10
Danny made his phone call to Elena from a public phone box. The conversation was brief, and fifteen minutes later he was in an Internet café. He bought himself a Coke and chose a computer with a view out onto the street. When he went online and logged on to MSN, Elena was waiting for him. She regularly changed her screen name and since her GCSE results had started calling herself 'A star'. Modest as always. Danny stuck to Danny.
A star says: (4:34:09 pm)
so wots all the mystery, yor call spooked me Danny says: (4:34:18 pm)
think im being followed
A star says: (4:34:26 pm)
o yeah right
Danny says: (4:34:47 pm)
im serious. a motorbike, u know i always spot bikes. Saw it twice yesday & more today. same bike same rider
A star says: (4:35:01 pm)
y should any1 want 2 follow u
Danny says: (4:35:13 pm)
dunno . . . really freakin me tho
Danny glanced out through the window. He was sure he'd seen the black TDM at least three times that day, the last time soon after he left the Victory Club.
A star says: (4:35:28 pm)
danny calm down yr making me nervos. tell me what happened @ club
Danny says: (4:35:43 pm)
saw big kev. got a mobile number, sure its my gdads
A star says: (4:35:51 pm)
wot big kev gave u the number
Danny says: (4:36:06 pm)
not exactly. kev called him, i got number from his mob
A star says: (4:36:15 pm)
r u gonna call
Danny says: (4:36:27 pm)
dunno. not sure wot 2 do
A star says: (4:36:40 pm)
don't call. might scare hm off. give me number
Danny says: (4:36:48 pm)
y
A star says: (4:37:13 pm)
mayb i can trace where kev made call 2, I mean the location, where yor gdad woz wen he took call
Danny says: (4:37:24 pm)
like how
A star says: (4:37:36 pm)
police do it. if plod can A star can. gimme number
Danny fished out the scrap of paper and sent the mobile number over to Elena.
A star says: (4:37:56 pm)
wot u do while i go 4 this
Danny says: (4:38:28 pm)
this bloke at club, said he might be able help find fergus. names eddie moyes, said id meet 2morrow but dunno if I trust him, gonna check something
A star says: (4:38:43 pm)
u r getting para!!!!!!
Danny says: (4:38:54 pm)
maybe but dnt trust any1 but u
A star says: (4:39:06 pm)
w8 there & dnt panic!!!!
They both stayed logged on to MSN but set their status to 'away'.
Danny still felt edgy. At any moment he expected to hear the growl of the TDM as it passed the window or see a man in black bikers' leathers walk through the door. The café wasn't busy – just a youngish businessman checking or sending e-mails and a couple of Australian girls online to friends back home. Their online conversations must have been interesting: the two girls kept shrieking with laughter and then whispering to each other.
Elena was always up to speed with the latest developments in online technology. She knew all about companies providing GSM location services. It was a relatively simple operation. They just traced which mobile mast the phone was connected to, and from that could locate the phone to within a hundred metres. The police had been operating the system for years and had used the location of tracked mobiles as evidence in court cases.
Now the system was available to the public, and Elena was ready to give it a shot. There were plenty of online companies offering the service. She logged on to one and read the welcome-page boast that from now on parents could keep track of their kids and companies could always know exactly what their employees were up to.
Elena went to the main page and got the bad news: to use the system, subscribers needed not only the phone number but also the phone user's four-figure PIN number. 'Should have realized they wouldn't make it easy,' she said to herself.
She decided to take a chance. She paid her ￡4.99 fee online using her cash card and got four attempts at the correct PIN number.
'Maybe he's stupid,' said Elena as she tried the obvious combinations: 1234, 4321, 1111, 2222.
But Fergus Watts obviously wasn't stupid. For another ￡20 she could try twenty more times.
Danny was going back over the website pages about his grandfather.
Ever since Eddie Moyes had introduced himself at the Victory Club, Danny had felt sure he had heard or seen the name somewhere before. And very recently.
Moyes certainly didn't look ex-SAS. He was overweight and well out of condition. But that didn't necessarily mean he wasn't a former soldier, and at the back of Danny's mind there was something telling him he'd seen the name in at least one of the stories about his grandfather.
And there was something else about Eddie Moyes that didn't feel right. At the Victory Club Danny had told him he was the grandson of Fergus Watts and that he was searching for his grandfather.
'Really?' Moyes answered with barely concealed excitement. 'I think I can help you. Look, why don't we get out of here and find somewhere we can speak in private? I know a nice little pub just down the road.'
Danny almost said yes, but something told him to back off. While everyone else at the Victory had recoiled in horror at the name Fergus Watts, this bloke was almost falling over himself to help. It didn't add up, specially as Danny had already convinced himself he was being followed.
He stalled Moyes by saying he had to get away but that they could meet the following morning at a café near Foxcroft. Moyes didn't press him to stay, just smiled, and agreed to everything he said. That worried Danny too.
'Maybe Elena's right,' he whispered, as he trawled through the pages. 'Maybe I am getting paranoid.'
He sat at the computer and went through page after page of newspaper stories, but the name Moyes didn't feature in any of them.
He was just about ready to give up when he came to a headline he'd read before:
SAS TRAITOR MASTERMINDS
MASS PRISON BREAKOUT
But this time it wasn't the headline that drew Danny's attention, it was the by-line underneath:
By our correspondent Eddie Moyes
Danny smiled. 'He doesn't want to help me, he wants to find Fergus for himself. Well, nice try, Eddie Moyes, but you're not getting to him through me. No way.'
A soft ping on the computer informed Danny that Elena was back on MSN.
A star says: (5:06:01 pm)
this could take 4ever and seriously damage my fundz
Danny says: (5:06:19 pm)
wots happening
A star says: (5:06:29 pm)
on site bt need pin no, 4 figures. dyu no his bthday, might b start or end of it. i dunno, im just guessing now
Elena was right, it could take for ever. The chance of randomly hitting the right combination was about as likely as winning the lottery. But then Danny had an idea. He took out the old photograph and turned it over.
Danny says: (5:07:12 pm)
try 8654
A star says: (5:07:21 pm)
y
Danny says: (5:07:29 pm)
just try
Elena went back to the site and punched in the four numbers. The web page changed immediately and told her that it was locating a number. In less than a minute a map came onto the screen with a circle around an area in Essex. Elena could zoom in on the map and in seconds she was writing down the details. She went back to Danny.
A star says: (5:08:08 pm)
GOT IT
They logged off quickly. Danny wanted to get back to Foxcroft to share the information and decide what to do next.
He was feeling better as he left the Internet café. He'd sussed out Eddie Moyes and there was no sign of the TDM. Maybe no one was following him at all. Maybe it was just his imagination. He turned to the right and walked towards the bus stop.
'Stand by, stand by. That's Bravo One foxtrot, he's gone right from Internet café. Fran's foxtrot.'