The Chosen Seed (25 page)
‘And the sooner he surfaces, the sooner we can catch him and figure out what the hell is going on.’
‘Why would anyone want to take Jones’ nephew and then go to such lengths to stop anyone finding him? And why The Bank?’ Fletcher didn’t look convinced. ‘It all sounds too much like a crazy conspiracy theory.’
‘Maybe it is,’ Hask said. He looked at Ramsey, who gestured at him to continue. ‘This Mr Bright—’
‘—Mr
Castor
Bright,’ Ramsey cut in.
‘—the man Cass was told
not
to investigate during the Man of Flies investigation? We think he didn’t stop.’
‘We need
you
,’ Ramsey leaned forward, ‘to find out what you can about him for us. On the quiet. If you make too much noise—’
‘—
any
noise,’ Hask added.
‘—you’ll find all manner of shit will come down on your head,’ Ramsey finished. ‘Jones got his sergeant to do a simple employment enquiry for that name at The Bank, and the headshed immediately put the kybosh on it. He’s a massive no-go area.’
‘If he’s traceable, my people will dig him out. No one can stay that well hidden these days, trust me. It’s not just a carbon footprint we have now, it’s an electronic one too; everyone leaves a trace.’ The commander stared at them both. ‘You find Cass Jones and I’ll find your Mr Bright. Deal?’
‘Deal.’ Ramsey grinned. Fletcher didn’t return the smile. From where Hask was standing the man didn’t look as if he had the energy. He couldn’t help but wonder what drove anyone to do the job Fletcher did. There couldn’t be much glory in it, and he was certain that the pay cheque wouldn’t be anywhere near as rewarding as his own. People were strange, he concluded as they said their polite goodbyes. Strange and fascinating.
‘Back to the office, sir?’
David Fletcher nodded and rested his head against the leather seat as they left Paddington Green Police Station behind. The driver was one of the very few perks of his job, but Fletcher normally preferred to drive himself. It normally concentrated his thinking; you couldn’t drift while you were driving. Over the past few days, however,
all
he’d wanted to
do in between one interminable meeting and the next was to drift off into a haze of jumbled thoughts. He was definitely too damned tired for driving.
Until the launch, his main concern – that being something of an understatement – had been SkyCall 1, that the project’s true purpose would be detected and bring Armageddon, both political and quite likely otherwise, down upon them all. He found that he rather missed that fear; if it happened now, it would be someone else’s problem. As it was, they’d hugely underestimated the sheer volume of information that now needed to be sifted and sorted and examined and made into some kind of sense.
The geeks working under the supervision of the virtually autistic South African liaising from Harwell were trying to process the information into some kind of filing system, but there was so much visual data that it was making it tricky. They’d pulled in more staff from MI6, but still there were nowhere near enough people – and that was without the constant calls from Arnold James demanding updates on the movements of the Chinese and Koreans and just about every other nation on the planet with any kind of nuclear capability. The one thing he had discovered was that constantly spying on others could make you paranoid … Meaning could be read into everything if you tried hard enough, and most meanings could very easily be misinterpreted.
He wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps they’d created a monster. It wouldn’t be the satellite that gave away what they were doing; it would be the paranoid behaviour of the nation’s politicians. He never thought he’d find himself thinking it but he was fast coming to the conclusion that people –
countries
– should be allowed their secrets. He thought of the old saying, repeated by politicians endlessly
to justify their spying,
Knowledge in the wrong hands is dangerous
. It always made him smile. If there was one thing he’d learned through the years, it was that too much knowledge in
any
hands was dangerous.
Maybe the rest of them would catch up when the world was reduced to burned-out remains. Probably not though. The politicians would be holed up in the bunkers that would also serve as their coffins, consoling each other with the thought that they had had
no choice
. It was all bollocks, of course. There was always a choice, even if no human being was ever able to make the right one.
SkyCall 1 was supposed to
create
security, but Fletcher believed it would have the opposite effect: they’d be looking for plots behind every message, and nothing would be seen in context. It would be WikiLeaks a million times over, but this time only one small nation would be getting the information. He sighed and closed his eyes as the car moved slowly through the London traffic, letting his mind drift until it came to rest on Cass Jones and this mysterious Mr Bright. It wasn’t a name he’d come across before. He’d put out some discreet feelers when he got back to the office – if nothing else, it would delay his return to the underground level he’d started to think of as hell.
T
oby Armstrong sat in the window of the grotty pub on the corner of Denman Street and nursed a pint he had no intention of drinking. The bitter cold outside had been creeping in through the cracks and gaps in the old building all night and even though the landlord had put the heating on when he opened up an hour ago it hadn’t yet dispelled the chill. Armstrong didn’t mind; the cold was helping to cool down his bubbling anger. At least he’d got out of the office and away from the fucking
Free the Paddington One! Save Cass Jones!
crusade. He smiled sharply at his own humour, but it was laced with a dark bitterness.
That he liked the DI and the profiler somehow made it all worse. Why couldn’t they see that Cass Jones was as guilty as sin? Surely the evidence spoke for itself? It wasn’t as if he even blamed Jones for cracking up – the man had been through enough to warrant it and more – but crack he had, and if the others couldn’t see it, then he’d just have to prove it to them himself. Jones was a liability and he, Toby Armstrong, was going to bring him in. Jones wasn’t good for people – he’d shot a
kid
, for God’s sake. Why the fuck did people –
sensible
people,
intelligent
people – still care about him?
He sipped the beer absently as he stared at the doorway to Moneypenny’s – Arthur ‘Artie’ Mullins’ girly club and
central office. If anyone knew where Jones was, it would be Mullins. They’d watched him for weeks after Jones’ disappearance, but there’d been nothing the slightest bit suspicious in his movements and eventually the surveillance had been called off. Too expensive. Armstrong had never believed for a second that Mullins knew nothing; he and Jones had a relationship that went beyond Cass collecting illegal bonuses from him. He’d seen it in Mullins’ eyes when he’d interviewed him. Now that Cass had come out into the open and Mullins thought the heat was off, maybe they’d get careless – and if they did, Armstrong intended to be there to catch them out.
Mullins had arrived at the nightclub half an hour previously, and Armstrong figured he’d watch the place until he left, see who came and went, then he’d follow Mullins himself. He intended to be the old man’s second until he found Cass Jones.
He felt a slight twinge of guilt about misleading his colleagues on the Angel of Death case – they thought he was going through David Draper’s life, chasing down leads, and he intended to keep letting them think that. He was a good detective and he’d find enough on Draper in his spare time to avoid drawing suspicion on himself.
The parallels between his own actions and Cass’ during the investigation into the teenage suicides didn’t pass him by – but what he was doing was
different
. Cass had been sneaking off to satisfy his own paranoid delusions and murder people;
he
was trying to track down a killer. As it was, there had been no reported sighting of the Angel of Death for a few days now. Perhaps that one had finally had the good grace to lie down and die himself.
Piccadilly Circus was always a hub of activity, but none of the passers-by buzzed at the door to the club. He sipped
his beer again. It wasn’t that early, and one pint wouldn’t kill him; it might even help calm him down. He wondered for about the tenth time since leaving the station whether he should have mentioned to Ramsey that David Draper was paid by a company that appeared to be wholly owned by The Bank. PC Spate was trying to get more information on it now; that was the reason he gave himself for keeping it quiet – nothing to do with not wanting to feed this new obsession.
What did it matter anyway? Just because the Man of Flies had been an employee of The Bank, it didn’t mean that the Angel of Death was too – Draper could have been doing his work for the Angel of Death as a hobby, an act of love, perhaps. He’d died of the same strain of bug that the killer was spreading so it wasn’t a huge leap to think that perhaps they had been lovers, despite Hask’s profile of their killer as a paedophile.
He took a larger gulp. That would sound more plausible if he’d been able to find some hint of what Draper actually
did
for the money he was paid. The company he was allegedly employed by was some sort of offshore holding company. Draper himself appeared to have no university degree, nor any specialist qualifications. In fact, the man was something of a ghost.
Armstrong turned his thoughts away from Draper. He hadn’t done
anything
wrong by not telling Ramsey. That case wasn’t connected to anything they were interested in. Maybe he’d tell them when he next checked in, let them tie themselves in knots trying to join all the dots while he got on with finding Cass Jones. He gripped the glass harder. When he looked down, he was surprised to see more than half the pint was gone.
A thirty-foot drive separated the building from the road, the kind of distance that didn’t imply secrecy, but at the same time meant anyone peering between the iron bars of the electronic gates would never be able to see anything going on behind the sparkling windows. Osborne had done a stroll-by, and there were two security cameras attached to the gates and a card-entry system by the discreet brass sign on the gatepost that read Calthorpe House,
Residential Home
.
Their black Range Rover was parked a little way down the leafy suburban road, and Cass had quite a good view of the place. The three-storey red-brick house looked like an old folks’ home. The drive went right up to the front door, and although there were some trees and plants near the gates, close to the house it was all gravel. The layout would give those inside a clear view of any comings and goings. The high wall surrounded the other three sides of the property, and if there was any sort of lawn and gardens for the residents to enjoy, they were at the back, hidden away from prying eyes.
It was gone midday, and Cass had been sitting there since dawn. He wanted to crash in and grab his nephew, but this wasn’t something he could rush, and anyway, he doubted Osborne and Wharton would let him – that was probably why they’d been sent with him. He liked them both, even if they didn’t say much, but he also had a healthy respect for their cold-bloodedness. He was conscious he might have become like them all those years ago, had he really
been
Charlie Sutton – and if he’d been on the other side of the law when he pulled that trigger.
‘This is a nice little location,’ Osborne said. ‘Clever.’ He didn’t look at Cass but kept his eyes on the building. A woman pushed a pram past the gates, desperately trying to
keep the large dog she was also walking under control.
‘Bedford Park – that’s where anyone walking down here will be headed. Like that bird.’ He gestured at the woman as she disappeared out of sight. ‘I bet no one gives a shit about what goes on here.’
‘Plus, this is Chiswick,’ Wharton added from the back seat. ‘They’re all too posh to ask. As long as it looks pretty, isn’t run by the council, and no one makes too much noise they don’t care. I bet they just check how much it costs to check in. If they’re high enough, then all’s good.’ He let out a small snort of a laugh. ‘Fucking middle-class muppets. Could be a bunch of psychos in there for all they know.’
‘Watch what you’re saying, mate.’ Osborne turned round in his seat and glared at his colleague. ‘His boy’s in there.’
‘Oh, sorry, Jonesy – didn’t mean your nephew’s a nutter.’ Wharton leaned forward and slapped Cass hard on the shoulder.
‘Jesus!’ The sudden pain was like an electric shock and his knitting muscles screamed.
‘For fuck’s sake, Wharton,’ Osborne said. ‘The man was shot.’ He laughed and turned back to face the front.
‘No problem,’ Cass wheezed, trying to catch his breath back. ‘It distracted me from my numb arse.’
Wharton joined in Osborne’s short burst of laughter. ‘You’re all right, Cass. I’ll give you that.’
‘Hang on, here we go again,’ Osborne muttered. ‘Is this our guy?’
The laughter stopped and they all sat up, alert and completely focused, as the gates swung open. There’d been a flurry of activity at seven that morning when the night and day staff had swapped over, but since then there’d been one car at eight – clearly another staff member, as they swiped an entry card to open the gates – and two more cars had
arrived an hour previously. Both drivers had spoken into the intercom, so Cass presumed they were visitors, relatives, perhaps. Unlike those who had come and gone first thing in the morning the arms appearing from the car windows had not been wearing white; those pale sleeves had been virtually the only things visible in the morning darkness.
Wharton was the only one who’d been able to see any of the drivers. Since six a.m. he’d positioned himself in the shadows a little along from Calthorpe House. He was dressed in jogging gear and as he stretched against the wall he was able to grab a glimpse of each of the people going in and out.
