“Hopefully it will. What better person to do a final test on than someone who’s coming here to kill me? Someone who’s going to be killed anyway?”
Jackson tried to read whether madness lurked behind the man’s eyes. He didn’t see any. Nothing but the pleading for understanding. “I s’pose.” He nodded. “Yep, I think I can work with that. How…? What will you be setting off?”
“I already told you—you don’t need to know.” Randall smiled.
“I think I fucking do if it puts me in the firing line, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t. It won’t.”
“There’s a problem with your software,” Jackson said. “Unless you’ve thought of it already. What if someone buys it for protection and ends up setting it off and it kills an innocent person? What if some bloke who lives in a built-up area has it and the postman walks up the path and cops it? Or a kid out playing? Some girl skipping, laughing with her friends? What then?”
“The people who would have this software would generally live remotely like I do. It doesn’t come cheap. And it doesn’t kill people automatically. You have to press a button.”
“But what about the snobs, the stars who live in those multi-million-pound villas, all in a row at Sandbanks, wherever the fuck that is? I can’t see one of their friends being killed by accident going down too well, can you? If they’re just a figure on screen and they press that button… This is what I was saying before. You sell this to the wrong person, and it might well end up exactly like I just described. This is dangerous shit. You should scrap it, pretend you never created it.”
“I should, you’re right.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t let it go. Not until I’ve seen it work on that man.”
“Right. So you test it tonight, and if it works you’ll be happy? Like whatever it was that drove you to create it in the first place will be satisfied that the job’s complete?”
“I hope that’ll be the case. That would solve a lot of future problems.”
“If I were you, I’d test it then destroy the whole thing. You’ve opened a nasty can of worms here, letting governments know such a thing exists. They won’t rest until they have your system, you know that, don’t you?”
Randall sniffed. “If I decide to destroy it, people would want me to tell them how they could recreate it. I’d have to go into hiding. Always running.”
“Damn straight you would. What the hell made you do this?”
He shouldn’t have asked, hadn’t really needed to. This bloke had been more afraid of his father than he’d wanted to admit. Jackson would know soon enough who that man was. If he was as prominent as Randall had implied, his death would be all over the news come the morning. For Randall—for anyone—to have the need to create something so…so outrageous to protect himself, he had to have been frightened for his life. Had to have been threatened, to have believed the threats.
Who the fuck is his father?
“I rather thought you would have realised why I did this,” Randall said.
“Yeah, I do, but come on! Sid—”
“I started my research before I knew about companies like Sid’s. I had to protect myself. My world isn’t like yours. My father… Once he found out about me, it all started. Small things.”
“Like what?”
Randall shrugged. “People accosting me in the city, telling me I would disappear soon if I didn’t disappear by myself. That kind of thing.”
“Why not just get out of your dad’s range?”
“Because he would have found me wherever I went. And even with him gone, if he’s left instructions… They’ll find me wherever I go after tonight.”
“Unless you get a new identity. Move away. Sid knows people who can make it seem like you never existed.”
Randall walked to the sofa and flopped down casually, as though what they’d been discussing wasn’t a matter of life or death, of subterfuge and crime-riddled dealings. Yeah, Jackson knew this kind of thing went on, but it was usually between governments, as far as he’d been aware, or those in the underground crime rings.
But it is to do with governments.
He shook his head, having to admit now that there were covert outfits he’d heard about but hadn’t fully believed were real. Outfits who had men at their disposal who thought nothing of threatening men like Randall on the street. In his own home.
Why didn’t you believe they were around? You work for Sid, you dickhead. He’s the same kind of outfit. Christ Almighty…
Jackson had buried his head in the sand, going about as though his job wasn’t anything to write home about. Pretending that killing people didn’t hurt anyone. Yeah, he knew deep down he wrecked lives, but he hadn’t allowed himself to really think about it. Now, here, Randall had yanked Jackson’s head up out of that sand, and Jackson was left with the gritty taste of the beach in his mouth—as though all those he’d killed were wet dust on his tongue, returning to choke him for what he’d done.
Chapter Fourteen
Langham woke, cold, the room in total darkness. He glanced at his watch—eleven p.m.—wide awake.
Shit.
He padded over to the window. Looked out onto the street. There was activity out there—he hadn’t expected anything less. A couple of uniformed officers milled about on the path.
Something was going on at The Running Hare. Fairbrother must have got inside—or got the old woman to open the door at any rate. Several police vehicles were in the car
