Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3 (16 page)

Zak coughed to announce his presence. The guy looked up from his game.

‘Yeah?’

Zak stepped into the room. ‘I’ve got a problem with my computer,’ he said.

‘Tried turning it off and on again?’ the guy said in a bored voice, all his attention back on his computer game.

‘Yes,’ Zak replied. ‘I tried that. No luck.’

The
Call of Duty
boy sighed – he obviously considered Zak to be an unwelcome interruption to his gaming session – pressed a button on his screen to pause the game and stood up. With obvious reluctance, he stomped over to another terminal.

Zak stepped further into the room. ‘I didn’t get your name,’ he said.

‘Darren.’ The IT guy was sitting at a second terminal directly opposite the one on which he was playing his game. ‘What computer you using?’ he asked.

‘Rodney Hendricks’s.’

Darren’s eyes rolled as if to say, not him again. ‘Quite sure he switched it on in the first place, are you?’

Zak forced a smile at the IT man’s little joke, then indicated the chair he’d just vacated. ‘Mind if I sit down.’

‘S’long as you don’t touch anything. Getting a high score on that thing. Got a high score last week and all . . .’

Zak sat down in front of the
Call of Duty
screen. It showed an assault rifle aimed in the direction of three Taliban fighters, their heads wrapped in keffiyahs, and a snow-topped mountain range in the background. As Darren’s fingers flew over the keyboard of his new terminal, however, Zak nonchalantly pressed the ESC key and the game screen shrank to a normal-sized window, which he quickly minimized.

‘I’ve got remote access,’ Darren announced. ‘What’s wrong then?’

‘Excel,’ Zak said. ‘Not loading.’ He clicked the remote access icon on his own screen. A window popped up with a list of names. He scanned down until he found ‘Ludgrove, J’. He double-clicked on the name. A password-entry box appeared.

‘Hey!’

Zak started. He looked up at Darren.

‘You been messing with the system files?’

Zak glanced guiltily at the
Call of Duty
computer, before realizing Darren was talking about the one upstairs. ‘I haven’t touched them,’ he said.

‘Well someone has,’ Darren grunted. ‘In the last ten minutes too. Moved a .exe file from the system folder. Anyone else been at your machine?’

‘No. Actually . . . yes.’

‘Who?’

‘Another work-experience guy. Black hair. Wears a green tie. Don’t know his name.’ As Zak spun his lie, Darren stood up and started walking back to his original terminal. Zak felt his pulse racing as he clicked cancel then maximized the
Call of Duty
screen again. ‘I’ll have a word with him, shall I? Tell him to . . .’ Darren was right next to him now, looking meaningfully at the seat Zak had taken. ‘Sorry . . .’ Zak jumped up. ‘Anyway, thanks.’

Darren grunted again. The sounds of his game filled the room almost before he was sitting down.

Zak was halfway to the door when he suddenly turned, as though something had just struck him. ‘You know what?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That work-experience dude. I think I saw him on someone else’s computer. Better make sure he didn’t mess that one up too.’

Darren dragged his eyes away from the screen to give Zak a sour look. He paused his game for a second time, then started walking back over to the other computer.

Zak moved quickly but stealthily. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he swiped the screen and tapped the camera icon, all the while moving in the direction of the second terminal. As Darren sat down, Zak took up position directly behind him, aiming the camera lens at the IT man’s fingers, and in full view of the screen.

‘Whose computer was he messing with, then?’ Darren asked.

‘I think his name’s “Lud” something . . . Ludlow?’ ‘Ludgrove,’ Darren said. He brought up the remote access screen and double-clicked on Ludgrove’s name. His fingers touch-typed a password. Zak couldn’t make it out, but he was confident that his camera had recorded the IT man’s fingers on the keyboard. He switched off the phone and turned his attention to the screen.

Darren was scrolling backwards through a list of all the actions performed on Ludgrove’s computer, each line coded with the time the action was performed. A Google search at 11.38. An email sent eleven minutes before that. Darren continued to scroll, and as nothing out of the ordinary presented itself, he didn’t stop until he reached 8.27. Just minutes, Zak worked out, after he had seen Ludgrove’s screen.

08.27 File deleted

File deleted

File deleted

File deleted

08.26 File deleted

File deleted

File deleted

Darren didn’t seem to find anything unusual. ‘Looks kosher,’ he said. ‘Still, I’d better tell Ludgrove if you think someone was fiddlin’ . . .’

‘Don’t worry,’ Zak said quickly and with a friendly smile. ‘I’m going back up there now. I’ll tell him.’

The IT man looked uncertain for a moment. Then his eyes flickered towards his
Call of Duty
terminal. ‘Sweet,’ he muttered lazily, and he slouched back to his game.

By the time Zak left the room, the sound of gunfire had returned to the basement, and Darren, his face once more bathed in the light of the screen, was deeply engrossed in the serious business of killing people.

What had Ludgrove thought Zak had seen that made him delete all those files from his computer? The files had to be somewhere, and Zak strongly suspected they had something to do with all this. The question of how to find them occupied him all the way back up to the seventh floor and Hendricks’s messy desk. He found Hendricks himself carefully arranging his coat on the back of his chair. He didn’t notice Zak until he spoke. ‘All sorted.’

Hendricks jumped, and looked a bit flustered, first at Zak, then at the coat. He glanced around conspiratorially. ‘Oldest journalist’s trick in the book,’ he whispered. ‘Pop your coat on the back of your chair, everyone thinks you must be in the office somewhere. Just off for a spot of . . . well, Mum’s the word, eh, Harry m’boy? Hold the fort here, there’s a good fellow . . .’

‘Liquid lunch, Rodney?’ a female journalist with a black bob asked slyly on her way to the Ladies.

A mixture of outrage and embarrassment crossed Hendricks’s face. He opened his mouth to protest, then clamped it firmly shut again.

‘I’ll stay here, Mr Hendricks,’ Zak said, doing his best not to smile. ‘Finish logging the sparrows. I’ll be fine.’

‘That’s the spirit, Harry m’boy. That’s the spirit.’ Hendricks shuffled off in the direction of the lift while Zak took a seat. He confidently predicted that his boss wouldn’t be back for a good couple of hours. That should give him ample time to do some snooping.

He looked over his shoulder to see Hendricks waiting for the lift. But something else caught his eye too. It was Ludgrove. He was standing six or seven metres from Harry’s boss, next to a water cooler and slightly concealed by a tall pot plant. Zak’s line of sight was blocked, but he could still just catch the look in Ludgrove’s eyes as he stared at Hendricks. It was a look of deep suspicion, and absolute hatred.

The lift arrived and Hendricks stepped in. Before the lift doors could close, however, Ludgrove was there, slipping inside more deftly than Zak would have suspected of somebody with his lumbering, brutish frame. As the doors hissed shut, he felt suddenly uneasy. If Ludgrove suspected Zak of something, he might think Hendricks was involved. He could easily try to beat some non-existent information out of the bumbling old nature-notes editor, and as Zak well knew, Ludgrove had form. He shot across the open-plan office, ignoring the strange looks from the startled journalists working at their desks. By the time he reached the lift, he could see that it had already reached the sixth floor. The stairwell was to his right. He ran towards it and hurtled down all seven flights, four steps at a time.

He was sweating when he emerged into the reception area, but he was just in time. The lift doors opened. Zak wasn’t quite sure what he expected to see – now that he was down here it seemed unlikely that Ludgrove would have done anything untoward on the actual premises of the
Daily Post
– but although Hendricks looked uncomfortable, he also looked unharmed. Zak lowered his head and stepped behind a pillar as the two men emerged. With relief he saw Hendricks leave the building, while Ludgrove walked up to the reception desk and started talking to the receptionist.

That relief soon fell away.

Hendricks had barely stepped out of the
Daily Post
building when Ludgrove broke off his conversation with the receptionist. She looked rather confused as he walked away from her and left the building. Through the glass frontage, Zak could see Hendricks walking west along Delfont Street, Ludgrove following him at a distance of about thirty metres. Zak hurried to the exit and joined the convoy, following Ludgrove at a similar distance.

He wished Raf and Gabs were with him. They had spent many a windswept afternoon on the island practising tracking techniques, but there was the world of difference between identifying the prints of wild animals and trailing a fully alert human being in an urban environment. Extra eyes would have been invaluable. Trailing someone who would recognize you if you got eyes on was hard. Get too close, you risk being seen. Not close enough and it was easy to lose your quarry. Zak
really
didn’t want that to happen, although he couldn’t have said why. Just that vague sense that if Ludgrove caught up with Hendricks, something bad would happen, and it might well be Zak’s fault.

But there was no Gabs. No Raf. Just him. He concentrated hard on the job in hand.

The streets were not as busy as they might have been. Hendricks had stepped out early, and as it was only just past twelve very few of the local office workers were out on their lunch break. It was busy enough, however. Zak found himself zigzagging across the pavement to stop the oncoming pedestrians blocking his line of sight on Ludgrove. His target turned left at the end of Delfont Street. For ten seconds, as Zak sprinted to the street corner, both Hendricks and Ludgrove were out of view. He picked them out again as he turned the corner. About thirty metres up ahead, Hendricks was approaching a pub. Zak expected him to enter it for his liquid lunch, but to his mild surprise he walked straight on, seemingly unaware that he had two people following him.

Five minutes passed. Or maybe ten. Zak wasn’t keeping track of time, just of Hendricks and Ludgrove. When Hendricks crossed to the other side of the road using a zebra crossing, both Ludgrove and Zak risked the busy road – a taxi beeped at him, but Ludgrove seemed too intent on following Hendricks to look back and notice him. A right turn, and then another left. Zak didn’t know where they were or where they were going. Not to the pub, clearly. The road ahead forked; they bore to the right and, twenty metres along this road, Hendricks took a sharp turn.

Ludgrove stopped. Zak did the same. He was breathing heavily, not through lack of fitness, but through anxiety. He didn’t know what was happening, but it didn’t feel good. But he saw why Ludgrove had stopped. The road into which Hendricks had turned was a dead end.

Zak stood with his back pressed against the red brick of a three-storey-high terraced building. Ludgrove was loitering by a pillar box, clearly deciding whether to follow his quarry or not. It took at least thirty seconds for him to decide to continue. Zak followed gingerly. When he saw Ludgrove stop and stare at the beginning of the road, he crossed the street again so he could share his view, albeit from a slightly greater distance.

Zak shared Ludgrove’s obvious confusion. The mews was indeed a dead end. There were no roads leading off it, nor were there any doors on either side. A few cars were parked at a handful of parking meters, but apart from that there was no sign of anything. Including Hendricks. Where on earth could he have got to?

Suddenly, Ludgrove stormed down the street. He started looking underneath and behind cars and, when he found nothing, his frustration clearly got the better of him. He kicked the chassis of a grey Mercedes, and the blow echoed against the high walls of the mews. Zak allowed himself a smile. Bumbling old Hendricks probably had no idea he was being followed, but he’d managed to give Ludgrove the slip anyway.

And then, without warning, Ludgrove turned.

It was almost as if he knew Zak was there. Their gazes locked and an angry sneer curled onto Ludgrove’s lips. He frowned, hunched his shoulders and started striding towards him.

For a moment, Zak considered standing his ground, but then he heard Gabs’s voice in his head. ‘
Remember, sweetie, sometimes your legs are better friends than your fists
.’

From the look on Ludgrove’s face – a deep frown, an angry sneer, a wildness in the eyes – Zak reckoned this was one of those times.

He ran.

1500hrs

A young woman with shoulder-length white-blonde hair and a grim-faced man were keeping very still. When you’re conducting surveillance, movement is your worst enemy.

The location Gabs and Raf were watching was extremely ordinary: a terraced house, number 6 Galsheils Avenue, Tottenham, London. Their CR-V was parked directly outside. It had been simplicity itself to find out that this was where Ludgrove lived. ‘His mother died eight years ago,’ Michael had briefed them. ‘Left him the house. Wife walked out on him last July. Domestic violence. He lives alone now. While young Zak has his eye on him, his house would be a good place to start snooping, don’t you think?’

‘I do hate that word,’ Gabs had sighed.

Discovering a safe place from which to conduct the surveillance had been more complex. But not impossible, since Gabs and Raf had access to the kind of information most people would find it very difficult to come by. So it was that they had discovered that the occupant of number three, almost exactly opposite, was a Mrs Enid Sears, who lived alone but was currently in hospital having a hip replacement. The front bedroom of her deserted house was the perfect place from which to keep tabs on Ludgrove’s place, and breaking in through the back way had been simple.