Chapter 33
“We’ll be here until yer man gets back from his job,” Christopher sighed, snuggling up to Emma’s stiff back. He wound his arm over hers and underneath her stomach, pinning his cold hand and splaying his fingers.
“When will that be?” she whispered into the darkness.
“Can’t be long if they’ve taken you now. They wanted to do it weeks ago, before he did the job but I convinced them not to.”
“Why? Why would you care?” Emma asked, turning her head so she could sense Christopher’s face in the darkness.
“Lotsa reasons.” His accent sounded lyrical and comforting in its whispered tones. “I knew the Actuary wouldn’t do a convincing enough job of retrieving the drive if he knew they had you. At least this way, he’s gone in and out without drawin’ attention to himself. To him, it’s just a normal job and he won’t mess up; apart from the fact I’m not there so it won’t be as smooth. The other reasons were personal. I wanted time to tool up because I knew when they took you, it was game over for me as well. I did a little bit of double crossing a while ago, so it was only a matter of time. Their boss doesn’t like to lose.”
“But you only asked them for another hour, in the nightclub. You said, one hour.”
“What yer sayin’?” Christopher sounded genuinely confused. “Nobody said anything about an hour.”
“You did!” Emma hissed. She turned so she was on her back and Christopher stayed leaning half over her body. Emma felt the fabric of his trousers through her socks as she moved her foot sideways. “I read your lips. You said, ‘One hour.’” She did a poor impression of his Irish accent and musical tenor voice and he laughed out loud.
“What kinda shite lip readin’ school did you go to?” he chuckled. “The one for eejits who haven’t a clue what’s goin’ on?”
“I don’t have a clue what’s going on!” Emma’s voice wobbled and she gave a huge, undignified sniff. “I thought Rohan did maths all day but now I find he’s...what is he doing?”
“He assesses risk and then eliminates it. He does the maths and works out projected outcomes with all the other number crunchers. They move on to spreading the cost but he calculates how to solve the problem. Nowadays the risk is stolen information; prototypes, databases or damaging emails, stored on a portable hard drive or some other device. It’s Rohan’s job to get it back before the thief does anything with it.”
Emma stayed eerily silent and Christopher jabbed her lightly in the ribs. He leaned up on one elbow and brushed his other hand lightly across her face. “I told them, not now; the guys in the bar. I don’t know in what weird Emma world that came out as one hour. But I’m guessin’ that’s why you ran?”
“It’s probably your accent,” she reasoned with a sigh. “But yes, it’s why I ran away from you. I imagined...well, it doesn’t matter now.” Emma sighed and laid her head back against the mattress.
“You thought I was a weirdo sex predator?” Christopher stroked the line of Emma’s throat, running his finger from underneath her chin to the line of her sweatshirt. She shivered, wondering how terrible it would be to allow him to undress her and enjoy one final moment of pure lust and satiation before she died.
Christopher snuffed once and moved his elbow, laying down flat and pulling Emma into him. She settled with the back of her head on his chest, his arm laid across her stomach. The heat radiating from his body made Emma realise how cold she felt. Christopher sighed. “I had lots of chances to make a move on you, if I’d wanted to,” he whispered. “I’ve been following you on and off for just over four years. I couldn’t believe it when the Actuary happened across yer at that weddin’. But then I should’ve guessed, what with his connections.”
“What?” Emma sat up sharply and stared at where she thought his face might be in the darkness. She could almost feel him smiling. “Explain everything!” she told him, administering a light slap on his stomach which made him groan.
They snuggled down together on the bare mattress, using Christopher’s woollen suit jacket to cover as much of them as possible. The temperature dropped around them as the house failed to protect them against the falling snow outside and the wind pounded the house with what sounded like flurries of ice. “I met Anton through a mutual friend when I came out of the Air Force.” Christopher’s whispers calmed Emma’s fears and offered a soporific effect. “He was friends with someone I knew and gave us tickets to go and see him in this crazy performance he was in. Man, he was just so...so...”
“Full of life?” Emma offered and she heard Christopher’s hair shuffle against the mattress as he nodded.
“Yeah. He was such fun to be with and we knocked around for a year or so before he told me about you. He had me tail you from time to time just so he knew you were ok.”
“Was I ok?” Emma asked, hearing the absurdity of the question as it left her lips.
“Aye, mostly,” Christopher answered, his smile leaking into his speech. “And sometimes not. Like when ya didn’t have enough for the electric bill that time in the post office, or the time that letchy guy from your second year history paper wouldn’t leave ya alone.”
Emma sat up in astonishment. “Anton sent Lucya money just at the right time and that horrid guy fell down some stairs. He ignored me for the rest of my degree. He wouldn’t even look at me!”
“Aye, well I told him not to,” Christopher snuffed in the darkness. “Cocky wee shite. But mostly, yeah, I could report to Anton that you were ok.”
“So how did you end up working with Rohan?”
“Working for him, Emma. It’s not a partnership, not really. Well, Anton asked one time if I wanted to meet the Actuary.”
“Why do you call him that?”
“That’s how I know him. And he knows me as Hack. It’s our business arrangement. It was best we knew as little as possible about each other. In case. It was how the Actuary wanted to play so I played along. Ironic really, seeing as I know everything about him, so I do.” Christopher didn’t offer explanations of what Rohan thought might happen if he revealed himself to this Irishman and Emma chose not to ask, shivering at the possibilities her tired brain conjured up for her. Rohan was right. Christopher did know him and had subsequently put him in danger.
Christopher cuddled Emma in closer, over locking his arms behind her back and assuming it was the cold torturing her and not her thoughts. “Anyhoo, Anton said his brother needed some help. He knew I was into writing computer programmes and having great success in the gaming world. He also knew I was military police in the Air Force. It fitted the Actuary’s needs and we met and that’s how it began, about three years ago. It made Anton feel better about what his brother did for a living and I’ve worked for him on numerous jobs and made a heap of money at it. But then it started to go wrong.” Christopher sighed and Emma waited patiently, allowing him to collect his thoughts.
“We did a job which went bad. The Actuary made the retrieval of a database a guy copied before leaving his job. It contained sensitive information relating to covert military operations by the American government and the guy fancied himself as a whistle blower. The Actuary paid him a visit in the usual style and offered him cash first and then violence second. The guy opted for the cash and handed the drive over but then after the Actuary left, the stupid wee shite tipped himself off a twenty third floor balcony onto a Dubai street.”
“Ugh!” The thought made Emma feel sick.
“Oh yeah! Messy! So it opened up a whole big problem with the local cops. Luckily the Actuary always takes precautions and their security cameras and evidence search picked up nothing that could link back to us. But it’s when we became aware there was someone goin’ behind us; when the cash was never found. There was another job before that; a politician playing heavy on email. He tried to get a government minister to allow a Chinese Triad to immigrate to Britain despite a string of convictions. The minister caved and let him in but someone stole his laptop with the emails on. The ministry wiped the b
ackups and got ready to deny everything but they needed the laptop so they could cover it all up properly. I found the culprit and Rohan paid him off. When we looked back at that, we thought the mark gave it up easily because of the types of others desperate for his information. A skinhead political opponent wanted that laptop very badly and they weren’t nice people so we figured it was easier for him to sell to us. But then he went missing and wound up decapitated in the River Thames. We thought initially it was the skinheads but then we literally tripped over the Contessa and her nasty little band of highly paid thugs. They were tailing us and cleaning up afterwards; taking the cash and disposing of the owners. This time, they want the risk itself, as leverage. It’s a real juicy one. You’re the bait to make the Actuary play the game; kidnap his wee sister. Clever, hey?”
Emma stayed silent. They had scored better than just a stepsister and something told her Christopher was fully aware of Rohan’s marital status. He seemed to know everything else; why not that?
Emma made sleepy snuffling noises and pushed her face into Christopher’s shirt. Worry about Rohan and Nicky exhausted her emotionally and she no longer knew who to trust. But Christopher was here for the moment and rubbed her back gently, kissing her forehead. “Want me to stop talking?”
“No. It’s making me feel safe.”
“It’s putting you to sleep!”
“Please keep going. I need to hear your voice. How old are you?”
“Ancient, lass. Ok, well, I got word that Anton was sick and went to see him. He asked me to take paid work watching out for you permanently and I didn’t feel I could say no.”
There came a long pause. Emma put her hands against Christopher’s chest and pushed herself back. “It was you in the garden?”
“Aye.”
“I only heard the dog bark a couple of times. How come?”
Christopher gave a low chuckle. “I’ve known that wee fella since he was a pup. We get on just fine, Farrell an’ me.”
“How often did you tail me?”
“All the time! I don’t do a shoddy job, woman! I followed ya everywhere, even to that wedding up north. The car you booked was a heap of crap so I went in behind ya and paid for an upgrade. I couldn’t risk you breakin’ down on the motorway because I’d have to pull in behind yer.” He planted soft lips against Emma’s cold forehead. “I knew the minute you clapped eyes on me, you’d want me for yerself and that wasn’t part of the deal.” He laughed as Emma slapped his chest.
“Well now I know you didn’t do a proper job!” She heard the smirk in her own voice. “Fat Brian would never let you on the estate. He’d smell you a mile off and...well, you’d end up with broken legs or just plain broke, one of the two.”
“Aye, well about that,” Rohan chuckled. “I’ve been on and off that estate as long as you have, but I usually just intimidated him into letting me move around. After Anton died, I figured I better do a proper job and Fat Brian and his wee flunkeys came to an arrangement with me. Did yer notice how attentive yer man was to you in those last few weeks?”
“Yeah! But I made the mistake of thinking it was because I was kind to him. Ok, so did you hurt him or pay him?”
“I threatened one and did the other. Slimy git! But it meant I could come and go as I wanted. I wanted to help ya, but Anton said I wasn’t to let ya see me. So I couldn’t.”
“Oh.” Emma felt small at the thought he’d seen where she lived, her poverty still raw and painful. “You said you were at Susan’s wedding? How? All the guests were invited.”
“I walked in, bought myself a pint and sat down. A man in a suit with an air of confidence can go anywhere. Your wee boy was very chatty and grown up for his age. I saw you bump into the Actuary and knew the game was up. Anton said you’d run if you saw him so I went outside and waited. Sure enough you came flyin’ out and ran for it. I saw his face as he watched you leave and knew he’d find you. He tried to reach out to me even before you were home and I deliberately ignored him, but it wouldn’t have been hard to track you down. He has other contacts. A man like him never relies on one source, which has been just as well for him this last few weeks. I haven’t been able to help him.”
“So it was you the private investigator mentioned when we stopped him following us. He said someone had been following Rohan for a while and he hadn’t noticed. But it was you, following me, wasn’t it?”
Christopher snorted. “I’m surprised it took him so long to spot that daftie! Actually, I followed you both intermittently, you because Anton asked me to and the Actuary, because I needed to know what he was doing. Having you around put our Russian friend right off his game. He spent more time staring at you than taking notice of his surroundings. I mean, what self-respecting PI tails someone in a white van?”
“I thought it’d be logical. There’re white vans everywhere.”
“Not driven by pillocks, there aren’t!”
“Well, that’s actually debatable.” Emma grew silent, lulled by the sound of Christopher’s regular heartbeat pushing blood through his body. When she spoke, her voice cracked with exhaustion. “I thought his mother put the investigator on him. She said not.”
“Na, it wasn’t his mother. She’s busy doin’ other mischief.”
“Like what?”
“D’ya know they call her the Black Widow at the residential home?”
“Yeah. I met someone who knows her.” Emma pushed herself up on one elbow. “Anton and I were sure she killed his father and mine.”
“Aye, I wouldn’t be surprised! It’ll be somethin’ in that herb garden of hers. She plays with it most days like a fanatic. That’s where I’d start.”
“So who paid...the investigator?” Emma halted half way through her sentence as sleep claimed her and she struggled free.
“Tomorrow, sweetheart,” Christopher whispered, stroking her back and resting his chin on the top of her head. “Sleep now. I’m not sure when they’ll come. Let me watch over you; like I promised a good friend I would.”