The Power of One (15 page)

‘Oh, they do,' Mac told him. ‘But they have asked their solicitor not to reveal their address for now. He's acting as go-between for any messages. I can give you his number?'

Abe frowned. ‘I don't think that's appropriate,' he said. ‘We need to know where they are.'

‘They are not accused of any crime, Abe,' Mac said gently. ‘I can't order them not to leave town. Now, how about you tell us what Paul was up to?'

For a moment Mac thought Abe was going to match his own intransigence, but he did not. He sighed. ‘Paul was a revenger,' he said. ‘Apparently one of the best in the business.'

The use of the word rang bells for Mac. Some obscure discussion he'd had with Tim on the history of magical illusion and the engineers who had … ‘reverse engineering'. He said, ‘You take an object; a … a piece of finished technology and you take it apart, find out how it's made.'

Abe nodded. ‘Technology, or code or both.'

‘Wasn't that what they did at Bletchley Park during the war?' Andy asked, surprising them all. ‘They needed to know how the enigma coding thingys worked. Ian Fleming, you know, the James Bond man? Well he or someone managed to capture one and then the boffins at Bletchley had to figure out how it worked and how they could fool it.' He shrugged. ‘I read a book,' he said. ‘It was really exciting. Science, like, but really good.'

Mac was a little taken aback. Andy could be surprising. ‘And what was Paul “revenging”?' he asked.

‘I don't know,' Abe told him. ‘I really don't.'

‘And wouldn't tell us if you did,' Kendal surmised.

‘Not if you didn't need to know,' Abe Jackson confirmed.

Tim ached. Not only that, he kept discovering bruises that he could not recall deserving. True, he had thrown himself from a moving car, hidden in undergrowth from armed men and run further and faster than he had since his school days, but he was still taken aback by what a toll this had taken on his body.

Rina fussed over him. Then got bored with fussing and left the task to the Peters sisters. By midday, Tim had tired of feeling sorry for himself – and being the focus of Bethany and Eliza's attention – and was recovered enough to want to see what Rina was doing.

‘I've come to tell you it's lunchtime,' he said.

‘Oh, good. How are you feeling now?'

‘Do you really want to know? No, forget that. I'm aching all over and bruised to hell, but I'm still here and that's what matters.'

‘It is indeed. You've called work?'

‘Yes. I told Blake I'd had a bit of an accident on the way home. That my car was damaged and I'd hurt my hand. I don't like lying to them but …'

‘Not a lie, Tim. Just a half-truth. And a magician with an injured hand is not likely to put on a good show.'

‘I'll be fine tomorrow but he's told me to take the day anyway. I'll lose pay, of course. But then I've got my normal couple of days off to recover properly. I said I'd still go up and meet the engineer; we've still got the illusion to set up.'

‘You'll need a car,' Rina said. ‘You'll have to go up to DeBarr's garage and see if you can hire one and just hope yours has been dumped somewhere.'

He came over to examine the scatter of newspapers and printouts on Rina's desk. ‘What are you looking at?'

‘Well, I've isolated the newspaper and the edition that Mac's clipping came from and I've found this other advert. Look.'

‘Funeral delayed,' Tim mused. ‘I suppose there really isn't an Arthur Payne born in 1923?'

‘Not that I can find. I've called all the local funeral directors and none have an Arthur Payne born on that date. One had a Ronald Payne, but I found his obit and I don't think there's any even remote connection. No, Paul put this in as a message to someone.'

‘Where did Mac find the clipping?'

‘In a book in Paul's flat. He didn't tell me what book and I didn't think to ask. I must be slipping in my old age.'

‘Which advert came first?'

‘The one delaying the funeral. Then this one, see. Arthur Payne. Born 1923. Funeral at Great Marham Church. Phone Paul for details. I called the
Echo
, no one really remembers taking the advert. I'd have thought the odd wording might have attracted attention.'

‘Um, yes, if it had been
phoned
in,' Tim said. ‘But for the last six months or so, you've been able to do it online and pay by card. I'd guess the advertising department just checks the copy to make sure it's not offensive and that's about it.'

Rina nodded. ‘Tim, I'd forgotten that. You could be right and Mac will be able to confirm that Paul placed the advert.'

‘Not really. Only that someone used his card.'

‘True.' She frowned. Matthew could be heard, calling them both in to lunch. ‘But most important, I think, is the fact that whatever delay there had been relating to the enigmatic Arthur Payne was now over. Whatever it was, Paul was ready to tell it or deliver it or …' She gestured irritably. ‘Whatever it was. Tim, lunch, I think. We'll work better on full stomachs and I think we should give Mac a call, see if he can tell us any more.'

Edward couldn't settle. Bridie Duggan had made sure they wanted for nothing but he still felt like a prisoner. Effective house arrest, even with such attention to comfort, was still just that and after recent events he even felt wary about going into the garden.

The house was a bit of a strange one, he thought, with its weird mix of mock Tudor, UPVC double glazing and those columns by the front door that looked like someone had pinched them from the Parthenon. Inside, there seemed to be a bit of a powder-blue trend going on; all the downstairs carpets and those up both flights of stairs being in that particular shade. Bedrooms had been themed, apparently; the guest room he shared with Lydia dressed in someone's rather abstracted notion of art deco, though the glimpse he'd had of Joy's room was refreshingly just post-teenage. He was rather touched to see that this cool, calm young woman, still had a collection of bears and rag dolls arrayed on the old wooden trunk at the foot of her bed.

The Duggans' security system would have put some government buildings to shame, he thought. It was all controlled from a central room into which all the cameras – sixteen in all – sent their images.

‘What happens if someone tried to cut the feed?' he had asked.

‘They'll have a job doing that,' Fitch told him. ‘Everything is channelled underground and then under the house.'

Edward didn't like to ask what had led to such paranoia. He had a vague idea that the nightclub businesses the Duggans ran had once been supplemented by less legitimate sources of income, but he didn't like to ask. It seemed rather rude, in the circumstances. He did, however, feel rather hemmed in. Used to the view of open skies and wide bay, this return to the urban felt suddenly claustrophobic and did nothing to soothe his frayed nerves.

The news from Rina and Tim had upset him terribly and roused feelings of guilt and anxiety that he couldn't shake. But what to do about them?

He'd spent the past hour talking to Lydia about going home, facing whatever it was they had to face and now, frankly, she was furious with him.

‘People risked their lives to get us here,' she said. ‘And no, I'm not exaggerating, am I? Bridie has the best security set-up here I've ever seen. Even Paul would have been proud to have designed something like it. A flea can't move without her knowing, never mind some homicidal maniacs in a red car. I'm not going anywhere. Not leaving this safe place. You want to ask Fitch to take you back, you go and ask him, but I'm staying here and I wouldn't blame him in the slightest if he told you to just go and catch the bloody train.'

‘I'm just concerned for Rina and the others.'

‘And what are you going to do to protect them if you go back? You'd just give her one more person to worry about and I think she's got her hands full already, don't you?'

‘We should never have involved her.'

‘Seems to me she involved herself and my god, I'm glad she did. I'm not the heroic type, Edward. I'm just the one that fills in the gaps, remember, does all the unglamorous jobs you and Paul weren't any good at. And I didn't mind. I was good at dotting the i's and crossing the t's and smoothing out the wrinkles in the deals you struck, but I'm not good at getting shot at. I never signed up for that when I took my marriage vows.'

A light knock on the door interrupted their quarrel. It was Joy.

‘I just came to see if you needed anything,' she asked. ‘Everything OK?'

Lydia sighed. ‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I suppose we were getting rather loud.'

Joy shrugged. ‘Oh, you should hear Mum when she gets going. Makes you two sound like you were whispering. Look, Fitch just thought you'd like to know, he's managed to get some friend of his to run the registration through the police computer. He thought it might have been a stolen car but it wasn't. The registration number was for a car that didn't exist. It's a bit of a risk, doing that, especially with all the number plate recognition cameras around. It might have attracted just the kind of attention they wouldn't have wanted. They did seem very sure of themselves.'

‘What does it all mean?' Edward asked.

Joy wrinkled her nose. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Fitch thought they were amateurish, because of the way they let us see them and all that, but now he thinks we were meant to think that. Kind of like a double bluff.'

‘But to what purpose?' Lydia asked.

‘If we knew that,' Joy said, ‘we'd know what to do about it. Fitch says we've just got to wait for the next move.'

R
ichard Grey had considerable admiration for whoever had written this code, or rather, these layers of code. At first he had assumed that the machine code contained straightforward instructions for some new game-play the programmer had been creating. Every programmer has their own style; their own fingerprint as Richard Grey liked to call it and knowing who had written this particular piece of code, he was intrigued as to why Paul de Freitas had chosen to use machine code and not some much simpler computer language to develop what was, on the face of it, a relatively simple patch for an existing game.

All programming for games was created with back doors to allow the programmer to test out the elements of the game without the need for actually playing through entire levels. Regular players with a modicum of technical knowledge took delight in discovering these illicit ways in – hence the proliferation of forums and discussion sites for gamers where ‘cheats' were exchanged and discussed. Far from being worried about this, many games designers would insert ‘easter eggs', which were little surprises and prizes for those clever enough to figure things out. Often these would be an extra level of game-play or some new solution to a puzzle. Just occasionally, when too many tunnels had been dug through a particular game, or when a game was about to be re-released, programmers would patch the most well-known cheats and close some of the back doors and thus add to the challenge for old players as well as encouraging the newcomers. Richard knew of completists who bought every new edition of a favourite game, just to try and discover these little variations. Not as popular or as obvious – in fact, usually members only – these cheats also had their forums and their aficionados. Richard did not really number himself among them. In fact, he wasn't what you might call a player of games but he kept abreast of the latest trends because you never knew what would be important or when it might become so. Richard was at the top of his particular profession and he fully intended to remain there.

He had thought at first that Paul had just been working on such a patch. The game in question,
Eventides
, was a lovecraftian RPG, first person, so far as Richard was aware and that was what had first alerted him to something being odd. He had gone away and phoned a friend, checking that he was correct in his first-person assumption.

Yes, his friend told him, though there had been rumours for a while of a hidden level played from the perspective of a woman called Lydia, a minor character in the original. ‘It's some sort of an in-joke,' the friend told him. ‘Paul de Freitas did the original story development as well as a lot of the game-play.
Eventide
was one of their first games, from when Paul didn't work for the company, he was just mucking about on the periphery.'

‘And the in-joke?'

‘Apparently, his sister-in-law is called Lydia. The story is, she was the one who put up the money to get
Iconograph
off the ground. The in-joke is that she looks like a secondary character, in the game and in real life, but she's the one calling the shots all the time.'

‘And this hidden level, according to the rumours, does it have an underwater theme?'

The sudden silence on the end of the phone told Richard that it did.

‘You know something,' his friend demanded. ‘Christ, Rich, if you know something, you've got to let me in.'

‘So you can print it in that dumb magazine of yours?' Richard laughed. ‘Look,' he said more seriously, ‘this is work. I can't tell you anything. But … do the rumours mention something about a kraken?'

Again the silence, followed by a burst of laughter and a string of expletives. Richard took that as confirmation and rang off. He sat staring at the phone, something at the edge of his consciousness telling him that though that might look like the answer, there was more to it than that. He went back to the sanctuary of his desk and ran the lines of code back across the computer screen.

He couldn't quite put his finger on it but …

Here and there were tiny fragments of unrelated code. At first he'd thought they were just place markers. It was easy to lose the thread if you were interrupted programming or debugging. He had, long ago when he still did such things, used a similar system himself. But … no.