The Chosen Seed (21 page)

Freeman followed him out.

‘I hope he’s good,’ Cass said, leaning against the sink.

‘Good? He’d bloody better be. He’s costing a fucking fortune.’ Freeman leaned against one of the kitchen cabinets. ‘Let’s hope he’s finding one too.’

An hour or so later Maric shut down the laptop and closed the lid.

‘And?’ Freeman asked.

Cass felt his heart racing slightly. It all came down to Maric: if he couldn’t get into the systems, finding Luke was going to be a lot harder, impossible, even. And now that Cass was out and about there was always a risk the police would find him, and if they did, it was game over. He had no illusions about that.

‘There’s no sign of your Mr Bright or the second network, not that this laptop can find, but that comes as no surprise. He’ll be in there somewhere.’ Maric’s whole demeanour had changed now that he was working. Yesterday’s laid-back surfer dude was completely gone; today the slim man
virtually crackled with energy. ‘Everyone who has any kind of standing in the world today has an email address. Your Mr Bright will have one, hidden away somewhere, and I can almost guarantee that he’ll use the same password for accessing the missing system.’

‘You don’t know this man,’ Cass said.

‘No, but if his email address isn’t available on the staff network, then only a select few will have it – so why would he bother with a new password for a system that is just as secret? But it doesn’t matter – we’ll find it, one way or another, and then we’ll have some fun with it. But first I have to find the second network.’

‘How?’ Freeman asked.

‘This is a very complex system, just like I imagine your Mr Bright is a very complex man. The thing is, the more complex the problem, the simpler the approach should be to solving it. We could spend a lot of time unpicking this computer and get nowhere trying to break through the defences; all we’d do is draw attention to ourselves, and then our sleeping beauty would be in trouble and we’d be out in the cold.’

‘So,’ Cass said, ‘what’s this simple approach then?’

Maric smiled. ‘I’m going to need access to the telephone exchange, a van, a uniform and some identification.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Let’s make some trouble!’

‘I just don’t see the point!’ Armstrong said, not for the first time. ‘It’ll be a complete waste of money – everything in this case points to Jones; we all know that. The knife used in Powell’s murder was from his flat, his fingerprints were at that crime scene and he
ran
. He’s
still
running. Why do you suddenly want to waste time and money on a wild goose chase?’

‘It has to be said,’ DCI Heddings leaned back in his chair, ‘Sergeant Armstrong has a point.’

‘About the money?’ Ramsey asked.

‘No need for sarcasm, Detective Inspector. You’re starting to sound uncomfortably like DI Jones, and you can see from his record that never did him any good.’ He looked over at Hask, who was keeping himself as much out of the way as a man of his bulk could. This fight wasn’t his; at the end of the day he was simply a hired consultant. ‘You agree with Ramsey on this, Doctor?’ Heddings finished.

‘Yes, I do, sir.’ So he was gong to be drawn into the fight after all. ‘It’s certainly worth exploring. If you go back to my original report you’ll see that I was never convinced that Cassius Jones could be this kind of impetuous killer. This new evidence – circumstantial though it may be – does cloud the initial conviction that Jones was responsible.’

‘Of course he’s going to say that,’ Armstrong muttered. ‘He’s a Jones crony. They both are.’

‘Enough, sergeant!’ Heddings snapped. ‘We pay Dr Hask enough of our budget for his professional opinions, so let me at least do him the courtesy of hearing what that is.’

‘There’s something else,’ Ramsey said, trying to calm the room. ‘We know that Jones spent time in the interview room with Shearman – if he was so intent on killing all these doctors, then why didn’t he kill Shearman when he had the opportunity? It doesn’t add up.’

‘Maybe he didn’t have a weapon with him, ’Armstrong said. ‘Or he didn’t get whatever information he wanted from him so wanted to keep him alive. Just because he didn’t kill Shearman it doesn’t make him innocent.’

Heddings looked down again at the report Hask and Ramsey had compiled. He sighed. ‘Who closed down the
initial inquiry into this Bright character? I can’t help but agree that it’s strange – he’s not a bloody Member of Parliament or anything, is he?’

‘Not as far as we know. Chief Inspector Morgan must have done it – or been told to by someone higher up – that’s something you could help with finding out, sir.’

‘Why the hell would I want to do that?’ Heddings leaned on his desk. ‘This is all a big enough mess as it is without suddenly chasing ghosts. If we start saying this might be a set-up the press will be all over us for trying to protect our own.’

‘Then don’t tell them,’ Hask said. ‘Cass Jones is old news; the public are far more concerned by the Angel of Death walking among them.’

‘And you
have
to let us check this out.’ Ramsey leaned forward, his hands on Heddings’ desk. ‘Because the one thing all of us in this room have in common is that we’re clean, yes? We’re honest coppers in a station that currently doesn’t have a reputation for that. If you don’t let us follow this lead simply because there might be fall-out, then you’re as bent as Bowman in my book.’

‘You just don’t want to believe that Jones is guilty,’ Armstrong said.

‘That may be true,’ Ramsey said. ‘I like Cass, I admit it. But if he’s guilty, I can promise you I won’t fight against the death penalty for him. Just let me prove whether he is or not, so if that is the eventual outcome, we can all sleep in our beds at night knowing he truly deserved it.’ He stared at the young sergeant, and Hask was struck by how strong the DI looked in that moment. There was something about him that reminded Hask of Cass, but he couldn’t put his finger on it – something in the eyes, perhaps. ‘Because, believe it or not, I like you too, Sergeant Armstrong,’ Ramsey
continued, ‘and I don’t want the death of an innocent man to be on your conscience if Jones gets executed and then five years later we figure out we were wrong. Can you get that through your pig-headed skull?’

‘You’ve all changed your tune,’ Armstrong grumbled.

The phone on Heddings’ desk started ringing, but the DCI ignored it.

‘Does that matter?’ Ramsey said. ‘Dammit, that’s the point of our job, isn’t it? We all have to have that ability, to change the way we think about something if the evidence points that way – until we find the truth.’

Hask frowned. Something was happening on the other side of the glass window. Police officers were getting out of their seats and he could hear someone out of sight shouting, ‘Hey, you can’t just come storming through here – you have to sign in!’

‘I think you should answer that phone,’ he said. Armstrong and Ramsey were still sniping at each other, horns locked, but he’d zoned them out. Who could cause so much ruckus in a police station?

The answer came through the door before his brain could reach for it. Heddings’ phone stopped ringing and the two policemen finally stopped arguing.

‘Sorry, sir,’ an out-of-breath constable said as he stumbled into the doorway. ‘He wouldn’t stop.’

‘That’s all right.’ Heddings’ voice was tight. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’

There was a moment of silence before David Fletcher, head of the ATD, slapped a large photograph onto the DCI’s desk. ‘Thought you might like to see this.’

The grainy enhanced image had clearly been taken at night, but the man at the centre was still recognisable as Cass Jones. His hair was longer and he’d lost weight, but it
was definitely the missing DI. He was staring up at something, cigarette in hand.

‘Where did you get this?’ Armstrong asked.

‘It was taken outside The Bank at 3.15 this morning. Most of the security cameras in that area belong to The Bank, but we still have one or two left over from the days when it was the MI6 building.’

‘He was outside
The Bank
?’ Hask asked. ‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Did he go in?’ Ramsey said.

‘No, as far as we can tell, he just stood there for about ten minutes, looking at the building, and then he left.’

‘You don’t happen to know where he went, do you?’ Heddings asked.

‘No, we lost him.’

‘He was looking at The Bank,’ Hask said softly.

‘Well, his brother used to work there,’ Fletcher said.

‘No.’ Hask shook his head. ‘If he was having a moment of grief, then he’d have gone to Christian’s old house. Grief leads people to treasure personal, not professional, things. He’d have been taking less of a risk as well. This … this is something else.’

‘Mr Bright,’ Ramsey said quietly.

‘Who?’ Fletcher frowned.

Hask smiled at the DI. ‘Cass Jones was looking for his nemesis.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

I
t was past one o’clock in the morning when the telephone company van parked up outside The Bank. A man stepped out and walked, head down, towards the building, a large computer bag over his shoulder.

He smiled as he spoke to the smart young woman behind the reception desk and slid over his identification card. She studied it thoroughly before politely returning both it and his smile.
One moment
. He nodded. He stayed by the counter as she spoke softly into her headset before smiling efficiently at him again.
The administrator will be down shortly
. The administrator. From his place at the counter he’d seen the name on her screen as she’d looked up the extension:
Stephen Bestwick
.

He waited. Bestwick appeared, looking as expected: middle-aged, suit, tie, slightly harried – the look acquired by network administrators across the world. The only difference was Mr Bestwick’s suit was more expensive, bespoke, even, and his shoes were Italian, handmade. He in turn looked at the telephone engineer: thick workman’s boots with traces of muck on them from too much time outside. A uniform that was clean but not overly new. A watch that was hardy rather than expensive. He explained that he needed access to the servers – there were some looping issues; they could cause data damage or transfer
speed issues, at worse data loss entirely. Stephen Bestwick listened as he led the engineer into the building. He would need to call and check this work was authorised, of course – company procedure. The engineer nodded himself.
Of course
.

Although it was one o’clock in the morning, the building was still busy, though the staff worked quietly, as if unwilling to break the sanctity of the peaceful night. Their feet tapped out a steady rhythm as the administrator led the way to the lift and took them down. He wasn’t surprised; the cool of the basement levels were the best places to keep secrets, and that’s exactly what computer systems housed: flirtatious emails, financial wrong-doings; everything was backed up and locked away. Emptying the trash can on a personal computer rarely deleted any file’s entire existence, and certainly not in a place like this. Everything was stored in case it was needed later.

Beside him, the administrator had dialled through to the engineer’s supervisor. In the silence the ring tone was loud. The engineer imagined the connection changing direction as he’d programmed it to do at the exchange earlier that evening; he visualised it like a streak of light, racing towards Brian Freeman and Cass Jones. It was Jones who answered, and now his voice was lighter and he spoke with the rising inflection the world had come to expect from any phone-drone, whether based in Mumbai or Glasgow. After a few moments the administrator appeared satisfied. He ended the call.

The lift stopped gently; no thud of arrival here. The Bank was a smooth operator in every way. For the first time since embarking on this project, the engineer allowed his heart to flutter with excitement and his mouth almost watered at the prospect of exploring – of
breaking
– the systems in
front of him. He followed the administrator, forcing himself to slouch instead of tapping his foot impatiently while he unlocked the door ahead.

The air inside was cool, and the hum that surrounded them was like the whisper of a calling lover. His skin tingled. He put his case down and then put his hands on his hips for a second and let out a long breath of air, as if disappointed to be presented with so many banks of servers. He opened the case and started pulling out the usual equipment, all company labelled. He glanced at his watch.
I hoped I’d be getting home early tonight. Not going to happen is it?
He shrugged and smiled again. The administrator looked at the heavy drop-safe laptop in the bag and the flask and sandwich box and then at the engineer before chewing his bottom lip. Is it going to take long? The engineer had been expecting the question; the one thing guarantee-able in this world was a lack of patience.
An hour? Maybe more? Hopefully less
.

There was a longer pause and then Stephen Bestwick pulled a business card from his top pocket and handed it over.
Call me when you’re done and I’ll come and let you out
.

He waited a full five minutes after Bestwick had left before pulling the chunky laptop from his case, unclipping the false bottom beneath the keyboard and removing the far sleeker model beneath. He tipped out the seven number-labelled datasticks from the empty flask, opened a port, accessed the network and entered the administrator’s username, using the same formula as for Diana Jacobs, with a full stop between first and surname. He slotted the datastick marked ‘1’ into the side and ran the sophisticated dictionary attack stored on it. Within minutes, he had the administrator’s password.

He sat back for a moment and smiled. For the next hour and a half, he was lost.

So, everything’s okay now?
The lift was as smooth on its way up as it had been on the way down.
No issues?
The engineer reassured the administrator – while yawning – that The Bank’s system had not been affected by the problems with the lines. Some other businesses in the area had not been so lucky, however; if The Bank had any external offices or servers in the area then they might find they have problems in the morning. But hopefully all would be sorted by then. The team was working around the clock.