The Deadly Lies Read online

  Alfonso walked to the front of the car, leaned against it, and breathed deeply. He would never get used to this part of policing.

  He looked down at the mobile phone. It lacked identifying marks and was locked with a PIN code. Alfonso walked around to the passenger door. Again, he opened it carefully, to avoid being injured by fragments of glass. The contents of the interior had been thrown around violently in the accident. He searched for the driver’s documentation. In the glove box he found an expensive brown leather wallet. There was also a package, tightly encased in Bubble Wrap.

  Alfonso took the two items around to the front of the car to examine them. The wallet contained a substantial amount of cash. He counted nearly two thousand euros in notes of varying denominations. There was a German driver’s license in the name of Bernhardt Freude, aged forty-six. He also found two credit cards and a membership card for a car breakdown service.

  He put the items back in the wallet and turned his attention to the bubble-wrapped package. Carefully, he unwrapped it. In his hands lay an exquisitely crafted bronze male nude.

  Alfonso was sure he had seen something similar to it in the past. Gabriel, his husband of nearly eleven years, was a keen collector of art deco. Their apartment in the fashionable Sarrià district of Barcelona contained trophies from their frequent visits to antiques shops around Europe. Such beautiful objects were not affordable on Alfonso’s modest police salary. But Gabriel was a senior executive for Spain’s Banco España Internacional, where his father was the bank’s chairman. It was not a job Gabriel particularly enjoyed, but it paid for a very comfortable lifestyle.

  Recently, Gabriel had become an enthusiast for European expressionist architecture. In April, they had taken a seven-day holiday and flown to Berlin, where they hired a large touring motorbike. It was an exhilarating way to see some of Germany’s finest examples of art deco buildings.

  They returned to Barcelona with a suitcase full of auction brochures, which Gabriel spent hours salivating over. They already planned a return visit in a few months.

  Alfonso looked again at the figurine in his hands. He turned it over and over, admiring the simple beauty of its form. An idea crossed his mind.

  Chapter 4

  STEVE WAS bored. The first-class lounge at Heathrow’s Terminal Four was dull. Stuffed with tight-assed businesswomen and overweight men wearing badly fitting clothes. Steve’s own Fred Perry top, bleacher jeans, braces, and Grinders boots were in sharp contrast. He amused himself for a while by catching the eye of his fellow waiting passengers. But he soon tired of their disapproving reactions. Steve felt like giving the lot of them the middle finger. Only the free food and drink stopped him. Periodically, he checked both Grindr and Scruff, but the talent was elsewhere in the airport. In desperation, he did what he always did in these situations—plugged in his headphones and called his mother.

  Her face appeared on his laptop screen. “What’s the matter, are you bored?” She knew him too well.

  “Hi, Mom. Nice to see you too,” said Steve. “Just thought I’d say hi before I got on the plane. We won’t be talking for a while, I reckon.”

  “We only spoke this morning, Stevie. Now don’t forget my Cinnamon Toast Crunch, will you? It’s impossible to get here.”

  Steve was glad he was wearing his headphones. He hated anyone hearing him called Stevie. It made him feel five years old again.

  “I told you where to buy them online, Mom. If I stuff them in my bag, they’ll only get squashed. I’ll get you something nice from Ghirardelli Square.”

  Candida Brown wrinkled her nose. “Oh, Stevie, you know how I hate American chocolate. It always tastes so stale. They make it far better here.”

  Steve felt his patriotic roots were under attack. “Dad always bought you chocolate when we lived in Renton. And you always ate it. Don’t tell me that’s the real reason you got divorced?”

  Candida laughed. “Maybe part of it. He just got boring. You know that. He and I turned out to be very different. You and I, we’re much more alike. We’re restless. Can’t just keep doing the same old thing. We have a need to do lots of different stuff. Crazy stuff. He didn’t.”

  It was true. Steve’s mother was unpredictable and wild. She was twenty years older than him and still had the capacity to shock. He loved her for it. When Steve was eleven, his parents separated. Candida and Steve left the three-room family apartment in a sleepy suburb of Seattle and moved to England. They lived with his mother’s parents in Brighton, on the south coast. That was where they still lived, in a rambling, ramshackle townhouse. Steve had the basement, his grandparents lived on the ground floor, and his mother had the upper floors.

  “While you’re out there, you should go see him.”

  Why had he not seen that coming? When Steve made a trip to the States, it revived uncomfortable memories of his childhood. He thought back to his last visit, four years earlier, when he was invited to the headquarters of a major software company in Redmond. The company had wooed him over two days of negotiation, but he resisted the riches the company promised, preferring to remain a free agent. He remembered how his mother had tried to encourage him to see his father then. At the last minute, Steve called his dad from the Seattle airport while waiting for his flight back to England. There was no answer. His father was out somewhere. He had been relieved.

  “Well, Stevie, why not? He isn’t a bad man—”

  “Just not a very good dad.” Steve remembered the times his father had not been there. Absent for Steve’s debut in the first-grade nativity play. Not there when Steve sang his first solo in the Renton Theater workshop production of Oliver! His dad made it very clear he disapproved of his son’s passion for musicals. Even when his father was at home, he was not really there. He would disappear into his den in the basement for hours at a time, reading his books on the military. Steve remembered how he was obsessed with wars and the US Army.

  “Okay, I’ll see him this time. Where’s he living now?”

  His mother’s face glowed with happiness on the screen. “Thanks, Stevie. It means a lot to me. He and I might have gone our separate ways, but he’s your dad, and I don’t want you to lose touch with him. The last thing I heard, the company was moving him down to Sacramento. But he may still be in Washington State—”

  “Okay, Mom,” relented Steve, “I’ve got a few days at the end of the hackfest. I was going to hang around in San Fran and cruise a few clubs. But the last time I was there, they weren’t anything like they used to be. I won’t be missing much. I’ll pay him a visit. Just for you, Mom.”

  Steve glanced up at the TV monitor showing the flight departures and cursed. His flight was delayed.

  DOMINIC LIFTED his head to the remaining rays of the sun. He shifted his bare legs out of the shadows, stretched, and basked in the warmth like a pampered cat. At his feet was a small carrier bag, the result of a successful visit to Antiquitats, next to the church, twenty minutes before. He was sure Jonathan would love the miniature bust of Handel, his most-beloved composer. Dominic had chosen his table outside the Restaurant Fragata so he could sit in the sunlight and have a good view of everyone who walked by.

  There was always something interesting or attractive to see in Sitges. In most Mediterranean towns, the evening promenade began around 6:30 p.m. But in Sitges it lasted all day, with a burst of activity starting in the late afternoon. Couples, straight or gay, walked hand in hand, relaxing with their partners, pleased to be able to display their contentedness to all who watched. The openness and freedom of Sitges was perfect for Dominic and Jonathan. Here they could be themselves. Dominic was still getting used to walking hand in hand with his husband without seeing judgmental stares from passersby. In England, by contrast, even with equal marriage legal, few same-sex couples felt confident enough to hold hands in public, even in the heart of London. Here in Sitges, if people stared, it was only to admire Jonathan’s well-crafted physique.

  A pale-faced young man wearing a short-sleeved olive-g
reen army shirt, camouflage shorts, and a baseball cap pulled low over his face sat on one of several benches less than a hundred feet away. Dominic was convinced the man was staring at him. He appeared to be in his late twenties and had a cigarette constantly in his hand. Dominic flattered himself that the young man was fascinated by his good looks. But in truth, he felt as though he was being examined, and it made him uncomfortable.

  Dominic picked up his glass of cava. He took a sip and then looked down at the puzzling text he had received from Bernhardt. It had arrived a few hours ago, but he had not noticed it until he prepared to leave the apartment. Jonathan had proved a very passionate distraction after Bernhardt’s first text.

  This second message was bizarre. It contained twenty numbers—38 35 25.603 121 48 11.249—and the phrase Turn to the feet of Adam. This was followed by eight more numbers—03 15 26 21—and finally a date: June 1.

  Once again, Dominic called Bernhardt’s phone. It went straight to voicemail, as it had done on the half-dozen occasions he had tried to call since he sat down. It was nearly seven o’clock. He had expected Bernhardt to have arrived by now. More than that, Bernhardt would have sent him several texts, checking whether Dominic was at their meeting place. Bernhardt was always punctual and a stickler for detail.

  Dominic looked up. The young man was staring at him again. Dominic decided now was the time to find out more about his observer. He finished his glass of cava, turned, and signaled to the waiter he wanted to pay. When he turned back, the young man had gone.

  A few moments later, the waiter arrived with his bill.

  “I was asked to give you this, señor.”

  From the metal platter the waiter left behind, Dominic picked up a note. It was tightly rolled and sealed with a cigarette paper. Carefully unsealing it, Dominic opened the note and read the brief message: Balmins platges, 23:00. I am a friend of Bernhardt.

  JEFF WOODFIELD looked approvingly at the image on the screen. It showed a headshot of one of the developers booked into the fifth Embarcadero Hackfest. The biennial gathering of the world’s finest hackers was due to start this coming weekend, here in San Francisco. Ever since he had launched the hackfests fourteen years ago, Jeff had spent his days finding the brightest and the best for the events. Attendance was strictly at Jeff’s personal invitation. He trawled hacking conversations on the internet to find new programming talent. If they were cute as well, then so much the better.

  The image on his laptop screen showed a man in his late twenties with a shaved head, wearing a blue Fred Perry top. Jeff flicked to the headlines of his research notes about the delegate.

  Steve Brown. 29 years old. Brighton, England. Control systems hacker. New attendee. Demonstrates ability with power station and traffic controls. Specialty: vehicle control. Potential recruit for Charter Ninety-Nine.

  Jeff flicked to the bottom of the page, where he had written miscellaneous notes. There was a single entry: Originally from Washington State. British gay skinhead, unattached.

  After scrolling back to the top of the screen, Jeff studied the face again. The guy was thirteen years his junior. Just what he liked. Experienced but still fresh. Jeff had never met a real gay British skinhead before. He was fascinated how they had taken a right-wing political subculture and turned it into a gay sexual fetish. He knew many liberal gay men were turned on by the gear and the attitude but had no affiliation to the politics.

  The heavy iron gates of the elevator clanged open behind him. Jeff turned to see his partner, Nick, step out onto the top floor of their apartment. Back in the early ’90s, when it was just an abandoned warehouse, Jeff had lived in the building for free for two years as part of an occupying commune. It was in a perfect location. A block away from Coit Tower, close to the waterfront, with a view of the Bay Bridge. Seven years later, he made ten million dollars from the sale of his music sharing website at the height of the dot-com boom in the summer of ’99. Enjoying the liberation of wealth, Jeff discovered the three-story warehouse was scheduled for demolition. He quickly bought it and turned the lower level into offices. The top two levels of the building became his home. It was an industrial architect’s wet dream.

  The sound of his partner’s tan rigger boots echoed on the bare wooden floor as he walked toward the steel desk where Jeff was seated.

  “Checking out the talent again, I see,” teased Nick. “Which one have you gone for this time?”

  Reflecting the image of Steve on the screen, Nick also had a shaved head. But the resemblance stopped there. Nick wore a loose-fitting, sleeveless white gym shirt that revealed his well-developed biceps and gave a glimpse of the muscles on his shaved chest. His faded blue jeans, which hugged tight around his buttocks and thighs, were tucked into his boots. He sported two days’ stubble that hinted at the natural blond of his hair.

  Jeff picked up the laptop and handed it to Nick for a closer look. “We’ve had an alert about this one. Nothing specific. But we’re going to have to test his integrity. Do you want to go catch him? Helluva catch.”

  Nick took the laptop from his partner and admired the image of Steve on the screen. “Three years younger than me. What’s the matter, am I getting too old for you?” Jeff kicked out at his partner playfully as Nick continued. “Sure, I’ll go catch him if you’re gonna let me. It’s been a while since I’ve played away. Or did you want to be part of it? A threesome to welcome the horny Brit?”

  The edges of Jeff’s mouth turned upward slightly. It was the closest he ever came to a smile. “Much as I’d like to fuck the pair of you, I don’t want him to sense he’s getting any kind of special attention. I reckon he’s a smart one, and we’re going to have to be cool. No. Just play the innocent tech-support guy and get as close as you want. We need intimate trackers on him to find out what he’s doing.” Jeff grabbed his partner’s crotch with rough affection. “And I know you’re an expert at inserting them.”

  Chapter 5

  WITH HIS flight delayed and nearly two hours to kill, Steve decided to call his father. There was no answer from the landline number he had, nor from the two mobile numbers. He went online to check the white pages. It took a while because his father’s last name was the same as his: Brown. After ten minutes scrolling fruitlessly through a long list of people called P. Brown, he ordered another Peroni and decided to take a shortcut. He would hack into his father’s online records.

  It was usually a simple task for Steve to penetrate the security walls protecting the databases of millions of personal records across the world. With his dad living in the US, his first port of call was the Social Security records database. It took him just under eight minutes, with the help of a couple of contacts who were online, to work his way through the software barriers. A new personal best.

  Steve scrolled through the long list of Social Security records for people called Peter Brown. None of the history records connected with his father’s address or place of work or school or any of the numerous details about his father’s life Steve had gathered over the years. He hacked into the pan-US phone records system for the area of Renton, Washington. But that also yielded nothing. Steve took another mouthful of his Peroni beer and stared in puzzlement at the laptop screen.

  He sat back and thought for a moment. His father might have changed his name, but this was highly unlikely given how fiercely resistant he was to change. Even if Peter Brown was known by a different name, Steve would be able to find an electronic paper trail showing the history of his personal records. He took another swig of his beer and spent ten minutes hacking into the Washington State database of births, marriages, and deaths. Each state in the US maintained its own records for its citizens. The majority of states had transferred their records to computer databases with password-protected access. A few remained in paper form only. Washington was one of the more advanced and had a reputation for being comprehensive and accurate.

  Steve looked for his parents’ marriage record. He knew their wedding had been on Saturday, July 11, 1987, in
Renton’s registry office. It should have taken Steve no more than a moment to find it. But his parents’ wedding was not listed as one of the four marriages celebrated in Renton that day. He struggled to remember his father’s date of birth. He knew it was January 2, and his father was either sixty-four or sixty-five. As Steve searched, he already anticipated the result. Sure enough, there were no records for the birth of Peter Tomacz Zubryzcki Brown in Washington State. His father had simply vanished from the electronic records.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Brown. They’re calling your flight.” Steve looked up to see the well-groomed young man who had welcomed him to the executive lounge earlier. Not his type, Steve decided. Perhaps there would be better talent onboard to while away the eleven-hour flight. Steve reluctantly closed the lid of his laptop. The mystery of his father’s online records would have to wait until he could get onto the internet again.

  ALFONSO DROVE his police motorbike onto the grounds of the gated apartment complex in Sarrià. He parked it in the reserved space, alongside his own touring bike. He removed his crash helmet and dismounted. From one of the panniers, he took out the bubble-wrapped package he had recovered from the wrecked vehicle earlier. He tucked it inside his helmet and went into the first of the apartment buildings.

  His husband was cooking when Alfonso entered the hallway of their top-floor apartment.

  “Gabriel, I’m back,” he called as he placed his helmet on the console table in the tiled hallway. He removed the package from the helmet and walked the length of the hallway to the sunlit kitchen. The smell of pastry cooking in the oven hit his nostrils. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen and admired the tall, muscular frame of his husband. Gabriel was baking empanadas—pastry stuffed with meat, a dish he loved. On the stove sizzled a pan of albondigas, Spanish meatballs. To the side, Alfonso could see a large tortilla, freshly made.