Ava McCarthy - Hide Me

She flopped back in her seat, exhaling a long breath. The silence in Vasco’s wake was suspiciously restful, like the calm of a receding rogue wave. She cast a doubtful look at the detective by the wall. His shoulders were stooped, his clothes wrinkled. For the moment, he seemed disinclined to take up where his boss had left off.

Harry glanced around Vasco’s office, absently taking in the ordered shelves and the clutter-free desk. She recalled the Dublin base where Hunter worked: the unwashed mugs, the overloaded in-trays, the Post-its curling up like tongues from the files. She pictured his face, lean and tired, his sandy hair short as a schoolboy’s, and waited for the pang of homesickness to hit her.

It didn’t.

‘You can go.’

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. Zubiri was ambling towards the desk, his untidy hair coiling out of his head like springs. He gathered up the photos.

‘This is no job for someone like you.’ His voice was low, his Spanish accent distorted by transatlantic tones that probably came from watching American TV.

Harry glanced at the door. Zubiri followed her gaze and shrugged.

‘Why should you get involved? Just so he can look good to the Chief?’ He blew out air with a pff through his lips.

Harry picked at her nail, but made no move to go. She watched him slot the photos back into the folder, McArdle’s bloated face now hidden from view. She leaned forward in her chair.

‘Who are these people? Why are you so interested in them?’

Zubiri shook his woolly head. ‘It’s none of your concern.’

‘Inspector Vasco mentioned criminal organizations. What kind of crimes are we talking about here?’

‘Every kind. The worst kind. Drugs, human trafficking, extortion, armed robberies, fraud . . .’ He slapped the folder onto the desk. ‘These people crop up in a lot of unconnected cases.’

‘And they operate out of San Sebastián?’

Zubiri shrugged. ‘Spain has always been important to criminals.’

‘For drug trafficking?’

‘For everything. Spain is a gateway to Europe, especially for the Moroccans and the Colombians. And Latin Americans can exploit the shared language and culture. Even the Italian clans look on it as a home from home.’

‘I thought all the crime bosses holed up in the south. In the Costa del Sol. Not here in the north.’

Zubiri fixed a pair of black eyes on hers, and Harry shifted in her seat. She was stalling and she knew it, caught between a survival instinct to back away and a more ignoble curiosity. Eventually, he answered her.

‘The northwest has a long history of trafficking with the Colombians. But security on the Galician coast has tightened up. Now the criminals turn to the ports of Euskadi. The Basque country. My country.’

Harry blinked. The intensity of his stare was unnerving. She gestured at the folder on the desk.

‘So where do the cheaters fit in?’

‘Who knows? Dealers, mules, middlemen, hitmen . . .’

Hitmen. Jesus. An image of McArdle’s white face floated before her, the life gushing out of it in bloody bursts. Her insides slithered.

‘Who do you think killed him?’ she said.

Zubiri didn’t need to ask who she meant. ‘We don’t know. But why should you care?’ He leaned forward, supporting his weight on the desk with his knuckles. The backs of his hands were dark and hairy. ‘McArdle was nothing to you. Just a fat Irish hacker working for criminals.’

Harry flinched. A shard of guilt twisted in her chest. She knew she’d blanked McArdle out. Hadn’t thought of him as a person. Hadn’t liked him much, if it came right down to it, though they’d never even spoken. She’d dubbed him ‘the fat guy’, and then found him dead.

She looked up at Zubiri. ‘What else do you know about him?’

He shrugged, straightened up. ‘Quite a lot.’

‘Was he good at what he did?’

Another shrug. ‘So they tell me. Started hacking as a kid. Broke into school networks, messed with phone systems, that kind of thing.’

Harry looked at the floor, as if he might catch a glimpse of her own shady past in her eyes. Zubiri went on:

‘It might have ended there if it hadn’t been for his sister. She got into debt with a heroin habit. McArdle cut a deal with her suppliers in Belfast: he’d repay what she owed by working for them.’

‘As a hacker?’

Zubiri nodded. ‘He needn’t have bothered. He found his sister’s body in an old warehouse a few weeks later. Overdose. The needle was still stuck in her arm.’

‘Jesus.’ Harry closed her eyes briefly, trying to blot the image out. ‘But he kept working for them?’

‘Once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. Just knowing these people, knowing what they do, is enough to put you at risk. They own you. Try to leave and you end up dead in a ditch.’

‘How long was he with them?’

Zubiri paused. ‘Eighteen years.’

Harry’s eyes widened as she worked it out. McArdle was thirty-four. Which meant he’d signed over his soul when he was just sixteen. She shook her head, recalling herself at that age: masquerading as Pirata, flexing her hacking muscles. Just like McArdle.

Pirata: Spanish for pirate. Just a curious explorer on the electronic high seas, testing the limits of technology. But it wasn’t all innocent. She’d breached securities, trespassed where others wouldn’t. She’d felt the searing heat of true piracy in her soul, and had struggled not to abuse her power. One wrong choice and things might have turned out differently.

They almost had.

At the age of thirteen, she’d given into temptation and hacked into the Dublin Stock Exchange. Fuelled by an illicit rush of adrenalin, she’d tampered with financial data. The authorities had tracked her down, but she’d been rescued by a mentor who’d schooled her in the ethics of hacking. She’d stuck to the code of honour ever since.

Well, more or less.

Harry slid a glance at the folder of photographs. If things had been different, could she have ended up like McArdle? A hacker for hire to the wrong kind of client?

Zubiri followed her gaze, then picked up the folder and tucked it under his arm. ‘You should leave. Go home. Forget about this.’

‘And let Vasco loose on me?’

Zubiri looked away. Harry didn’t move.

Go home. To what? To Hunter? Her mother? Her rocky relations with the police? She pictured Vasco raking over her past, maybe even grilling her father. Her muscles tensed. She thought about McArdle, about her San Sebastián roots; about a whole mess of things that together stirred up an urge to hide away and become someone else for a while.

Suspect or decoy?

Zubiri leaned his knuckles back against the desk, dipping his large head so that he looked up at her from under his brows.

‘Go home. Pretending to be someone else is tougher than you think.’

Harry shot him a surprised look. He leaned in closer. His five o’clock shadow looked coarse enough to strip paint. He continued in his low, oddly accented voice:

‘Not everyone is cut out to work undercover. You need discipline, control.’ His knuckles tightened into fists against the desk. ‘You can’t forget your cover, not for a day, not for a minute. You must become one of the bad guys, laugh at their jokes, do what they do. And keep your fears to yourself.’ Sequins of sweat broke through the stubble. ‘These people are not like you and me.’

‘Vasco said it would be quick. In and out.’

‘Vasco doesn’t know shit. He has never worked undercover. Things get ugly, plans go wrong. You need to think on your feet.’

When Harry didn’t respond, he shook his head and went on:

‘You will be alone. Really alone. More alone than you’ve ever been in your life.’ A small muscle pulsed in his eyelid. ‘You can’t leave at the end of the day to relax with family and friends. You’re cut off. Isolated. You have no one to talk to about what you’re going through, except your contact agent.’