At least if they haven’t found Luke and Phoebe, there’s a chance they are still alive, he thought.
And in Naomi’s eyes, he saw exactly the same thought reflected back at him.
106
As they sat at the round table in his small office, accompanied by Renate Harrison, it seemed to John much longer than twenty-four hours since Detective Inspector Pelham had entered their lives.
‘Right,’ he said, looking sharp and fresh. ‘Did you manage some sleep?’
‘Not really,’ John said.
‘None,’ Naomi said.
‘You’ll be able to go back home tonight.’
‘Thank you,’ John said.
Addressing Renate Harrison, Pelham said, ‘You’d better get them fixed up with something to help them sleep.’
‘What news do you have?’ Naomi asked.
‘Some progress,’ he said. ‘Not as much as any of us would like, but some. OK, this is the latest position. Our mystery man Bruce Preston is still in a coma following sixteen hours of neurosurgery yesterday. He’s under round-the-clock police guard in the Sussex County Hospital, and if he regains consciousness, we’ll interrogate him as soon as we are permitted. But he has severe brain damage and his prognosis is not good.’
‘Have you found out about his identity?’ John asked.
‘It’s false. I’ve had the FBI check him out and the trail goes cold in Rochester, New York State.’
‘No link between him and the cult we told you about?’ Naomi said.
‘The Disciples people?’
‘Yes.’
‘None so far. We’ve sent photographs of him and the woman in the picture in his wallet to the FBI, and we haven’t heard anything back yet.’ He paused to take a sip of coffee. ‘An analyst from our High Tech Crime Unit, who’s been working around the clock on your two computers, has a number of questions he wants to ask you – he’s coming in at ten.’
‘Did you find anything on Bruce Preston’s laptop?’ John asked.
‘Not yet; it seems he was very careful – or very good at hiding his tracks.’
‘How much longer do you need to keep my own laptop?’ John asked. ‘I need it back pretty badly.’
‘The analyst is bringing it back for you – both your computers.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We got the registration of the red Mitsubishi from the security cameras at the Channel Tunnel late yesterday,’ he announced. ‘The plates are false.’
John and Naomi said nothing.
‘At seven o’clock this morning I got a phone call from France. This car has been found at a small airport in Le Touquet. We’ve managed to ascertain between us that a man and a woman, in their mid-to-late twenties, boarded a Panamanian-registered private jet with a small boy and girl who fit Luke and Phoebe’s description, at half six in the morning yesterday. The pilot had flown in from Lyons and filed a flight plan to Nice. But the plane never showed up there.’
‘Where did it go?’ John asked.
‘It left French airspace, and disappeared into thin air.’
‘Does anyone have information about who owns this jet?’ Naomi asked.
‘We’re working on it.’
‘What’s the range of one of those aircraft?’ John asked. ‘How far could it travel?’
‘I’m told it depends entirely on the size of its fuel tanks. It had taken on sufficient fuel, given that its tanks weren’t empty when it arrived, for fourteen hours of flight. Apparently this particular aircraft has a cruising speed of three hundred and fifty knots. Which basically means enough to get to America and halfway back.’
Going back to his desk, Pelham produced a map of the world, which he laid out in front of them. It had a curved line drawn on it in red ink. ‘This line covers all the destinations the plane could have made safely on its cruising range.’
John and Naomi stared at it bleakly. The line stretched from Bombay in one direction, to Rio in another. And that was without taking into account any refuelling stops.
Their children could literally be anywhere on the planet.
107
The high tech crime analyst had a pallid complexion, bloodshot eyes and a large gold earring. He was dressed in grubby jeans and several layers of T-shirts and reeked of cigarette smoke. Addressing the floor rather than John and Naomi’s faces, he said, ‘Hi, I’m Cliff Palmer,’ then gave each of them in turn a wet-fish handshake.
Naomi noticed he had a slight nervous tic.
He sat down, placed John’s computer in front of him, then pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands. It immediately slid forward again.
Renate went out of the room to fetch him a drink.
‘You’ve been looking through my computer and the kids’ computer?’ John said.
‘Yes, uh-huh.’ He nodded pensively, and pushed his hair back again. ‘I’ve made copies of both hard disks, I thought that was the best thing to do. I’ll go down to the car and fetch your children’s computer in a minute. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve not been to bed yet – I worked through the night.’ He looked at each of them in turn, as if expecting sympathy. Naomi gave him one tepid quiver of her lips.
‘Have you found anything of interest?’ John asked.
He put his hand in front of his mouth and yawned loudly. ‘Yes, well, it might be of interest – stuff on both the computers, but I can’t do anything without the keys.’ He raised his eyebrows at John.
‘Keys?’
‘The encryption keys.’
‘Do you mean for the passwords?’ John asked.
Cliff shook his head. ‘Not just those – although there are plenty of those in both systems that I haven’t been able to get beyond, or bypass, yet. But it’s the language they’re using in emails and on chatrooms.’
Renate Harrison brought him a mug of tea and set it down, and coffees for John and Naomi.
John said, ‘I warned Detective Inspector Pelham about that yesterday when the computers were taken to you – that they’ve developed a speech code of talking backwards, with every fourth letter missing.’
The analyst stirred sugar into his tea, then sipped it. ‘Yes, I was told – but it’s way more sophisticated than that. From the progress I’ve made so far, all I can tell you is that they’ve been in touch with quite a number of people all over the world for at least a year – that’s as far back as I’ve gone at the moment. But all the addresses are encrypted and the language is impenetrable.’
He sipped some tea. ‘I’ve tried all the usual encryption suspects but there’s no match to any of them. There are ciphers out there that are just not breakable by anyone, you know that, don’t you?’
‘These are three-year-old children, Cliff,’ Renate Harrison reminded him.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said, a tad irritably. ‘But it’s the same on both machines.’
‘Are you saying they’ve devised these?’
‘Someone who has been accessing these computers has either been devising them or borrowing them. I can’t tell you who, all I can do is try to find out what they say, and I think I’ve hit a brick wall.’
Naomi looked at John. ‘What about your guy, Reggie?’
‘Reggie Chetwynde-Cunningham? I was about to say that. He’d be the person for this.’ Addressing the analyst, he explained, ‘I work at Morley Park. This man has an entire research facility there – he’s the top encryption expert in the country.’
Cliff gave a nod. ‘I wouldn’t normally like to admit defeat to a pair of three-year-olds. But under the circumstances-’ He gave a nervous laugh.
No one laughed with him.
108
Lara reversed the rental Fiat into the car park bay so that when she returned she would be able to drive out forwards, saving precious seconds, should she need them.
Figuring out the pay and display machine, she bought a ticket for the maximum time, four hours, and stuck it where the instructions told her, on the inside of the windscreen. That would give her until six o’clock this evening.