The fact that this was true didn’t make me any happier about letting Harry help us.
Seething, I followed Nico over to the computer. Harry had already switched on the hard drive and inserted his CD. Seconds later the screen started flashing with page after page of computer-program information.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘Clusterchaos is reading the security protocols,’ Harry said. He leaned back in his chair. ‘It’ll take a few minutes.’
‘It better not take any longer,’ I muttered.
Nico was peering at the screen. ‘Man, that is cool.’ He turned to Harry, his eyes full of respect. ‘How does it work?’
Harry explained, using terminology I didn’t understand – and that I was sure Nico wouldn’t be able to follow either. But Nico just nodded.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Impressive.’
As Harry had predicted, after a couple of minutes the screen grew still. A single line of text flashed up: Please enter your search terms.
With a triumphant grin, Harry typed in my dad’s name: William Hamish Fox.
A long list flashed up. Over one hundred entries.
‘Too many,’ I said. ‘You need to narrow it down.’
‘Okay, how about a date?’ Harry said. ‘Or a range of dates?’
I gave him the dates that covered the time from ten days before my dad’s death to three days after.
This time the list was five items long.
Heart pounding, I scanned the information. The dates corresponded to the days in Mom’s diary where she’d written W to Hub. Those were obviously the times when my dad had meetings with Bookman.
‘Can you open those files?’ I said.
‘Sure.’ Harry started tapping at the keyboard. ‘It’ll just take a couple of minutes.’
Nico was across the room, examining a folder of papers. I walked towards him, scanning the labels on the front of the filing cabinets as I passed.
Each cabinet had a number. I went around the room, taking in the cabinet labels 501-542.
The number Bookman had scratched in the ash at his feet leaped into my head.
343.
In all the rush to get here, I hadn’t made the connection. If Bookman knew whoever killed him was on their way here, maybe the number was some sort of clue to what the killer was after.
I darted into the next room. The cabinets were all numbers in the low two hundreds. Higher numbers in the next room . . . up to 326.
I reached the next room. Filing cabinet 343 was the sixth cabinet along from the door. I yanked open the drawers. What was in here?
I pulled out a couple of files. A tally of MoD postal costs from 1982-1984 . . . some computer hardware instruction manuals . . . a bunch of spreadsheets . . .
I stood back, bewildered.
Harry appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ve tried to open the five bits of data you want, but they’re encrypted. They’re small files, but it’ll still take the best part of an hour to work out the decryption so I’m downloading them. We can look at them later.’
‘Awesome,’ I said. ‘But I think I’ve found something else.’
I explained quickly about the number Bookman had written in the ash.
‘I was certain it corresponded to this filing cabinet, but I can’t find anything in here connected to my dad’s meetings with Bookman.’
‘Maybe the information is hidden,’ Harry suggested. He reached past me and pulled a bundle of papers out of the cabinet. ‘We should take everything. Examine it later.’
I went to help him, when another thought struck me. Surely it would have been real risky for Bookman to leave an important document in an open filing cabinet like this? ‘Maybe the records Bookman hid here aren’t inside the cabinet at all,’ I said.
Harry stared at me. ‘You mean . . .?’
‘Let’s pull it away from the wall.’
Heart in my mouth, I tugged at the cabinet. It was too heavy to move. Even with Harry’s help I couldn’t budge it.
‘Nico!’ I yelled.
He came running. ‘Ed just contacted me remotely to say they’re at the hospital. Ketty’s okay,’ he said breathlessly.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s really great. Could you teleport this filing cabinet please?’
Nico shrugged. ‘Okay, but we’ve only got twelve minutes until that guard comes out of the trance Ed put him into.’
Jeez, we were going to have to move fast.
With a flick of his wrist, Nico slid the cabinet away from the wall.
‘What’s this about?’ he said.
I raced around to the back of the cabinet. Scanned it fast.
There, taped to the bottom corner, was a tiny disk.
My heart skipped a beat as I ripped the disk away from the metal. ‘Look!’ I held it up.
‘We can play it on the computer in the other room while the encrypted files are downloading, see if it’s relevant,’ Harry said.
‘It must be relevant,’ I said.
The three of us raced back to the computer in the other room.
A red light was flashing over the door.
As Harry inserted the disk into the computer’s drive, I turned uneasily to Nico.
‘That light wasn’t on before, was it? D’you think it’s an alarm?’
‘I don’t know.’ Nico shuddered. ‘How much longer are the encrypted files going to take to download?’
‘Two minutes max,’ Harry said.
‘We can easily see what’s on this disk in two minutes,’ I said. ‘How long tile the guard wakes up?’
Nico checked his watch again. ‘Seven minutes.’
My mouth was dry as the computer screen fizzled, then settled into a black and white CCTV picture of a hallway. It looked vaguely familiar.
‘That’s the Hub,’ Harry said. ‘I recognise it from the night I met you.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, it looks familiar to me, too.’
A man walked into view. He was wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He paced to the door, then turned.
I recognised him right away. A tall, middle-aged man with a long, straight nose and a slightly haughty expression.
‘That’s my dad,’ I gasped.
‘Ssh.’ Nico put his hand on my arm. ‘Listen.’
‘I can’t let you do it,’ Dad was saying. ‘I’m going to the police.’
Another person spoke, but too quietly to make out what they said, or even if the low mumble belonged to a man or a woman.
‘Turn up the volume,’ I said desperately.
‘It is up,’ Harry hissed. ‘Shh.’
‘Then you’ll have to kill me,’ Dad said. He spread his arms wide and smiled. ‘Kill me and leave a wife distraught and a daughter without a father.’ He paused. ‘You’re not going to do that. I know you’re not.’
He stood, still standing and smiling. Still utterly confident that he was not going to be hurt. And, without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that I was about to see him die.
24: Showdown
Harry was saying something in a low voice to Nico, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen.
My dad was looking at someone. His killer.
The killer was talking, but still in a low, indecipherable mumble.
‘Dylan?’ Harry tugged at my arm. ‘The Clusterchaos program has finished downloading the encrypted files. Let’s take the disk and look at it somewhere else.’
‘Wait.’ I wrenched my arm away. On screen my dad was backing away from his attacker.
‘But I know what you’re planning,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you get away with it.’
And then the killer stepped into view. A trim, suited woman with a neat blonde bob. Even before she turned I knew who she was.
Geri.
Beside me Nico tensed. I stared, glued to the screen.
‘I’m sorry, William.’ Geri’s voice was angry and clipped. She raised the gun in her hand and pointed it at my dad. ‘You don’t have the right to stop this . . . to
stop me.’
The shot rang out. A single bullet. Into my dad’s chest. He crumpled to the floor, his eyes shut.
Geri stood, watching for a second, then she turned and walked past the camera, out of sight.
I stared at my dad’s lifeless body as the screen fizzled to nothing.
The silence in the room thundered in my ears.
‘Guys, we really need to get out of here now. We’ve got less than two minutes to get past the guard,’ Harry hissed. He pressed the disk drive and handed me the minidisk.
Nico turned to me with shocked eyes.
‘I can’t believe . . . Geri . . .’ he tailed off.
I nodded, shoving the minidisk into my pocket. I was unable to believe it myself.
‘Dylan. Nico. We—’ As Harry spoke, the lights went out and the computer lost power.
I glanced through the door. The electricity was totally down through the whole floor.
‘Someone’s turned off the generator,’ Harry whispered.
‘That guard must be inside,’ Nico whispered. He grabbed my arm. ‘Dylan. We have to hide.’
I let myself be dragged across the room. The three of us crouched behind a row of filing cabinets.
My head was spinning. Geri killed my dad.
All this time she was the murderer. She had come to me and recruited me and befriended me and made me feel I was a bit more special than the others – and all the time she had killed my dad.
I suddenly remembered what Laura had said about Mom’s fears for her own safety, after Dad died.
Oh. My. God.
Geri had killed my mom as well.
It was too much to take in. Too horrific to let myself believe.
And yet I’d seen the evidence.
Footsteps echoed along the corridor towards us.
And then the door slowly opened.
I froze as Geri Paterson herself walked into the room.
Shock gave way to a fury that filled me from the toes up.
No way was I hiding from her . . . evil cow.
I stood up. Harry grabbed at my arm, trying to pull me back, but I stepped out from behind the filing cabinet, out of his reach.
‘You murdering bitch,’ I said.
‘Ah, Dylan, dear, I thought you must be here.’ Geri spoke from the doorway, her flashlight shining in my eyes. ‘Where’s Nico?’
With a roar, Nico reared up, arms outstretched. The filing cabinet opposite him soared into the air.
Geri fired. Not an actual gun. Some sort of tranquilliser. The dart hit Nico in the chest. He fell to the floor, unconscious. The filing cabinet he’d been teleporting landed on the ground with a thud.
‘What did you do to him?’ I said, all my fury evaporating in shock.
‘He’ll be out for twenty minutes or so,’ Geri said dismissively. ‘And I know Ed and Ketty are in the hospital. They phoned me. So it’s just you and me, Dylan.’ She looked round the room. ‘From your earlier greeting may I take it that you found the minidisk Bookman hid here?’
‘You killed my dad,’ I said, tears rising in my eyes. ‘And my mom.’
Geri lowered the flashlight so I could see her face. Her expression was cold and cruel.
‘I have been a senior-level government agent for over twenty years,’ she said. ‘I brought together the scientist behind the Medusa gene and the resources to develop it. Along the way I’ve done many things you wouldn’t understand. Now where’s the minidisk, Dylan?’
‘I don’t know,’ I lied, feeling the disk in my pocket as I spoke.
I braced myself for Geri to threaten me, but instead she stepped briskly forward, took one of Nico’s legs and dragged him to the door.
All of a sudden Ed surged into my head.
Dylan, what’s going on? I can’t reach Nico? Are you out of the building? The guard will be coming round any second.
It’s Geri. I let everything she’d done flood rapidly through my mind as Geri dumped Nico’s unconscious body by the door and went through his pockets.
Ed listened with a growing sense of horror.
But that means she must have killed Bookman, too. I’m calling the police.
There’s no point. You know Geri will be able to talk her way out of anything with the police.
It’s the only hope.
He broke the connection.
For a second I wondered if Ed was right . . . hope surged inside me. Then it died.
Calling the police wasn’t enough. Geri had proved time and again that the police were, ultimately, under her control and at her disposal. I was going to have to find a way to escape – and get justice – by myself.
I focused on my force field. Harry must still be somewhere in the room, but he was unarmed and without a psychic skill.
My ability to protect myself was the only chance we had.
I was expecting Geri to raise her tranquilliser gun and aim it at me, but instead she yanked open the nearest filing cabinet drawer and scattered the papers on the floor. She turned to me, her flashlight burning my eyes.
‘I want that minidisk. Now,’ she spat.
‘No,’ I said, my earlier fury returning with full force.
Geri sighed. She tucked the tranquilliser gun back in its holster and drew a real gun from her jacket. She pointed the gun at Nico’s head.
‘I know that you can withstand a bullet, Dylan, dear, but I don’t think Nico will stand much of a chance, will he?’
‘You won’t shoot him!’ I said. ‘It’s Nico.’
‘I shot Bookman earlier,’ Geri snapped. ‘An unconscious boy would be no problem after that.’
I suddenly remembered how we’d spoken to Geri just after finding Bookman’s dead body. How I’d heard plates clattering in the background.
‘I thought you were in the Lake District, with Alex and Jez,’ I said.
‘I was just down the road.’ Geri chuckled – her high, tinkly laugh. ‘It’s amazing how suggestive the power of sound is . . . now give me the disk or Nico dies. Right here. Right now.’
She cocked her gun and held it against Nico’s temple.
I still couldn’t believe she would really kill him. But after everything else I’d found out today, I also knew I couldn’t take the chance.
Whichever way I looked at it, Geri had me totally in her power.
Gritting my teeth, I fished the minidisk out of my pocket and held it towards her. Rage flooded my whole body.
‘Why did you kill my parents?’ I said, my voice shaking with fury. If I had to give up the proof, at least I was going to get some answers.
‘It was their own fault,’ Geri said. ‘Your dad provoked me.’
‘How d’you freakin’ figure that?’ I said. ‘I’ve just seen evidence that shows my dad was totally defenceless.’
‘What, the old CCTV footage from the Hub on this?’ Geri said smoothly, stepping forward to take the minidisk. ‘This shows that your dad was blackmailing me.’
‘What?’ I said.
Geri stepped smartly back and aimed her gun at Nico’s head again. ‘Your father discovered something the Medusa Project was planning to do.’
‘What was that?’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Geri said. ‘All you need to know is that your father didn’t like our plan and was threatening to expose the whole project. I know you won’t understand this, Dylan, but he left me no choice but to kill him.’
‘You evil cow,’ I said, hot tears filling my eyes. ‘And what about my mom? I suppose you’re going to say she was getting in your way, too?’
‘No. Your airhead mother didn’t know about the project your dad wanted to expose,’ Geri said with a sneer. ‘She suspected me of killing him, though. She stole this disk containing the CCTV of our argument. Bookman and I had to get it back. You’re mother wouldn’t give it up without a fight.’
‘A fight which you made look like suicide.’ I felt sick.
‘Yes. If Bookman hadn’t kept the film and put it on this disk, your mother wouldn’t
have needed to die. It was his fault . . . stupid man threatening to blackmail me. He managed to keep the disk away from me afterwards, too. He said it was his insurance policy . . . a way of making sure I guaranteed him a comfortable old age. That’s why I killed him earlier. He’d kept this disk hidden away here for years. All the while he told me there was some elaborate set-up whereby if I did away with him, Milton and McKenna would come after me.’ Geri paused. ‘It was you, Dylan, who led me to the truth . . . ironic really, considering I was trying to stop you with those texts . . .’
‘That was you?’
‘Yes, but the texts didn’t work and on you went and, eventually, you led me to Milton and McKenna. Of course, once we actually had the two of them in custody, I realised that they had no idea about your father’s death . . . no idea about me . . . Bookman had been bluffing all along. I wasn’t sure what to do at first, but once you started asking about Bookman, I knew it was only a matter of time before the truth came out. Which meant I had to find this disk before you did – whatever it took.’
I stared at her, rage coursing through every cell of my body. I couldn’t believe what an idiot she’d made of me . . . Every time I’d turned to her for help I’d played right into her hands.
‘So you killed Bookman so he couldn’t blackmail you any more, just like you killed my dad and my mom to stop them talking . . .’ I paused. ‘Except my mom didn’t actually know anything real important about your work . . . nothing she could prove anyway . . . Once you had the disk back from her, you could have just threatened her not to talk.’
‘I didn’t want to leave any loose ends,’ Geri said briskly. ‘And, of course, dear, your parents are not really in the same category. Your father was a genius whose passing was a terrible loss to the world of science, whereas your mother was a pretty, silly little East Coast princess with a diary full of beauty appointments. Plus, of course, she was going to die anyway . . . because of the Medusa gene.’
‘Shut up about my mom!’ I shouted. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I lowered my face and glanced quickly sideways, hoping against hope that I would catch a glimpse of Harry.
Nothing but darkness.
I looked back at Geri. She was still aiming her gun in Nico’s direction, but her eyes were on me. If I could just move fast enough, maybe I could reach her before she shot him. Maybe I could even wrestle the gun off her.