THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (37 page)

Jake closed his eyes, replaying what had just happened with the old man over and over in his head. He looked at his notes. The mobile number for the person who’d hired the van was given on the sheet.

He changed the setting on his mobile to private so that it didn’t reveal who he was, and dialled the number shown on the hire form. A generic voicemail message played out.

Pre-pay or pay-as-you-go mobile customers were very difficult to trace. All paid up in advance, there would normally be no details of the subscriber held anywhere.

Jake pulled away from the house. He needed to visit someone who could help, someone who wouldn’t blow his cover.

103

Thursday

6 October 2005

2100 hours

M40 westwards

Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ was known by Jake and his colleagues as the Cheltenham listening service because it was their job to monitor radio and microwave signals. Mobile phones to them were nothing more than radios at a basic level.

The five thousand staff there specialised in different disciplines of listening. These days a lot of it was actually visual, which meant they would monitor internet traffic too.

The journey to Cheltenham was slow going. Jake had decided against using his blue lights on the motorway. It was now getting to the point where he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than absolutely necessary.

Jake remembered driving at top speed with lights and sirens on for two hours solid during his training course, giving a running commentary to the instructor in the passenger seat of what he was doing, why he was doing it, what he’d seen and why he was reacting in a certain way.

For Jake, the commentary became a habit. He found it upped his concentration level when driving fast. He still did it in his head automatically. Sometimes he did it aloud to wake himself up. Especially if driver fatigue was taking hold, like now.

‘Approaching hazard. Junction. Mirror. Breaking. Hard. Too fast, Jake. Too fast. Got control of lane one at junction. Traffic stopped. That’s a nice arse on the left in the green on the pavement. Good spot, Jake. Control of lane two. Out into lane two. Mirror. Accelerate away from nice arse. Sadly…’

Two hours of driving lay ahead of him before he reached Cheltenham. He needed all the entertainment he could get.

GCHQ was housed in a swish, new circular building. Jake had been there once before. He had been amused to find out its nickname. Brilliant, he’d he thought, the Americans have the Pentagon and us Brits get the Doughnut.

The Doughnut had been open a year. It was the largest building project to house an intelligence agency anywhere in the world outside of the United States, but even then the place wasn’t big enough to hold all its staff.

Packed with computer servers holding information and data that had been collected day-in, day-out, each server – and there were dozens of them – could hold a petabyte of data. Just one petabyte was equivalent to eight times the entire word count of the British Library. The electricity needed to run GCHQ’s servers alone could power an entire city.

He had met Claire’s cousin, Kate Collins, a couple of times. He knew she did something fancy at GCHQ related to picking up signals from hidden ships and anti-aircraft stations. It was maths-based; he didn’t really understand it. He remembered chatting to her in the pub once, when she’d been staying at Claire’s. As soon as Jake had heard the word maths he’d switched off. She’d gone on about how special she was, about how she’d done this and done that. She was full of herself. Good-looking with a thick mane of very long and very dark brown hair, she spent a lot of time at the gym and on her appearance. She was fit and attractive, but Jake found her terribly dull and boring.

Kate had a confidence problem. Jake had seen it. She was desperate to be loved by a man. Other men saw it too. This meant she had a bit of reputation, according to Claire. Jake had seen her eyes looking him up and down. He’d never mentioned it to Claire.

Kate lived near her father, a retired Royal Navy admiral, on the outskirts of Cheltenham. He’d wanted sons and had made no bones about the fact that he was disappointed in fathering only girls. He’d never spent much time with them as they were growing up. Jake wondered how much that had impacted on Kate’s confidence issues and her decision to track down hidden ships with her obviously gifted, maths mind.

It was almost 2300 hours when Jake pulled into the cul-de-sac where Kate lived. The estate had been built in the eighties. Yellow bricks, white UPVC windows and a parking bay in front of the house, with her Ford Fiesta sat in it. Neat and efficient; a bit like Kate herself.

As she answered the doorbell, Jake deduced that she must have just been to the gym from the cropped sports top and three-quarter-length, Lycra leggings she was clad in.

‘Jake?’ Kate looked shocked to see him.

‘Hi, Kate, can I come in? Need to talk to you.’

Kate stood to one side, confused. ‘Yes, sure. It’s late, what’s going on?’

Jake walked past her into the spotlessly clean living room and sat down.

‘What’s happened, Jake? It’s Claire, isn’t it? What’s happened to her?’ Kate’s face was ashen.

Jake got straight to the point. ‘Claire is missing. I think she’s been kidnapped.’

104

Thursday

6 October 2005

2305 hours

Fiddler’s Green, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, near GCHQ

‘What the fuck?’ was all Kate could say.

‘She was supposed to meet me in Cornwall. She didn’t turn up. I drove back, couldn’t find her. To cut a long story short, the last few days I’ve been retracing her steps. Done my own investigation. I think she was taken from her apartment building by someone in a van.’

Jake decided to leave out the part about the small bag.

‘Oh my God!’ Kate was visibly shocked.

‘I need your help, Kate.’

‘Yes, whatever you need. What can I do?’ Kate sat down in an armchair across from him in her neat living room and leaned forward with her palms upwards. Jake sensed from her body language that she was genuinely concerned. He needed to know that she really and truly wanted to help before he could move on.

‘This is all confidential. I know I can trust you. I don’t know who’s done this, but it seems that there might be some connection to her work, possibly terrorist extremists. I don’t know how they located her address, but they have. It’s also possible that someone at her work is involved. We need this whole thing to be kept quiet. Don’t let her work know that I know.’ Jake omitted the part indicating that no one at his work knew about this either.

‘Wow. You think the Security Service has been infiltrated?’ asked Kate.

‘The van that was used to take Claire was hired using the driving licence of a guy who died in an explosion in Pakistan in December of last year. Someone at the Security Service has been talking to the family; his father told me that. And now Claire’s missing. I don’t know who I can trust or who or what the problem is. That’s why I’ve come here. It’s why, as family, I was going to ask you to help rather than use the official channels at this stage.’

Kate looked down at her bare feet, clearly in thought. She said nothing.

Jake continued. ‘I want to know more about who this guy was that died in an explosion in Pakistan. I need you to run the phone number used to hire the van through your systems for me, and tell me what you have on it.’

‘It’s a big ask, Jake.’

‘I know. I don’t have many other ideas. I could go back to London, make everything official and hope that someone picks up the pieces quickly?’

‘What do you mean official? Have you not properly reported her as missing yet?’

Jake sighed. ‘No – they’ll take me off the case because of our relationship. I can’t have that happen. Not when I have leads to follow!’

‘Have you checked her mobile phone location with the cell-site data?’

‘Her mobile phone, purse and car keys are in her flat. She’s not just gone off with someone else… that’s not what this is. She’s been taken properly, Kate. Kidnapped. They’ve taken her and her computer.’

‘Why her computer?’

‘I don’t know, maybe she had something on it linked to why they took her?’

‘OK. I’ll do it.’

‘Great. When?’

‘Tomorrow morning, when I go in. First thing,’ said Kate.

‘Can I wait here, maybe stay the night, and you can give me the response personally rather than use phones or email?’ Jake didn’t want anyone listening in, but he was also tired after the drive and he sorely need to crash.

‘Of course. It’s a one-bedroom though.’ Kate looked him in the eye a little too long as she finished the sentence. It was a mannerism she shared with her cousin. A look he’d seen from Claire many times.

‘The sofa is fine, Kate. I snore, so you wouldn’t want me to top and tail with you.’ Jake decided to make a joke of it to avoid any awkwardness.

Kate laughed. ‘Let me grab a shower and some bedding for you. I’m still in my gym kit, for goodness sake!’

Jake watched as the lithe, Lycra-clad figure bounded off upstairs. He heard the water running and smelled expensive bathroom products wafting down in clouds of steam.

Kate returned carrying pillows.

‘I have some wine in the fridge. Night cap?’ she asked Jake, who was still slumped on the sofa.

She was wearing an indecently short robe and her hair was wet. Jake couldn’t take his eyes off her long brown legs.

She leaned over and placed the pillows behind him. He could smell her conditioner.

Jake moved away, twitchy at being so close to her under the current circumstances.

He brought the subject back to Claire to hide his blatant attraction. ‘Have you any idea how or why she would get mixed up in something where she’d get kidnapped, Kate? She’s just an analyst. Works in the office. I don’t get it.’

Kate stood back up with a frown on her face. Jake wasn’t sure if it was because he’d moved away or because of the mystery surrounding Claire.

‘Analyst? That’s… that’s not what Claire does,’ she said with her hands on her hips, looking at Jake like he was stupid.

105

Thursday

6 October 2005

2330 hours

Fiddler’s Green, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, near GCHQ

‘But that’s what she told me she did for the Security Service…’ Jake was confused.

‘Look, Claire and I haven’t been that close since we were teenagers, never forgave her for that business with my Dad. We don’t speak that much really, family get-togethers and things and we’ve never really talked in-depth about what we do… But you can be sure Claire isn’t someone who sits in the office all day. She’s field based, doing what I don’t know, but she’s not an office-based analyst, Jake.’

‘What? Really? I was operating under a totally different impression,’ Jake said, taken aback. ‘So what happened with your dad?’

‘She can tell you that when you find her, but she’s no angel, Jake.’

‘Why would she lie to me about what she does?’

‘Claire can be a bit of a stranger to the truth sometimes.’

‘The suit in the cupboard?’ murmured Jake to himself.

‘What?’ asked Kate, perking up at the thought of some salacious gossip about her cousin.

‘When I went to her apartment, I checked her bedroom. I spotted a man’s suit in her wardrobe. Designer. Expensive.’

‘And it wasn’t yours?’ asked Kate, eyes widening.

‘It wasn’t mine,’ said Jake ruefully.

‘No way! The dirty slut!’ shouted Kate, jumping up and throwing her arms out. ‘See! I told you she couldn’t be trusted!’

She seemed very excited; bouncy, bubbly, talkative. Maybe it was the endorphins? Had they rubbished that suggestion yet? Was she excited because of the exercise she’d just being doing at the gym or was she just excited that
he
was here?

She was blushing now. Maybe she really likes me, thought Jake. Why hadn’t he considered it before? Because he’d thought she was dowdy and boring and now she looked sexy and was showering him with attention? Or because he was having doubts about Claire? About the man’s suit in her wardrobe? About why she had actually gone missing?

His eyes were drawn to Kate’s body. He made himself look away.

He loved Claire, didn’t he? He was sure he did. That’s why he was here trying to find her, wasn’t it? Or was he simply trying to find her because her disappearance might be connected in some way to the bombings?

The suit in the wardrobe. The stuff about what had gone on with Kate’s dad. He couldn’t shift it from his mind. It was there, eating away at him. There could be an innocent explanation? He was trained not to jump to conclusions. But Claire had been distant with him recently too. Very stand-offish.

He could handle her having sex with someone else. Mistakes happened. Alcohol played a part. He understood that. He knew all too easily how that could happen.

But the suit in the wardrobe? That was premeditated; malice aforethought, mindful. Not just a physical thing that had happened on the spur of the moment?

‘Have you eaten?’ Kate asked him, changing the subject with a slight smile.

‘Not a great deal, not lately.’ Jake wondered if they were talking about food. He hadn’t expected this. He was here because of Claire, but he was feeling less and less certain about her.

‘You’re worrying about her, aren’t you, Jake?’ she asked. ‘Don’t. Claire’s a grown woman. She can look after herself. She’s certainly not the innocent little girl she makes herself out to be.’

Kate’s mood had changed. He could see that she had gone from excited to seductive. She moved closer to him, stood in front of him as he sat on the sofa.

‘You want something?’ Her chin lowered toward her cleavage, and she looked at him through her eyelashes, her gaze lingering too long. It was almost daring him. Where did girls learn how to do that look? There was no mistaking it.