The Pulsar Files, page 6
part #1 of Matt Flynn Series
He walked, trying to avoid head-height brambles while looking down, searching for clues. After a few minutes, he stopped to check his progress and realised if Katić had come here, he’d picked an excellent spot.
Without exposing himself to passing cars or a farmer making his way across the field, he could take time with his preparation and take the shot without revealing his firing position. If anyone had been awake at such an early hour on a Sunday morning and heard a shot, they would have no idea where it came from and assume someone was shooting rabbits. If Katić believed his firing position to be hidden, safe and comfortable, it gave Matt confidence the gunman might have become complacent and left something behind he shouldn’t have.
He looked up and realised he’d walked too far, as now a pylon would have blocked Katić’s view of the progress of the balloon. He retraced his steps, walking backwards. In his mind’s eye, he saw the balloon rising up towards the electricity lines, the sniper reaching for his rifle and fine-tuning the sight, waiting, waiting until the slow-moving balloon reached the spot where he wanted it to be.
When Matt located what he believed to be the optimal firing position, one he would have used himself if asked to do so, he called Rosie over. He explained his logic and she agreed.
‘What now?’ she asked. ‘Search the undergrowth and see if we find anything like a spent bullet casing?’
‘No, he’s too wily to leave behind something so obvious, something else; maybe a chocolate wrapper or a piece of chewing gum.’
‘Yuck. I’m not picking up something like that without gloves.’
He gave her a look. ‘Rosie, you’re not picking up anything without gloves.’
They both dropped to their knees and parted the undergrowth, looking for something that didn’t belong. He realised with the area being used by walkers and horse riders, they could come across some of their discarded detritus, but the more they moved away from the bridleway the more he thought this wouldn’t be an issue.
Ten minutes later and finding nothing, Matt began to feel despondent. He could bring in a forensic team who were better at doing this sort of thing than they were, but even so, their deployment wouldn’t be straightforward. The Director would baulk at the cost of pursuing a lead with such weak evidence and Matt would look a royal prat if they found nothing.
He stood and stretched, his back muscles groaning at the effort.
‘Matt take a look at this.’
‘What is it?’ he said, making his way through the undergrowth in the direction of her voice.
‘Look there,’ she said pointing. ‘The ground appears more flattened than the area around it and I can see a couple of broken branches.’
Matt moved as close as he dared without compromising the scene. ‘So it is,’ he said, his voice betraying his interest. ‘Maybe he broke a few to improve his view.’
Matt dropped to his knees and started a fingertip search of the area, Rosie did the same. After a few minutes of fruitless searching he said, ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘I think you’re right,’ she said turning round. Her eyes narrowed, ‘What’s the white thing over there?’
‘Where?’
He followed her pointing finger and on spotting the item, parted the foliage around it. Rosie leaned down beside him and pulled out an evidence bag. She turned it inside out and, using it to cover her hand, lifted the cigarette butt. She held it up for Matt to see. A third of it remained, a cigarette break terminated before it could be completed.
‘Interesting, it’s not a filter tip, but plain. Few Brits smoke them nowadays,’ Matt said taking the evidence bag from her. ‘Is our man getting sloppy in his old age?’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘I can see some Cyrillic writing on the paper.’
‘Oh, listen to you the linguist,’ She said. ‘You told me you don’t speak any languages, not even the language of your grandparents.’
‘This looks like Russian but I also know Serbian can be written in Cyrillic.’
‘You should be on Mastermind with such an arcane knowledge of odd subject matter. But if it isn’t, we can still check it out for DNA as we’ve got Katić’s on file. How much do you want to bet we find a match?’
Chapter 11
Latif Artha smiled when he spotted signs for the motorway. He liked driving around the narrow country lanes of Wiltshire, admiring the big houses he passed and slowing down to take in some of the breath-taking scenery, but tired after a day’s work and desperate to reach London, the allure of the countryside paled in the moonlight.
He joined the M40, took his little car up to seventy-five miles and hour and relaxed for the first time today. The motorway was quiet at this time on a Friday night and with a bit of luck, he could maintain the inside lane position for some time, only moving over to the middle lane when he needed to or until he reached the busier sections of the road around High Wycombe. It wasn’t that he didn’t like speed, but his little Fiat 500, great for nipping around Swindon where he worked, didn’t move so fast. Any time he did venture over to the outside lane, a big aggressive Audi or BMW with darkened windows would come up close and harass him until he got out of the way.
He didn’t intend to be travelling this late but a developing crisis at the office delayed him. He worked for QuinTec, a military equipment testing company as a senior analyst. At one time the UK Government owned the business, but ten years ago they were spun-off into the private sector, their shares being sold through public auction. The Ministry of Defence, which at one time accounted for over ninety per cent of their turnover, were nowadays at less than twenty percent.
With their expertise in testing all manner of battlefield weapons, from rifles all the way to tanks and helicopters, QuinTec assisted governments all over the globe. With the cost of equipping even a small army running into millions of pounds, the price of their testing regime could be saved many times over. Over the last year, Artha and his colleagues prevented the German military from wasting money on an armoured car which was unsuitable for use in the Gulf as intended, and the French from investing millions in an anti-aircraft missile system that wasn’t accurate.
The office crisis centred around the Pulsar helicopter made by the US defence company, Dragon Technologies. A former pilot with the RAF Search and Rescue Service, Artha was responsible for testing the aircraft on behalf of the MOD, and the customer was entitled to accept or reject their findings as they saw fit. His report included criticism of the Arrow Battle System, the advanced multi-barrel weapon boasting accuracy that claimed to save over seventy per cent on ammunition costs.
He couldn’t fault the weapon system’s accuracy nor the claims about savings made by Dragon, but when selecting certain sequences of barrels, for example, an armoured-piercing bullet to attack a car, and then switching to normal ammunition, and back again, the weapon would lock. If the pilot was using voice control and continued to utter the ‘fire’ command, as he would in a tense battle situation, the system would suddenly switch to ‘auto’ mode. This ceded all control to ABS, the system automatically selecting and firing at targets as its stored and learned parameters determined. The pilot couldn’t turn it off, a full system re-boot back at base being the only solution.
In a busy area like a marketplace in Iraq or a city in Syria this could have catastrophic consequences. ABS, whether attuned to the pilot’s target criteria or not, would start selecting targets based on the reasoning of its artificial intelligence: the tall bearded guy with a satchel over his shoulder, the woman reaching into her burqa for money to pay a stall holder, the dark car travelling fast with four local government officials inside.
This had all been explained to Dragon and while he could understand their reluctance at trying to find such a fault in over five million lines of software code, he couldn’t understand them telling him the barrel shooting sequences he selected were unrealistic. This was a smoke-screen as he had found the malfunction without a great deal of investigation. What else would be revealed if he tried a bit harder?
When the MOD first received the QuinTec report they accepted the findings and their interest in Pulsar waned. A few months later, a number of MOD personnel were invited to observe demonstrations and overnight their reluctance disappeared. They now wanted to buy Pulsar.
Not only did they want to buy it, they would not listen to any criticism of the aircraft, no matter how lofty or intelligent the person uttering it. The MOD were QuinTec’s customer and, like any customer, could do whatever they liked with their report. However, in this instance Pulsar was being purchased using UK taxpayer’s money and the report would be of interest to a wider audience than a few military analysts at the MOD. Hence the terse meeting earlier this evening where the MOD had told QuinTec they wanted Artha to rewrite his damning report.
The MOD couldn’t move ahead with their purchase of the aircraft without the approval of their ministerial masters, and the UK government wouldn’t give the go-ahead with the spectre of Artha’s report falling into the hands of the opposition. Not only did the MOD fear a leak from within their organisation, but Artha was the author of a military blog where he posted information about QuinTec’s testing regime and occasionally some non-confidential equipment test results, several of which had found their way into national newspapers. Nothing about Pulsar had been posted yet and that’s the way it would stay if he valued his job, according to QuinTec’s Technical Director who collared Artha after the meeting.
To add fuel to this otherwise volatile chemical mix, he was on the way to see his boyfriend, Derek Spencer, Member of Parliament for Manchester Ashton. Derek was a backbencher and took a keen interest in defence matters. He coveted the Defence brief, at present the preserve of Simon Crosby, a lazy bugger who did little, but a man with the ear and confidence of the Prime Minister.
If Derek sensed the whiff of a cover-up he would quiz Artha until he revealed something, and the QuinTec analyst was bound to let something slip as he believed the MOD were playing dirty. It was a dangerous game to play as it wasn’t beyond large organisations put in this position to try and smear his reputation. In his nightmares, he cringed at the thought of the lurid headlines: Gay MP in Military Slip; Defence Secrets Exchanged Between the Sheets.
The Chairman of QuinTec had now become involved. Despite starting the meeting this evening assuring his colleagues he was opposed to bowing to pressure from the MOD, his attitude softened after the firm’s accountants warned of the damaging effect the loss of their business and those of customers within their realm of influence would be. Latif had been sent away for the weekend to ‘consider his options’, a veiled threat to fire him if he didn’t re-write the report, or at the very least, tone down his criticism of Pulsar. With the level of anger he felt now, he wouldn’t alter a word. He needed to meet Derek and listen to his wise counsel.
Looking around in the dark night, he realised he wasn’t alone. A black vehicle in the middle lane kept pace with him. It could have been there for the last few minutes for all he knew, as his mind was wandering, the last five miles or so driven on auto-pilot. He watched it more closely now. Driving at the same speed as him, the black car made no attempt to motor ahead or slip in behind him; strange behaviour as the motorway was otherwise deserted.
The same thing happened in cinema and supermarket car parks. He would park at the back, not wishing to join the scramble for a slot closer to the door, and in a sea of empty spaces, a car would park in the space next to him. Perhaps the black car was being driven by some elderly man or woman, scared to be driving on a rural motorway by themselves at this hour of the night and comforted to see another car beside them.
Part of him, the part that felt compelled to help the old or infirm remove their bags from overhead lockers in planes, and donated money to Age Concern, didn’t mind their presence; but the practical part of his brain did. His head was in turmoil and he needed wriggle room if he lost concentration and the car started to wander across the carriageway. He eased his foot from the accelerator and reduced his speed to seventy. Like two cars tied together by a giant elastic band, the black car eased ahead before pulling back and returning to its tandem position.
A few minutes later, they reached a long downhill stretch causing his car to speed up, a feat not possible on level ground. As before, his companion did the same. He was about to honk his horn in disapproval, when the black car slewed across the carriageway and bashed into his.
‘Hey!’ he shouted but the words strangled in his throat as his car shot off the motorway and hurtled into the dark, enveloping countryside.
It burst through low-lying gorse and up an embankment. The steering wheel started to spin wildly in his hand and, to his horror, he realised the ground below him had disappeared, the car sailing through the open air as if flying. It flipped over, nose down, fell to the earth with an ear-splitting thump and bounced high into the air. It turned upside down and smashed into a large, jagged rock, the remnants of a long-abandoned quarry.
Chapter 12
Rosie Fox yawned and stretched and would have liked nothing better than to put her feet on the desk and fall asleep. Her employers were tolerant of many things, but it didn’t include sleeping at desks. She’d gone to bed at a reasonable hour but her partner, Andrew, had got up at four to captain an early morning flight to Alicante. It wouldn’t be so bad if he walked around the house quietly, but he stomped up and down stairs as if there was a fire and clanked his spoon against his cereal bowl as if testing the durability of the porcelain.
She wouldn’t mind the disruption if he made her happy in other ways, but some of his habits were getting on her nerves and were at the heart of their last few fights. Before meeting her, he’d attended boarding school and while at university, lived in catered accommodation for all three years, but she didn’t expect him to be quite so inept at ironing, cooking, cleaning and DIY.
She wasn’t without blame as she was guilty of leaving the food shop until the cupboards and fridge were bare, or borrowing money from his car park ‘change’ jar and forgetting to pay it back. She had gone to university too and lived with three girls who all took a share of the household duties and while at home during the holidays, her mother insisted she ‘mucked’ in. If she couldn’t or wouldn’t help, her mother would do it but in the Harlow house, if she didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.
Matt Flynn wasn’t in the office today, out doing what, she didn’t know. She didn’t mind as his strengths were out in the field, not stuck in here doing paperwork and following up on any research being conducted on their behalf. She had been researching crime scenes in the county of Oxfordshire, spreading the net way beyond the boundaries of the city of Oxford, but none of the incidents uncovered required the services of a crack Serbian sniper.
She stood and looked over the partitions. She spotted Sikandar Khosa at his desk and walked over. Short and beefy and wearing a ‘SlashMetal on Tour’ t-shirt, a bit faded and looking as though it had been worn many times before, he often supped Coke and ate chocolate bars while he worked. He claimed they were an occasional treat, but whenever Rosie walked past he’d just finished eating or was part-way through another.
She leaned her arm on the dividing partition. ‘Morning Siki. Ah, you’re now into Picnic bars. I used to like them when I was a kid.’
‘Oh, hi Rosie,’ he said in a voice a couple of octaves higher than most people expected, given his sizeable frame. ‘I didn’t hear your stealth-like approach. I thought they’d stopped making them, but a mate of mine put me onto a sweet shop in Tottenham Court Road. Damn addictive they are, I can tell you.’
‘If you were into drugs, you’d be dead by now.’
‘Chocolate is just as bad,’ he said screwing the paper up into a ball and scoring a direct hit into the bin. ‘What can I do for you today?’
‘The cigarette butt recovered from the field in Oxford. Have you received the result yet?’
‘Nope, and if I did you’d be first on my list to tell.’
‘I know Siki, but I need this. Could you check, please?’ she said nodding at the phone.
He reached for it. ‘How can I resist your persuasive charms? Let me call my contact.’ His podgy fingers prodded the handset with surprising dexterity, entering a number from memory.
The guy on the other end of the line had to be from the same part of Pakistan as Siki, as the HSA researcher lapsed into a language she didn’t understand. It included much chuckling and laughing from the guy he was calling, expressions not often associated with members of the forensics fraternity. A few minutes later, Siki screeched something into the handset which to her sounded like an insult, even though he was still smiling before slamming the phone down, making her jump.
‘My God, that man can talk, but I suppose I would be the same if I only had dead bodies and tissue samples to look at all day long.’
‘Aside from a discussion about your old schoolmates or whatever you guys talked about, did you get around to mentioning the cigarette butt they’re supposed to be analysing?’
‘Cigarette butt? Shit I forgot to ask and he’s just gone out with his kid brother for the afternoon. He won’t be back in the lab for two days.’
‘Siki, how could you? I need it for–’
‘Gotcha!’ he said pointing at her face. ‘Ha, ha. You should see your expression; classic.’
‘You sod,’ she said, trying to give him a slap on the shoulder which he nimbly avoided.
‘You don’t fall for it often, Rosie, but when you do, it’s hook, line and sinker.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Come on now, what’s the story?’
‘Are you ready for this?’
‘C’mon, Siki, you’ve had your fun.’
He took a deep breath, milking it. ‘The DNA sample from the cigarette butt matches…’ He drummed his hands on the desk, ‘our old friend, Dejan Katić.’
