Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle (40 page)

sh.rt/8hr30pt

¶riotbaby

A government minister who’s literally in bed with big data. This proves everything.

Act now. Make it count.

Twelve

‘I’m going to fix us up a one-on-one,’ said Mark.

‘Ah – sorry –?’

J-R trotted to catch up with Mark, grappling the strap of his backpack over his shoulder. Mark slowed to let him catch up. Dusk was falling on the busy street.

‘A meeting.’

‘With?’

‘With Vanna.’

‘Who is—?’

‘Vanna Prendergast. Ex colleague-slash-buddy who works in Perce’s office and owes me a favour. I’ll get us a face-to-face and we can put this to her.’

They walked together along the cracked pavement, J-R’s folded bike bouncing at his side. He didn’t know where Mark was leading him.

‘I don’t – I’m not sure what I can do here any more, Mark. I’m rather a long way from my comfort zone.’

Mark swung to a stop. J-R stumbled to avoid colliding with him.

‘J-R. How long have you been working on this? Did you suddenly stop believing in making a difference? You read the logs on Graham’s USB.’

J-R had read them, but like everything important these days, they were written in characters he couldn’t understand.

‘If they’re real,’ said Mark, ‘we have hard evidence they’re using Grubly to snoop on millions of people – millions. They were aware of the Digital Citizen hack all along. They must be scrambling to cover this whole thing up. It’s just like I first said – do you remember, back in the café?’

J-R nodded slowly.

‘Everything Graham’s given us,’ said Mark. ‘How can we not use this? This isn’t some legalistic question about whether Bethany was telling the truth. We actually need to stop these people.’

‘I just don’t see how—’

‘Which is why I’m saying, let’s take it directly to Mondan. Don’t let them bury this. Come on: this’ll be fun.’

Mark’s excitement was a lure; but J-R didn’t relish confronting this Vanna person. He’d dealt with Perce’s people many times and found them obnoxious and diffident. Under no scenario would this go smoothly.

They turned a corner onto a street whose remnants of shops were colonised by temporary street-food outlets. Meat smoke charred the air and there was noise and light. A young crowd filled the pavement. J-R almost took Mark’s arm. He’d not felt so warmed since his BlackBerry fizzed out.

Then Mark did touch him, on the shoulder, to guide him into a makeshift cafe whose transparent tenting contained a merry cluster of formica tables. Men hailed Mark, all with the same trim swagger. He guided J-R onto a stage of wooden palettes, where they sat at a table and studied laminate lists of mezze and unfamiliar beers. Mark hailed a dark-eyed man and ordered for them both, then sat back, eyes liquid in the light.

‘So – I guess we were behind the curve with our big reveal about Bethany and Sean?’

J-R winced. Before they left Parley Mark had showed him
sic_girl’s latest posts. Bethan’s idiotic emails. No sordid holiday snaps as yet – but even in their words, her mails displayed the same giddy nonsense he’d seen in those shots from Cádiz.

‘It does make a horrible kind of sense,’ he said. ‘Perce always had a – proprietorial air with Bethany. I could never understand why she laughed it off, so.’

Mark nodded.

‘That’s Perce all over.’

His sleek phone was in his hand, the enormous screen turned towards J-R. It displayed a photograph of a beautiful dark woman with oversized glasses and the words,
Vanna P mobile
.

‘So are we going to nail him? Shall I call Vanna? Before the borek comes?’

The phone’s screen weaved with hypnotic colours. Suppose Perce and Bethany
had
cooked up some deal? Chasing Perce, exposing it, would destroy her. What did loyalty look like, in this scenario?

J-R cleared his throat.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve slogged at this for two years – with no life outside work. If I thought for a moment I was selling people’s privacy to some corporation –’

So Mark called the number. He made professional murmurs into the phone, deploying all his easy forcefulness; but even he seemed surprised by the response.

‘Tomorrow morning? Well, I suppose –’

He widened his eyes at J-R who mouthed,
Saturday?
Mark shrugged, mouthed,
Why not?
and grinned. J-R threw up his hands and replied out loud.

‘Why not, indeed?’

Mark gave a delight of a smile and engaged his counter-party in brisk arrangements. In the morning they would knock at the door of Mondan’s great electrified headquarters with nothing in their pockets but a USB drive and a passing hope. Krish once said to J-R,
Always have a gun taped behind the cistern.
A reference to some film. Sorry, Krish, he thought, I have nothing.

Mark ended the call and J-R reached to place a hand on his leg; but there was too much table in the way. Mark looked down, baffled at J-R’s directionless reaching.

‘The tabbouleh is who?’ asked an accented voice.

The waiter. J-R recovered his arm and fussed with his paper napkin. Mark continued to study him.

‘We’re sharing everything,’ he told the waiter.

When the waiter had gone, he leaned eagerly towards J-R.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to fuck Sean Perce?’

¶riotbaby

DEMO: All in the West End area: thirty minutes and counting to party time. Get yourself close to any branch of HomeTech in the Oxford Street area. Don’t let their blatant tax evasion take money out of YOUR pocket.

DEMO: Wheelchair sit-in going down NOW at Winstanton Property Services on Albermarle Street. These are the dudes who are evicting tenants with disabilities. Be there.

Thirteen

There are certain things you can walk away from – if you have the nous and the balls:

Bethany rubbed her backside. Her only injury from her abduction was a screaming bruise down her right flank, where Dani had shoved her into the plastic chair. The bruising must be an attractive shade of blue by now. She didn’t care to check.

She shifted against the chair’s padding. Being cooped up in this hotel meeting room was like being trapped in the Beiges
section of the Dulux catalogue. After this morning’s events the police had triggered DEFCON 5 and commandeered the room as their command centre, and were clearly loving every second.

Official voices bounced around the walls, two conversations cutting across one another. Bethany was trying to keep up with DC Ackroyd but she kept being distracted by DS Raeworth, who was briefing Krish on the other side of the table. It seemed they’d identified this morning’s ringleader and Raeworth was reading out his profile. His telegraphic delivery was hard to ignore in this closed acoustic.

‘Leo Sandberg. Known to us. Masters dropout from Trinity, Cambridge. IT whizz.’

Raeworth’s rhythms of speech reminded her of the shipping forecast. As he spoke he held an ice pack to the back of his head. He’d refused medical attention after his fall and was generally playing the wounded action hero. Bethany wished he – and everyone else – would cool it. Probably she was fooling herself and this was an unmitigated disaster but she liked to hope it wasn’t, thanks very much.

‘Picked up at an anti-capitalist demo last year,’ continued Raeworth. ‘Property damage. Again in November, assaulting a police officer. No evidence – masked. One eviction, verbal warning. Squatting. Tactical had him under occasional observation since the charges fell through.’

‘Observation?’ said Krish. ‘So how come—?’

‘
Occasional
observation, sir.’

Krish’s BlackBerry cut the conversation short.

‘Ach, hold on a moment.’ He stood to take the call. ‘Oh, you? Well no thanks a bunch for
your
advice.’

He moved away from the table. Bethany turned her attention back to DC Ackroyd, who was trying to update her on today’s leaked emails. She was finding it impossible to take the information in. Was she still in shock?

‘Sorry, Detective Constable. You were trying to tell me –?’

He gave her a sympathetic smile, the patronising tosser.

‘Our assumption was not correct,’ he said. The police were just as bad at saying
I was wrong
as politicians. ‘We assumed the emails had been leaked from the department.’

The logic of that statement should presumably be clear. She shook her head as if this would improve her hearing.

‘Well, but they were. These were mails from me, from Procurement colleagues, from my office. The only common link was the department.’

‘Actually, no, Minister.’

He handed her a laser print. She waved it away.

‘Sorry. Reading glasses.’

The policeman shrugged.

‘This erm – communication – between you and Mr Perce, posted by sic_girl at 11:41 today was originally sent on the eighteenth of last month. An email in which you – well –’

‘Yes, all right – so?’

‘It’s sent from your home email address. Gmail.’

That cut through the tofu in her head. She grabbed the paper off him. Oh, shit, yes, she remembered this one. Peter would have read this by now. She had to talk to Peter – but not now. One impossible situation at a time.

‘But then how are they getting them? If you take away the department, there’s no common link. This was sent to Sean’s home email.’ She’d given up with the
Mr Perce
. ‘Others to his office, to partners in his bid. Where’s the link?’

‘It’s Mondan, Minister. Mr Perce’s personal email is hosted by his firm. All the consortium companies share a mail server –
mail.group.mondan.com.
Every one of the leaked emails passed through that server. It’s housed in their UK data centre, here in London. It’s the link.’

Bethany glanced across at Krish but he was still on the phone. Christ, she thought, could this tip the balance? Was the department no longer on the hook for the security breach?

Raeworth leaned towards her from the opposite side of the table.

‘We have a court order, Minister,’ he said. ‘We can’t hold back any more. We’re putting a data forensics team inside Mondan. We’ll do it with their full cooperation of course. I’ll brief Mr Perce myself tonight.’

Before she could respond, Bethany saw the expression change on Krish’s face. Still listening to his phone, steel set into his jawline. He spoke once more then held the BlackBerry away from his ear, killed the connection and stared at it.

Raeworth was trying to get her attention.

‘Minister?’

She shushed him with a wave of her hand.

‘Krish?’ she said. ‘What is it?’

Krish turned his stare onto her. He looked fit to murder.

‘Well, now. It seems we have a name.’

‘For . . .?’

‘For our blogger. AKA sic_girl. The leaker.’

Both policemen stood. This was becoming more like a tacky cop show by the minute. Bethany moved her weight off the sore side of her arse.

‘We do?’ she said. ‘From where?’

‘From – a source at Parley.’

She let this pass.

‘So . . .? The name?’

‘Leo Sandberg. Known as identikid. Our scuddy wee laddie from this morning. He’s the head of this TakeBackID collective. He’s behind it all.’

Both policemen were on their phones so fast it was like they’d already had them at their ears.

¶riotbaby

PIGWATCH: Horses. Moorgate Tube and area. Avoid.

RIOT TIP: The kids with the breezeblocks in Regent Street: go for the corner of the glass. It breaks more easily than if you hit the centre.

Fourteen

Everyone is shouting. Everything is splashed with red. Dani’s dark-adapted eyes follow the mash by the light of flatscreen animations. They call this place the Flamingo Arms. That was never its name but everybody knows the stencilled birds on the boards out front. It’s round the corner from her flat. From who-she-used-to-be’s flat. She’s working on thinking Terry Salmon. She starts by getting shitfaced.

She makes a rumpus on the dance floor. Her throat hurts from when she murdered her vocal chords before, on the high notes of
Sound of the Underground.

Leo was here a while but now he’s gone. He was telling her about some caper. She planned to stick with him but things got choppy and she didn’t see him go.