India demanded, ‘What did you say?’
‘Tussilago farfara,’ Tatum repeated, amused. ‘It’s the botanical name of the wildflower coltsfoot.’
‘How did you know that?’ she asked me fiercely.
‘I looked it up.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, the minute I linked Ellis Quint, even tentatively, to the colts, and to Rachel Fems’s pony, The Pump abruptly changed direction and started tearing me apart with crusading claws. I can surely ask, India, why do you write about me so ferociously? Is it just your way? Is it that you do so many hatchet jobs that you can’t do anything else? I didn’t expect kindness, but you are… every week… extreme.’
She looked uncomfortable. She did what she had one week called me ‘diddums’ for doing: she defended herself.
‘My editor gives me guidelines.’ She almost tossed her head.
‘You mean he tells you what to write?’
‘Yes. No.’
‘Which?’
She looked from me to Tatum and back.
She said, ‘He subs my piece to align it with overall policy.’
I said nothing. Tatum said nothing. India, a shade desperately, said, ‘Only saints get themselves burned at the stake.’
Tatum said with gravitas, ‘If I read any lies or innuendos about my having improperly talked to Sid Halley about the forthcoming Quint trial, I will sue you personally for defamation, Miss Cathcart, and I will ask for punitive damages. So choose your stake. Flames seem inevitable.’
I felt almost sorry for her. She stood up blankly, her eyes wide.
‘Say we weren’t here,’ I said.
I couldn’t read her frozen expression. She walked away from us and headed for the stairs.
‘A confused young woman,’ Tatum said. ‘But how did she — or her paper — know we would be here?’
I asked, ‘Do you feed your appointments into a computer?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t do it personally. My secretary does it. We have a system which can tell where all the partners are, if there’s a crisis. It tells where each of us can be found. I did tell my secretary I was coming here, but not who I was going to meet. That still doesn’t explain…’
I sighed. ‘Yesterday evening you phoned my mobile number.’
‘Yes, and you phoned me back.’
‘Someone’s been listening on my mobile phone’s frequency. Someone heard you call me.’
‘Hell! But you called me back. They heard almost nothing.’
‘You gave your name… How secure is your office computer?’
‘We change passwords every three months.’
‘And you use passwords that everyone can remember easily?’
‘Well…’
‘There are people who crack passwords just for the fun of it. And others hack into secrets. You wouldn’t believe how careless some firms are with their most private information. Someone has recently accessed my own on-line computer — during the past month. I have a detector program that tells me. Much good it will do any hacker, as I never keep anything personal there. But a combination of my mobile phone and your office computer must have come up with the possibility that your appointment was with me. Someone in The Pump did it. So-they sent India along to find out… and here we are. And because they succeeded, we now know they tried.’
‘It’s incredible.’
‘Who runs The Pump? Who sets the policy?’
Tatum said thoughtfully, ‘The editor is George Godbar. The proprietor’s Lord Tilepit.’
‘Any connection with Ellis Quint?’
He considered the question and shook his head. ‘Not that I know of.’
‘Does Lord Tilepit have an interest in the television company that puts on Ellis Quint’s program? I think I’d better find out.’
Davis Tatum smiled.
Reflecting that, as about thirty hours had passed since Gordon Quint had jumped me in Pont Square, he was unlikely still to be hanging about there with murderous feelings and his fencing post (not least because with Ginnie dead he would have her inquest to distract him), and also feeling that one could take self-preservation to shaming lengths, I left the Piccadilly restaurant in a taxi and got the driver to make two reconnoitering passes around the railed central garden.
All seemed quiet. I paid the driver, walked without incident up the steps to the front door, used my key, went up to the next floor and let myself into the haven of home.
No ambush. No creaks. Silence.
I retrieved a few envelopes from the wire basket clipped inside the letter box and found a page in my fax. It seemed a long time since I’d left, but it had been only the previous morning.
My cracked arm hurt. Well, it would. I’d ridden races — and winners — now and then with cracks: disguising them, of course, because the betting public deserved healthy riders to carry their money. The odd thing was that in the heat of a race one didn’t feel an injury. It was in the cooler ebbing of excitement that the discomfort returned.
The best way, always, to minimize woes was to concentrate on something else. I looked up a number and phoned the handy acquaintance who had set up my computers for me.
‘Doug,’ I said, when his wife had fetched him in from an oil change, ‘tell me about listening in to mobile phones.’
‘I’m covered in grease,’ he complained. ‘Won’t this do another time?’
‘Someone is listening to my mobile.’
‘Oh.’ He sniffed. ‘So you want to know how to stop it?’
‘You’re dead right.’
He sniffed again. ‘I’ve got a cold,’ he said, ‘my wife’s mother is coming to dinner and my sump is filthy.’
I laughed; couldn’t help it. ‘Please, Doug.’
He relented. ‘I suppose you’ve got an analog mobile. They have radio signals that can be listened to. It’s difficult, though. Your average bloke in the pub couldn’t do it.’
‘Could you?’
‘I’m not your average bloke in the pub. I’m a walking midlife crisis halfway through an oil change. I could do it if I had the right gear.’
‘How do I deal with it?’
‘Blindingly simple.’ He sneezed and sniffed heavily. ‘I need a tissue.’ There was a sudden silence on the line, then the distant sound of a nose being vigorously blown, then the hoarse voice of wisdom in my ear.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘You ditch the analog, and get a digital.’
‘I do?’
‘Sid, being a jockey does not equip the modem man to live in tomorrow’s world.’
‘I do see that.’
‘Everyone,’ he sniffed, ‘if they had any sense, would go digital.’
‘Teach me.’
‘The digital system,’ he said, ‘is based on two numbers, zero and one. Zero and one have been with us from the dawn of computers, and no one has ever invented anything better.’
‘They haven’t?’
He detected my mild note of irony. ‘Has anyone,’ he asked, ‘reinvented the wheel?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Quite. One cannot improve on an immaculate conception.’
‘That’s blasphemous.’ I enjoyed him always.
‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘Some things are perfect to begin with. E=mc2, and all that.’
‘I grant that. How about my mobile?’
‘The signal sent to a digital telephone,’ he said, ‘is not one signal, as in analog, but is eight simultaneous signals, each transmitting one-eighth of what you hear.’
‘Is that so?’ I asked dryly.
‘You may bloody snigger,’ he said, ‘but I’m giving you the goods. A digital phone receives.eight simultaneous signals, and it is impossible for anyone to decode them, except the receiving mobile. Now, because the signal arrives in eight pieces, the reception isn’t always perfect. You don’t get the crackle or the fading in and out that you get on analog phones, but you do sometimes get bits of words missing. Still, no one can listen in. Even the police can never tap a digital mobile number.’