chapter twenty-one
The doughnut shop is overheated and oppressive, the air sickly with the odour of fat, sugar and broken resolutions. Mandy checks the time. He’s late. Will he come? Or will he call her bluff, stay away?
Then she sees him, waddling across the street, same clothes, same as always. He pushes the door open, sees her, sidles over, sits down. He seems smug, none of the jitters of yesterday. He doesn’t bother with a greeting. ‘So what colour am I eating today?’
‘Tartan.’
He smiles, a leery expression, like a Halloween mask. ‘That’s new.’
Suddenly she wants this over. ‘Passwords,’ she says, making it a statement, not a question.
‘Here,’ he says, handing over a piece of folded paper.
She unfolds it, examines it. Three usernames, three passwords. She starts to stand.
‘It won’t get you far. Nowhere near the financial systems he penetrated. Nowhere near the money, if that’s what you’re after.’
‘Right,’ she says, frowning. ‘More like my old clearance level.’
‘Exactly. But I have something better. Something much more useful. You should sit.’
She hesitates, but does what she’s told. ‘What?’
‘Do you have your phone with you?’
‘Of course. Why?’
‘I have a video for you.’
‘What’s on it?’
‘You can look on mine.’
He stands, shimmies around the table and sits next to her. She can sense his body: its closeness, its heat, its smells. Not rank, not body odour, surprising in a creature that sweats so profusely. No, not the smell of hard work and honest labour, but something more insidious: something sweet, as if the doughnut icing is being extruded through his skin.
But her unease is forgotten the moment she sees his phone. There’s a video, full-screen, instantly recognisable: a wide angle looking down from ceiling height to the trading-room floor at Mollisons. Closed-circuit TV. He points at a figure walking into view. It’s Tarquin Molloy. ‘There he is, your young copper. You see? Walking through the office as if there’s no tomorrow. Which, of course, there wasn’t.’ And he emits a syrupy snicker.
Her sense of discomfort reasserts itself. What has happened to the Turtle that he can now laugh, appear relaxed? Where is the panicked jellyfish of the day before? But again, the video draws her attention, the details difficult to discern on the small screen. ‘What’s he doing?’ she asks.
‘He’s stopped. Recognise where?’
‘My desk.’
‘Logging on to your computer.’
The hair on the back of her neck rises. Tarquin at her desk?
‘Your desk, your computer. That day. Lucky for us.’
‘Lucky? How?’
‘Because you had your own camera.’ The Turtle closes the video, opens another one. This one is directly above the desk, looking down. Mandy squirms. How often did this horrible man sit in his cave of monitors, his Turtle shell, leering at her?
‘Watch,’ he says.
She has no choice, the vision is compelling her to bear witness. She can see Tarquin typing, quick short bursts.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Entering your passwords, of course,’ says the Turtle.
‘The ones I gave him?’
‘Yes. To get into the system.’
‘And the ones you gave him?’
‘He uses all sorts of passwords from all sorts of sources. If you play it frame by frame, you can make them out.’ The Turtle cuts the video off, switches back to the original wide-angle view. ‘He was there a good twenty minutes. Knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it.’
‘Do you know what he took?’
‘Ten million dollars, or close enough. Transferred it out, there and then. Middle of the day, middle of the floor. He had balls, I’ll give him that.’
‘So it’s true? He stole the money?’
‘It’s true all right.’
Mandy wants to ask more, but the Turtle has restarted the video and the screen has her. Tarquin is standing, looking around him. He checks the screen, seems to shut the computer down. Then he bends towards the machine.
‘He’s ejecting a flash drive,’ says the Turtle. ‘It contained the software he used to steal the money, exploiting the information and passwords he got from you and from me and from Zelda Forshaw and from God knows who else.’
Mandy can no longer move; she’s transfixed. She watches as the undercover cop stops to talk with someone, leaning over a cubicle wall. It looks like Raff, one of the chief traders. Then he saunters away. She can see the confidence in his gait, full of exuberance, the jauntiness of an Olympic track star.
She watches as he enters the lift. She’s about to speak, when another figure enters the shot: a tall man with long greasy hair and an elegant suit inserts his hand, preventing the doors from closing. The man enters the lift. Mandy’s breath fails her. It’s Henry Livingstone. She finds it hard to speak, but speak she must, voice tremulous. ‘Is there more?’
‘No. No cameras in the lift. It must have gone to the basement, otherwise another camera would have picked them up. No cameras down there either.’
‘The videos. Can I get copies?’
‘Yes. But only if you promise that’s the end of it. No more approaching me. Ever. No telling anyone where you got them from. Nothing about me at all. Or else.’
‘Or else what?’
‘I have other videos. Other cameras.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You and Tarquin. Going at it. In the storeroom, in the boardroom.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘You’re public property, lady. You think the tabloids or one of those trashy current affairs programs wouldn’t want a piece of them? I reckon they’d pay big dollars. After what happened out west and up on the coast. What did they call you? The Suicide Blonde. You, having it off with the dead cop. They’d lap it up. You’d break the internet.’
‘Bullshit. They couldn’t publish them.’
‘They would certainly report their existence. Use still frames and pixilation. Great publicity: I could auction the originals on the dark web.’
She feels sick to the stomach. ‘What’s the point of giving this to me if I can’t show the police?’
‘You can
