Coffin Dodgers (9 page)

Unless he's swapped transport, none of the carts belongs to the security guard. We hid from him a few times earlier, and while he drives a golf cart like everybody else does -- normal transport is banned beyond the customer car park -- his cart is painted like a police car. It even has the strip of lights on the roof, which makes it look like one of the sit-in cars you get for toddlers, except not as tough or intimidating.
 

Dave and I crawl higher until we're nearly at the top of the hill. We're as close to the carts as we're going to get without being spotted. We lie in silence, barely breathing, doing our very best to eavesdrop.

The voices are male, local and arguing about something.
 

"Yes, it could have gone wrong," one of the voices says. "But it didn't. There was a potential problem. We fixed it."

"You were lucky," another voice says. "You know we need two. What if that one hadn't worked out?"

I know him. I know that voice. I'm racking my brains trying to remember who it is.

"It worked."

"I know it did. But what if it hadn't?"

"It worked."

"That was luck."

"Doesn't matter. All's well that ends well. Everybody's happy."

"I'm not happy."

Voice one doesn't say anything, but he makes an irritated noise. I think this conversation has been going on for a while. Days, possibly.

"Enough," the third man says. I don't recognise his voice.

"But this idiot managed to get the police involved!" voice two says. "The police!"

Dave and I look at one another.
 

"The police won't be a problem," the third voice says. "Isn't that right?"

"They don't suspect a thing," voice one says. "As far as they're concerned, everything checks out. Our guy knows what he's doing."

"Are you sure about that? I don't like don't knows. I don't pay you for don't knows."

"One hundred and ten percent. Even if they bring in the forensic computer guys, they won't find anything unusual."

"That's not the point," voice two interjects. "The whole thing was a shambles. We should have had two. We got one. We had to get someone in to fix things because the police were taking an interest. There was a pattern, and patterns always mean police. How many times have I said that? How many bloody times?"

"I said enough," voice three says.

"Sorry. Sorry. But what if our guy hadn't been available? What then?"

"He was," voice one says.

"But what if he wasn't?"

"He's always available. He's a computer guy. He doesn't have anything else to do."

Voice two takes a deep breath as if he's gearing up to do some shouting, but the third man speaks before he has the chance to start.

"Here's how you're going to play this from now on," he says. "One, you're going to make sure that nothing -- nothing -- connects the next two. Understood?"

Two grunts of assent.

"Two, you're going to handle them separately. Use different actors. Different methods. No similarities. No patterns."

"That's the hard bit," voice one says. "It's not as if we can go around shooting people. There are only so many ways you can make things look like accidents."

"Is it too difficult for you? Do you want out?"

"I didn't say I didn't want to do it. I'm just saying."

"Three. You don't use Otto. The man's a simpleton."

Otto?

And suddenly I realise what they've been talking about. Judging by the expression on Dave's face, he's had the same realisation at the same time.
 

As the T-shirt slogan puts it: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
 

You know those dreams where you're dead, and it's your funeral, and you're floating above the whole thing, watching the mourners arrive, taking a mental note of who didn't turn up and who did turn up but acted like an arse to you when you were alive? The dreams where everybody's saying what a great guy you were, and the prettiest girls are devastated, and it's clear that your passing has left a great big hole in people's lives that they'll never, ever fill? This is a bit like that, except the mourners are doing the tango on my grave and telling one another what a dick I was.

Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to charge at the carts, screaming like a berserker, and beat the occupants to a pulp with my bare hands. I'd like to drag the men from their carts, make them beg for mercy, and kick them repeatedly in really sore places. I'd like to find a secret cache of weapons and fire at the golf carts until they and their occupants are so full of holes they look like giant colanders.

I don't do any of those things, of course. I stay silent and keep listening.

"So when's the next one?" voice one asks.

"We'll be in touch," the third man says. "When will Sansom have the candidates?"

"End of the week," voice two says.

I'd have realised who the voice belonged to sooner if an animal hadn't chosen that very moment to run up Dave's trouser leg.

It might have been a mouse, or maybe a rat, or a toad. Whatever it was it was small, it was fast, and it was inside Dave's trousers. Still, at least Dave took it calmly, if by "calmly" you mean jumping up, yelling and beating at his trouser leg as if the fabric were on fire. By the time he'd got it out of his trousers the golf carts had started up and driven off in a hurry, presumably to call security.
 

We grabbed our stuff and charged down the hill like a pair of Vikings, albeit Vikings who'd been spooked by a mouse, a rat or maybe a toad. We made it to the front gate without incident, jumped on my bike and got out of there at high speed. We were halfway home before our breathing returned to normal, and halfway again before I realised who one of the the men in the carts was.

Sleazy Bob.

"Are you sure you haven't missed anything?"

We'd deliberately arranged our prank for the Saturday night because none of us were working the following day. I give Amy a call and she and Dave turn up at my place just after lunchtime. The bags under Dave's eyes suggest he's had about as much sleep as I've had -- roughly none. As Dave and I recount the story Amy sits in silence, hugging her knees, wheels turning behind her eyes.

"And you didn't get a look at them?"

We shake our heads. "I looked at the newspaper to see if they'd written anything," I say. "Right enough, there was a story about a foiled vandalism plot. But they didn't mention anybody other than the security guy. Said he caught the vandals red-handed and they made a run for it. There's a photo of him in his Toytown car, looking smug."

"And you're sure one of them was Sleazy Bob." It's more of a statement than a question but Dave and I nod anyway.

"I've been racking my brains over this, but I really don't think I've heard the other voices before," I say.
 

"Me neither," adds Dave.

"Any idea who Sansom is? A customer? Somebody who works in the casino? Could it be a computer system?"

"No idea," Dave says. "The name doesn't ring any bells for me."

"Same here," I say. "I don't think Sansom's a thing, though. I think it's a person."

"Okay. So we know they're up to something, that Otto was involved, and that they've fiddled with the computers to destroy the evidence, and we know that they really were trying to kill you, Matt," Amy says. "Now what?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. I don't know what they're doing, or how they're doing it, or who they're going to do it to. And I don't know why they're doing it." I look at Amy. "We don't have much to go on, do we?"

"No," she says. "It isn't much. If Doctor Doolittle here had waited a few more minutes --" she waves at Dave, her expression making it clear that she's taking the piss rather than criticising -- "we might have a bit more to go on. But we don't. If we took this to Burke he'd laugh us out of the station. And he'd probably report Dave to Animal Cruelty."

Dave pretends to take the huff. "I'm a victim here," he wails. "I deserve sympathy." Amy throws a cushion at his head.

"Not much isn't the same as nothing," she says. "You say they kept talking about 'needing two', and about making things look like accidents. We can do something with that."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"We can go through official records, newspaper archives, that kind of thing," Amy says. "See if we can find accidents affecting two people at the same time. Once we've done that, we can see if there are any patterns."

"They said that apart from Otto, there weren't any patterns," I say. "That was the whole point."

"Doesn't mean there aren't any," Amy says. "People make mistakes. They cut corners, they don't realise the traces they're leaving. I think that if we find the victims, we'll find patterns too."

"And if we do?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," she says. "And there's something else we can do. We can find out who this Sansom is. It's an unusual name. Can't be too many Sansoms round here. If we can work out who he -- or she -- is, we might get a better idea of what's going on. Oh, and Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"You know about gadgets. Do you think we could bug Sleazy Bob's office?"

"What for?"

"We might catch him arranging something. If he's involved in this, he needs to get in touch with the others."

"If he's doing it by email we won't be able to intercept it. You'd need to be a hacker," Dave says. "I don't see him using the office phone either. It's too risky -- the system records every incoming and outgoing call. Anti-fraud thing. If he's doing it on the phone, I reckon he's using a mobile. I've no idea how to intercept that."

"What if he uses his mobile in his office?" Amy says. "Could we bug that?"

"You could bug his office easily enough. You'd only get his side of the call, though, and if he leaves the office mid-call you won't hear the rest of it."

"That's better than nothing. I think we should do it. You've got access. If we can get a bug, do you think you can plant it?"

Dave thinks for a moment. "Yeah," he says. "I think so."

"Okay. You and Matt, you can look into where we can get a bug. I'll see whether I can dig up any possible victims. Do you have shifts tomorrow?"

"No," I say. Not that I'd have gone in if I had been down to work. Knowing your boss has tried to kill you isn't a great morale booster.

"No," says Dave. "I did have plans, though."

"Another date?"

"Yeah."

"I've got to hand it to you, Dave," I say.  "You don't hang about.  Who is it this time?"

"Her name's Julie.  Not sure what she does."

"How did you meet her?"

"She stopped me to ask where the ATMs were, and we just got talking. Seems nice."

"Cool. So where's the venue?"

"Tosca's."  Dave knows what I'm going to ask before I ask it.  "No, she's not vegan.  I checked."

"Good thinking. Call?"

"Yeah."

"Nine?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Amy says. "Matt and I will meet up after work tomorrow night, and we'll catch up with you whenever, Dave. Here's good for me. That okay for you?"

"You're only invited if you bring the beer," I say. Amy looks right through me. Her body may be here, but her mind is far, far away.

Finding a bug is easy enough. There are stacks of sites selling surveillance kit, offering technological solutions to an age-old problem. Is your marriage on the rocks? Do you feel that your relationship lacks intimacy? Why talk to your partner when you can use gadgets to spy on them instead?

Some of the things on offer are incredible. You can mail a pair of your partner's pants and get them checked for DNA, as if that's perfectly normal behaviour rather than a sign that your relationship is completely and utterly screwed, whether they're having an affair or not. One site selling mini cameras is clearly aimed at a very specific market: the copy for a spy pen, a plain-looking black Biro with a tiny wireless camera hidden in the tip, suggests leaving it in the bathroom to spy on your flatmates while you watch the footage on your phone. I'm not sure what's worse, the ad copy or the fact that customers must read it and go "Yes! That's exactly what I need!" I spend most of the afternoon ranting about peeping toms, while Dave browses through catalogues, compares specifications -- features, range, size, price, that sort of thing -- and ignores me completely.

"Do we need video?" he says, scrolling through yet another site.

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"Probably not. You'd need to put it somewhere it can see Sleazy Bob, so if it can see him there's always a chance he'll see it. I doubt it -- we could probably glue a camera to an elephant, leave it next to his desk and he wouldn't spot it -- but it's probably not worth the risk."

"You're the expert."

We decide on a small but powerful microphone instead. The sales blurb says its range is measured in miles, but we don't believe a word of it. All manufacturers exaggerate. However, the user reviews say it's good for several hundred metres, even when walls and other obstacles get in the way, and that's good enough for us. We place the order, enter card details and hope the site isn't lying about its estimated delivery date. While Dave waits for the order confirmation to appear I make some coffee.

When I come back from the coffee machine, Dave is staring into space. For someone who doesn't do serious, he's looking awfully serious.

"What have we gotten ourselves into?" he says.

"I don't know. I really don't."

"I like it when things are simple. This is not simple. This is extremely messed up."

"I know."

"What are we going to do? Let's say we find that there's a big conspiracy. What then? What can we do about it?"

"I don't know, Dave," I say, and I mean it. "I really don't know."

The intercom buzzes and Amy's face fills the screen. I hit the button to let her in. If I'd known what she had brought with her I wouldn't have. She's got a stack of paper several inches thick.

"Homework," she says, dropping the paper on the table with a loud thud.

"You did all that after work?" I ask.