“They think the timings of my movements that night don’t add up. But there’s something else. I found an email, in my inbox. It’s a huge insurance policy that Gabe—someone—took out just before he died. They’ll think it was me—or that I knew about it, at least. They think I killed him, and I did it for the money.”
“An insurance policy?” Cole was blinking like someone punch-drunk, barely able to register what was going on. “I don’t—but—”
He groped his way to a pew and sat, hands lifeless between his knees, as if trying to come to terms with what I had just said. I moved across and sat beside him.
“I know. I know, I was as shocked as you. But the police have my phone, and they know about the insurance. I don’t know if I’m being set up, or if Gabe—” I swallowed. It was extraordinarily hard to spit out what I wanted to say. “If Gabe—if Gabe took the policy out himself, because he was afraid of something. That’s what I came here to ask. Did he say anything to you? Before he died?”
“Jesus—no. He didn’t say anything. Why—what—”
He stopped. His expression was utterly bewildered.
“If he didn’t take it out,” I spelled it out for him, “then someone is framing me. Do you understand? Someone killed Gabe, and they’re framing me. It’s not a burglary gone wrong, or a case of mistaken identity. Someone arranged a hit on Gabe, and they’re trying to set me up to take the fall. And if he did take out the policy, then there’s every chance he did so because he saw them coming.”
For a long moment Cole simply stared at me as if he had no idea what to do or say. Then something seemed to snap into place inside him, and I saw him visibly click into a different gear—adrenaline-fueled problem solver, so similar to Gabe that it made my heart hurt.
“Okay,” he said. He stood, walked down the gap between the pews to the side aisle, and then came back. “Okay. So. Damage control—the police are after you. What do they know?”
“They have my phone—unlocked,” I added in answer to the question I knew was coming.
Cole winced. “Not ideal, but okay.”
“They have most of Gabe’s devices—phone, laptop, and so on. I gave them the passwords that I knew, but I don’t know all his log-ins. Oh, wait—” The memory came back to me from the police interrogation. “They don’t have his hard drive. Someone took it.”
“Someone took his hard drive?” Cole sounded as puzzled as I had been.
“Yes, at least, it was gone. They asked me about it.”
“The hard drive from his main computer?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else missing?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t look before I called the police—I didn’t see any of his equipment when I went back to the house, but I assume the police would have seized it all.”
“Okay…” Cole said slowly. “And what do you need?”
“Well, I have some cash. And I have clothes and a burner phone that Hel—my sister—bought me. But I need a way to talk to Hel. And longer term, I need somewhere to sleep.”
“You can stay at m—” Cole began, and then shook his head. “No, sorry. Stupid idea, I can see that. They’ll get to me eventually. Okay, no, first things first. Communication. Let me think…” He turned away, staring at the patterns cast by the tall stained-glass windows across the austere gray flags. Then he turned back. “I think Signal is your best bet. It’s end-to-end encrypted, and there’s a setting where you can make messages expire after reading.”
“But you have to give your phone number to sign up to Signal, don’t you? And that part’s not encrypted. So if the police are monitoring Hel’s phone, they’ll be able to find this number, and then I’ll be toast.”
But Cole was shaking his head.
“No. You have to give a phone number, but it doesn’t have to be your phone number.”
“What do you mean? You have to verify it—I’m sure you do.”
“You just need a number where you can receive a text message,” Cole said. “Look.” He sat back on the pew beside me, opened his laptop bag, and pulled out a MacBook. “There’s a bunch of sites that can do this—we use them for development tools. They generate a throwaway number, and some of them you can use temporarily to receive texts. So… okay, let’s pick this one.”
He chose one site from a bunch of bookmarks, seemingly at random, and clicked through. Instantly a list of UK mobile numbers popped up on-screen, and he selected one and tapped Open.
“Right. Install Signal on your phone and enter that number.”
I did as he said, typing in the unfamiliar number laboriously and going through the sign-up process until the only step left was to verify the number. I clicked, and a few seconds later a message popped up on Cole’s computer screen.
“Click to verify…” Cole said, and tapped. There was a pause. He picked up his own phone, typing something, and as he did, my phone vibrated and the screen lit up. I unlocked it. A Signal message notification hovered at the top of my screen: Do you read me Red Sparrow, it said.
I stared down at the phone in my hand. For the first time in what felt like days, I found I was smiling.
“Cole, you are a fucking genius. Thank you.”
“You can message Hel from that number now, and there’s no way for the police to trace it. Is she on Signal?”
“I don’t think so. She’s more of a WhatsApp kind of woman.”
“Well, don’t worry, I’ll get a message to her somehow, tell her to get in touch. You should probably assume the police can read the messages if they’re monitoring her phone, but they shouldn’t be able to trace your location from them.”
“Okay. And thank you. Thank God you know this stuff.”
“Part of the job,” Cole said, a little grimly. “Look, I’ve been thinking about tonight. I wish you could stay at my flat—”
I was shaking my head even before he’d finished the sentence.
“—but it’s not going to take the police long to come sniffing around. Noemie has a cottage, though. She bought it to work in, years ago. It’s down near Rye, and we spend the weekend there sometimes. It’s nothing fancy, I don’t think it’s even got central heating in fact, but it’s quiet and isolated, and it’s in Noemie’s name so it’s one step further down the chain from you. You could stay there while you figure out your next move.”
His words gave me an uncomfortable knot in my stomach—perhaps because they echoed the questions that had been whispering at the edge of my subconscious all night: What the hell had I been thinking? And what was I going to do? I couldn’t keep running forever.
“That’s part of the problem,” I said. “I—I honestly have no idea what my next move is. I didn’t plan any of this, and now—now I’m stuck. My only way out is through.”
“Through? What do you mean, through?”
“I mean, I have to find out who killed Gabe.” There was an edge in my voice that sounded, even to my own ears, on the verge of desperation. “I have to. Nothing else matters.”
“But, Jack…” Cole’s face was alarmed. “If you’re right—if this was a hit rather than just some punk after Gabe’s computer equipment, or a burglary gone wrong—these people are dangerous. You could end up being killed yourself. I really don’t think you should go poking tigers.”
“I… don’t care.” It was the first time I had said the words aloud, though they had hovered at the edge of my conversation with Helena, unspoken, unadmitted even, but only just. “If it’s that or rot in prison for the murder of the man I love—”
Suddenly I could barely speak. The unshed tears were back, thick and clotting at the back of my throat, making it hard to get the words out. The bitterness of it crashed over me again like a wave. Gabe dead. Our life in ruins. The police hunting me for a crime I hadn’t committed and Gabe’s killer—Gabe’s killer… If I didn’t think about it, if I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, concentrating on one step at a time, then I could keep going, just. But Cole’s words had made me look up, had made me think about my situation and what I was doing, for the first time since I had left the police station. And the unfairness of it all made me gasp.
“Jack, no.” Cole’s voice was quiet, but there was something horrified there too. “Please, please don’t say that. I can’t send you out there wondering if you’re going to do something stupid to yourself—”
“I’ve already done something stupid,” I said flatly. “When I walked out of that police station. I marked myself as suspect number one. The only important thing is tracking down who did this, because if I don’t find out who killed Gabe, my life is over anyway. I have nothing to live for, don’t you get that?”
“Jack, no,” Cole said again, and this time his voice cracked. “Please don’t say that, Gabe wouldn’t want—”