Phil Kurthausen - The Silent Pool

‘Ha, I knew it was a ploy you being kind.’ She took a deep breath, composed herself and then looked at him. ‘What do you know about the Bovind Foundation?’

‘I know Bovind is one of the richest men on the planet, his company invented Lightspeed, the family friendly web browser. He's from Liverpool originally, isn't he?’

‘He is but you'd never guess it now. He speaks and looks like an American. But more importantly he has that crazy messianic religious belief of the truly deluded and self righteous.’

‘So you're not a fan. But what does Bovind have to do with me?’

Rachel studied Erasmus carefully. Her glasses and sweater reminded Erasmus of one of the girls from Scooby Do .

‘To my editor Bovind is Liverpool's only hope of staving off the city's bankruptcy. There are rumours the Mayor's office is about to announce a unique funding deal: Liverpool the city as sponsored by Intracom. My editor sees this as the best thing that could happen to the city. They are even running a feature on him this week. The working title's “Liverpool's Messiah”. Trust me my sources are impeccable. Bovind is coming to the rescue tomorrow.’

Colour had returned to her cheeks. Erasmus handed her some more chocolate, which she eagerly accepted.

‘So what's the problem with someone saving the city? My daughter's classes were cancelled yesterday because the city can't pay the teachers. Maybe your editor is right and, by the way, what does this have to do with you following me?’

Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Lightspeed in every classroom means your kid only gets to see what they, Intracom, want her to see. It's the only software that can robustly censor out porn, violence, the dark netherworld of the web that you gravitate to when you're growing up. But it also ranks searches according to their own criteria.’

‘Every search engine does that, even Google, it's how they make money.’

‘The difference is that Intracom do it according to their own secret algorithms. Nobody knows how they work but you just try typing in “evolution” and see what comes up. The top search results are all pseudo-scientific organisations promoting Intelligent Design. Intracom are influencing how knowledge spreads.’

‘Come on, these are conspiracy theories. And anyway they can't influence textbooks.’

Rachel raised an eyebrow. ‘Jeez, do you talk to your kid much lately? Intracom own the publishing houses that publish the standard school book works in Biology, Physics, Maths.’

Erasmus felt a guilty pang. ‘What's this got to do with me?’

‘Kirk Bovind is the biggest fundraiser for the World Evangelical Church.’

‘The Third Wavers. Stephen was a Third Waver,’ said Erasmus.

A look of triumph appeared on Rachel's face.

‘But so what, so are half this city, and a huge proportion of the US and rest of the UK,’ said Erasmus.

‘I'm a junior reporter, yeah. I get to deal with the crazies, the ones who confess to a dozen murders and think that they are Napoleon, yeah. But occasionally in the shit there is a pearl. Stephen was one of those pearls, maybe even my ticket to a national. He rang me two days before he went missing, told me he knew a secret about the Church and Bovind. I was due to meet him but he disappeared. Did you know he was last seen entering the Beatles museum?’

Erasmus shook his head. Seemed like Rachel had had more success than him and Pete.

‘I did some digging, old school journalism, asked around, spoke to a barista who saw him in a Starbucks opposite the council office the day he went missing and then left heading towards the Albert Dock. I went into every shop on the dock and then struck lucky: he went into the Beatles Museum at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning! Why would he do that on a work day?’

‘A fan of the Beatles?’

Rachel tutted. ‘The spotty youth who was working the ticket booth remembered Stephen. It was so early in the morning and it was so unusual for him to have two customers at that time of the day?’

‘Two?’

Rachel looked triumphant.

‘Someone came in two minutes after Stephen entered. There's something else as well.’

‘Go on.’

‘He's not the most reliable of witnesses though. He was stoned out of his mind when I talked to him. But he did say he doesn't remember either of them leaving the museum. The exit is the entrance. So where did they go?’

Erasmus didn't know but he was willing to bet there was a service entrance somewhere in the building. As part of his training for 14 thIntelligence Company he had had it drilled into to him to look for alternative exits in every building he entered. Even now it was a habit he couldn't break.

‘So why were you following me?’

‘I started following Jenna and she led me to you. I thought you two might be having an affair, maybe you knocked off the competition, but after today I can see we both want the same thing, we both want to find Stephen.’

The mention of Jenna in the context of an affair with him distracted Erasmus for a second. Rachel caught the change in him.

‘Are you?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Having an affair with Jenna Francis.’

‘Of course not,’ said Erasmus, but he had a suspicion that the growing flush on his face was betraying him. Rachel looked delighted that she had hit home.

‘Why did Stephen approach you?’ asked Erasmus, hoping to move the conversation along quickly.

‘I did a fluff piece on Bovind for my editor. It nearly made me puke doing it. It was hardly Woodward and Bernstein you know. All about him being a philanthropist, a man of God, the saviour of the city. I tried to put in some stuff about Lightspeed, refer to the search rankings but my editor was having none of it. Not my finest hour. It went in the paper on a Friday carrying my byline, that same evening I got a call from Stephen. He was emotional, angry at me; he said I didn't know the truth and that Bovind wasn't a saint, but that he was the Devil.’

‘The Devil?’

‘His exact words. He then told me it wasn't safe to talk on the phone and we arranged to meet up. I turned up, he didn't, and next thing his wife has reported him as missing. Suspicious huh?’

She looked up at him.

‘What should we do?’ she said.

‘We? I'm going home for a large drink. I suggest you do the same and make sure you get some sleep.’

‘But what about you, what do you know? You promised me you would tell me?’

She was talking to Erasmus’ back.

CHAPTER 10

Malcolm Ford looked out from his office on the twenty-third floor at the top of Beetham Tower. The floor to ceiling plate-glass windows afforded him a magnificent view of the city at night. He could see the blinking green and red harbour lights at the mouth of the Mersey estuary, and then south towards Perch Rock and the lighthouse that stood by the fort guarding a dock that had silted up many years ago. The Mersey lay in the centre of his view, dark and brooding. From his vantage point, Malcolm Ford felt that the city belonged to him. Far below he could see a pedestrian, probably a drunk staggering home from a bar at this time of night. He was the size of an ant. Malcolm cocked his hand like a gun and shot him as the staggering man made his way home to his tiny life.

Tonight he was a happy man. A deal had been done, bringing his firm a huge amount of income and Malcolm had been the lawyer leading the transaction team. It had been months of work culminating in this last late night session. Malcolm had in equal parts cajoled and rewarded the junior lawyers and accountants to make sure that the documents were signed, the takeover completed.

The client and the nature of their business was unimportant in Malcolm's mind. It had been something to do with a paper merchant, but who cared; it was the deal that mattered. It had been completed at 1 a.m. in a flurry of faxes and congratulatory phone calls. The client had been satisfied and the rest of the team overjoyed that the weeks of overnighters and endless paperwork was over for a short time at least, until the next deal came along.