Strangled Silence (20 page)

She didn't spot the envelope until she was
opening the bedroom door.

It was a plain white square, leaning against the
base of the lamp on her bedside table. Her parents
were usually up before her, but they left any post for
her on the kitchen counter. One of them must have
left it in here while she was asleep. She wasn't mad
about the idea that her parents were still sneaking
into her room; apart from the fact that she was old
enough to demand her privacy, she had been bringing
boyfriends home for some time now. Having
her latest romantic endeavour interrupted by one of
her parents – particularly her overprotective dad –
was a scene she could really do without.

For a moment, Ivor flickered into her thoughts.
She could only imagine what her dad would make
of him. He was only a few years older than her, but
a far cry from the jack-the-lads who'd had the misfortune
of running into Martin Mir. And her dad
had never been keen on her dating soldiers – even
ex-soldiers. 'They're dogs,' he would say simply.
When asked what that made him, his reply was
always the same:'An
old
dog.'

Picking up the envelope, she noticed that
although it had her name and address written on it,
it didn't have a stamp or postmark. It must have
been hand-delivered. She slit it open with a nail file
and pulled out the card within. It was a funeral
card. Frowning, she opened it. There was no
inscription inside, just a couple of lines printed in
fake handwriting:

Sending you our deepest condolences on
the loss of your mother, Our thoughts
are with you and your family at this
difficult time.

With a start, Amina dropped the card on the
bed and stepped away from it, her hand covering
her mouth. It was a threat. Somebody was
threatening her mother. No – they were threatening
her
with the death of her mother. But it couldn't
be. Surely it was a mistake or . . . or maybe a
joke . . .

It wasn't a mistake and it wasn't any joke. With
trembling hands, Amina picked up the card and
slid it back into the envelope, holding it by the
edges in case it might have the perpetrator's fingerprints
on it. What was the name of that detective
from CTC? Sykes, that was it. She would take it to
him and explain about the story she was working
on . . .

No, she wouldn't. Feeling suddenly cold, she sat
down on the edge of the bed. For the first time, she
realized what this story they were working on
could actually mean. If they really were scratching
the surface of a criminal conspiracy, they were
interfering with some very serious people. People
who would do serious harm to anyone who got in
their way. People who might have powerful influence
in the police force, or the courts, or the
intelligence services. The fact that Sinnostan was
thousands of miles away had made all of this
something of a fantasy. She had never considered
that she might not be safe here, in nice, civilized
London.

This was why Ivor was scared and Chi was
paranoid, but she had completely failed to
appreciate the risks they were taking. It had all
seemed like an adventure. She felt suddenly sick.
Had somebody come into their house – into her
room
– to deliver it? Somebody who stood over
her while she lay there in a deep sleep? Maybe they
had even prowled through the house unseen in the
night, peering into the bedrooms of her parents and
her brother; noting where they slept. The house had
an alarm, but that wouldn't matter to people like
this, would it?

Amina looked around her room to see if anything
had been disturbed, but it all seemed the
same. What about bugs? Was she under surveillance
now? She cursed her own stupidity.
Of course
she
was being watched. Chi had shown her the bugs in
Ivor's flat. She remembered being excited by the
whole thing – like a bloody idiot. She was only ever
careful of what she said around Ivor and Chi
because
they
were careful. When she was alone, she
brushed off their suspicious tendencies and acted
like she didn't have a care in the world. She'd never
taken any of it that seriously. Were the watchers
tapping the phones here? What about the phones
and emails at the newspaper? Mobiles were easy to
listen in to – she had to assume anything she'd said
on hers had been picked up.

Just as the thought crossed her mind, her phone
rang, making her jump. God, this was it. This was
where some deep, garbled voice on the phone told
her to stop asking questions if she knew what was
good for her.

But it was Dani. Amina answered, relief flooding
through her.

'Hi . . . hiya. What? Sorry, no . . . no . . .
I forgot we were going out tonight. Listen, I
don't think I'll be able to make it. No. I . . . I
just can't at the moment. Look, I'll call you back,
OK?'

Dani had hardly replied before Amina rang off.
The more she thought about the funeral card, the
more anxious she became that she might already
have dug herself too deep a hole. She needed to talk
to Ivor and Chi – show them the card and see what
they thought.

First, though, she needed to see her family and
find out if any of them had left the card in her
room. If not, her whole life had just changed.

Chi woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing.
It rang again impatiently as he slowly registered
that he had fallen asleep at his desk again. Lifting
his head from his folded arms, his elbow nudged
the mouse on the pad beside him and the PC
woke up with him – but considerably faster. He
reflected that it was time he got himself a new
girlfriend; he didn't want to end up as one of those
guys who only had a relationship with their
computer.

The doorbell rang again. It sounded louder this
time, even though he knew it couldn't be. His
clothes had that constricting, crumpled feel to them
from having been slept in. Standing up stiffly, he
stretched and started for the door.

'OK! OK, I'm coming!'

Most people gave up after the first four or
five rings; these guys must be pretty sure he was
here . . .

That made him stop for a moment, but he
shook his head and hurried out to the hall and
down to the front door. He wasn't so uptight yet
that he was afraid to answer the door. Not yet. He
was in his bare feet, and for some irrational reason
he wished he'd put on his boots. There was something
about being barefoot that made you feel
vulnerable.

He opened the door to find a man and a
woman standing there. He could tell immediately
that they were old bill. The man was thin and
freckly with pale brown hair and a slightly superior,
but absent-minded air about him. The woman had
'career' written all over her. She was black, with her
dark hair cut short, her navy blue suit and pin-stripe
shirt carefully pressed – unlike her partner's – and a
look on her face that said 'Go ahead . . . make my
day'.

'Come on in,' Chi said, before they had even
raised their IDs. 'Coffee?'

The man's name was Detective Sergeant Sykes,
the woman's was Detective Superintendent
Atkinson, and they were from Counter Terrorism
Command. They were here to investigate a tip-off
that Chi had been involved in the recent anthrax
scare at the
Chronicle
building. He had been spotted
on CCTV footage recorded a few days before the
incident and had made scathing references to the
paper's political ties in his weblog,
EyesWideSideways
.

'And where did this tip-off come from,
exactly?' Chi asked as he gestured at them to sit
down at the kitchen table and waited for the kettle
to boil.

'We're not at liberty to say at the moment, sir,'
Atkinson replied.

'Anonymous, huh? Or intelligence sources
maybe? Come on, give me a clue.'

'We'd appreciate it if you would just answer our
questions, sir,' Sykes told him. 'It's just a formality,
you understand. We have to follow up every
lead, even if it's to eliminate you from our
enquiries.'

'Of course.' Chi filled three mugs with coffee
and set out sugar and milk.

The mundane act of making the drinks gave
him time to think and helped hide his nervousness.
Somebody had decided to turn up the heat on him,
and heat didn't come any more serious than the
CTC.

If they decided they had enough evidence to
arrest him, they could hold him for weeks without
charging him. Even if they didn't have enough
evidence to charge him, they might still be able to
get a restraining order and put him under indefinite
house arrest. They could hold him like that for
years, or put an electronic tag on him, take his
computer gear, his files, all without a trial. The only
question was, what had they been fed to bring them
to his door?

All the phone calls he made to Nexus and his
other mates were encrypted. He was very careful
about what he said on any other calls and he hardly
ever used his mobile. But then there were all the
sites he'd visited on the web. They could be traced.
The police and intelligence services were permitted
remote access to any server or database in
the country. The new Drawbridge Act gave
them power to do all of these things and much
more.

Even so, the police had to play by the rules.
One of the advantages of having wealthy parents
was that he had lawyers ready and waiting to defend
him against any trumped-up charges that came his
way. But if the intelligence services were involved,
then the gloves came off. They could feed the
police information that Chi and his lawyers would
never be allowed see. After all, if you had a spy in a
terrorist organization, you could hardly go around
telling everyone who they were. He could be put
under house arrest without ever knowing what
they had on him.

Sitting down at the table, facing the two
detectives, he readied himself for what was to come.
But all the while, he was itching to get back to his
PC, contact his network and have them start
stretching out their feelers. He needed to know
what was coming.

The detectives' questions were direct and to the
point, and he answered them without expression.
No, he had nothing to do with the anthrax scare at
the
Chronicle
or anywhere else. No, he did not have
any medical or laboratory training. No, he did not
have a grudge of any kind against the newspaper or
any of the other targets of the anthrax scare. As he
was questioned, Chi's mind raced. He knew that if
they got a warrant to search his house they would
find all his files. With all the information he had
gathered over the years, they were bound to dig up
something to make them suspicious. One wrong
connection and he was stuffed. And his files were
full of all kinds of connections to suspicious activity.
That was the whole point.

No, he did not support, nor have any affiliation
with, any of the groups on the terrorist watch list.
No, he had never received any training in weapons
or explosives. No, he had never searched for information
on these subjects on the web (which
wasn't exactly true – he had just never been stupid
enough to do so from his own computer. He
couldn't help being curious). No, he had never
subscribed to any of the publications on the list
Atkinson showed him. No . . . no . . . no . . .

'Do you know this man?' Atkinson held up a
photo.

'He's been on the telly,' Chi replied. 'Chinese
guy. They say he's into biological weapons or
something. Don't know him personally, no.'

This was all fishing. They didn't expect him to
admit to any of these things, they just wanted to
provoke a reaction, to size him up. He clasped his
hands around the coffee mug to stop them
trembling. Tension tightened around his shoulders
and neck. His jaw clenched and unclenched and he
tried to relax, conscious that they would be reading
all of this.

'What were you doing at the
Chronicle
building?'
Atkinson asked then.

Chi hesitated. If he had been caught on CCTV,
they probably knew he had met Amina. It didn't
make sense to lie about it anyway.

'I'm working on a story with one of the junior
reporters there; a girl named Amina Mir.'

The two detectives exchanged looks but didn't
make any comment. Chi knew she had been
questioned after the anthrax scare; they probably
remembered her.

'What's the story?' Sykes enquired.

Chi's first instinct was to give the line that he
and Amina had agreed on: that they were investigating
a pattern of mental-health problems in
Sinnostan veterans. But then he realized that he had
a chance here to divert the detectives' suspicion
from him. Better to be a harmless nut than a
subversive terrorist suspect.

'Actually, it's part of an ongoing investigation
I'm carrying out,' he said with fake enthusiasm.

'I've been following up reports of mysterious
abductions in battle zones in Sinnostan and places
like that – and the subsequent stories of mindcontrol
experiments related by the abducted
soldiers after they return. It's all in conjunction with
the increasing reports of UFOs over the UK and
the US, as well as over Sinnostan itself. I'm playing
with a theory that the soldiers are being
abducted, experimented on and maybe even
replaced with alien doppelgängers in preparation
for the seeding of an alien population on Earth. I
can see you're sceptical, but the evidence is
extremely compelling. Would you like to have a
look at some of it?'

This time the detectives were less subtle in
their exchange. Chi knew that look too well. The
sidelong glance, the raised eyebrows, the carefully
suppressed smile.

'Sure,' Atkinson said. 'Let's have a look.'

They wanted any chance to see his place
without having to get a search warrant. That
was to be expected. He took them down to his
study, glad of the big WATCH THE SKIES poster on
the wall. He sat down at his PC and clicked on a
blank folder. This was his 'Completely Bonkers'
file. He kept it for laughs, but now he could
pretend it formed the backbone of his work. A
few more clicks and a range of articles filled the
screens.

'These kinds of abductions and experimentation
have been going on since Roswell in
'forty-seven,' he explained, flicking at speed
through the outlandish collection of documents.
'You think our governments are running things?
Think again. There's a network of dark agencies
working in a global conspiracy to undermine
the human race and create ties with an alien
race that's desperate to colonize our planet.
These men see the future and they know it's not
human. And they want to be part of the ruling
class, rather than be consigned to slavery like the
rest of us.'

Chi had to be careful here. He had to come
across as crazy, but not
unbelievably
crazy.

'Look at all the key figures of the second half
of the last century – the icons who could have
really unified the world with their ideas. John F.
Kennedy: assassinated. Martin Luther King:
assassinated. John Lennon: assassinated. Mikhail
Gorbachev: overthrown. Bob Geldof: accused of
selling out. And do you really think the South
African government would ever have let the
real
Nelson Mandela out of prison? Like hell! They
were all working for a unified Earth and were
therefore a threat to the aliens' plans. The invaders
needed us to be divided and weak so they could
take over our governments one at a time. You know
they have weapons that can duplicate the effects
of natural disasters? A few signals to a satellite and
they can create earthquakes, tidal waves, forest
fires, avalanches, volcanoes . . . OK, maybe not
volcanoes . . .

'Then there's the documentary proof that
George W. Bush never actually existed, that he was
in fact an animatronic puppet—'

'We get the idea,' Atkinson interrupted from
behind him. 'I think we've seen everything we need
to, don't you, Sykes?'

'I think Mr Sandwith has important work to
get back to,' Sykes replied. 'Thanks for your time,
sir. And good luck with your story.'

Chi nodded and walked them out to the door.
When he closed it after them, he pressed his ear
against it and heard their chuckles on the other
side. He turned and leaned back against the wood,
heaving a sigh of relief. They were gone, for now,
but he was sure that those who had sent the police
had more moves to make. And unlike the two
detectives, they couldn't be fooled into thinking he
was harmless.