"Yes," said Kate pointedly to Paul. "Do we?"
"What"s the point? It was just road rage. He"ll be long gone by now. And he didn"t actually do anything they could prosecute him for. It"s not as if we"ve got any evidence either." He avoided Kate"s gaze. "We don"t even know who he was."
"Didn"t you get his licence plate number?"
"No... Look, I really don"t think there"s any point calling the police."
Penny looked at him long and hard. She obviously knew he wasn"t telling the whole truth. But he returned her stare without flinching.
"Well, it"s your decision," she said after a while.
"That"s right."
Kate could feel her heart jumping beneath her blouse. The pointer padded over to where she sat and stuck his wet nose into the palm of her hand. Suddenly, a wave of tiredness washed over her. In times of extreme stress, the human brain sometimes takes the option of shutting itself down to avoid trauma. Mrs Bainbridge; seeing Sampson again; the pursuit, the confusion over Paul"s strange behaviour. She wanted to sit here and stroke the ridiculously-named dog and not have to think about any of it.
But that wasn"t an option. Oh, how she missed the cool atmosphere of the lab, where all made sense; where everything could be measured and weighed and a.n.a.lysed. Where, if things didn"t go as they should, there was always an explanation.
"We ought to get going," Paul said.
"But what if this road-rager is still out there?" Penny asked.
Andrew said, "I could take the Land Rover out and check if the coast is clear."
He moved to the door.
"Be careful, darling," Penny said, with a tremor of genuine concern in her voice.
Andrew returned fifteen minutes later fifteen minutes during which Penny paced the sitting room with the dog at her heels, her nervousness a reproach to Kate, to not make snap judgements about other people"s relationships. Or her own relationships, for that matter, she thought. She was desperate to get Paul on his own to find out why the h.e.l.l he"d been acting so weirdly.
"No sign of the b.u.g.g.e.r, so I think it should be safe for you to leave," said Andrew, throwing his Barbour down on an armchair.
Paul stood up immediately. "Excellent. Let"s go, Kate."
As Kate rose to her feet, Andrew added, "Big story on the local radio news. Some elderly woman has been found shot outside her house."
"Shot?" Penny exclaimed.
"Yes, in Hednesford."
"Good heavens, that"s where I play boules! How could something like that happen in a sweet little village like Hednesford?"
Kate tried to remain calm, but she couldn"t shake the image of Mrs Bainbridge crumpling in front of her hollyhocks and lavender. She had taken a bullet meant for Paul, and Paul was now standing here, staring intently into the garden, grim-faced.
"You didn"t come through Hednesford, did you?" Penny asked.
"No. No, we didn"t," said Paul.
"We should go," Kate said, her voice trembling. "Can I just use your toilet first?"
"Of course."
When Kate emerged from the loo, Penny and Andrew were deep in conversation, holding hands. She was sure she heard Penny call Andrew "poppet".
Penny said, "Your friend has gone out to his car already."
"Oh. Okay. Well, thank you both so much."
"Think nothing of it."
After the young couple had driven away, Andrew turned to Penny. "What did you make of that?"
"I didn"t believe a word they said."
"No. I certainly didn"t believe all this stuff about road rage. I didn"t believe that Paul chap when he said they hadn"t been through Hednesford either."
Penny felt a rush of excitement. "You don"t think they might have had something to do with the old woman"s death?"
Andrew strode towards the phone. "I made a note of their registration number when I went out. I"m going to call the police."
After dialling the Stafford police and explaining about the strange couple that had visited them, Andrew went outside, keen to join the rest of his hunting party. He looked around for his shotgun.
"Penny, darling," he called. "Have you seen my gun?"
She emerged from the house. "No where did you put it?"
"I left it right here, propped against the wall. I...oh, blast."
They both looked towards the road.
"I"d better call the police again," Andrew said.
Kate and Paul pa.s.sed through Slitting Mill and out onto the main road again. At Kate"s insistence they had backtracked a little way to try to find Kate"s phone but there was no sign of it. Paul used his own phone to call Kate"s number, but nothing rang, even though they walked back and forth along the road close to the spot where Kate was sure Paul had thrown it, nervously half-expecting Sampson to jump out at them from behind a tree. While they were searching, Paul asked Kate about Sampson, and she explained about the creepy odd-job man at the CRU who never seemed comfortable in the role.
After ten minutes" fruitless searching, Kate was forced, reluctantly and with bad grace, to accept the fact that her phone was gone. She felt annoyed with Paul, both about the phone, and about his odd behaviour. They drove in silence to the outskirts of Stafford, glancing behind them in the car"s mirrors all the way, and as they pa.s.sed a row of shops and a pub, Kate said, "Pull over. We need to talk."
Paul pulled up outside the pub, The Red Lion.
Kate took a deep breath. "Why did you lie to them, Paul?"
He reached for her hand, and she flinched away.
"Kate..."
"No. Don"t touch me. Not until you"ve explained yourself. Why did you tell them you didn"t know who was chasing us? Why did you lie about Hednesford-on-the-Hill? And why wouldn"t you let me call the police?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose and stared at the dashboard. He thought about the shotgun in the boot of the car, wondered if his impulsive move to take it had been a mistake that would destroy Kate"s trust in him even further. Finally, he turned to look at her. "Okay. I"m going to tell you the truth now. I"m sorry I didn"t before, but when you hear it, you"ll understand why. But first I need a drink and so will you."
CHAPTER 28.
They pushed open the saloon door of the pub, which was empty apart from a few young blokes in football shirts, and a couple of older men, smoking cheap cigarettes as if their lives depended on it. A middle-aged barmaid leaned on the bar and showed off a crepey tanned cleavage.
Paul hesitated before ordering. He was in dire need of a very stiff drink, but he would need to drive later, so in the end he settled on a pint, and Kate had a vodka and tonic.
They sat opposite one another at a wobbly table next to the cigarette machine. Kate, who had been calling Miranda whilst Paul was at the bar, put down Paul"s mobile.
"How is he?"
"He"s fine. It took Miranda a while to drag him away from the Playstation to talk to me. He seems to be having a great time. Not missing his mum as much as she misses him."
Paul took a big gulp of beer.
"Go on then," Kate said. "Tell me why you threw my cellphone out of the window rather than letting me call the police."
It was a few moments before Paul could summon up the courage to speak.
"Don"t you ever wonder why you never knew Stephen had a twin brother? Because I bet he never mentioned me, did he?"
Kate shook her head. She had often wondered.
"I"ll tell you why he didn"t talk about me when you were both at the CRU."
She waited.
"Because I was in prison. That"s where I was when he sent me that letter."
Kate pushed herself back in her seat, almost toppling over backwards. "Prison? What...what for?"
Paul leaned forward and tried to touch her knee but she pulled away. "I didn"t murder anyone, if that"s what you"re thinking. I"m not a rapist or a mugger."
"What then?"
"Hacking."
"Computer crime?" She relaxed a little. She was still shocked, but there was something about computer crime that didn"t seem as harmful as other crimes. As long as you weren"t selling child p.o.r.nography or creating viruses that destroyed people"s computers or stole their personal details... although, she thought, perhaps that was exactly what he had done.
"What did you do?"
"I robbed a bank."
"Oh." She refused his outstretched hand.
"It was 1989. Stephen was already working at the CRU. I was living in a bedsit in London and had an incredibly dull job, working in the IT department of a sixth-form college in Southwark. But during the evenings I had a whole different ident.i.ty. I was a hacker called Shadowfax I know, it"s embarra.s.sing, but I was a Lord of the Rings fan obsessed with getting into places where I wasn"t supposed to go. There was a small group of us we used to chat on Usenet, which was a kind of precursor to the internet.. There was a guy called Dark Fox I know, I know who was renowned as the top hacker in the UK. Actually, he was a cracker, which is what the true hackers, who weren"t criminals, call people who use their hacking skills maliciously."
"And you weren="3"t a cracker?"
"No. Just a hacker."
They both laughed at the ridiculousness of what they were saying. But then Kate stopped laughing. "Except you robbed a bank."
Paul sighed. "It was a dare, a challenge. Dark Fox had been boasting about how he"d got into Midland Bank"s system and wiped out his overdraft. Everyone was hugely impressed by this. It took an enormous amount of skill to get into a bank"s system. Except I wasn"t that impressed. Why just wipe out your overdraft? Why not make yourself rich?"
"Because if your bank balance suddenly shoots up, the bank might notice?"
"Yes. Well, of course, I thought of that, so I came up with a scheme. I would invent a new ident.i.ty, a fake account under a made-up name. I used the hints and information that Dark Fox had revealed and used my own skills and I was b.l.o.o.d.y good to get into the bank"s system, set up this bogus account and credit it with 10,000. Not an enormous amount, but I thought I"d start low."
"And I expect 10,000 was a lot to you back then."
"Yeah. It"s a lot now." He realised he had finished his beer.
"Let me get you another," Kate said, noticing the forlorn way he staring at the empty gla.s.s. She returned a minute later with another pint.
"Thanks. Okay, so, the first part of the plan worked. I got in, set up the account, credited ten grand. The next bit was the genius bit, I thought. I got the system to send me a cash card along with a pin number a.s.signed to this bogus account. I set up a PO Box and collected the card from there, strolled down to the local Midland and took out my first grand." He grinned. "It was so exciting. I could hardly believe it had worked. That evening I went online and started telling all my hacker buddies about what I"d done. Suddenly I was their hero. Even Dark Fox said he was impressed."
"But you got caught."
"Yeah."
"What happened?"
"It turned out Dark Fox was an undercover cop. It must have been one of the first cases of computer entrapment. They traced me to the PO Box and that was it. I was arrested and charged for theft. Sent to prison for five years, though I was out in three."
Kate took Paul"s hand again. He hadn"t hurt anyone. The money was a drop in the ocean of the bank"s vast profits it wasn"t like he"d taken it from some little old lady"s account.
"I still don"t get it, though," she said. "You were convicted of a computer crime. You did your time, as they say. Why did that stop you from wanting to call the police about Mrs Bainbridge?"
"I haven"t finished yet. It gets...a lot worse. I feel scared to tell you, Kate. I"m worried that it will make you hate me."
"I need to know, Paul."
"I don"t know..."
She stood up. "If you don"t tell me I"m going to walk out of here, find a phone box and call the police right now. I mean it."
The men at the bar were watching Kate, their attention caught by the rising tension. Paul gestured for her to sit. "Okay, I"ll tell you."
He hesitated. "They put me in a cell with a bloke called Tony Plumber. He was a bit older than me and a lot harder. This was his second time inside."
"What was he in for?"
"Tony was a traditionalist. He"d robbed a bank the old fashioned way, with a stocking on his head, and a sawn-off shotgun. He thought it was hilarious that he"d been stuck in a cell with some nancy who"d tried to rob a bank with a computer. "What you should have done," he said, "was take the computer into the bank and whack the cashier over the head with it. You want to try robbing the proper way."""
It was then that Kate realised where this story was going. "Oh, Paul... You didn"t."