Cold Courage (10 page)

The location of the Well changed frequently, generally being housed either on old, disused servers or servers whose operating systems used outdated technology and which the companies or government authorities in question no longer bothered to protect. Using servers like this was a hacker’s bread and butter. Usernames for the Well and access to its files were encrypted and stored on yet another separate server.

One of the important features of the Well was that cracked
security
systems only stayed visible for a short time. What was available in the Well was different every day. The purpose was not to make money or do damage but to share information.

But you had to work in the field for a long time and catch the eye of more experienced operators before you could even get close to the first gateway. When someone did finally gain access, he felt a responsibility to use the Well’s information with due respect for the work of those who gathered it.

‘What happens if someone talks?’ Lia asked.

‘Nothing like that has ever happened. If someone did that, he would never work in the field again. Angry computer wizards would track him down and pummel his every movement on the net.’

‘Can they really do that?’

‘Yeah, you can track just about anything a person does if you have enough firepower behind you.’

Rico nodded out into the room, and Lia realised he meant his computers.

‘Aren’t you breaking the rules by telling me about the Well?’ Lia asked light-heartedly.

‘Yes, actually,’ Rico said just as cheerfully. ‘But you don’t have access to it. And if you told someone else about it, they would probably just think you were paranoid.’

Even most experts who worked at computer security firms considered the existence of a site like the Well impossible.

‘And besides,’ Rico added as if stating a truism, ‘the fact that you’re here means Mari has decided you’re safe.’

‘And I am,’ Lia said. ‘I know so little I couldn’t be a risk to anyone.’

Rico smiled, taking off his bizarre glasses and rubbing his eyes.

‘These things make my head feel funny,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe they need a little more refinement.’

Rico showed Lia around the machines in the room. Some of them were programmed to track people or organisations whose information could be of use to the Studio. Rico didn’t want to name them, but he proudly mentioned that they included two British police forces and three international communications companies.

A few dedicated machines secured Mari’s, Rico’s and the others’ computer traffic, monitored possible attempts to break through their security and kept watch over the office. No one outside could circumvent the measures he had put in place, Rico assured her. He also had a backup electrical generator, so the only thing that could crash the system was an explosion that took out the entire floor of the building. For internal Studio communication, Rico had developed an instant messaging application with direct access to all their computers and mobile phones so they could stay in constant contact.

‘And here are my Mills.’

The Mills were machines Rico used to produce websites, online discussion boards and web histories for use in organising gigs. He showed her an example of how a program was monitoring aeroplane enthusiast discussion boards and using them to create new content. If you read the messages that the Mills created closely, you might notice that some of them were linguistically simplistic or copied from other online discussions. But these
creations
served their purpose: people usually only glanced at web pages, and if they didn’t look very high quality, they moved on to other pages – believing they had seen genuine discussion threads.

‘So if we wanted to create discussion online about you, for example, the program would sprinkle mentions of Lia Pajala here and there. Your name would appear in an old message on one of these aeroplane sites and a list from five years ago of people someone remembered attending a convention.’

And thus Lia would have an online history, which it would be difficult to prove was fake.

Lia listened, her head spinning. Finally she changed the subject.

‘How did you and Mari meet?’

A smile flitted across Rico’s face.

‘Hasn’t Mari told you?’

It had happened four years before.

‘I was a lazy hacker bum. I wasn’t really doing anything, just spending most of my time hanging around BigSmoke.’

BigSmoke was one of London’s hacker spaces, the type of
semi-public
meeting place for hackers you could find in any metropolis around the world. Any hacker who joined could come and sit, mess around online and trade information.

‘Of course almost all of us were young men.’

Sometimes hackerspaces held open houses when anyone could drop in. Usually there weren’t many guests, but one day Mari turned up. A whole room of men fell silent in an instant.

‘Because she was a woman?’

‘No, because she was a
woman
.’

Attractive, under the age of thirty, and coming to ask about computers, Mari elicited an almost comical reaction.

‘There wasn’t a bloke there who wasn’t falling all over himself to help her. And get her phone number. Except me.’

‘What do you mean, “except you”?’

‘I could tell just by looking at her that she wasn’t interested in that. She was really looking for someone to work.’

Mari had said she was looking for a person who knew websites and information systems. That had failed to narrow the range of potential helpers at all. But she chose one from the crowd.

‘They exchanged numbers. And then you should have seen the winding up he got the rest of the night.’

Mari called the next day, but not to ask the man for help.

‘She asked him for my number,’ Rico grinned. ‘That’s how it started. Pretty quickly I knew I wanted to be a part of this.’

In the middle of Rico’s story, Mari appeared at the door and motioned for Lia to follow her.

‘Rico is lovely,’ Lia said.

‘I knew you would like him.’

Paddy was waiting in Mari’s office.

‘Patrick Moore,’ he said, hand outstretched.

He was large, with broad shoulders; keen eyes peered out from below Paddy’s buzz cut and strong brow.

‘What do you think of the Studio?’ Paddy asked.

‘Hard to say. It’s the most unique workplace I’ve ever seen. Confusing and exciting.’

‘I think this is the best place to work I can imagine,’ Paddy said and smiled at Mari. ‘Unfortunately for me there just isn’t enough work here for me to live on it.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Mari said. ‘I pay you better than anyone else. It just isn’t enough to support your wanton lifestyle.’

Paddy laughed.

‘I play poker. And sometimes I like to fly to far-off places,’ he explained to Lia.

‘To escape gambling debts,’ Mari said.

Paddy laughed again, and Lia almost thought she could sense some sort of tension between them.

Soon Paddy excused himself, and Mari collapsed on the sofa next to Lia, pulling her legs up under herself.

‘I’ll get right to the point. Arthur Fried – did you find anything?’

Lia spoke about the vanilla offerings of the news archives and her conversation with Timothy Phelps. Mari was interested in Timothy’s thoughts.

‘The marriage is a good observation. There is something fake about them, some kind of acting. We’ll have to dig into the wife as well.’

Lia said that even after reading so much about him, she still didn’t understand why Fried was supposed to be Satan. What was this all about?

‘I can’t say yet,’ Mari said.

For the time being she simply had a firm conviction that Fried was worse than he looked.

‘I don’t want to ruin his personal life. What I want is to cut off his political career so thoroughly he could never make a comeback.’

‘And if you’re wrong? What if he’s just one extremist conservative politician among many?’

‘I know that this sounds strange, but so far I’ve never been wrong. If we just dig deep enough, we’ll find some dirt on Fried. But just one revelation won’t be enough; an operator like him could recover from that.’

At its apex, politics was extremely unkind, but, based as it was on reputation and charisma, politicians often survived crises. If one unfortunate thing came out about a popular elected official, the party protected him and the electorate didn’t necessarily lose
confidence
. After several scandals, however, supporters started trickling away. No one working in politics wanted to have anything to do with someone who had lost his reputation.

‘And I want Fried out of the game permanently.’

Making a brilliant return after stumbling was not at all
unheard-of
for politicians. All they needed was to wait a year or two for people to forget. Strangely enough, surviving some cock-ups could even be seen as a benefit for a politician. As if in losing his position a decision-maker also gained life experience.

Mari asked Lia to continue, encouraging her to make note of everything that might lead to evidence that Fried was not as squeaky clean as he made himself out to be. Mari and the others at the Studio were also researching other channels.

‘And what about Holborn Circus? Have you had time to think about that?’ Lia asked, changing gears.

‘Actually, I have a meeting at a pub tonight related to that. Do you want to join me?’

They walked to The Rake. Along the way, Mari told Lia about the man they were going to meet.

He was not a particularly charming person, but he had one important virtue: he knew people in the London underworld, and he sold his information to anyone who had money and whose own connections could be useful to him. Mari had acquired information from him before.

‘He collaborates with the police too; he’s an informer.’

They ordered sandwiches and beer. Mari said that the man’s nickname 
was Big K.

‘Don’t ask why, because I haven’t the foggiest. He isn’t even very big.’

About fifty years old, Big K was fleshy but not rotund. As he sat down at their table with a pint in hand, Lia thought he looked
relatively
normal, if you didn’t think an earring and a ruddy complexion were abnormal.

‘Evening. Long time no see,’ Big K said.

The Rake was a very small pub but so full of people and noise that they didn’t have to worry about other customers overhearing. Mari greeted Big K and introduced Lia as her friend.

‘The price is the same no matter how many people listen,’ Big K said.

He said he had made a few phone calls.

‘The results weren’t great. Of course, the value depends on how you interpret it,’ he added.

No one in any of the usual professional crime circles seemed to know who was behind the brutal Holborn Circus murder. The
visibility
and unorthodox nature of the act made it unusual.

‘People who do things like this generally put the word out, or you just recognise who did it. The big gangs have established methods, and the little capers that junkies get up to are always the same, you know.’

But no one knew why anyone would crush a woman with a steamroller.

‘Or whatever they used. Maybe a city highways department workman who was sick of his wife nagging him did it.’

Lia glanced at Mari. What a pleasant chap.

But he did have one potential scrap of information.

‘One friend had heard that the woman was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, Poland or Estonia or Latvia.’

Lia said nothing, despite a strong desire to correct him.

That was already in the news, that she was probably from Latvia. But I don’t imagine criminal types keep up with the police beat.

Big K continued.

‘I heard that there were several whores involved, maybe from Latvia. That would explain how she got into such nasty trouble.
And even though no one knew anything about the guy who did it, they said the body was a message. They didn’t want to make all of London shit its trousers, just one specific person or group.’

And that was all, he said and took a slurp of his beer.

Mari nodded, removing from her bag an envelope and offering it to him. Big K glanced in the envelope, nodded in turn and left without a word.

Lia waited for Mari to say something, but she was concentrating on her sandwich.

‘It seems like you were right,’ Lia finally said. ‘I can’t think how that could help us move forward. She may have been a Latvian prostitute, or Eastern European. Plenty of those around.’

‘No, there was nothing concrete in that to follow up on. That’s what this is like – you put out feelers in different directions and wait for something to break,’ Mari said. ‘I could ask Paddy to ask his sources about Latvian prostitutes, but Big K is better in that respect. Paddy knows former criminals, Big K knows current ones.’

They were silent again for a moment.

‘Any ideas?’ Lia asked.

‘Yes, one,’ Mari said. ‘The best thing would be to speak with the detectives investigating the case.’

‘But you didn’t want to contact the police!’ Lia said.

‘And I don’t. But this seems like a dead end. If this is important to you, we have to look at all the possibilities. Even the difficult ones. Go and see the police.’

‘Why would they tell me anything? I’m a complete bystander.’

‘Maybe they won’t. But when people ask direct questions, they get direct answers surprisingly often. That trait seems to be inbuilt in us somehow. We want to give people what they hope for from us.’

Lia was hesitant.

‘What if they just take me for a daft woman obsessed with lurid crimes?’

‘That isn’t very far from the truth,’ Mari said grinning. ‘Care for another?’

The grey office block of the City of London Police at 37 Wood Street had probably been an imposing building in its time. Crushed between the modern business towers of the Square Mile, it looked small and insignificant.

Lia had taken the morning off work for this. Two days before, she had rung the police telephone exchange and enquired which unit was investigating the Holborn Circus murder.

She was told that each area of London had its own homicide unit. The City’s own detectives always investigated murders that occurred within the district.

‘Do you have information to offer related to the case?’ the woman asked in a routine tone.

‘No. I just wanted to talk to a detective,’ Lia answered.

Prior arrangement was always required for any meetings, the operator informed her. They didn’t connect phone calls directly to detectives.

Even so, Lia had decided to drop in at the police station, trusting she would be able to meet someone.

Once she reached Wood Street, however, her hope diminished. The building’s reception area was tiny, with a group of people crowded before a counter of worn, dark wood. No chairs, no turn numbers, not even organised queues. Standing behind the counter, two police officers did what they could to straighten out the crush of clients. The place oozed with boredom and wasted time.

Lia felt as though she were in entirely the wrong place, adrift despite her focused mission.

She decided to queue in front of the older, male officer; the younger officer, a middle-aged woman, looked too bored. She waited twenty minutes or more. For one patron after another, the two civil servants sought forms and quickly scribbled on scraps of paper numbers for them to ring.

When Lia’s turn came up, she greeted the policeman warmly.

‘Good day.’

‘It’s just got much better,’ the man said with a smile. ‘How may I be of service?’

‘If I could, I’d like to see one of the detectives investigating the case of the body found in the car on Holborn Circus.’

‘That sounds like a perfectly reasonable request, but it may be difficult in practice,’ the officer said, explaining that detectives didn’t take tip-offs from citizens face-to-face – she would have to ring or send an email to the police central office.

‘I don’t have a tip. I just want to ask a few questions. It won’t take long.’

The policeman looked at her more closely. The woman next to him also glanced at Lia, and Lia could see from the motion of the policewoman’s head what she was signalling to her colleague: get rid of her.

Lia looked the man straight in the eyes.

‘Is that so?’ the man said. ‘Is that so?’

Lia comprehended how thoroughly he evaluated her in those two seconds.

‘What if we do this?’ he continued. ‘I’ll try to call one of the detectives, and if he decides to give you a moment, you can ask your questions. If he says no, you have to be satisfied with that. What was your name?’

‘Lia Pajala. And yes, that would be lovely,’ Lia said with relief. She smiled at the policeman again, adding an extra sparkle for his stern colleague.

After looking up a phone number on his computer, the officer made the call. Lia waited, looking at the man’s soft, friendly face and ears, from which grew long hairs that he, like so many other ageing men, for some reason felt no need to trim.

No one answered.

Lia was sure that the man standing behind the counter was also a little disappointed.

‘And Detective Chief Inspector Gerrish hasn’t noted any
information
in his public calendar,’ the officer said. ‘He simply may not have arrived yet, or he may not be coming in at all today.’

‘Is only one detective investigating the case?’

After glancing at his computer screen again, the officer explained the process of an investigation. Such large cases in the City were always dealt with by one of the larger criminal investigation units,
which consisted of around twenty police officers. When a body was found, they set up an incident room, a physical location where all the information was collected. All leads received by phone or by police patrols were directed there. But since the case had gone so long without any resolution, at this point only two detectives were working on it any more, one of whom, Detective Chief Inspector Gerrish, was leading the investigation. For one or two officers to take sole responsibility for a case after the initial crime scene
investigation
and other large-scale operations were finished was perfectly normal.

‘Britain doesn’t seem to have the resources to do it any other way.’

‘Fortunately Britain seems to have excellent police officers in her service,’ Lia said. ‘Would there be any use in waiting a moment for Gerrish to arrive at work?’

‘No telling. But go ahead if you like.’

Lia flashed the man her most beautiful smile, thanking him and moving aside.

While she waited, she watched the creeping press of patrons. Some of the visitors were exasperated, but the officers serving at the counter seemed to have a superhuman ability to keep their cool.

Lia had never been forced to transact any complicated business with the British authorities. As an EU citizen, she had not even needed to request a work or residency permit when she moved to England. At the police station, she quickly saw how happy her position was: the greatest problem facing the people crowding the reception area was not crime, it was the paperwork jungle.

Another twenty minutes passed, and Lia considered leaving. The policeman noticed and motioned for her to jump the queue.

‘Let’s try one more time,’ he said and punched the number into his phone.

When someone answered immediately, Lia perked up. The policeman explained the situation and then waited. The reply was clearly negative. But the policeman winked at Lia and continued the conversation.

‘Listen, Gerrish, are you any more busy today than any other day? This young lady says she’ll be quick, and she looks like a woman who keeps her promises. S-3, I would say.’

Lia’s eyebrow went up upon hearing this code word. The line went silent. Then from the other end came a resigned, ‘OK.’

‘You can have fifteen minutes,’ the policeman said to Lia.

Lia extended her hand.

‘Lia Pajala,’ she said, introducing herself again. ‘Graphic designer from Finland.’

‘Lionel Rowe,’ the man replied. ‘Copper from Croydon.’

A few minutes later, a man of about thirty appeared in the reception area. Lionel Rowe waved Lia over to him.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Peter Gerrish. What was your business?’

‘I’d like to ask you about the Holborn Circus murder.’

‘Why?’

Lia was flummoxed. She had prepared a snappy answer to this obvious question, of course, but now, confronted by the impatient police detective, it eluded her.

‘I’ve just been thinking about it a lot,’ she finally said.

‘I hope you aren’t one of these women who think they can guess who murderers are in their dreams,’ Gerrish said. His tone said that he had met more than one person who fitted this description.

‘No, I’m not,’ Lia said. ‘Just fifteen minutes.’

The detective eyed her mistrustfully.

‘That balding bloke wobbling behind the counter over there is one of the best policemen I’ve ever known. If Lionel Rowe thinks that I should let you ask your questions, I’m inclined to do so. Follow me.’

Without waiting for a response, Detective Chief Inspector Gerrish started across the lobby. Lia hurried after him. Briskly they proceeded to the other side of the building, through a door the man opened with a pass he carried around his neck, and then up two flights of stairs. Lia only had time to read the sign on the door into the corridor that led to Gerrish’s office: Major Investigations Team.

‘Sit,’ Gerrish said when they entered his office. ‘Ask your
questions
.’

The room was full of papers and files. Lia sat in the visitor’s chair, the upholstery of which was so worn that the stuffing showed through.

‘I saw the car on Holborn Circus. I don’t have any eyewitness testimony that would help you though, because I only saw it from the bus,’ Lia began.

‘Did you see the body?’

‘No. But the case has stuck in my mind, and I wanted to come and ask about it because… Because it just felt like someone on the outside needed to be thinking about this woman too. Everyone else has already forgotten her.’

Gerrish said nothing; he only looked at Lia seriously.

‘I’ve read all the news reports about the case, and they’ve contained almost no information. Have you discovered anything about who she was?’

Gerrish sighed, growing even more sombre.

‘This was such a brutal murder that it’s anyone’s guess,’ he said. ‘This is also an unusual case in that the body was dumped during morning rush hour in the middle of the City, but we still don’t have any real leads. Every deadline my superiors give me for getting results passes with nothing new to report. And now I’m going to have to ask for more time again. Is that sufficient?’

Lia shook her head.

‘I’m sorry to be taking up your time. But I’m not a crackpot, and I’m not a murderer groupie. If you don’t want to tell me anything, I can leave.’

‘Are you a reporter?’ Gerrish asked.

‘No,’ Lia replied. She had intended to tell him she worked at
Level
but now left it out. ‘I’m a professional graphic designer. Just a normal person who wants to think about this case.’

Gerrish asked to see Lia’s identification and jotted down her national insurance number on his computer. Instead of returning her card immediately, he stared at it.

‘All the bells in London,’ he said, a little wistfully.

Lia stared at Gerrish in confusion, and he continued.

‘All the bells in London, all the cells in London. All the tears in London, all the fears in London.’

‘Where is that from?’ Lia asked.

‘I don’t know. Part of a longer rhyme. They read it to us when we were young. Not here in London, in Manchester. Seemed to me it
was saying something about how short life is and how much trouble a person can find in it. Don’t borrow sorrow from tomorrow, our old vicar used to say.’

‘I like that. It sounds like something that would have brought a lot of people comfort over the years.’

‘What I’m saying is that you don’t have anything to do with this crime. But you’re still choosing to carry this sorrow,’ Gerrish said, unable to conceal the ridicule in his voice.

Lia flinched, as if he had slapped her across the face. A stinging, naked shame filled her.

She realised how tired Gerrish must be.

His job is accepting death. And then trying to explain its logic to others.

Yet still, Lia’s small sorrow didn’t merit such condescending
treatment
. True, she had chosen this sorrow, but his disdain was
unnecessarily
hurtful. Indignantly she stared at Gerrish.

The smile disappeared from the corners of his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then opened them again.

‘I’m sorry. People should think about crimes and what can be done about them. Too few people bother.’

‘I read that the woman may have been Latvian. I’ve also heard that she may have been a prostitute,’ Lia said.

‘That’s a reporter’s trick for trying to get a detective to shoot his mouth off,’ Gerrish said sharply.

Lia went quiet.

‘If I tell you something about what I know, can I be sure I won’t find it online or in the news later?’ Gerrish demanded.

‘Yes, you can.’

‘Right, then. As you know, we determined that the victim was Latvian. We publicised that because we expected the uncommon nationality to prompt more tips from the public. It didn’t. You said you saw the Volvo. Do you know how the body looked, exactly what was in the car?’

Lia swallowed, remaining silent.

Gerrish spoke quickly without waiting for any reaction.

‘When a person is crushed with a steamroller, nothing stays intact. It’s like everything bursts and loses its shape.’

He described the pathology findings in detail. The woman’s tissues, her organs, everything had been flattened. Whoever did it had driven over the woman several times – the medical examiners had deduced that from how the body was smashed: the tissues showed stress marks in different directions. Most of the victim’s blood had been squeezed out and flowed away, and of course the large bones were crushed to powder.

‘But, oddly enough, many of the smaller bones weren’t pulverised, they just broke into smaller pieces.’

The detailed description made Lia feel ill, but she ordered herself to get a grip.

The forensic pathologist had determined that the surface on which the woman was crushed influenced the result, Gerrish told her. The terrain had been soft, fresh asphalt that gave a little under the body.

‘That was why parts of the skin were preserved and some small things like the fingernails were almost undamaged. Both the
fingernails
and toenails were painted.’

Lia felt tears welling up.

I’m not going to cry. I can cry about this later but not right now.

‘Do you know anything about the place where it happened?’ she asked.

Not much, Gerrish admitted. There had been fresh asphalt, but the particles that adhered to the body mass were a composition used all over the country. The presence of the asphalt and the use of the roller indicated a road construction site had been the scene of the murder.

‘But in theory it could have happened anywhere tarmac had been resurfaced recently. Even in the drive in front of a house, if they might have been able to do it without the neighbours noticing.’

The police had investigated all the building sites in the Greater London area, because the remnants of the body had only been in the car for about twenty-four hours. There had been sixteen such sites, but none of them had shown any evidence of the crime.

Gerrish still believed that it happened at a construction site though. The perpetrator had shovelled most of the body onto a plastic tarpaulin, which he then lifted into the boot of the Volvo.