Chapter 57
Fifty-Seven
ROMAN
Roman scrolls through the code, tracing what he thought he’d lost.
He leans closer to the screen, the glow whitening his face. The room is silent except for the hum of his laptop fan and the tap of rain on the window. Sanj’s voice is still in his head: Leave it, man. You’ve gone too far already. The closest thing he has to a brother.
Sanj means well, but going too far is kind of the point; he might as well finish the job.
Roman scrolls through the code, tracing the trail he thought he’d lost. He’s been at it for hours, eyes dry, stomach cramping from energy drinks and nerves. The details of the required payment sit in a neat little PDF on his desktop, encrypted, but not enough.
One hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The amount Vanessa Lambert had been meant to pay to a private offshore Jersey bank account, if the emails he’d seen were to be believed.
And most telling had been the string of digits he’s sure he’s seen before.
He rubs his eyes. It should be nothing. Another shell, another fake name. But it isn’t.
Something about it gnaws at him.
He drags an old file from his archives, one of his early hacks—messy, impulsive, back when he still thought of it as a game.
The smooth guy from the lane everyone trusts. The one who smiles at everyone and pretends to be Mr Charming.
Roman clicks open the cross-reference he’s built—names, transfers, IP logs. It’s all there: old email addresses, the dummy corporations he’d hidden behind, the offshore accounts he’d used for goodness knows what.
And now one of the account numbers has reappeared, waiting to be fed Vanessa Lambert’s money.
He rubs a hand through his hair and reads the name again.
‘Shit.’
He wishes he’d never looked now. He wishes he’d listened to Sanj, closed the whole thing down after the first scare.
He stands, pacing the room. His distorted reflection in the dark window looks wretched, like an old man.
This isn’t a game any more.
The screen times out, plunging the room into shadow.
Roman switches the light on, and immediately regrets it. His bedroom looks rank. The pile of cables on the floor, the half-eaten crisps and dirty socks . . . the tangle of chargers like black snakes around his feet.
Roman drums his fingers on the desk, thinking. What he’s uncovered changes everything, and now he has to decide what kind of person it makes him if he does nothing about the information.
But his stomach tightens as another thought follows. A thought that chills him to the bone.
Emily.
The way she’d looked at him—wild-eyed and shaking—when he’d confessed what he’d done.
Roman shudders. He should never have trusted anyone with that much truth. He’s been a fool.
He pulls up the tracing tool he built to map old access logs to rough locations. Crude and approximate, but good enough for a city. He plugs in the IP address tied to the payment instructions.
The map flickers.
Nottingham.
He sits back and starts to type.
To: Adebayo@
Subject: URGENT
He stops. Paces again, counting steps to calm himself. His mind’s whirring, replaying everything: Emily’s haunted voice when he went over to the house, her eyes all red and frantic. The way she’d looked when she’d said, Oliver is not a murderer.
He should feel vindicated, but instead he just feels sick. He hates Oliver Sharpe, and yet here he is, hesitating. But why? Anyone so evil must pay for what they’ve done.
He goes to the window and pushes it open. The cold rushes in, sharp and clean. Across the road, Orchard Lane looks so perfect, all its secrets packed behind the glass.
He wonders if the police will even take his tip-off seriously. Or if they’ll trace it back to him, come knocking, seize his kit, his drives, everything.
Roman sits on the bed, elbows on his knees, and tries to slow down his breathing.
‘Get a grip,’ he mutters.
A siren wails in the distance, growing louder.
He wonders if it’s heading to Orchard Lane.
Roman types the email and sends it before he can change his mind.
He half expects alarms to go off. Doors to burst open.
But nothing happens, and that’s worse in a way.
He slams the laptop shut, shoves it into his rucksack and drags a hoodie over his head. His phone buzzes.
He ignores it. If he gets distracted, he might change his mind.
He thunders down the stairs two at a time, grabs his bike from the hallway and bursts out into the rain.
The cool air hits him like a slap as he swings a leg over the bike and pushes off hard, the tyres skidding slightly on the wet tarmac as he heads over to Sanj’s place.
He pedals fast, breath burning, rain stinging his eyes. His thoughts are a mess—fragments of numbers, names, faces—but one thing is crystal clear now.
Everything has changed.
He needs to speak with Sanj. Show him what he’s found
The Audi pulls alongside him without warning, its engine purring smoothly. Roman glances sideways and his stomach drops.
The window slides down.
‘Get off the bike, Roman,’ Tim Walker-Dent says calmly. ‘We need to talk.’
The Audi cuts in front of him and Roman is forced to stop pedalling. His voice emerges breathless and sharp. ‘No, we don’t.’
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ Tim says, almost kindly. ‘You don’t understand what you’re getting yourself involved in.’
Roman angles the bike so he can move around him. ‘Funny. That’s exactly what I was thinking about you.’
The Audi surges forward, cutting in front of him again. Roman swerves, nearly clipping the bumper.
‘Last chance,’ Tim snaps. ‘Stop playing the fool and get off the bike.’
Roman does not hesitate. He kicks off, swerves round and rockets off down the road, heart hammering, legs pumping the pedals.
Sanj’s street is not far. In his mind’s eye he can see the familiar low wall, the dim porch light. Relief flares inside him.
Then an engine roars and the Audi comes out of nowhere, headlights blazing, filling his vision.
For a split second, everything slows and, absurdly, Roman thinks of his mum standing in the kitchen, hands on her hips, pretending not to worry when he stays out too late.
Of his dad knocking on his bedroom door, his gruff voice hiding the pride he never quite knows how to say out loud.
All the arguments, all the eye-rolling, all suddenly meaningless.
They love him. He knows that now. Completely.
The impact comes hard and fast.
The last thing Roman sees is the flash of silver as the world lifts violently beneath him and the road drops away.
Then Sanj’s face flashes up—grinning, saying, we’ve got this, like he always did. Like brothers. Like they would always survive things together.
Roman thinks, with a strange, lucid calm, that he was going to build something one day. That he is only fifteen. That there was still so much to do with his life.
And then . . . then the world turns dark and there is nothing. Nothing at all.