Crusher (21 page)

The computer screen leaped into life, dazzling me momentarily. The desktop was an amazingly vivid image of Tower Bridge at dusk, all glowing lights and reflections off the river. I must have jogged the mouse with the in-tray and woken the PC up from standby, but there was no lock screen, no password, nothing. I knew Eccles hated technology and liked preparing everything by hand, but this seemed like overdoing it. I wondered how often he even used this computer. The keyboard was spotless, practically brand-new, and the icons on the screen seemed the standard ones you see on every new PC—rubbish bin, browser, a shortcut to the maker’s website … and
RTTracker
? I looked more closely at that.

Its icon was a cartoon of a lorry in a crosshair. When I double-clicked on it a log-in dialogue appeared, both fields automatically prefilled:
User: ECCLES_IRONBRIDGE, Password:
a row of dots. I clicked the
Log-in
button.

Almost instantly the screen filled with squiggly yellow lines on a beige background, centred on a flashing red dot with a white label. Thicker orange lines crossed diagonally from the top left to the bottom right of the screen, where they met a wobbly orange circle. There were lots of labels and words and numbers, but none of them made any sense to me. I clicked on a picture of a magnifying glass with a dash in it, and the image zoomed out. Of course—it was a map. The different coloured lines were roads. But a map of where? I zoomed out again. The yellow roads vanished, and green roads appeared, snaking around the shrinking orange circle. And in the middle of the wobbly orange circle a single word appeared bigger than all the others:
Paris
.

It was France, where Eccles’s van went every week. And that flashing red dot, heading for Paris, was his van. It must have been fitted with a tracking device, so Eccles could find out exactly where it was any time he liked.

Shit, I thought, does the Guvnor know about this?

I checked my phone. I’d been away from my post for
ten minutes. The kitchen would run low on pans soon, and I’d be missed. Putting the office keys back would not be a problem—I figured I could just leave them around for Georgio to find, and he’d be too worried about his own job to report it. I exited the tracker program and opened it again. When the log-in dialogue reappeared I clicked on
Forgot your password?
Then I switched to email and clicked on
Send and receive
.

And waited.

Twelve minutes. I clicked “Send and Receive” again.

Ping
.

I opened up the reminder email, grabbed a pen and a bit of paper and painstakingly copied down the text. My tongue had crawled out of the corner of my mouth again, but I let it. I had just deleted the email when my dad’s phone beeped and rattled on the desk. I nearly jumped out of my skin—I’d set the volume to max because the kitchen was so noisy, and I’d forgotten to silence it. I stood to go, snatching the phone up, and checked the screen.

Need 2 c u 2nite
—
xx

It was from Zoe, and it had two x’s. I counted them a few times, just to be sure.

“Finn?”

Georgio was standing in the doorway. I’d been so gobsmacked to hear from Zoe I hadn’t even heard him
approach—and he did not look happy. I tried to keep the idiot grin on my face.

“What are you doing? And how did you get in here?”

“The door was open. I was hoping to see the boss about getting a day off.”

“Mr. Eccles is not here. You are not supposed to be in his office, and the door was not open.” He plucked the keys from the desk and stared at me.

I shrugged. “Oh, right,” I said. I hoped he would believe he was an idiot. I sure as hell felt like one.

“You’re needed in the kitchen,” said Georgio. He opened the door wide and stood back to usher me out. I’d seen him do that before, late at night, with a politician almost too drunk to walk. His absolute self-assurance was like a gravity field that pulled you towards the door and slung you through it. I crash-landed at the sink, where the pots had piled up into a massive, greasy, teetering pyramid, and got stuck in. Maybe I should have worried about what I was getting into, but all I could think of was Zoe, and I couldn’t help whistling.

“Sweet Thames, flow softly …”

“Serious Organized Crime wants to give you a medal,” said Zoe. “My dad nearly blew a gasket.” We were lying in my bed and she was resting her chin on my
belly, looking at the bruise Hans’s heel had made on my sternum. She seemed fascinated by the marks he had left on me, and while we’d been making out she’d somehow managed to nudge every one of them hard enough to make me yell. I wasn’t sure if me nearly getting killed made a difference to her, but it made a difference to me; when she’d walked in I’d gone for her like a randy bear, without the finesse. I hadn’t slowed down till she’d kicked me in the kneecap Hans had stamped on.

“They’ve been after that guy for years. He was the number one suspect in half the Camorra killings last year.”

“The Camorra?”

“The Naples Mafia.”

“Jesus. There’s no reward, is there? That’d be a lot more use than a medal.”

“His name was Hans Ostwald.”

“No shit. He really was called Hans?”

“Good liars stick as close to the truth as possible.” She pressed her chin into my bruised sternum till I yelped, then grinned in satisfaction and wriggled up to slide her arms round my neck.

“Does Serious Crime know who sent him?” I said.

“Of course not. But whoever did must be seriously connected. And there’d be nothing in writing, no emails, not even phone calls.”

“Great. Maybe I should try to catch the next one alive.”

Zoe sat up, suddenly grim, and folded her arms across her breasts. “What do you mean, the next one?”

“Until I find out why my dad was murdered, they’re going to keep coming after me,” I said.

“You don’t know that.”

“No, but it’d be sensible to assume that.”

“But you said all your dad’s notes had gone, that there weren’t any clues.”

“I want to show you something,” I said.

She sat beside me in the bed as I called up the
RTTracker
site on my laptop, praying the battery would last long enough to let me log in. It did, and I entered Chris Eccles’s ID and password, and the map appeared: now the red dot with the white label was on the east of the city, flashing at three o’clock inside the orange circle of motorways that ringed Paris.

Zoe peered at the label. “That looks like a number plate.”

“It’s the registration of a van belonging to Chris Eccles, the chef. The Guvnor’s borrowed it. Well, not the Guvnor himself, his sidekick James.”

“Shit, and you’re tracking it?”

“I think it’s bringing something back from Paris. And when it does, I’m going to go take a look.”

Zoe was horrified. “Finn, please don’t. I’ve told you about McGovern, everyone has.”

“If he had my dad killed, I want to know why.”

“But what if this has nothing to do with your dad?”

I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“God, you’re so bloody pig-headed!”

“Yeah, that’s what my dad used to say.”

The PC wheezed and rattled, then popped up a warning message as the battery ran out. I shut the lid and slid the laptop onto the floor.

“Will you do something for me?” said Zoe.

I looked at her.

“Will you ask your mother about this?”

“Not just yet,” I said.

“You don’t trust her?”

“She’d tell me not to get involved. That I should inform the police, let them handle it.”

“I like her already,” said Zoe.

“I don’t trust the police.”

“Do you trust me?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Then please don’t do this.” And she kissed me, and this time I didn’t go for her like a bear, and she didn’t poke my bruises, much. But I never answered her.

*  *  *

When Zoe woke me with a kiss the next morning she was already in her school uniform, smelling of soap. “Your shower is rubbish,” she said. I made a grab for her, but she dodged and headed for the door. On the threshold she turned. “What are you doing today?”

“Going back to sleep.”

“Are you going to tell the police about that van?”

“I miss you when you’re not here,” I said. It was a crude attempt to avoid the question, and it didn’t work. She looked at me as if I’d slapped her, and turned away, blinking. “Wait,” I said. I leaped out of bed, grabbed my trousers and followed her bollock-naked down the stairs, getting to the door just as she turned the latch, and holding it shut with my hand. She looked at me with such anger and disappointment I could barely meet her eye. I fumbled in the pockets of my jeans.

“I changed the locks yesterday,” I said. “Bit late, I know, but …” I pulled the keyring out of my pocket. The keys on it were shiny and new; I offered them to her. “They came with three sets of keys,” I said.

She looked at the keys, and then at me, and she was thinking really hard about something. I didn’t ask why this was such a big deal because I didn’t want to know. I didn’t think I’d ever understand her—one minute so funny and sussed, the next so vulnerable and bitter she radiated pain.

“Thanks,” she said, in a small voice. She took the keyring and slipped it into her pocket, so it barely jingled.

“Will I see you tonight?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said.

She turned the latch and tugged the door open, and I hopped backwards so it wouldn’t catch my toes when it opened. It was raining slightly and she tugged up the collar of her school blazer, as if that was going to make a difference, and she scurried away without another word or one glance back.

I never asked Zoe about her mother, I realized later that morning, as I went through my workout. I was so preoccupied by my own it didn’t occur to me. Was her mother around? Was she dead, or separated from her dad? Prendergast wore a wedding ring, I remembered, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was the sentimental type, though that didn’t seem likely. Didn’t it ever bother him when she stayed out all night? I wondered what Prendergast had done, or hadn’t done, to make her hate him so much. I wondered if either of them even knew.

I cursed. I’d lost count of how many press-ups I’d done. Fine, I’d just keep going till I couldn’t do any more. But before I could start again my mobile rang, and that gave me an excuse to knock off. I was out of breath when I answered and my palms were so sweaty I nearly dropped the handset.

“Yeah, hello?”

“Who am I speaking to, please?”

“Finn Maguire,” I said, before I remembered that it was them who had called me, so they ought to know. It was probably some phone spammer, I decided, and I tried to think of a good way to wind them up.

“This is Nicola Hale, from the law firm Hale and Vora.” Yeah, right. Her name was probably Seema Singh, calling from Huckster & Huckster in Mumbai. “Could you confirm your date of birth, please?”

“Why don’t you confirm it?” I said. How dumb did she think I was?

“I’m sorry, I need to be sure I’m talking to Finn Maguire.”

“You are talking to him. But I don’t know who he’s talking to.”

“Um—sorry—Mr. Maguire, you may have received a letter from us?”

That threw me. I glanced through the bills and junk mail that had been piling up on the table. Under a wrinkled menu from a pizza delivery joint was a thick, cream-coloured envelope with
Hale & Vora, Something
printed in the corner.
Solicitors
, that was it. Addressed to me. How long had it been there?

“Eh, yeah. I haven’t opened it yet.”

“We do need to speak to you, and we were hoping you might be able to come to our office.”

“What’s this about?”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss that without establishing your identity.”

Shit
, I thought, it’s the house. The bank must know my dad’s dead and they’ve stopped paying the mortgage.

“Is this about my dad?” I sounded like a lost orphan, I realized.

“Are you free around four today? We’re at 391 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”

“Sure,” I said, my heart sinking.

“And you will need to bring some ID.”

Lincoln’s Inn Fields was right on the border between the West End and the City, so there weren’t many fields, just a little park hemmed in by a square of massive Georgian townhouses. The gleaming brass plates beside every door announced the entire square was occupied by law firms, and judging by the Jags and BMWs parked on the off-street forecourts, law firms that made a lot of money. I’d opened the letter—nearly cutting my finger on the rigid flap of the envelope—but even though I’d read it a few times, I still didn’t know what this was about. It simply asked me to contact Kamlesh Vora or Nicola Hale at their offices. If the bank was going to evict me, I thought, it was pretty bloody mean to make me schlep all the way into the City to let me know. But then banks
weren’t exactly known for their people skills, in spite of all their cheesy adverts.

The glass door of 391 was locked. I rattled it and saw the receptionist give me a good look-over before she buzzed me in. You could see her wondering if I was a rough sleeper trying to bum a cup of tea. My battered fibre suitcase didn’t help, and I found myself wishing I’d washed or changed my jeans since splattering garlic butter over them the night before at work. But she clearly decided to live dangerously and pushed the button. I heaved open the plate-glass door and approached her huge wooden counter clutching my little suitcase to my chest like Paddington Bear.

“Eh—I’m here to see Nicola Hale?”

“Have you brought some ID?”

When I slid the suitcase across the beech wood desk Nicola Hale raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. She was slim, neat and efficient, with blue eyes and long blonde hair, in her late twenties, I supposed. She looked at the case as if it might be full of laundry.

“It’s all in there,” I said. She was a lawyer, she was paid to read, and if they wanted to evict me I wasn’t going to make life any easier for them. Or admit that I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of the stuff in there.