THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR (11 page)

“I wasn't asking, I figured you'd unravel that one. It's the second one that interests me.”

“Why?” he asked and I could picture him leaning forward in anticipation.

“I think they are one and the same.”

“Interesting. I'll see what I can do.”

“We'll be back in Norfolk tomorrow midday.”

Julie watched me carefully, thinking. “I've heard of De Costas before. About a year ago I was doing a commercial for a new exotic super-car and his name came up. I thought I knew it from somewhere.” She paused deep in thought.

“And?” I asked impatiently.

“Bit of a recluse. Mega bucks.” She glanced at me sheepishly. “Well let's say probably not as rich as your father, and now I guess you. Don't know anything else but I'm sure a little research online will help.” She pulled out her iPad mini and was soon searching through the web for anything she could find.

The hotel phone rang softly and I picked it up watching Julie scrolling through web pages. There was only the sound of breathing on the other end of the line.

"Who is this?"

"Boyd, we met this morning. I got information that will interest you." I recognised the voice of the man in charge of the Rathborne construction.

"What information."

"It's gonna cost you. I'll meet you at the office in two hours." The receiver clicked and then reverted to the dial tone as he rang off. I replaced the receiver slowly.

“Who was that?” Julie asked without taken her eyes off the iPad.

“Boyd, from the site. He wants to meet in two hours.”

Julie looked up sharply. “It's a set-up.”

“I know. But I have to go.”

“Not without me you don't.”

“Do you know how to use a gun?” I asked pointedly.

She held her hand out and I passed her the Glock. Quickly she slipped out the magazine, checked the chamber and dismantled the gun. Then just as quickly re-assembled it and handed it back to me.

“Self-defence training. It included a handgun course.” She shrugged. “A girl alone in New York, once mugged twice shy, third time the bastard's dead.”

“Okay. You can come.” I unzipped my suitcase and found the hidden handgun, a Beretta BU9 Nano nine millimetre with two magazines each holding six rounds and a box of spare rounds. “Here.” I tossed the gun over to her, then a magazine.

“Ladies gun,” she snorted unappreciatively.

“It'll still do the job and it's small enough for you to conceal.” There was still much I didn't know about Julie, and I was beginning to wonder what she wasn't telling me.

A
dull glow of light shone
from the grimy office windows. I parked the car, switched off the engine and lights, and waited. Somewhere behind I knew Danny's boys were watching, covering our backs. A slight movement in the office caught my eye.

“He's there,” I said to Julie. “Stay behind me and a little to my right.”

I headed over towards office, Julie following behind. The door was open and I could see Boyd sitting at the desk looking at a sheaf of papers.

I stopped short of the door.

"I’m here Boyd, what's this information you have?" I asked just loud enough for him to hear. He stopped what he was doing and looked up.

"Come in."

I signalled Julie to stay in the shadow and stepped towards the door just as Boyd brought a big Colt Magnum up from behind the desk.

The first round slammed into the wooden doorframe where my head would have been had I stayed still. The second whined harmlessly across the site and buried itself into a heap of sand. I fired hitting him in the upper chest, spinning him around and throwing him back against the wall. My next shot put a neat hole in his forehead and took the back of his head clean off, spraying a red mist of blood and brain against the wall. He slid slowly to the floor.

This wasn't the way I wanted it to go. I needed him alive so I could pump him for information, but I wasn't going to argue with a Magnum.

There was the sharp crack of the Beretta, and I leapt outside to see Julie taking aim at one of Danny's boys, who had the good sense to take cover.

“Julie, stop,” I shouted and she turned, pale with fear, the gun pointed directly at me. “Okay. Take a deep breath and hand me the gun.” She gave it to me slowly, shaking. Danny's man approached us.

“I'm Paul. We have to leave, now. The police will be here in no time. Follow me keep your lights off. You know the drill.”

We followed him back to my rental car and he made us follow him out through a back gate onto a dirt road without using our lights and slowly we made our way in a circuitous route back to the main road. Then stopped at the side of the road.

Paul walked back to us and leaned in through the window. “I need the guns, both of them.” I handed them over including the magazines and my shoulder holster. “Nobody followed you to the site, I made sure of that, and we'll scrub the phone logs both here and at the hotel.”

“Thanks Paul.”

“Thank Danny, I owe him. Next time you see me, you may not be thanking me. Gypsy's warning mate.” He walked back to his car and drove away.

“What did he mean?” Julie said hesitantly, still shaking.

“Let's just say it's a fluid situation. Nothing is what it seems. And you're lucky he didn't shoot you.”

“Can we go home now?” She managed a weak smile.

EIGHT

While Julie slept
I
lay awake
trying to figure out this puzzle that just seemed to dive off in another direction every time I thought I had it figured.

We checked out at eight in the morning and were airborne by nine.

Such a lot had happened that I needed the time to relax and think of the next move. To wonder whether I should tell Hamish anything of what had happened. Somebody was obviously logging my every move and just as obviously, wanted me out of the way permanently. I was on the right track and either had, or very nearly had, the information to blow this whole mystery. I was sure that Samuel De Costas or Ascot or whatever his true name was, would be able to supply the answer.

I didn't know whom I could trust, so decided that the best tactic would be to keep quiet and just do some gentle probing.

By the time I thought all this through about a dozen times, it was time to call up Norwich airport for landing instructions. As this was the aircraft's home base the controller recognised the identifying letters and cleared me straight in on runway 09.

There was very little traffic, just a few Piper Warriors on the circuit and a helicopter making practice approaches.

Once on the ground, I handed the Mustang over to Simon and the ground crew, and with my arm around Julie, walked over to the car.

“Would you call your father and ask him if he would drive up to the Hall this afternoon.”

She looked at me a little taken aback. “Why on earth would he do that? He doesn't even like driving to the airport. You know that.”

“He can take the train then. Henderson can meet him at the station. I need to talk to him face-to-face, not on the phone or Skype.”

At first I thought she was going to refuse, but instead she said. “If you tell me what's on your mind?”

“Remember those loose papers we found in the safe? The one with Des Ascot's name on it?”

“Yes.”

“Attached to it was a note with what I thought were clues to a crossword puzzle. I didn't think about it because my father was always doing crosswords and even created his own which he submitted to the local paper. I think he called himself
The Question Meister
or some ridiculous thing.”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“When your dad was going through the mainframe, he said he found some stuff that he said were bored IT guys playing games on company time.”

Julie sat up in her seat, iPhone already in her hand. “So you think that was your Dad's way of pointing to where the missing data is.”

“Yeah. Not missing. Hidden.”

“Dad, it's Julie. Thomas needs to talk to you.” She handed me the phone and after a brief conversation, he agreed to be at the Hall by two in the afternoon.

I was glad and surprised that she had recovered from the horror of seeing somebody shot. She had managed to sleep on the flight and looked pale, but in control.

B
ack at the Hall
we checked on Mary who seemed to be in one of her positive and happy moods, then went to the flat. The papers where I'd left them and as Julie turned on the desktop computer, I found the sheet with the attached note.

“See what I mean. Above Ascot's name he wrote
'Top American'
, and on the note these phrases;
'is yet kindlier to our taxi drivers'
, then
'obnoxiously evil road'
and lastly
'the reverse is a true'
.

We both looked at the phrases and then Julie typed them in upper case into a Word document. On their own, they did not make sense and looked just like cryptic crossword puzzle clues. At the bottom of Des Ascot's main personnel sheet, a list of his previous work record, was a scrawled a reference code: OR 443 121/TQ followed by another cryptic crossword puzzle clue,
'Olympic swimmer's key stroke'
scrawled in pencil as if my father was thinking about crossword puzzle clues.

“Let's start with these companies Ascot worked for,” Julie offered, typing the names into Google. They were all public shell companies. “That's interesting. Ascot's like his résumé. Fake. What the hell is he up to.”

“There are a lot of ways to use shell companies, some of them legal, some of them not. Some are also used by Governments to hide large transfers of money into covert operations and all sorts of other shady dealings. In the interests of national security, of course.”

“Of course. You would know something about that.”

“We used shell companies to pump money to informants in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, not to mention some of our allies we wanted to keep a close eye on.”

“We're still no closer to finding out who he is. He's not listed on any of these shell companies; in fact they are as mysterious as he is. The only difference is that they exist, and he doesn't.”

Professor Oldfield arrived
at the Hall in the early afternoon, and was shown to the flat.

"I'm glad to see you Dad," Julie said hugging him briefly

"Me too,” he said crisply, giving her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. He shook my hand briefly. “Show me what you have.”

I showed him the page where I had written out the phrases my father attached to the bogus personnel sheet. "We've been trying to work out the code, but nothing seems to fit." He sat looking at the page for a long time.

"Did you say your father was a crossword puzzle creator?" he asked quickly. I nodded. "Then I think I may know where some of the answers lie." He sat down at the desk and began to type quickly. “I'm accessing the mainframe. Now, watch this," he said.

He typed rapidly and the screen went blank.

He typed more code and again nothing happened, then on the third try an unfilled crossword puzzle grid filled the screen.

"When I first went through it, I thought that maybe one of the IT guys was in the process of creating a game hadn't finished what he set out to do. As you can see, there are only seven horizontal rows, but there are ten vertical columns."

“Okay.” I said cautiously, glancing at Julie who looked just as baffled.

"How many clues are there on that note? Four. Now, it may be a long shot but I think there is a relationship. Let's see. Julie open an excel document in that laptop and create a grid exactly like this one."

She did as he asked, and when she finished sat back looked at her father, who gazed at her questioningly at her and then at the note. Her face cleared. “Oh. I see.” Quickly she typed the phrases starting at the top left until she reached the end of the third phrase. “That's it. The last clue doesn't fit.”

I stared at the puzzle. "They're not clues they're answers. It's not an encryption, the answer is right in front of us. If the reverse is true, then if we read it backwards starting at the bottom right to top left, then we get......” I read the letters backwards. “Total gibberish.”