Newton’s Fire

Steven closed his eyes. He clenched both hands and took a deep breath, as though trying to control his rage. If so, he had limited success. He pushed past Penelope and marched to the top of the stairs, pressed Luke back against the far wall. ‘You did what?’ he demanded.

Luke wanted to be indignant. These men were brazenly invading his privacy, after all. But he was simply too unnerved. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said weakly.

‘He logged out of his main account,’ said Blackbeard, still down below. ‘Then he logged back in to another account under a new name and emailed the photos to someone called Rachel Parkes.’

‘Rachel Parkes?’ demanded Steven. ‘Who the fuck is she?’

‘No one,’ said Luke. ‘I’ve never even heard of anyone called …’ But then he remembered that photograph on the kitchen wall, the young woman with the enchanting smile, and he looked down at Penelope with dismay. She’d frozen on the second-top step, and was trying her best to shrink into invisibility, but her expression gave her away.

Steven saw it at once. ‘You hag,’ he yelled. ‘You stupid fucking hag!’ He went back to the top of the stairs and grabbed for her face. She cried out and leaned away from him. Her ankle turned on the step; she lost hold of the handrail and fell sideways. Luke pushed past Steven in an effort to save her, but her hand slipped through his and he had to watch in horror as she tumbled down the steps, pummelled by her own impetus. She hit the landing floor so hard that her neck audibly snapped, then she settled motionless on her back.

There was a moment of shocked stillness before Luke hurried down to kneel beside her. He felt for a pulse, for any sign of life. Nothing. Her eyes were already glazing. He felt sick, furious. He turned to Steven who was making his way calmly back down the steps. ‘You killed her,’ he said.

‘She shouldn’t have sent that fucking email, should she?’ His callousness jolted Luke, reminded him how alone he was. That was when the third man arrived, and he really put the fear of god into Luke. It wasn’t just his shaven head, or the shrunken white T-shirt that showed off his tattoos and body-builder’s physique. It was the overt meanness of his face, the kind of man who met the world with cruelty and violence, because he liked it that way. Without a word, he went to stand beside Blackbeard, pointedly cutting Luke off from the main body of the house.

‘I need to call an ambulance,’ said Luke, his voice cracking just a little.

‘I thought you said she was dead.’

‘I’m not a doctor, am I?’ He tried to push between Blackbeard and the bruiser, but they stood firm. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Let me through.’ But even he could hear his own fear.

‘Boss?’ asked Blackbeard.

Steven reached the foot of the steps. He didn’t answer for another moment or so, thinking the situation through. But finally he came to his decision. ‘Take him,’ he said.

II

Naples Airport wasn’t done with Vernon Croke quite yet. The control tower bumped him from his take-off slot to allow some Russian oligarch off first. He sat there seething. However much you earned, there was always someone left to kick sand in your face. It was how the game worked. And even trying to compete was dizzyingly expensive, especially when you found out how unforgiving a ratchet pride could be. Every car had to be faster than last year’s; every boat fancier, every villa plusher. One step backwards and people would whisper that you were on the slide. Last year, as a consequence, Croke had spent three million dollars more than he’d taken in. Three million dollars! And this year was tracking even worse. He needed something good to happen, that was the blunt truth of it. He needed Jerusalem to come off. But there was no point undertaking so risky a venture unless he could guarantee a major payday. And that meant talking to Grant.

Croke had no way to contact Grant directly, for the man took his security far too seriously, but he sent word out into the ether, and it wasn’t long before Grant called him. ‘What do you want?’ Grant asked.

‘Our Jerusalem project,’ said Croke. ‘We’ve had movement.’ He talked him through the day’s developments, withholding Avram’s absurd deadline and their ignorance of where in Crane Court to look until the end.

‘Hell,’ grunted Grant. ‘You had me excited.’

‘There’s still one possibility,’ said Croke. ‘We search the whole block. Every building.’

‘You’re shitting me, right?’ laughed Grant. ‘How do you expect to pull that off?’

‘By calling in a bomb threat,’ said Croke. ‘We’ll have the whole place evacuated then send in people in to check it out. Which is why I needed to speak to you.’

‘Forget it,’ said Grant tersely. ‘You know we can’t have our fingerprints anywhere near this. That’s why we hired you.’

‘I don’t need you for that. I’m going to go to our beloved Vice President.’ With the president still in recovery from the recent attempt on his life, she was in charge of the administration, so it made sense to use her while they could.

‘She’ll do it for you, will she?’

‘Not for me. For God.’

‘Ah. Thaddeus.’ Grant allowed himself a moment’s thought. ‘He’d have to talk directly to her, you realize? Her team have gotten pretty good at running interference.’

‘I thought they were all true believers too,’ said Croke.

‘They’re DC insiders. They believe whatever will win them the next vote.’ Grant paused then asked: ‘So why the call? You don’t need my approval for that.’

‘There’s no time for me to arrange covert delivery. Not by tomorrow night. So, if we find it, I’m going to have to take it in through the front door myself. And, to put it bluntly, I’m not doing that for free.’

‘Fair enough,’ agreed Grant. ‘How much?’

‘A hundred.’

Grant laughed loudly. ‘A hundred? Are you crazy?’

‘Let’s not fuck with each other,’ said Croke. ‘I may not know your real name, or who you represent, but I’m not stupid either. We have to be talking the owners and CEOs of some big fucking corporations. Fortune 100 kind of big. The kind whose slush funds can buy small countries. That’s what all this secrecy is about, because you can’t risk word leaking about what America’s business elite are up to.’

‘Get to the point.’

‘If this project succeeds, it’ll be worth tens of billions in revenue to them. Hundreds of billions. You gave me five years to make it happen. Five years is an eternity for your modern CEO. I can deliver it on Tuesday. Doing so, however, will mean risking my reputation, my freedom and my life. And you expect me to do it for free?’

‘There’s a pretty big gap between free and a hundred million dollars.’

‘A hundred’s my price. Take it or leave it.’

‘Then I’ll leave it, thanks.’

‘I’m impressed,’ said Croke. ‘I had you down as a spokesman, if I’m honest. Some kind of lobbyist. I didn’t realize you had the authority to make trillion dollar calls without even asking.’

Grant sighed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll check. But don’t expect an answer today, not on a Sunday. My friends are fierce about family time. Tell you what: why don’t you set things rolling, and I’ll call you back as soon as I get an answer.’

‘Sure,’ laughed Croke. ‘And when will that be? On Wednesday, by any chance? Why hire me if you think I’m that stupid?’

Another sigh. ‘Fine. Give me a few minutes. I’ll see what I can do.’

III

Luke had no hope of fighting his way past Blackbeard and the bruiser. But Steven was another matter. He flung himself backwards, catching Steven by surprise, knocking him down. He scrambled over him, his feet on his chest and face as he sprinted up the steps.

Someone tap-tackled him. He went tumbling. He span as he fell, kicked out blindly, caught the bruiser in his throat, sent him crashing. He turned and scrambled up into the attic, zigzaging between broken furniture and dust-sheeted mounds that glowed like weary ghosts. He pulled over a stack behind him to hamper the pursuit and glassware and crockery shattered, littering the floor with shards. His jacket was hanging from a rusted nail, his mobile, wallet and keys in its pockets; but he didn’t have time to stop for it. He ran down a short passage to a window that led out onto the roof. He tried to lift the sash but it was painted shut, so he smashed the glass out with his elbow and dived through its empty heart, twisting in the air to avoid the daggers of dirty glass on the sloped roof, hitting with his shoulder instead, tumbling down into the leaded valley between two gables. He thrust out his foot to stop his momentum and it went straight through an old red roof tile whose two halves snapped back together like a mantrap. The bruiser reached out the window for him but Luke pulled himself free, hobbled along the gable valley to the roof edge, took half a step back. The house looked incomparably higher from up here than from down below. And there was no easy way down. Its walls were thick with ivy, and there were iron drainpipes at either corner, but he didn’t much fancy trusting his life to either of those.

He turned around. The bruiser had clambered out the window. Someone passed him a handgun from inside. No, not a handgun. A taser. Not that that was so much better. Luke scrambled up a gable, old tiles buckling and snapping beneath him, precipitating small terracotta avalanches. He crossed the ridge, descended into the neighbouring valley, then up another ridge. The far slope fell away to nothing. He’d reached the edge of the house. He had no option but to tightrope walk along the ridge towards the rear, arms out wide for balance. The old tiles were slick with moss; his left foot went from beneath him and he tumbled down the sloped roof. Desperately, he tried to stop himself but the camber was too steep. He fell over the edge, flinging out his hands to grab the ivy-tangled gutter. His momentum was too much for it. One end ripped free from its mountings, swinging him out and then back in a wild arc towards the house, so that he hit it like a wrecking ball, hard enough to make him lose his grip. He grabbed ivy as the gutter fell away behind him, shattering into shrapnel on the patio beneath.

Noises above. He looked up to see the bruiser peering cautiously over the edge. He wrested a roof tile free and hurled it down at Luke’s face, but it veered at the last moment, bounced off his back before smashing on the flagstones. The bruiser stooped for another tile. Luke looked down. He was way too high to drop uninjured to the patio, but a few feet to his right the patio gave way to a grassy bank. He tried to edge along the wall to it, but clumps of ivy kept ripping away in his hands so that he had to scrabble desperately for grip with the sides of his shoes. Another tile smashed into the wall above his head, showering him with red dust and fragments. He kept edging sideways until finally he was above the bank. He kicked away from the wall, spinning in mid-air, bending his legs to brace himself as he hit the bank then tumbled down onto the lawn.

The impact punched all the air from his lungs, left him wheezing and dazed. He staggered to his feet, wobbled over to the sanctuary of the surrounding woods, sucking in air as he went, bewildered by how suddenly his world had been flipped on its head. The front door banged and footsteps raced across gravel. He could hear the bruiser yelling directions from the roof, like the helicopter pilot in a police chase. Luke fled deeper into the trees, hurdled a fallen timber. Earth clumped on his soles and he almost fell over a tripwire of ground ivy. Crows screeched from trees as he passed, giving his position away. The woods thinned. He burst out into open wasteland, knee deep with ferns, nettles and reedy grass, flecked with bluebells, dandelions and thistles. An abandoned compound of some kind lay ahead. Military, to judge from the rusting MOD ‘Keep Out’ signs, the fence topped with triple strands of barbed wire. Rabbits had burrowed fat holes beneath it, like intrepid POWs, but none were big enough for him.

There were vast fields of root crops to his left, far too exposed for him to risk crossing, so he turned right instead, ran alongside the fence. Someone had thrown a tattered green tarpaulin over the barbed wire – kids wanting to play inside the compound, no doubt. He tried to haul himself up and over, but the mesh was too old and too loose, so that it bellied out towards him and bit into his fingers. Then he heard voices shockingly close behind and he glimpsed colour and movement in the trees. No time to climb. No time to flee. As his two pursuers burst out into the clearing behind him, Luke threw himself down amid the ferns and nettles, and prayed that he hadn’t been seen.

FOUR

I

Rachel Parkes rested the tea tray on an upraised knee as she turned the doorknob of Professor Armstrong’s office, pushed it open and then hurried through, setting the tray down gratefully on the edge of his oak desk so that she could finally scratch the tip of her nose, which had been itching dreadfully all the way up the stairs.

‘Not there,’ sighed the professor, taking off his reading glasses as he looked up from his paperwork. ‘The coffee table.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I mean, you do realize why they call it a coffee table? It’s not just a whim, you know.’

‘I had an itch,’ she told him. ‘On my nose.’

‘How fascinating,’ he said. ‘Do you have any other bodily sensations you wish to tell me about?’

‘Not currently, Professor,’ she said, transferring the tray as requested. ‘But I can keep you informed.’

He shook his head at her as he came over to the table, poured himself a cup. ‘You call this tea?’ he asked.

‘That’s what it claimed on the box.’

‘I’ll be glad when Karen gets back.’

‘Me, too.’

His eyes narrowed; his lips pinched tight. ‘How’s the budget report?’ he asked. ‘I trust you’ll have it ready for me this evening, as you promised.’

‘I never promised it this evening,’ she said. ‘I promised it first thing tomorrow.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘If there’s no difference, you won’t mind waiting.’

‘I’d like to look it over at home tonight.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. I have my appointment.’

‘Your appointment? Today may be a Sunday, Miss Parkes, but it’s still a workday.’

‘You knew about this. I cleared it last week.’

‘Remind me.’

Behind her back, Rachel clenched a fist. He knew exactly where she was going, and why. He just wanted to make her say it for some perverse reason of his own, perhaps so that he could deliver another lecture on the folly of Afghanistan, graveyard of empires. Damned if she’d let him use her brother that way. Damned if she would. ‘It’s private,’ she said. ‘And the budget report will be on your desk first thing tomorrow, as I promised.’

‘I plan to be in very early.’

‘It will be waiting for you.’ She nodded a little too curtly, tried to soften it with an afterthought of a smile. But he wasn’t even looking at her any more. He simply waved her away with a patronising little flick of his right hand, then stirred a pinch of sugar into his tea.

II

Max Walters – the man who’d called himself Steven – burst from the trees expecting to see Luke; but there was no sign of him, just an overgrown glade bordered by fields and a derelict MOD compound. He swore beneath his breath. The fierceness of the chase had kept him from thinking about the old woman, but now his mind went back to her. He felt no remorse. She’d brought her fate on herself by sending that email. However, he did regret the shit-storm it was likely to kick off.

He tried to game it out. Luke would call the police, that was for sure, and the police would visit the house to check his story out. The smashed window, the broken roof tiles and guttering would all corroborate his account. And they hadn’t thought to wear gloves, so they’d have left their fingerprints everywhere. His own were on the police database for various youthful follies, and both Kieran and Pete had records too. This was a total fucking disaster. Then he remembered that Luke had form of his own. It was one of the reasons he’d hired him in the first place, for just such an eventuality as this. He had no idea of Walters’ real name, and his only point of contact with him was via an anonymous email address that would be easy enough to scrub. He began to glimpse a way out of this.

‘Any sign?’ he called out to Kieran, who was wading through the ferns and nettles, looking for Luke.

Kieran shook his head. ‘He has to be in here somewhere. If he’d gone for the fields, we’d have spotted him for sure.’

‘But what if he has got away? What if he’s calling the police right now?’

‘How? His mobile was in his jacket pocket back in the attic.’

‘What if he meets someone? What if he finds a house or a payphone?’

Kieran nodded gloomily. ‘We need to get out of here.’

They turned, began jogging their way back.

‘The email the old bat sent,’ asked Walters. ‘Any way to tell if this Rachel Parkes woman has seen it yet?’

‘Not unless she replies. She hadn’t when I looked.’

‘But she’s likely to, right? An email like that, a sweet old biddy asking her for help.’

‘I’d have thought so.’

‘Then let’s assume she hasn’t got it yet. So if we can delete it somehow, she’ll never even know it was sent, right?’

‘Easier said than done. We can’t do it remotely, not unless she’s been incredibly sloppy with her passwords. 123456. RachelP. Shit like that. I can run through the most-likelies, but we’d have to get extremely lucky. And her service provider will lock us out if we get it wrong too often. Then she’ll know for sure that something stinks.’

‘So give me a better idea.’

‘We send her another email from the old bat. Have her say that her account’s been hacked and that her last email was a virus, please delete it without opening. Or we could even attach a Trojan to it ourselves.’

‘And what happens if Parkes finds out that the old girl was already dead when that email was sent?’

‘There’s no way of doing this clean and fast,’ said Kieran. ‘This is lesser-of-evils’ territory we’re in.’

‘Fuck!’ Walters made to punch a tree, but that wouldn’t help. ‘What if she lives locally? What if we could get inside her house?’

‘Then it would be a piece of piss,’ nodded Kieran. ‘Everyone keeps themselves permanently logged in these days. Nine times out of ten, you just turn on the first device you find and you’re in. Even if not, I can easily hack in or rig something up. Something untraceable.’

‘You’ve got your kit with you?’

‘In the car. Never leave home without it.’

‘Good,’ said Walters. ‘Then let’s get busy. We’ve got work to do.’

FIVE

I

A wasp had taken an uncomfortable interest in Luke’s hair, buzzing around his collar and ears. And something large and ticklish was making its way up inside his trouser leg. But he lay absolutely still until his heartbeat had moderated a little, until he’d heard nothing but birdsong for at least five minutes. He got carefully to his knees, peered through the grasses and the ferns. No sign of them. He rose to a stoop then ran away from the house, chased by little flurries of panic.

Now what?

He needed to call the police, of course, but how? His mobile was back in the attic and he couldn’t see any houses, not so much as a farm building. These were the Fens, after all, about the least-densely populated part of England. He checked his pockets, found some pound coins and other loose change; hardly enough to fund a new life in South America, but better than nothing. He headed onwards, listening intently. Engines kept screeching in the far distance, motorcycles at full throttle. He’d seen signs earlier for some biker festival; presumably they were gathering for it. He reached a farm track, followed it between fields of rape and wild poppies. An automated irrigation system began to spray, painting rainbows in the sky. A farmhouse ahead, a sagging roof and lichen shadows on its cream walls. He rang its doorbell, banged and shouted. No one answered. He considered, briefly, smashing a window. But it was too late to help Penelope, and his record would make life tough enough with the police without adding a burglary charge, so he turned and hurried on.

A flight of fighter jets queued to land at a nearby air-force base, noses up like snotty guests. Mildenhall, most likely. There had to be houses that way. He reached more woods, ground crackling with dried branches and twigs, emerged onto a winding country lane. It looked faintly familiar. He’d got a little lost earlier, trying to find Penelope’s house. If this was the road he thought it was, there should be a T-junction ahead, with a road that led down to a hamlet with a pub.

There was no traffic at all. All those people moaning about overpopulation should move here. He’d been jogging five minutes before he heard a car coming up fast behind. He stepped off the lane to wave it down when, looking back through a hedgerow on a bend, he glimpsed its black bodywork and tinted windows. He threw himself down and the SUV sped on by. He tried to catch its licence plate, but it was going too fast. It slowed for the T-junction, indicated right, and vanished from sight.

There were sirens in the distance as he hurried down the hill. He ignored them. The hamlet’s pub was old, low and thatched, with a beer garden to one side and a car park on the other. He caught sight of his reflection in the front windows and was shocked by what a mess he looked. He decided to go around back in hope of a rear door and a payphone.

A handwritten sign offered a warm welcome to anyone attending BikerFest. That invitation had been gladly accepted, if the fifteen or so motorcycles parked outside the low, modern extension were anything to go by. Luke slipped inside. It proved to be a games annexe, large and gloomy except for two spotlit pool tables and a dartboard, plus a bank of fruit machines and arcade games. Middle-aged bikers with grey-streaked hair, black leather jackets and spotted bandannas drank pints of soupy ale. The payphone was next to a large varnished pine table, where two bikers were keeping an eye on a great mound of wallets and keys. One of them grinned at him as he passed, daring him to try his luck. Luke turned his back on him to dial the emergency services. A bored-sounding woman answered. ‘Name?’

‘Hayward. Luke Hayward.’

‘Address?’ she asked.

‘Martyn’s Hall,’ he said. ‘Near Mildenhall.’

‘Is this about the fire?’

‘Fire?’ he frowned. ‘No. This is …’ Then he remembered the sirens and stopped dead. Steven and his friends must have set fire to the house, destroying any and all evidence that they’d ever been there. And his own car was sitting outside the front door! Shit! If they been smart enough to disable it before they’d left, the police would inevitably conclude that he’d killed Penelope himself, then had set fire to her house intending to cover his tracks only to find himself trapped there by a car that wouldn’t start. They’d run his licence, get his name, learn of his convictions for assault and making threats against the authorities. And what would his defence be? An absurd story about a mysterious Newton collector, an anonymous lawyer and a generic email address. They’d laugh themselves sick.

‘Sir? Are you still there, sir?’

He muttered a curse, slammed down the phone. This was a nightmare. He needed to think. If the police got hold of him now, they wouldn’t bother looking for other explanations, they’d arrest him and charge him and lock him away, giving those three men all the time in the world to cover their tracks. He was screwed. He was completely screwed.