Ian Rankin - Westwind

‘Shut up!’

‘That was why you left home, wasn’t it? Did the old drunkard like to give you a beating too, eh?’

It was enough. Harry’s teeth were bared in absolute, mindless hate. She swung back the pistol and whipped it across Hepton’s face. As it connected, he brought up his left hand and gripped Harry’s pistol hand, her left hand, angling the gun away from him, while his right hand, now clutching the dictionary, swiped at her head, connecting heavily. The gun went off, its deadly charge hammering home into a computer screen, which sparked once before starting to smoke.

Hepton rose from his chair and placed one foot on the seat, using it as a springboard to launch himself over the desk, the computer, the monitor screen, landing heavily on Harry. His left hand still clutched her gun arm, while his right flexed and sent a clenched fist hard into her face. The contact was satisfying. She gasped, writhing beneath his weight. He could feel blood trickling down his cheek from where the pistol barrel had hit him. Then Harry’s knee connected with his groin, and he felt searing pain. He retched, but held fast to her arm, and punched her again, in the mouth this time. But she was wrenching free of him, kicking out, and scrabbling with her free hand towards his face, his hair, his eyes...

Her nails were like tools as they raked down his already bloodied cheek, digging into flesh. He cried out and pulled away from her hand. She used the moment to kick again with her full weight, sending him flying into a desk. People were pouring from the room, not about to lend a hand. Even Nick Christopher seemed rooted to the spot, his eyes on the pistol. The pistol she was raising again, aiming. Blood dripped from Hepton’s face onto the stone floor. His skin felt on fire. He prepared himself for a final assault, while four feet away Harry stood, blood flowing from nose and mouth, her trigger finger squeezing...

‘Bastard,’ she screeched. ‘No more!’

‘Harry!’

She froze at the sound of the voice. Her gun still trained on Hepton, her eyes peered towards the far door, where another gun was trained on her .

‘Parfit!’ she spat, arcing the pistol towards the door. But too late: Parfit’s bullet hit home with a wet sound like an overripe peach hitting a wall. An inky pink spray covered Hepton as Harry fell back, her head crashing against a computer screen, cracking it, then her body sliding floorwards in a clumsy, ungainly mess. And there she lay, the gun still in her hand, but like nothing so much as a toy now, a rag doll with too little stuffing. Inelegant, and not at all tidy.

There were shouts, panic, pandemonium. Parfit didn’t care, didn’t bother identifying himself. He walked over to Hepton.

‘Have you finished?’ he asked. His eyes strayed momentarily to the corpse.

‘What?’ Hepton was still in shock, still reeling from a great feeling of being alive .

‘Whatever it is that you’re doing here.’

‘Oh.’ He was jolted back to the present. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not quite.’

‘Then get on with it.’ Parfit looked around. ‘Where’s Dreyfuss?’

‘He’s gone off to look for Jilly.’

‘Right.’ Parfit handed him a clean handkerchief. ‘Here, mop some of that blood off your face.’ As he stalked off, Nick Christopher slumped weeping into a swivel chair, covering sticky red face with sticky red hands. Hepton looked towards Parfit’s retreating figure.

‘What took you so long?’ he called with a grin, before walking back around the row of consoles to his own screen, where, numbly but fixedly, he began to go to work. ‘Nick,’ he said, ‘I need your help.’

Nick Christopher rubbed at his eyes. His voice was hollow. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Hepton pointed to the computer console next to his own. ‘Get that thing up and running. Do you remember that TV satellite we hacked into a couple of months back, so we could get the porn channel?’

‘Yes.’ Christopher looked uncomprehending.

‘Good, get me back into it, will you?’

Fagin stared at the screen. Villiers was growing ever more agitated beside him.

‘What’s happening?’ he snarled.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ said Fagin. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Then Harry must have found him!’ Villiers said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Fagin answered. ‘Look.’

He was pointing towards the screen. Numerical sequences were appearing, rows and rows of numbers.

‘What are those?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fagin simply. ‘Perhaps he’s trying to confuse us.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ Fagin explained, ‘maybe he’s using these to throw us off the scent of what he’s really doing.’

‘You mean you don’t know? I thought you were supposed to be an expert?’

‘In some things, yes. But when it comes to hacking, I think Martin Hepton might just have the edge.’ Fagin’s smile had a hint of pride about it. Villiers grabbed him and shook him.

‘So shut it down,’ he yelled. ‘Close the whole thing down.’

Fagin did not resist. Instead he waited until Villiers had stopped shaking him. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘All we can do is wait for him to make his move — his real move.’ Then he sat down in front of the screen, a grandmaster awaiting his opponent’s opening gambit.

The room was empty now, with the exception of two live bodies and one very cold one. Hepton was in a chair on castors. Once Nick had tapped into the television satellite, he used this chair to wheel himself quickly between the two computer terminals — his own, locked into the Argos satellite and, consequently, into Zephyr ; and the TV satellite. He worked fast and expertly, so that even Nick Christopher had trouble deciding what he was doing. Hepton was happy to explain.

‘I’m going to marry these two bastards,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take over the TV satellite and lock it into Zephyr , then disconnect Zephyr from Argos . Resulting in...’

Nick Christopher saw it all now, and broke into a wide, devilish grin. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Do you know—’

‘Of course I know. I know what it’ll do. What’s more,’ smiling too, he turned to glance at his friend, ‘I really think I can do it.’

‘What’s happening now?’ Villiers was frantic. What had happened to Harry? Why hadn’t she disposed of Hepton?

Fagin rubbed his temples. He was too old for this, too old for Hepton’s tricks. ‘He’s doing something ,’ he said. ‘But I don’t quite know what...’ His fingers worked slowly, methodically, on the keyboard, trying to cancel whatever Hepton was doing. Then it dawned on him. His voice became a whisper. ‘He’s using two terminals.’

‘What?’

‘He’s using two terminals at the same time.’

‘So open a second terminal! Now!’ Villiers pushed Fagin against the console. Fagin reached to a second computer and started coding in. ‘Perhaps there’s still time,’ Villiers said.

‘Yes, perhaps,’ agreed Fagin.

Jilly, however, saw what they could not. One of the monitor screens had burst into life. And instead of the aerial views she had become used to, she was watching a nature programme. The scene looked very much like Africa. Parched earth, creatures gathering around a drying pool of water. Then a voice.

‘Quickly, the animals learn that old enmities must be put aside, for now at least. Water is necessary for their survival, so they gather around, forgetting that they are enemies, knowing only that life is their priority. Hunters and hunted sip side by side...’

Villiers and Fagin turned slowly, disbelievingly, towards the TV monitor. For that was, unmistakably, where the sound was coming from. Stuck to the top of it was a large piece of Dymo tape, on which was printed ZEPHYR: LIVE PICTURES .