He managed to get into work more or less on time, and found Mikkel Madsen doing his helicopter thing again. Saying, ‘I am grievously displeased with you, Investigator Gayle.’
‘If this is about the kid, I talked to him. Gave him the full benefit of my wisdom,’ Vic said. ‘So if he’s gone and done something stupid, I don’t want to know. I intend to eat as many painkillers as I can stand, throw up as and when necessary, and otherwise sit in a quiet corner and do paperwork.’
‘You tied one on with him.’
‘We went on an official drunk, as ordered.’
‘Yet he comes in here hours before the shift starts, fighting fit and happy. You know why?’
‘You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?’
‘He had a busy morning while you were sleeping off your official drunk. He checked in on both Drury and McBride. And it seems that both are in the wind. What the kid wants to do is go to Idunn’s Valley. That is where the excavation site is located, and that is where he thinks Drury and McBride are headed. Also that biologist who took a copy of that excavation licence. The captain had to give him a little lesson on the facts of life, how we don’t trespass lightly on other jurisdictions, proper procedures, the difference between hard and circumstantial evidence et cetera. The kind of lesson that I believe I asked you to deliver.’
‘He’s stubborn, but I’ll get him straightened out. Where is he?’
‘He is working a case I gave him,’ Mikkel said. ‘Two guys went at it in a do-it-yourself place. People are stripping the shelves because they think the dust storm is going to be Armageddon. One accused the other of queue jumping and stabbed him with a chisel. Assault with intent. The kid has about fifty witnesses to interview. Trying to iron out the kinks in all the conflicting stories should keep him out of mischief for a couple of days. More than long enough for you to find him something else that will usefully occupy his keen mind.’
‘I’ll do my best. Meanwhile, do you have any aspirin?’
27. Seriously Strange Shit
London | 10 July
Chloe and Henry spent the night in a hotel hard by the M25. The kind of blandly anonymous place where salesmen meet their clients and companies hold away days. Generic toiletries, triple-glazed windows that couldn’t be opened, a restaurant with rattan screens, bamboo stems in glass tumblers as table centrepieces, and the choice between watching a TV screen tuned to a sports channel up in one corner or a view across the motorway to fields of oilseed rape while you enjoyed the ‘eclectic’ menu of microwaved Indian and Thai food.
They’d driven there from Norwich after picking up a Nissan people carrier at the station car park, delivered by an extremely polite young man in chinos and a blue windbreaker.
‘I want you to make sure my old motor is recovered,’ Henry said, as he signed for the vehicle. ‘It’s parked in the long-term car park by Acle harbour. The police might be looking out for it by now — the Disruption Theory crew have probably given up everything they know. So whoever picks it up should watch their step.’
‘I’ll take care of it personally, Mr Harris,’ the young man said.
He exchanged sets of keys with Henry and handed him a new phone, then lifted a folding bicycle from the back of the people carrier and pedalled off.
The stuff they’d left behind at the pub in Martham was waiting for them when they arrived at the hotel. Chloe imagined a cadre of smart young men and women operating out of some kind of Acme distribution centre, supporting clandestine operations with every service and necessity. A thought both absurd and chilling.
While she picked at soggy spring rolls and an insipid vegetable stir-fry, Henry fielded several calls on his new phone, told her that Sandra and her people had extracted themselves without difficulty, said that the Prof’s lawyers were working on getting Daniel and the others released on bail.
‘It shouldn’t be a problem. They aren’t really the target.’
‘Meaning that I am.’
‘The others are a way of getting close to you. You may be the way to getting close to the kid. But we’re still good. We’re off the map, and Sandra’s people have set up a false trail.’
There was a moment when Chloe could have told him about sending Gail Ann to check out the gym where Max Predator trained, but she let it pass. She wanted to know what Gail Ann had found out first, and she still wasn’t certain that Ada Morange’s plans coincided with the best interests of Fahad and his sister.
She slept surprisingly well, woke to an alarm call at six, showered, and, sitting at the edge of the bed wrapped in a towel, used the room’s phone to call Gail Ann.
It rang a long time, long enough for Chloe to become worried.
‘Now you’re calling the new phone,’ Gail Ann said, when at last she answered. ‘Took me an age to find it.’
‘Did it go okay yesterday?’
‘I didn’t even know this time of day existed,’ Gail Ann said. ‘Before I even try to answer that, let me at least start making coffee.’
‘I kind of need to know if you found out anything useful,’ Chloe said.
‘Didn’t you get my messages?’
‘I’m in a hotel. Using the room phone.’
‘They still have phones, in hotel rooms?’
‘It controls the TV, the air conditioning…I think this call is costing like two pounds a minute, but I can’t be sure my phone isn’t bugged or something. I used it to call you yesterday because it was all I had. How did it go at the gym?’
‘It was interesting in all kinds of ways. But first, did you hear about Disruption Theory’s offices?’
A fire had broken out in the offices late last night. There’d been a brief mention about it on BBC London’s news feed; Gail Ann had found several references on Twitter and Facebook, including a photo taken from a neighbouring block of flats. A long-distance shot and a little blurry, she said, but it was definitely Disruption Theory’s building, the top floor lit up by flames.
Chloe felt hot and then cold. She said, ‘This is my fault.’
‘Section 808 claims to have firebombed it,’ Gail Ann said. ‘They said that the place was harbouring dangerous alien technology.’
Section 808 was an extremist group which had broken away from the Human Dignity League after it had entered the political mainstream.
Chloe said, ‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘Not according to the BBC.’
‘That’s right. Everyone was arrested.’ Chloe wondered if Henry knew about this. Of course he did. She said, ‘This is all down to me.’
‘You can’t hold yourself responsible for what extremists do. Let me tell you about my little adventure at the cage-fighter gym,’ Gail Ann said. ‘I know it will make you feel better.’
‘Did you find Max Predator’s manager? Did you talk to him?’
‘It was a her, actually. Just a sec. There. Now I have coffee.’ Gail Ann slurped some, said, ‘Oh my.’
‘Does she know Fahad? Does he hang at the gym?’
‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ Gail Ann said. ‘Let me start at the beginning. So the gym? It was sort of tacky and sad. These bodybuilders grimly working away at their machines, lifting weights, whatever. And all these mirrors so they can admire their gross mods. Horns and fangs are popular. Also claws, and these hooks, they call them spurs, at wrists and elbows. There was one guy with little horns growing out of his forehead. There was another guy with bright red skin and a kind of spiny ruff. Sort of like a lizard. And tattoos like you’ve never seen. One guy had tattooed eyeballs. It’s some kind of Jamaican thing, apparently.’