Damian’s Story (cont.)
Damian Gross watched the Red Fort van turn left at the end of his long driveway and disappear into the night. He closed his bedroom curtains and scurried downstairs to his study.
Dugdale had assured him that there were no intruders and the last of the security guards had vacated the house. Good. He was convinced that Margie Robertson, or whatever she’d been called, had been trying to unnerve him in order to subtly drive home the importance of her company’s services. But still, there was something he needed to check.
He closed his study doors and, with his Wilson Combat Supergrade Classic in his hand, gave the room a perfunctory search, feeling faintly absurd as he glanced under sofas, behind the desk and in cupboards. But this was his home’s one space that remained devoid of cameras and so he needed to be certain because . . .
He paused. Removed a book from a lower shelf and opened it. The tome had been hollowed out and a small control unit secreted between its covers. He removed it and entered an eight-digit sequence, paused and added five more characters. He heard a tiny click and pulled his shoulders back.
‘I am Damian Gross.’ He spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Authorisation for opening: granted.’
He heard an artificial voice intone, ‘Opening authorised.’
The sofa, tugged by underfloor electromagnets, moved back by about four feet. The adjacent chair also slid to one side. It was a weird sight, as if the items of furniture were being repositioned by the neatest and quietest of poltergeists. This shifting exposed an area of parquet floor that had been mostly covered and now an oblong section of this space dropped by about three inches and slid to one side. This revealed what looked to be a container, roughly the size and shape of an adult’s coffin. A thick slab of Perspex covered it, but after a moment, this also slid to one side and the container began to rise, exposing metallic struts beneath its structure.
It reached chest-height and stopped. Gross stepped forward.
The container was full of files. It held a cache of corruption. Every dossier detailing every shady deal Gross had ever been part of; every paper chain linking ostensibly respectable firms and business people with his own, less legitimate ventures; every signed memo implicating members of the rich and powerful in criminal enterprises was stored here.
It was also a cache of complicity. It held sex tapes showing a failed prime minister and former exchequer; the dalliances of two presidents, although Gross doubted the footage of one of them would be of any use other than offering a kind of masochistic titillation. Sound recordings of the great and the good being less than great as they got up to no good. Photographs of public figures indulging in private vices.
The container was brimful of material that gave Damian Gross leverage, and, as always, looking at the hoard and running his fingertips across it was one of the few experiences that excited him sexually. He knew the contents by sight and ticked off every item from his memorised inventory, finally nodding to himself.
‘Good . . .’
He stood back, preparing to return his study to its customary state.
‘That’s very impressive.’
Gross swore involuntarily. ‘Fuck!’ He whirled around and saw Maggie Roberts had entered the room. ‘Christ! What the hell are you doing in here? I’ll have you fired! I thought you’d gone!’
She appeared to be taken aback. ‘My colleague left in the van. I told Dugdale I wanted one final sweep of the house.’
‘And he was cool with that?’
‘I told him you’d texted me and that the request came from you.’
Gross pointed a finger in her direction. ‘You are in a world of trouble!’
The woman held his stare. ‘All right. Let’s drop the pretence, if only so you’ll end this tirade of petty insults. I’m fairly thick-skinned, but it’s exhausting, in a depressing OMG-there-are-still-men-like-you-out-there kind of way.’
‘You’d better—’
‘Hush! Now, Mr Gross. I warned you. I told you I thought something was wrong. I told you that you weren’t taking the situation seriously enough. And I told you I thought you had a dangerous intruder in your home. Well, now I’m convinced of all three.’
‘How can you be so bloody sure?’
She closed the door behind her and locked it from the inside. ‘Because, Mr Gross, I’m the intruder I warned you about.’