In the Company of Ghosts (6 page)

As the hacker was starting the QuickTime movie, Doyle noticed Mrs Witchley had what looked like a tiny steel hole-punch in her hand. She unobtrusively leaned over and slipped it below the bottom of Spads’ jacket hanging on the back of his chair, closing the punch’s teeth and snipping a swatch of fabric out.
Shit, so that’s how my coat got cut.
It seemed conversing with spectres wasn’t the sole mental disorder the old woman had.
Maybe she’s into Voodoo as well? Be after our hair next, and I haven’t got that much to spare anymore.

A film image filled the monitor, angles distorted through the prism of a wide-view fish-eye lens – larger at the centre and smaller around the edges. There were two men in maintenance overalls half way up a stepladder, faces covered by balaclavas; a third man below, pulling at a hoist attached to the ceiling with a vacuum seal. Simon Werks was oblivious as they manoeuvred his prone body into position, only starting to emerge into consciousness after they had fixed him into a noose dangling from the chandelier. Werks was really beginning to thrash as the group cut his attachment to the hoist, leaving him dangling in the air at the end of the noose. It didn’t take long for the billionaire to choke to death. He appeared heavier than he looked. Werks was wearing a mask, a ball-like rubber sex toy to gag him, which his killers left on his face as they untied a set of weights from his feet. The third man kicked out the leg of Napoleon’s mechanical desk, catching the desk’s side before it could bang on the floor. With the billionaire’s corpse left swinging from the chandelier, the three masked workmen shrank into the corner of the camera’s view, opening a window and boarding a window cleaner’s hoist. Taking their equipment, they sealed the window behind them before being hoisted out of sight.

‘So, two conflicting versions of his death,’ said Agatha. ‘One murder, one suicide. But which recording is correct?’

‘Pixel for pixel, both are,’ said Spads. ‘I’ve been running each of the files through video processing and as far as the software has been able to tell, neither of the recordings are faked.’

‘Now I see why you had me released from Stick Hill.’

‘We’re branching into care in the community,’ said Doyle. ‘Anything occur to you about this?’

‘Three possibilities,’ said Agatha. ‘First, Mister Werks committed suicide and he or a third party decided to make his death appear like a murder. Second, he was assassinated and his death made to look like suicide. Third, he is still alive and both tapes are fakes.’

Doyle nodded. ‘And any of those is a real mind fuck, no-win whichever way you cut it. Right down our street.’

‘How was the office brought into this affair?’

‘The same bloke who installed the private security camera in Saucy Simon’s monitor, Luke Wilder, he called it in. He’s part of the company’s security detail. He used to be a copper and phoned an old mate of his in Special Branch after building security found Werks doing his chandelier impression. Lukey Boy reviewed the footage from the secret camera and gave his mate the nod that the suicide was a fake, told plod where to find the secret camera inside the monitor. The news bounced around the Home Office until it was cut out and flushed through to the orifice.’

Agatha drummed her fingers on the desk. ‘Mister Wilder is under protective custody?’

‘He’s vanished, is what he is,’ said Doyle. ‘You can listen to the call he made for yourself. His pants must’ve had more skid marks than the Dakar Rally, the fear was really on him.’

‘It’s not impossible,’ said Agatha. ‘He might have wanted to commit suicide and leave a mystery behind him, a legend. Conspiracy theories are rarely forgotten. But that’s the least likely option, all the same. I don’t think Mister Werks wanted to enter the rolls of history. The fact he had a hidden camera installed suggests he thought he was at risk and didn’t fully trust his own security team.’

‘Paranoid, then,’ said Thorson. ‘Wanted to see who was logging into his terminal when he wasn’t about?’

‘Paranoid, that’s a nasty word, Helen. Cautious, that’s how I would describe Mister Werks. You can never be too cautious. I think events have rather vindicated his decision in hindsight.’

‘We’re close to eliminating your third option,’ says Doyle. ‘I’ve already arranged for someone I trust to do a second autopsy on the sly and match the DNA. She’ll make sure which twin it is we’ve got on the slab, and rule out a looky-likey. Anyway, I can’t see any motive for Werks to pull a Reginald Perrin on us. Why would he want to fake his death and disappear? No money problems. Who wouldn’t want to be Saucy Simon? What man wakes up one morning and realises he’s developed an allergy to the leather on his chauffeur-driven Aston Martin?’

‘You would be surprised,’ said Agatha. ‘But I agree with your general premise. Occam’s razor,
Lex Parsimoniae
. The most straightforward option is the second. A person or persons unknown murdered Simon Werks and wanted his death to appear like an accident. Someone knew about Mister Werks proclivity for autoerotic asphyxiation inside his office, and provided for a tape to be faked showing his unfortunate death indulging his perversion. Then a hit team arranges for the fiction to become a reality. Quite ingenious, really. You make your victim’s death so excruciatingly embarrassing that the chances are the victim’s own family will cover it up for you.’

‘Faking the tape,’ said Thorson, ‘feeding it into the building security system and replacing the real footage of the assassination. That’s pro-work.’

‘Premier League shit,’ added Doyle.

‘It’s very important that the drug the assassination team used to sedate Mister Werks is isolated from his blood. That drug will tell us all that we’re going to find out from the scene of crime. I trust your friendly coroner is proficient in such matters?’

Doyle tapped his watch. ‘It’s not my first time on this merry-go-round, love. We’re on the clock with this case. Home Office wants to be ahead of the game before the news of Saucy Simon’s death gets leaked to the press.’

‘There’s a story on the internet that Mister Werk’s twin cancelled his presence at a business event in Durban. I trust we will be able to talk to Curtis Werks?’

‘Already arranged. His house is in Surrey. The interview will be there,’ said Doyle.

‘Let me see the segment prior to the assassins releasing Mister Werks feet,’ requested Witchley.

Spads restarted the footage and fast-forwarded to the point Witchley had asked for, freezing it for her. Witchley tapped the screen, indicating the hitmen’s assembly mechanism. ‘Custom suction attachment, weights and pulley. This machine isn’t an industrial system that was re-purposed. This was built to order with only one function in mind, lynching a man and making it appear like a suicide.’

‘Guess it wasn’t a home assassination kit from Amazon,’ said Doyle.

‘Engineering, medical knowledge, forensics expertise, leaving nary a trace inside the room or on the body. Not many people are so professional. Mossad. The SVR and a couple of the other Russian services, the MSS in China, a few other state actors. Corporations, perhaps. Where they can afford a private security force with staff that are ex-service. Motive, that’s the thing. Find the motive and the rest will follow.’

‘Might have been his business competitors?’ said Spads.

‘A possibility,’ said Witchley. ‘Although a slim one, I suspect. Even the Russians don’t act like Russians these days.’

‘The Chinese could have done it,’ said Doyle. ‘If they thought Saucy Simon was becoming a danger to one of their key markets. Trust me, them I know.’

‘An avenue to explore when we meet Curtis Werks. What developments have they got coming down their R&D pipeline? Anything that Simon Werks was personally involved in which his killing might derail. I would like that monitor with the concealed camera put into the hands of Frank Ludington in the office’s workshop, can you arrange that?’

Doyle pointed to the billionaire’s screen sitting on the chamber’s stone floor. ‘We can walk it around. And before you ask, Lukey Boy’s details are on the grid with GCHQ. All we’ve pulled so far is a false negative flashed on his car’s plates from a speed camera over a flyover in Hull. If he cards, cash-points or pays with plastic we’ll know about it.’

Agatha didn’t look convinced. ‘As an ex-policeman, I would be disappointed if Mister Wilder was so easy a pickup. He has experience of how our trawler casts her nets. Aside from Werks’ twin, is there anyone the victim was close to who we can talk to? Wife, girlfriend? Background information from the usual sources appeared a little sparse.’

Doyle looked meaningfully at the old woman and waved her personnel file at her. ‘Déjà vu, on that one. Pot. Kettle. Black.’

Witchley just smiled. ‘The less privacy the age allows, the more comfortable it feels to embrace the shadows.’ She indicated the vault around them. ‘And there are so many shadows down in the Firehall. But then, perhaps that’s the point; this
is
where information goes to fossilise.’

‘Saucy Simon didn’t have a wife or a girlfriend. We’ve traced a few payments to a high-class escort agency called
Lace Flowers
. Last used over twelve months ago, so not exactly a regular punter. I guess the noose and a few good bondage web site subscriptions were all he needed to keep him fluffed up.’

‘Not as much as listening to the rest of the dead,’ said Mrs Witchley. ‘But, still. Give your friend a nudge, see if the sedative’s been identified yet. Helen, perhaps you could accompany me. And Spads, do deliver the monitor to the workshop and see what Frank has to say.’

If the look on Spads’ face was anything to go by, he was dismissive of the idea. ‘Board swappers. What are they going to tell us?’

‘That sometimes what you run isn’t as important as where you run it,’ said Witchley. ‘Don’t be so supercilious towards the physical. Take the screen around to him and you might be surprised, young man. Not every problem is a coding error.’

***

The office’s workshop lay at the end of a maze of claustrophobic corridors, a doorless stone arch which gave onto a vaulted chamber. Spads poked his head in and glanced around. The room’s walls were mounted with rickety shelves, the clatter from thousands of hard disks removed from their computer casings filling the chamber. Spads realized he was looking at a battery farm for computer storage. Each drive was connected to a reading arm, feeding a slim cable that joined a snake of coaxial wiring bracket-punched into the ancient wall. The drives danced with the sound of a thousand chattering teeth, the shelves they were resting on shaking and vibrating from the spinning media. Down at the other end of the room, surrounded by crowded workbenches and plastic carts full of more hard disks, sat the man he’d been sent to find. Frank Ludington rolled between the benches on a wheeled office chair, his black fingers searching out pieces with a watchmaker’s precision from a litter of equipment scattered across the surface. Mid-fifties with Caribbean-white teeth, an arc of white in the under lit room. Ludington glanced behind as Spads hovered at the entrance, trembling with the heavy flat screen under his arm.

‘Come in, why don’t you.’

‘I will,’ said Spads. ‘I need to come in.’

‘You’re the software boy that Agatha was phoning me about, I reckon.’ He looked up from his reading spectacles, a string tie on the frames looped around his neck.

‘I’m Spads.’

‘So you say.’ His white stubby beard twitched in amusement, the lines of his mouth crinkling as he wiped an oily hand on his overalls, before extending a palm towards Spads. ‘You look more like a Gerald Cuthbert to me.’

Spads hand was uncertainly reaching out to shake the proffered hand before he realized what the old man had called him. ‘How did—?’

‘Hell, boy. You think Frank Ludington’s my real name? Half the people down here’ve got fiction stamped on their passports. The office feels more like a witness protection scheme than a crown protectorate most days.’ He snickered.’ Maybe when people say you got to go
underground
, this is what they mean, eh? Firehall being around long enough for that saying to have originated down here. Well, someone call me Gerald, I’d get me a new handle too.’

Spads swung the dead billionaire’s monitor around and landed it on the bench, not taking his eyes off the rumbling mass of hard drives. ‘The tube train brings old drives in here, too?’

‘Every week, regular as taxes,’ said Ludington. ‘Just like us, eh, boy? Too useful to be thrown away, just needs to be forgotten. Tucked away, until the day come again.’ He lifted up a hard disk; an aluminium case tied with tight plastic cord marked ‘Ministry of Defence S.O.D’.
Secure Only Disposal
. Using wire cutters to slice away the plastic, Frank tossed the tie into an open bin bag and placed the drive on a moving belt that looked as though it should be rotating sushi dishes. The belt ended up at the far end of the room, an industrial arm on a wheeled platform marked Honda Automotive picking hard disks up, slotting them into the shelves and plugging in a network connection for their contents to be sucked into the office’s system. Green recycling crates lay in front of the shelves, and every so often a network connector would disengage, another robot limb trundling across and covering the disc in a lead box – a quick whining magnetic discharge to wipe it – and then the erased drive tumbled down towards the collection boxes.