strode towards the phone. ‘I made a note of their registration number when I went out. I’m going to call the police.’
After dialling the Stafford police and explaining about the strange couple that had visited them, Andrew went outside, keen to join the rest of his hunting party. He looked around for his shotgun.
‘Penny, darling,’ he called. ‘Have you seen my gun?’
She emerged from the house. ‘No – where did you put it?’
‘I left it right here, propped against the wall. I . . . oh, blast.’
They both looked towards the road.
‘I’d better call the police again,’ Andrew said.
At Kate’s insistence, she and Paul had backtracked a little way to try to find Kate’s phone but there was no sign of it. Paul used his own phone to call Kate’s number, but nothing rang, even though they walked back and forth along the road close to the spot where Kate was sure Paul had thrown it, nervously half-expecting Sampson to jump out at them from behind a tree. While they were searching, Paul asked Kate about Sampson, and she explained about the creepy odd-job man at the CRU who never seemed comfortable in the role.
After ten minutes’ fruitless searching, Kate was forced, reluctantly and with bad grace, to accept the fact that her phone was gone. She felt annoyed with Paul, both about the phone, and about his odd behaviour. They drove in silence to the outskirts of Stafford, glancing behind them in the car’s mirrors all the way, and as they passed a row of shops and a pub, Kate said, ‘Pull over. We need to talk.’
Paul pulled up outside the pub, The Red Lion.
Kate took a deep breath. ‘Why did you lie to them, Paul?’
He reached for her hand, and she flinched away.
‘Kate . . .’
‘No. Don’t touch me. Not until you’ve explained yourself. Why did you tell them you didn’t know who was chasing us? Why did you lie about Penkridge? And why wouldn’t you let me call the police?’
He pinched the bridge of his nose and stared at the dashboard for a long time. He thought about the shotgun in the boot of the car, wondered if his impulsive move to take it had been a mistake that would destroy Kate’s trust in him even further. Finally, he turned to look at her. ‘Okay. I’m going to tell you the truth now. I’m sorry I didn’t before, but when you hear it, you’ll understand why. But first I need a drink – and so will you.’
They pushed open the saloon door of the pub, which was empty apart from a few young blokes in football shirts, and a couple of old men restlessly toying with their cigarette packets at the bar, looking as if they couldn’t wait to get outside to smoke the next one. A middle-aged barmaid leaned on the bar and showed off a crêpey tanned cleavage as she pulled Paul’s pint.
They sat opposite one another at a wobbly table next to the cigarette machine. Kate, who had been calling Miranda whilst Paul was at the bar, put down Paul’s mobile and took a huge gulp of her vodka tonic.
‘How is he?’
‘He’s fine. It took Miranda a while to drag him away from the PlayStation to talk to me. He seems to be having a great time. Not missing his mum as much as she misses him.’
She watched Paul sip his bitter, and sensed that he was struggling with the urge to down the whole pint in one.
‘Go on then,’ Kate said. ‘Tell me why you threw my mobile out of the window rather than letting me call the police.’
It was a few moments before Paul could summon up the courage to speak.
‘Don’t you ever wonder why you never knew Stephen had a twin brother? Because I bet he never mentioned me, did he?’
Kate shook her head. She had often wondered.
‘I’ll tell you why he didn’t talk about me when you were both at the CRU.’
She waited.
‘Because I was in prison. That’s where I was when he sent me that letter.’
Kate pushed herself back in her seat, almost toppling over backwards. ‘Prison? What . . . what for?’
Paul leaned forward and tried to touch her knee but she pulled away. ‘I didn’t murder anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not a rapist or a mugger.’
‘What then?’
‘Hacking.’
‘Computer crime?’ She relaxed a little. She was still shocked, but there was something about computer crime that didn’t seem as harmful as other crimes. As long as you weren’t selling child pornography or creating viruses that destroyed people’s computers or stole their personal details . . . although, she thought, perhaps that was exactly what he had done.
‘What did you do?’
‘I robbed a bank.’
‘Oh.’ She refused his outstretched hand.
‘I was twenty. Stephen was already working at the CRU. I was living in a bedsit in London and had an incredibly dull job, working in the IT department of a sixth-form college in Southwark. But during the evenings I had a whole different identity. I was a hacker called Shadowfax – I know, it’s embarrassing, but I was a Lord of the Rings fan. I was obsessed with the challenge of getting into places where I wasn’t supposed to go. There was a small group of us – we used to chat on Usenet, which was a kind of precursor to the internet. There was a guy called Dark Fox – I know, I know – who was renowned as the top hacker in the UK. Actually, he was a cracker, which is what the true hackers, who weren’t criminals, call people who use their hacking skills maliciously.’
‘And you weren’t a cracker?’
‘No. Just a hacker.’
They both laughed at the ridiculousness of what they were saying. But then Kate stopped laughing. ‘Except you robbed a bank.’
Paul sighed. ‘It was a dare, another challenge. Dark Fox had been boasting about how he’d got into Midland Bank’s system and wiped out his overdraft. Everyone was hugely impressed by this. It took an enormous amount of skill to get into a bank’s system. Except I wasn’t that impressed. Why just wipe out your overdraft? Why not make yourself rich?’
‘Because if your bank balance suddenly shoots up, the bank might notice?’
‘Yes. Well, of course, I thought of that, so I came up with a scheme. I would invent a new identity, a fake account under a made-up name. I used the hints and information that Dark Fox had revealed and used my own skills – and I was bloody good – to get into the bank’s system, set up this bogus account and credit it with £10,000. Not an enormous amount, but I thought I’d start low.’
‘And I expect £10,000 was a lot to you back then.’
‘Yeah. It’s a lot now.’
