Going Grey

  Possibly not. Not if I only found a Christmas card with an illegible signature. Okay, if I'm worried about curses and thunderbolts for lying, then I'll make it an aunt. I have no aunts.

  There was a line to be drawn. She'd try one call, see how easily it tripped off the tongue, and then decide whether to carry on.

  Many of the names on Grant's list had no current details, just last known job or location, and they hadn't thrown up much in searches. This was a generation in its fifties when blogs and social media took off. They didn't post every cough and spit online like Clare did. It was harder to build a picture of their associations and movements.

  Dru decided to start with a man called Martin Mancini. She tapped out the number, sucked in a breath to steady her voice, and waited.

  "Mancini."

  "Hi. Sorry to trouble you." Oh God, here we go. Even now, it wasn't irrevocable. The Rubicon would be crossed when she opened her mouth to lie. "My name's Dru. I know this is a long shot, but I'm trying to find someone who knew my late aunt. She studied genetics and cell biology at Lomax in the early seventies. I don't even have a name. All I've got is Seattle." There: easy. She could see why lying was seductive. She decided to push the boundary. "Maybe somewhere else in Washington."

  Mancini paused. "Sorry, Washington doesn't ring a bell. What was your aunt's name?"

  Dru wasn't prepared. Why didn't I plan that? "Gordon," she said, snatching a name from the personnel files in her line of sight. "Jenny Gordon."

  "Sorry, I can't help. Have you tried the reunion committee?"

  "I'm working through a list of names." Perfect. That would cover her if anyone rang around the list to check if they'd had a vague, rambling call from a woman called Dru. Or Drew. Because I didn't say, did I? "Thanks. Sorry to have bothered you."

  Dru ended the call and rested the cell against her cheek, eyes shut. It was done. And now she could do it again, and again, and again, until she cleared the whole list. The heavens hadn't parted to unleash retribution: nobody had been harmed. She could live with it. She went to get a soda from the vending machine before working through the rest of the list.

  By noon, she'd crossed off more names of people who couldn't help. She'd planned to walk around town during lunch, but now she didn't want to stop. It was like feeding coins into a slot machine, thinking that each spin of the reels would be the one that spewed coins into her lap. Some calls led her to other numbers. Some went to voice-mail, and she highlighted those to retry later. Others simply rang out until the time limit cut them off. She marked those as retries as well. By the time her own cell bleeped to remind her it was time to go home, her stomach was growling.

  Weaver caught her leaving. "How's it going?"

  Dru walked a fine line in what she told him, enough to show she was actually doing something, but not enough to compromise her or tell him more than he wanted to know. She indicated her office with a jerk of her head and unlocked it again. This wasn't a conversation for a corridor.

  "I'm working through a list of phone numbers," she said. "I've gone back to his college class, because you don't entrust someone with that kind of material unless you know they're reliable." She wondered again whether to mention the hotline. "There's a possible Seattle connection. I'm approaching it from both ends of the timeline."

  "Good."

  "Does any of that sound familiar to you?"

  "I met him after college. I don't remember any kind of link with Seattle. But Charles obviously plays his cards very close to his chest." Weaver lowered his voice. "If you reach the stage where you think you've found an accomplice, stop and call me. Don't take it any further."

  "So you'll refer it to the FBI?" Dru was reassured that he'd seen sense. "Okay."

  "No, but you don't know who you might be dealing with. If this rumour has any truth in it, there's a lot of money at stake, and I have no idea who Charles might have gotten himself involved with."

  Dru hadn't considered that this might become physically dangerous. People shot each other for small change, though, let alone something potentially worth billions. She should have thought of that.

  "Do you know something I don't, Mr Weaver?"

  "I don't want you taking personal risks."

  "If you genuinely think it's risky, we should let the police deal with it."

  "And you know that won't do the company any good right now. It won't do Charles any good, either."

  Dru understood the risk to the merger and to KWA, but she couldn't see a reason for worrying about Kinnery's welfare. "You won't be sympathetic if you find he's stolen this company's property."

  "It's not sympathy," Weaver said. "If Charles did something stupid, he'd probably prefer to come back to KWA and bring his ill-gotten gains with him than be charged and have his career and reputation destroyed."

  Dru thought that over. She had the feeling that she didn't know quite as much as she needed to about the nature of Weaver's relationship with Kinnery.

  "Is this just for leverage?" she asked. "Is that all it is?"

  "If Charles has anything that's ours, then it's a Pyrrhic victory if prosecuting him damages us as well." Weaver opened the door. "It'd be good for business to have him back here and feeling obliged to behave himself."

  Now Dru understood. It was the thinking man's blackmail. If it worked, then it was a tidy solution. "How about his mule, then? If he has one."

  Weaver just looked at her. "You know the law won't necessarily do what's right for us. Charles can make his accomplice see sense so we can resolve this without defence lawyers crawling all over us."

  Dru had no idea what he meant by that, and she was instantly ashamed of herself for not really wanting to know. He didn't appear to be about to explain anyway.

  "I better be going," she said.

  Dru drove home, fretting about that unidentified English voice, and preoccupied by what someone prepared to be a gene mule might do when cornered. She still couldn't imagine how Weaver could reclaim KWA's patentable genes.

  Actually, she could. She simply didn't want to. People kill for a few bucks from a liquor store, remember? She was only doing this to keep her job, not to right wrongs or mete out justice. But there was taking the moral low ground to look after her family, and there was being implicated in something illegal. She'd have to be careful.

  "Pizza again," Clare said. She sliced it into wedges and put the plate on the table. "Or I could make noodles. Or stir fry."

  "Sorry, sweetheart." Dru wasn't paying attention. "I'm being a lousy mom. I got tied up on my way out. And I've got to make a stack of calls tonight."

  "Why won't you tell me what's going on?"

  "It's just work. It's tedious."

  "Dad called me today."

  Normally that would have been enough to herald a crisis summit at the kitchen table. Tonight it just washed over Dru as it should have done every other time.

  "What does he want?"

  "He asked if I wanted to stay over some time."

  Larry had resisted that since they'd split up. Dru tried not to ask why he'd had a change of heart, because if the reason wasn't that his girlfriend had found someone her own age to play with and left him, she'd be disappointed.

  "Sure," Dru said. "Why not?"

  "Really?"

  "I might need to be out of town for a few days for this investigation. So you'd have some company. And I wouldn't have to worry or embarrass you with a babysitter."

  "You trust me every day during the school vacation, Mom. I'm fourteen."

  "But I'm home every evening. And if the house burns down while you're here on your own, I get charged with neglect."

  "Okay." Clare piled pizza on her plate and headed for the stairs. "If you're going to work, I'll go watch a movie."

  There were times when Dru thought the teenage storm was coming to an end and they were starting to see one another as people again. God, she hoped so. Fighting sapped her strength. She took her plate of pizza into the living room and resumed the ring-aroun
d, trying not to smear tomato sauce on the cell phone.

  Ten unsuccessful calls down the list, she realised that she was missing her favourite TV show. And it didn't even matter.

  "Dr Missiakos? Hi, sorry to trouble you." Dru had trotted out the line so often that she was word perfect. The biggest risk now was sounding as if she was reading from a call centre script. "My name's Dru. I realise this is a long shot, but I'm trying to find someone who knew my late aunt and was studying genetics and cell biology at Lomax Uni in the seventies. I don't have a name, just that they had a Seattle or Washington connection."

  "Would this be a woman?"

  "I don't actually know." Dru had her second level response down pat now. "All I have is a Christmas card with initials I can't read."

  "You might mean Margaret Dunlop," Missiakos said. "Maggie."

  Dru fumbled for a pen. A woman. She'd focused on a male suspect too fast, then. "Dunlop?"

  "Her family had a place in Washington. Really remote, as I recall. Something like Bethel in the name. Sorry, it's been a long time. I lost touch with her. She was on a different course, I think. I often wonder what happened to her."

  "Well, thank you, Doctor. That's an enormous help." If she could tie the phone to that as well, it put her miles ahead. "I really appreciate it."

  "You're welcome. If you find her, remember me to her."

  "I will. And thank you again."

  Dru sat looking at the red CALL ENDED icon and felt a smile creep across her face. She couldn't stop it. Then she chuckled to herself.

  "Well, Margaret Dunlop," she said. "I thought you'd be a guy. That'll teach me to stereotype, won't it?"

  So how did the Seattle cell fit in with the Brit? She'd either found a link she didn't yet grasp, or she was in danger of being diverted by a random element. Kinnery might have had other secrets to bury, perhaps something as simple as a drug habit or an affair. That might have been behind his decision to quit KWA and his wife's reason for leaving him.

  Dru put that on a back burner with her other anxieties and focused on the gleaming gold fragment that had emerged from the pan of gravel she'd shaken so carefully. She needed to find a place called Bethel, and look for a Margaret Dunlop.

  Or I could ask Grant, seeing as we're paying him. But that's giving him too much information.

  I want to do this myself. I'm getting somewhere.

  It thrilled her. She felt victorious and clever, and the small success gave her a renewed appetite for more. She was hugging her knees and wondering whether to open a bottle of wine when Clare came downstairs.

  "Mom, you can't keep lying to me," Clare said.

  It jerked Dru out of that glowing satisfaction. "Lying? What?"

  "It's a man. Isn't it?"

  The guilt shattered and vanished. "I wish."

  "Well, one of those calls made you very happy."

  "Okay, I found someone I'd been trying to contact for the company." She'd have that glass of wine after all. She deserved it. "I've got some research to do, but I might need to take that trip later this month."

  "I'll call Dad, then."

  "You do that, sweetheart." Dru went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass. "I'll let you know when I've got a schedule."

  Dru settled down on the sofa again with her drink and switched on the TV to catch the news before continuing with the search. Damn, she'd missed the bulletin. Was it that late? She'd call it a day, then. There was always tomorrow. It was Saturday, and she hated giving unpaid overtime to KWA, but she really needed to pin this down.

  Maggie Dunlop. That might be the puzzle piece that would unlock the rest. Dru ate the last chunk of pizza crust on her plate and raised her glass.

  "To lying," she said. "In moderation."

  VANCOUVER

  FIRST WEEK OF AUGUST.

  Kinnery stared at his burner phone on the cafe table, waiting for it to show signs of life.

  Leo still hadn't contacted him to say if Ian had been removed or not, and the longer it dragged on, the more Kinnery's imagination filled the gaps with nightmare scenarios. If Mike had gone to Athel Ridge, he would have found Ian by now, if the boy was there to be found.

  Maybe something went wrong and Ian used that goddamn rifle

  Kinnery people-watched while he took a bite of walnut cake and reached for his cup. Coffee slopped into the saucer. The half-empty cup had somehow magically refilled itself. The waiter must have topped it up, but Kinnery hadn't even noticed him approach, and that was a worrying lapse of concentration. If someone could walk up to his table and spend seconds right under his nose, he didn't stand a chance of spotting someone tailing him.

  The burner stayed stubbornly silent, but then the cell in his pocket vibrated. He snatched it out to see NUMBER WITHHELD. He hadn't expect Leo to call him, let alone use this number again, but perhaps he didn't trust even the most bland message to encrypted mail any longer. No: Leo probably didn't trust him. He hunched over the table with the phone to his ear, but the caller beat him to the punch.

  "Hi Charles. It's Shaun. I just wanted to say sorry for making an asshole of myself the other week. Are you still talking to me?"

  Kinnery had a brief, sweaty, heart-pounding moment thinking how close he'd come to saying the name Leo. He recovered himself. "Hi Shaun. Obviously I am."

  "Bad moment?"

  "Cake crumbs." Kinnery tried to focus on the table so his reactions wouldn't be swayed by the thing uppermost in his mind – Ian and the ripples that were now spreading from having to reveal his existence. "They went down the wrong way."

  "Ah, the joys of academia."

  "We do work in August, you know."

  "Talking of work, have you been reading the business pages? I take it you know we're in merger talks with Halbauer."

  Kinnery had stopped thinking of KWA as we a long time ago. He'd forced himself to unplug from it. But at his core, something still said mine, mine, mine, and he knew it. The company was like an ex-lover. Kinnery accepted that they'd parted – that he'd abandoned it – and that it had a right to a life of its own, but it hurt to see it happy without him.

  "I know," he said. "I wouldn't recognise the old place, would I?"

  Shaun paused for a moment. Kinnery knew that timing all too well. "You could always come back, you know."

  For a few moments, Kinnery floundered. It was a complete one-eighty from the call that suggested Shaun thought he was a lying, thieving bastard and that there was no smoke without fire.

  "It's been a long hiatus, Shaun."

  "You left to get your life straight, you said. By all accounts, you've done that."

  No, not even close. "Yes, I suppose I have."

  "You'd be a big plus for Halbauer."

  "I'm not getting any younger. I've reduced my hours."

  "I'm not asking for a factory week. A retainer. A consultancy."

  Kinnery tried hard to sift the motives. The Halbauer deal would inject cash into KWA, so Shaun would eat shit if it helped the negotiations. By the same token, any embarrassing news like leaky DoD projects, even historical ones, wouldn't help. Kinnery tested the waters.

  "So the CEO of Halbauer doesn't subscribe to The Slide, then," he said.

  "Oh, that's all gone quiet." Shaun sounded as if he'd dismissed it, but Kinnery knew he'd keep it in his mental pending tray until Hell opened a ski resort. The man could wait forever. "That's the Internet for you. The attention span of a three-year-old. Will you think about it?"

  "We said some pretty harsh things to each other back then."

  "That was a lifetime ago. It'd be good to have you on the team again. Give us a bit more weight. Think it over and call me."

  The conversation left Kinnery disoriented. He'd never planned to become an academic; the idea of returning to the cut and thrust of the commercial world felt temptingly like a new lease of life. But he didn't need any extra complications. Shaun wasn't having a sentimental moment and honouring his old partner's contribution to KWA's success, either. This was str
ictly business.

  Kinnery finished his coffee. He should have gone home and waited in the privacy of his study for Leo to make contact, but any conversation would be like divining the various meanings of a haiku. Nothing would be spelled out. He strolled along the Seawall, playing a what-if game in his head about the kind of research he could do in a post-Halbauer world, then went to pick up some groceries before heading home. He was searching through the packets of Michelina's in the freezer section when his burner rang.

  He took a breath and willed it to be positive news. "Hi. I'm in a store right now."

  There was no greeting or identification. "Someone tried to call your late friend. A woman. She didn't leave a name." It was Leo. Kinnery could almost hear him looking down his nose in disdain. "You might want to wonder how she got that number."

  Kinnery re-ran the line in his head to work it out. Maggie. Oh God. "Nobody should have it. Any news for me?"

  "You're going to be at the conference in Toronto the day after tomorrow, aren't you?"

  "Yes." Kinnery knew a summons when he heard one. He couldn't even blame the department secretary for being careless with information, because the list of conference speakers was public. And I do believe you're keeping tabs on me, Leo. "Are you passing through?"

  "Royal York, PM's suite. Make yourself known at the desk around eight and just exercise some situational awareness. I hope the talk goes well."

  The call cut off. Kinnery muttered under his breath, frustrated by the stalling on Ian. "God, you could just say yes or no, couldn't you?."

  A woman rummaging through bags of green beans gave him a wary look. Maybe she hadn't seen the phone. He carried on filling his basket, but it was displacement activity now. He was none the wiser about Ian, and he had an extra problem; someone had tried Maggie's number.

  Knowing the care that Maggie had taken to keep that out of directories, there were very few ways that someone could acquire it. One occurred to Kinnery as he was heading for the cashier's desk, and it was terrifying. Someone had his phone records for the landline. If they had that, they might have his registered cell records too. He started to unpick the detail as he stood waiting to pay for his groceries.