67

  Silas

  Silas heads for the CID corner of the Parade Room, where he can see Strover at a desk, deep in conversation with someone on her mobile. She’s working late again, without being asked. At least she doesn’t have a family.

  As soon as he left Conor in the woods, he called Mel, told her that he’d seen their son. He also announced that he wanted to accompany her to a joint counselling session.

  ‘Are you doing this for Conor or for you and me?’ she asked.

  ‘All three of us.’

  She said she’d think about it, which is a start.

  He sits down next to Strover, now off the phone.

  ‘That was the Major Crime Team in Truro,’ she says. ‘The SIO’s been trying to contact you.’

  Silas turned off his phone in the forest, a belated attempt to focus on his son. He then phoned Mel in the car, ignoring calls from the office in an attempt to focus on her.

  ‘The County Lines Coordination Centre has confirmed the dead man was involved in a network operating out of Swindon,’ Strover continues. ‘He used to work at the Bluebell until six months ago, but they don’t think he was down in Cornwall selling drugs.’

  ‘Because he was there to target Kate,’ Silas says, unable to hide his frustration. It would be so much easier if he could take the lead on this case, but his boss thinks otherwise. Devon and Cornwall are running the show and his role is to liaise with their Senior Investigating Officer.

  ‘I told them that,’ Strover says.

  ‘Do they have any idea who might have killed him?’

  ‘That’s why they were calling.’

  Silas looks up.

  ‘Forensic ballistics has come back with some data on the bullet that was retrieved from the victim’s skull.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Strover consults her notes.

  ‘According to NABIS, the only other bullet with barrel markings like this was fired in Thailand. Nine years ago.’

  Silas sits back in his chair. The National Ballistics Intelligence Service specialises in firearms-related criminal activity in the UK. It normally only holds data on a case abroad if a UK citizen is involved in some way.

  ‘Remind me why I’ve heard about Thailand recently?’ he asks.

  Strover throws him a scornful look. Unlike him, she never seems to forget anything. ‘One of the seven people in the world who looks like Kate’s new boyfriend was last seen in Thailand,’ she says. ‘The one who bears the closest resemblance.’

  It’s probably nothing, but Thailand doesn’t often cross Silas’s desk in Swindon twice in one day.

  ‘Does your friend have more details yet?’ he asks. ‘A name would be useful. His age too.’

  Strover turns to her laptop and starts typing.

  ‘And did NABIS have any other information?’ he adds, watching her.

  ‘Very little,’ she says. ‘The file just says the gun was fired in a drugs-related incident. No trace of it since.’

  Strover has found the mugshot of the man in Thailand and adjusts her laptop screen so that Silas can see it.

  ‘A bit blurred,’ he says as she displays an adjacent image of Rob, Kate’s partner, ‘but it’s a striking likeness, isn’t it? Uncanny.’

  ‘Some more intel on him has just dropped,’ Strover says, opening up a new window on her screen. She freezes, her fingers suspended above the keyboard.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Silas asks.

  ‘His name.’

  ‘And?’

  She points to a line of small print on the screen. ‘Gilmour Martin.’

  He stares at the words. It’s one of those moments when an investigation comes alive. The name matches the registered keeper of the Tesla that was seen by Kate’s gallery friend in her village. Kate asked them to check as she was worried that Rob might have been in Cornwall when he was meant to be in London. Silas is just not sure what this new lead means or where it will take them.

  ‘Do we know where he is now?’ he asks, eyes narrowing. Gilmour Martin is not a common name.

  Strover shakes her head. ‘Last seen in Thailand nine years ago,’ she says, reading from the screen. ‘Police took his picture because he was involved in some sort of disturbance at a beach party. Subsequently released without charge. Bit of a loser, by all accounts.’

  ‘And never heard of again – until yesterday. We need to find out everything we can about him. And look into that “care of” address the car was registered to in north London.’ He should have checked when Strover first mentioned it, been less scratchy.

  ‘I’ll run his name through every database I’m allowed to,’ Strover says.

  And some that she’s not. Silas has learnt not to ask. He likes it when Strover’s got the bit between her teeth.

  He peers more closely at the image, comparing it with the one of Rob. ‘Can you find a photo of Rob when he was younger?’ he asks.

  He watches, impressed by his colleague’s digital dexterity as she finds a picture of Rob from an old cover of Wired, taken in his early days when he was a buccaneering young techpreneur. Silas wishes he could reverse his own ageing so easily. There must be an app out there. It’s the sagging jowls that upset him the most.

  Strover positions the image side by side with the Thai mugshot of Gilmour Martin. The likeness now is even more striking.

  ‘Have you told Kate yet?’ he asks. ‘About the matches we’ve found? We should let her know about Gilmour Martin.’

  ‘I can’t get through to her,’ Strover says. ‘Left a message on her mobile.’

  He’s not sure how Kate will react to the news that Rob’s not only got an identikit double but one who’s been driving around the lanes of Cornwall in a matching Tesla.

  68

  Kate

  Kate stumbles back down the stairs from the roof terrace in the darkness, the buzzing of the drone fading with each step. The machine was like a demented insect, menacing. She knows where she needs to go. Before her bath, she prepared a few scented candles in the bedroom, ready for Rob’s return. All part of her plan to combat Capgras.

  She feels her way through the door and finds them on the bedside table. A moment later, she’s holding a match and trying to strike it. The match snaps. She tries another and then another, her hands trembling. Finally, she manages to strike one and the room lights up with the faint glow of the candle. It’s not how she imagined it would be tonight. She thought they’d be in bed together, drinking wine, making love. Like a normal couple. But it’s turning into a nightmare.

  The candle’s shaking so much in her hand that she spills some wax on the floor. She puts it down beside the bed and lights two others she brought with her in her luggage, calming candles from Cornwall. Relax. She needs to get everything in perspective. The power cut, the dead phone line, the shutters – there’s a perfectly rational explanation. They’re all part of the problem with the apartment’s software, the same issue that prevented her from leaving earlier tonight. It’s either an accident or an over-cautious Rob. The drone is more problematic. There was nothing accidental about that. Maybe its appearance was a coincidence, an envious neighbour who enjoys buzzing the rich kids in their penthouse suites.

  I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted it to be.

  What did Rob mean? Will he be back tonight? And which Rob will it be? The old thoughts are returning like smoke, seeping in under the door, circling and swirling around her. She is certain it was Rob’s voice on the phone earlier, but she won’t be able to cope if someone else turns up here now. An impostor, his double. The man from Thailand.

  She looks around for her phone to call Ajay. She needs his reassurance that her damaged brain is playing tricks, nothing more. She knows she should ring Rob first, ask him what’s going on, but she’s lost her nerve.

  She finds her mobile on the sideboard in the kitchen. No signal. She purses her lips, trying not to cry. The steel blinds must be blocking reception. What sort of security measure is that? Protection against bloody cold-callers? She just wants to be back in Cornwall with Bex and Stretch. And maybe even with Jake too, camping on the rainy hillside like they used to.

  There’s hardly any power left on her phone either. Perhaps the landline’s working again. She finds the receiver in the bathroom. Dead. She looks around. There’s a ticking sound high up in the corner. The blades of a wall fan are turning lazily in a faint breeze. Climbing up onto the end of the bath, she can see the evening light outside. No sign of any steel blinds. She holds the phone up by the fan and looks at the screen. One bar of reception appears. Balancing carefully, she dials Ajay’s number. Engaged.

  And then a distinct sound echoes through the apartment. The front door. She listens for a moment. Silence. On an impulse, she decides to try Jake’s number.

  ‘Hello?’ she calls out, waiting for the phone to connect. More silence. ‘Rob?’

  The door again, closing behind whoever has just come in.

  ‘Rob?’ she repeats, louder now, her voice shaking. ‘Is that you?’

  Why hasn’t he said anything? The silence is scaring her. She climbs down off the bath, knocking over the candle as the phone connects through to Jake.

  ‘Rob?’ she calls out.

  He doesn’t answer. It must be someone else.

  69

  Silas

  ‘Boss, your phone.’

  Silas turns from the window in the Parade Room and takes his mobile from Strover. She doesn’t say anything, but it’s clear from the display that it’s Conor.

  ‘You OK?’ Silas asks, walking over to a quiet corner.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Mum,’ Conor says.

  Silas glances around the room. No one is within earshot, but it’s still not the sort of conversation he’d like colleagues to overhear. Not even Strover.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Thanks – for calling her,’ Conor says. He sounds in a better place, more together. ‘She was chuffed about the counselling.’

  She didn’t seem particularly chuffed when Silas spoke to her, but he’s glad if they’ve made progress, however slight.

  ‘I’ve also been up at the Bluebell, asking around,’ Conor continues. ‘I overheard a conversation in the back room – went the distance for you, Dad.’

  ‘You’re not to put yourself in danger,’ Silas says, checking again to make sure that no one can hear him. He’s being disingenuous. If Conor is to find out anything useful at the Bluebell, it’s going to be dangerous. And it sounds like Conor took a big risk. For him.

  ‘I was almost caught listening at the door, but I got away with it,’ Conor says. ‘Had to pay someone off to keep quiet.’

  ‘How much?’ Silas asks.

  ‘We can talk money later. The whole place was in turmoil anyway. You heard the ex-barman’s been killed? The one who used to work there a while back.’

  ‘In Cornwall,’ he says, sighing. ‘Yesterday. Anyone know who shot him?’

  ‘That’s what’s pranging everyone out.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘Turns out he had to do a runner six months ago. He’d been told to target that woman you mentioned, the one who was sick at recognising people. Apparently she was causing all kinds of carnage.’

  Silas is hit by another pang of guilt about Kate. He’d been told to target that woman… He should have been more careful. The irony of what Conor’s saying is not lost on him either. He always hoped his son might show a bit more interest in his old man’s job and now he’s giving him a blow-by-blow account of his working life.

  ‘So anyway, after he spikes her drink that night, he drives off after her, just to be certain,’ Conor continues, speaking in the mockney accent that used to so annoy Silas. He can live with it now. At least they’re talking. ‘And sure enough he comes around the bend and sees her car smashed into a tree. Not nice, quite peak actually, but job done. I didn’t know any of this shit until tonight. He’s a hard bastard and just sits there, lights out, having a toke as he watches her life ebb away. What he doesn’t realise is that she managed to call 999 before she passed out.’

  Silas remembers listening to the recording of her anguished voice, barely able to breathe let alone speak.

  ‘Just as he’s about to head off, he sees this other car pull up silently next to the crashed one,’ Conor continues. ‘A man gets out and checks on the driver. But this geezer doesn’t wait around. He drives away when he hears the ambulance approaching.’

  ‘What sort of car was it?’ Silas asks. He sees this other car pull up silently.

  ‘The barman is shitting himself in case this other man was following him,’ Conor continues, ignoring his dad’s question. ‘He thinks he might have seen the same car at the pub earlier that evening – in the car park. So he drives off too, in the other direction. Stays low. Disappears. Six months later, it’s show-trial time and a lot of people are banged up for fat sentences. The remaining gang members are not happy and send the barman down to Cornwall, where your woman’s recovering, to finish the job. And then he’s shot dead.’

  ‘This could be very helpful,’ Silas says, way too formally.

  He’s having a conversation with his own son, not taking down a witness statement. Just how dysfunctional a dad has he become? He glances around the Parade Room, over towards Strover. Mel will kill him if she ever hears about this. He reassures himself that the only way to get their son out of the trouble he’s in is by dismantling the entire gang. And to do that, he needs to understand the network, its rivalries.

  ‘Is there any chance you could ask a bit more about this other man? What he looked like?’ Silas asks. ‘And maybe the make of car he was driving?’

  Silence.

  ‘You always did want more from me, Dad, that’s the problem,’ Conor says. ‘Never fucking happy. I’ve risked my life for you tonight. Stood outside the boss’s office with my ear to the door. I could have been killed.’

  Silas rubs the stubble on his chin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  Conor’s right. His default response is invariably disappointment, like the time Conor achieved Bs and Cs in his GCSEs. It was only afterwards that they discovered Conor was dyslexic.

  ‘It might have been a Tesla,’ Conor says, and hangs up.

  70

  Jake

  ‘Smells good in here,’ Bex says, walking into her kitchen with a suitcase in one hand, tiny dog in the other.

  ‘Welcome home,’ Jake says awkwardly. Bex’s house suddenly feels very small. ‘I’ve made some dinner.’

  He’s repeated his offer to move out, but Bex is insistent that he stay.

  ‘So this is the new man in Kate’s life?’ Jake adds, looking at the dog.

  ‘Meet Stretch.’ Bex lets him down onto the floor. ‘Whined the whole way up here, but otherwise he’s alright.’

  Jake bends down and tickles the tiny dog behind his ears. He’d always imagined something big and smelly whenever Kate talked about getting one. This one’s long and thin, like a narrowboat.

  He serves dinner once Bex has taken her stuff upstairs.

  ‘You’re not eating?’ she asks as she tucks into hogweed gnocchi. He found the hogweed stems earlier, picked them before the leaves fully opened.

  ‘Bit late for me,’ he says. ‘It’s almost midnight.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have stayed up. This is delicious. Like asparagus.’

  ‘Did you manage to speak to Kate?’ he asks.

  Last time they chatted on the phone, Bex was going to call Kate after she’d seen Dr Varma.

  ‘Voicemail. Rang Rob too, left a casual message asking him to get Kate to call when she has a moment. I didn’t want to alarm him. You know, in case…’ She falters.

  Jake looks up. He knows what she was going to say. In case Rob has been replaced by a double. By Gil. Jake has other ideas. He’s spent the evening digging into Rob’s past again, his business interests, what he’s doing in Brittany. Jake’s been here before, after the split from Kate, when he spent too many hours googling Rob. This time he thinks he might have found something.

  After Bex has finished her dinner, he takes her through to the sitting room to show her what he’s discovered online.

  ‘On the surface, Rob and his tech empire – his “unicorn” company in the UK – is all about something called “direct neural interface” technology,’ he begins.

  ‘In English?’ Bex says as Jake juggles various open windows on the computer.

  ‘Helping the human brain to interact better with machines,’ he says. ‘Devices implanted in the cerebral cortex to operate artificial limbs, that sort of thing. He’s also invested in loads of other medical start-ups, including one that makes portable headsets for assessing brain injuries.’

  ‘That’s what he’s been using with Kate’s recovery,’ Bex says.

  ‘All good selfless stuff, improving the health of mankind.’

  ‘Why do I think you’re not convinced?’ Bex asks.

  ‘It’s the recent trip to Brittany that’s worrying me,’ Jake says, gnawing on a thumbnail. ‘Brest is a tech hotspot in France, has deep roots in military encryption and communications. An investigative website over there has been looking into Rob’s R and D unit, what’s he’s going to be investing in tomorrow. And they think it might be facial-recognition technology. He certainly needs to do something – apparently his company is massively overvalued, and some people are worried about him investing in the French tech sector.’

  ‘Is that such a problem?’ Bex asks, yawning. ‘If he’s into facial recognition?’ She must be knackered after her long drive, even in a Tesla.

  ‘They’re a bit more uptight about that sort of thing over in France,’ he says. ‘This website thinks that Rob is there to flog some secret new system on the quiet to the French government, to help them combat terrorism.’

  ‘Can’t see a problem with that either,’ Bex says. ‘I mean, apart from it all being a bit Big Brother.’