Chapter 26
Digital Ghost
IVY
I wake up and Alistair is still in bed. He’s on his back, his arm under my pillow, his other hand loose on my hip. He opens his eyes.
“You're still in bed.”
He pulls me into the curve of his beautiful body. “Don't get used to it.”
“I wouldn't dare.”
His phone buzzes on the bedside table. He reaches for it without lifting his head, looks at the screen for a moment longer than I expect, and sits up.
“Brodie?”
“Brodie.”
Twenty minutes later we are in the manor kitchen at Ashworth Park with the rest of the troops.
Isobel is at the head of the table, hands folded around her cup, immaculate as always in a smart pantsuit, perfectly accessorized, hair done.
Christopher is at the foot, looking, once again, like death warmed up.
Henderson, looking marginally healthier, is against the dresser, Bijou at his feet.
The long oak table has been laid for breakfast. Three French presses, a jug of orange juice, a bowl of mixed berries, a huge plate of figs, a board of expensive sourdough toast still warm from the oven, butter, honey, two kinds of yogurt.
Daisy pours a coffee and slides it toward me with a subtle smile.
God bless the woman. She’s definitely my favorite.
I look to Isobel for news.
“Brumilde is doing very well,” she says. “They expect her home in two days.”
There’s a murmur of relief. I close my eyes and say a little prayer of gratitude. Alex had also had a good night, so my heart feels a little less bruised.
Alistair takes my hand under the table. I reach for the coffee pot with my free hand and pour for both of us. I inhale the scent of it, proper coffee, expensive, citrus and chocolate. I feel at ease until I clock the gun at Henderson's hip.
Alistair takes a piece of toast, then sets his phone on the table and calls Brodie on speaker.
“Morning, Brodie,” he says gruffly. “You’re on speakerphone.”
Brodie's voice comes out clear and concentrated. “Morning, all. I have news.”
We fall silent.
“You asked me about Vellcottt. This is what I have so far. He’s forty-six. Bermondsey. Eight years in Belmarsh in the early two-thousands. Came out, kept his head down. Mostly clean-looking on paper for the last decade.”
Henderson folds his arms across his chest. “And dirty in fact.”
“Dirty in fact. He's on a regular retainer from a holding company called Pearl Lambert. Pearl Lambert is one of three entities I’ve been watching because their movements correlate to messages we had from Hargrove.”
Alistair lets go of my hand and drops his toast, glaring at Christopher, who looks shocked. “You're telling us the man who held Christopher's debt works for Hargrove.”
A pause. “Yes.”
“How long has Vellcottt been on the books?”
“At least eighteen months.”
“And Christopher has been at Burgundy's how long?”
Brodie clears his throat. “Just under a year.”
Christopher looks like he’s going to choke on his fig. It would serve him right.
“So… what you’re saying is that Christopher didn't accumulate a debt. He was given one.”
“Yes, sir,” replies Brodie. “I think so. And when we extrapolate that data—”
Alistair stands up. “Then the same people who placed the bomb in my house have ties to the people who’ve been across the table from my brother three nights a week for a year.”
“Yes, sir.”
The orange juice on the table goes blurry. I blink hard. My free hand has gone tight around the handle of the coffee cup, and I realize I am gripping it because some part of me wants to hurl it across the room.
That wall did not come down by accident. It came down because someone read a map. And the map was made of conversations my husband's brother had at a fucking card table. My mouth is so dry. I feel hot and cold. I want to be sick.
“Brodie,” says Ariana. “Who does Vellcottt report to?”
“Hargrove. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Not Hargrove. He’s too important. There will be a layer between them. Possibly two. Find the layer.”
A beat.
“Fair point,” Brodie says. “I haven't drilled into his communications yet. I've been chasing the bank flows. I'll prioritize it.”
Ariana crosses her arms. “This is not a debt operation,” she says. “It is a surveillance operation. The debt is the leash.”
Isobel nods, her face grim.
“Christopher has been at that table for almost a year. Drinking. Losing money. Talking. They won’t have asked direct questions, they won’t have needed to. What they will have built, drink by drink, is a picture. From the inside.”
She turns toward Christopher. “And then they used the picture and put a bomb in it.”
Christopher blanches and looks away.
Hargrove has had a map of this family for months. Christopher has been the cartographer.
Ariana’s in full ops mode. “Brodie. Listen carefully.
The Vellcottt channel is one of three things at minimum.
There will be at least one secondary surveillance line you have not yet found.
Possibly people inside our circle that we do not know are inside our circle.
You need to assume the bomb at the nursery was not the only device they have placed.
If they had a year of access through Christopher, and they had Vellcottt on retainer for eighteen months, they will not have built only one capability.
There will be at least one more device, somewhere, currently dormant.
Either at Ascot Grange in a place we have not yet swept, or here, or in one of the cars, or in the offices, or somewhere that touches our movements.
Sweep again. Sweep with the assumption that the first sweep was for Elena's people and the second sweep needs to be for Hargrove's.”
“Understood.”
She is still not looking at anyone.
“And, Brodie? They will know we have identified Vellcottt by now. He will be told to stop reporting and to disappear, or he will be cleaned up by the people above him. Either way you have a small window where his accounts might still be active. Take everything off them now.”
“Already in motion.”
“Faster.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ariana finally looks up. “Hargrove has had twelve months. We’ve had two days. We’re going to spend the next week catching up.” She picks up her tea, looks at it, sets it down again.
Isobel has not moved. She has been listening with the stillness of a woman who is not surprised. She knew. Or had suspected. She catches my eye briefly, then looks back at the garden.
Alistair turns to the phone. “Brodie. You heard her. The comms layer, the second device, the Vellcottt accounts before they go cold.”
A pause.
“Mr Ravenscroft.”
“Yes.”
“Hargrove is significantly more dangerous than Mikhail was. Than Elena was.”
Alistair's hand on the table goes very still.
“The man is mostly a digital ghost. He’s brilliant at hiding but at the same time he seems to be everywhere. I don’t have a handle on him yet.”
I hear the discomfort in Brodie’s voice. He’s not used to not knowing.
“I don’t even have a picture. He’s confounded my identification system because he has an automated profile that changes every few minutes. I don’t know his nationality. I can’t even tell you his eye color.”
“You’ll get it,” says Alistair.
Brodie sounds unsure. Something about Hargrove has spooked him.
The kitchen is silent, apart from Reacher whining in a dream. Alistair takes a breath and ends the call, then turns to his brother.
“Christopher.”
Christopher lifts his head, eyes screwed up like a child bracing for a scolding.
“You are going to write down everything you can remember about every conversation at that table. Every name. Every detail. With Henderson. Today.”
“Yes.”
Alistair reaches across the table and puts his hand on Christopher's shoulder. He leaves it there for a moment longer than I expect. Christopher closes his eyes.
The question arrives in my mouth fully formed. “Why don't we just pay him?”
Everyone turns to look at me.
“Hargrove. He says he is owed half. Half of what was Mikhail's is not nothing, but it's not Alex's life. We have the money. Why don't we just pay him?”
Alistair turns his body to face me fully.
He puts his cup down. “Men like Hargrove are not paid off. You give them what they ask for and they ask for more. You give them more and the requests change shape. Once they have their claws in, they make demands for access. For influence. For the next favor and the next, until the day they ask for something you cannot give and tell you that you should have thought of that before you gave them the first thing.”
His voice is very level.
“By that point they are inside. We will have spent a year paying them not to do something they were always going to do anyway, because the only thing men like that respect is the demonstration that they cannot have what they want.”
Isobel nods grimly. “Hargrove and his associates will haunt us forever. We’ll never be safe. Sometimes a dead body is the only way to put a proper end to things like this.”