The Weaver Fish (19 page)

Before beginning his own tasks, Worse checked on Ritchie and Kev. The car was no longer at Millie's address. He streamed through the record and found what he expected, a phone call from Ritchie to Fiendisch reporting a lack of sighting of their target. The latter had instructed them to leave the scene and get some sleep. Worse called out to Millie.

‘Another link established. Those two watching your place are taking orders about you from Fiendisch. Not surprising, but now confirmed.'

Millie looked up. ‘Are they still there?'

‘No.' He was pleased to report that.

Worse was keen to find out more about Fiendisch, and follow his movements. He began with the banker's mobile phone, accessing the account file and copying the numbers dialled. He recognized those of Ritchie and Zheng, but it was another that caught his attention. This was a frequently called fixed line number in Margaret River. Worse pursued this, to find it was registered to Verita's Wines, a fully controlled entity of the unlisted Providence Portfolio, having directors Karl Fiendisch and Charles Finistere. Providence itself was a subsidiary of Humboldt. As he discovered these connections, Worse copied relevant material into a research folder, as well as writing some notes on a pad. After several minutes, he sat back, staring at the screen. Strand within strand; every thread of enquiry seemed to unravel another.

For the moment, he decided to return to Fiendisch. The mobile account led him to a home number. Worse noted the address. After this, he wanted a break, and collecting the sheaf of emails from Nicholas he walked through to his bedroom and lay down, his head supported on three pillows. He first confirmed they were in chronological order, then read the last first.

Worse stared at the page for several seconds. He then went back to read the earliest, working forward chronologically. There was a definite change in sentiment in the penultimate message, where Nicholas mentioned some unexpected, and evidently unreasonable, pressure to get the project completed. It was a comment that might have passed unnoticed, its significance only illuminated by the subsequent message, and events. Worse noted the dates. The last fully optimistic, unreservedly positive email was on August 12; two days later the mood was changing.

‘Did Nicholas write letters by post, or only email?' Worse had left the printouts on his bed and walked through to Millie's desk.

‘A couple of postcards early on, that's all.'

‘Did you chase up the Hiro Wasabi contact?'

‘I did. Actually, I ended up having that meal out with him myself last week. Nicholas was to phone Hiro to confirm the arrangement, but never did. Hiro tried email and phoning the bank, only to be told that Nicholas had left the company.'

‘Were there emails, Nicholas to Hiro?'

Millie hesitated, possibly thinking she should know. ‘I don't know.'

Worse glanced at Millie's screen, but didn't ask about her progress. ‘When you have time, it might pay to search for Nicholas's email files. There may be versions of things written but not sent, internal memos, correspondence with other colleagues. Whatever.'

Millie nodded agreement but already Worse was moving to another terminal.

He had been unable to trace the origin of payments to Zheng's account. However, the problem could be greatly reduced with a little more information, essentially by searching for a link from both ends. Over the next few minutes, Worse remodelled the task by incorporating accounts associated with Humboldt Bank, Fiendisch or Finistere. It remained computationally demanding, and he fully expected the analysis to take days. But now he was confident of success; in the end there would be a result, some pathway of maximum likelihood connecting Zheng to an account number, a password, and the name of a person of interest.

26

‘Why do I think there's trouble afoot?'

Knowing his friend's capacity for play, Worse examined each word for obliquity, especially ‘afoot'.

‘Afoot? A foot,' he pronounced carefully. Sigrid eyed him patiently. He continued. ‘It's funny you should say that. A foot has been the sort of gestalt of my day. I've seen an amputee on crutches, a young man in a wheelchair with a leg in fixators, a shop window full of right-hand shoes, and kids playing hopping games in a car park. Now you say afoot. Why is it a one-legged day?'

He seemed genuinely intrigued, and Sigrid, not quite sure of the comic temperature, said seriously, ‘It's Scalene Thursday; you should know that. In many cultures it's an important festival. You're meant to cross your legs for luck.'

Worse looked at her suspiciously, but with no shift in tone began to describe in detail the events of the previous few days, keeping his account factual and largely free of opinion or inference.

Sigrid listened without interruption, showing concern, surprise and amusement as the story unfolded. From time to time he stopped talking, as other diners or café staff moved close to their table. He concluded with a précis of his conversation with Millie just prior to leaving the apartment that evening. It was about taking a look at the Fiendisch house later in the night. When he finished, Sigrid stared at her water glass, eventually looking up.

‘Have you talked to the police?'

‘Not at this stage.'

‘Could the Zheng attack be to do with SpeakEasy?'

It was a natural question. SpeakEasy was an internet site managed exclusively by Sigrid and himself, dedicated to commentary that would normally invoke the hopelessly archaic and repressive Australian defamation and contempt laws. Sigrid and he as editors, and any contributors, were protected by Worse's own DPA encryption code and a distributed virtual server system using cuckoo programs that switched rapidly and randomly across almost a million public access servers.

For over three years now they had offered a forum for essays and critiques on subjects such as censorship, judicial impropriety and incompetence, law of contempt abuses, parliamentary privilege, political nepotism, conflict of interest, and corporate bullying. It was the modern incarnation of a dissident printing press, and their regular pamphleteers' dinner on Thursday evenings dealt with editorial matters for the following week. Obviously, the site had many enemies, and it could easily be that Fiendisch had reasons to attack SpeakEasy unrelated to the Nicholas business.

Their meals had arrived, and Worse was carefully dissecting bones from his grilled fish.

‘I'm investigating that, but it's looking very unlikely—no irregularities, no security flags, nothing direct and nothing statistical.' He was referring to automated self-checks embedded in the operating system. After a few seconds, he added, ‘I need to understand exactly what purpose Fiendisch had in hiring Nicholas, and if it changed. Anyway, has anything unusual been happening in your world?'

‘My patients. They're all unusual.'

‘I thought you made them normal.'

It was Sigrid's turn to scrutinize her meal. ‘Well and normal are different things. What would you like me to do?'

‘I was hoping you might look after SpeakEasy this week. Maybe a BenchPress edition; you could use the judicial activism material we worked on.'

‘Yes. I could do that.'

‘I'd also like you to apply your mind to what I've told you. Give me any ideas.'

Sigrid looked serious. ‘I think you should talk to Spoiling.'

‘I thought you would say that. How much should I tell him?'

‘Everything. Except whatever could incriminate you. Leave out your little contingency gift in Ritchie's car, for example. And where Zheng rests.'

Worse accepted the advice with a slight tilt of the head.

‘Call him now.' She reached for the water bottle and refilled their glasses.

Worse removed a mobile from his jacket pocket and dialled a stored number. Almost immediately, Sigrid could hear, ‘Worse, how are you?'

‘Hello Victor. I have a perplexity for you.' Worse and Spoiling shared a private vernacular.

‘I feel a headache coming on.'

‘Victor! You enjoy perplexities.' There was mock hurt. ‘It's about the Humboldt Bank in Fremantle, a director called Fiendisch, and a missing person, Nicholas Misgivingston. Can we meet tomorrow?'

‘Of course, for coffee.'

‘Thank you, Victor. I will call you. By the way, I have a name and number for your Sydney colleagues looking into their shootings.' He gave Smudge's contact details taken from Ritchie's mobile. As he pocketed his own phone he reached thoughtfully for his water glass.

‘Any concerns?' Sigrid eyed him searchingly.

‘About Victor? No, I don't think so.' Worse was ruminative, using an unopened sugar sachet to corral scattered breadcrumbs into a neat square. After several seconds, Sigrid re-enquired.

‘I mean, do you feel better or worse, less or more disturbed, after speaking to him?'

‘Better, less,' he answered. He pushed his chair back from the table and crossed his legs, one knee over the other.

‘That good luck thing, does it last through midnight?'

The theoretical basis of a
defective pixelation algorithm
(DPA) had been advanced by Worse in 1995. The essential idea was that data were intentionally encrypted with embedded random errors. This rendered conventional code breaking approaches almost useless, but the trick was to modulate the error statistics such that security
was maximized while decryption remained possible. If it were slightly wrong, either everyone could read it, or no one.

It could be shown that, in principle, error frequency should vary with the Shannon information content in the message, but no one had determined the critical relation. The proposal attracted brief interest in the literature including discussion of suitable error processes, and a short paper by a student of Thwistle's applying classical signal-noise theory. Most came to view the problem as intractable. Worse used a different approach, viewing it as a sort of inverted sampling problem, and the essence of his solution was the crucial discovery of an equilibrium structure exhibiting nested orthogonalities. From this followed a family of elegant symmetry results, which in turn led to very surprising computational efficiencies.

As it happened, when this work was completed, he was planning the SpeakEasy project, for which a unique encryption algorithm would be very advantageous. He therefore decided not to publish the algorithm, and shared the result only with Sigrid. At the time of writing, this and the underlying general optimization theorem remain unpublished.

27

Millie was driving, and as she pulled over to the kerb Worse glanced at the dash clock and thought of Sigrid's reply. ‘For a year,' she had prescribed authoritatively.

Half past midnight; enough time then. Millie switched off the engine and turned to Worse, who was unbuckling his seatbelt. He pointed through the windscreen.

‘It's the third one along, with the limestone wall. Built 1930s and restored with the good features preserved, typically renovated for comfort and security. These properties go down to private beaches on the river. Very nice.'

Millie sat back comfortably, but her glance settled on the Fiendisch residence.

‘I know what you'll say,' she began quietly, ‘but do you think Nicholas could be in there?' Her eyes stayed focused on the house.

‘What will I say?'

‘Exactly.'

They fell silent. The degree of danger to which Nicholas had been exposed was obvious to both of them, but his possible fate had never been explicitly raised. In reference to Nicholas, Worse had been careful, in the tense and mood of his language, and in its context, to convey a presumption that his disappearance would be explained and he would be found alive. He was waiting for Millie to broach the worst of possibilities. She seemed to be thinking about it now, and he decided to speak.

‘I think Nicholas became extremely valuable to them. He was made party to, or discovered for himself, some criminal activity in the bank, probably related to his software project there. Either he escaped into hiding or they have him working for them under
some kind of duress, even confinement in some form. I think the second is more likely, bizarre as it seems. I don't think he's otherwise been harmed. I think he's alive. If Fiendisch wanted to hurt him, he would use Ritchie and Kev, and they're stupid enough to talk about it. There's nothing on the voice recordings.'

Worse was vaguely relieved that he had managed to convey these ideas without using ‘dead' or ‘killed'. But he was a little troubled by his own last point, by the possibility that Zheng had been instrumental in Nicholas's fate. He was still looking along the road when he added, ‘But I'd be very surprised if he's in that house.'

Millie turned to face him with a look of intense seriousness.

‘Thank you.' Just two syllables, very quietly, were enough to expose a voice slightly broken with emotion. Worse met her gaze; even in the near darkness, he could see distress, resolve, and trust. He suddenly had a sense of enormous responsibility, and it mixed uncomfortably with the compassion he already felt around her missing brother. He turned to look forward, and remained silent.

After several seconds, he reached for his mobile, adjusted it to silent mode, and opened up a line to the car phone, which Millie answered. Then he fitted a miniature wireless speaker to his left ear, tested communication both ways, and placed the mobile in a jacket pocket. Millie would speak to him if anything untoward happened in the street. His plan was simple: to place a tracking device on Fiendisch's car, and to take whatever opportunities presented to explore the premises generally.

Worse turned to grasp his small backpack from the rear seat, and in the single move of swinging forward and opening his door they exchanged glances. A moment later the door closed, and he was almost lost in the shadows of the treed verge. Millie sat forward, staring intently into the gloom. She could just make out his dark figure climb to the crest of the boundary wall, hesitate, and disappear over the top. In that moment she felt acutely alone, and a mild but unfamiliar anxiety entered her thoughts. She reached out to the dash and central-locked the car.

From the top of the wall, Worse surveyed the front of the property. Between him and the house was a dense native garden, through
which he could see some dim lighting in the ground floor. Across to his left was the driveway, protected from the street by large iron gates. He twisted his body and, grasping the capping as best he could, lowered himself to the ground, the last few centimetres being in free fall. Immediately, he ran his hands over the inner surface of the wall, feeling the roughness for points of purchase, for toeholds. Satisfied that he would have little difficulty in scaling its height even in haste, he crouched down and observed the house for a few minutes. The lighting remained subdued and there were no sounds. The second level window curtains were drawn closed. He noted a security alarm under the eaves.

His plan was to edge along the internal face of the wall to the driveway, but once there he sighted a motion-sensor spotlight directed toward the gates. Any further progress would be easily detected. He therefore retraced his steps about five metres, headed across the garden directly to the front of the house, and emerged on a path connecting the driveway to the front entrance. From there he moved leftwards and, keeping low, passed to the rear of the sensor range. At that moment he heard Millie's voice in his earpiece.

‘Car coming from my direction.'

Worse moved into the garden, and watched how the vehicle's peripheral headlight briefly illuminated the point in the driveway where he had just crossed.

‘It's a taxi. Driver, one passenger, I think; turned left at the end.' He nodded slightly, as if Millie could see.

The driveway widened to lead to a single lock-up garage, as well as an uncovered bay to its left, where the BMW was parked in the open. From his temporary refuge in the garden, Worse studied the roller door of the garage. There was an exterior handle and lock, but it was clear that opening it would be a noisy affair.

He moved forward between the BMW and the left wall of the garage, finding a path leading toward the rear. At the end of the wall, he stopped and peered around the corner. In front of him was a large paved outdoor living area, partly roofed by a vine-covered timber pergola. This connected to the house proper via French doors, through which could be seen a dimly lit kitchen. Beyond the patio was a swimming pool, and adjacent to
this a small building that Worse supposed housed the filtration machinery. Arrayed about were seating areas, one protected by a sturdy canvas market umbrella. Past that, the property sloped away into darkness.

Of immediate interest, though, was the rear wall of the garage, in which was a door affording access from the terrace, and a window. Worse slipped around the corner and looked in the window, one hand simultaneously reaching for the brass door handle and gently turning it. The window was obscure, but the door opened easily and he stepped through, closing it behind him.

He stood motionless in the gloom for several seconds. The window transmitted minimal light, yet he was gradually able to make out the general disposition of things around him. To his right, beneath the window, was a workbench with a vice and assorted tools. On his left were garden implements, lawnmowers, and various edging and pruning tools. In front of him was a passage between two tall storage cupboards, along which he could see the metallic gleam of a vehicle.

In his research on Fiendisch's finances, Worse had not discovered ownership records for a second vehicle. He moved between the cupboards, and recognized a late model Range Rover. Shining a subdued torchlight on its registration plate, he memorized the number; he also noted reddish mud on the tyres and wheel arches.

It was parked close to the garage wall on the passenger side, and was unlocked. Worse made his way to the driver's door, using his torch judiciously to examine the interior. There was nothing of interest on the front seats, and he moved to the rear door. The back seat was folded down to enlarge the luggage tray and he could see what looked like a large pile of crumpled blankets.

Worse had put much thought into what he might find and what it would imply about Nicholas's fate. Conversely, the fact of Nicholas's disappearance implied certain possible findings, and he was not surprised at what he now saw. If Nicholas had been restrained and transported hidden under those blankets, Worse might find some indication as to whether he had been physically harmed first.

As quietly as he could, he opened the rear passenger door,
switching on the dull interior ceiling light. Holding his penlight in his mouth, he began to fossick amongst the blankets, progressively adjusting his weight further into the car in order to complete the task systematically.

He was searching the armrest pocket of the opposite door when the briefest flash of light, hardly perceptible, alerted him to danger. It was the starting flicker of a fluorescent tube. Within a second, the garage was flooded in blue-white light, and Worse heard the workshop door close, rattling its adjacent window. At the same time, the ageing roller door to the front drive began to grind open.

There was no opportunity to escape either way undetected, and Worse had to act instantly. He launched himself fully into the vehicle and pulled the rear door shut, its sound subsumed in the noise of the garage door, and covered himself with blankets. He heard the driver's door open and felt the suspension react to the weight of a new occupant. The door slammed shut and the engine started. As they reversed out, Worse found his mobile. Awkwardly, with one finger, he sent a message to Millie:
In range rover. Follow.

Millie replied through Worse's earpiece. She could see the front garden now floodlit, and the remote-controlled gates opening. Worse heard her start his car. He felt the Range Rover reverse over the road verge, then set off down the street. Although he had the tracking device in his pocket, he had not instructed Millie how to access its signal through his laptop or the Mercedes Comand system. He switched his phone to GPS; at least he could keep informed of their movements. At the same time, Millie had position indication on the car GPS, and mentioned whenever the street name changed. Once, when he thought she was too close, he messaged her:
Hold back a little.

Curled up tightly on the hard luggage tray, and fully covered by blankets, Worse was desperately uncomfortable; he felt his joints stiffen and from time to time was forced to suppress a threatened cough or sneeze excited by dust or fibres in the blankets.

It was half an hour before he was certain who was driving, when the silence was broken by Fiendisch speaking on the phone.

‘Where are you? ... I'm being followed ... I don't know ... I can't
see ... On the freeway ... Verita's ... Because the Admiral wants matters finalized ... I will stop at the roadhouse, let me know when you are a few minutes away ... No, bring Kev ... Forget the girl for now.'

Nothing that Worse heard was unexpected. It would be virtually impossible at night to trail a car from Fiendisch's house to the freeway without being noticed. And their destination, Margaret River, was no surprise. He messaged Millie:
F has spotted you. Keep up now.

Over the next hour, Worse was constantly updated by Millie about progress. Fiendisch had put on music; surprisingly, it was loud rap with, even more bizarrely, Latin lyrics, and not at all to Worse's taste. Eventually, Millie told him that they were approaching a roadhouse on the left, and he heard the clicking of the car's turning signal. As a sound, it was welcome relief from the music.

‘If he goes inside, you may get a chance to get out,' said Millie. ‘I'll let you know when it's safe.'

Under the blankets, by feel alone, Worse found the tracking device in his pocket. He had intended to secure it to the BMW before leaving the Fiendisch property, and was pleased not to have done so already.

The vehicle slowed to a stop; Worse heard the driver's door open and the seat springs ease.

‘He's buying petrol,' reported Millie.

Worse was acutely aware of the sounds involved, including that of gushing fuel entering the tank only centimetres from his ear. He heard the cap replaced, the flap closed and latched, and the fuel nozzle reseated in the pump.

‘He's walking in to pay. Get out the driver's side ... now.'

Worse had already slipped the tracker under the driver's seat, locking it magnetically below one of the steel rails. He opened the door and stepped out, rebunching the blankets into a heap, then closed the door and looked around. Millie had pulled up in a parking bay serving the restaurant, which was closed. Worse ran to his car, glancing at the office as he went. Fiendisch was just entering, still with his back to events.

Worse eased himself into the passenger seat, smiling warmly
at Millie, and immediately reclined the seat fully. Millie had left the engine running.

‘I need to stretch. I think my joints are welded into foetal flexion. I'm going to lay low. There's no reason why we should tell Fiendisch that there are two of us. Did he look at you from the pump?'

‘He tried to. I watched him through the wing mirror.'

‘Would he have recognized you?'

‘If he did, he's pretty smart.'

‘There's no doubt he's smart,' replied Worse. ‘What's happening?'

‘He's returning to his car ... getting in ... driving off.'

‘Follow. We're post-subtle now; he knows our business. I heard him call those two crooks from outside your place to chase us.'

Millie reversed from their parking bay, swinging the car around. Worse was still lying down.

‘Post-subtle. How well that describes our world,' Millie said as she rejoined the highway.

‘Oh yes. Post-subtlety. It's a stunning new movement in the humanities. Invented by those philosophers who live on the Paris Métro. Solves for the great unknowns by progressive elimination of substance. Quite Gaussian in its genius. Ideally suited to frugality of expression and perfunctory dialectic. Permits insults, for example. Silences discouraged, unless they're antisocial. I expect its defining contribution in mathematics will be blank pages of proof. Surely it has reached Cambridge? Anyway, we must now view ourselves as participants at risk in its chase variant.'

‘Don't annoy me with that stuff; it may have reached Cambridge, but not mathematics, thank God.' Millie was surprisingly short. Worse managed to lace the apologetic with more irritant.