV, but they could easily be getting the same news and photo on their phones. He’d make the morning papers for sure, perhaps the evening editions of the local ones. He had hoped for a little more time.

He stepped out of the main door on to the rain-glossed street and pulled a baseball cap from his pocket, jamming it on to his head and pulling the brim down low over his eyes while the flight comparison page finished loading.

There were plenty of flights from both airports. Too many. There would be no point in heading out to try to intercept Liv on the off chance he might pick the right one. He needed Arkadian and his contacts, but it was too soon to call him back.

He started to move away down the street and opened another app that located free Wi-Fi spots. The reception was even slower now he had left the building’s Internet footprint and it took a while for a map to appear on the screen. A blue dot pulsed at the centre showing his own location, then other icons started popping up around it. There was a hotspot in the direction he was heading, about two streets away, close to the hospital. He slipped the phone in his pocket and increased his pace. He wanted to be in position when the time came to call Arkadian. He also wanted to be nearer his mother. He knew it was the first place the authorities would look for him, which was why he had stayed away, but until he could figure out a way to ensure her safety he’d feel better being close — just in case anything happened.

It took Arkadian seven of the ten minutes he’d been given to get hold of his old partner and tell him what he needed. The rest was easy — too easy.

‘She’s on Cyprus Turkish Airline TK 7121 to Newark,’ Yun said.

‘What time’s takeoff?’

‘Five minutes ago.’

Arkadian felt oddly relieved. Maybe it was for the best. Liv had wanted to go home after all. ‘Thanks anyway,’ he said.

‘No problem. The information was right there on the system the moment I accessed the database.’

Arkadian frowned. ‘Why would that be?’

‘Could be coincidence. More likely someone else had already put in the request.’

Arkadian’s mind lit up with the implications. ‘Is there any way you can find out who called up the information first?’

‘Sure, hold on.’ He heard the clatter of a keyboard and the background noise of planes. He wondered if one of them was Liv’s. ‘It’s just showing a guest user ID,’ Yun said. ‘It came through on the blue channel though.’