Each Day I Wake: A gripping psychological thriller: US Edition (7 page)

What Evan Hamilton didn’t need to tell any of team at
The Herald
was they were under pressure to come up with results. Since the breakthrough story that had led them to be nominated for the
Insight Award
, their investigation had produced some good copy but not a single front page headline, no new killer story. Doubters were already circling, making the newspaper’s management restless, to say the least.

Hamilton steeled himself for the 8 AM meeting. He knew he would have to crank up the pressure on the team.

He arrived at the meeting room his customary five minutes early to find Geoff Tunny sitting there alone. “No one else here?”

“Early yet. Give them time.”

Working with a private investigator like Tunny went against everything Hamilton valued in journalism. But in these days of press competition, with journalists so accountable if matters weren’t wholly above board, it was the only way to get results. Not that Tunny was allowed to be called a PI when he worked for the paper. SC, story consultant, sounded much more acceptable to anyone looking in from outside.

Useful, then, that the others hadn’t yet arrived. There were matters they needed to discuss.

“Tell me, Geoff, where do you think we are in exposing Montague?”

Tunny lowered his eyes. “You want the detail or the methodology?”

“Because there is no detail yet?”

“It will come so long as we don’t try to rush it.”

Hamilton gritted his teeth. “So, let’s have the methodology.”

“You sure you want to know about this?”

“There’s no one here but us two.”

“OK. We have a bug in Montague’s office. In his computer.”

“Monitoring his keystrokes?”

“Better than that. It relays all his activity on the desk top. Copies every document. And it also records everything he says.”

“You can listen directly?”

“And see what he’s looking at, where he’s linking to.”

“How did you manage to set it up?”

“You’re sure you really want to know?”

Hamilton nodded.

Tunny smiled. “OK. That’s the pleasing part. The reason why you pay me to do what I do. There’s a young guy from China, Alan Qui, works in Canada One, not for OAM but for another investment company. He’s not making it, not delivering the goods, and sooner rather than later he’s going to be sent home. The only way he’ll be able to face his family when he gets back to China is to show them he’s made good money and no longer needs to work in London. So, he’s taking on jobs. One of those jobs was to stay overnight in the Tower and place the bug for us.”

Hamilton was beginning to wish he hadn’t asked. “What happens if he talks?”

“He won’t.”

“What if Montague discovers the bug?”

“Relax. He won’t. He’s too busy being Tyrone Montague, king pin and financial whiz kid, to ever notice. And for insurance, once we’ve gathered the information we need, part of the deal is that Qui goes back and removes the bug. If we’re lucky, we’ll be back out of there before they even notice.”

“This shouldn’t come down to luck.”

“You know well enough how this game works by now, Evan. You have to take risks. Acceptable risks. It’s what we do.”

Hamilton shook his head. “And what did it cost?”

“Five thou to put the bug in and another five thou to take it out. Cheap at the price.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“You want to catch Montague, don’t you? Expose him for the bag of slime that he is?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m afraid, Evan my friend, that you have to feel comfortable getting down and dirty like the rest of us.”

There was noise outside in the corridor. The rest of the team arriving.

Hamilton wondered how he’d ever let himself get mixed up with a low-life like Tunny. But the time for remorse was long gone. They were in this together now.

He stepped back to take his seat at the head of the table. “Keep this to yourself, Tunny. Just between us. Safer that way, I’m sure you agree.”

Tunny whispered back. “You know you can depend on me, Evan.”

Stella DaSilva combed her hair and tied it in a pony-tail.

Her next client liked them young and she knew how to dress to appeal to this without surrendering the high-class sheen that was so essential when you had to cut it in the top London nightspots.

But she shouldn’t think of him like that. He was more than a client. He was the one who’d saved her.

She looked in the mirror and smiled to show her perfect whitened, straightened teeth. “Not bad. Not bad for someone who began with nothing. Nothing at all.”

Her thoughts went back to the children’s homes where she’d spent seven loveless years wondering why the world had been so hard on her and the brother with whom she’d lost contact. It was a cruel thing to do, she knew that well. But to separate them, place them in homes at opposite ends of the country and leave no means for them to stay in touch was routine in those days. That didn’t excuse what had been done or make it any easier. She’d lost contact with her brother and now, even if she could find him or if he was to find her, she wouldn’t want him to know how she now lived. As an escort girl. Or by any other account and no matter how she dressed it up to the outside world, as a high class whore.

And all because their father had been killed crossing the road that misty night. All because their mother, Caitlin, couldn’t cope with the loss of Jimmie and had fallen apart, taken to drink and then found another man who’d begun knocking her and her brother about. When the neighbors reported it, Caitlin had been forced to choose between the children and her new man and she’d chosen to stay with him.

It was for their own good that they were removed and placed in public protection, Stella knew that. Nothing but violence and abuse would have resulted if they’d stayed with their mother and her new man. And while the care she’d received in the half dozen homes she’d been confined in during those years was without fault in its own terms, she’d been left in a loveless world with no one, no mother, no brother, to care about and be cared for.

When she reached eighteen she had to leave. That’s the way it worked. She was an adult. She had to stand on her own two feet.

It was like stepping into a swamp on a moonless night, with no direction, no preparation for what was to come.

But she’d made it.

She’d come to London with the few possessions she’d been allowed to keep and faced the terror of cold nights on damp and icy streets.

She had something on her side. She was beautiful in a way that attracted men of a certain kind. She was tall, thin with small breasts, raven black hair and brown, bright eyes that the years in the homes had not dimmed.

The first of her many men had been the one to find her, to save her and lead her to the direction her life was now on.

The man she was going to meet again tonight.

There was security in knowing that he’d remained as true to her in his own way as she’d remained true to him over the years since she’d arrived in London. Though he had a wife and another life quite different to anything she knew; though she had others to fill the time between their meetings, and yes, to pay the bills and keep her in the high life to which she was now accustomed.

She dabbed her lips with a tissue, removing some of the bright red lipstick she’d been applying as she looked in the mirror. He didn’t like her to look too obvious.

She moved back and looked herself over. Yes, she could still cut it amongst the models and would-be starlets that appeared on the scene and shone for a few brief months before the terrors of this life took hold of them. Pornography or violence or perversion. Stella had seen it all, had steered a pathway through all that. There was no way she would let anything now stand in the way of her success in surviving.

Time to go.

She smoothed the tight, tight silver lame dress over her hips. Not too short. But short enough to excite.

Time to meet the man who’d saved her.

He didn’t like to be kept waiting.

He didn’t like journalists and he didn’t care who knew it. They were a menace, snooping about, collecting information that might compromise his investigation and for what? All for a few headlines that would be forgotten next day once another story came along. Meanwhile, for policemen like him, the task of bringing prosecutions that would succeed in court went on. As he would tell anyone who would listen, he didn’t give a damn about the faint-hearted liberals crying about freedom of the press. What mattered was putting the wrongdoers away.

He’d been investigating drugs misuse in the City for over three years now, ever since Superintendent Henderson had received information that a new drugs gang was finding a ready market for cocaine, methamphetamine and other illegal highs amongst the asset traders and bankers of Canary Wharf. He’d been making progress, establishing useful contacts that sooner or later would deliver the evidence he needed, he was sure of that. And then along came the journos, on his case, and he didn’t mean that in any figurative sense, either.

He knew that Evan Hamilton at
The
Herald
had set up a team to investigate City corruption. Stories about rogue bankers were a currency high in demand. He respected the man, admired, even, his determination to root out corruption in high places. But that was no help now it was clear that many of those accused of financial wrongdoing were also of interest to the drugs investigation. Fingering any of them for financial fraud would create such a climate of suspicion that the gathering of information on drugs misuse would be all but impossible.

Yet it was difficult to intervene. That was the problem when working undercover. With so much police time already invested in trying to penetrate the protective layers around the trade in drugs, it would be disastrous if his identity was now revealed. That meant he had to stand by while Hamilton and his men were running all over
his
back yard.

Above any of this, Hamilton’s men could even be a direct threat to him. No one, least of all the press, needed to know the details of his undercover identity. If they did, he could end up in the dock himself.

He sat back in his office chair and gave a smile.

It wasn’t all hard going.

There were satisfactions in living a life as someone else. Going undercover in a new identity as a drugs dealer himself gave a man like him new freedoms. Led to many experiences he would never have had if he’d remained an ordinary copper.

Like meeting Stella and taking her as a lover.

The alarm he’d set on his phone rang. Time for his meeting with Superintendent Henderson. Time to let him know that Hamilton and his journos were intruding too far on the case.

He looked at the name tag on the uniform he wore for formal meetings like this.

John Delaney.

Strange how after spending so much time undercover his given name was starting to look unnatural to him. Stranger still that his undercover name, Terry Morgan, had started to feel so much more like the real him.

Marshall Brogan knew he should have worked harder to establish the identity of the intruder. It would have given him a stronger bargaining counter in his meeting with Tyrone Montague. But perhaps he already knew enough.

It wasn’t easy to get through to the man. His assistants did their jobs well in protecting their CEO’s time and space. Though they wouldn’t quite say as much, every barrier they placed in his way asked the same question - why would a lowly security guard be asking for a confidential meeting with the head of OAM? Surely, if there were matters of importance that needed consideration, they would best come from the Head of Security. Yet Brogan had persisted and when the matter reached Montague himself, his curiosity raised no doubt, he agreed to the meeting.

Sitting in the padded leather Chesterfield facing Ty Montague, it was difficult for Brogan to remain calm. The aura of privilege surrounding the man could be all but touched, all but tasted. Montague was, in this moment, an embodiment of every injustice Brogan had been forced to contend with down the years. The children’s home managers, the prison governors, the ships’ captains, and all the mean-spirited authoritarians that had dogged his life - now all rolled into one. It was bound to reignite the rage that he’d fought to control over so many years. An anger made all the stronger by the way Montague was keeping him waiting, pretending to be involved in the paperwork before him, a well-practiced artifice to let him know who was in control. Brogan knew that despite it all, he must not let the way he felt at this moment intervene. He wanted something from the man.

When Montague looked up over his half-moon spectacles his attitude was dismissive. “I don’t know why I agreed to see you, Mr. Brogan. Call it a courtesy.”

Brogan disliked the way Montague referred to him as
mister
. The false note struck made this into an insult, a token of how inferior Montague thought him to be. But what was required here was not anger but modesty. “I’m grateful you could find time, sir. As I told your assistant, it’s something important that’s best spoken of between the two of us.”

Montague didn’t sound convinced. “So, out with it. You know how busy I am.”

Brogan took his time. He knew that Montague found it hard to resist a deal. Any deal that he thought he would come out of as the winner. It was a weakness that must have served him well. “It’s about a trade, sir.”

“What could you possibly have that I’d want to trade with you?”

“Information. I think you know something that’s of great importance to me.”

“Good for you. And what might you have to trade in return?”

“Something happened in your office last week.”

“Nothing has happened here.”

“As far as you know.”

Montague drummed his fingertips on the desk. “Nothing’s come through from Security. If what you’re saying is true, why hasn’t it been reported?”

“That’s why we need to have this meeting.” Brogan paused. “And because you might want to keep this confidential, away from Security and the police.”

Brogan knew this was a crucial moment. Montague was entitled to ask him to leave, entitled to call Brogan’s boss and ask for an explanation of why every rule in the book was being broken. Yet the look Montague gave him suggested the gamble of mentioning the police was about to pay off. If the rumors he’d been hearing were true, Montague would go a long way to avoid any form of police involvement in his business.

Montague gave a smile that said
relax
,
let’s take this one step at a time
. “OK, Mr Brogan. Tell me what you want from me.”

“The answer to a single question.”

“And if I agree, you’ll tell me what happened here last week?”

Brogan nodded. “Then we have a deal?”

Just as in an exchange of prisoners at a deserted checkpoint could not depend on one side going first and the other agreeing to respond, they had arrived at the matter of trust. The only solution was to meet halfway.

Brogan began. “I found someone in your office at 2 AM checking out your computer.”

Montague showed no surprise. “And you apprehended them?”

“They left before I could do that.”

“And you didn’t report it and then you waited all this time before letting me know?”

“You’ve not been the easiest man to get to see.”

“But you saw them?”

“No.”

“Then what do you have that could possibly be of any value to me?”

“I have something. Something that could allow you to identify them.”

“So give it to me.”

“Not before we make the trade.”

Montague leaned forward. “What, then, do you want from me?”

“The intruder was using your computer.”

“And?”

“There was an image on the screen. A photograph of a woman. Someone who’s important to me.”

“And how am I supposed to help?”

“I want to know her name. The one she’s using now. And where she is.”

“Why would you expect me to know that?”

“A beautiful woman on the computer of the CEO of one of the largest investment companies on Canary Wharf? Why else would she be there? If you didn’t know her?”

“Could be any woman. Men have any number of photos of beautiful woman on their computers.”

“Not this one. She’s Irish, like me. Three years older than me. Raven black hair. Shining bright, brown eyes. She’s wearing a pearl necklace. It’s unusual. Every fifth pearl is a black pearl. There can’t be many necklaces like that.”

Montague’s eyes narrowed as he heard the description. “You want to tell me why she’s important to you?”

“I’d rather you told me her name.”

Montague leaned further forward, staring at Brogan as if he was looking at him for the first time. “You’re her brother, aren’t you? I can see the resemblance.”

“So you do know who she is?”

Montague brought his computer back to life and, after a few clicks of the mouse, brought onto the screen the image that Brogan had seen the week before. “Is this her?”

Brogan stood and looked over Montague’s shoulder. “That’s her. That’s my sister. You know her name?”

“She’s Stella DaSilva.”

“You know where I can find her?”

Montague nodded.

Brogan could feel the optimism that he would again find his sister burning through him. But he knew enough to suspect that this might be yet another cruel building of hope about to be dashed. “So tell me where she is.”

“There’s the small matter of what happened in this office last week and that piece of evidence you have.”

So, as Brogan had predicted, there was no avoiding the matter of trust. Montague was a man whose reputation had been well-earned, they said. A man who would cheat and lie to secure any advantage while claiming that all he was doing was playing by the rules of the game. Brogan struggled to fight back the feeling that all along Montague was indeed his superior and that he would find a way to outmaneuver him.

He recalled all he’d been through since being separated from his sister and decided this was no time to lose faith in himself. Instead, it was time to raise the stakes. “I’ll give you what I have if you tell me where to find her.”

Montague could not hide a sneer. “You’re expecting me to trust you?”

“Yes, and the fact that I could hand over what I have to the police.”

“I could just report you.”

“And there’s the trade.”

There was a long pause as Montague assessed the odds. When he began again drumming his fingers on the desktop, Brogan knew he’d called the man’s bluff. “I just need to know where she is.”

Montague opened a desk drawer, removed a business card and handed it over. “She’s here in London.”

Brogan studied the card.

Stella DaSilva - Diamond Escorts.

Beneath the name, a phone number.

Montague held out his hand. “Now, give me what you have.”

Brogan knew it was time to honest. “I don’t have any evidence, as such. I just needed to find my sister.”

Montague’s eyes flamed. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Mr. Brogan. What’s to stop me getting you fired?”

“For what? For telling you there was an intruder in your office?”

“For not following procedure and not reporting a serious security breach.”

“And not bringing in the police. I don’t think so.”

Montague’s eyes moved left and then right. “You know I have friends who won’t like to hear you didn’t keep your word with me?”

Brogan suspected that he had been successful enough in reducing Montague’s expectations that what little he had would now suffice. “I don’t have anything to identify the culprit, but I have a list.”

Brogan explained that the intruder must have been one of the overnight stayers since no one had trespassed into the building that night. “The culprit is one of those on the list I made when I did my rounds. I think I have them all. You should be able to find out who it was.”

There was almost a note of admiration in Montague’s voice as he accepted the list. “You’ve taken quite a risk, Mr. Brogan. But at least you’ve delivered something.”

Brogan smiled. “And all you’ve had to give in return is the card of an escort agency girl.”