Silva spent a restless night in the cottage. She lay awake listening to every little sound: a creak on the landing, a fox screeching outside, the wind in the trees.
The previous evening she’d been on autopilot: escape from the water, get dry, find some spare clothes, treat the cuts, get some calories inside, try to rest. She realised her reaction had been a way of coping, the result of her army training. Push the emotion down and you survive, allow your feelings and fears to rise to the top and you end up making the wrong decisions. Now though, lying in the dark, the shock kicked in. Someone wanted her dead. If not that then at the very least they wanted to hurt her and scare her. But who? Fairchild’s ‘dark forces’? Whoever was in the black BMW?
Sometime in the predawn a car passed in the lane, the noise waking Silva from a fitful sleep. She jumped out of bed and went to the window. Headlights painted the hedgerows as the car drove away. The car was the final straw and she gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs.
She opened the back door and slipped outside into the pale light that preceded sunrise. The weir rumbled, the water churning in the pool below. She walked across to the sluice gate at the top of the weir and gripped the railings with both hands. The cold metal sent a sharp pain into the cuts on her palms. She flinched but continued to hold on, as if she needed to cling to some form of reality. She breathed in the sharp morning air, felt a mist on her face as spray rose from the frothing water, heard the sounds of birds starting their dawn chorus. All that was real. The other stuff, like Karen Hope, Fairchild’s dark forces, the break-in and the mysterious assailant who’d pushed her into the water, was just the opposite. The realm of fiction. Things she didn’t want to believe. Things she was frightened of.
Except it wasn’t fiction. Somebody had attacked her.
She relaxed her grip on the railings and turned, almost expecting to see someone lunging for her, hands outstretched, intent on violence. She shivered, aware of how vulnerable she was, and hurried back into the cottage and locked the door.
Inside, she fished out a tin of rice pudding from a cupboard for breakfast and changed back into her own clothes. She spent another hour clearing up the mess the burglar had left behind and then fired up her bike and headed for north London and Third Eye News, the agency her mother had worked for.
She raced along the M4 but heavy traffic on the North Circular meant the eighty-mile journey took well over two hours, and by the time she got to Highgate it was mid-morning. The agency was located in a maisonette above a wholefood shop and consisted of half a dozen rooms filled with desks and screens and chatter. As Silva entered several journalists came over to greet her, and it wasn’t until she’d spoken to them all that she was able to climb the stairs to the top floor where Neil Milligan, the editor, had his office. The room was a nook tucked in under the eaves and was crammed with piles of old newspapers and magazines. A desk sat beneath a skylight and a large TV hung on one wall showing rolling news. There’d been another terrorist atrocity, this one in Hamburg. A man had run amok with a knife and three people were dead. Not religious extremists this time: the attacker had been a white neo-Nazi, the victims young Turkish immigrants. Seeing Silva, Milligan rose from behind his desk and came over and hugged her. He was a thin man, his narrow face covered with a grey beard, his features sharp, his eyes keen.
‘Where’s it going to end?’ he said. ‘I’m getting tired of writing the same story over and over.’
Silva shrugged. Quite why Milligan expected she, of all people, would have an answer, she didn’t know.
‘Thanks for coming to the funeral, Neil,’ she said. ‘Thanks for setting up the fund too.’
Milligan had signalled his desire to create a scholarship in Silva’s mother’s name. The scholarship was intended to sponsor a journalism student through university. It was a nice touch and something her mother would have approved of.
‘Not much good can come of this.’ Milligan gestured at the screen. ‘But it’s important we try to cling onto some sort of hope.’
The final word of the sentence cut right through Silva. Hope. Karen Hope. ‘Yes.’
The response was flat and Milligan picked up on it.
‘You OK, Rebecca?’ He tutted to himself. ‘I mean, fuck, of course you’re not OK. What I meant was—’
‘Forget it, I know what you meant.’ Silva dismissed Milligan’s apology. ‘My mother was working on a trafficking story when she was killed, right?’
Milligan recoiled, almost as if Silva was being disrespectful by getting straight to the point. ‘Yes. She was trying to follow the migrant flows across the Mediterranean, talk to the victims, the perpetrators, the NGOs, the authorities. It was sheer bad luck she was interviewing the head of the charity when the attack happened.’ Milligan moved round and sat behind his desk. Shuffled a sheaf of papers. He appeared distracted. ‘I want you to know we’re not dropping the story, and I fully intend to publish something with your mother’s name on the byline.’
‘What happened to her laptop?’
‘It’s probably downstairs somewhere. I know we had some equipment sent to us from Tunis.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘Why? There’s nothing on the machine. The disk has been wiped, ready for a fresh install.’
‘So how are you going to publish the people-trafficking story?’
‘Your mother’s files were backed up to cloud storage.’ Milligan nodded at his own laptop. ‘I can access them from here.’
‘I was wondering if there was anything else she was working on. Something much bigger than people trafficking.’
‘Bigger than trafficking? Not that I know of.’ Milligan glanced up from the laptop. ‘Look, I know what you’re trying to do. You want to make sense of this and understand why your mother died.’ He gestured at the screen on the wall. The chaos in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. ‘But there is no sense to it. She was just doing her job and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Silva held Milligan’s gaze, sensing he was being evasive. ‘Because somebody broke into her cottage. They tried to make it look like a simple burglary but they removed the hard drive from her old computer.’ Silva lifted her hands and turned them over. The grazing from her fall into the weir was evident. ‘And when I was there yesterday someone attacked me and pushed me into the river. I nearly drowned.’
Milligan cocked his head. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m in one piece,’ Silva said, lowering her hands and noticing the slight shake as she did so. ‘Physically anyway.’
‘Did you report it to the police? They could help. Victim support. That kind of thing.’
‘No.’ Silva wondered why she hadn’t done just that. She’d been assaulted and the house had been burgled. At least the police would have been able to give her some reassurance. Unless… her train of thought was curtailed by an involuntary shudder. ‘But it got me thinking if my mother might have stumbled across something, something which could have got her killed. I’ve an idea about what it might be and it has absolutely nothing to do with people trafficking.’
Milligan reached for a remote control and blipped the volume on the TV monitor up several notches. Sirens in the background. A reporter talking to camera. A blast of music as the channel went to an ad break. Milligan shook his head and mouthed the word no. He reached for his jacket on the back of his chair and stood.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said.
Light chinked through the curtains and fell on Holm’s face. He blinked awake, aware of traffic noise in the street outside, the growl of a heavy goods vehicle, the beep of a horn. Then somebody pounding on something. Bang bang bang. Holm screwed his eyes shut. He had a beast of a hangover for which Palmer was entirely to blame. As Holm was leaving work the previous evening, a text from his friend had bleeped into his phone.
‘If you’re going to drown your sorrows, best not to do it alone, eh?’ Palmer signed off with a winking emoji, and half an hour later they were starting their second pint in the Morpeth Arms at the bottom of Millbank, ostensibly to celebrate Holm’s new job.
The night had gone downhill from there, ending with a curry that Palmer insisted on paying for.
‘The way you’ve been talking, it sounds like you could be taking early retirement soon,’ he said. ‘Best save your pennies.’
One Madras and several bottles of Cobra later, Palmer was bundling Holm into a taxi for the ride home. He could remember little else except the taxi driver’s shake of the head when Holm had stepped out and vomited on his own front step. Drinking with Palmer tended to be like that.
‘Bloody hell.’ Holm heaved the words out and pulled a pillow over his head.
Bang bang bang.
The pounding came again. Then a pattering on the window. Stones or earth hitting the glass. Holm pushed off the pillow and cast the duvet aside. He staggered to the window, drew back the curtains and looked down into the street.
Farakh Javed grinned up at him before gesturing at the front door. Holm bent and lifted the sash window.
‘Boss. Are you going to let me in or what?’ The smile again. Like a bright sunbeam and about as welcome.
Holm groaned. This wasn’t the sort of morning he’d been expecting. He’d hoped to phone in sick and lie in bed for a couple of hours. Later, when he eventually got up, to cook a hearty breakfast and veg out in front of some daytime TV.
‘Well?’
Holm nodded and moved to the hallway. He buzzed the entry lock and a minute later the door to Holm’s flat swung open and Javed stepped in.
‘Some dirty wino’s spewed on your front step,’ he said. ‘This neighbourhood’s going to the dogs.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Holm crossed the room. He wondered about closing the curtains because the light was altogether too strong for his eyes. Instead he dropped onto the sofa. Javed was bouncing like a first-round featherweight who’d yet to land a punch. ‘Sit down, you’re making me nervous. Besides, what are you doing here?’
Javed stopped moving for a moment. ‘You look like you could do with some fresh air.’
Holm shook his head and started to protest, but Javed was already moving back towards the hallway and heading for the front door.
Five minutes later Silva and Milligan were leaving the busy centre and strolling into Highgate Cemetery. Stillness. The peace of the dead. Milligan hadn’t spoken since they’d left the agency and now he led the way in silence, following a path that wound beneath huge trees, the light from above filtered to a soft lime by a canopy of leaves.
‘What’s going on, Neil?’ Silva said, trying to keep up. ‘What exactly was it my mother was working on?’
‘I told you, the trafficking story.’ Milligan hunched over and shuffled along. ‘She wanted to do a series, a piece on each country involved, she was interviewing the actors and—’
‘You said.’
‘I did?’ Milligan stopped walking and shook his head. His eyes were wide open but his pupils tiny. He glanced back the way they’d come. ‘Sorry. The past few weeks have been stressful. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.’
‘I’m sure you have. It must be difficult when one of your journalists is deliberately targeted because of a story she was working on.’
‘Yes, it…’ Milligan’s affirmative nodding stopped and changed to another shake of the head. He started to walk on. ‘No, Rebecca, not deliberately. Your mother was killed by terrorists in league with the people traffickers. Their target was the head of a charity providing help to refugees, and your mother and the other victims were bystanders unwittingly caught up in the attack.’
‘That’s bullshit. If it was really true then why couldn’t we have this conversation in your office? Why did somebody break into my mother’s house? Why was I followed by a mysterious car on the motorway and then later pushed into the weir?’
‘This isn’t a discussion I want to have, OK?’ Milligan increased his pace, striding away. Silva followed. ‘You’ve had a warning, you might say a lucky escape. Take my advice and move on.’
‘Move on? Are you fucking joking?’ Silva caught up with Milligan. She was angry at the way he was being so dismissive. ‘My mother was murdered and I’m beginning to suspect the facts aren’t as simple as the authorities are making out.’
‘Forget it, right? Forget whatever you think you know.’
‘It’s Hope, isn’t it? Karen Hope?’
Milligan stopped and spun round. He shot a hand out and grabbed Silva by the wrist. ‘For God’s sake don’t mention her name.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I told you not to, OK?’
Silva paused and lowered her voice. ‘How has it come to this, Neil?’
Milligan let go of Silva’s arm. He stared down at the asphalt path. The surface was dotted with the white blotches of discarded chewing gum and he moved his right foot and scuffed at a piece. After a moment he looked up, his face drained of colour.
‘I’ve got three children, Rebecca. They walk half a mile to school and back every day. Do you know how easy it would be for a car to mount the kerb and run them over? How easy it would be for someone to sweep past and throw acid at them? I’m not easily frightened, but I couldn’t live with myself if…’ Milligan’s words trailed off as he looked across to an elaborate tomb where a cherub stood on a plinth. ‘I’ve resisted pressure before but that’s always come from big business or hapless politicians or tinpot dictators. This is different. This is much, much bigger. Global.’
‘Global?’ Silva was thrown. Milligan was opening up but now she was wondering if he was slipping into fantasy. ‘Are you saying there’s some kind of conspiracy?’
‘Yes.’ Milligan gulped and swallowed. Sweat beaded on his forehead as if he had a fever. ‘Too many people have too much riding on this to contemplate the alternative. I’ve always believed in speaking truth to power, but the power in this case is too strong. I can’t fight against them without losing everything.’
‘Does anyone else have the story?’
‘There is no story. I’ve told you nothing, Rebecca, nothing, understand?’
‘At least tell me what happened to my mother’s files so I can follow this up.’
Milligan glanced round, scanning the shadows under the trees. He stepped off the path, beckoned Silva to follow and darted away into a stand of thick laurel. Silva jogged after him and pushed under a tangle of branches into a little clearing. Milligan stood on the far side. He held his hands up.
‘Stop.’ He clenched his fists, fighting something internally before letting his hands fall to his sides. ‘This is all I tell you, OK? You promise you won’t try to contact me again? Promise you won’t tell anybody we met?’
‘I promise,’ Silva said.
‘The laptop was taken away by a couple of intelligence officers. They said it contained evidence that would help them track down the terrorists. When I logged on to our system and tried to discover what happened to the files your mother had backed up to the cloud, I found nothing. All the material had been deleted without trace.’
‘But—’
‘That’s it. I don’t want to hear another word.’ Milligan stepped away. ‘We can’t meet again, not alone like this. It’s too risky.’
‘Neil, you’ve got to help me get to the truth!’
‘I’m sorry about your mother, more sorry than you can know, but I’m done with this, understand?’ Milligan turned around and started to go back the way they’d come. When Silva took a step after him he held up his hands. ‘Let it go, Rebecca. For your own good. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to pursue this at the cost of the lives of the people she loved.’
Milligan trotted off into the trees, dodged through a gap in a tall box hedge and was gone.
Outside the sun was brighter than ever and Holm squinted against the glare. His headache had subsided, but the last thing he wanted to be doing was chasing after Javed.
‘What’s this about?’ Holm stepped across the pavement. Javed was indicating the park over the road, so they crossed and went in.
‘You thought this was Taher, right?’ Javed began to stroll up a path that curved round a kids’ playground. ‘Directly involved or behind the scenes, but ultimately responsible?’
‘Yes.’ Holm glanced over to where a toddler had tripped and taken a face plant. His dad was trying to console the little boy. ‘Even if nobody believes me.’
‘I didn’t say that. I said nobody else believes you.’
‘So you do think it was Taher?’
Javed turned his attention to a pair of pigeons crossing the path ahead. He stopped and watched as they squabbled over a discarded burger.
‘Well?’ Holm was running out of patience. He began to walk on. ‘Do you?’
‘Here.’ Javed pulled out his phone and thrust it at Holm. ‘I’ve got a Twitter account. Personal. I don’t use it for much though. The occasional message to friends, plus I like to follow some footie stuff. Arsenal mostly.’
Holm raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t imagine Javed as a football fan. ‘So?’
‘This was posted last night. It was to me and about half a dozen other Gunners fans, but when you read the message you’ll see the other recipients were just a blind.’
Holm peered down at the phone. The tweet was in Arabic and he struggled to get beyond one or two words.
‘A football fan who communicates in Arabic. So what?’
‘I’ll translate, shall I?’ Javed smiled. ‘The innocent one wakes. He seeks to avenge the wrongs which have been done. He shall punish the transgressors but others will fall as well. Women and children and babes in arms. Who can say if this is justice? Who will listen to my voice? Who will stop this madness?’
Holm stopped in his tracks. ‘Say the first bit again.’
‘The innocent one. That’s what the name Taher means, isn’t it? Innocent, pure, clean, chaste.’
Holm pushed the phone away. ‘I’m done with this, Farakh. Taher is strictly off-limits, remember? If you’re worried home-grown extremism might have spread to football fans then you should have a word with Huxtable. She’ll find somebody to look into it for you.’
‘The Spider? No, I don’t think you understand and she certainly wouldn’t.’ Javed shoved the phone back towards Holm. He was agitated, upset almost. ‘Take a look at the username.’
Holm peered at the screen again, more to placate Javed than with any real interest. ‘It’s a bunch of letters and numbers. Makes no sense.’
‘TCXGP1505. The digits. Do they mean anything to you?’
‘1505?’ Holm laughed. ‘The fifteenth of May. Coincidentally, it’s my birthday.’
‘Now take the letters. It’s a simple rotation cipher. Shifted by two. Child’s play.’
‘TCXGP.’ Holm did the decoding in his head and as he did so a chill spread across the back of his hands. ‘RAVEN.’
‘Which is?’
‘MI5’s code name for Taher.’ Despite the warm sun Holm shivered. A smidgeon of nausea began to rise from his stomach. ‘Christ.’
‘Your birthday and a code name supposedly known only to the security services sent in a social media message to me.’ Javed took the phone back. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit odd?’