Chapter 33 #2
“Which is exactly why you can’t keep it.
Anyone who knew anything about Clive Sear will remember the watch, why he bought it, how proud he was of it.
Witnesses at the warehouse fire described the watch to investigators.
It’s in their statements. If anyone sees it on David Moran halfway around the world, they’ll be curious.
They’ll ask questions. They’ll follow up.
And then you’ll be dead or in prison.” Locke held out his hand.
Sear hesitated, unconvinced.
“Or we can quit now. I’ll take my documents and you can go your own way,” Locke said easily, as if he’d actually allow Sear to walk out alive.
Sear wasn’t used to taking orders or losing his possessions and his first reaction was to fight.
Locke waited patiently, until finally, Sear’s fingers went to the clasp. He unfastened it slowly, as though he were removing a piece of himself, and placed the watch in Locke’s palm.
Locke dropped it into his jacket pocket without looking at it.
“Now,” he said. He placed the briefcase on the table between them and opened it. He turned it to face Sear and let the contents speak for themselves.
Sear leaned forward. He picked up the Australian passport, studied the photo and turned the pages to examine the entry stamps Locke’s team had placed to build a travel history. He picked up the New South Wales driver’s license next. Then the birth certificate.
“David Moran,” Sear read aloud. He tried the name the way you’d try on a jacket. “David Moran. Born in Adelaide. And where does David Moran live?”
“Where he’s told to live,” Locke said.
Sear’s forced smile flickered.
“We covered this. You agreed. Begged me, in fact. From the moment you leave this room, Clive Sear is dead,” Locke continued.
“You will never contact anyone from your previous life, never mention your previous name. Very importantly, you’ll never return to the United Kingdom.
If you do any of those things, modern technology could connect you to Clive Sear and your new identity collapses.
After that, law enforcement finds you in a week. Maybe less.”
Sear watched him steadily. Then the smile came back. Wider this time, as though Locke had told a good joke at a dinner party.
“Of course.” Sear held a confident, untroubled gaze. “Clean break. Fresh start. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
Locke had seen that look on clients before. Those clients were all dead now.
“Two more things,” Locke closed the briefcase.
He reached into his jacket and produced a single sheet of folded paper. He unfolded it and placed it flat on the table.
Sear looked at it and blanched.
The photo showed Sear standing outside the warehouse in East London eleven days before the final fire. He was wearing the same confident smile he’d worn half a moment before.
“I keep a complete and comprehensive file on every client,” Locke said.
Sear’s gaze stayed on the photograph.
“We will be watching you.” Locke folded his hands on the table.
“If you ever contact anyone from your old life, discuss my operation with anyone, or give me any reason to doubt your reliability, that file goes to law enforcement and every English-language news organization. I reverse every database change my team has made. Your fingerprints, your DNA, your facial recognition profile. All restored. Every airport, every border crossing, every traffic camera on earth becomes a trap. David Moran disappears and Clive Sear is apprehended, tried, convicted and, if you’re lucky, you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. ”
Sear blinked and nodded. Then he cleared his throat. “What’s the second thing?”
Locke continued, his tone unchanged. “The fee you’ve already paid covers your identity build and the initial database work.
Maintaining the erasure is a separate service.
My team monitors the databases continuously.
Search engines. News archives. Law enforcement updates.
If your old identity resurfaces anywhere in the digital world, we catch it and remove it before it gains traction.
That monitoring costs two hundred thousand US dollars per year.
Wired to an account number I’ll provide. First payment due in thirty days.”
“Two hundred thousand a year,” Sear repeated, shocked.
“Every year. For as long as David Moran wants to remain alive and free.”
“And if I stop paying?”
Locke paused for a while, giving Sear a chance to worry and squirm.
“The next time someone runs your fingerprints or your photograph pops up in an old archive nobody will catch it. You’ll be on your own.” Locke shrugged. “Most clients who stop paying are arrested within eighteen months. The others are dead, one way or another.”
Sear forced a chuckle. “So I’m paying rent on my own life.”
Locke shrugged again.
“It’s quite an arrangement you’ve built for yourself,” Sear said. “And they say I’m heartless.”
Locke allowed him to keep digging his own grave.
Sear leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. The smile was back but it had a different quality now, as if he were recalculating.
“Can I be honest with you, Mr. Graves?”
Locke’s eyebrows arched.
“I think your fee is outrageous. Given the circumstances,” Sear said.
“The circumstances being that you torched a warehouse full of defenseless people and now the whole world wants you to pay for that, you mean?”
“Those people were squatters. Vagrants. They’d been in that building for months.
The council wouldn’t remove them. The police wouldn’t remove them.
” Sear waved a dismissive hand like brushing a fly.
“I had a development contract worth forty million pounds stalled because some filthy homeless squatted my building like a roach hotel.”
Locke didn’t reply.
“And do you know what happened?” The council thanked me.
Privately, of course. The neighbors were thrilled.
Property values on that street went up fifteen percent in six weeks.
” Sear uncrossed his arms and leaned forward.
“I did everyone a favor. Those people would have died anyway. A strong wind would blow them away, assuming they ever woke up and walked around. Some crusading prosecutor decided to make a name for herself, and suddenly I’m a monster. ”
“Life sucks. Then you die,” Locke replied.
“Homeless vagrants,” Sear continued. “Contributed nothing, produced nothing, paid no taxes, squatting where they had no right to be. And I’m supposed to feel guilty about that? I’m supposed to pay millions of dollars to hide from that?”
“Yes,” Locke said flatly. “If you were not a sociopath, you’d feel guilty and you’d apologize and you’d make amends. And you’d still go to prison because you deserve to be there.”
“Yeah, well, I hired you. Guess that means I don’t need to worry about any of that,” Sear sneered.