The Darkfall Switch (11 page)

‘Dr Foster? Dan? It’s Margaret Andrews. We met at Arnold Coward’s offices.’

‘Oh yes, I remember, Margaret.’

‘Is everything going well?’

‘Yes. It’s a long haul, but I think I’m making progress.’

There was a slight pause before she said, ‘I understand that you may have had a visit from the police.’

He was surprised: the officers had left him only a couple of hours ago.

When he confirmed their visit she said, ‘We were informed by our contacts in Washington that there had been a development. That it looked like Luke Proctor’s death wasn’t suicide.’

‘Yes.’ He remembered her questioning it at the time of their meeting. Had she suspected something even then? In fact, had she already known? ‘You asked me about it when we met,’ he continued. ‘At the time I had no reason to think anything different. Did you suspect something?’

‘No. It just seemed a little odd at the time. It’s only recently that our Washington people were notified by the American police. In fact, I think it was the FBI that was involved – I don’t understand the workings of the American police forces. Anyway, they said that you were a suspect, which I told them was patently rubbish, but they insisted that the CID were going to be asked to question you.’

‘They did,’ Foster said.

‘Were you able to satisfy them? Account for your movements?’

‘Very luckily, yes!’ He told her about the false alarm.

‘As you say, it was lucky for you.’

‘Yes indeed. But why would anybody suspect I was involved in Luke’s murder?’ he observed. ‘You’d sent me to question him. That’s all. Anyway, I’m an engineer, not an assassin. And, quite apart from the fact that I don’t go around murdering people, what motive could I have had for killing the boy?’

‘I suppose they could have thought that you might have gained information from him, information that you didn’t want anybody else to get hold of.’

He considered that carefully for a long moment. It made sense, but only if they knew about Luke’s note to him.

‘But they didn’t know he’d told me what he did.’

‘You mean the closing comment in the boy’s note, the Darkfall thing?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘The boy had written that they should give the note
to me, and to nobody else – certainly not to Joe Worzniak. I’m sure they would have respected his last wish.’

She countered, ‘I see why you think that, but we can’t be absolutely certain. At the time, just after they’d found their son, they may well have respected his wish and not told anybody other than you. But then they may equally well have changed their minds when they discovered that perhaps he’d been murdered.’

Foster considered that. Again, it did make sense.

‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘whatever. But in the end it was lucky for us that he’d left the note. And incidentally, how can we be sure it
was
a suicide note? He could have just been planning to run away from home. But either way, without it I’d never have discovered what I did and I’d still be looking for clues.’ He waited for a response, but when none came he went on. ‘But I don’t want you to think that the Darkfall subroutine – if that’s what it is – is definitely the answer to all this. All I know at this stage is that it was something mentioned by Luke, and it seems to mean nothing to anybody, to the company’s British office or their clients over here.’

‘And because it’s a mystery you need to find out more about it.’

‘Yes. Once I know what it is, I’ll be able to either eliminate it, or nail it as the culprit.’

There was another pause, but then she asked, ‘I wonder why the note said that his parents shouldn’t tell this Worzniak man about it. The message that was addressed to you, that is.’

‘I gather he was scared of him. I’m not surprised: I took something of a dislike to the man myself.’ Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘Do you have any information on him? This Worzniak, I mean?’

There was a brief silence before she answered, as though she was thinking over what to say. ‘Not much. Actually, he seems to be a bit of a mysterious character – something of an
éminence grise
. Our contacts know of him but they weren’t able to tell us much about him. Or they don’t want to.’

Foster wondered briefly about this hint of a breach in the special relationship between the two nations.

But there was little more to say, and so they ended the call.

Afterwards, he looked thoughtfully at the phone for some time. He realized that he knew very little about Margaret Andrews. At their first meeting she had been a quiet observer, leading him to assume that she
was a junior civil servant, perhaps an assistant to the government’s expert, Sir James Ballantyne. It was only when they were parting, and she asked about Luke’s death, that he had detected that she may have had a deeper insight into the affair. Now he wondered if he hadn’t underrated her status quite considerably.

When he checked his computer he found another email from Grant’s secretary, confirming his booking on the flight and asking if had a preference for any hotel in Denver.

He had indeed! As he sent his reply he remembered the Brown Palace fondly, with the huge stars and stripes hanging down the centre of its enormous atrium. It was one of his favourites.

That evening, as he sat with Janet over the chicken stir-fry, he made a decision. ‘You know I said I had to go to the States soon,’ he said and when she nodded he added, ‘Well, it’s next Monday.’

‘Oh.’ She took a sip of her wine; she had brought a bottle of Sancerre which he had cooled off in his refrigerator before they sat down to eat.

‘I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.’

She stopped, the rim of her glass still at her lip, and stared at him over the glass, her mouth open in surprise. ‘To America?’ she exclaimed.

‘Yes. Denver. It’s a lovely area. I could take a few days’ break and we could explore the Rockies together.’

‘But … can you do it, Dan? Just “take a few days”? What are you doing there that gives you that freedom?’

‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later, but right now I need to know. Will you come?’

She took a sip of her wine and gazed at the glass, as though collecting several thoughts. Then she looked up at him. There was a shade of doubt in her voice as she said, ‘Well, I suppose I could. God knows I need a break. They owe it to me….’ Then she smiled; she’d obviously reached a conclusion. ‘OK. I’ll come. But it can’t be Monday. I’ll come and join you.’

‘You’ve got a US visa?’ he asked and she nodded.

‘Good. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow.’

They clinked glasses to celebrate the plan.

As they continued eating he told her about his work and his present assignment. She asked a question or two and in the end observed, ‘How exciting! I never thought engineering was like that.’

‘It isn’t always,’ he replied. ‘This is very unusual. Not that engineering doesn’t have its own excitements, you know.’

‘Actually, I don’t know anything much about engineering – or engineers. Tina’s told me a bit about what Alex did in Hong Kong, but she didn’t really seem to know too much about it.’

‘Or care?’ he asked.

Her eyes gazed steadily into his for a moment before she smiled understandingly and responded, ‘Probably. But the rest of us out here – us non-engineers – we don’t know much about it.’

He smiled at her and said, ‘And yet your life’s affected by engineering at almost every second of every day.’

‘It is?’

‘Definitely. Just tell me, you made telephone calls today, didn’t you?’ She nodded and he expanded on his theme. ‘And drove to work? Switched on lights? Probably rode an escalator.’

‘Of course.’

‘Each one of those involves engineers and engineering.’

A small frown crossed her face. ‘I suppose they do.’

‘Too right,’ he said, and then added in a very quiet voice, ‘And, most of the time, they all work OK. But when they stop working, or go wrong….’

She looked at him sadly for several seconds. ‘Like what happened on the Underground.’

He nodded silently and she reached across to squeeze his hand.

‘Yes,’ he said as he returned her clasp. ‘The Underground’s a very complex operation, involving all forms of engineering: civil, mechanical, electrical and electronic. They work together like a spacecraft’s
life-support
system. But if something goes wrong the risk to life is enormous. And then there’s very little time before the consequences start
skyrocketing
.’

She shivered. ‘God! I’m always using the Tube. Now I wonder if I’ll ever do so again.’

‘You can’t stop doing things because you realize that your life depends on engineering. If you did, you wouldn’t drive a car or take a lift. Every day, most of us trust our lives to engineering and we all take it for granted that everything will work safely. As generally it does. But if you brought a tribesman here from some remote South American village, he’d see it all, wonder how it all worked, and be terrified.’

He decided to change tack. ‘Your marriage,’ he said, ‘you told me about your ex being a bastard, and how you dumped him.’

‘Yes.’ There was bitterness in her voice.

‘Anybody in your life since then?’

‘You asked me that before.’

‘Yes. And you said something about your friends trying to
matchmake
.’

‘That’s right.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’

She took another sip of her wine, looking thoughtfully into the glass. ‘Dan, listen. I’ve made some pretty awful mistakes with my life—’

‘We all do that,’ he said gently.

‘No!’ Her response was fast. Vehement. ‘You don’t understand. You see, after my marriage broke up I made some particularly bad decisions. About men.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I suppose I wanted to hit back. And suddenly I felt I had to prove that I wasn’t a failure, that I was still attractive and … well, not bad at the sex thing.’

He started to speak, to reassure her, but she put her fingertips to his mouth to stop him. ‘But, whatever the reason, I look back now and I’m horrified at the way I behaved and the things I did. You won’t believe some of the creeps who put advertisements in the papers.’

‘You used those?’ He was really amazed. How could an attractive woman like this need to look in lonely-hearts columns for a partner? What was wrong with today’s men? ‘You mean, all that WLTM stuff?’

‘Yes. And GSOH. And then there were the dating agencies. That is, after I’d given up going to bars on Friday nights, getting pissed and waiting to be picked up.’

He gritted his teeth. It was quite a shock, but, then, he was no angel himself. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I really don’t want to know. It’s in the past.’

‘Yes it is. And in case you’re thinking, after that night at Tina’s, that I wanted to pick you up, no, it wasn’t like that. I did really call you to apologize. I really wanted to say sorry. Nothing else. I swear – you weren’t just another pick-up.’

‘I’m glad about that.’

‘I came to my senses a few months ago. Stopped going to the bars. Stopped looking in the papers. Stopped calling the agencies. Threw
myself into work.’ She looked at him and continued, ‘And then there was you.’

‘Come on,’ he said softly. ‘Come to bed.’

Over breakfast the next morning, he told her that he would be buying her tickets and making the hotel booking later that day. She protested, saying she was by no means strapped for money, and that she would gladly pay, but he stopped her by kissing her on her lips and smothering her words every time she tried to speak. She giggled and, in the end, acquiesced.

‘There’s one thing more,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Your name. When I make the reservation I may need to tell them whether you’re Miss, Mrs or Ms Coleman.’

‘I’m afraid it’s Ms,’ she answered. ‘I reverted to my maiden name after the divorce.’

‘Ms!’ he grimaced. ‘I hate that title, but I guess modern society forces us to use it.’

She smiled at him affectionately. ‘I do believe, Dan Foster, that you are quite old-fashioned.’

‘I am,’ he agreed.

‘And I’m glad. This world could do with some more of the
old-fashioned
courtesies.’

After she had left he looked up flight information and selected a few that he emailed to her office, for her to choose one she preferred. He didn’t mention that she’d be travelling First Class – that could be a nice surprise later on. Then he sat back to wonder about the hotel. Since Arnold Coward had made the reservation and were paying his bill, he couldn’t really bump up the chargeable costs by adding Janet. He needed to speak to the hotel, to see how best to handle it. Perhaps he would need to book a separate room for her. He would have to wait until the afternoon before calling, because of the time difference between Denver and London.

He had settled down to re-examine the technical information on the Generation 300 system when Hamish Grant rang to say that all the necessary arrangements had been made with Powerplant Dynamics’ management staff that he would need to meet in Denver. In particular, he would be seeing their chief executive officer. ‘He rejoices in the
name of Zak Beckermann,’ Grant said, with some amusement in his tone.

‘Probably short for Zachary or Zachariah,’ Foster said.

‘In view of the difficulty of spelling either of those,’ Grant said, ‘I can well understand the need for brevity.’ Then he added, ‘And your friend Joe Worzniak will meet you there too.’

Foster scowled. ‘I suppose I can endure his company,’ he said drily, making Grant chuckle.

‘You really took a dislike to him, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I did. There’s something unpleasantly cold about him.’

‘Well, unfortunately, our American colleagues insist that he should accompany you on your visit to the company. They say he’ll be able to open doors for you; overcome any difficulties that might crop up. That you will get better co-operation if he’s there to apply pressure.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Foster growled. ‘I’m sure it’ll help.’

‘Listen, Foster,’ Grant said after a short pause. ‘I wonder … while you are with him, can you try and find out a little more about him? For us?’