The Pulsar Files, page 14
part #1 of Matt Flynn Series
Chris tapped Matt’s knee, breaking his concentration. ‘What are we going to do when–?’
‘Chris, not here,’ Matt said, jerking a thumb behind at the driver. ‘We’ll discuss it when we get there. Talk about politics, football, religion or anything you like, but nothing personal. Okay?’
‘Sorry, I forgot.’
Monday morning traffic in London looked as it always did: buses, cabs, cars willing to pay the congestion charge and hordes of tourists pouring out of Paddington Station, lining the pavements at each set of traffic lights. Looks could be deceptive, though. The key to following a vehicle was to look the same as those around you.
Matt didn’t look at the cars, instead he focused on the occupants, trying to spot a single guy, his face too intense or, a less common sight on the street, a car containing two or three male passengers. Of course, if they used two women, or a woman and a man, his job became much more difficult.
Matt didn’t think they had been followed, nevertheless when they arrived at the street in Canonbury he instructed the cabbie to drop them thirty metres away from the safe house. If they were being tailed, it was a toss-up which option was safer.
Was it better for Chris and Louise to be exposed during the thirty-metre walk to the house and confuse any follower as to its location, or stop outside the house, allowing minimum exposure but giving away the location of the safe house?
He chose the former because if an abductor tried to attack them, he and Rosie were there do something to stop them. If instead they knew the location of the house, it was likely that neither Matt nor his partner would be around to help them once the villains decided to make their move.
‘I don’t think I’ve been to this part of London before,’ Louise said as they walked, ‘it looks so suburban and yet it doesn’t feel like we travelled very far from the centre.’
‘The Emirates Stadium isn’t far if you like football, but I don’t get the impression it would interest you too much.’
‘My dad would love it but his enthusiasm for the game didn’t rub off on me.’
Two doors away, Matt looked at Rosie who nodded. In situations like this they fell into a routine like an old married couple. She turned and monitored the rear while he scanned the gardens on either side of the street and the road ahead.
They walked up the path towards a brick-fronted house with a garage to one side. Matt turned the key, opened the door and headed into the hall to silence the alarm. Most houses in the street had alarms, locks on the windows and at least one deadbolt on both front and back doors, and this house was similarly equipped.
‘What do you think?’ Matt said.
‘It’s better than the place I share in Shepherd’s Bush,’ Louise said.
‘There should be food in the fridge–’
‘Great!’ Chris said with some enthusiasm. ‘I’m starving.’
It elicited a strange look from Louise but he didn’t inquire.
‘What I suggest we do is this,’ Rosie said. ‘You guys take a quick look round and decide on where you want to sleep. When you’re done, come back to the kitchen and we can all have a drink and something to eat if you’re hungry, and then we’ll sit down and talk about what happens next.’
Fifteen minutes later they took seats around the large beech table in the kitchen, Chris tucking into a thick ham sandwich, the other three making do with a mug of coffee.
‘First up let’s talk housekeeping,’ Rosie said, ‘by that I mean clothes, food and some other bits and pieces. There’s food in the house for seven days, eat the lot in three,’ she said looking straight at Chris who stopped chewing, ‘and you’ll starve for the rest of your time here. All right?’
Chris nodded.
‘Neither of you are to go out of this house to do anything. If you run short of something, talk to one of us.’
‘What about the back garden?’ Louise asked.
‘It’s out of bounds and do not open the back door under any circumstances. It’s fitted with a special alarm and, if triggered, a couple of armed cop cars will turn up within five minutes.’
‘A window then?’
‘Yes, you can open a window, but remember to close it. Is everything to your liking so far?’
They both nodded.
‘You’ll need a couple of changes of clothes and some nightwear. You should find the bathrooms stocked with toiletries, one with men’s things the other for a woman. When we’re finished here, Matt and I will set off and pick up some gear from your respective houses. I’ve written down the alarm code and telephone numbers and I’ll run through all the things you can do with the alarm later, like alarming only the upstairs rooms or sending an emergency signal to our switchboard if you need to. That’s about it for housekeeping. Any questions?’
‘How long will we be here?’ Chris asked.
‘Matt will cover that in a sec. Any other questions about housekeeping?’
‘Will either of you be staying here with us?’ Louise asked.
‘We don’t, as a rule,’ Rosie said, ‘but we could make an exception and have one of us stay here for your first night.’
‘I would feel better if you would.’
She looked at Matt.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
‘Anything else? No? Matt, now it’s your turn.’
‘Right, the answer to how long you’ll be here will be determined by how long it takes us to neutralise the threat against you. From what we heard earlier, we’re convinced the threat is posed by Dragon Technologies because you hacked into their computer systems. I don’t think it’s in retaliation for breeching their security, but they’re trying to suppress the information you downloaded, frightened their dirty tactics will be exposed.’
‘In which case, they’ll need to suppress me,’ Chris said.
‘How do you mean?’ Matt asked.
‘Well, they can take my laptop with all the Dragon documents on it, but I saved them to the Cloud and also to a back-up drive. If they’re savvy about this, they’ll know the only way to stop the documents becoming public is to eliminate me.’
‘Couldn’t they just kidnap you,’ Louise said, ‘and ask you to delete the documents on the Cloud and then destroy your laptop? They don’t need to kill you, surely?’
‘I don’t think they’re as subtle as that,’ Chris said.
‘Hang on a sec,’ Matt said. ‘We don’t know what they know or what they want. It could be the laptop or you as well; we just don’t know. In many respects it doesn’t change anything. Our aim here is to protect you, Louise, and the documents.’
‘I understand the protection thing is for the next few days or weeks,’ Louise said, ‘but how do we, how do you, stop them trying to kidnap or kill us in the longer term?’
‘Let me turn the question back to you,’ Rosie said. ‘What can you do to publicise their dirty activities?’
‘I told you earlier how we tried to get the details published in my newspaper, but they got there first with a court injunction?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been giving it some thought and I think there are still a couple of options we should consider.’
‘Let’s hear them.’
‘We can either publish on a website like WikiLeaks and hope the story is picked up by newspapers around the world, or we can arrange for the subject to be raised in Parliament. I seem to remember hearing something about not being able to prosecute MPs for anything they raise in the Commons chamber.’
‘So, if we can get an MP to talk about this,’ Chris said, ‘Dragon couldn’t do anything to stop them?’
‘No, they can’t. Also, when an MP raises such issues, newspapers are free to report it with impunity.’
‘Fantastic! It sounds like a great solution. How do we do it?’
‘I don’t know any MPs,’ Louise said, ‘maybe I could make contact with my own if I knew who he or she was. Maybe you guys know someone?’
Chris shook his head and for an instant looked deflated.
‘I might know someone,’ Matt said, ‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘Fantastic!’ Chris said, now full of life once again. ‘I feel we’re getting somewhere at last. Is there any more of that excellent ham?’
Chapter 26
Poor Matt. Not only was he having to spend the night babysitting their two charges, he needed to drive to Oxford yet again, this time to pick up some clothes for Chris. Rosie had to do the same for Louise, but the newspaper reporter only lived across town in Shepherd’s Bush.
With Louise’s flat only a short hop from Canonbury, Rosie decided not to go back to the office and collect her car and instead walked to the underground station carrying an empty sports bag. After climbing on the train, she looked around the carriage for any suspicious characters, a hard thing to do as those who didn’t have their faces buried in a newspaper or weren’t playing games on their phone or talking to a friend, looked the part.
She hadn’t been to Shepherd’s Bush often and didn’t know the area well, but after looking at the map on her phone, realised Louise lived only a few streets away from an underground station, pub, restaurants and within easy walking distance of Westfield Shopping Centre. Living in suburban Harlow, she missed the glitz and glamour many of those places offered and for a moment suffered a pang of jealousy.
She turned into Godolphin Road. Louise shared a two-bedroomed house with a fellow journalist who, Louise assured her, would have left for work early in the morning. Just as well, as coming across a stranger who was dumping things from the wardrobe into a sports bag would give the poor girl a heart attack and elicit a call to the local cop shop. She climbed the stairs outside the building, stood for a moment and scanned up and down the road.
The girls rented the ground and upper floor of the building, commonly called a maisonette, while the basement had a separate entrance and was occupied by a different tenant. Access to the rear was through a tall metal gate, currently secured by a padlock.
If Dragon were serious in their search for Chris Anderson, and they had every reason to believe they were, they would be watching Louise’s house, Chris’s family house and the place he shared with his uncle and aunt. If HSA were looking for someone, she and her colleagues would do the same.
She opened the door and walked into the house, making sure the lock snapped shut behind her. At thirty-six, Rosie was ten years older than Louise, but even then, the discarded clothes on the floor, unwashed dishes in the kitchen and the house looking in need of a good dust, took her by surprise. Two working girls lived here for sure, but it didn’t mean they needed to live like slobs.
Ignoring the lounge and kitchen, she walked upstairs. Louise told her she would recognise her bedroom by how tidy it looked and by the presence of a guitar. Spotting the difference in the ‘tidy’ stakes was a difficult task, who was less messy being a better measure, but she couldn’t help but notice the Epiphone copy of John Lennon’s classic guitar in the corner. She didn’t play, but once went out with a guy who played in a band and while she didn’t like their music, she loved guitars and could happily wander through musical instrument shops for hours.
Louise had given her a list of three outfits: jumpers, jeans, underwear and pyjamas, but nothing too dressy as they wouldn’t be going anywhere. Before starting to load the bag, Rosie stood behind a curtain and looked out of the window. From a watcher’s perspective, the first few minutes after someone entered a house was a good time to grab them, as the person they came to snatch would be too preoccupied in depositing baggage, taking off their coat and checking the mail to notice anything strange going on outside.
A quick glance wasn’t enough to detect movement inside an empty car or the difference between the slow cruise of a visitor looking for a parking space and a watcher checking out the building. She stood for several minutes, her head still but her eyes moving up and down the road in a systematic, gentle sweep.
A silver Toyota caught her attention. At certain times of the day, two men travelling in the same car looked unusual and the ploy of the passenger holding an estate agent’s property details in his hand didn’t fool her. In these days of gender diversity and civil partnerships, two gay guys looking for a flat wouldn’t be considered out of the ordinary, but the clothes, stocky build and the furtive glances to the left and right by both men in the Toyota didn’t ring true.
If they were looking for Louise’s apartment, it was clear they didn’t know the exact location as they ignored several empty parking places, but then again, it could also be a ruse. As they drove past, her guard would drop or, while she focussed on the Toyota, a guy in another car could be watching the house and trying to detect any movement inside. The cat and mouse tactics employed by watchers and counter-watchers could twist an ordinary mortal’s brain into little knots, but she was used to it.
The curtain fell gently as if rippling in the breeze from an ill-fitting sash window and Rosie moved to the wardrobe. She filled the sports bag with clothes, not an easy task as many of the items required couldn’t be found on hangers but lying in a heap on the floor, or weren’t in the wardrobe as Louise suggested, but thrown into a nearby chest of drawers. She zipped the bag and checked her weapon, making sure it was accessible and ready to fire.
She moved to the window again and took a final look at the road, but couldn’t see any sign of the Toyota or anything else that looked suspicious. She picked up the bag and headed downstairs. At the foot of the stairs she walked towards the front door, listening for the sound of movement outside and trying to spot shadows on the other side of the opaque glass. Seeing and hearing nothing, she took a deep breath and opened the door.
Her caution was necessary as she didn’t want to give the location of Louise’s apartment away, the reporter would need to come back and live here at some point, but she also didn’t want to be surprised by an attacker hiding outside. In many ways, this could be an assailant’s best approach, as breaking into Louise’s apartment wouldn’t give them any indication of her current location, but kidnapping and torturing Rosie would.
Standing on the step outside the front door, she looked around as if trying to make sense of the weather, but searching for the silver Toyota and any supporting colleagues. She walked down the stone steps and headed in the direction of the underground station.
She set off at a brisk pace, keeping as far away from the road as possible. Godolphin Street was one-way, meaning the Toyota needed to drive around the block before making another pass, not easy with traffic, pedestrians and traffic lights. However, if the men in the car had driven past Louise’s flat and parked further along the street, a couple of heavies might be waiting around the next corner, ready to confront her; she needed to be careful.
She felt better when she reached Uxbridge Road, a busy thoroughfare of afternoon shoppers, ambling tourists, delivery drivers and noisy day-time traffic. It wasn’t a good place to attack or kidnap a victim with dozens of witnesses, multiple CCTV cameras and Shepherd’s Bush police station further down the road. She walked with a renewed confidence in her stride, her adrenaline level, pegged one-to-one with the threat level, sinking slowly like thermometer mercury on a cloudy day. She glanced at the shops and businesses she passed: Caribbean restaurants, Halal supermarkets and the Christian Church of St Stephen and St Thomas.
She reached the underground station without incident. On entering the concourse, she stood to one side, leaned against a wall and rummaged through her bag as if looking for money or her ticket. She knew where she’d put her ticket but used the time to scan all those walking towards the ticket barriers and a small group of people loitering outside.
She zipped up her bag, slung it over her shoulder and, picking up the sports holdall, headed for the train. Rosie was good at this game, but the same could be said for the team following her.
Chapter 27
Matt arrived back at the safe house in Canonbury as the occupants, including Rosie, were sitting down for dinner.
‘Smells good,’ Matt said, walking into the hall, dumping the sports holdall with Chris’s clothes inside on the floor and hanging up his jacket.
‘Hi Matt, how was the journey to Oxford?’ Rosie asked.
‘No problem on the way down as I was moving against the traffic, but on the way back I got caught up in an accident on the M4. Took me over an hour to drive past.’
‘What a shame. Have you eaten?’ Louise asked.
‘Nope, I’ll go out in a minute and find something.’
‘Don’t bother. There’s enough for us all.’
‘You sure? I don’t want to starve you for the rest of the week.’
‘Don’t you worry, it’s not a problem. Grab a seat. The more you eat the less there’ll be for Chris; I think he needs to lose a few pounds.’
‘Hey,’ Chris said. ‘I’m a growing lad, I need plenty of fuel.’
‘Never describe any food I make as ‘fuel,’ Chris Anderson,’ Louise said, her face in a scowl, ‘or you’ll feel the thick end of a spatula.’
‘Ouch. Sounds painful.’
With everyone seated, Matt helped himself to a glass of water from the jug on the table, thirsty after so many hours in a car and drinking too much motorway coffee. He noticed a couple of bottles of wine in the wine rack and even though he didn’t drink while on duty, he was surprised Louise or Chris didn’t avail themselves of a glass or two.
Louise placed a large dish of spaghetti bolognese on the table and another bowl containing salad. ‘You two serve yourselves first,’ she said, ‘you’re our guests.’
Matt didn’t need telling twice because after slaking his thirst with a couple of glasses of water, what he wanted now was something to eat.
‘While you were out,’ Rosie said when all their plates were filled, ‘I looked over the documents Chris downloaded from his hack into Dragon’s computers. It’s dynamite stuff: names, places, amounts and, buried behind a password, photographs and videos of famous faces doing a lot of things they shouldn’t.’
