That, after all, was how he had survived for the best part of twenty-five years.
But almost every sentence Bone had written, every one of his recollections and theories, had been revelatory, clues not simply towards the solving of a murder, but vital pieces in the jigsaw of his father’s life. Ben immediately wanted to share the letter with Mark, and yet a part of him enjoyed the buzz of privileged information. This was the breakthrough the police had been searching for, but it was also a secret glimpse into a world that his brother could only have guessed at.
30
Mark called Bob Randall from a phone booth in the ticket hall of Leicester Square underground station. He lost his first twenty-pence piece in the teeth of a broken callbox, but reached the contact number at his next attempt. A man answered, sneezing as he picked up.
‘Can I help you?’
‘This is Blindside.’
‘Hold the line.’
Taploe was put through in under ten seconds.
‘Randall,’ he said.
‘We may have a problem.’
‘Elaborate, please.’
‘I just got to the office. Macklin’s breakfast was cancelled. Lunch as well. It looks like he’s going to be there all day. I told him I was going out for a coffee so I could get to a phone and tell you.’
‘I see. So do you still want to go ahead?’
‘Do you?’
‘There’s no problem at our end. The network will go down at 11 a.m. as arranged. We have the team standing by waiting for your call. But you sound unsettled.’
Mark had not wanted to betray any of his anxiety. Think of Dad, he had said to himself. What would my father do? He braced his foot against the wall of the callbox and said, ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I just thought you should know.’
‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that. So let’s press ahead. This is information that we need. Now, where are you?’
‘Leicester Square tube.’
‘Well, it’s almost half-past. Get backto the office. We’ll expect to hear from you within the next forty minutes.’
‘Sure.’
‘And Mark?’ Taploe said.
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t forget the coffee.’
‘What?’
‘You told Macklin you were going out for a coffee. Make sure to bring one back to work.’
Half an hour later Mark was sitting in an armchair in his office when he heard the distinct rumble of a Macklin ‘Fuck’ coming through the walls. Another voice — Kathy’s — cried out, ‘What the hell happened?’ and then a door opened in the corridor.
‘Why’s the fucking email not working?’ Macklin shouted. ‘Where’s Sam?’
‘Maternity leave,’ somebody said.
‘Fucking great.’
He swerved into Mark’s office, a shirt button popped open on his belly. Mark lowered the magazine he was pretending to read and tried to look distracted.
‘Your computer working, mate?’ Macklin asked him.
‘Mine just crashed as well,’ Kathy said, coming in behind him.
Mark stood up with perhaps an exaggerated non-chalance and walked across to his desk. Hitting a key at random, his stomach a swell of nerves, he prayed for total system failure.
Granted.
The small, frowning face of an Apple icon appeared on screen and nothing Mark could do would remove it. Turning to face Macklin and Kathy he said simply, ‘Shit.’
At the reception desk, thirty feet away, Rebecca, a temp who had replaced Sam as office manager, answered a telephone call just as her own computer froze irreparably. She had been in the middle of writing a frank and erotic email to a one-night stand and was worried that it would now be discovered on the system.
‘Well, that’s fucking great, isn’t it?’ Macklin was saying. ‘I had twenty fucking messages downloading and now they’re all shot to fuck. Some cunt in the Philippines, probably, a prepubescent anorak who thinks it’s a fucking laugh infecting every computer in the civilized world with Macintosh Clap. Doesn’t he have something better to do? You know, watch football, play Virtual Cop or something?’
Mark caught Kathy’s eye and grinned. ‘It may not be that bad,’ he said. Momentarily forgetting the temp’s name, he called out to her, ‘Is yours down too?’
‘Yes,’ Rebecca replied from across the room, covering the telephone with her hand. The conspiratorial way she then soundlessly mouthed the word ‘Frozen’ made Mark wonder if she fancied him. ‘Well then, I’ll get someone to fix it,’ he said.
‘Who does Sam normally call?’ Macklin asked. ‘Of all the fucking days to be on holiday…’
‘The number’s in her magic book,’ Kathy told him. At this, Mark stepped in.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll call them,’ he announced, and then panicked that he might have sounded too enthusiastic. Why would he do it, after all, when Kathy was around and knew where to find the book? Rescue this. Say something. ‘Mack, you go next door. Kathy, make him a cup of tea. Virus or no virus, it’ll be fixed by lunch.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ Macklin asked.
‘Vibes, man,’ Mark said. ‘Just vibes.’
He was impressed by how precisely the men from A Branch looked exactly like computer technicians. For some reason he had been expecting lab engineers wearing white coats and protective helmets, but the three men who came to the Libra offices within half an hour of Mark’s call were spotty, unwashed, socially inept youths. None of them looked at Mark. They had already performed a complete dry-run of the operation the preceding weekend and knew exactly which rooms to target and where to locate the safe.
‘Is there a unit in there?’ one of them had asked Kathy, nodding towards Roth’s locked office.
‘Yeah,’ she had said.
‘Any chance of getting a look at it?’
‘Sure.’
And total access was thus provided. Over the course of the next four hours, every computer in the building was disassembled and a copy made of its hard drive. Mean while, having been shown to the basement by Mark, a security specialist plugged phoney wires into the mainframe — purely for the purposes of cover — and then calmly broke into the Libra safe, making a thorough photographic record of its contents. Mark, who had told an increasingly agitated Macklin that he would ‘keep an eye on things downstairs’, watched all this unfold from the basement doorway and felt the thrill of his participation in it. This’ll make our case, Randall had told him, and he was surely right.
Yet there was a single flaw, a problem that nobody could have foreseen. Just after two o’clock, as Macklin was leaving the office to buy himself a sandwich for lunch, he turned to Rebecca in reception and, laying the ground work for a future date, said, ‘Sorry about all the computer geeks, sweetheart. Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s all right,’ she replied. ‘But it’s a bit weird, Mr Macklin. They got here so quickly.’
Macklin, who was wondering what chance he had of getting her into bed before the end of the week, only half-absorbed this observation and said simply: ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. Sam left me a note before she went away, basic stuff saying where everything was. I had the number for the computer technicians and called them after what happened. Only, thing is, they said they were busy, couldn’t get here till three or something. Then they go and show up twenty minutes later.’
‘Is that right?’ Macklin said. ‘Is that right?’ She now had his full attention. ‘After twenty minutes?’
‘Yeah.’
He frowned.
‘Maybe they had a cancellation. Did you ask?’
Rebecca shook her head.
Macklin eyeballed the only visible technician in the room, a twenty-four-year-old A-Branch recruit named Frankwho was pretending to rewire a circuit board outside Mark’s office.