The Pulsar Files, page 5
part #1 of Matt Flynn Series
‘Modern technology,’ Matt said, ‘it gets everywhere. This is your hire car, yes?’ He pointed at the picture. ‘And hey, look at this. Isn’t this you behind the wheel?’
Katić took his time looking at the pictures, perhaps trying to remember what he had been doing there or, as Rosie suspected, trying to construct a cover story.
A minute or so later he said, ‘Yes, theese is my car.’
‘What were you doing in Oxfordshire?’
‘I cannot remember.’ He started to smile. ‘Ah yes, now I remember. Lots of green fields, I went there to see customer.’
‘Look at the date,’ she said pointing at the date stamp on the photograph, ‘see if it refreshes your memory.’
‘8th February?’ He shrugged and shook his head.
‘It shouldn’t be so difficult, it’s only a week ago. Do you have a diary?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not much of a businessman, are you?’
Matt leaned over and looked into Katić’s face, his finger stabbing the ANPR picture. ‘You’re expecting us to believe you went to see someone and talked tractors at six o’clock on a Sunday morning?’
‘What can I say?’ he said with a casual shrug. ‘I like to leave my bed early in the morning.’
Chapter 9
Chris Anderson paced the floor of his bedroom, his head a confusing mix of anger and despair. He’d returned from a meeting with Superintendent Cousins, this time at Kidlington, the headquarters of Oxford Police, his belief undimmed that the killing of his parents, sister and her friend had been deliberate. Yet again, the policeman rebuffed him with platitudes about awaiting the results of the accident investigation and telling him that without any evidence to the contrary, they could not start an alternative inquiry.
He needed to stop pacing. Aunt Hannah was downstairs with her ‘New to Oxford’ people and they didn’t like to be disturbed during their noisy bonding sessions, fuelled by numerous bottles of white wine. She’d established the group when her two kids were still at school, and despite both of them having grown up and now working away from home, she still continued with it.
He sat down at the desk, piled high with text books, folders and papers, all untouched since moving here from Witney, remnants of another place, another time. He’d told Superintendent Cousins he intended going back to university after Easter and, while the words sounded true at the time, he couldn’t back them up with much sincerity.
Part of his indecision lay in the number of things he needed to sort out. Chris believed, but didn’t yet know until the family solicitor located his father’s will, that he, a twenty-one-year-old university student, had now become the majority shareholder in a fifty-million-pound company. In addition, he now owned a million-pound house on the Woodstock Road in Witney, and throughout his life his father had been a saver and not a spender. Chris knew little about the shares, property and investments he owned, and there could well be other stuff he knew nothing about. No wonder he felt confused.
He put his head in his hands with his eyes closed, trying to shut out the weight of responsibility he felt. The desk had been a gift to Kevin from Chris’s father after he gained a first in Electrical Engineering. Stephen told Kevin he had finished with studying, but Chris believed it was his way of dropping a hint to the unqualified Kevin that he should make a start on his own education.
‘Chris? Chris!’
He opened the bedroom door and walked to the top of the stairs. Aunt Hannah was standing there looking better than many of the new mums in the lounge, some ten years her junior. Today she’d made a real effort, perhaps trying to hide her grief, with styled hair and a tight pink top he’d never seen before.
‘Were you wearing headphones? I called you several times.’
‘No. I think I must have been away in a world of my own.’
Her face softened. ‘It’s all right, you’ve given me the chance to get away from all the small talk for a bit. There are a couple of people here to see you. They’re in the kitchen.’
‘Thanks. I’ll come down in a minute.’
He tucked his t-shirt into his trousers and ran a hand through his tousled hair. He owned a hairbrush, but like everything else, didn’t have any idea where it might be. He walked downstairs, more irritated than curious. If the people in the kitchen were journalists, he would tell them to get out without hearing a word. He knew what sounded like a reasonable response in an interview could look monstrous on paper depending on the angle they wanted to highlight. With straplines see already such as the ‘The boy who survived’ or, in the more salacious publications, ‘Was son involved in balloon killing?’, no way did he want to add any more fuel to those particular fires.
He guessed it stemmed from his father’s reluctance to talk to journalists who often dressed up their intentions as ‘fact finding’, only to find a damning article in the local rag accusing the company of raining death on innocent civilians in the Middle East. If, instead, it was a couple of police officers here to give him an update, he would listen, but he suspected they wouldn’t have anything new to tell him.
He walked into the kitchen to find a slim blonde woman inspecting the coffee machine, and a large man sitting at the kitchen table with his back to him looking at something on his phone.
The woman, noticing his arrival, walked towards him with outstretched hand.
‘Hello Chris, my name is Rosie Fox and this is my colleague, Matt Flynn.’
Her hand felt cool and slim. He looked at the man sitting on a chair at the kitchen table for the first time. Flynn was tall with dark hair, a chiselled, serious face and a chin not acquainted with a razor for the last couple of days. He simply nodded.
‘We’re from Homeland Security,’ Fox said taking a seat on a high stool beside the breakfast bar. ‘You might have heard of us, your folks being in the defence business. We’d like to ask you some questions.’
‘Yes, I have,’ he said in voice steadier than he believed he could muster. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ he said, trying to buy some time to get his head around this.
‘I’ll take a coffee and so will Matt. He doesn’t say much until he’s had his first shot of caffeine. Milk, no sugar for both.’
He set the coffee machine gurgling, the same one they had at Woodstock Road. It felt cold, indicating Aunt Hannah and her chums had now switched to wine. He removed cups from the cupboard in an automatic motion, his mind racing. Why the hell were HSA, the bad-asses of law enforcement, here to see him? He studied Computer Science at university and had been involved with a hacking group for several years, but they knew how to cover their tracks. Had he slipped up? Were GCHQ smarter than he and his on-line friends believed?
He knew all about HSA because of his dad’s business. They had powers more like the army than the police. They could hold suspects without charge for weeks, carried guns and didn’t have to explain themselves when weapons were drawn and people shot. Christ! Guns in Aunt Hannah’s house? What would the ‘New to Oxford’ women think if they found out? They would soon become the ‘Never Moving to Oxford’ women.
‘Is this where you’re living now, with your aunt and uncle?’ Fox asked.
‘You’ve heard about the balloon accident, I take it?’
She nodded. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Chris. We won’t make this meeting any harder for you than it needs to be.’
‘Thanks. Yeah, I’m living here, but I don’t know for how long. The house on Woodstock Road where… the place where I used to live is much too big for me and…and the psychologist I’m seeing said I shouldn’t be on my own.’
‘Good advice, in my opinion.’
Chris made the drinks and placed them on the table, took a deep breath and sat down.
‘Thanks,’ Fox said.
‘You’re probably wondering why we’re here,’ Flynn said.
It was the first time Flynn had spoken. The voice belied the rough exterior as it sounded smooth and articulate, London with a hint of Irish.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Based on information in our possession, we’re investigating every major incident in the Oxford area on Sunday 8th February. It may surprise you to hear, but the people of Oxford on this day were largely law-abiding. We could only identify four serious incidents: a robbery at a newsagent in Cowley, a domestic murder with a shotgun at Slade Park, a car-jacking outside the John Ratcliffe Hospital and the balloon accident involving your family.’
‘Why is the balloon accident included? The other three are crimes and the police told me what happened was an accident.’
‘I’m being slightly evasive here, Chris, as I don’t want to panic anyone, but neither the robbery, the domestic murder nor the car-car jacking make the grade. The only incident of any significance is the downing of the balloon. We’re here to find out more and see if the incident might have involved some criminal activity.’
‘We appreciate our approach may come as shock to you Chris,’ Fox said. ‘We would have preferred in the first instance to talk to your uncle, but unfortunately he wasn’t in the office when we called.’
‘No, it’s fine, I’m not worried about hearing this. I don’t know if the Oxford police mentioned to you, but I raised the same subject with them.’
Fox shook her head.
‘I even went down to Kidlington to see them this morning.’
‘To tell them what, that you suspect there might be criminal involvement in the downing of the balloon?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They didn’t believe me. They still believe it was an accident.’
‘What did they say, specifically?’
‘Let me think, the remains of the balloon are being investigated by the Air Accident Investigation Branch and their findings so far support their initial assumption of pilot error.’
‘Makes sense to me. What makes you think any different?’
‘My dad and Uncle Kevin own a business called Galleon Electronics, making among other things, the electronic switches for releasing rockets and bombs on fighter planes. People around Oxford hate us. They demonstrate outside the factory gates sometimes and call my dad names in letters and emails.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ Fox said, ‘I don’t think the work that Galleon does is so serious it would encourage someone to kill members of your family just to make a point or get at your father. I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s not a big company, a small cog in a mighty military machine.’
He felt deflated; she was right. He could name a slew of bigger companies: the makers of fighter plane wings, jet engines, ammunition, and those who designed the software to guide rockets and smart bombs. If he was a protestor and decided to focus on the industry, he would go after one of them before looking at his dad’s business.
‘Do you have any evidence of criminal involvement, Chris?’ Flynn asked. ‘Or is it just a hunch?’
‘How do you mean evidence? Like what?’
‘Did your father receive death threats before taking the balloon flight or, over the last few weeks, did he seem more nervous than usual, for example?’
He shook his head. ‘No, not as far as I remember.’
‘What about the relationship between your father and the workers at the factory? Did he get on with them and your Uncle Kevin?’
‘He got on with everybody at the factory. There’s never been a strike and Kevin and Dad always worked well together, Dad as Managing Director and Uncle Kevin as Sales Director.’
‘It doesn’t look like the balloon incident is worth examining after all,’ Flynn said standing, his face registering nothing. ‘We’re done here. I guess we need to spread the net wider than Oxford.’
‘Hang on Matt,’ Fox said. ‘What about the balloon itself, Chris? Although I believe the technical term is ‘envelope’. Did it survive the crash? Is it being analysed by the AAIB?’
‘It was destroyed by fire after the propane tanks burst on impact.’
‘Oh.’ She frowned before reaching her bag. She stood, walked towards him and offered her hand. ‘Thanks for seeing us, Chris.’
He walked them to the door.
‘The papers said you’re a university student,’ Fox said.
‘At least they got something right. Yeah, I’m at Durham.’
‘What are you studying?’
‘Computer Science.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s what I always wanted to do, but it’ll take some time and effort to get my head back to sitting in a lecture hall. I might take a few months off to sort a few things out.’
‘All the best with whatever you decide to do and thanks again for your help. Goodbye Chris.’
Chapter 10
Matt and Rosie walked out to the car after their short and unfruitful chat with Chris Anderson. Matt glanced over at the activity visible through the lounge window and wondered why a group of women were getting pissed at this time on a Monday afternoon.
No words were exchanged between the HSA agents until the car reached the end of the road.
‘You took a gamble, Mr Flynn, and for once in your life it crashed and burned.’
‘I hoped there might be a good old-fashioned family feud lurking somewhere in the background, or at least a few silent phone calls and death threats, but I guess we need to do this the hard way.’
‘Off to Slade Park,’ Rosie said reaching for the satnav, ‘to take a look at the domestic with a shotgun?’
‘We’ll make a detour first and take a look at the balloon crash site.’
‘Fine with me.’
Rosie could touch-type at lightning speed and her rapid tapping of the satnav screen put his earlier efforts to shame.
‘Why did we let Katić go?’ he asked.
‘Technically we didn’t. We couldn’t produce any evidence to charge him, so we were forced to hand him over to Interpol. It will curb his shooting activities for a long time, but it’s the last we’ll see of him.’
‘Surely, we could have held them off for another couple of days? No human rights campaigner would give a toss if we took that scumbag off the streets for a bit.’
‘You’re a hard man to please, Matt Flynn, but as much as I like to keep people like him away from the rest of the population, he told us nothing. I trust Interpol can come up with something more substantial to throw at him.’
‘I don’t fancy their chances.’
‘Maybe we don’t need him.’
‘Why not?’ Matt asked.
‘The person paying him should be our focus. Whichever way you look at it, the Serb is no more than a hired gun; a foot soldier following orders, or in his case, a greedy bastard chasing the money. If we find out what he did, we should have a good idea why he did it and knowing this, we should be able to identify the big fish paying him.’
‘Makes sense, in theory but it would be quicker hanging Katić up by the balls until he tells us.’
Ten minutes later, they turned down Ladder Hill.
‘The crash site’s up ahead,’ Rosie said.
Matt slowed, searching for the spot, much to the consternation of a following driver who honked his horn in frustration at the actions of another dawdling tourist. Spotting an open gate and trampled ground, Matt switched on the indicator and turned into the field, the sound of a revving engine and a shouted obscenity somewhere behind.
With his view no longer obscured by a line of trees, he knew they were in the right place. Firstly, their location matched the photograph and map taken from a national newspaper. Secondly, remnants of blue police incident tape fluttered on the ground like birds with broken wings, scant recognition of the tragic events that had happened here.
They drove some way into the field and parked under the high-tension electricity lines that whistled softly in the light breeze. The ground in the area where the balloon came down was scorched and the grass all around them flattened and trampled by hundreds of feet and the wheels of many cars and vans.
They got out of the car and Matt stood and looked around. They were in a big empty field, and all around, as far as he could see on a misty day, more fields. Above them the pylons and electricity cables looked intact, either undamaged by the falling balloon or recently repaired.
Rosie walked towards him.
‘If our friend Katić did come here and wanted to take down this balloon, although I can’t for the life of me think of the reason why, the place I would choose is there,’ she said pointing at the line of trees they had just driven past. ‘He could wait there under cover until the balloon made its appearance.’
‘Why there?’ Matt said. ‘Why not over there or there?’ he said indicating a few other small thickets of trees in the opposite direction.
‘My line of trees is close to the road, ideal for a quick getaway, while the trees you’re pointing at would require him to drive back across this field, exposing his presence to anyone around. Also, if someone heard a shot or saw the balloon fall to the ground, they would clock his car moving back over the field to the road.’
‘Good point, and I happen to agree with you.’ He lifted the map in his hand and pointed to it. ‘There’s another road at the opposite end of these fields, but I think it would give him too difficult a shot. No, you’re right. It has to be over there.’
They returned to the car and drove back across the field to the entrance. He parked close to the gate and got out. From a distance, the line of trees looked like they closely followed the curve of what he believed to be a farmer’s access road, but on closer inspection it was more haphazard. What appeared to be small trees from distance was ferns interlaced with brambles, nettles and overgrown rhododendrons. Down the centre and looking well-used, a bridleway.
‘You take the right side,’ Matt said, ‘I’ll do the left.’
Rosie, never one to keep quiet if she believed she’d been handed the short straw, opened her mouth to say something. When she realised neither side offered an advantage over the other, she closed it again and said nothing.
