The Balance of Guilt (25 page)

Halfway there.

Adam turned and caught Oscar staring at him. The scar on the man’s neck was prominent in the fluorescent brightness of the room. He beckoned and the spy hesitated, but paced over to the boards.

Adam’s hand slipped to the mobile.

‘I was just wondering if I could see some kind of pattern in there,’ Adam said, pointing to the list. ‘I was reading this book the other day and there was something in it about substitution codes.’

Oscar folded his arms. He looked entirely unimpressed. ‘Oh yeah? This may come as a surprise, but the way we work isn’t quite like in the books.’

Adam did his best to smile. ‘No, I appreciate that, but just give me a moment. I did wonder if there might be something in it.’

The spy was still too close to the briefcase. Adam turned, walked over to a desk and picked up a piece of paper. Oscar watched him all the way. When he returned, Adam positioned himself on the other side of the man.

‘By the way, I hope you don’t mind me asking this,’ Adam said lightly, ‘but I have been wondering and now seems as good a time as any to ask. How did you get that scar?’

The spy scowled. His fingers rose to his neck. He looked about to speak when a deafening bell began ringing, filling the room with its shrill clamour.

‘Fire alarm!’ Adam shouted. ‘Come on, everyone out, quick.’

He spread his arms and began ushering people through the door. Oscar tried to dodge around him and get to the briefcase, but Adam barred the way.

‘Come on, you know better than that. No returning for any belongings. Get going!’

He shoved the spy towards the exit. Oscar glared at him and pushed back, but Adam was ready.

‘I’m a fire warden,’ he yelled. ‘Responsible for your safety. So get out! Now!’

Oscar turned for the door, but it was a feint. He spun back around and lunged towards the briefcase. He almost made it, but Adam caught him around the middle in a rugby tackle and dragged him back.

‘Get out of my fucking way, you twat!’ the spy shouted. His breath was stale, made Adam grimace.

Oscar stretched forwards, as far as he could, fingers grasping for the case. He was fit and strong and Adam only just managed to hold him. The two men stood, locked together, pushing hard at each other, panting and sweating.

The exodus to the door slowed. Other detectives were stopping, watching the wrestling match, unsure what to do.

The bells rang on, clanging and clattering, deafening in the confines of the room.

Adam planted his foot against a desk and used the leverage to give Oscar a shove. He stumbled backwards and looked about to try to lunge again for the briefcase when a sizeable detective grabbed his shoulder.

‘That’s the fire alarm, if you hadn’t noticed,’ he grunted. ‘Door’s that way – sir.’

Oscar squared up to the man, but another joined him, then another, until he was facing a human wall.

‘You fucking amateurs!’ he shouted.

‘That way,’ the big detective retorted, giving the spy a push towards the door.

Oscar stumbled and loosed off a few more insults, but headed for the exit, his uninvited escort just behind.

The room was empty. Adam checked the corridor. A line of people was heading for the building’s main entrance. Sierra was amongst them, Oscar just behind.

Claire emerged from a side door and nipped in to the Bomb Room. Another door opened and Dan strode out to join them.

Adam grabbed the briefcase. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I reckon we’ve got maybe ten minutes before they realise what we’re up to.’

I
N THE BOTTOM DRAWER
of the cabinet beside Dan’s bed, well hidden beneath a pile of yellowing warranties, receipts, bills and bank statements, as well as the deeds to the flat, is a black, A4-sized diary. No one else has seen it, nor even knows of its existence, not even Claire. Rutherford has been allowed the occasional peek, particularly when Dan is completing an entry, but, in that idiosyncratic way of his, the master has sworn the dog to silence.

The diary is too personal for other eyes; filled not just with facts, but authentic and vulnerable feelings. Not of a day to day kind, the mainstay of most such chronicles, but case by case. It is fattening considerably faster than Dan ever expected when first he began writing. Some of the cases are mundane, his involvement transitory, advisory or fleeting; crimes which inconvenienced the world with only minor flurries of interest and which were solved within days.

Others are amongst the most notorious the South-west has seen, and, in some cases, even the country.

The sensitivity of many of the details is such that Dan once, sitting on the great blue sofa, writing up a successful investigation after a couple of whiskies, had one of those little moments of melodrama to which he is more than prone. He mused that the diary should perhaps only be released to a doubtless fascinated public after his death, and quite possibly, as is the case with the national archives, after a period of another fifty, or maybe more, years.

As to the mechanics of the entries, Dan followed a maxim of his profession – or his official profession, at least – and kept them short and sharp; one page per case, no matter how extraordinary, devious, shocking or complex.

But with this current investigation, Dan broke the personal rule and gave the next few minutes a whole page to themselves. They formed a brief but bizarre interlude, worthy of the finest of Hollywood thrillers, and so felt deserving of the accolade.

He even gave them a subtitle –
The Pressure Puzzles –
and thought, albeit a little pompously, that summed up the episode rather well.

Adam laid the briefcase gently down on a table. Dan and Claire gathered around and together they studied it.

It was obvious it was no high street model. It was unusually heavy, probably reinforced with metal, or more likely some kind of secret high tech spy material. Dan ran a hand over it. The leather felt particularly tough and oddly cold, making him suspect it wasn’t leather at all.

‘Be careful,’ he muttered. ‘If you press the wrong thing, it probably self destructs.’

‘Seriously, we had better take it gently,’ Adam replied. ‘If we don’t manage to get into it, we don’t want the spooks knowing we’ve been trying. If we hear people coming back into the building we’ve got to get out of here.’

On the front of the case, in the centre, was a sturdy, shiny handle, and on each side a lock. Both required three digits, chosen from the wheels of numbers.

The fire bells stopped their clamour. The clock on the wall said 10.50. ‘I reckon we’re OK until eleven,’ Adam added.

Dan poked at the left hand lock and tried pulling the briefcase gently open. He was expecting firm resistance, no give at all, but was surprised by a slight movement.

‘Naughty naughty,’ he said quietly. ‘I think the master spy Oscar has succumbed to our familiar friend laziness.’

He tried the catch. It sprung open. Dan let out a whistle. ‘That’s a bit of luck. He only kept the one side locked.’

‘Which still leaves us with the other side,’ Claire replied.

‘Yep,’ Adam said. He tried the other catch. It was firmly locked. ‘Bugger,’ he grunted. ‘I thought it was too much to hope for. Right, what number do we try?’

A pause. Only the soft ticking of the clock sounded in the quiet of the room.

10.51.

Claire said, ‘Do we have any records on Oscar? Like – when’s his birthday? What house number he lives at?’

‘No,’ Adam replied. ‘None.’

‘Do we know anything about him? Has he talked about a single thing which might help us?’

Another hesitation. They all stared at the briefcase.

‘No,’ said Adam finally. ‘The spies just don’t talk about anything, apart from work. They’re like robots.’

Dan nodded and said, ‘True, but we’ve got to try something. What about putting in numbers at random?’

‘It’ll take too long. We don’t have the time.’

More silence. The clock turned.

10.52

‘I know,’ Dan ventured. ‘We used to do this trick on bike locks when I was a kid. Because the three different cogs work in a line, if you got the first one and wiggled the lock, it gave a bit. That told you that you’d got the number right, so you could move on to the next one.’

‘I doubt a spook’s briefcase would work like that,’ Adam said.

‘It’s worth a try, surely,’ Claire replied. ‘Go for it.’

Dan bent down and tried turning the first tumbler to different digits, testing the case for any give each time.

One. No movement.

Two. No movement.

Three. No movement.

He kept going. Six, then seven. Still nothing.

‘It’s not working,’ Adam groaned.

‘Give it a chance. I haven’t done all the numbers yet.’

Eight. No movement.

‘Last shot,’ Claire whispered.

Dan turned the tiny wheel to nine and tried the case. There was no hint of the lock easing.

‘Shit,’ Adam hissed. ‘What now?’

A lorry grumbled by outside. The second hand of the clock kept moving.

10.53

Claire asked, ‘Are we even sure the mobile’s in there?’

‘No.’ Adam snapped. ‘We’re bloody not. There might just be his damned lunchbox and some extra small condoms.’

Dan noticed his hearing had grown attuned to the sound of the clock. He could sense each ticking second, the soft clunk of the hands as they measured off another precious minute.

10.54

He picked up the case, put his ear to it and moved it gently from side to side. Something within slid back and forth.

‘I reckon the phone’s in there,’ he said. ‘That sounded like a mobile moving around.’

‘It could be anything,’ Adam grunted. ‘Your bloody imagination runs away with you. It’s always been your trouble.’

Dan glared at his friend. ‘It’s my bloody imagination that’s got us this far, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘I would have got here without you. Don’t start thinking you’re Sherlock Holmes again.’

‘Whose idea was it, about where the phone was hidden?’

‘Who thought of checking the CCTV in the second-hand shop?’

The two men stared at each other, their faces set hard. Claire’s pointed voice interjected, ‘Do you think we might just concentrate on more important things than your investigators’ beauty contest?’

10.55

They turned back to the case, impervious and aloof, dominating the desk.

‘We’ve only got five minutes left,’ Adam snapped. ‘Dan, start trying some numbers at random, like you suggested. It’s our best hope.’

Dan bent down and began spinning the little wheels, clicking up random numbers, trying the case each time.

416   No movement.

946   No movement.

221   No movement.

602   No movement.

Dan groaned. ‘This is not happening. There are far too many numbers to work through.’

10.56

‘We’re running out of time,’ Adam moaned.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Claire said suddenly. ‘What about lazy numbers?’

‘What?’

‘You know, like 123, or 999, or 111. Oscar left the first lock open. Maybe he’s been lazy enough to set the other one to a number that’s easy to enter.’

Dan nodded eagerly and quickly started clicking up the numbers.

111   No movement.

123   No movement.

222   No movement.

Adam let out another loud groan.

‘Hang on, there are a few more to try,’ Dan said.

He span the wheels as fast as his fumbling hands would allow. 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888. All produced nothing.

Dan paused. Next came 999.

Of course. It had to be.

Claire and Adam saw it too. They exchanged a look of hope.

The emergency number. They should have seen it before.

It must be the one which opened the case.

The digits clicked into place.

999

The briefcase remained firmly locked.

10.57.

Dan stood up, stretched his aching back, swore loudly and suffered a reproachful look from Claire.

Adam kicked out at a chair, sending it rocking back and forth. ‘Bollocks!’ he yelled. ‘And we were so damned close.’

‘What do we do now?’ Claire asked.

‘We’ll have to confront the spooks anyway. But without the phone as evidence they’ll probably just bluster it out.’

He swore again. Dan stared at the briefcase, willing it to give up its secret. What did he know about Oscar that could help?

Very little was the answer. The man was arrogant, supercilious and annoyingly full of himself. He’d given nothing away in the brief conversations they’d had.

Dan could almost imagine Oscar practicing his patter in the mirror. A gun in one hand, a finger pressed to his lips, he would whisper the warning to his reflection.
Careless talk costs lives you know.

The man thought of himself as a real life James Bond.

A firework lit up the darkness.

Dan lurched forwards, shoving Adam out of the way.

‘Hey, what’re you doing?’ he complained.

Dan didn’t answer, instead bent down and entered the three numbers. A zero, then another zero.

His hand was sweating so much he could hardly move the wheel to push the last digit into place. Finally he managed a grip and rotated it around.

007.

Dan took a shaky breath. He tried the briefcase.

It clicked open.

Adam emitted a noise the like of which Dan had never before heard from him. It was an unlikely sound from an experienced and hardened Detective Chief Inspector well into his forties in measure of years on earth. The sound was difficult to describe, but might best be compared to that made by a young girl, who’d spent Christmas morning unwrapping a series of pleasing, but distinctly modest presents, only to come to the end of the pile with a sense of bafflement.

Where was the headline gift?

Then comes the smiling parental leading to the window of the house, to see a pony contentedly grazing in the back garden.

10.58.

‘Well don’t just stand there gawping at it,’ Adam yelped, with Olympian chutzpah. ‘Turn the bloody thing on. We’ve got to find out if it’s the one Tanton called. And if it is – if it is …’

The briefcase contained a few papers about a new car, a diary, a hairbrush, some pens, a copy of George Orwell’s
1984
, and a mobile phone, tightly sealed in a plastic evidence bag.

They clustered around. Dan reached out and switched on the phone. He could feel Claire next to him, her shoulder rubbing against his.

The mobile’s display flickered and blinked into life.

Enter PIN code

But it wasn’t those familiar words which drew their attention. It was the numbers, pulsing by their side.

100, 99, 98
 …

‘What the hell’s that?’ Adam yelped.

‘It looks like a countdown,’ Dan replied.

‘No shit. Thanks Einstein. A countdown to what?’

An unwelcome memory nudged at Dan’s mind. It was something the Geeks were very proud of, had installed on their own phones and computers and gleefully demonstrated. They were so proud, in fact, that the technological feat entailed a host of spins on their chairs, multiple high-fives and much squealing.

90, 89, 88
 …

‘It’s a memory wipe thing,’ Dan said quickly. ‘Paranoid people use it. Not content with setting a PIN code, they program the phone to wipe its entire memory if the PIN isn’t entered in a specified time. Everything goes, the SIM card, the memory card, the whole lot. It’s popular with bankers, politicians, business people, anyone with sensitive information.’

‘So if we don’t get this PIN right,’ Adam groaned, ‘and in the next few seconds, all my evidence disappears.’

‘Yep. You’ll have nothing concrete against Ahmed, or the spooks either. And that’s not all. If I remember rightly, we only get three tries at the code or the phone wipes itself anyway. So, no chance for random guesses. We’ve got to be cleverer than that – and fast.’

59, 58, 57
 …

Adam filled the air with some creative obscenities. ‘This is worse than a bloody film,’ he moaned.

‘Shall we just get on with trying to crack it then?’ came the voice of reason which was Claire. ‘As we don’t have a lot of time.’

48, 47, 46
 …

‘Right, what do most people use for a PIN?’ Adam snapped.

‘Their birthday. The year, or the day and month,’ Claire replied.

‘What’s Ahmed’s?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Where are his records?’

‘In the custody suite. At the other end of the station.’

38, 37, 36
 …

Adam swore again. ‘How old is he?’

‘About 35.’

‘So he’d have been born in …?’

Dan said, ‘1975 – ish. Shall I try that?’

‘But it’s only a bloody guess.’

‘Any other ideas?’

28, 27, 26
 …

‘Try it,’ Adam gasped.

Dan did. The display blinked, then changed.

Incorrect PIN. Enter PIN code. 2 attempts remaining

Adam let out a low wail. Dan thought he even heard Claire swear, but that could have been the tension getting to him.

23, 22, 21
 …

‘Shall we try another year close to 1975?’ Dan asked.

‘Any other ideas?’

The ticking of the clock on the wall was the only reply. It was slightly out of time with the changes on the phone’s display.

18, 17, 16
 …

‘Try it,’ Adam barked. ’What else have we got? Try 1974. Go!’

Dan typed in the number. His hand was trembling badly.

Incorrect PIN. Enter PIN code. 1 attempt remaining

Outside, in the corridor, a door banged. They could hear a rumble of voices.