Face Value: A Wright & Tran Novel Read online

  “I know Wendy, I know,” Kara agreed, “but, I’ve caved in to the pressure,” she laughed a little nervously. “So David said you could you help me out?”

  Mead didn’t hesitate, “Of course Kara. You fire away.”

  Kara started with banal questions about airport transit procedures and Mead answered them succinctly. After about five minutes of to and fro with Kara taking hurried and completely fictional notes, she simply changed gears and figured that if she had reeled Mead in well enough the answers would just keep coming.

  “Wendy, this is great. David was right about you. You certainly know your stuff.”

  “Oh, I, well, I suppose,” Wendy almost simpered.

  “So, when people are leaving the UK do the Border Force have to check all their passports too?” Kara asked. “That would be slightly depressing seeing all the happy faces leaving on holiday.”

  “Ah well, no. The Government really wants to reintroduce passport controls for all departing passengers from all points, to all points, but that programme is behind schedule.”

  “Phew, that’s alright then. I couldn’t think of anything more happiness-sapping,” Kara said, managing to mask her actual disappointment at the news.

  “Ah, but Kara, they do have to do it for all international air passengers. Everyone has to present their passports at UK air departure points.” Mead had said it in the tone of a teacher instructing a diligent pupil.

  “Really?” Kara said it as flatly as possible, once more hiding her real emotions that this time had been elated at the news. “But that must be thousands of people? Where on earth do they store all that data? And who would ever have time to look at it?”

  “Oh it’s not stored. The passport chips are read or the machine code scanned for the old passports with no chips. Although they’re out of date completely in a couple of years. Everyone will have to have a chipped passport by 2016. But there’s no data capture. That would be impossible. The system just runs a check against some databases, no-fly lists, Interpol lists, that type of thing. If it doesn’t sound alarm bells then that’s it. Have a nice trip!” Mead said with a light tone to her voice.

  Kara played along, “Gosh! And there’s me thinking there was a whole collection of photos taken of everyone leaving the country.”

  “Ha!” Mead laughed, “No, nothing like that I’m afraid.”

  “So no Big Brother stuff? How sad. I imagined you could have tracked people through the airport? You know, follow them on CCTV and do all that spy stuff.”

  Wendy laughed, “It would be almost impossible to do that unless you knew what they looked like already and were using it to follow them in real time. The Police and anti-terrorist guys do use it for that sometimes, but I really can’t talk about those operations. The CCTV is controlled by the Transport Police, except ironically in the car parks. But we’ve got five separate parking options and over 3000 spaces, not including the off-site parking that runs into thousands more. The chances of tracing a specific car would be dependent on knowing which car park was used and a rough time window of when it came through. And we are small when compared to Heathrow,” Mead paused, “But listen to me rabbiting on. You know I love all this stuff and I could talk about it for days but you want to know about the passengers and the impact on them.”

  “No, no this has been great. Really Wendy, fantastic. David was right, you really are an expert in this. I can’t thank you enough, but I do realise you must be busy and I think I have enough to be going on with for now.”

  “Oh, well, you know, that’s so nice of him to say so. You ring me anytime you like and good luck.” Mead was back to being a slightly infatuated schoolgirl.

  “It really has been terrific. Thanks so much Wendy.”

  Kara hung up the call and sighed. Her worst imaginings were confirmed. The Sterlings, or whoever had sat in for them, were gone and there was no way of knowing if it was the actual Mr and Mrs Sterling or not. She hadn’t really known what she would have done with the information had it been available, but she didn’t have anything to work on now. Even if Tien was able to perform a brute force attack on the UK Border Force main database they wouldn’t find anything useful. All it would show was that the Sterling’s passports and someone who looked enough like them to get through the system had got on that flight. Tien had ruled out the hack anyway. She said that breaking in was difficult enough but insisted it would certainly be traced regardless of what deception plan she ran around it. They might get in but they would get caught. It would take the Government agencies a while but they would catch up with them. It didn’t matter now. There was no point breaking in to the equivalent of an empty safe. Kara got up from her desk and went back to her apartment.

  *

  Grafton Yard was a converted Georgian Terrace that had once been a series of very fine London townhouses and was now a series of very fine, but much smaller, London apartments. The bonus for Kara was that the rent was therefore affordable in an otherwise unaffordable area. She also liked the fact that there was one conventional way in but potentially five non-conventional ways out. She knew she didn’t have to think like this anymore but she doubted she would ever stop. The habits for self-preservation had been hard won. So she was happy to know that the car park was small, gated and protected by pin-coded entry and the apartment’s main entrance was accessed from it. Her apartment had a small balcony to the rear that overlooked the car park and three main lounge room windows to the front that overlooked the Kentish Town Road. If she squeezed up close to the left hand side of the left hand window she could just see her office and Tien’s apartment, one hundred and fifty yards down the road.

  She kicked off her shoes and stripped off the rest of her clothes as she walked through to the bathroom. A half hour later she was relaxed, soaking in a hot bath and sipping a straight Maker’s Mark bourbon. The hoarse, gruff, velvet voice of Ted Hawkins was playing on her Sonos system and the music drifted into her mind, soaking her soul with its sadness. She loved his melancholy, the power of his voice and the truthfulness of his delivery. The drifter Mississippian, whose life was beset by prison and addiction knew how to live the songs he sung. Kara could still remember the first time she heard him sing his cover of the old Country song ‘There Stands the Glass’. He infused the song with a depth and a need that addicts and those that knew them could recognise instantly. She had once watched a documentary that featured the original performed by a Honky Tonk Country singer called Webb Pierce. The song had been a huge No.1 hit for him back in the Grand Ole Oprey days of the Fifties but as far as Kara was concerned, Pierce’s original was a thin and wispy twang in comparison to Hawkin’s deep and soulful plea of desperation. The sadness she felt as she listened to Hawkins always reflected her sense of missed opportunity for him. How he had come so close to achieving an easier life, and had it snatched away by death. As the playlist progressed from the ‘Best of the Venice Beach Tapes’ to the ‘Kershaw Sessions Live at the BBC’ she sunk her head under the water and tried to think about a new way to track down the Sterlings. The water was almost cold and the playlist had ended by the time she got out of the bath with not so much as an inkling of an idea.

  Sitting on her sofa, wrapped in her dressing gown, towel still on her head and contemplating what music to play next, Kara’s thoughts were interrupted by the opening riff from ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ by ‘Them’. It was her personalised ringtone for Tien. She answered the call before the guitar chord played out.

  “Hi, we need to go back to Arlesey,” Tien said with no preamble.

  “Okay. What for?”

  “Their roof space is too small for the rest of the house.”

  Chapter 11

  Tuesday Afternoon. Arlesey

  Kara drove them the forty miles up the A1 in a little over fifty minutes. There was light traffic heading north in the middle of the afternoon and her only restraint was the average speed cameras that lined the route. On arriving they turned off the alarm, donned gloves and went strai
ght to the upstairs linen cupboard. The drop ladder came down smoothly and they both went up into the roof space. Tien flicked on the switch to an unshaded single bulb and the space showed what it had on their last visit. Insulation batts and no sign of disturbance.

  “So where’s the discrepancy?” asked Kara.

  “I’m going to guess the far end from here. It’s darker and would be easier to hide a false wall.”

  They turned on the torches they had brought and gingerly made their way across the space, stepping from one rafter to the next. As they covered the twenty or so feet toward the eastern end of the house Kara could still see nothing that looked odd. The wall she was approaching seemed exactly like the end wall near the access hatch. But as she stepped right up next to it she suddenly realised the ‘bricks’ were flat.

  “It’s a photograph! It’s a photograph on high quality paper pasted in sections,” Tien said, as she flashed her torchlight the length of the false wall. “Oh Kara, this is good work. There’s no chance you would see this normally. No reasonable search team would have found this. The paper is thick enough to not crease or flex. Mind you, it’s also thick enough to reflect the laser measure I used, so in effect it let itself down.”

  “And you found this from just messing around with your 3-D model. How much space is it concealing?” asked Kara.

  “About three and a half feet in depth. I couldn’t tell how wide it was from the measurements I had but looking at it now, it would seem to run the whole thirty feet width of the house.” Tien moved down the length of the paper screen feeling for an opening. “And I wasn’t messing about.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I was bored,” Tien said.

  “Other people watch TV. You make 3-D models of houses that we don’t need?”

  “It would seem we did need it, now doesn’t it? Ah ha!” Tien reached through a black cut-out concealed right at the bottom corner where the photo screen met the floor space and the roof hip. She felt for and found a catch. Shining her torch she called Kara over, “It’s got a lock, did you bring your picks?”

  “Of course.”

  Crouching in the narrow gap Kara took slightly longer than usual but after a few minutes the lock gave a soft click. Kara backed off and stood up to stretch whilst Tien reached through and pulled the catch. A two-foot wide reinforced door on a plywood frame swung in. Tien stepped through and swung her torch up the length of the space.

  “What’s in there?” Kara called to her. There was no answer. “Tien, what’s in there?” Kara stepped across the gap of the rafters and ducked in through the door. Tien was stood just to her front. “What is it Tien?” Again there was no answer, but Tien stepped off to her left and allowed Kara’s torch to light the space. On four wooden boards spaced along the width of the roof space were small, neat stacks of twenty-pound notes.

  “Holy fuck!”

  “Language Kara. But yes, that about sums it up,” Tien chided her with good humour.

  “How much is there?” Kara asked.

  Tien crouched and swapped her torch for a single stack of the notes. As Kara shone her light on it Tien balanced the stack in her prosthetic palm and counted it quickly before shuffling forward from rafter to rafter to look at each of the four boards in turn.

  “There’s ten grand in each stack and each board, except for this one, has ten by ten stacks. This board has thirteen stacks missing. So all in all, assuming all the stacks are the same there’s three million eight hundred and seventy thousand pounds.”

  “Holy-” Kara stopped herself from swearing again. She didn’t need to ask if Tien was sure. Her friend had many talents and mental arithmetic at speed was one of them.

  “This rather changes the game, doesn’t it?” Tien said as she looked back along the length of the space to Kara, “What do we do now? Get the Police involved? Surely they’ll be interested with this lot?”

  “We leave it where it is,” Kara said as she gazed at the stacks of notes. “For now.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, Tien. But we’re going to have to move it and sharpish.”

  “Why?” Tien asked and then added, “And where? Where are we going to move this to?”

  “Not sure where, but I’ll figure that out. The why is easy. Let’s say that the Sterlings are being held against their will. Let’s assume it’s because of this lot. If they break and the people who have them come back here and get the money then there’s no reason to keep the Sterlings alive. So we need to shift it. If it turns out that Chris and Brenda come back on their own, well I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”

  “You sure we shouldn’t be going to the Police?” Tien asked with a fair amount of scepticism in her tone.

  “Look, if we take this to the Police then it’ll disappear out of our hands. The whole case will be in their lap. Look at how much money is here.” Kara shone her torch over the notes.

  “Yes, I get that it’s a lot but what happens if the Sterlings come back on their own and this is just their savings? What-”

  Kara interrupted her, “C’mon Tien. That’s not likely. This isn’t from a sailor’s pension. If they come back on their own I’m sure we can return it and suggest at the same time that Mr and Mrs Sterling make it worth our while to keep their extra roof insulation quiet?”

  “You think they will?”

  “I don’t know. But we could really do with a proper payday. This could actually make us solvent. I could stop having to turn tricks at King’s Cross,” Kara said and winked at her friend in the low grey light of the torches.

  “Kara!” Tien said and scowled at her.

  “What we have to do is get it out of here in the next couple of days and in the meantime you’ll need to set up some form of tripwire so we know if anyone comes in here.”

  “That’s easy. The Sterling’s Wi-Fi modem is still running and I’ve got a couple of Nanny-cams in the boot of the car. I’ll rig one of them up and piggy-back onto the signal. It’s motion sensitive and it’ll stream the footage straight to my phone if it activates. Good quality image too if I put it up near the hatch door where there’s good light.”

  “Thanks MacGyver,” Kara said.

  “Oh ha ha. You’d be lost without me,” Tien said and held the torch up to her chin and poked her tongue out.

  Kara laughed.

  As they turned to leave Tien’s torch played over a shape nestled in the far corner of the space.

  “Hang on Kara, there’s something here.” Tien crouched and shone her torch to reveal an old-fashioned children’s duffle bag with cord string-pulls that when taut closed off the neck of the bag.

  “What’s in it?” Kara asked as she held her torch steady for Tien to navigate by.

  Tien struggled for a few moments and then turned back to Kara, “I can’t get the string,” her voice was heavy with a barely concealed frustration. It wasn’t often Kara saw it in her but sometimes, and normally with the most mundane tasks, Tien’s annoyance with her left hand would come to the surface.

  “It’s okay, I’ll get it.” Kara shuffled across the rafters and took the bag. Easing the stiff cord away from the neck she angled it down so Tien’s light could shine into it. There were four UK passports nestling at the bottom of the otherwise empty bag.

  “Who are they for?” asked Tien.

  Kara reached in and retrieved them. “This one’s for Mr Adam Johnson who looks remarkably similar to the photos of Chris Sterling that we got from Michael. This one’s for John Adamson and look at that,” she held the passport round into the light so Tien could see it.

  “It’s the same photo!”

  “Yep.” Kara juggled the documents and opened the other two. “This is for Mrs Anna Johnson and this one, Mrs Joanna Adamson. But both of the photos are of Brenda Sterling.”

  They searched the rest of the concealed space thoroughly but there was nothing else hiding in the shadows. Taking the passports, they locked everything else back up the way they’d found it
.

  The drive back into London took longer in the late afternoon traffic but it allowed them time to talk. As they were pulling back onto the Kentish Town Road they had a semblance of a way forward.

  “I still don’t trust him,” Tien said.

  “Well neither does anyone else in their right mind. He’s a thief and a cheat and a conman. But he’s also the only person we know that might have an idea who can produce forged passports. So I don’t see we have a choice. Do you want to ring him and set it up?”

  “Not really, but I guess I’ll have to. Do we try and get him to your place?”

  “Well that would be nice but he won’t go for it. He always wants to choose the ground. That’s fine. We’ll let him think he’s running it.”

  “I’ll ring the boys then?” Tien asked.

  Kara nodded by way of reply, “And I’ll get a message through for Victoria to get in touch. Agreed?”

  There was a pause as Tien considered Kara’s question. Finally she said, “Agreed.”

  Chapter 12

  Tuesday Night. Central London

  Tien sat at the alfresco table warmed in the glow of a sunset and caressed by the slightest of breezes. With her smartphone on the table, headphones in and the gentle rocking of her head she looked like she was enjoying her own musical accompaniment whilst drinking wine and eating a beautiful Italian meal. Her sunglasses, not strictly needed for the late evening sun that cast narrow and lengthening shadows to her front, nonetheless added a touch of urban chic. She occasionally adjusted them. Being first-generation British Vietnamese didn’t diminish from the natural beauty of her Vietnamese genes. She looked like a thousand other Asian tourist in London on a beautiful July evening. Her small mouth, with its perfect Cupid’s bow and soft lips required the occasional dab of her napkin. The reality of her situation went unnoticed by the multitude of passers-by.

  Tien sat at the outside corner table of the alfresco seating area with clear sight lines to Leicester Square and Irving Street. There was no music playing in her headphones, just the faintest static hiss of an open radio channel. The wine glass to her front held cranberry juice with a dash of blackcurrant and although she spun meagre amounts of spaghetti on to her fork at slow intervals, she ate very infrequently. The adjustment of her sunglasses and the dab of her napkin covered the raising of her right cuff-mic to her mouth.