Tiberius Found

CHAPTER 9

  Brennan paced his office while Lithgow worked away at the computer, the grey memory card from Dryden locked into a slot.

  ‘Well?’ Brennan said.

  ‘It seems pretty clear from this that Control thinks a dead man helped the boy escape,’ Lithgow replied.

  ‘A dead man?’

  ‘Alan Cedric Cuthberts, Professor of Genetics. Worked at Trent Pharmaceuticals until 2010, then crossed over to a government-sponsored research gig. He died in a lab fire two years later at the PathGen buildings north of Oxford. The cause of the fire was identified as an over-loading of one of the system reactors. It says here that the investigation team reported it as being suspicious but no one was brought up on charges.’

  ‘So why does he think this corpse is involved?’

  Lithgow tapped at the computer screen and a large image appeared, showing Alan Cuthberts. The time stamp showed last year. ‘’Cause it’d seem that Professor Cuthberts isn’t so dead after all. He’s still alive. Or at least he was a year ago.’

  ‘And what’s the connection between Tiberius and this guy?’

  ‘Doesn’t say.’

  Brennan sucked his teeth. ‘We’re not being told the whole story, here.’

  ‘So what’s new?’

  ‘Yeah, good point. Okay, run this professor through the F-R system. Centre the search on where that picture was taken then widen out to cover the immediate area in a standard pattern.’

  ‘It could take months using face-recognition,’ Lithgow said. ‘It’s not infallible.’

  ‘That’s why we’re going to hit the ground,’ Brennan replied. ‘Let the F-R run in the background; if it picks up a hit then all the better. I want to know what this Cuthberts is hiding from. Why did he make out that he’s dead? And what’s he got to do with the boy? Work up his profile. Find out all you can about him; education, work history, political leanings, ex-wives or girlfriends, known associates; everything. We know the man; we find the man.’

  ‘Already started,’ Lithgow said, tapping away at the screen.

  Daniel closed and locked the door to his new room. Even in the bohemia of Greenwich Village the place was surprisingly clean and spacious – it had a large bedroom, a kitchen area and small bathroom. It’d do for a day or two.

  He dropped his bag by the bed and made a circuit of the room. Two large windows overlooked the street and from the fourth floor he had a good view of the surrounding area. The streets were well lit and in the warm spring evening all manner of musicians and entertainers performed in the plazas and parks. Car horns merged with the music to produce a strange, almost hypnotic rhythm. Half-past seven on a Friday evening and the weekend was well under way.

  He pulled back the covers on the bed and shifted the mattress; no signs of bug life. He re-made the bed then went into the bathroom and ran the water in the shower. He smiled; this cubicle was a thousand times cleaner than the one in The Hotel on the Park. Within a few seconds the room started to fill with steam and he had to wipe the condensation away from the small mirrored cabinet over the sink.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said to his reflection.

  In the mirror, just over his right shoulder, he noticed that the room had a large window, much bigger than he was used to seeing in a bathroom. It had a simple lever catch and when he pulled the window open saw that it led onto a fire-escape, which snaked down the side of the building into a darkened side alley. Here, tucked away from the main streets, the sounds of the revellers were muted.

  Fifteen minutes later, after a relaxing shower, he walked back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. He sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the television. He flipped through the channels and saw that another martial arts film was on. Daniel pulled the Bruce Lee book from his bag, lounged on the bed with his head propped up on the pillows and opened the book at the mark he’d placed halfway through.

  Brennan leaned on his knuckles over Lithgow’s desk. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No doubt about it; that’s him,’ Lithgow replied. ‘Taken three weeks ago at a traffic intersection just outside Lincoln.’

  The image on Lithgow’s screen showed Alan Cuthberts behind the wheel of a Volvo estate.

  ‘Track the car,’ Brennan said. ‘Find out where it came from and where it went. Get me the registration address, as well.’

  Lithgow tapped at the screen and an address appeared. ‘Sittingwell House, Northing Lane, Scothern; it’s a village a few miles out of Lincoln off the A46.’

  ‘I don’t like it. That was way too easy,’ Brennan said.

  ‘Hey, don’t knock it. Sometimes we get lucky.’

  ‘Don’t believe in the thing,’ Brennan replied. ‘If it was that easy why hasn’t Control already found him? No, something’s not right. Get all this fed through to the car, and call Davis. Let’s go and see if the professor’s at home.’

  Brennan’s black 4-wheel drive Lexus eased into a field entrance on the outskirts of Scothern, with Sittingwell House visible across a wide, open field. He focused the dash-mounted camera on to the house and adjusted the digital display; a panel in the car came to life and showed what the camera could see.

  ‘All looks quiet,’ Davis muttered from the back seats. He held a Tablet showing a three-dimensional image of the house.

  ‘Switching to thermal,’ Brennan said, touching a button on the top of the camera.

  The display of the house shifted into a red outline with two greenish-blue images showing on the ground floor.

  ‘Two people, men by the look of them, in the kitchen area,’ Davis reported.

  Brennan shifted the camera. ‘That’s the Volvo,’ he said. ‘And the engine’s still warm.’

  ‘Looks as if they’re cooking,’ Lithgow said. ‘Take them now, do you think?’

  Brennan paused. ‘No, let’s give it some time. See what they do. It’ll be dark in an hour, we’ll go in then. Quick and quiet, no fuss.’

  ‘It’s still there,’ Simon said to Alan Cuthberts, as he looked at a screen in the kitchen. The image of a black Lexus parked half a kilometre away showed on it. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘If they’re coming for me then it must mean Daniel has escaped them,’ Alan replied. ‘It doesn’t matter if they take me now. I can’t tell them where he is.’

  ‘Maybe that’s not all they’re after.’

  Alan paused a moment before answering. ‘I don’t know anything that Dryden couldn’t already know for himself. I’m tired, Simon. I’m tired of running and hiding. Daniel’s escaped them and that’s all that matters. I think I might just sit here and let them come. But you go; it’s all been arranged and I doubt they’ll even notice that only one of us turned up. Patrick will have more on his mind than to worry about whether both of us turned up for his ridiculous pre-wedding celebration.’

  Simon shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. I made you a promise and I won’t go back on it. You go. Let these bastards whistle for what they want.’

  ‘It won’t stop them looking for me.’

  ‘It will if they think you’re dead.’

  ‘That hasn’t seemed to work so far,’ Alan replied with a smile.

  ‘It will this time.’

  Alan paused, understanding the hidden meaning in the younger man’s words. He shook his head. ‘No. I can’t ask you to do that for me, Simon.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You’ve done more than enough for me in the past; it’s about time I did something for you. ’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get the decoy ready. Go now, before they make their move.’

  The sky was darkening with the onset of evening as Brennan scanned the house again with the thermal-imaging camera. The two people in the kitchen were sitting at a table and appeared to be eating.

  One of the thermal images suddenly fell to the floor; its arms thrashing and its legs kicking wildly. The other image moved over to it.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Davis asked.

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p; ‘I’m not sure,’ Brennan said scrutinising the thermal display on the screen.

  ‘Looks like one of them is having a seizure,’ Lithgow suggested. ‘Heart attack, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Brennan echoed. It sounded as if he wasn’t convinced.

  The two thermal images on the screen seemed to merge.

  ‘Get ready to go in,’ Brennan ordered. ‘I don’t like the look of this.’

  ‘Check,’ the two men replied, readying their weapons and other equipment.

  Brennan continued to scrutinise the screen. What was happening? It looked almost as the images were wrestling. Then the image that had been kneeling helped the other to a chair and moved away to a cupboard.

  ‘He’s okay now,’ Lithgow said. ‘Maybe it was nothing.’

  Brennan frowned as he glared at the screen. There was something about the figure sitting in the chair. Its thermal readout was too deep, too red; too hot. The second image retrieved something out of the cupboard and put it into the microwave.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ Brennan muttered. ‘Something’s going on. Let’s go.’

  All three men sped out of the car and began running across the field toward the house.

  Simon leaned with his back against the kitchen unit, a fixed determined look on his face. Behind him the microwave whirred – its counter running down from thirty seconds. A block of plastic explosive and detonator spun on the turntable inside it.

  Brennan, Lithgow and Davis had made it half way across the distance to the house before the fireball knocked them to the ground.

  An hour-and-a-half later Brennan walked through the smoking remains of the house, kicking at the wet timbers and charred fragments, followed by Davis and Lithgow. The fire brigade chief protested against their entry to the property, but after a phone call from his superior he’d reluctantly let the three men with government IDs do what they want. The blue flashing lights of the engines lit them up as they made their way through the ruin.

  ‘Boss,’ Davis called. ‘You’d better look at this.’

  Brennan picked his way through the debris and looked down to where Davis pointed his torch beam. The remains of a mannequin lay next to a charred skeletal corpse in what was once the kitchen.

  ‘What do you make of this?’ Davis said.

  A smile creased Brennan’s face. Remnants of electric circuitry showed inside the mannequin. ‘The sneaky bugger.’ He dragged the side of his boot against the clutter on the floor. ‘Clear an area,’ he ordered his men.

  Together they moved aside the mess and found what Brennan was looking for. The outline of a trap door showed in the burnt remnants of the kitchen linoleum. ‘The sneaky bugger,’ Brennan repeated.

  He hoisted the trapdoor up and shone his torch beam into the hole below. A short ladder led down into a brick-lined chamber. Water had pooled at the bottom of the shaft.

  ‘I didn’t think this place had any underground workings,’ he said looking up to Lithgow.

  ‘Nothing logged on the building spec,’ he answered.

  ‘But there were two heat sources in the room when it went up,’ Lithgow said.

  Brennan kicked the mannequin. ‘They switched that thing for one of them.’ He looked at the corpse. ‘The professor, it looks like.’

  He climbed down into the chamber below the trap door, his boots sloshing through the sooty-black water. A solid steel gate blocked the passageway leading away from the small chamber – a digital lock securing it shut. He climbed back up into the kitchen. He shook his head at the two men.

  ‘What’s so important that this bloke’ll sacrifice himself just to let the old man get away?’ Davis asked.

  Brennan shook his head again. ‘I don’t know, but I’d seriously like to find out.’