The Bleak E-Book

Keith Dixon

• Herausgeber: Keith Dixon
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

WINNER OF THE 2014 CHANTICLEER CLUE AWARD FOR PRIVATE EYE/NOIR FICTION! Sam Dyke is back! The private investigator who never gives up until the bad guys are caught—or worse. For Sam, taking this particular case is not promising. His client is a secretary who’s watching her boss fall apart, and she can’t bear it. The case requires subtlety and finesse and so isn’t his usual kind of job. But he likes her and takes it anyway. And he soon discovers that it’s not the pressures of work that are getting to her boss. It’s his colleagues, a group of cultish scientists. Their leader is a hyper-intelligent seer/visionary who has a personal philosophy that is taking him towards one final act—to produce a calamitous event that will destroy the lives of hundreds of people. Or more. Dyke sets himself on a course to prevent this madman from achieving his ends. A course that endangers him, his new partner and it seems anyone else who gets in the way of this doomsday plan ...

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE STRANGE GIRL – CHAPTER ONE

Other Works

THE BLEAK

KEITH DIXON

Semiologic Ltd

Copyright

© Keith Dixon 2014

Published by Semiologic Ltd

Keith Dixon has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph, photocopy, or any other means, electronic or physical, without express written permission of the author.

Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

For information, contact: [email protected]

Cover image © chris.chabot

under Creative Commons License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

Design by Keith Dixon

Subscribe to the Website at www.keithdixonnovels.com or the Blog at www.cwconfidential.blogspot.com to get the second in the Sam Dyke series, The Private Lie, for free.

CHAPTER ONE

THE NINTH RULE of private detection states that you should never take on a client you think might be nuts.

I wasn’t entirely convinced this was the case with the woman who’d called me that morning, but I was certainly tending that way.

As I walked towards Chatwins, the best bakery in the North West, looking forward to a latte and a slice of Victoria sponge in their tea-room, I warned myself against being a soft touch. She’d asked me to carry a folded newspaper in my left hand and told me I should call her Barbara, though I doubted that was her real name. A certain amount of paranoia in the people you deal with in this job is acceptable, but you can take things too far.

Nevertheless, here I was on a cold Monday lunchtime in Crewe, my leather jacket pulled up around my ears and a copy of The Guardian stuffed under my left arm. If nothing else I wanted to see what she looked like. She’d sounded as though she’d been talking to me from a cupboard with her hand over the mouthpiece and her eyes wide and staring. My kind of client.

I crossed the street and was about to open the bakery’s door when another customer opened it from the inside and slipped out, holding it ajar. I went through gratefully and was murmuring a word of thanks when she said, ‘Costa Coffee, fifteen minutes.’

I had the presence of mind to nod and then continue inside without looking at her. I knew she was slim and dark-haired, a little taller than the average. She’d kept her face turned away from me so I got nothing else except a whiff of floral perfume.

Once inside I joined the queue for bread and bought a brown loaf. Most of the customers were older women and I felt as though they’d all seen the playlet at the door and weren’t fooled.

I stood for a moment and looked through the plate glass windows at the passing pedestrians. None of them looked sinister, or even vaguely naughty. When my fifteen minutes were up I went out into the wind again and crossed the pedestrianised town centre, ignoring the siren call of Marks and Spencer’s Food Hall and clutching both the bread and the newspaper like any ordinary shopper, a hard act for me to pull off.

She was sitting at the furthest table from the door in Costa Coffee’s murky rear section. She watched me come in and picked up her coffee mug so that my provisions didn’t knock it over. Her eyes moved past me to watch the door as I pulled out a chair.

She was somewhere in her late twenties or perhaps just thirty, with straight black hair pulled into a severe knot at the back of her head. Her face was oval, her skin nearly as white as the coffee mug she held between her fingers. She was dressed for the office—a simple black skirt and a cream blouse underneath a maroon jacket that had some kind of complicated lapel thing going on. Her lips were rather large but matched the fullness of her round eyes. It wasn’t a hardship to sit opposite her.

I said, ‘Barbara.’

‘What? Oh, yes. I gave you that name, didn’t I? I forgot. My mother’s name.’

‘But not yours.’

‘Are you mad? Of course not. Why would I give you my real name when I don’t know you?’

‘You’re the one who called me. It’s not like I’ve been hunting you down.’

She looked away as though gathering herself, going over options.

She said, ‘Are you any good at this?’

‘Irritating women? It’s my speciality. I can get you references, if you’d like.’

‘This being-a-private-detective business. Sam Dyke Investigations, or whatever your Yellow Pages ad says. I have no idea what you do, or whether you can help me. Well, actually, it’s not me. Well, it is in a way …’

I held up a hand.

‘First, why are we meeting here and not in my warm and cosy office? What are you frightened of?’

‘I’m not frightened … not exactly. But I wanted to meet you in public, out in the open.’

‘So now we’re in the open you’re worried someone will see us. Unless there’s something on my shoulder that you can’t take your eyes off.’

She raised those large round eyes—which I’d noticed by now were a kind of bluey-green—back to my face.

‘I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Things seem to be going crazy around me. Around my boss. That’s why I’m here.’

I leaned back in my chair and summoned up some preconceptions and prejudices: secretary, boss. Young secretary, very attractive. Perhaps an older boss who decides to notice her …

She headed me off.

‘It’s not what you think.’

‘What do I think?’

‘That I’m having an affair or something grubby like that. It’s not.’

‘Okay, so what is it?’

‘Are you going to have a drink?’

‘Should I? Will I need one?’

‘It might look less suspicious.’

‘Of course, coffee always lessens the look of guilt I wear on a daily basis.’

Nevertheless I stood up and fetched a latte grande, then sat facing her again.

I said, ‘So tell me. What’s going on? And what do you think I can do about it?’

She took one more sip of her coffee, sticking out her tongue to lick a feather of froth from the mug’s rim.

‘Do you know Midwinter? The company?’

I shook my head. She nodded, as though she hadn’t expected me to know.

‘It’s a kind of research laboratory out near Alderley Edge. Only about two hundred of us work there. Very private. Not secret as such, not working for the government or anything like that. More like environmental research, though there are teams working on different projects too.’

‘Scientists, white coats, petri dishes and retorts.’

‘Exactly, though I’m not sure what a retort is. My boss would know. Nathan. Doctor Nathan Mustow.’

‘So he’s one of the scientists?’

‘Definitely. Very bright man. I’m his assistant, on the admin side. He’s part of a team of people working on something to do with bioaerosols …’

I raised my other hand. I needed the exercise.

‘Is there going to be a test on all this?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand it all either. Nathan told me once that bioaerosols are basically living organisms caught up in moisture in the air. They can be harmless like pollen or a bit nastier, like viruses and spores. His group study how they’re carried and when they’re active and so on. He’s been all over the world doing research. I’ve written up papers for him.’

‘So he’s a big cheese in the world of bugs.’

‘If you want to belittle him, yes.’

‘I’m sorry, I get carried away with my own wit sometimes. So what’s the problem? Why have you come to see me?’

Her shoulders slumped and she stared down at the table. Then she lifted her head, and those eyes, and there was fear and sorrow and hesitation all compounded into one forlorn expression.

‘I have no idea what I’m doing here. I … I just feel I need to do something. I’ve worked for him for nearly two years and I think I know him quite well.’

‘And?’

‘And he’s falling apart.’

CHAPTER TWO

I TOOK A sip from my coffee.

I said, ‘You’re going to have to be clearer than that. Falling apart physically? Mentally? Spiritually?’

‘You’re not very sympathetic to a new client.’

‘If you want a counsellor I can give you some names. It’s not my job to give you sympathy.’

She stared at me for a moment. ‘You’re right, I don’t want sympathy.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m prepared to pay you to find out what’s happening to my boss. Why is he so stressed? Why is he making mistakes? Why is he turning up late for work and then going home early?’

I pushed my coffee mug to one side and leaned forward. I said, ‘I have to tell you, this isn’t promising. What you’ve just described sounds like every middle-aged executive I’ve ever met. What makes you think he’s any different to anyone else in a high-pressure job? In this economy?’

‘You don’t understand—he’s just different. When I first started there two years ago he was funny, open, helpful. A great boss. I really liked him. He’s married to a woman called Isobel, who he really loves, as far as I can tell. When I started there he used to talk about her and what they’d done at the weekend. I was just getting over a split from a boyfriend myself and he was nice without being, you know, creepy. He was thoughtful.’

‘What changed?’

‘Nothing. At least nothing I could see, at work. He’s still married to Isobel. They don’t have any kids, so no problems there. No deaths in the family. He’s working on the same projects. But about a year ago he started coming in late and looking haggard, you know, as if he hadn’t slept. He’d ask me to do something and then a couple of hours later he’d ask me again. He started sitting in his office, staring out of the window. I’d walk in and find him looking at the trees instead of poring over a database on his computer. He seemed to lose his drive and his focus, and I had to start covering up for him.’

‘Has anyone said anything to him? His boss? Colleagues?’

‘He has reviews every three months with Harry Tuck, the production manager. But I’m not privy to what’s said. Everybody else is so caught up in what they’re doing that I don’t suppose they’d notice if he jumped out of a window. So long as it didn’t interrupt their work-flow.’

She stopped, as though expecting me to say something. Perhaps she realised she’d sounded critical and that I’d want her to elaborate. I said nothing and waited, usually the best tactic when you think people are going to reveal themselves.

She said, ‘As I’m telling you all this I can see how childish it sounds. All I have is a feeling, an intuition. Things were one way before, now they’re another. I should just get over it, shouldn’t I, and save my money?’

‘Have you spoken to Isobel about him?’

Now she looked shocked, her eyes widening. ‘I couldn’t do that! I hardly know her. We’ve only spoken on the phone, when she’s rung in to talk to him. And she usually calls his mobile anyway.’

‘So you have no idea what his wife thinks. Whether she’s noticed any change or not.’

‘Trust me, she’s a woman. She’s noticed.’ She leaned back in her chair abruptly, as though she’d made a decision, then reached down for her handbag, which she placed on the table between us. ‘I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Well thanks for your honesty.’

‘I don’t see how I can help you. Most of my work involves tracking down people who’ve gone missing, or investigating frauds of one kind or another. And paperwork. Don’t get me started on paperwork. But in this instance there’s nothing there for me to look at. I understand you’ve had an intuition, and I respect that. I do. But I wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘I see. Anyway, thanks for your time.’ She began to stand up and pushed back her chair.

A thought occurred to me.

‘Hold on. Please, sit down.’

She lowered herself to the chair again. ‘What?’

‘Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff when I came in? Why the change of venue? What’s all that about?’

Her mouth twisted sardonically. ‘I’m a bit paranoid, I suppose. The security at Midwinter is crazy and we’re always being reminded not to talk about what goes on there because it’s commercially sensitive. When you’re at the cutting edge you have to be careful that no one bleeds. That’s a poster in the ladies’ toilet. Good, eh?’

‘So … you thought you might be followed? Or that I might be?’

‘Something like that. I came off campus for lunch, which hardly anyone ever does. There’s a great subsidised canteen on-site and we’re miles from anywhere, so most people stay put during the day.’

‘Sounds more like a concentration camp than a jolly place of work.’

‘Oh, it’s not jolly.’ She stood up again. ‘Margaret, by the way.’

‘What?’

‘Margaret Sellers. My real name.’

I stood and reached out my hand, which she shook.

‘Sam Dyke.’

‘I know. Of Sam Dyke non-Investigations.’

‘Let me think about it. Do you have a card?’

‘No, but I wrote my details down before I came here. To make things easier.’

She opened her handbag and pulled out a lined index card. Her name, private email and phone information were inscribed in a neat italic hand in blue ink. I put it into my wallet.

We said goodbye and she walked towards the front door and I followed her, though I stayed inside. She exited and turned left, probably heading towards  the car park in Forge Street. She walked briskly, head down, minding her own business and obviously trying not to attract attention to herself. It occurred to me that she was a hell of a secretary to have so much invested in her boss that she’d talk to a private detective. Perhaps she was in love with him, a little bit.

Opposite my position, from the parking bays facing McDonalds, a dark Prius pulled out and came towards me. It paused briefly outside the Natwest Bank branch and a pencil-thin man with short red hair peeled away from the cash-point, glanced briefly in Margaret’s direction, then climbed inside the back seat. It rolled away smoothly, and not too quickly for me to make a note of its plate.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS ONLY a two minute walk to my office but I took my time and went the long way around, skirting the back of Marks and Spencer instead of heading straight across the square. There was something desperate in Margaret Sellers that I never liked to see in people younger than me. I couldn’t tell whether she was secretly in love with her boss but couldn’t admit it, or whether she was over-dramatising a very common workplace malady. The idea that she might be right didn’t appeal to me.

Except …

I hadn’t liked the look of the slim man who’d climbed inside the Prius. Body language experts tell us we make up our minds about people within the first four seconds … well, I’d made him in two. At long range. He was jittery, a bit cruel, focused and probably followed orders well. I had no doubt that he was following Margaret and what worried me was the fact that he might have seen me talking to her. He could have stepped into the coffee bar, had a quick look around, and then left.

But probably not.

Margaret would have leaped a foot off her chair had he walked in, assuming she knew who he was. If he did indeed belong to the security set-up at Midwinter, she more than likely knew him by sight.

So perhaps he stayed outside.

But then, what was the point? Why follow her if you didn’t see what she did once she was off-site? Why follow her in the first place? What had she done?

I spun on my heel quickly and looked around.

No one.

If I was being followed after leaving the coffee shop, it was being done by people who knew what they were doing. And probably drove dark-coloured hybrid cars.

MY OFFICE SITS over a large store that used to sell furniture but is now empty. The owners couldn’t make a go of it any longer, especially after the Crash, when people were more interested in selling furniture than buying it. I missed the gentle hum from the heating units downstairs and the occasional bursts of laughter of the sales reps, having fun together when there were no customers about. I picked up the post that had arrived since I left for my appointment with Margaret earlier and trudged up the stairs to my two rooms. I’d inherited the kitchen I’d shared with the furniture store and doubled my floor-space, though thankfully the landlord hadn’t yet seen fit to increase my rent. He obviously didn’t want to mess with me.

The post was one piece of junk mail and one bank statement, which didn’t make enjoyable reading. I filed it in the big cardboard box I use for all my accounts detritus and fired up my laptop.

Midwinter’s website was a limited affair. Pages for Who We Are, What We Do, Location and Contacts.

The Who We Are page showed a photo of the Chairman and CEO, Charles Montgomery, a slightly rotund man in his forties with a gleaming dome of a head and an artificial smile that he seemed unwilling to share with us. He wore the usual Chairman’s dark suit and striped tie and could have been an impostor, a bought character from Getty Images for all I knew.

The Contacts listed were a generic email address—info@—and one phone number which was probably Reception.

The company wasn’t exactly clamouring for our attention.

The What We Do page was slightly more informative. There was some bland PR-speak about being on the leading edge of research in the fields of Geoscience and Environmental Science, with renowned researchers from all over the world being part of their team, but there were no specifics. No links to individual pages for scientists. No links to research papers or successful project outcomes. Nothing about any publicity or joint ventures or government funding.

Not very much at all.

I thought again about Margaret and her vague intuitions concerning her boss and his state of mind. It seemed odd to me that she would look to someone in my line of work to help her out. Didn’t Midwinter have an HR Department? Could she really not have spoken to Mustow’s wife, Isobel? Or his boss … what was his name, Harry Tuck?

I wanted to file the whole thing under ‘interesting but crazy,’ but something about the way the thin man had glanced at her, that fleeting moment, almost as though he disliked what he saw, changed my mind.

After all, it was my mind and I had every right to change it.

I WAITED UNTIL three o’clock and then rang Margaret on her work number. She didn’t sound pleased.

‘What do you want? I thought you said you wouldn’t do anything.’

‘Do you know a very thin man with red hair, possibly owns or is driven around in a black Prius?’

There was a moment of silence that I would probably describe as ‘stunned’.

‘What about him?’

‘Who is he?’

‘David Bonetti. They call him Mr Bones, because he’s so thin. And his name, I suppose.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He works for Security. For Jolyon Greif.’ She pronounced it ‘Griff’. ‘What about him?’

‘Let’s just say you weren’t as paranoid as I thought.’

‘Oh my god! Was he following me?’

‘Or it was a massive coincidence he just happened to be taking out money from the cash-point opposite.’

‘I’m going to be in such shit!’

‘Take it easy. Did you see him come into Costa after me?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘And he didn’t stay to watch me leave, either. I suspect as far as he’s concerned you were just out for a coffee, no harm done. Probably just an exercise.’

‘You don’t know these people. They’re like the bloody Gestapo.’

‘Look, can you get me in to see your boss? Do you control his timetable?’

‘Up to a point, yes. I can get you an appointment. But why? What would you say to him?’

‘I don’t know yet. When can we do it?’

She went away for a moment and then came back.

‘He could fit you in tomorrow, eleven o’clock.’

‘Okay. How do we do it? Who should I be?’

She thought about this for a while, then said Mustow frequently met people from recruitment companies. Often it was under the pretence of talking about recruitment in general when in fact they were just trying to head-hunt him.

‘I’ll tell him you’re from our new agency and you want to get a feel for what kind of work he and his colleagues do. Can you manage that? General questions about the work and the company? You’d have to wear a suit and take notes.’

‘I can do that.’

‘But don’t get too personal. He’ll hate me if he finds out what you’re up to. I’ll have a hard enough job selling the interview to him anyway. I’ll tell him HR wanted him to do it.’

‘You don’t have to do this just because I asked.’

‘You’re right, I don’t. But I came to you, didn’t I?’

‘Strikes me you’re risking a lot for your boss.’

‘Life’s about risk, Mr Dyke. I learned that a long time ago. I’m not someone who can pull the bed covers over my head and pretend that everything’s okay.’

‘Then you’re a woman after my own heart. Carry on.’

We worked on some more of the details for a while and I thanked her. Then I told her my fees and there was a pause before she said, ‘That’s okay.’ She added, ‘When you get here tomorrow you’ll have to go to the Security lodge and get a badge. Ask for me and I’ll fetch you back here.’

‘Will this get you in trouble?’

‘I’ll handle Nathan. I’m more worried about why Mr Bones was following me. I don’t mind taking risks but I dislike that bunch of little Hitlers. I wouldn’t want them to think they’ve got something on me. Do you really think it was, like, practice?’

‘In my experience security people don’t like change and they don’t like the unusual. When they saw you driving out this morning they probably wondered where you were going and thought they’d have a look because they’ve got nothing else to do. How exciting can it be, herding a bunch of white coats from one laboratory to the next and making sure they don’t spill acid on each other?’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Me too.’

Though I suspected I wasn’t. Hopefully, getting into Midwinter would give me the opportunity to find out exactly what went on there and why Margaret and her boss were being run ragged.

CHAPTER FOUR

ON THE WAY to Alderley Edge, along the main road from Congleton, a small lane snaked off to the right and took me between high hedges before depositing me at a square, brick-and-glass security lodge. A tall wire fence loped away in either direction, sustained by concrete pillars that leaned backwards at the top and held three strands of barbed wire and, every hundred metres, an assortment of surveillance gizmos. The campus looked like it encompassed a large stretch of well-tended park land but from where I sat there didn’t seem to be many buildings at its centre. Like any large city, Manchester had its fair share of low-key, high-tech satellite companies, but as far as I knew not many of them had this level of security. I wondered what they had to hide.