Chapter 40
Sunny
Wednesday morning, I was sitting in a dreary coffee shop on the wrong side of London Bridge, with the smiling faces of Leaf and Karma waving good morning to me from my computer screen.
They sat in a room of honey-coloured pine walls, light streaming in through a large window, with the Derbyshire forest behind them.
It was a stark contrast to the dank café, which I’d only popped into so no one at work knew I was making this call.
It smelt of burnt coffee and soggy ham and cheese toasties.
“Summer, come and meet Sunny,” Karma said, beckoning someone off-screen towards the webcam.
A fit blonde appeared. She was probably in her mid-twenties, with the kind of clear skin and clear eyes that only a Spartan-like commitment to training, clean eating, and rude good health can generate.
She had probably never consumed anything containing an E-number in her entire life.
I self-consciously covered the angry-looking spot on my chin.
Summer smiled, and her whole face lit up.
“This is our daughter, Summer,” Karma said. “She’s a massage therapist, acupuncturist, and reiki healer.”
We swapped hellos; then Summer bobbed off to go charge someone ￡100 to either touch them, push needles into them, or not touch them.
(Reiki is essentially just being in a room with someone, hovering your hands a few inches above their body.
Which is why you never meet anyone on GayHoller who says, “Wanna come over for some reiki?”)
“What have you managed to find?” I asked, when I finally had Karma all on my own.
“I’ve got a few documents for you.” She popped on a pair of reading glasses.
I was, quite literally, on the edge of my seat.
Partly so I didn’t sit on chewing gum. Karma shared her screen, which must have been the first time anyone in human history has successfully achieved that technological feat without ten minutes of faffing about first. A document flashed up with the ZephEnergies logo I recognised from the letter in Vladimir Popov’s office.
“These are purchase orders,” Karma said. I read them on the screen. “This one is for ￡96,750 for fencing supplies. Cyclone fencing, plain wire, poles, ready-mixed concrete, it’s all here. From a company called Thowden’s.”
“I know them,” I said. “They’re a big construction-and-hardware-type company. They’ve got stores all over the Midlands.”
“This is the trade side of their business, not the retail,” Karma said. “But why is ZephEnergies putting in a massive order for cyclone fencing with Thowden’s?”
“Could be anything,” I said, erring on the side of caution. “They could be building a wind farm somewhere nearby.”
“I thought that too,” Karma said. “Wait until you see this.”
Over the next twenty minutes, Karma showed me documents that clearly indicated ZephEnergies had bought and installed fencing around the Newton Bardon site.
The paper trail included delivery addresses, quotes from fencing contractors for installation, and—the real icing on the Party Ring—photographs Leaf had taken of the fence going up.
“Why would ZephEnergies be paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to fence off a massive greenfield site at Newton Bardon, a site we already know was earmarked for the nuclear power plant, if they’d not been given the nod that the contract was theirs already?” I asked.
“You can see why we’re convinced it’s a done deal,” Karma said. “As I say, we can get more documents, but they cost a lot of money.”
“How much is it?” I said, sliding unavoidably into a Leicester accent.
It came out like owmuchisit. The answer was ￡10,000.
Daylight robbery. I didn’t have any budget, let alone ten grand.
This was the price we paid for not involving our bosses in our investigations.
That said, unless it involved photos of exposed celebrity boobs, the Bulletin wasn’t dropping ten big ones on a few documents.
We’d have to do without the dark web and its dossier.
“How do you reckon these documents got online anyway?” I asked.
“Could be any manner of ways,” Karma explained. “A security breach, perhaps. Hackers. Or there could even be a mole in the business. A whistle-blower. Someone who doesn’t like what the company is doing and wants to tell the world but without risking their position or getting caught.”
The source of any piece of information is as important as the information itself.
What we had here was a nugget. But if history had taught us anything, it was that discovering one little piece of gold is all you need to start a gold rush.
These documents were a marker, an indicator.
Now Ludo and I needed to keep digging to see what other nuggets we could uncover in the hope that it led to a rich seam of pure gold.
“By the way, Sunny.” Leaf suddenly reappeared behind Karma and peered into the screen over the top of his reading glasses. “Do you know someone called Torsten Beaumont-Flattery?”
I said I did and asked why.
“He’s coming to pay us a visit. He won the door prize on Saturday night. Know anything about him?”
“Aside from the fact he’s built like a rugby player who ate three other rugby players?”
Where should I even begin?