The Weaver Fish (18 page)

25

It was almost 4.00 am as Worse chose the coast road to return to Perth.

‘I think it might be safer if you stay with me for the time being, rather than Sigrid.' His place was far more secure, and he was thinking ‘safer' for both Millie and Sigrid.

Millie didn't reply. After a full minute of silence, she asked, ‘Why did those men come to kill you?'

Worse gave a summary of events beginning with Zheng's visit, and finishing, ‘So, at the moment, it comes back to Fiendisch, though he apparently confers with someone else. I don't know why they would want me dead.'

He had been glancing periodically at the satnav screen. Ritchie's car had not moved.

‘Are you scared?' Millie looked at him.

‘Scared? Appropriately, I would hope.' Worse was thinking of the recent struggle in his apartment, and Zheng's fatal miscalculation. He turned his head, looking past Millie to the white water glints on the black sea. They reminded him of the quartz scintillation earlier. He appeared to change the subject. ‘Have you heard of Leonardo di Boccardo?'

‘No.'

‘No. Few have. A Florentine political philosopher and earliest known victim of aggravated identity erasure. He was the luckless progenitor of all those airbrushed out of history in fascist times. Despite that, he projects an appealing sort of mentorship across the centuries, I find.'

‘Airbrushed at least hints of a certain artistry; now we would
be digitally remastered from the record,' said Millie, rather technically. ‘Anyway, what about him?'

‘He advised that, in conflict, one need only be as fearful as one's adversary is clever. From what I have seen of the two outside your place, that would be not very. In the case of Fiendisch, more. Definitely more. A small advantage is that I suspect they're not completely sure of my identity.'

‘As I am not,' Millie responded drily. She also looked briefly at the ocean, then ahead. ‘Do you think their interest in you is connected somehow to Nicholas disappearing?'

‘Increasingly.'

Worse called Sigrid to say that her house guest would not be arriving. He gave no explanation.

When he had rung off, Millie continued her enquiries. ‘Why would they conceivably want you dead? I mean, what is it you do? Ordinary people don't get killed off by gangsters for no reason.'

‘It is troubling, isn't it?' Worse said. ‘Generally, I just quietly mind my own business. Occasionally I might meddle in someone else's—only bad people, though.'

‘Did you go to the police?'

‘No. I was wanting to figure out more for myself first.'

When they were nearly at the Grosvenor, Worse pulled over and asked for the computer. He instructed Peepshow to blind the security system to their arrival. As he drove into the basement car park he noted Zheng's car, but made no comment. In the elevator, all he said was, ‘Thirty-three,' as he pressed for the floor, for Millie's benefit.

Worse actually had two adjoining apartments, occupying the whole north side of his floor. When he referred to his spare room, it was more like a spare apartment. Millie was not aware of this, and when he showed her to what was clearly a main bedroom, she asked rather pointedly where he would be sleeping.

‘Through here,' he said, ignoring the imputation. They walked into the side that was primarily his home.

‘I'll be here if you need me. The security's good. I'll show you around in the morning.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, later today.'

He had carried the computer and backpack up from his car, and now put them down on a hall table.

‘How can you afford all this?'

Her curiosity exceeded good manners, and within the lifetime of the question Worse detected an apologetic inflexion. But he did answer politely.

‘Indebtedness. Mine and others'. Consulting fees. Some modest royalties.' He was tired. ‘We'll make a plan tomorrow. There's a lot of research we can do from here. We need to unravel the strands of our respective mysteries. I'm sure we will find them joined somewhere, which can only be helpful, actually.'

They were standing in the hall outside his computer room and he gestured inside. ‘We can find you some clothes and whatever as well. Go shopping, I mean. We may also be able to get back into your place soon. First we should make a judgement about your level of continuing risk. Let's plan to start at ten.'

He walked through to his kitchen and assembled some fresh items on a tray, then led her back to the other apartment. He put them in her refrigerator, and pointed to other supplies in cupboards.

‘Towels and so on are in the bathroom. Washing machine and dryer in there. You could do your things overnight. If there's anything else you need, just come over and call out. You should feel completely at home.'

‘Thanks. It's great. A definite improvement on where I've been recently.' The thought of Nicholas interrupted the pleasure in her face, and she looked down.

‘I was meaning to ask,' said Worse, ‘do you have your credit cards and so on with you or are they at the flat?' Millie patted her denim jacket.

‘Good. I mention it because if they were back there, you might have considered cancelling them.'

‘And my travel documents are in safekeeping at a bank.'

‘Not the Humboldt, I trust. Goodnight.' As he left, he added, ‘By the way, I have a regular commitment on Thursday evenings. I'll be out tonight.'

He closed the link door behind him.

Worse was up and working by 8.00 am. The first thing he did was check the location of Ritchie's car. It was still in Millie's street. He scanned the voice recording from Ritchie's phone, making some notes as he did. There had been little conversation over the past four hours as the two took turns at watching the house, and sleeping. Worse also prepared another computer, specifically for Millie's use, with safeguards for both her and himself.

Millie appeared at exactly 10.00 am, opening the link door and calling out. Worse answered, and she followed his voice to the workshop. She looked surprisingly refreshed, and seemed pleased to see him. He marvelled at the art of dressing differently using the same clothes.

‘By the way, I don't know your first name,' she said brightly.

Worse hesitated. ‘Richard. Have you eaten?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

Worse stood up and moved to the computer he had dedicated to her.

‘This is for your exclusive use. You can do everything on it. It's important you don't touch any of the others, please. Printer's online. Here's your email address.' He pointed to a sheet of paper on the bench. ‘Username. You need a ten-character password, case sensitive, the usual string caveats. You can set up access to your UK address using these instructions,' he gestured again toward the sheet. ‘It calls an encryption routine. Obviously, don't mention where you are, or me, in your messages.'

‘Where am I, anyway?'

‘Level thirty-three, the Grosvenor. Did you sleep well?'

‘Yes. I took a while getting off, but then I was fully out to it till the alarm.'

‘Do you have everything you need for the moment?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘I'll make coffee while you set up your mail.'

‘You said that you'd sensed that Nicholas was becoming unhappy in his work. Why did you think that?' They were sitting on the main balcony, where Worse had served coffee.

‘Well, he had been hired to develop a suite of specialized instruments for the wine industry—futures, options, hedge
products, insurance tools and so on. It was exciting stuff. They seemed like a very sophisticated business, they wanted the best, and they were prepared to pay for expertise. They treated him very well at first, professionally and socially. He was loving it here.'

She fell silent, and Worse waited. ‘Then his last few messages seemed different. Early on, they'd left him to get on with it, and it was going really well. He was at the stage of testing prototypes—basically running lots of simulations—when I think Fiendisch started interfering.'

‘Do you know what that was about?'

‘I gathered that they disagreed about parametrization. I don't know any details. Nicholas wondered if the bank was under financial strain. That was in his last message. I've printed them off for you.'

‘What did the parametrization issue mean to you?'

‘I don't know. I haven't thought that through. Margins, maybe. Acceptable risk, profit projection.'

Worse was silent for several seconds. They sat in canvas chairs, both facing out, with a small table between them. The project seemed sound in principle. The Australian wine industry had made enormous advances in recent years, and had become a billion-dollar export earner. Conventional economics would prescribe profitable management for each stage of harvesting, production, packaging, marketing, shipping, retail, associated tourism, and so on. As far as Worse was aware, the industry was successful in those respects. But bankers and brokers would inevitably want more. A specialist derivatives market would assist in capital raising, risk management, portfolio gearing and, above all, provide another layer of opportunity for profit. It wasn't surprising that a boutique investment bank like Humboldt had seen the potential for niche financial products and set about developing them.

But something else made a connection for Worse. His reconstruction of Zheng's final days placed the killer in the heart of the South-West premium wine district. For a man with a minibar tab listing beer only, the visit was surely not for pleasure.

‘Coffee okay?'

‘Great.' She hadn't yet tasted it, and was prompted to reach for
her mug. As she did, and unpredicated by anything spoken, they exchanged glances with such exact coincidence that Worse felt slightly unnerved, as if embarrassed by trespass and discovery. It was one of those events that, however trivial, draws attention to itself by virtue of improbability. But for Worse it was more than that; he knew from experience that it signalled in him a particular curiosity and self-consciousness around another person. Even looking away, he sensed her smiling as she raised the coffee to her lips.

‘Tell me what you think has happened to your brother.' The shift was sudden, and she seemed to startle slightly.

‘Well, even before meeting you I was worried about something awful. I told you that it's completely out of character for Nicholas not to keep in touch. And I found his flat burgled. All that might have had nothing to do with the Humboldt, except that the mood of the emails did change, and Fiendisch behaved so oddly, nothing like you'd expect of a business principal with even ordinary concern for a staff member.'

Worse was always entertained by disjunctive pairs such as odd and even in the same sentence, and turned to look at her. His momentary distraction went unnoticed.

‘Anyway, I thought the bank aspect of it looked sufficiently strange to sneak in for a look around. I mean, Nicholas would have had an office there. No signs of that last night.' She gestured negation with one hand while resting her coffee on the table with the other. In doing that, she looked at Worse.

‘Now, of course, from everything you've told me, I'm really worried. For Nicholas. And for myself, I suppose.'

Worse stared at the balcony railing, and took the conversation back a step.

‘Is that something you do regularly, breaking into banks?'

‘I didn't really break in,' she said defensively, ‘I had an entry card. No, of course I don't. Do you?'

‘Denial, fallacy, protest, deflection. Very infrequently. Weren't you scared?'

‘Absolutely. Especially when—'

‘The flower arrangement sprang into life. I'm sorry.' Worse was looking into his coffee, but was aware of her grinning.

‘You're forgiven.'

He looked at her as he rose from his chair, collecting her mug. ‘Well, you scared me too, and you're forgiven.'

Worse had been thinking about the best course of action. There were two mysteries. The first, Zheng's attack, was his. The second was Millie's—what had happened to Nicholas, and why she herself had been targeted. The relational complex
Zheng
implicated Ritchie implicated Fiendisch, though not necessarily the Humboldt.
Nicholas
implicated the Humboldt and Fiendisch, and as well,
Nicholas
implicated Millie implicated Ritchie, though not necessarily Fiendisch or the bank. It seemed inconceivable that the two sets of events were not related, at least through Fiendisch, and if that were the case, Worse believed that finding Nicholas should take priority. He shared these thoughts as they walked through the kitchen to the computer room.

On the way, Worse briefly showed her the other lab, explaining that should the need arise, they could do basic forensic work in-house.

‘Why do you have all that stuff at home?' she asked.

‘I used to be interested in it.'

‘I hope you're not some kind of arch-criminal and I've been completely hoodwinked.' She was being humorous, but Worse was blunt.

‘I'm not.' A moment later, before she could formulate something apologetic, he added, ‘Hoodwinked is a nice word. We should use it more.'

Millie stayed quiet.

‘I don't think I told you about our spyware in the bank's IT system,' Worse said as they entered the computer room. ‘We have a copy of everything there is.'

‘Wow,' Millie almost whistled appreciatively.

‘First, I think we should independently record everything we can remember about all the rooms in the bank. Then combine notes. Then we'll start mining the computer records: keywords Nicholas, Zheng, Grosvenor, for example. I'm also going to find out more about Fiendisch. Interrupt me at any time. Otherwise we'll discuss progress over lunch.'

Millie assented briskly by sitting at her desk, turning to give Worse a stack of printed emails. Worse had already thought about the fact that these represented her last contact with Nicholas, and he accepted them with slight formality.