Читать книгу Newton’s Fire - Will Adams - Страница 14

FOUR

I

Rachel Parkes rested the tea tray on an upraised knee as she turned the doorknob of Professor Armstrong’s office, pushed it open and then hurried through, setting the tray down gratefully on the edge of his oak desk so that she could finally scratch the tip of her nose, which had been itching dreadfully all the way up the stairs.

‘Not there,’ sighed the professor, taking off his reading glasses as he looked up from his paperwork. ‘The coffee table.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I mean, you do realize why they call it a coffee table? It’s not just a whim, you know.’

‘I had an itch,’ she told him. ‘On my nose.’

‘How fascinating,’ he said. ‘Do you have any other bodily sensations you wish to tell me about?’

‘Not currently, Professor,’ she said, transferring the tray as requested. ‘But I can keep you informed.’

He shook his head at her as he came over to the table, poured himself a cup. ‘You call this tea?’ he asked.

‘That’s what it claimed on the box.’

‘I’ll be glad when Karen gets back.’

‘Me, too.’

His eyes narrowed; his lips pinched tight. ‘How’s the budget report?’ he asked. ‘I trust you’ll have it ready for me this evening, as you promised.’

‘I never promised it this evening,’ she said. ‘I promised it first thing tomorrow.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘If there’s no difference, you won’t mind waiting.’

‘I’d like to look it over at home tonight.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. I have my appointment.’

‘Your appointment? Today may be a Sunday, Miss Parkes, but it’s still a workday.’

‘You knew about this. I cleared it last week.’

‘Remind me.’

Behind her back, Rachel clenched a fist. He knew exactly where she was going, and why. He just wanted to make her say it for some perverse reason of his own, perhaps so that he could deliver another lecture on the folly of Afghanistan, graveyard of empires. Damned if she’d let him use her brother that way. Damned if she would. ‘It’s private,’ she said. ‘And the budget report will be on your desk first thing tomorrow, as I promised.’

‘I plan to be in very early.’

‘It will be waiting for you.’ She nodded a little too curtly, tried to soften it with an afterthought of a smile. But he wasn’t even looking at her any more. He simply waved her away with a patronising little flick of his right hand, then stirred a pinch of sugar into his tea.

II

Max Walters – the man who’d called himself Steven – burst from the trees expecting to see Luke; but there was no sign of him, just an overgrown glade bordered by fields and a derelict MOD compound. He swore beneath his breath. The fierceness of the chase had kept him from thinking about the old woman, but now his mind went back to her. He felt no remorse. She’d brought her fate on herself by sending that email. However, he did regret the shit-storm it was likely to kick off.

He tried to game it out. Luke would call the police, that was for sure, and the police would visit the house to check his story out. The smashed window, the broken roof tiles and guttering would all corroborate his account. And they hadn’t thought to wear gloves, so they’d have left their fingerprints everywhere. His own were on the police database for various youthful follies, and both Kieran and Pete had records too. This was a total fucking disaster. Then he remembered that Luke had form of his own. It was one of the reasons he’d hired him in the first place, for just such an eventuality as this. He had no idea of Walters’ real name, and his only point of contact with him was via an anonymous email address that would be easy enough to scrub. He began to glimpse a way out of this.

‘Any sign?’ he called out to Kieran, who was wading through the ferns and nettles, looking for Luke.

Kieran shook his head. ‘He has to be in here somewhere. If he’d gone for the fields, we’d have spotted him for sure.’

‘But what if he has got away? What if he’s calling the police right now?’

‘How? His mobile was in his jacket pocket back in the attic.’

‘What if he meets someone? What if he finds a house or a payphone?’

Kieran nodded gloomily. ‘We need to get out of here.’

They turned, began jogging their way back.

‘The email the old bat sent,’ asked Walters. ‘Any way to tell if this Rachel Parkes woman has seen it yet?’

‘Not unless she replies. She hadn’t when I looked.’

‘But she’s likely to, right? An email like that, a sweet old biddy asking her for help.’

‘I’d have thought so.’

‘Then let’s assume she hasn’t got it yet. So if we can delete it somehow, she’ll never even know it was sent, right?’

‘Easier said than done. We can’t do it remotely, not unless she’s been incredibly sloppy with her passwords. 123456. RachelP. Shit like that. I can run through the most-likelies, but we’d have to get extremely lucky. And her service provider will lock us out if we get it wrong too often. Then she’ll know for sure that something stinks.’

‘So give me a better idea.’

‘We send her another email from the old bat. Have her say that her account’s been hacked and that her last email was a virus, please delete it without opening. Or we could even attach a Trojan to it ourselves.’

‘And what happens if Parkes finds out that the old girl was already dead when that email was sent?’

‘There’s no way of doing this clean and fast,’ said Kieran. ‘This is lesser-of-evils’ territory we’re in.’

‘Fuck!’ Walters made to punch a tree, but that wouldn’t help. ‘What if she lives locally? What if we could get inside her house?’

‘Then it would be a piece of piss,’ nodded Kieran. ‘Everyone keeps themselves permanently logged in these days. Nine times out of ten, you just turn on the first device you find and you’re in. Even if not, I can easily hack in or rig something up. Something untraceable.’

‘You’ve got your kit with you?’

‘In the car. Never leave home without it.’

‘Good,’ said Walters. ‘Then let’s get busy. We’ve got work to do.’