Connected (21 page)

The girls were still chattering away excitedly to
themselves. Doug eavesdropped for a few seconds.
“I was like really pissed,” said one, “but he was like, ‘Let’s go back to my
place and like, get wasted,’ and I was like, ‘No I want to go home,’ and he was
like…”
Doug immediately regretted tuning in and turned back to the window trying to
block out the incessant gibberish, which now seemed impossible to ignore.
“Excuse me!” he said finally, leaning across the aisle towards them. “Have you
ever like, realised, like, how often you like, use the word ‘like’ in every
inane sentence you like, utter?”
The girls looked back at him blankly for a few seconds, as though he’d just
spoken in Aramaic then, exchanging a few raised eyebrows, resumed their
scintillating tales of adolescent drunken antics.

“So where exactly is this pleasure palace?”
enquired Brian.
“Crouch End,” Doug replied, crudely emphasising the word crouch. “We take the
circle line to Kings Cross and then the Piccadilly up to Wood Green.”

The single storey, flat roofed building of the
club itself crouched at the end of a quiet side street not far from the tube
station. Above large unpolished windows, blacked out except for the white
feline motifs, was the name Snow Leopard, picked out in metallic silver against
glossy black panels. The muffled beat of dance music emanated from a dimly lit
opening, in which a large bearded man, dressed in a black bomber jacket,
towered menacingly.
“Fifteen to enter, first drink’s free!” grunted the man in a low cockney
monotone.
“Each?” asked Brian. “Or for the two of us?”
The man sighed, sneering with contempt. “Thirty quid or fuck off!” he said,
pulling his shoulders back and puffing out his chest truculently.
Brian started to turn away, but Doug grabbed his arm. “This one’s on me,” he
said, pulling the notes from his wallet and handing them to the man.

“He’s a little ray of sunshine isn’t he,”
commented Brian, as they passed into the dark seedy interior of the club
itself. Half a dozen mostly suited men sat at low tables around a small raised
stage, upon which gyrated a tall blonde girl in a pale leopard print bikini.
Doug scanned the room, but saw no sign of Zhirkov. A cloying sickly sweet smell
filled the air. They made their way to a small bar at one end, where another
bored looking blonde in a tight black tee-shirt stared at them expectantly.
“Two beers please,” said Doug.
“The free ones!” added Brian.
The girl opened two of the tiniest beer bottles they had ever seen, and placed
them on the counter without even cracking a smile.
“You want me dance for you?” came an accented voice from behind. They swung
round to find a small, but voluptuous brunette smiling up at them suggestively.
“No thanks,” said Doug politely, taking the beer and making his way to one of
the tables at the back of the room. Brian hesitated for a moment, eyeing the
girl carefully before following.
“I don’t know quite how it works,” said Doug, “but I’m pretty sure that if you
do anything to encourage them, we’ll be saddled with an horrific bill to pay at
the end of the night.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” sighed Brian gawping up at the blonde stripper,
who had just removed her top with a beguiling flick of the wrist. “Although
getting saddled by one of these girls might not be an entirely unpleasant
experience,” he added.
The blonde returned the gaze, smiling in their direction, her eyebrows dancing
up suggestively.
“Now you’ve done it,” said Doug.
As the music came to an end, she stepped down from the stage and approached the
table. “I’m Michelle,” she chirped in a thick Liverpudlian accent, placing a
hand on Brian’s shoulder and sitting down beside him. “Where are you boys
from?”
“Listen, I’m sorry,” said Doug, “we enjoyed your dancing up there, but we’re
students and really can’t afford anything besides these exceedingly small
beers.”
She smiled, reaching over and placing a hand on his knee. “Hey honey, relax. I
only asked where you were from.”
On stage, under the coloured down-lights, she had looked quite striking, but up
close, it was apparent that most of the effect had been the result of skilfully
applied make-up. She was still an attractive girl, probably in her early to mid
twenties, and with breasts suspiciously large and firm for the lithe young body
from which they billowed.
She hesitated for a moment, eyeing the young men up and down, her expression
somewhere between pity and regret, and then stood up to leave. “Well if you
change your mind,” she said, pointing at them with both index fingers at once.
“I’ll do you a deal - thirty pounds the pair.”
“Well, they do make a lovely pair,” said Brian, “but what do I get to do with
them for thirty pounds?”
“No, cheeky!” giggled the girl, nodding towards the red curtains along the wall
behind them. “I meant thirty pounds will buy a private dance for the pair of
you.”
On closer inspection, the curtained wall behind was in fact a row of
partitioned booths, screened off with red velour drapes.
“What do you suppose they do for you in there?” asked Brian.
“Dance around and show you their tits, I imagine,” said Doug flatly, “I can’t
see thirty quid buying you much more than that.”
“But I’ve just seen her tits without paying anything,” said Brian, looking
confused. “Maybe in there you get to cop a feel as well!”
“Maybe,” said Doug, draining the small bottle of beer and starting to roll a
cigarette. “Why don’t you get another round in while I step outside for a
breath of fresh air.”
“I wonder what silicon ones feel like,” asked Brian, looking over once again at
the bountiful blonde who now sat giggling girlishly between two beer-bellied
business-men.
“Don’t know,” mumbled Doug, carefully moistening the cigarette paper with the
tip of his tongue, and getting up. “Can’t be as good as the real thing though.
Just wait til Wednesday mate!”

The bouncer eyed Doug suspiciously as he stepped
out into the cold night air and lit up. An elderly couple shuffled past on the
far side of street, glancing disapprovingly in the direction of the club,
before disappearing behind a parked white van. A little later, the boastful
roar of an oversized exhaust manifold joined the muffled bass of the club’s
sound system, and a bright blue Subaru Impreza appeared at the end of the
street. As it got nearer, its gold alloys sparkling ostentatiously under the
street light, a cacophony of drums and electric guitar could be heard screaming
from within. Doug watched with curiosity, as it pulled up behind the van,
waiting to see if its driver matched his mental image of cocky, bling-encrusted
boy-racer. The music stopped as the engine was cut, but for a minute or so,
nothing stirred except for the two pensioners ambling slowly up the street.
Eventually the couple turned down an alleyway and almost immediately the
headlights of the Subaru flashed twice. A moment later, two men alighted from
the van and walked furtively round to the back. Opening the rear door one of
them leant inside, while the other approached the Subaru. The driver’s window
descended, revealing the profile of a man whose long black hair and chubby face
glittered with metallic piercings. Recognising his online nemesis, Doug stepped
back into the shadows and watched silently as a white computer base unit was
lifted from the back of the van. He quickly pulled out his mobile, switched it
to camera mode and started snapping, as the unit was carried round and lowered
carefully into the boot of the car. While the men stood whispering to each
other in the street, Doug dropped the cigarette and slipped quietly back inside
the club.

“And you think this was the PC stolen from Peter’s
brother’s house last night?” whispered Brian doubtfully. “I admit it does look
a bit dodgy to be transferring gear from a white van to the boot of your car,
late at night, outside a strip club, but…”
“Oh come on Brian. This guy hacked into my PC somehow. He’s been reading all my
emails and God knows what else. He realises from my correspondence with Peter,
that there’s something valuable on that PC, and gets it lifted so he can take a
closer look.”
“Listen to yourself Doug. This isn’t some Robert Ludlum novel, you know. What
makes you think a Russian hacker would be the slightest bit interested in some
obscure maths project? The guy is probably just buying some hot gear that’s
fallen off the back of a lorry. Stuff gets nicked all the time …”
“It’s not just an obscure maths project.”
“Yeah right, it’s a cool hypnotic video file which gives you wacky dreams –
yeah I got that, but it still doesn’t sound like something you’d risk breaking
and entering…” Brian paused, looking over Doug’s shoulder. “Hey don’t look
now, but the kingpin of this international web of espionage has just entered
the building.”
Doug glanced over his shoulder.
“Hey, I said don’t look! You’ll blow your cover,” continued Brian
sarcastically.
Zhirkov was leaning with one elbow on the bar, talking nonchalantly at the
barmaid, while simultaneously scanning the room for someone more interesting.
Momentarily, his gaze connected with Doug’s, and then passed on without a hint
of recognition. The barmaid was feigning interest, but appeared unimpressed
with the man’s display of over-familiarity.
“He does look a right knob though!” said Brian. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to talk to him.”
“And say what? ‘Why did you hack my PC?’ Don’t be an idiot. What if he’s
friends with King Kong out there in the corridor? Do you want to get the other
side of your face smashed in as well? I hear symmetrical scarring is very ‘in’
these days – Gok Wan told me.”
Doug thought for a moment. “What if we get him outside? Look, here’s what we
do. We pay our bar bill and leave. Then we cross over the street and set off
the guy’s car alarm. He comes out to investigate and we collar him.”
“And then what?”
“Well, we make him tell us what he’s up to.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we hurt him.”
“And what will that achieve?”
Doug paused for a moment. “Well, it’ll make me feel better for one.”
“Okay, you have a point there, I admit.”
“So you’ll do it?”
Brian frowned, and then blew out his cheeks. “Oh what the hell. It is Saturday
night after all - and you haven’t got yourself into trouble for a whole week.”

The Subaru looked to Doug like some kid’s
oversized dinky toy, evoking an image of giant chubby fingers clasped around
the ridiculously large rear spoiler and pushing it along to childish
vocalisations of “vroom-vroom”. The white van had disappeared and the street
was now empty, except for a handful of parked cars. A couple of wheelie-bins
stood a few yards away on the pavement. Doug pushed them together and walked
around to confirm their suitability as a hiding place. “Okay, are you ready?”
he asked. “You crouch down here, and I’ll give the car a little rock.”
Brian took his position, with some trepidation. “Are you absolutely sure about
this?”
“No,” said Doug placing his shoulder to the car’s side and pushing hard. The
car rocked on its suspension, but remained silent. Doug placed his hands on the
edge of the roof and tried again, heaving several times in regular succession.
Nothing. He took a few paces back and then ran at the car planting the sole of
his shoe into the front passenger door. A satisfying dent appeared in the panel,
but other than the dull thud of the impact, the street remained quiet.
“Doug!” whispered Brian loudly, from behind the bins. “Maybe, it doesn’t have
an alarm. Let’s just go home, can we?”
“A car like this? It must have one,” said Doug, raising his voice in
frustration. He looked around in desperation, and spotted a large rock on the
pavement a few feet away.
“Oh shit!” whispered Brian, as Doug picked up the rock and hurled it against
the front window. The glass shattered, and at last the air was filled with the
loud rhythmic honking of the Subaru’s alarm system. In addition, just in case
there had been any doubt as to where the sound was coming from, all four
indicators began to flash in unison. Doug sprinted over to join Brian behind
the bins, his heart racing with adrenaline.
“When you said you were going to give it a little rock, I didn’t expect such a
literal interpretation,” said Brian, peering anxiously between the bins at the
club entrance.

The first face to appear momentarily at the door
was that of the bouncer.
“Oh fuck!” said Brian. “What if the yeti comes over with him?”
They waited, eyes glued to the club, and quite oblivious to the gleaming black Range
Rover approaching from the other end of the street with a clear view of their
crouching ambush. After a few seconds, Zhirkov appeared from the door, striding
hurriedly towards them. He then looked down the street and into the beam of a
pair of headlights. Doug and Brian followed his gaze with horror and
recognition, as a small wiry man with a ponytail climbed out of the Range Rover
and pointed towards them. Another large man dismounted from the other side and
the three of them started jogging towards the bins.
“Run!” shouted Doug, as they both turned and fled in the opposite direction.
After thirty yards, they heard a car door slam behind them followed by a
screech of tyres. Doug glanced back over his shoulder to see the Range Rover
accelerating towards them, the growl of its V12 growing louder against the
Subaru’s alarm.
“There!” gasped Brian, pointing to a gap between the terraces fifty yards
ahead. They heard a rubbery squelch as the car mounted the curb just a few
yards behind, followed by the grating of metal on brick as they leapt over the
low wall and into the alleyway. The passage was dark and no more than three
feet wide. Overgrown garden shrubbery spilled over the graffiti covered walls
on either side, whipping at their faces as they sprinted through the darkness.
Finally they burst out onto an adjoining street where they stood panting, hands
on knees, looking and listening for signs of their pursuers.

They both jumped as the diesel roar of a
double-decker bus broke around the corner and rumbled towards them. Spotting a
stop just down the road, they ran over and hailed the driver.
“I don’t care where you’re going, mate,” said Brian. “How much to the nearest
tube station.”
“One seventy,” mumbled the driver without looking at them.
They took their seats at the back, and peered through the grimy rear window
towards the alleyway.
“Lightweights!” said Doug finally. “They couldn’t even be arsed to chase us.”
“Oh well then, why don’t we just go back for another ‘running of the bull-bars’
Pamplona style!”
“That was a bit close I admit,” said Doug, as the bus made a left.
“Close! Any closer and we’d be pulling its front bumper out of your arse!”
shouted Brian angrily.
“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the best laid out pla… Oh shit!” he said, as the
bus made another left.
“What? Hang on, isn’t this…?”
“…the same road that we started on – yes! Here they are – quick - down!”
Doug and Brian slumped down in their seats, peering candidly out of the side
window at the three angry looking men, who were thankfully too preoccupied
comparing the relative damage to their vehicles, to look at the bus.
“That’s the same guy that broke your face, right?” said Brian.
“Sergei Markov - Yep!” confirmed Doug. “The same guy who was at Kal’s Party the
night before he died.”
“And Cindy’s ex-boss!” added Brian.
“Oh shit! Of course! She told me he owned a club in North London. This must be
it!”
“So he knew Kal, who also worked on Dream-Zone, and he seems to be connected
with the other Russian who hacked your laptop.”
“Yeah - and that guy has just taken delivery of a stolen PC base unit, the very
night after one possibly containing the only other known copy of the full
Dream-Zone video, was stolen.”
“Okay, that does seem like an improbable cascade of coincidences. So what are
you going to do?”
“I’m going to the police.”