In the Company of Ghosts (11 page)

‘Yes?’

‘Got your router from the Werks building. It was still powered up. Pulled the records of where it was broadcasting the hidden feed from said device’s memory.’

‘I won’t forget.’ Spads flipped the phone shut and kept working on the dead billionaire’s laptop. He was mirroring the drive at a magnetic level, security systems and all. Plenty of time to crack it later, in the comfort of the humid stone chambers under Monument.

Helen appeared with a couple of books under her arm. She set them down on the desk and walked over to the office’s shelves to check the titles on the spines. ‘He had those two on his bedroom table, bookmarked towards the back, nearly finished reading them.’

Spads inspected the titles.
The Me I Will Become
, and
The Light Within My Perfection
, both by someone called Tom Roberts. He presumed the photos on the front were of the author. They were both of the same man. He looked tall and complete and happy. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘He’s a Christian evangelist. Runs a number of religious TV stations out in the states, along with a network of churches. A very profitable network.’ She started tugging books off the shelves and piling them next to the first two. ‘More of the same. All
Roberts Foundation Press
.’

‘Paper books,’ said Spads. ‘Not digital.’

‘You’re right!’ she exclaimed as the realisation dawned on her. ‘We haven’t found an e-book in his flat or in his office. Not a single work of fiction here, just these church cash-ins. Which means our dead friend wasn’t a serious reader.’ Helen examined the inside of the dust jackets, turning one around to show Spads. ‘Signed by Tom Roberts himself.’

The collector within Spads kicked in. ‘That makes them valuable.’

‘That’s why they’re paper books. You can’t charge the devout thousands for a digital download. Faith needs to be kept as solid as possible. New editions printed annually, so his congregation can repurchase the entire collection every year.’ She tapped the open page. ‘And this is the latest edition, just like all the others. Nothing older in his collection. I think Simon Werks found his faith quite recently.’

The lights on Spads’ kit lit up, indicating the drive had been sucked clean, so he reassembled the laptop and stowed his gear away while Helen examined the books. She was sliding them back onto the shelves when the front door chimed. A brief flash of panic crossed Spads’ face, but Helen tapped the handbag where she kept her pistol. ‘Assassins don’t knock. Just remember what ControlWerks told the building manager.’

‘We’re with the company.’

Helen shrugged. ‘No, we’re with the
office
.’

They walked to the flat’s front door and Spads was happy to let Helen answer it. Talking to new people was never something he did unless he had to. There was a short, older woman waiting outside, wearing a black leather jacket, tight trousers and a look that was about four decades too young for her. She gazed short-sightedly at them through glasses that filled most of her pinched face, and when she spoke, lips wobbled wildly that might have been borrowed from Mick Jagger. ‘I am Lenochka. Does Mister Werks wish me to clean today? Nobody tells me flat is busy today until I arrive. Every other day I come. Nobody tells me flat is busy.’

‘Please do come in,’ smiled Helen, ‘don’t mind us. We’re looking to remodel the flat with a more contemporary balance of style. Something a little more twenty first century.’

The cleaning lady waddled in suspiciously, going to a section of wall in the hallway and sliding it back, disturbing the hall’s minimalist lines by revealing a cupboard full of plastic buckets filled with cleaning products, upright mops and an industrial strength Dyson vaccum cleaner that appeared stainless enough it might never have been used. ‘Is Mister Werks in office? I leave office to last if he is at desk.’

‘He’s not here. He’s taking some quiet time, you know, away from things.’

‘Ah,’ she said, hanging her leather jacket inside the cupboard and putting on a blue apron. ‘Religious retreat. He say he is going on one.’

‘Yes, the retreat in America, I think,’ said Helen. ‘You probably know Mister Werks’ tastes better than we do. We’ve not met him yet, unfortunately. Have you worked for him long?’

‘Really, I heard he enjoyed that kind of life? We were told to make sure all the sofas we buy have an anti-stain coating for alcohol.’

‘First three years, yes. Always mess to clean up. Ash on floor. Wine on floor. Stupid girls. Some of them from Russia, the kind that ask for money, giggling and saying rude things, thinking I cannot understand. Not now. No more stupid pretty girls. Mister Werks asks me to pray with him when I come here, sometimes. We kneel by window. He has clean life and clean flat.’

Spads experienced a moment of regret listening to the cleaner’s tale. Simon Werks was one of the few people Spads could have confided in concerning his personal religion. Perhaps Spads could have got the dead billionaire to understand the fundamental truths behind the universe. Saved him from wasting his time on the same fatuous teachings his mother seemed obsessed with. Werks had made many worthy contributions to the uplift of humanity. If only he had believed, perhaps God would have stepped in and saved the billionaire just as Spads had been saved.
Keep me as the apple of thine eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.

‘You pray with him?’ Helen sounded sceptical.

‘It is true, here…’ Lenochka grabbed Spads by the sleeve and dragged him along the corridor to the large window overlooking Hyde Park, pulling him down in front of the tall pane of cold glass. ‘Like this.’

It was looking out the window in that brief moment that Spads had his epiphany. There was a red bus driving down the road in front of the park, the ninety-nine to Woolwich High Street. Flashing along the digital billboard along its side a shop assistant made a phone out of his fingers and the logo of the phone shop being advertised rolled into place, along with a cartoon speech bubble reading ‘Call John.’

‘John 9:9,’ whispered Spads
.
The preaching tones of his mother surfaced in his head.
Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” But the Son of God kept saying, “I am the man.”
Spads shivered with the power of the revelation.
Simon Werks couldn’t be saved. But his contribution could still be honoured. He can be avenged. This is the test I have been given, to find the killers behind Werks’ murder. You test those who are righteous and examine the deepest thoughts and secrets. Let me see your vengeance against them, for I have committed my cause to you.

With her apron on,
the old woman smelt of chlorine and lavender, but Spads no longer cared. He had been shown his path. It all made sense. If he had been locked up in a super-max prison on the other side of the Atlantic, incarcerated with all those meathead bullies and psychopaths in that human zoo, he couldn’t have been deployed as a servant of the universe.

‘He is American, but he is
good
now,’ said the woman, as if the residual memory of superpower rivalry was still embedded deep in her soul. Americans could be good, if they tried hard. She got up from her knees. Spads did the same.

Helen made a doubtful noise as the old woman waddled off to drag all the buckets and dusters out of the cupboard. Spads’ colleague motioned back toward the office with a graceful flick of her head, resting her back against one of the sofas. ‘Check you’ve got all the data and we’ll make a last pass for anything we’ve missed.’

‘I am the man,’ said Spads.

‘You the man,’ she agreed, cheerfully. ‘So, Simon Werks needed to believe in something more than vast amounts of money. But only towards the end. What does that tell us?’

‘No, a mad scientist cloned me’ She moved to a tall display table with a miniature raft carved from pale-green jade, a Chinese figure who might have been Buddha sitting in it with a basket of flowers, an attendant and a deer. ‘What you think?’

He walked over to get a closer look. Spads wasn’t sure if Helen was asking what he thought of the jade piece, or the idea she had been spawned in the lab of some mad scientist. ‘Is that Buddha?’

‘No, she’s Ma Gu, an immortal identified with the elixir of life in Taoist scripture. A piece inferior to this sold for two million last year to a Chinese industrialist.’ Helen picked it up, feeling its heft, no longer than a pen, then she opened her handbag and dropped the miniature inside, clinking as it jounced against her Beretta
BU-9 Nano
sub-compact pistol. ‘This is
my
something more.’

Spads’ eyes widened. ‘You can’t take that.’

She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Of course I can. Simon Werks didn’t even care about these when he was alive, let alone now. Look how the pieces stand out against the walls and offset his ceiling. These were chosen for the colour scheme – do you have any idea how insulting that is to a real collector? If a Picasso or a Henry Moore figurine had gone better with the carpet, then that’s what would his agents would have bought for the flat.’ Helen pointed to a mottled green jade-faceted vase on a neighbouring display table. ‘A Qianlong-period baluster. Now that’s worth twenty times as much.’

Spads moved in front of it. ‘You can’t steal it. They’ll catch you!’

Helen laughed. ‘Too big to hide on the way out. And they’ve already caught me. Why the hell do you think I’m working for the office?’

Spads gawked at her. It seemed like his day for epiphanies. ‘What if they’ve got concealed cameras in here?’

‘They don’t, I swept for them. But even if there were cameras here, that’s the point of you, Spads, isn’t it? Something substantial to hack. You felt alive when you were kicking down the Pentagon’s firewalls, that much I know. You had to feel good doing that.’

‘The FBI were going to extradite me!’

‘You’re good with systems. I’m good with more physical concerns. Think of the things we could do together.’ She leaned in and gave him a hot, warm kiss on the lips. Helen tasted like Cinnamon. She tasted like manga. A reward for his service or a test? Spads was just about tending towards the former.
Question seven – he needs to tell you that you are a radiant woman and that you are enough.
It almost made sense now.

CHAPTER SIX – SUSPICIOUS MINDS

Agatha peered through the tiny glass lens built into her door to see who had rung her bell. Nobody ever called on them at the Tower. Certainly not the locals, who wouldn’t even acknowledge a
good evening
from her as she set off on her nocturnal walks.

Vincent Bouche appeared at the end of the corridor, a cook’s apron with the colourful cartoon figure of a waiter printed on it springing against his knees as he stalked towards the door. He still had the razor sharp vegetable knife in his hand he had been using to slice apples. ‘Anyone we know, madame?’

‘It appears to be Spads. He’s the electronic warfare specialist currently attached to section seven.’ There was a distant excited snaffling from the kitchen as Saucisses scratched at the shut kitchen door. The miniature pig was the only one in the household that enjoyed receiving visitors. As long as they scratched him under the snout, he was content. Agatha was not so easily fobbed off. Nor was her housemate.

Bouche pressed his face to the spy-hole. ‘One of the office’s babies. Not a pretty one. Too much time searching the internet. Bad for his skin.’

Agatha’s friend stepped to the side, out of sight as she opened the door. ‘Spads, I wasn’t expecting you. You should have called ahead.’

‘Wanted to,’ complained Spads. ‘Doyle says it’s
Moscow Rules
from now on. That means we don’t trust our phones unless it’s an emergency.’

‘Really? I wonder who could have given him that idea? It seems admirably prudent, however.’ Agatha indicated the warmth of the corridor and stepped aside for him to enter. As the man squeezed past, she felt the rim of his coat, locating the missing shape in the fabric. A pea-sized pentagon. She made a subtle hand signal to Bouche confirming their visitor’s identity and he lowered his knife, then she closed the front door. Spads started in alarm as he realized that someone had stepped out as silently as an assassin behind him.

‘Spads, this is Monsieur Bouche, Vincent Bouche. He’s acted as something of an honorary member of the office for decades, so you can be completely candid around him.’

‘I’m not on your social networks or your search engine indexes,’ said Bouche. ‘I am like Les morts, yes? I am like one of Madame Witchley’s ghosts.’