The Doomsday Prophecy

‘Doesn’t look like it to me,’ Hudson said. ‘He ran out to save the kid. A second later, he’d have been caught up in it too.’

‘What if he saw Herzog? What if he remembers him? He’s a witness.’

‘No way. It was just chance. He had no idea what was coming.’

She frowned. ‘Maybe. Go back. OK, stop. Replay.’

‘We’ve been through this a hundred times,’ Hudson said.

‘I want to know who this guy is. I get a bad feeling about him.’

They watched and listened again. The sound was scratchy and filled with background sound – jumbled conversation from other tables and passers-by, traffic, general white noise.

‘The sound is shit,’ Kaplan muttered.

‘Yeah, well, we didn’t exactly get much time to prepare,’ Hudson said. ‘If I hadn’t thought to bring the stuff just in case, we wouldn’t even be listening to this conversation at all.’

‘Just shut up and let the damn thing play.’

He went quiet. Kaplan was in charge, and he already knew she could be pretty mean if he pushed it too far.

‘Pause,’ she said. ‘Did you hear that? He mentioned her name again. Go back.’

He rewound the image a few frames. ‘It’s hard to be sure.’

‘I’m sure. Turn up the volume,’ she said. ‘Can you clean it up any more?’

‘I’ve cleaned it up all I can,’ Hudson replied irritably. He’d been up most of night working on it, painstakingly whittling away as many unwanted frequencies as he could isolate. ‘I’ll need a few more hours to get the best out of it.’

‘If you could get that fucking kid out of it,’ she said, ‘I’ll be happy.’ The percussive tap – tap – tap of the child’s bouncing ball each time he came into the range of the mike was cutting out a lot of the precious conversation and driving her crazy.

Hudson restarted the playback and they listened carefully.

‘There it is,’ she said. ‘Bradbury. Comes out clearly now.’

‘Yup. Definitely Bradbury.’

‘Shit. OK, let it play on.’ The video played on a few more seconds. She focused hard on the sound, closing her eyes. Then she opened them, and her jaw tightened. ‘Stop. Cleaver. He said “Cleaver”.’

Hudson was annoyed he hadn’t picked up on it before. ‘Copy. What did he say about him?’

‘Run it back. Slow it down.’

They listened to the hissy, muffled recording again. ‘I think he’s saying “where is Cleaver?”,’ she said. ‘That’s what it sounds like to me.’

‘But how could he know about Cleaver?’

‘Means he’s been talking to Bradbury. Means he’s in on it.’

‘Or he just saw it in the address book.’

‘Either way,’ she said, ‘that isn’t something we want him to know.’

They watched more. On screen, Number One unfolded the newspaper and leaned across the café table to show it to Number Two.

Kaplan reached for the copy of the same paper on the desk. Followed Number Two’s gaze down the front page. She nodded. He was definitely looking at the report on Nikos Karapiperis’ death.

Then the child came into the frame, his ball went out into the road, and they watched again as Number Two leaped out to save him. Then the explosion burst across the terrace all over again.

‘You can shut it down now. I’ve seen enough,’ Kaplan said.

‘Fucking baby-saving hero,’ Hudson muttered.

Kaplan started pacing up and down. ‘Put it all together. They knew everything. Bradbury, the money, Cleaver, Nikos Karapiperis. And Number One knew we were tailing him.’

Hudson swivelled round in his chair to face her. ‘How did he know that?’ The screen went black as the laptop shut down.

Kaplan shook her head. ‘He wasn’t just some friend of the family. This is a professional at work. No way anyone could have spotted us otherwise.’

‘So who are these people? Who are they working for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You think they know where Bradbury put it?’

‘I’m going to have to call this in,’ she said. ‘I don’t like either of them. And I don’t like that Number Two is still around.’

She walked to another room, where she could speak in private, and dialled the number. It was a long-distance call. The same man’s voice answered.

‘We might have another problem,’ she told him. She explained the situation quickly.

‘How much does he know?’ the man asked.

‘Enough. About the money, and about Cleaver. And about us. And maybe more.’

There was a long silence. ‘This is already getting messy.’

‘We’ll deal with it.’

‘You’d better. Get me names. Find out everything he knows. Then take care of him. Do it properly and quietly. Don’t make me have to call Herzog in on this again. He’s too damn expensive.’

When the call was over, Kaplan went back to the other room. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Chapter Nineteen (#ulink_20b5e298-574c-5fc1-b1ec-26d5df509349)

Ben checked out of the hospital still feeling drained and numb. He shambled out of the glass doors and into the hot morning sun, hardly feeling the warmth on his face. His mind was blank as he stood there on the pavement, not knowing what to do next.

Approaching footsteps made him turn: two men. One had a camera, the other a notebook. Reporters. They were looking right at him.