The Courier
AVA McCarthy

To my husband, Tom, for rowing in through thick and thin and taking on whatever needs doing. My love and appreciation always.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

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Preview

Acknowledgements

AVA McCARTHY

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Harry had a rule about breaking into safes: never do it for a client you couldn’t trust. She studied the woman sitting behind the desk and wondered how on earth she could tell.

‘We don’t have long,’ the woman said, picking at Harry’s business card with her nail. ‘He’ll be back in an hour.’

Harry tried to read her eyes but couldn’t see them behind the oversized sunglasses. ‘Perhaps we should do it another time.’

The woman’s mouth tightened. She dragged a hand through her hair, spiking up her short pixie cut.

Her name was Beth Oliver, or so she’d said. She’d called Harry an hour ago, asking to meet at her home on the seafront to discuss a specialized job. So far, they’d skirted around the details, but Harry could tell there was more.

Beth jerked to her feet and began pacing the room. Her figure was boyish, flat front and back, making it hard to pin down her age. She came to a halt by the large sash window that overlooked Dublin Bay.

‘I can’t wait any longer.’ Her fists were clenched. ‘It has to be today.’

Harry glanced over at the tall, stainless steel construction that occupied one end of the room. ‘You’re sure the laptop’s inside the vault?’

Beth nodded, shoving her hands deep into her pockets. Her outfit was casual, trainers and jeans, the kind Harry favoured when her own scams needed a quick getaway.

Inwardly, she sighed. Six months ago, her internal wiring would’ve sorted through all the signals, but lately her judgement had been off. Maybe it wasn’t surprising after all she’d been through, but surely she should’ve snapped out of it by now?

She snatched up her case and got to her feet. Playing it safe was not in her nature, but her instincts were too unreliable to take a chance right now.

‘Your best option is to call the vault manufacturers,’ she said. ‘They could probably open it for you.’

Beth spun round. ‘But they know my husband, they’ll ring him to check it’s okay.’

‘Any reason they shouldn’t?’

‘I told you, he can’t know about this.’ The pitch of Beth’s voice was ramping up. ‘Besides, I need you to examine the laptop. That’s what you do, isn’t it?’ She pushed Harry’s business card across the desk, the Blackjack Security logo visible in one corner. ‘Recover information from hard drives?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Among other things.’

‘Well, that’s why I’m hiring you.’

‘Look, Beth, I’ll be straight with you here. For all I know, you could be a stranger off the street who’s just broken into this house.’ Harry held up her hand at Beth’s outraged look. ‘And even if you are who you say you are, I have no legal authority to break into your husband’s safe and examine his laptop without his permission. I just can’t do it.’

Beth’s knuckles were white. ‘What if I could prove the safe belongs to me?’

Harry frowned. ‘Does it?’

She snorted. ‘Everything in this bloody house belongs to me. Cars, bills, mortgages, I pay for it all. Garvin’s been bleeding me dry for years.’ She resumed her patrol of the room. ‘He’s always on the point of making it big, but everything he does is a disaster.’

She stopped in front of the steel vault, arms folded, shoulders hunched. Harry moved up beside her, the polished metal reflecting her own approaching image: navy suit, tangled black curls, dark smudges for eyes. Beside Beth’s pipe-cleaner frame, her own modest curves looked buxom.

For the first time, Harry studied the vault up close. It was the size and shape of a triple wardrobe, with a heavy-duty door along its centre panel. Mounted on the handle was a brick-sized entry device complete with small keypad and screen. A red light blinked on and off in one corner.

The back of Harry’s neck tingled. She was close enough to the vault to reach out and touch it, and the challenge to crack it open made her fingertips buzz. She dragged her attention back to Beth.

‘So you can prove you own this?’

She tried to keep the hopeful tone out of her voice. There was a lot here that needed clearing up before she could accept Beth as a client.

Beth marched back to the desk and snatched an envelope from one of the drawers. ‘I’m well used to people not believing what I say.’ She handed the envelope over. ‘Especially where Garvin’s concerned.’

Harry opened the flap. Inside, she found a passport and a bank statement, both in Beth’s name. The passport showed a woman with high cheekbones and a slight upward tilt to her eyes. Harry glanced over at Beth. It could’ve been her, but the bug-eyed shades made it hard to tell.

The bank statement showed a payment to Bull Safehouses Limited and another to a local computer store. Stapled to the back were a receipt for a Dell laptop and an invoice for the vault, both dated some six months previously.

Harry raised her eyebrows at the woman’s efficiency. Either her personal accounts were in better shape than Harry’s, or she’d been planning this for some time. She ran her eye over the rest of the statement, noting the substantial payments made to men’s clothing outlets, utilities, supermarkets and petrol stations. It was clear Beth paid for a significant chunk of the household outgoings, whether her husband contributed or not.

Harry handed the paperwork back to Beth. ‘So what’s on the laptop that’s so important?’

‘Proof that he has money of his own.’

Harry threw her a sharp look, and Beth nodded.

‘He’s had money for some time, I’m convinced of it,’ she said. ‘Six months, maybe more. His suits are flashier, he’s upgraded his car. And I haven’t been getting the bills.’

‘Surely that’s good?’

Beth stared at Harry from behind her dark shades.

‘I’m about to divorce him. I need to show he has money of his own, otherwise he’ll come after mine.’ A tiny muscle flexed in her jaw. ‘And he’s had all he’s getting from me.’

Harry flashed on the scam she’d pulled in the Bahamas that year. She’d soft-soaped a banker with tales of a cheating spouse and the need to hide her assets before her divorce. Sympathy and plausibility. Vital ingredients for any fraud. Was Beth’s story really any different?

Harry stared at the woman’s pinched profile reflected in the vault door.

‘Has the black eye anything to do with it?’ she said.

Beth shot her a look, and Harry pointed at the shining steel.

‘The glasses hide a lot, but you can still see it from the side.’

Beth checked her reflection, then dropped her gaze. She slipped off the glasses and fiddled with the stems, not meeting Harry’s eyes.

She looked older without the shades, her weathered skin at odds with her youthful frame. She was probably in her mid-thirties, just a few years older than Harry, and she had the slanted eyes and fine bone structure of the woman in the passport photo. The only difference was her left eye. The skin around it was plum-purple, the cornea shot through with blood.

‘How’d that happen?’ Harry asked.

Beth didn’t answer. Instead, she tugged her shirt collar tighter round her neck, but not before Harry had spotted the bruises. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Finally Harry said, ‘Are you planning on cleaning him out?’

Beth hugged her chest. ‘I don’t want anything from him, I just want to get away.’ She glanced at her watch and rubbed her arms, as though trying to keep warm. ‘Look, are you going to help me or not? Because we’re running out of time, and believe me, you don’t want to be here when he gets back.’

Harry studied her for a moment, tossing around the possibilities. The bank statement, the passport, the black eye. Her eyes flicked towards the gleaming vault, its winking light daring her to crack it open. She made up her mind.

‘How long do we have?’ she said.

Beth’s good eye lit up. ‘Forty minutes, maybe less.’

Harry whipped a standard contract out of her bag and filled in the blanks. As she watched Beth sign, her mind ran through a checklist of the tools she’d brought along: torch, pliers, plastic bags, screwdriver, bottled water and a packet of wine gums. She’d left her laptop on the back seat of her car. She could go back out if she needed it.

She tucked the signed contract into her bag, then turned her attention to the vault. Below the small screen on the security panel was an ATM-like slit. Below that was a recessed opening with a flat metal pad about the size of a large coin. And engraved in gold at the bottom of it all was a tiny padlock logo.

Beth shifted her feet. ‘Like I said on the phone, it’s got biometric access. Have you bypassed that kind of thing before?’

‘A few times.’

In truth, Harry had only done it twice. Hacking biometric security was an unpredictable science, and mostly it took time. She peered at the slit and the small metal pad. On the face of it, she’d need two things, neither of which she had: a digital keycard and one of Garvin’s fingers.

‘He always keeps the card on him,’ Beth said, as if reading her mind. ‘Even at night. There’s no way I can get hold of it.’

Harry nodded. In her experience, people kept a backup for something that important. She moved over to the desk, scrutinizing the items on its surface: phone, pens, notepad, some disconnected cables and a silver-framed photo.

She rummaged in her case and found her torch. Then she crouched down low, training the beam on the underside of the desk. She’d once known a target who’d taped an envelope to the bottom of his desk, a secret stash for all his bank accounts and passwords. Ever since then, she’d paid attention to nooks and crannies.

She craned her neck, squinting between the cross-planks and into all the corners. Nothing.

Harry straightened up and sank into the office chair, scooting in close to the desk. Most people kept notes to jog their memories, but this guy kept things clean. No doodles, no scraps of paper, no printed reports. Her own desk was a lot more topsy-turvy.

She opened the drawers. Paperclips, spare pens, boxes of staples. She hitched the drawers out of the desk, hoisting them around and checking every surface. Still nothing.

Beth prowled around the room, checking her watch at ten-second intervals.

‘Relax,’ Harry said. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘You don’t know what he’s like. The last time he came home and found someone unexpected in the house, he just threw her out.’ Beth waved a hand in the air. ‘Oh, he was very civil about it, but she must have known something was wrong. She still left, though.’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘She was family, she should’ve known.’

Harry shot her a look. Beth was slumped against the vault, picking at her nails.

‘Known what?’ Harry said.

Beth shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘That he’d turn on me. The minute she’d gone, he smashed up a chair and used it to break my ribs.’

‘Jesus.’ Harry stared at her. ‘Why?’

‘No reason. There never has to be a reason.’

Harry blinked. She tried to imagine being tied to a man who made you feel afraid. Without warning, she flashed on a familiar face: someone she’d trusted, who’d later tried to kill her. Her heartbeat picked up, and she shook the thought away.

She drummed her fingers on the desk, trying to re-focus. Her gaze flicked over the silver-framed photo, and she reached out for a closer look. A young girl in a school uniform smiled up at her with Beth’s tilted eyes.

‘My little girl, Evie,’ Beth said. ‘She’s in boarding school. Safer there.’

Harry nodded, and turned the photo round in her hand. The glass seemed loose, the backing board not quite flush with the frame. She prised up the clips and tipped the photo out on to the desk. Tucked in against the backing board was a blue plastic swipe card, with a gold padlock logo in one corner.

Hairs rippled at the back of her neck. Beth strode towards her.

‘Don’t get too excited.’ Harry headed over to the vault. ‘We still need your husband’s fingerprint.’

She fed the card into the slot. The red light flipped to amber, and the screen prompted for her next move:

Please Scan Fingerprint

Beth fidgeted behind her. ‘What now?’

‘If we had more time, we could lift Garvin’s prints from around the house.’ Harry wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe make some kind of mould. Problem is, with ten fingers to choose from, it’s a bit hit and miss. We only get three shots before the vault locks us out for good.’

Beth groaned. ‘We’ve only twenty minutes left.’

Harry peered at the recessed opening. ‘When did your husband last open the vault?’

‘This morning. Why?’

‘Has anyone touched the finger sensor since?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Harry fetched her torch and shone it into the recess. The beam picked out a faint smudge of grease on the metal pad. She snapped off the light and ran through her options. She could hack the sensor in a few different ways, but the priority here was speed.

‘What are you going to do?’ Beth said.

Harry shrugged. ‘Use the only fingerprint we have. The one on the sensor.’ She saw Beth’s blank look and explained. ‘I’m going to try and reactivate it.’

Harry bent down low so that her mouth was on a level with the metal pad. It was a capacitive sensor that measured electrical changes across its surface when a human finger touched it. A high measurement meant a ridge in a fingerprint, and a low measurement meant a valley. The sensor put it all together to reconstruct a fingerprint pattern.

The trick now was to make it think that Garvin’s finger was still there.

Harry swallowed, and licked her lips. She needed to breathe on the surface of the sensor, letting the moisture from her breath gather between the lines in the grease stain. With luck, it’d be enough for the sensor to measure the capacitance and mistake it for an actual finger.

Gently, she breathed on to the surface of the pad, exhaling for three or four seconds. The screen beeped, and she glanced up at the message:

Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.

Damn. Probably too much moisture. She must have exhaled for too long. She could try it again, but in her experience, tricking around with her breathing technique wasn’t going to help.

‘Now what?’ Beth’s voice was shrill.

Harry aimed for a confident tone. ‘Plan B.’

She reached for her case, but before she could open it the desk phone rang. Harry jumped. Beth’s hand flew to her throat and they both stared at the phone.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Harry said.

Beth shook her head. After four rings, the answering machine kicked in.

‘If you’re there, pick up the bloody phone.’ The man’s voice was gravelly, his accent clipped. New Zealand? He waited a beat before continuing. ‘Forget it. I’m nearly there, I’ll see you in two minutes.’

The call ended with a click. Beth stepped backwards, wide-eyed. Her fear was infectious, and Harry found herself checking over her shoulder.

‘Can you do it?’ Beth’s voice was a whisper.

‘In two minutes?’ Harry swallowed. ‘Maybe. Or you could bail out now?’

Beth’s headshake was almost imperceptible. A voice in Harry’s head shrieked at her to run, but she blocked it out. Fumbling through her case, she found a clear plastic bag and a bottle of water. Trying to hold the bag steady, she half-filled it with water, then tied a knot in the top. She kneaded it, testing its pliability. It wobbled like jelly in her hands. She squeezed a corner of the water-filled plastic into a marble-sized balloon. Then she turned back to the vault.

She felt Beth’s eyes on her like a pair of hot skewers. Holding her breath, she lowered the balloon on to the sensor and counted to three.

Beep. Beth cursed. Harry’s gaze shot to the screen:

Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.

Hot sweat flashed down her back. She’d only one shot left. She grabbed her torch and shone it on to the sensor. The smudge was still there, faint but visible.

‘One minute left,’ whispered Beth.

Harry ripped out the packet of wine gums from her case, the contents exploding on to the floor. She snatched up an orange jelly. Its surface was soft and dry. She pushed her index finger into it, coaxing the smooth jelly round her fingertip with her thumb and middle finger.

The jelly had the same capacitance as the skin on a human finger. Hackers called it the Gummi bear attack, and there was a small chance it could fool the sensor.

Harry moved her fingers into the recess. Wheels crunched on gravel in the driveway outside, and Beth gasped. Harry froze, a pulse hammering in her throat.

A car door thunked.

Harry swallowed and lowered the wine gum towards the pad, her fingers trembling. Footsteps scraped against stone outside. She touched the jelly against the metal, keeping the pressure even.

One, two, three.

The light flashed green. Bolts clinked inside the vault. A split second later, the door to the house crashed open.

2

Finding a diamond could mark a man out for death. Mani knew this, but still he had no choice.

Black dust swirled in the beam from his helmet, thicker than smoke. There was always dust. It burned his throat and crusted against his skin. Most of the time, he could barely see his own hands.

He adjusted the mask over his mouth. It was a poor fit, inadequate for wide, African noses. Most of the men pulled them down under their chins after the first twenty minutes.

‘They don’t fit,’ Takata explained. ‘Besides, Van Wycks, they say the dust is safe.’

But Mani knew better.

He tightened his grip on the drill, holding it like a machine gun, one hand in front of the other. Pickaxes clinked in a nearby tunnel, and in the distance someone buzzed up a chainsaw. Mani lodged the bit into a crevice on the blue kimberlite rock and leaned into it, the pressure burning through the knife wound in his arm. His heart pounded against the butt of the drill.

‘Mani? Are you all right?’

Mani could hardly see Takata’s face, but he felt the old man’s bony fingers on his arm and heard his wheezing chest. Mani nodded, blanking out the cramped tunnel and the ceiling that seemed ready to crush him.

He pictured the layers of rock pressing down from above. Three or four feet of loose black soil up near the surface. After that, the soft yellow ground, for another fifty feet. Then the blue ground, where the kimberlite was hard and dense, to a depth of six hundred feet. All of it right above Mani’s skull. And all of it packed with diamonds.

‘Mani?’

The bony fingers squeezed his good arm. Mani shook the sweat out of his eyes and fired up the pneumatic motor. Vibrations hammered through his body. The drill chewed into the tunnel wall, spitting out chunks of blue-grey rock. The noise blasted his eardrums till they felt like they might bleed.

He released the trigger and squinted at the blast hole. The drilling had ground up more black dust and Mani could feel it coating his skin. The heat was suffocating, the reek of chemical explosives filling his sinuses.

Up until a month ago, his days had been spent in air-conditioned libraries and classrooms. He’d been studying engineering at the University of Cape Town. The student hostel was small but clean, and he’d had his own room. Here at the Van Wycks mine, he shared a locked-down compound with thirty other men. The toilets were filthy and had no doors, and the single shower doubled up as a refuse dump.

‘Roer jou gat!’ Move your arse!

The guard punched Mani hard on the shoulder. Hot pain sliced through the wound in his arm, and he winced. He half-turned, being careful not to meet the guard’s eyes. His name was Okker. He stood with his legs wide apart, anchoring his twenty-stone bulk in place. His face was a white moon, slick with sweat.

‘Daardie gat is te klein.’ That hole is too small.

Okker slapped a wooden club into the palm of one hand. Mani knew, as did all the men, that the large business end was weighted with a sheath of lead. The guard stepped towards him.

‘Doen dit oor.’ Do it over.

‘Yes, sir.’

Mani knew the switch to English would annoy him. Mani’s Afrikaans was fluent, but he rarely gave voice to its guttural sounds. He turned back to the wall, fumbling for the blast hole with the drill bit. He felt Takata’s hand under his elbow, guiding him.

A sickening crack split the air. Takata cried out and slumped to the floor. Mani spun round in time to see Okker raise his club again.

‘Stupid old man,’ Okker yelled in English. ‘Didn’t you understand what I said? I told him to do it!’

He swung the club down with both hands. In the same instant, Mani hurled himself in front of Takata. The club smashed into Mani’s shoulder. He yelled, sank to his knees. The old man’s chest heaved with his wet bubbling cough.

Behind Mani, wood slapped against skin in a slow, menacing rhythm. He snapped his gaze round. Okker lashed out with his foot, crunching it into Mani’s ribs. Stabbing pain shot through him. He doubled over, clutching his side. Dear God. Was he going to die here in this rat hole?

He thought of his brother and gritted his teeth. If it wasn’t for Ezra, he wouldn’t be here. He flashed on his brother’s face leering up at him from the bed, one tooth missing. The diamonds, they belong to the African people. And beside him, Asha, beseeching him with her calm, almond-shaped eyes.

Asha.

He tensed his muscles, heaved himself to his feet, and turned to face Okker. The guard was flexing his fingers around the wooden club, his hands small for such a large man. There was no one else around.

A hooter shrieked in the distance, and Okker froze. He narrowed his eyes. Then he rammed the club into Mani’s chest, forcing him backwards and pinning him against the wall. Jagged rock bit into Mani’s back.

‘I’ve been watching you.’ Okker’s voice was low. ‘And I know what you’re up to.’

Mani stopped breathing, every muscle suspended.

‘I don’t know how you’re doing it,’ Okker went on. ‘But I’m going to find out.’ He jabbed the club up under Mani’s chin, and leaned in close. His breath was hot and sour. ‘And when I do, you and the old man are dead.’

Mani dug his nails into the rock behind him, his muscles rigid. Okker’s eyes slid down to Takata’s motionless body. Then he jerked the club away and stepped back.

‘Get him out of here.’

Mani rubbed his jaw with a trembling hand, then bent down and lifted Takata to his feet. The old man was light, his flesh parchment-thin on birdlike bones. Takata was fifty-three, but his body was older, too old to be down here. His sons and grandsons all worked in the mine. So had his daughter, for a time.

Looping one arm around Takata’s waist, Mani half-carried him along the uneven path, ignoring the fiery pain in his own ribs. The tunnel widened. Cones of light criss-crossed through the blackness as other miners spilled from their own tunnels into the belly of the mine.

‘You should not have done that.’ Takata’s voice was low.

‘I should have let him kill you?’

Mani felt Takata shrug. He guided the old man towards the lift shaft.

‘Your daughter would not thank me for letting you die,’ Mani said.

Another shrug. ‘Asha, she knows I will not live for ever.’

Mani didn’t answer. Together they trudged alongside the metal conveyor that carried the ore to the crushers. It creaked and rattled, hauling thousands of tonnes through the tunnels. The dust here seemed paler but just as dense, whipped up by dry ore on the move. Dry drilling was the rule in the Van Wycks mine. Dust-suppressing water sprays would have cleaned the air, but were forbidden in case they harmed the kimberlite.

Mani pushed into the lift along with Takata and a dozen other men. Daylight bled down through the shaft, and all around him the miners hacked out their damp, rattling coughs.

The ancient crate groaned upwards. Inch by inch, the darkness thinned, the air grew warmer, until finally they broke through the surface. Mani squinted against the sunlight and the blizzard of dust. The lift clattered to a halt, and Takata hobbled out, following the other men. Mani trailed after them, his mask still in place.

The throb of diesel engines filled the air. Tractors and dumper trucks lumbered around the open pit. The men on the ground, mostly black, guided the heavy machinery with yells and hand signals. None of them wore a mask.

Mani flicked a glance at the tonnes of ore piled in the waste pits a few hundred yards away. There were diamonds in those discarded mounds, if you knew where to look.

‘I’m watching you, kaffir.’

Okker was so close that Mani could feel the heat radiating from his white flesh. He slid his gaze away and shuffled behind the other men, keeping his eyes on the ground until Okker had moved away. Then he turned to stare again at the stockpiles of kimberlite ore. Dust caught in his throat, and he coughed like the other men, pain slicing his lungs like slivers of glass. His eyes watered, blurring his focus. His gaze drifted beyond the waste pits to the shadowy Kuruman mountains in the north. The mountains they called the Asbestos Hills.

Diamonds and dust.

He wondered which would kill him first.

3

Harry yanked open the vault door and scrambled inside, Beth pushing in behind her. Outside in the hall, the front door slammed.

Harry’s eyes raked along metal shelves, her heart pumping. Together, they groped through them. Stacks of small coloured envelopes covered every surface. No sign of a laptop.

‘What the fuck?’ Garvin’s gravelly voice echoed in the hall.

Harry whipped around, but they were still alone. She turned back to the vault, craning to get a view of the top shelf. Blood drummed in her ears.

A second voice spoke, lighter than Garvin’s. ‘Move inside. Now.’

Harry frowned. Garvin hadn’t sounded like a man to take orders. Then her brow cleared. In the corner of the top shelf was a slender black shape.

‘Got it!’ she whispered. She stretched up, grabbed the laptop and shoved it into her case. ‘Come on, let’s go. He can’t take on both of us.’

She checked on Beth, one hand on the vault door. Beth was on her knees, stuffing blue and white envelopes into a black duffel bag. Why wasn’t she moving?

Ratchet-snap. Harry spun round. The spring-loaded action had come from the hall. When Garvin spoke, his voice was shaking.

‘You can’t shoot me,’ he said.

Harry’s eyes widened. Behind her, Beth had stopped moving.

‘Someone will hear.’ Garvin sounded close to tears. ‘There’ll be witnesses.’

‘I never leave witnesses.’

Harry’s hand flew to her mouth. She ducked back into the vault and swung the door to, leaving it open a slit.

‘The light!’ Beth pointed at a button on the door jamb.

Harry pressed it, keeping her finger down, and like a fridge light the bulb went out. She peered through the crack.

A heavy-set man was backing into the room, hands in the air. Crescents of sweat stained his shirt under the arms.

‘I’ve got money,’ Garvin said. ‘Take whatever you want.’

He stumbled against a chair and whimpered, his shoulders sagging. A middle-aged man in a baseball cap followed him in. His hands were clamped around a blocky pistol trained on Garvin’s face.

Harry swallowed. Her fingers felt slippery with sweat. Beside her, Beth had frozen.

The man gestured with the gun. ‘Face the window.’

Garvin swivelled obediently to his right, like a child anxious to please. Harry could see his profile: the trembling lip, the puffy face. The other man scanned the room, his gaze sliding towards the vault. Harry shrank back, pressing up against the shelves, her finger still on the light switch. Beth had flattened herself against one wall.

Metal snapped and clicked. Harry flinched, waiting for the shot. When none came, she inched forward and peeped out through the slit.

Garvin’s hands were handcuffed behind his back. The man jabbed the gun into his shoulder blade.

‘Kneel.’

Garvin dropped to his knees, making small mewling sounds. The man with the gun touched the elongated barrel to the back of Garvin’s head.

‘Any last requests? Sorry, too late.’ Phut-phut. The muffled shots spat into Garvin’s skull. He jerked once, then crumpled to the floor.

Harry gasped. Her finger slipped, and light flooded back into the vault. The man in the baseball cap whirled round and for an instant they locked eyes. Then he raised his gun to her face. Harry screamed, slammed the vault door shut. Bullets zinged against metal, and the door’s automatic bolts clanked home.

Harry backed away, her heart pounding. She could hear Beth moaning in the dark.

‘Who is he?’ Harry whispered, but Beth didn’t answer.

The door handle rattled, and Harry held her breath. She cocked her head, straining for more sounds. Nothing.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dark. Beth had slid to the floor, knees up, hands over her ears. Harry had a sudden image of Garvin’s bulk, towering over Beth with a broken chair. She hugged her arms across her chest, and tried to be glad he was dead.

She squinted into the gloom. The only source of light was a small red dot blinking on the door, the twin of the light on the security panel outside.

Harry stiffened. The keycard! Had she left it in the slot? She couldn’t remember. But she’d dropped the wine gum to the floor, hadn’t she? Even if he found it, he couldn’t possibly guess its purpose.

Unless she’d left it on the sensor.

Dammit, why couldn’t she remember?

The light blinked amber, and Harry froze. He must have found the keycard and fed it back into the slot. She backed up against the wall in line with the door and lifted her case, ready to strike. It was the only weapon she had. Her eyes fastened on the amber dot, waiting for it to turn green.

Nothing happened.

‘What’s he doing?’ Beth whispered, clambering to her feet.

Harry shook her head. She pressed her ear up against the door. The steel was like ice on her cheek. She could make out a faint, scuffing sound, like something heavy being dragged.

Nausea slithered inside her. Dear God. He was going to use Garvin’s fingers on the sensor. Harry closed her eyes, blocking out the image of him roughing up a corpse to press dead flesh against the pad.

The numbers. Concentrate on the numbers. Ten fingers, three shots. Maybe they’d get lucky and he’d strike out.

The scuffling grew closer.

Who was she kidding? Those odds weren’t real. After all, who used their pinkie on a biometric scanner? Chances were, Garvin had used his thumb or index finger, something the man in the baseball cap had probably worked out for himself.

Four fingers, three shots. Those odds were on the killer’s side.

The scuffling stopped. Harry waved Beth to the other side of the door, and raised her case back over her head. She stared at the amber light.

Handcuffs clicked, then clattered to the floor. A trickle of sweat ran down Harry’s back. There was a grunt, a final heave. Harry counted to three. Then a soft beep sounded from the other side of the door.

Strike one.

Harry took a deep breath and flexed her fingers on the case. Beth had found a metal cashbox on one of the shelves and was holding it high over her head. She traded looks with Harry and nodded, her eyes wide with fright.

They waited. One, two, three.

Another beep, faint but unmistakable. Harry let out a long breath. He had one shot left. If he failed, he’d need a code to reset the device before he could try again. And the only person who knew that code was dead.

Sweat ran into Harry’s eyes and the amber light blurred. Beth’s breathing came fast and shallow.

Beep-beep-beep. Amber flashed to red. The man outside roared, and gunshots pumped into the lock. Harry screamed, spinning away from the door. Metal screeched as the vault’s anti-attack bolts slammed into place, dead-locking it against assault. Bullets blasted the door, round after round, until finally the shooting stopped.

Harry glanced over at Beth. She was cowering on the floor, arms over her head. Had that become her only means of defence, curling into a submissive ball? Harry rubbed at her ears. They still pounded with echoes, or maybe it was her own blood exploding through her veins.

For a long time, neither of them moved. Hot metal ticked into the vault. The air grew muggy, heavy with exhaled moisture, and for the first time Harry worried about being able to breathe. The walls seemed to crush in on her, and she fought an urge to hyperventilate. How long could they last in here without fresh air?

‘Maybe he’s gone,’ Beth whispered eventually.

‘Maybe.’ Harry slid to the floor and tried to regulate her breathing. ‘Or maybe he’s just waiting us out.’

Beth’s face crumpled, making Harry feel like a brute for pointing out the truth. She studied her for a moment: the cropped hair, the bruised eye, the fingers that plucked at the black duffel bag.

‘Are you glad Garvin’s dead?’ Harry asked.

Beth shrugged, and didn’t look up. She twisted the bag’s cord around her fingers.

Harry had another question, though she didn’t expect an answer to this one either.

‘Why did you stay with him?’

This time, Beth looked up. ‘You think that, just by leaving, the violence would’ve stopped?’ She shook her head, jerking at the drawstring on her bag. ‘Leaving is more dangerous than staying, sometimes. Unless you plan it right.’

She slid Harry a glance, then dug an envelope out of the bag.

‘Know what this is?’ She hooked her fingers under the flap and extracted something small. ‘Here, catch.’

Harry caught the tiny pellet Beth had flung into the air. She rolled it between her fingers, then held it near the red light in the door. It looked like a piece of clouded crystal, about the size of a garden pea. Even in the tiny glow of light, its metallic lustre gleamed.

‘That’s over a carat,’ Beth said. ‘Maybe a hundred and twenty-five points.’

Harry stared at her. ‘This is a diamond?’

‘A rough diamond, uncut. Africa’s finest.’

Harry turned the stone over in her hand. It felt smooth, as though coated in an oily film, and looked more like a chip of polished lead than a diamond. She shook her head.

‘So I broke into Garvin’s safe to let you steal his diamonds?’

Beth pointed to her bloodied eye. ‘Call it compensation.’

Harry stared at the frail woman in front of her. Battered wife or burglar, who could tell? At this point, Harry’s internal barometer was swinging wildly.

She held the stone out to Beth, who waved it away.

‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘You’ve earned it.’

Harry shook her head and tossed the stone into Beth’s lap. Then she sprang to her feet, her limbs suddenly twitchy with the need to get away. She switched her attention to the vault door, running her hands along the cold steel. The man with the gun must have gone by now. Surely he couldn’t risk hanging around a dead body, live witnesses or not?

‘How do we get out of here?’ Beth’s voice was tight.

But Harry wasn’t worried about how to get out. Security was paramount for this kind of vault, but its focus was to keep intruders out, not lock hapless prisoners in.

The question was not how to open the door, but what was waiting for them on the other side of it.

Harry’s fingers groped in the dark till she found what she was looking for: a long metal lever. It was the vault’s internal escape mechanism, required by safety regulations in case someone got trapped inside. The regulators probably hadn’t had her exact situation in mind, but Harry was grateful for their foresight.

She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. Then she wiped her palms against her thighs, and gripped the lever. She glanced back at Beth.

‘Ready?’

Beth jumped to her feet and nodded, hitching the duffel bag over her shoulder.

Harry pushed the lever down with both hands. Bolts shunted back through metal, one after the other. The light flicked green. Holding her breath, Harry pressed her shoulder to the door. It didn’t budge.

Shit. Had the killer’s bullets damaged the mechanism?

She slapped her palms flat against the door, arms fully extended. ‘Come on, push.’

Beth joined her at the door, and together they heaved. A chink of light sliced into the vault.

‘Keep pushing!’ Harry said.

‘Something’s jammed up against it!’

Grunting, they leaned their weight into the door until finally it gave way, breaking open a small gap. Beth’s rail-thin figure disappeared through it.

‘Beth, wait!’ Harry froze, waiting for the spray of bullets. When it didn’t come, she peeped out into the room. It was empty.

She grabbed her case and squeezed through the gap, stumbling over the reason why the door had jammed. Garvin’s body lay wedged against it, face down on the floor.

His hair was wet with blood, and Harry caught a whiff of dried urine in the air. She backed away, clutching the case to her chest, then raced out into the hall.

‘Beth?’

The front door was wide open. Harry sprinted outside, checking the street. People were out strolling, taking in the sea view over the wall. There was no sign of Beth.

A siren whined in the distance. Harry whirled round, taking in her choices. Behind her, the open front door. To her left, her red Mini parked by the kerb. In spite of the chill blowing in from the sea, Harry’s brain was over-heating.

She edged towards her car, raking over the highlights of her morning so far. A safe that she’d broken into illegally. A client who’d disappeared. A duffel bag full of stolen diamonds. Not to mention a dead body. The list wasn’t encouraging.

The siren grew louder and she fumbled for her keys. Did she really want to stick around for the police? The last time she’d got close to an investigation, she’d ended up a suspect. Still was, for all she knew. That wouldn’t help her credibility this time round.

With trembling fingers, she opened the boot of her car and dumped her case inside. She thought of the man in the baseball cap who didn’t leave witnesses, and her throat closed over. She knew she should talk to the police, but for the second time that day, a voice in her head screamed ‘run’.

The siren grew more strident. It wasn’t too late. After all, no one knew who she was. The killer didn’t know her name, and the police didn’t need to know it either.

Harry gasped. Her business card. It was still on the desk inside. She spun round and scrambled back up the steps, taking them two at a time. The siren was close now, in the same street. She raced back into the house and made straight for the office. Averting her eyes from Garvin’s body, she scoured the surface of the desk. She hauled out drawers, checked on the floor.

Tyres squealed outside, car doors slammed. A cold shiver rippled down Harry’s spine.

Her business card was gone.

4

‘Beth Oliver died four months ago.’

Harry turned away from the window and gaped at the plain-clothes detective by the door. ‘What?’

‘That’s right.’ He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms folded across his chest. ‘So now as well as all the other holes in your story, you’re saying you were hired by a dead lady.’

Harry squinted at him, as if sharpening her focus could change what he said. He was lean and wiry, his sandy hair cut short like a schoolboy’s. His name was Hunter, and he’d been questioning her in Beth’s kitchen for two hours.

She thought of Beth: the battered face, the passport, the bank statement. She shook her head, but her insides were sinking.

‘She was here, I talked to her.’

Hunter shrugged. ‘I don’t know who you talked to, but it wasn’t Beth Oliver. She died in a car accident last July.’

Harry groaned, and sank into a kitchen chair. She’d known something was off from the start. Why the hell hadn’t she just walked away?

She shook her head. She knew why. That damn vault. Even as a kid she’d been the same, hacking into computers just to prove she could. By the time she was eleven she could crack open almost anything, and mostly it just brought her trouble. Maybe at the age of twenty-nine it was time to consider grown-up things like consequences.

She looked up at Hunter and had a hard time meeting his eyes. ‘Seems like I misread my client.’

‘If there ever was a client.’

‘Look—’

‘The woman next door saw you charge out of the house, ready to take off.’

Harry glared at him. ‘I told you, I wasn’t taking off. I was looking for Beth.’

‘So why’d you go back into the house?’

She hesitated. She could hardly tell him she’d been looking for her business card, trying to cover her tracks. ‘I don’t know. To stay with the body, call the police. I don’t really remember.’

‘But you didn’t call us, the woman next door did.’ Hunter pushed himself away from the door and sauntered towards her, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his chinos. ‘Imagine that. You’re standing here with a dead body and you don’t call the police.’

Harry met his gaze and tried not to blink. ‘I must have heard the sirens. Why would I call you if you were right outside?’

He stared at her for a long moment, and she made herself stare back. Faint cracks fanned out around his tired hazel eyes, but otherwise his skin was smooth. She guessed he was probably somewhere in his thirties.

‘So tell me more about this man with the gun,’ he said eventually.

‘I’ve told you all I can remember. He was wearing a baseball cap, and a light blue jacket and jeans, I think.’

‘Height?’

‘Five feet ten or eleven, maybe.’

‘Face? Age?’

Harry shrugged. ‘He was tanned, quite lined. Compact build. In his fifties, I’d say.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I only saw him for a minute through a narrow slit. Ask the woman next door. If she saw me, she might have seen him.’

‘We already did. She didn’t see anyone. No man in a baseball cap. No Beth-lookalike.’ He stepped closer towards her. ‘Just you, dumping a case into your car.’

‘That was the laptop, I told you. Here.’ She stood up, fished in her bag and held out her car keys. ‘Red Mini parked outside. Take the laptop, I don’t want it.’

Beth probably hadn’t wanted it either. She’d only been interested in the diamonds.

Hunter took the keys and tossed them to a uniformed officer, who caught them and left the room. Then Hunter turned back to Harry, moving in closer. He smelled of coffee and herbal deodorant.

‘Harry Martinez.’ He peered at her face. ‘Any reason I should know that name?’

Her stomach dipped. She shook her head and aimed for a casual shrug. After all, what could she say? That her father was Salvador Martinez, the high-profile banker who’d gone to prison for insider trading? That the fraud squad had been watching her now for six months, convinced she’d helped him stash some of his money?

Hunter’s eyes never left her face. ‘What’s Harry short for? Harriet?’

‘Henrietta.’ Her father had been the one to start calling her Harry. Harry the Burglar, to be precise, but now was not the time to share that particular detail.

Hunter’s eyes dropped to the business card she’d given him. ‘Blackjack Security. You own this company?’

Harry nodded. ‘I started it up a few months ago.’

‘What kind of work do you do?’

She shrugged. ‘It varies. Penetration tests to check system security, computer intrusion investigations, computer forensics for litigation.’

Hunter was nodding slowly. ‘You make a habit of breaking into people’s safes?’

Harry felt her cheeks burn. ‘Not without the owner’s permission. Look, you don’t really think I killed Garvin Oliver, do you?’

Hunter cocked his head, like a terrier processing signals. Then he waggled his hand, showing how much her credibility hung in the balance. Before she could press him further, the uniformed officer returned to the room and handed back her keys. Hunter threw him an inquiring look, and the officer nodded. Harry looked from one to the other, wondering what damning evidence they’d turned up against her in her own car.

Hunter’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID, and his mouth tensed. She could see him debating whether to take the call, then he answered it in terse tones. While he listened tight-lipped to the voice on the other end, Harry thought of her missing business card.

She longed to believe that Beth had taken it, but she knew the chances were slim. More likely the man in the baseball cap had seen it and slipped it into his pocket. The notion made Harry’s brain jangle. The killer already knew her face; now he knew where to find her, too.

‘She what?’

Harry snapped her eyes back to Hunter. He was glaring at her, deep lines carving up his forehead. Her heartbeat geared up a notch. He listened some more to the voice on the phone. Then he ended the call, his eyes still drilling through hers.

‘That was Detective Inspector Lynne,’ he said. ‘Ring a bell?’

Harry’s fingers tightened around her keys. For an instant, she was back in the Bahamas, a suitcase full of banknotes by her side; and waiting for her in Dublin was a detective with watchful grey eyes. She swallowed.

‘I think so,’ she managed. ‘Isn’t he with Fraud?’

‘I put in a call to check you out. Seems Lynne has dibs on the name Martinez. Gets alerted any time it turns up.’ His eyes probed hers. ‘He reminded me about the case against your father.’

‘So? My father went to prison for six years. Case closed.’

‘Apparently not.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘Sal Martinez. I should’ve made the connection. Earned millions in insider trading, didn’t he?’

‘Which he forfeited to the courts as part of his sentencing. He paid out over forty million euros.’

‘But according to Lynne, there was more. And it’s missing.’

Harry thrust out her chin. ‘What’s all that got to do with me?’

‘Lynne’s a tenacious man.’ He paused. ‘He asked me to give you a message.’

‘Oh?’

‘He advises you not to plan another trip to the Bahamas.’

Harry flashed on another image: jade green sea, baking sand and the slick-slick of cards being dealt. She shook her head.

‘Am I being accused of something here?’ she said.

‘Like I said, Lynne is tenacious.’ Hunter glared at her. ‘He doesn’t give up.’

Harry sighed. Suddenly her whole body ached, as if reminders of the past had sapped her energy.

‘Look, if I’m not under arrest for anything, I’d like to go.’

Hunter shrugged. ‘You can go. For now.’

She made her way past him towards the door, then hesitated and looked back.

‘The man with the gun.’ She bit her lip. ‘He saw me.’

‘So you said.’

‘He might find me. He said—’

‘—that he never leaves witnesses. You said that too.’

Harry stared at him. ‘Aren’t you going to do anything about that? Offer some kind of protection?’

Hunter shrugged. ‘We’ll get a patrol car to cruise by your house once in a while.’

‘What good will that do? He’s not going to wait in the street with a rifle, is he?’

‘I don’t know, you tell me.’ Hunter narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re the only one who saw him.’

He turned away, dismissing her. Harry’s insides plummeted. She thought of the man in the baseball cap and how he’d locked eyes with her just before he pulled the trigger. She thought of her business card, in plain view on the desk. Her head reeled. She stumbled through the hall and out on to the street. The air was fresh and salty, and she gulped it down. Then slowly, she moved towards her car.

Instinctively, she checked over her shoulder, her eyes sweeping across the array of windows fronting the Georgian terrace. So many places for a man with a gun to hide. She shuddered.

If she could just find the woman she still thought of as Beth, then maybe the police would believe her. But how? Somehow, she was connected to Garvin Oliver, but what did Harry know about him? According to Beth he was a sponging wife-beater, but her version of events was hardly reliable now.

Harry began to regret handing over the laptop. It might have revealed information about Garvin Oliver that could have helped to track Beth down. On the other hand, maybe she should just let the police handle it. Right now, they didn’t believe a word she said, but they were bound to discover the truth eventually.

Raindrops spat against her face. She unlocked her car and ducked inside, and immediately her nose wrinkled at an alien smell. The uniformed officer must have been a smoker; he’d left his tell-tale sootiness behind. She opened a couple of windows to generate a cross-breeze, and did a quick visual survey of her car.

Everywhere showed signs of a cursory search. The pile of computer books on the passenger seat had been rearranged and her notepads had fallen to the floor. She flipped open the glove compartment. Her maps and screwdrivers had been disturbed too. She felt a creeping sense of violation at the thought of someone rifling through her things. Then she checked the back seat, and frowned. Her laptop was missing.

Harry’s spine buzzed. She leapt out of the car, hauled open the boot and stared inside. The raindrops were heavier now, raucous seagulls free-wheeling inland in packs. Harry reached for the case that lay where she’d left it. Inside it, her torch, pliers and the rest of her toolkit were all undisturbed.

And alongside them was Garvin Oliver’s laptop.

5

Callan clanked through the turnstiles, hitching his bag higher on his shoulder. The only thing inside it was a Browning pistol that he’d already fired once that day. He checked his watch. In another twenty minutes, he planned on firing it again.

He scanned his surroundings. In front of him was an oval of immaculate grass, bounded by low hedges. Adverts for Hennessy and Paddy Power bookmakers lined the railings on the inside. The parade ring was empty.

He tipped up his baseball cap, backhanding the sweat from his forehead. He was cutting things bloody fine. The last job had been a screw-up, throwing him off schedule. He pictured the puffy-faced man kneeling on the floor, pissing himself as he waited to be shot. It should’ve been quick. In, out. No mess, no witnesses. He fingered the business card in his pocket. Now he had the Spanish-looking girl to add to his list.

People swarmed in front of him, beating a path between the grandstand, the bookies and Madigan’s Bar. Leopardstown racecourse always drew the crowds.

Leopardstown. Baile on Lobhair. Town of the lepers.

Pain pulsed through Callan’s skull, and with it an image: baked red dirt, buzzing insects, the stench of rotting flesh. A village in Sierra Leone, bodies butchered for the ritual cannibalism of the RUF. But in all of the rebels’ murderous binges, they never ate the lepers.

Callan blinked, shoved the memory away. He swallowed and edged closer to the ring. Soon the punters would be five deep around it, inspecting the horses for the next race. That was fine with him. He needed the crowd cover.

He opened his programme and checked through the runners for the one o’clock race. There were seven in total, and number four was underlined: Honest Bill. The small print confirmed what he needed to know: Jockey, R. Devlin; Trainer, D. Kruger; Owner, T. Jordan.

Frantic commentary echoed over the tannoy, winding up the 12.40 race. Punters began staking out their space by the parade ring. Callan adjusted the bag on his shoulder. It was light. In the jungles of Angola and Sierra Leone, every man in his unit had carried an AK-47, ten magazines, an extra ammunition belt, an M79 grenade launcher and a supply of white phosphorus grenades. Here, things were different. Here, you only carried what you could conceal.

Hooves clopped behind him, buckles clinked. He turned to see a frisky black horse being led into the ring. His coat was glossy, his chest muscles bulging. Callan consulted his racecard. Number one, Rottweiler’s Lad.

‘Bit of a sprinter, that fella.’ A middle-aged man had appeared next to him at the railings, chewing on a pipe. ‘Good deep chest.’

Callan grunted, raking his gaze over the other horses filing into the ring. Numbers three, six and five, all dark brown. They jig-jogged past, stirring up an aroma of hay and manure. Where the hell was number four?

The public address system crackled, the announcer giving the all-clear on the previous race. ‘Winner all right, winner all right.’

The signal for the bookies to start paying out. The man with the pipe ripped up his ticket and snorted. Then he turned to Callan, sweet tobacco mingling with stable smells.

‘Who d’ya fancy for this one, then?’

Callan’s jaw tightened. He didn’t have time for ring-side tipsters, but rudeness would attract attention. His urban camouflage was anonymity: jeans and casual jacket, cap over the buzz-cut, everything loose-fitting to hide the muscles so at odds with his middle-aged face. After one o’clock, he needed to be forgettable.

He feigned a smile. ‘Honest Bill.’

‘Ah, Billy-boy. Great horse. Brave as they come.’

Rottweiler’s Lad pranced by, tossing his head and snorting. Jockeys began drifting into the ring, and Callan checked the racecard for Honest Bill’s colours: black-and-white cubes. None of the jockeys matched.

‘There’s your fella.’

Callan turned. A honey-brown horse bounced into the ring. His coat looked sweaty, and his hind legs were sheathed in red bandages. The saddle cloth bore the number four.

The muscles in Callan’s neck tensed. His eyes travelled beyond the horse to the jockey who’d stalked in behind him. He was taller than most, wiry like all of them, and his silks were patterned like a chessboard. Rob Devlin. Callan studied him, making sure he’d recognize him again.

Devlin made his way into the centre of the ring, shaking his head at a red-faced man who was waiting for him there.

‘Is that the trainer?’ Callan said.

The man with the pipe followed his gaze, then shook his head. ‘That’s the owner, Tom Jordan. TJ, they call him.’

Callan watched the red-faced man. He was standing eye-to-eye with the jockey, trying to stare him down, but Devlin seemed to be doing all the talking. A bell sounded, and the pair broke apart. Jockeys scattered to mount their rides, and a tall, scowling man broke away from another group to give Devlin a leg up.

‘That’s the trainer,’ the man with the pipe said. ‘Dan Kruger. One of the best.’

Callan narrowed his eyes. So that was Kruger. He edged around the ring to get a better view. The trainer looked to be in his late thirties, with prominent, dark brows and a tanned face. He patted the horse’s neck and saluted the jockey. Then Devlin gathered up his reins and headed out of the ring.

Callan glared at the jockey’s swaying back. For now, he was out of reach. But that still left the other two. He fixed his sights on Jordan and Kruger and followed them as they left the ring. They mingled with the crowd now flowing back towards the stands, and Callan melted into their slipstream.

He unzipped his bag a fraction and slotted a hand inside, grasping the butt of his gun. Keeping the weapon in the bag meant he could place the barrel right up against the target. Two silenced shots and the target would go down. The crowd would think he’d fainted, Callan would disappear, and his ejected cartridges would be caught inside the bag. Neat and tidy.

He followed the two men across the concourse. Kruger disappeared inside one of the bars, and Jordan was about to follow when a small boy of nine or ten raced up and grabbed him by the hand. Jordan turned and laughed, allowing himself to be dragged away.

Callan clenched his fingers around the gun. He tracked the pair along the side of the stands as they hurried towards the bookies’ enclosure.

He checked his watch. It was almost one o’clock. He lengthened his stride, closing the gap between them. The boy scampered off to the nearest bookie and Jordan stood alone, like a springbok separated from the herd.

Callan hesitated, checking his cover. The crowds here had thinned, the punters deserting the bookies for a place on the stands. He hung back. Too exposed.

The tannoy system crackled. ‘They’re under starter’s orders.’

The boy reappeared. Jordan took him by the hand and together they hiked up into the stands.

‘And they’re off.’

Callan strode after Jordan, circling, weaving, slipping through the crowds, using whatever cover his combat zone offered him. The commentator droned out his inventory of horses.

‘And racing now away from the stands, it’s Forest Moon the leader, from Holy Joe and Dutch Courage. Then comes Rottweiler’s Lad, with Honest Bill the back marker.’

Jordan and the boy stopped halfway up the grandstand. Callan was already four steps higher, and he stared at the back of Jordan’s head.

‘Rounding the turn now, it’s Forest Moon and Holy Joe. Then Rottweiler’s Lad improved into third place.’

Callan sidestepped into a gap, lining himself up behind Jordan. Suddenly, the man ducked, squatting low. Callan froze, then relaxed again as he saw the boy climbing up on to Jordan’s shoulders. By the time Jordan was upright, Callan had moved one step down. Two more, and he’d be right behind him.

The commentator’s voice shifted up a key. ‘And into the back straight, it’s Holy Joe, Forest Moon weakening into second, challenged by Rottweiler’s Lad, Honest Bill, then Dutch Courage.’

A murmur rippled through the crowds. ‘Come on, Honest Bill.’

Jordan handed the boy a pair of binoculars. People craned their necks to get a clearer view and Callan took another step down.

‘As they round the final bend, it’s Holy Joe the leader from Rottweiler’s Lad, then Forest Moon, Honest Bill making ground on the outside but Devlin has left him a lot to do.’

The crowd buzzed, shifting restlessly. ‘Come on, Billy-boy!’

Callan inched forwards. Suddenly, the boy swivelled and stared at him through the binoculars. Callan’s scalp prickled. He flashed on another ten-year-old boy. Matted black hair, wild eyes. The child soldier with binoculars around his neck and a machete in his raised arms. Chills swept through Callan’s frame.

A roar went up from the crowd, and the commentator’s pitch shot up an octave. ‘And they’re into the home straight, it’s Rottweiler’s Lad, Holy Joe, Honest Bill accelerating on the outside!’

Callan’s vision blurred. He could smell the child soldier’s unwashed body. He recalled how the boy’s shirt had fallen open, exposing red welts where the initials ‘RUF’ had been carved into his chest with a razor. Callan hadn’t hesitated. He’d fired his sniper rifle, spitting two bullets into the boy’s forehead.

‘And they’re inside the final two furlongs!’ The commentator was in a frenzy, the yells from the crowd filling the stands. ‘It’s Rottweiler’s Lad, but here comes Honest Bill surging up on the outside!’

Callan remembered standing over the boy’s body. He’d stared at the bloody initials where the rebels had rubbed cocaine to induce the boy’s savagery. Beside him stood a line of wailing children. The child soldier had been about to hack off their arms.

‘It’s Rottweiler’s Lad from Honest Bill, I’ve never seen anything like it, Devlin has turned him loose, calling on him for everything he has!’

The boy on Jordan’s shoulders turned away. Callan’s chest tightened, the memories choking him. He took a deep breath, then descended the final step. He was right behind Jordan, close enough to smell the scent of cigars from his clothes.

The commentator was yelling now. ‘It’s the final furlong, it’s Rottweiler’s Lad and Honest Bill, stride for stride, Honest Bill digging deep.’

Callan stretched the canvas of his bag taut around the gun barrel.

‘They’re neck and neck, what a race between these two!’

The roars had reached a deafening pitch. It was the crescendo he’d been waiting for, the perfect cover. He pressed the gun barrel into Jordan’s back.

The commentator hadn’t drawn breath. ‘It’s a desperate finish as they come up to the line, Rottweiler’s Lad trying to fight back!’

The stands were a blaring wall of noise. Callan squeezed the trigger twice. The commentator’s voice was off the scale.

‘And it’s Honest Bill the winner! What a horse!’

Callan stepped backwards and sidled through the heaving crowd. From the corner of his eye he saw the boy tumble to the ground, his father crumpling beneath him.

Callan strolled towards the exit.

Winner all right.

6

The most important thing about pilfering confidential data was not to get caught. Harry flicked a glance in her rear-view mirror and wondered how she’d get away with it this time.

A flash of heat washed over her. What the hell was she thinking? She should have taken Garvin’s laptop back to Hunter the minute she’d realized the mistake. The longer she held on to it, the worse it would get. Already, she felt as if something radioactive was glowing through the boot of her car.

Harry geared down into third, negotiating the bends on the coast road. Waves slapped against the wall to her left, tossing spray into the air like confetti.

She came to a T-junction and slowed down, considering her options. Turn right, and she could loop back to Garvin Oliver’s house and hand the laptop over.

Turn left, and she could be home in fifteen minutes. Harry chewed her bottom lip.

When you got right down to it, the police had been the ones who’d screwed up, not her. After all, it wasn’t her fault the officer had snatched the first laptop case he’d seen.

She checked left and right. Naturally, she wouldn’t dream of withholding evidence. She gripped the steering wheel and swung left. She’d hand over the laptop just as soon as she could, but not until she’d peeked at it herself first.

Harry wound her way south, her whole body clenched, her eyes darting to her mirror. No one seemed to be following her, but it was hard to tell. On her left the beach curved like a bow, the slate-grey water reflecting the rain clouds above. Her arms ached from gripping the wheel, but relaxing them was beyond her.

She cruised through Killiney Village, cutting left down a rough track tucked in behind a row of new builds. She pulled up in front of the only house on the lot: a small, stone cottage with double-glazed windows and matching white UPVC door. She stared at it and felt herself droop.

Six months ago she’d been renting an apartment close to the city, where she’d basked in Dublin’s lively buzz and felt that she belonged. But lately she’d had an urge to buy her own place. She’d rented the cottage as an experiment. Living close to the sea was supposed to be soothing. But instead, there was something unsettling about the greyness of the beach and the isolation of her new home.

Harry sighed and climbed out of the car. Maybe it wasn’t just her professional instincts that were becoming unreliable.

She hauled her case out of the boot and trudged inside the cottage, passing through the narrow hall into the cramped kitchen beyond. She dumped the case on the table, then flung open the small windows at the rear of the house. Sharp, salty air perked up the room, but she didn’t stop to enjoy the view. Right now, she had other things on her mind.

She eyed up the case. Beth had only been interested in the diamonds, but the laptop must have had some importance if Garvin locked it up in a vault. She wiped her palms along her thighs. It was a long shot to hope it might lead her to Beth, but it was worth a try.

Harry slid the laptop out of the bag. Something small rattled out with it, clattering on to the floor. She peered under the table, and her whole body froze. Almost invisible against the stone tiles was a smooth, pea-sized pebble. Harry bent to retrieve it, then rolled it between her fingers, holding it close to her face. Beth’s uncut diamond. It felt cold, as though it had been kept in the fridge. She watched its steely lustre catch the light for a moment. Then she buried the stone in her fist.

Beth must have slipped it deliberately into her bag. Had she been leaving her a gift, or planting evidence? Harry was inclined to believe the worst, but either way, it’d be hard to explain to the police. She shook her head and dropped the pebble into her jacket pocket. She’d work out what to do with it later, but right now, she had a laptop to cross-examine.

She reached out to flip open the lid, then hesitated. Any snooping she did on the laptop could probably be traced. Worse still, her activities might overwrite valuable data on the hard drive. Apart from getting caught, the last thing she wanted was to compromise a murder investigation.

She frowned. Then she marched to the spare bedroom where she kept her field kits and retrieved a stash of hardware: a digital camera, a screwdriver, a sanitized hard drive, a spare laptop and a bunch of cables and switches. Adding a clutch of paperwork to the mix, she set the lot on the kitchen table and went to work.

First, she grabbed the camera and took some shots of the laptop, recording the make, model and serial number and documenting her actions as she went. Next, she unscrewed the laptop chassis, exposing the hard drive and releasing it from its caddy. She photographed the disembowelled hardware, labelled each component, then photographed it all again. It was tedious work, but she needed a record of her activities. If the integrity of the hard drive was ever in doubt, at least she could prove chain of custody. Inwardly, she winced. Her own integrity might be a little trickier to establish.

Snatching at the cables, she hooked up the hard drive to a set of switches, connecting it to the blank drive which in turn was plugged into the spare laptop. She powered everything up, worked the keyboard for a moment and then stood back. It would take a few hours, but soon she’d have a duplicate of Garvin Oliver’s hard drive.

Odd to think that somewhere the police were putting her own laptop through the same paces. Acquiring a forensic duplication was the first step in analysing a hard drive for evidence. She’d worked her share of computer forensics cases in her last job with Lúbra Security. Of course, that was before she’d got sidetracked by a crooked trader who’d tried to kill her for her father’s money.

Harry shivered. Her eyes swept the room, taking in the slanted ceilings and exposed oak beams. She’d thought it was the need for a slower pace that had taken her out here. She suspected now it was more to do with having somewhere to lick her wounds.

She shook her head. Godammit, enough introspection. The need to pace up and down jerked through her limbs, but the cottage just wasn’t built for it. Instead, she flung herself into a chair and thought about Beth. Or whatever her real name was.

She scribbled down everything she knew about her, which didn’t amount to much: her physical description; her intimate knowledge of the contents of Garvin’s safe. She recalled the woman’s likeness to the passport photo belonging to the real Beth, and her story of Garvin’s beatings. She was family, she should’ve known.

Harry frowned. Were she and Beth sisters?

She thought of the next-door neighbour who’d seen Harry poised for flight. Neighbours usually had plenty to tell, as long as they were asked the right questions. Would the woman next door know anything about Beth’s family?

Harry tapped a fingernail against her teeth. Talking to the neighbour in person was out of the question. She’d hardly chitchat to someone she’d just witnessed fleeing the scene of a crime. On the other hand, what choice did Harry have? She had no name or phone number. All she had was an address.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She snatched up her car keys and headed for the door.

Sometimes, an address was all it took.

7

The closer Harry got to Garvin Oliver’s house, the harder it was to breathe. She cracked open a window and sucked in the sea air. Ahead of her, yellow police tape snapped in the breeze, and an officer stood on guard by the railings. Traffic slowed to a crawl as motorists rubbernecked at the scene. Harry inched her car in behind them.

Her stomach was taut, as though braced for a punch. An image flashed before her: Garvin kneeling, head bent as though in prayer; the gun barrel touching his skull.

I never leave witnesses.

Sweat spilled down her back. The notion that someone out there wanted her dead jammed up her brain.

The officer on sentry duty waved the cars on, bending low to inspect the occupants as they passed. A fair-haired man, lean and athletic, stepped out of the house to join him. Harry caught her breath. Hunter. Shit. How bad would it look to be caught coming back for a voyeuristic eyeful? She yanked at the steering wheel and veered up a side road, her heart banging against her chest.

She’d been stupid to even think of driving past the house. What was the matter with her? She detoured away from the coast road, taking the long way round. Five minutes later, she’d pulled up at the library closest to Garvin’s home.

As she pushed through the door, she inhaled the smell of ageing, plastic-bound books. A lot of people thought libraries were dull, but to Harry they were hidey-holes full of free information. And information was artillery for a social-engineering attack. Which was double-talk for executing a scam.

She smiled at the librarian behind the desk. ‘Hi there. Do you keep a hard copy of the electoral register?’

The librarian smiled back. He was tall and stooped, with the gentle-giant look that often went with large men.

‘You can check it online, you know, to see if you’re registered.’ He pointed over his shoulder. ‘The computers are back there.’

‘Yes, I know, but I’d prefer the hard copy if you’ve got one.’

She’d tried the online system before. For honest citizens just checking they were registered to vote, it certainly made life easy. But for snoopers like Harry it blocked you right at the get-go by demanding both a name and address. No off-course browsing allowed. The printed version, on the other hand, dumped everything right in your lap.

The librarian nodded, and ambled out from behind the counter. That was the other great thing about libraries. No one ever asked you why.

Harry followed her jumbo helper as he wound his way between the rows of shelves. Behind her, scanners bleeped and date stamps thumped. Eventually, the librarian stopped by a filing cabinet and pointed at the stacks of paper perched on top.

‘That’s most of it for this area, I think,’ he said. ‘If we don’t have the one you need, we can check with the other libraries.’

Harry thanked him and watched him lumber away. Then she hefted the mound of paperwork to a nearby desk and pulled up a chair. She thumbed through the pages. They’d been stapled together in bunches, organized by district and adjoining roads. She traced a finger down the columns of data. The houses were listed by road number, with the occupants’ names recorded against them. She smiled, her mouth almost watering. All that juicy information. Then she fished a pen and paper out of her bag and went to work.

It didn’t take long to find Garvin Oliver’s road. She scanned the house numbers. There it was, last on the list: 91 Seapoint Avenue. Occupants: Oliver, Beth; Oliver, Garvin. The register must have pre-dated her death. No mention of the daughter, which made sense. As a schoolgirl, she wasn’t eligible to vote.

Harry’s eyes slid back to number 90. There was only one occupant: Cantwell, Margot. Since the Olivers’ house was an end-of-terrace, there were no other immediate neighbours. Replacing the stack of paper on the filing cabinet, Harry returned to the front desk where she borrowed a telephone directory and looked up the name Cantwell. None listed for 90 Seapoint Avenue. Damn. Ex-directory. Why did people do that? Did they really think it kept their number private?

She chewed the end of her pen for a moment. Then she swapped the directory for the Golden Pages and looked up video rental stores in the area. There were two, but MaxVision was the closest to Garvin’s home, located just around the corner. Harry noted the phone number, along with that of the MaxVision store across town in Malahide.

Then she flipped to the florist section and ran her finger along the page till she found one close to Seapoint. She jotted down the name and number, and was about to return to her car when she spotted the row of computers behind the desk.

Beth Oliver died four months ago.

Harry contemplated the screens. Surely if there was a sister, she’d be mentioned in Beth Oliver’s death notice?

Two minutes later, and after a brief chat with the librarian, Harry was logged into the national newspaper archives. For the next hour, she scanned through the death notices. She expanded her search to stretch back more than six months, just to make sure. But Beth Oliver’s name wasn’t there.

Harry frowned. Then she shrugged it off and headed back out to her car. Settling herself in the driver’s seat, she dialled the number for the MaxVision store located in Malahide.

‘Hello, MaxVision Rentals.’ The voice was male, but just about. A bored teenager, by the sound of him.

‘Hi there.’ Harry smiled widely. The bigger the beam, the better it transmitted to your voice. ‘I was in with you a couple of nights ago and I just wanted to say how helpful the girl behind the counter was. Really, she went to a lot of trouble and recommended a great movie.’

There was a pause while the teenager seemed to grope for a response. Satisfied customers probably weren’t covered in the training manual.

‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘Well, glad we could help.’

Harry kept the smile going. ‘I just wondered, could I get her name so I can thank her, maybe write a nice letter to the manager?’

‘Uh, well, sure. But we’ve got two girls working here. What did she look like?’

Harry scrambled for something generic. ‘Oh, darkish hair, I think. Medium height. Slim.’

‘Slim?’ He sounded surprised, and Harry backpedalled fast.

‘Well, slim-ish.’ She laughed. ‘Anyone under fourteen stone looks slim to me.’

‘It might have been Lara.’ He sounded doubtful. ‘Was she sort of, like, pale, dressed all in black in a big tent thing?’

Harry pictured an overweight, teenage Goth. Poor Lara. ‘Yes, that sounds like her. Could you tell me your store manager’s name so I can drop him a note?’

‘Sure, it’s Greg Chaney, you can send it here to the store.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And my name’s Steve.’

‘Thanks, Steve, you’ve been a great help. I’ll be sure to mention you too.’ She hung up and scribbled the names on her pad, awarding herself a mental thumbs-up. Persuading people to part with information always made her day.

Next, she called the MaxVision store near Garvin Oliver’s home.

‘MaxVision Rentals, Jilly speaking.’ Another teenager, but chirpier this time.

‘Hi, Jilly, this is Lara from MaxVision in Malahide. Listen, are you guys having trouble with your computers today? Our stupid system has been down for the last two hours.’

‘Really? No, ours is fine. Did you try switching it off and on again?’

Harry snorted. ‘I suggested that, but who listens to me? Steve here reckons he’s some kind of computer genius, says he’s on the case. You know what guys are like.’

Jilly sniggered. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Anyway, I have a customer of yours here who wants to rent The Mona Lisa but she doesn’t have her card with her. Could you verify her information for me? Greg Chaney, our store manager, said it’d be okay to ask.’

‘Sure, that’s no problem. Greg calls us all the time. What’s her name?’

‘It’s Margot Cantwell, 90 Seapoint Avenue.’

‘Hang on.’

Harry crossed her fingers, trying to ward off the possibility that Ms Cantwell was a movie-phobe.

Jilly came back on the line. ‘Yep, she’s here. Do you want the account number?’

Harry let out a long breath. ‘Yes, please.’

She jotted down the number as Jilly called it out. She didn’t need it, but information was like currency: too valuable to be discarded. Then she closed her eyes, keeping her tone casual.

‘Is there a phone number next to that?’

‘Yeah, it’s 2834477.’

Harry’s eyes flared open. Bingo. She scribbled the number down. She had what she needed, but she played things out.

‘That’s great,’ she said. ‘No late returns due, I hope?’

‘No.’

‘Or outstanding fines?’

‘No, she’s all clear.’

‘Great. I’ll set her up manually with an account here and enter it into the system when it’s back. I’m sure Whiz Kid Steve here will have us up and running in no time.’

They shared another snigger, then Harry thanked her and hung up. She stared at the phone number she’d just acquired. Some people made a living from scoring information they weren’t supposed to have. In the trade, they were known as information brokers. The key was to push for just a small piece at a time. Then you traded each nugget for something bigger at every stage of the scam. Harry’s biggest trade-up was yet to come. She dialled Margot Cantwell’s number.

‘Yes?’

The woman’s tone was snippy, and Harry pictured her with a ‘what-is-it-now’ look on her face. She beamed into the phone.

‘Hi, this is Catalina from Kay’s Florist in Blackrock. Is that Margot Cantwell?’

‘Yes.’ If she’d added What’s it to you? Harry wouldn’t have been surprised.

‘Great,’ Harry said. ‘I called to your house just now to deliver a bouquet of flowers, but there was no one home. Will you be there if I call again in half an hour?’

‘I’ve been here all day, I didn’t hear anyone. Who’re they from?’

‘Actually, there’s no card.’

‘I don’t want them. Never trust anyone who sends you flowers, that’s what I say.’

‘They’re really beautiful.’ Absurd to feel defensive about her imaginary flowers, but who got surly at an unexpected bouquet?

Margot snorted. ‘Flowers just give a person something to hide behind, if you ask me. Let the roses say it all so you don’t have to commit yourself in words. Saves the trouble of lying.’

Harry blinked. Whatever the world had done to Margot, she was having a hard time letting it go. Still, for all her crankiness, she seemed willing to stay on the line. Harry steered the conversation towards the Olivers.

‘I didn’t like to leave the bouquet next door,’ she said. ‘Not with all those policemen around. What happened in there?’

‘They won’t tell me. I heard some kind of commotion, then this young woman with wild dark hair came rushing out of the house. Looked odd to me, so I called the guards.’

Harry smoothed a hand over her tangled curls. ‘Isn’t that the Olivers’ house? I’m sure I’ve delivered flowers there.’

Margot sniffed. ‘You probably have. That’d be his style all right.’

‘Poor Mrs Oliver. We did the flowers for her funeral. It was a car accident, wasn’t it?’

‘So they said. The police were around a lot that time, too.’

‘I never met her husband.’ Harry crossed her fingers. ‘But I did meet her sister once. She chose the flowers for the funeral. She and Beth were very alike, weren’t they?’

Margot paused. ‘Beth didn’t have a sister. She was an only child.’

Harry frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes.’ The woman had turned pensive, and Harry strained to read her voice. It was never a good sign when the mark began to think.

‘And another thing,’ Margot continued in the same tone. ‘There wasn’t any funeral. Not here, anyway. She was buried in South Africa.’

‘South Africa?’

‘Cape Town. That’s where they’re from.’ Margot paused. ‘What did you say your name was?’

Damn. ‘Catalina, from Kay’s Flowers. Sorry, I must be mixing things up, we do a lot of funerals in here. Listen, it’s been nice talking to you. I’ll send someone round with the bouquet later today.’

Harry disconnected and flopped back against the seat. That was stupid. She’d reached too far, straying from her nuggets of information. Guesswork didn’t always pay off.

She rewound the conversation with Margot. At this point, her efforts seemed like an elaborate scam that had netted her very little. So the Olivers were from Cape Town. She recalled the woman masquerading as Beth. To Harry, her accent had been a plain-vanilla blend of the South Dublin suburbs. No terse South African clip, no foreign inflection. It wasn’t conclusive, but together with Margot’s information, it seemed to rule out the possibility that the woman was Beth’s sister.

Harry drummed her fingers on the wheel. All she had now was Garvin’s hard drive.

8

‘Diamonds, they come from stardust, did you know that, Mani?’

Mani grunted, his arm throbbing as he helped Takata to his feet. The sun grilled his face as he followed the queue along the barbed-wire corridor.

‘Asha, she explained it to me.’ Takata sounded surprised that his daughter knew such things. ‘Diamonds are older than the sun.’

Mani shook his head at the old man’s poetry. Behind him, the last of the hydraulic excavators clanked to a halt. The pit was now a graveyard of dust-covered machinery, abandoned for the day.

Mani’s face twisted in pain as a hard lump in his chest ground further into his gut. Takata’s voice dropped to a whisper.

‘The diamonds, they come from outer space.’

Mani managed a shrug, the lump a jagged fireball inside him. ‘It’s only a theory.’

He’d explained it to Asha himself the day before he left. He’d sat with her on the ground outside the shack, watching her weave brooms from the grasses she collected. As always, there was a contented stillness about her. He’d wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Instead, he’d snatched up a stick and drawn a circle in the dirt.

‘Do you know where diamonds come from?’ he’d said.

She smiled. ‘From the ground.’

A pack of shrieking children swooped in front of them, their faces gritty with dust. Asha laughed and waved them away. Mani jabbed at the centre of his circle.

‘They come from grains of carbon deep inside the Earth,’ he said. ‘In the mantle. A hundred miles below the surface.’

He avoided her gaze. He was showing off, and he knew it. Educated student returns to his home village. But he couldn’t help it. Keeping his eyes low, he scored a line from the centre of his circle to the edge.

‘Volcanoes carried the diamonds upwards, punching lava through the crust.’ He pointed, teacher-like, at the line he’d drawn. ‘These volcanic pipes, they hardened into kimberlite.’

He glanced at Asha’s face. She was watching him with her serene, almond-shaped eyes.

‘I know,’ she said.

He tightened his grip on the stick. How could she know? How could she know anything, living in this shantytown of metal huts, with its goat-kraals and chicken coops and rusty hubcaps salvaged from wrecked cars? He glared at her. He could tell her things, things she couldn’t learn in this godforsaken place. He stabbed at the centre of his circle.

‘Yes, but where did the grains of carbon come from?’ he said. ‘How did they find their way into the Earth’s mantle?’

Her shoulders lifted in a gentle shrug. ‘They grew there.’

He shook his head, smiling. She didn’t know. ‘That’s what we used to think. That they came from plants or animals. A bit of plankton, maybe, or an insect, dragged around by the continental plates.’ He sneaked a glance at her. ‘But now we scientists know better.’

Her eyes were on the swatch of grasses in her hand. She made no comment on his claims to be a scientist. He turned away, his cheeks burning in the sun.

‘Go on,’ Asha said.

He shook his head, tossing the stick aside. ‘I’m talking too much.’

She retrieved the stick, and held it out to him. ‘But I want to know.’

Her gaze was steady, the smile gone. He cleared his throat, took the stick, then carved a second circle into the dirt.

‘They found a meteor in Antarctica. It broke up a sawblade when they tried to cut through it.’ He filled his circle with dots. ‘That’s because it was seeded with diamonds.’

Asha plucked at her grasses. Mani roughed out a five-pointed star above his circles.

‘Then astronomers discovered diamonds in a super-nova,’ he said.

‘A super-nova?’ She stumbled on the English word. He looked at his feet. Suddenly, his urge to impress her seemed unkind.

‘It’s an explosion of dying stars,’ he said gently. ‘They viewed it through a powerful telescope and saw diamonds. Now they say the grains of carbon were planted in the Earth by meteorites and stardust.’

Her hands went still, and her eyes drifted away from him. Mani kicked at his crude drawing, obliterating it in the dust.

‘It’s only a theory,’ he said.

Asha was silent. He followed her gaze to the settlement clearing where the children always played, even in the dust storms. Beyond it, the metal huts looked like water tanks with roofs. Van Wycks provided them. In winter they were ice-cold; in summer, sizzling hot. Mostly, families gathered outdoors, unprotected from the kimberlite dust that blew in from the Van Wycks mines.

His eyes came to rest on the grassland beyond the shantytown, where his mother had died the year before. Ezra had got word to him that migrating Congolese rebels, high on cocaine, had stumbled across her and slit her throat open.

He swallowed and looked back at Asha. She had wrapped her arms around her waist, one hand stroking her side. Mani knew she had scars there, and more on her back, from where they’d operated to remove part of her lungs.

‘All this because of stardust,’ she whispered, shaking her head.

Mani dropped his gaze. Then he leaned closer to her, his fists clenched on the stick.

‘You should have come with me when I asked. To Cape Town.’ He was whispering now, too. ‘You still can. I won’t go to the mine, we can leave today. Ezra got himself into this mess, he can get himself out of it.’

Asha shot a hand out and gripped his wrist. Her eyes bored into his.

‘You must help your brother – you must.’ Her breath was hot on his face. ‘If you don’t, they will kill us.’

A uniformed guard jabbed the butt of his submachine gun hard into Mani’s shoulder. He winced, quickening his pace. Sweat oozed from him as the lump in his gullet tore at his insides, the pain now worse than anything in his arm. He knew he’d feel no relief until the diamond settled deep inside his belly.

The queue wound its way through the barbed-wire corridor. Mani’s eyes swept the horizon, taking in the watchtower with its armed guards, and the double electric fence surrounding the compound. The fences were spaced far apart to stop diamonds being thrown out to confederates. Some of the men used catapults to shoot the stones out. Their accomplices were usually savaged by the Alsatians that patrolled the other side.

Takata dug an elbow into his ribs, nodding towards the man in front. It was Alfredo, Mani’s bunk-mate. He was Mani’s age, twenty-four, but already had five children to feed. He twisted towards them, his shoulders hunched and his face screwed up in pain.

Mani’s gut clenched. Instantly, he knew Alfredo was carrying.

He shot a look at the guards. The nearest one was only a few yards away. Mani whispered in Portuguese. Like him, Alfredo was Angolan.

‘Cuidado!’ Be careful!

Alfredo opened his eyes, tried to nod. He cradled his abdomen, shuffled a few steps. Mani’s heart raced. Another fifty yards and they’d be inside the x-ray unit.

What was Alfredo doing? No one escaped the x-rays at the end of every shift. Especially if you were black. He glanced at his friend’s sweating face, and suddenly understood. Alfredo was gambling the x-rays weren’t switched on.

Mani swallowed, the diamond punching through him like a fist. Alfredo was a fool.

Regulations limited the mine to three x-rays per week on any employee; the rest of the time, the machine was meant to shoot blanks. But what did Van Wycks care about regulations? Radiation overdose was like asbestosis or silicosis: just another black disease.

Mani knew from Ezra that there were no blanks. The machines shot full-power x-rays every day.

His gaze slid back over his shoulder. A tank-shaped figure had moved into view: Okker.

Mani spun round, his chest banging. He felt Okker’s eyes drilling the back of his neck. Like most of the guards, Okker was a mercenary. The worst kind of soldier. Thugs and criminals, dishonourable discharges shipped in from foreign armies. But even the other mercenaries were afraid of Okker.

Suddenly, Alfredo yelled, clutching his belly. Then he doubled over and thudded to the ground. Weapons snapped, guards sprinted. In seconds, three submachine guns pointed at Alfredo’s head. Mani froze.

Okker lumbered over. ‘Take him straight to x-ray. Today he can jump the queue.’

The guards hauled Alfredo up by the arms, ignoring his screams. Mani jerked forward, but Takata’s bony fingers were like a vice on his arm. He stopped, but not before Okker had seen him.

‘Well, well, kaffir boy.’ He slapped his club into the palm of his hand. ‘Friend of yours?’

Mani’s intestines knotted around the stone. He gritted his teeth, trying to keep the pain from his face. Okker jabbed the club into Mani’s chest, clicked his fingers at the guards.

‘This one, too,’ he said. ‘Do both of them now.’

Two more guards appeared at Mani’s side and dragged him to the head of the queue. They shoved him through the entrance to the x-ray unit, flinging him through a set of double doors into the waiting room. Alfredo’s guards were hauling him into the mini-theatre beyond. Mani stumbled after him.

‘Wait! Let me go first!’

A fist punched him in the side of the head, slamming him to the ground. Three savage kicks crunched into his lower back. He curled, foetal-like, to protect his abdomen, but the taller guard yanked him up and hurled him against the wall. Mani slid to the ground, panting. The guard raised his weapon, took aim.

‘Just stay still, college boy.’

Mani squinted up at his face. It was large and square, like a slab of cement. His name was Janvier, a Belgian mercenary. Rumour had it that he practised his sniper aim from the watchtower by shooting passing miners in the back. Behind him, the other guard looked young and pale.

Mani pressed himself into the wall, his skull pounding. By now, Alfredo was locked inside the x-ray room. Mani checked the warning light over the door. Flashing red would mean the x-rays were on. The light was still green.

He thought of the black specks they’d find in Alfredo’s stomach. He closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do.

A buzzer sounded. The light flashed red. Mani began to count. Twenty-five seconds was all it took to scan someone head to toe. Another fifteen to check the results.

Eight, nine, ten.

Van Wycks had every angle covered. Daily x-rays at the end of every shift. More x-rays and searches when your contract ended and you left the compound for good. Sometimes they fed you laxatives the day before just to purge any diamonds out.

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.

Nothing was allowed to leave the mine. Any vehicles that came in never went out, in case they carried diamonds through the gate. And if a mine worker died, his family never got his body back. Instead, he was buried inside the compound, so that no one could smuggle diamonds in his corpse.

Mani opened his eyes. Twenty-five seconds. The light turned green.

He listened. All he could hear was his own ragged breathing. He couldn’t bring himself to count any more.

Then he heard a yell. Something in the other room crashed to the floor. A door slammed. Mani stiffened, snapping his eyes to the window. Alfredo stumbled into view, crouching. He lurched across the compound, heading for the electric fence. A shot cracked into the air. Alfredo buckled at the knees, sagged to the ground. Blood seeped from his thigh. He clawed at the dirt, trying to drag himself on.

Okker strolled up behind him, swinging a rifle in one hand. Mani swallowed.

Okker laughed. ‘Look, he’s going for the fence.’

Alfredo stopped crawling and lay trembling in the dust. Okker bent over him.

‘What are you going to do, tunnel under it?’

He guffawed again, looking around for an audience. Then he turned back to Alfredo, took casual aim and shot him in the face.

Mani gasped. He shook his head, couldn’t breathe. Okker was still laughing. Mani wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Okker snapped open a knife and sliced through Alfredo’s shirt, baring his scrawny abdomen. Then he touched his blade to the dusky skin.

‘Let’s slit him open, see what we’ve got.’

Mani jerked back against the wall. His limbs twitched, pulsing with shock. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to listen to the ripping sounds from outside. The diamond in his own gut scorched through him.

Something clicked near his ear. Mani opened his eyes and stared into the bore of a gun. Janvier smiled. Behind him, the younger guard looked sick.

‘You’re up next, college boy.’

9

‘Someone’s been looking for you.’

Harry spun round, backing up against the safe. A pintsized young woman stood in the doorway, a mug of coffee in her hand. Harry rolled her eyes at her own jumpiness.

‘You scared me,’ she said.

Imogen Brady stepped into the room. ‘He called three times, wouldn’t leave his name.’

Imogen’s eyes raked Harry’s face. Friend and business partner, she occasionally doubled up as Harry’s self-appointed keeper.

‘He sounded pissed off about something,’ she said.

Harry’s pulse raced. Baseball cap, tanned face, the barrel of a gun. Had he started to track her down already? She turned back to the office safe to hide her panic.

‘Probably a recruitment agency.’ She swiped her keycard and punched in her access code with trembling fingers. ‘Do me a favour, next time he calls, tell him I’ve gone away for a while.’

Imogen came to stand beside her, her head barely reaching Harry’s shoulder. ‘Is that the laptop from the new client?’

Harry bit her lip. She’d told Imogen about the call-out to Monkstown before she’d left, but now she wished she hadn’t. Her next move was definitely the wrong side of legal, and the less Imogen knew about it the better. She shoved Garvin’s laptop to the back of the safe, then snapped the door shut.

‘It’s just routine stuff.’

Imogen blocked her path. Her eyes were huge in her pixie face, but she still managed to look stern.

‘You look terrible.’ Imogen glanced at the safe, then back again. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just tired.’ Harry tried to keep her voice light. ‘Not sleeping well lately.’

That much was true, at least. For the past few months she’d been plagued by nightmares that slashed like hatchets through her sleep. Recurring flashes of betrayal and death. She suppressed a shudder.

‘It’s that house of yours, if you ask me.’ Imogen plonked a hand on one hip. ‘Cooped up in the middle of nowhere, it’s enough to depress anyone. Why don’t you get a place in town, somewhere closer to the office?’

Harry’s gaze drifted around the small, open-plan space where Blackjack did its business. The walls were a mix of exposed brick and pipes, the high domed ceiling a mess of ancient plumbing from the original Guinness Brewery warehouse.

The office was located in the Digital Hub, a cluster of technology companies based in the old Liberties area of inner-city Dublin. Harry had chosen it as the home for her new company a few months before, funding it with money left over from her exploits in the Bahamas. The location had an edginess that had appealed to her: state-of-the-art technology tucked in between the bargain stores of Thomas Street and the chimney stacks of Guinness with its yeasty, Bovril smells.

Harry shivered. Normally, the Blackjack office filled her with pride, but not today. Today it was a place where a man with a gun might find her.

‘Here –’ Imogen thrust her untouched coffee into Harry’s hands. ‘You look like you could do with this more than me.’

Before Harry could reply, the phone rang and Imogen bustled off to answer it. Harry took the opportunity to slip away to her own desk, where she’d hooked up her office computer to the copy of Garvin’s hard drive. She pulled up a chair and sat hunched over the keyboard.

Given the choice, this was the last place she’d be. But she needed to do some snooping, and this was where she stashed her burglar’s tools.

She stared at the screen and wondered where to start.

You could tell a lot about a person just by digging through his computer: what internet sites he browsed, what files he opened, what photographs he downloaded. In fact, you could unearth more information than there was time to analyse, and that was the problem.

Harry drummed her fingers on the desk. Normally, she’d have some context, some obvious starting point. If a client hired her as a computer forensics investigator, her mandate would be clear: find evidence to show an employee was downloading pornography on company time; prove the new sales guy was passing information to a competitor. But what was she looking for on Garvin’s laptop? Some clue to ‘Beth’? Or to the man in the baseball cap? Suddenly, the idea seemed far-fetched.

She checked on Imogen. Still on the phone. She’d jammed the receiver into the crook of her neck, her hands free to fiddle with her rings. Harry turned back to her screen and launched her forensic toolkit program.

Small hairs rose on the back of her neck. She was about to cross a line. Garvin’s hard drive was evidence in a murder investigation, and she’d no business trespassing on its data. Whatever way you looked at it, she was probably about to commit a crime.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She thought of the trouble she was already in: of Detective Inspector Lynne, still stalking her past; of Hunter, who’d pegged her as guilty of theft, or maybe even murder; of the killer on her tail, and Hunter’s indifference to the danger she was in. She balled her fingers into fists. Was she supposed to clock up brownie points before she qualified for police protection?

To hell with it. Maybe it was time she protected herself. She jabbed at the keys and leapfrogged into Garvin’s files.

She took a few moments to scout out the landscape, eyeballing the installed programs, skimming through the logs and noting the most recently used files. It was like nosing around someone’s house while they were away, and it took effort not to look furtive. She picked her way around, until gradually she’d built a picture of how Garvin had used his laptop.

It was standard stuff. Mostly he switched between spreadsheets, a word processor and the internet. The everyday tools of the ordinary user. And with them, he’d produced thousands of files.

Harry leaned back in her chair, hands in her pockets. Analysing files was as much instinct as science, but right now she was all out of hunches. Her fingers touched the rounded pebble she’d found inside her bag. It still felt cold. She worried at it for a moment, then let it drop, leaning back into the keyboard. Sometimes the most obvious was worth a try.

She keyed in a search for the word ‘diamonds’.

Thousands of filenames rolled up the screen, and Harry groaned. She refined her search, filtering by date stamp, concentrating on files that Garvin had accessed in the week before his death. The list shrank to seventeen. That was more like it.

Harry flipped open the first file and scanned through it. It was an invoice from a company called Safari Diamond Corporation for ‘twelve rough 1.5 carat whites’. The invoice was addressed to Garvin Oliver Trading Limited and amounted to $90,000.

Harry skipped into the next file. Another invoice, this one originating from Garvin Oliver Trading Limited to a Dutch company called Staal Precision Cutters. Garvin was charging them &euro;30,000 for a shipment of eight uncut yellows, ranging from 0.75 to 1 carat.

Harry flicked a glance at Imogen. She was winding up her call, pushing away from her desk. Harry skimmed through the next few files. More invoices and orders, and a handful of spreadsheets that looked like profit-and-loss accounts. Garvin was clearly in the diamond-trading business, and her eyes widened at his bottom-line numbers. ‘Beth’ was right. Garvin had been making money.

‘Want another coffee?’

Harry jumped, and snapped the files shut. Imogen stood behind her, yawning and stretching like a cat.

‘Thanks.’ Harry scrambled for another errand to keep her friend out of the way. ‘I skipped lunch, so maybe a doughnut, too?’

‘Good idea. You need the calories.’

Harry waited till Imogen had left the room, then poked through the rest of the files. More invoices, orders and correspondence with suppliers. Garvin had been busy the week before he died.

Finally, she opened the last file, a spreadsheet called ‘Stock Inventory October 2009’. It had been accessed earlier that morning.

Rows of data flashed on the screen. Harry blinked, trying to make sense of them. It looked like a list of stones that Garvin had bought and sold. He’d recorded the quantity and colour of the stones, along with their weight in carats, noting suppliers and customers against each entry. The largest stones weighed up to four carats, and a few of them even had names: Apollo, The African Star, Egyptian Sunrise.

Some of the entries had digital photos embedded in the data. Harry zoomed in. Images of smooth, crystal-like stones filled the screen. Some were foggy white, like the one in her pocket; others a duller yellow or brown. One photo showed a cluster of six misty whites, set beside a matchstick for scale. Each stone was listed as 0.25 carats, no bigger than the match’s head.

‘Here you go.’

Imogen plonked a mug down on the desk, along with a creamy doughnut. Harry spun round to face her, obscuring her view of the screen.

‘That was ChemCal on the phone,’ Imogen said. ‘They’ve decided to prosecute.’

Harry raised her eyebrows. Imogen had been working on a forensics investigation for ChemCal Labs. The MD had suspected his chief accountant of embezzlement, and had hired Blackjack to scour his laptop for any tell-tale signs.

‘Do they want you to testify?’ she said.

‘They’re talking it over with their lawyers.’ Imogen fiddled with her ring. ‘I’ll pencil in some time, just in case.’

Harry sipped her coffee, willing her screensaver to kick in behind her. She nodded at Imogen’s fidgeting fingers. ‘How’re you doing with that ring?’

Imogen made a face, then splayed out the fingers of her left hand. ‘It’s making me grumpy.’

‘I’d noticed.’

Imogen had announced her engagement the week before to an architect she’d been dating for six months. From the outset, she’d declared it was only an experiment to see how getting married would feel. Harry had been sceptical. In her view, it was long-term commitment that probably made marriage such a chore. Treating it like a new dress you could take back if it didn’t fit seemed to be missing the point.

Not that Harry felt up to long-term commitments, either. She couldn’t imagine herself taking that leap, plummeting into a world where wills clashed and two lives were locked together. Just thinking about it made her feel short of air.

Imogen wiggled her fingers, appraising her ring. ‘I’ll probably give it back today.’

Harry glanced at the twinkling stone, her awareness of diamonds heightened. It was a small solitaire, about the size of a peppercorn. From the little she’d learned, she put it at less than half a carat.

‘What about Shane?’

‘He’ll get over it.’ Imogen smiled and put her head to one side, her long ponytail springing out from her crown like an S-hook. ‘He’s looking a little twitchy himself. The word “hasty” keeps coming up.’

Then she flapped her hand, dismissing the subject. ‘I’ll send you the ChemCal report.’

‘Any surprises?’

‘Not really.’ Imogen headed back to her desk. ‘He’d tried to cover his tracks with some hidden files, but it didn’t take long to sniff them out.’

Harry stared after her for a moment, then snapped her eyes back to the screen. Hidden files. She could almost feel her brain shifting.

She’d taken Garvin’s files at face value up to now, only considering those in plain view. And why not? After all, he’d been killed during the course of a burglary, hadn’t he? Wrong place, wrong time. Just like her.

But what if there was more to it than that? Gooseflesh buzzed along her arms. What if he was killed because he had something to hide?

10

There were plenty of ways to make a file disappear. The question was, which would Garvin have used?

Harry hitched her chair in closer to the desk, her fingertips tingling. There were lots of commercial tools out there that kept your secrets safe, camouflaging your files till they melted out of sight. You couldn’t view them, delete them or modify them. As far as the operating system was concerned, the files just didn’t exist.

Harry plunged back into her forensic toolkit. The operating system may have been gullible, but her box of tricks wasn’t. She rattled her fingers across the keys, setting up a search. Her copy of Garvin’s hard drive was more than just a replica of recognizable files. It was a bit-by-bit image, and that included deleted data, unused memory and hidden information. She wouldn’t be fooled by a bunch of skulking files claiming to be invisible.

She launched her search for camouflaged files, then sat back in her chair and waited.

Her eyes roamed the room, coming to rest on the office safe. It was smaller than Garvin’s, about the size of a filing cabinet, and she used it to store evidence from Blackjack’s investigations.

Security and privacy.

Harry shook her head. Technology was supposed to safeguard your secrets, but did it really? She thought of Garvin’s vault, protected by his own fingerprint.

Something you know, something you have, something you are.

The security mantra ran through her head. Something you know: a password. Something you have: a keycard. Something you are: your fingerprint.

Harry shuddered, picturing Garvin’s killer scrabbling at the dead man’s fingers. Biometric security had its uses, but there was nothing she wanted hidden badly enough to put her own body parts on the line.

The computer beeped, and her eyes shot back to the screen. The search had come up empty.

Harry frowned. No covert files. Most likely it meant that Garvin had nothing to hide, but she shoved the thought away. Right now, hidden files were all she had.

‘Harry?’

Imogen was holding the phone out to one side, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s him again, you sure you don’t want to take it?’

Harry’s skin prickled. She shook her head, registering Imogen’s frown as she turned to make excuses into the phone. It was probably a legitimate caller, but disclosing her whereabouts to anyone right now seemed like a bad idea. Harry tried to ignore her drumming heartbeat, and dragged her gaze back to the screen.

She chewed on a fingernail. Maybe Garvin had used a less sophisticated approach than commercial privacy products. Her mind drifted back to her first Blackjack case. Her client had been an angry, middle-aged woman who’d wanted evidence that her husband was cheating. It hadn’t taken long. His laptop had yielded a slam-dunk photo of himself with his nineteen-year-old secretary. To hide it, he’d simply renamed it from susie.jpg to su.123. Without the .jpg extension, the picture viewer didn’t pick it up. And trying to open it with anything else just spewed gibberish on to the screen. Either way, Susie stayed incognito.

Bogus file extensions were quick and easy, and people used them all the time. Harry rummaged through her toolkit and fired off an extension checker search. In less than a minute, two filenames flashed up on the screen:

VW-Stock.got

VW-Cargo.got

Harry stiffened. Two phony extensions. It looked as though Garvin had tried some sleight of hand. She stared at the doctored file types. ‘GOT’ for Garvin Oliver Trading?

Normally her toolkit could figure out the true file type, but this time it played dumb. She checked the file locations. They were stored alongside dozens of spreadsheet files, including the stock inventory she’d opened earlier. Chances were, she’d unearthed two more spreadsheets, but it was hard to find an innocent explanation for their disguise.

She opened the first file, VW-Stock. A blizzard of symbols filled the screen: Russian and Greek script, hashes and squiggles, all of it densely packed. The familiar gobbledy-gook of unreadable data.

She opened the second file. More hieroglyphics.

Harry squinted at the screen. Had she got the file extension wrong?

She shook her head. This time she was throwing in with her instincts, and that left her with one explanation: the files had been encrypted.

A shiver scampered down her spine. She felt like she was grappling with one of those nested Russian dolls. Data inside encryption, inside hidden files, inside a vault. What the hell had Garvin needed to hide so badly?

She frowned at the illegible garbage on the screen. To unscramble it, she’d need the encryption key and that could be just about anywhere. Maybe it wasn’t even on the hard drive. She was beginning to think Garvin was more technically savvy than she’d given him credit for.

Harry drummed her fingers on the desk, glaring at the filenames on the screen. What the hell were they hiding?

She checked the timestamps on each of the files. They’d been encrypted eight days ago, locked into riddles that no one else could read. And once a file morphed into ciphertext, its plaintext version was deleted.

Or was it?

Harry scooted in closer to the desk and kicked off a search for deleted files. What were the chances that Garvin’s plaintext still lurked in the cracks of the hard drive?

A list of recovered files unravelled up the screen. One by one, she sifted through them, looking for a match.

Nothing.

She slumped back in her chair. No plaintext, no deleted data, no encryption keys. Garvin’s files were locked down tight, and her chances of cracking them open didn’t look good.

Her phone trilled from deep inside her bag. She fished it out and checked the caller ID. Private number. Harry licked her lips, but her mouth was dry. The man with the baseball cap had her number from her card, but that didn’t mean it had to be him. She hit the silence key and stuffed the phone deep into her bag.

She hunched back over the keyboard. There had to be something else she could try. She thought for a minute, then straightened up. It was an outside chance, but worth a shot. Her fingers flew across the keys as she set up her final search. This time her target was temporary files.

Hard drives were riddled with them. Conscientious programs created them as backups, saving temporary copies of your files while you worked on the originals. They came in handy if the program crashed before you’d saved your data.

Garvin would have worked on his files in plaintext before he eventually encrypted them. It was the backup of those plaintext files that Harry needed to find.

She beat a tattoo on the desk with her fingers, her eyes fixed to the screen. Temporary files were usually deleted when the original file was closed, but not always. With luck, the ones she needed were still lying low on Garvin’s hard drive.

And if not, she was all out of tricks.

The computer beeped. Her pulse quickened. She stared at the filenames listed on the screen:

VW-Stock.tmp

VW-Cargo.tmp

‘Harry?’

Something fluttered in Harry’s stomach. She fumbled with her mouse. Supposing they were just backups of the encrypted files?

Imogen appeared at her side. ‘You really need to take the call this time.’

Harry bit her lip. Then she pointed her mouse at the first file. Held her breath.

Double-click.

The file opened.

Crystal-clear plaintext filled the screen.

‘Harry, it’s the police.’

11

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

Harry winced at Hunter’s tone. She wedged the receiver against her shoulder, her fingers working the keyboard. ‘I don’t play games, Detective.’

‘I could haul you in for this.’ His teeth sounded glued together. ‘You’re being deliberately obstructive.’

‘I’ve told you the truth.’ She browsed through the first of Garvin’s hidden files, VW-Stock.tmp. It looked like another stock-take of stones.

Hunter snorted. ‘From what I’ve heard, you and the truth don’t exactly hit it off.’

Harry breathed through her nose, trying to tune him out. She pecked through the data: numbers, customers, colours, weights. She frowned, backtracking a little. Could that be right?

‘You intentionally removed evidence from a murder investigation.’

Harry jerked her gaze away from the screen. She didn’t hold the moral high ground on much right now, but he wasn’t getting away with that one.

‘If you’re talking about Garvin Oliver’s laptop, then it was your officer who made the mistake, not me.’

‘You withheld evidence.’

‘I gave you the keys of my car.’

Hunter was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I want the laptop.’

‘Come and get it anytime you want.’

‘I want it now. We’re right outside.’

Dammit. ‘All right, I’ll come and buzz you in.’

She slammed down the phone, her eyes straying back to the numbers on the screen. Then she snapped the file shut. That would have to keep for a while.

Imogen hovered behind her. ‘Everything okay?’

Harry got to her feet. ‘Not exactly. I’ll explain in a minute, but right now, I’ve a pissed-off detective to talk to.’ She gave her friend a direct look. ‘Promise me you’ll stay out of things for the next few minutes? No matter what you hear me say?’

Imogen’s eyes lit up for a second, then she frowned. ‘What are you getting into, Harry?’

‘Just promise me?’

Imogen pursed her lips. ‘Okay. But that explanation better be good.’

Harry gave her an attagirl pat on the arm, then headed out to reception where Hunter was waiting behind the glass security doors. His shoulders were hunched, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets.

She took a deep breath, wondering how to compose her face for the ten-yard walk to the door. In the end, she settled for a self-righteous glare, which Hunter seemed to have no trouble returning.

She strode across the empty reception and punched the door-release button on the wall. Hunter swung in past her, a gust of cool, yeast-scented air riding in behind him. He wheeled round to face her, his cropped hair spiky from the wind.

‘Next time, I’d appreciate it if you would answer your mobile.’

Harry shot him a look. So that was one caller identified. No reason to think the other was a killer with a gun, but then, nothing today had exactly been rational.

He looked past her to the door. ‘You remember Detective Inspector Lynne, don’t you?’

Harry whipped round. A lean, dark-haired man was standing in the doorway. Forty-ish, neat grey suit, penetrating eyes. He stepped inside. She remembered how silently he’d always moved. Like a cat.

Lynne inclined his head, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘Ms Martinez.’

Harry managed a stiff nod. Then she turned on her heel and led them back through reception, her spine tingling with awareness of being watched from behind. Resisting the urge to accelerate like a fugitive, she coached herself to stay calm: Nice and easy, keep it steady, just give them the laptop and they’ll go. The diamond burned a hole in her side.

The last time she’d tangled with Lynne had been in a hospital corridor four months earlier. Her father had lain dying in the next room, eking out his last days on life-support machines. By then, his helpless body was as thin as a child’s, kept alive by tubes hissing air into his lungs. Lynne’s questions had been the same as always: What happened to the money from Sal’s insider trading? Did you help him to hide it? Why did you visit a bank in the Bahamas? Where’s the money now?

More persistent than his questions were the silences he waited for her to fill. But she never did. She never told him she still had the money, or some of it, anyway. She’d stolen it to protect herself, but afterwards, she’d kept it for her father. She’d wanted to give him something to wake up to. But then the doctors had told her that her father was going to die.

Harry squared her shoulders, warding the memory off. She snapped her security pass against the card-reader on the wall and marched into the Blackjack office. Maybe a brisk pace would make her look as if she was in control.

She gestured at the safe. ‘It’s in here.’

Imogen swivelled in her chair, eyes wide, mouth shut. Harry fixed her attention on Hunter as he stepped towards the safe. Up close, she could see that he needed a shave, the bristles glinting like iron filings on his face. He snapped a pair of latex gloves up to his wrists, his eyes trained on hers.

‘You’ve had the laptop for hours, why didn’t you say anything?’

Harry shrugged, avoiding Imogen’s gaze. ‘I didn’t notice until now. I’ve only just got here.’

‘How do we know it hasn’t been tampered with?’

‘I secured it in the safe the minute I realized your mistake.’ She drilled him with a look. ‘This is a computer forensics lab. Preserving evidence is a priority around here.’

Hunter raised an eyebrow, scanning the room. ‘Looks like an ordinary office to me.’

Harry began checking things off on her fingers. ‘You can’t get in here without a security pass, and there’s a CCTV camera pointed at the safe, which, by the way, you can’t open without the access code and swipe card. There’s no way anyone could have tampered with it.’

Lynne spoke quietly from the doorway. ‘Nobody except you.’

Harry locked eyes with him for a moment. She could sense Imogen’s open-mouthed stare, and even Hunter seemed unwilling to break the silence. She spun towards the safe, swiped her card and punched in the access code. When the door clicked open, she pointed at the laptop, motioning for Hunter to help himself.

Lynne cleared his throat. ‘Make sure you take the right one this time, Hunter.’

Hunter froze, his mouth fixed in a tight line. Then he grasped the laptop with both hands.

‘What about my laptop?’ Harry said. ‘You still have it.’

Hunter’s eyes flicked sideways at Lynne. ‘We need to hold on to that for a while. You’ll get it back eventually.’

A muffled ring tone sounded nearby, and Lynne stepped out of the room to take the call. Harry clicked the safe shut, glancing over at Hunter. She wondered about the friction between the two officers, and whether it might be worth tapping into. She cocked her chin in the direction of the door.

‘Isn’t it a little unusual for Fraud to tag along on a murder investigation?’

Hunter shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Fraud, Customs, they’re all piling in on this one.’

‘Really? Lynne doesn’t exactly strike me as a team player.’

Hunter snorted, but didn’t answer. He busied himself with a chain of custody form, filling out the details. She wondered how far she could push him.

‘Is he your boss?’

For a second, his pen froze. ‘No.’

‘He certainly acts like it.’

Hunter glared at her. ‘This is my investigation. I’m in charge, and don’t you forget it.’

Sweat glinted on his upper lip in between the stubble, and she took it as a sign that she’d pushed enough. She perched against a desk, arms folded, while he finished off the form. When he finally looked up, his eyes were hard to read.

‘We’ve been watching Garvin Oliver for some time.’ He wrestled the laptop into a silver anti-static bag. ‘His diamond operation isn’t entirely legit, but then you probably know that.’

Harry thought of Garvin’s hidden files, then blanked the knowledge out in case it showed on her face.

Hunter drilled her with a look. ‘Illicit diamond trading is one thing, but do you really want to get yourself involved in murder?’

Illicit diamonds. Africa’s finest, Beth had said. Harry’s mouth felt dry.

‘Look, you’re really wasting your time with me,’ she said. ‘I’m not involved in all of this.’

Hunter held her gaze. The hazel eyes looked muddy and tired. Then he nodded and sighed, and for the first time seemed to loosen the tight rein that he kept on himself. He held up his hands.

‘Okay. It’s possible you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens.’ He sneaked a glance at the door, then lowered his voice. ‘But if not, I’m warning you, we’ll soon find out.’

His eyes locked on to hers, his expression an odd mix of threat and empathy. Then Lynne slipped back into the room and clicked his fingers.

‘Let’s go.’

Hunter stiffened, and Harry could have sworn she saw his fists clench. Then he snatched up the laptop and strode to the door. Harry didn’t know what kind of politics Hunter was up against, but it looked as though Lynne was pulling rank.

She watched them go, her eyes falling on the silver evidence bag tucked under Hunter’s arm. Suddenly her breathing stalled. The notion of the police getting hold of Garvin’s data started an inexplicable hum in her throat, and she felt an overwhelming urge to snatch the laptop back.

‘Harry?’

Imogen was staring at her. Harry gave herself a mental shake. What was the matter with her? There was nothing on Garvin’s laptop that could get her into trouble. She wheeled round and scampered back to her desk, Imogen close behind.

‘What’s going on, Harry?’

‘I’ll explain in a minute.’

Something in Garvin’s hidden inventory file had snagged her attention and she needed to check it out. First, she pulled up the original inventory that Garvin had left in plain view: ‘Stock Inventory October 2009’. The familiar set of images flicked across the screen: the cloudy pebbles weighing 0.25 carats, each the size of a match head; metallic specks, 0.03 carats, no bigger than sugar crystals. The largest on the list was a yellow, 4-carat octahedron the size of a raisin. According to his records, Garvin had sold it for &euro;10,000.

Then she switched back to the hidden file, VW-Stock.tmp. Many of the stones were christened, just like before: Yellow Mist, Helios, Pink Heart. There were almost three hundred stones in all, with dates going back over a year.

She homed in on the images. Most incorporated ordinary objects to lend the diamonds scale, and her eyes widened at the numbers. A gleaming, metallic stone, the size of a gobstopper: 100 carats. Another the colour of weak camomile tea and bigger than a jumbo marble: 175 carats. But most of them were as big as hen’s eggs and weighed in at over 200 carats. The last on the list was the largest of them all, a silvery crystal of 270 carats. It had been sold over a year ago to someone called Fischer for almost five million euros.

Harry let out a long breath. Was that what this was about? Was Garvin smuggling large stones, and trying to cover his tracks? She checked the file again. Whoever Fischer was, he’d only bought one stone. The rest had been sold exclusively to a buyer called Gray.

Harry’s brain hummed with questions, and she almost forgot about VW-Cargo.tmp, the second hidden file. She clicked it open, her mind preoccupied. Where did Beth fit into all of this? Another array of names flashed up on the screen. At the top was an obscure twelve-digit number: 881677273934. Harry doodled it down on her pad, her eyes travelling over the column of names: Excelsior, Artemis, Dawn Light.

Harry frowned. Dawn Light. The name seemed familiar. Dim memories floated like ghosts. Frosty mornings, bright colours. She shook her head. It wouldn’t come.

She checked the name again, and her whole body went still. Her breathing stopped, her fingers froze; the only part of her that moved was the pulse pounding in her jugular. She swallowed, and stared at the screen.

Recorded against the entry for Dawn Light, was the name HARRY MARTINEZ.

12

Mani stumbled into the x-ray room, sweat drenching his body. Outside, he could still hear Okker’s yells as he gloated over Alfredo’s butchered torso. The image burned into Mani’s brain, and he clenched his fists to stop his arms from trembling.

‘Over there!’

The guard called Janvier slammed Mani up against the wall. He jammed the butt of his gun against Mani’s cheek, forcing his head sideways, while the younger guard shone a torch in Mani’s ear. Then between them, they whipped Mani’s head around to check the other side. Janvier wrenched Mani’s mouth open and poked a spatula inside it until Mani gagged. Then he tore at Mani’s eye sockets and crushed his nostrils while the other guard kept him pinned to the wall.

The search wasn’t necessary. The x-ray machine performed a whole-body scan, and stones inside any part of him would be found. But Janvier and some of the other guards still indulged in their own spot checks. They liked the humiliation it caused.

When they were done, they hauled him out from the wall and shoved him to the floor. They patted him down, then turned and left. Mani stayed on his hands and knees, his elbows locked but his arms still trembling. Behind him, the door clunked shut, sucking all sound from the room.

He lifted his head. In front of him, the x-ray cubicle stood open, waiting for him like a giant, Perspex capsule. To his right was the conveyor belt that scanned outgoing luggage and to his left was another guard in a white coat, watching from behind a screened-off booth. His name was Volker, and he’d worked the x-ray unit for the last two years. He rapped on the reinforced glass.

‘Stand up!’

Mani struggled to his feet, the diamond slicing through his gut. Volker tapped the keyboard in front of him.

‘Name?’

‘Mani…’ His voice cracked. Then he cleared his throat and lifted his chin. ‘Mani Eduardo Tavares Villa dos Santos.’

Volker’s eyes narrowed at the full Portuguese name. Mani kept his chin raised. He’d spent most of his life trying to live up to that name. His parents had been Angolans, living half their lives under Portuguese rule, the rest under bloody civil war. His surname followed the Portuguese pattern of combining both their names. But his maternal grandmother had been Congolese, a strong, raucous woman who’d lived in the shadow of the Blue Mountains close to the Congo River. She’d asked that her first grandson be given a Congolese name, so he became Mani, meaning ‘from the mountain’. He could still hear his father’s scornful voice: The man from the mountain, he should be a warrior with a gun, not a mouse with a book.

Mani squared his shoulders, trying to ignore the fiery pain in his belly.

Volker stepped out from behind the screen, his redrimmed eyes fixed on Mani’s face. Mani gritted his teeth, then rolled up his left sleeve to show the bandage on his upper arm. Slowly, he unravelled the filthy dressing to expose the knife wound underneath. He sucked in air at the sight of it. Red, raw flesh bulged out through a gaping rent in his skin. The puckered edges were too far apart to knit together, but so far there was no sign of infection. No oozing pus, no bad smell. He knew what to look for because that was what had happened to Ezra.

He took a deep breath. Then he pressed the misshapen folds of flesh. Pain blazed a trail up his arm and he felt himself sway. Fighting the dizziness, he kneaded the wound until two silvery-white stones worked their way out, each the size of a large pea. He picked them up with trembling fingers and dropped them with a clatter into the metal dish that Volker was holding out.

Mani closed his eyes, the hot stabbing in his arm starting to recede. He could hear the whoosh of running water and the rattle of stones against metal. When he opened his eyes, Volker was back in his booth. Mani fumbled with his bandage, binding up his wound.

Volker flicked a switch on his console. ‘Into the cubicle.’

Mani shuffled into the x-ray capsule, positioning himself in the centre of the circular platform. The door slid shut with a whunk. A motor hummed as the C-arm of the x-ray machine enclosed the base of the cubicle and began inching its way up along the walls. Mani felt his limbs relax, the pain in his arm now a dull throb. He closed his eyes. Thank God tomorrow was his last day at the mine.

He had only come back because Ezra had begged him to, saying that he was ill. At first, Mani had refused. He had exams to sit, a scholarship to honour. He didn’t have time to return to his home village where children coughed in their sleep, and where Asha now lived as Ezra’s wife. So he sent money instead. But Ezra pleaded with him, saying that he might die. Blood poisoning from a knife wound, he’d said. He didn’t explain till later that the knife wound was self-inflicted.

So Mani had gone to see him, bracing himself for the crushing misery of the shantytown he’d managed to escape. His was a family of diamond diggers. His grandfather had crawled along the Angolan sand dunes, scrabbling for diamonds by hand, carrying them in the tin can that hung around his neck. The mine owners had stuffed a gag in his mouth to stop him from swallowing any stones. Mani’s father had washed gravel by the riverbeds, gripped by a gambler’s conviction that the next stone would change his life. When Mani was ten, his father moved them to the Northern Cape in South Africa, where he swapped riverbed mining for the underground pits. He’d been killed in a fight over a diamond the size of a sunflower seed.

‘You must take my place in the mine,’ Ezra had said when Mani went home. ‘Until I am well.’

Mani had looked away. The shack was dark, filled with the oily smell of the Primus stove. He shook his head.

‘I will send you more money, I will find another job in Cape Town.’ He already worked two jobs between his studies, sending most of his money home, but anything was better than the incarceration of the mines.

Ezra sighed. ‘Money, it will not be enough.’

Mani squinted at his brother’s face. Ezra’s eyes were feverish, his voice weak. What trouble had he got himself into now? Mani knelt beside the bed, the mud floor warm from the heat of the day.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘The Van Wycks mine.’ Ezra licked his parched lips. ‘There is something about it you need to know.’

And then, in the smoky, stifling hut, Ezra had explained.

He’d been on a toilet break when he found the first stone. He’d wandered up to the waste pit behind the latrine, putting off going back to his shift, and the diamond had glowed at him from underneath the rubble.

Ezra’s eyes glazed over. ‘It was bigger than a sparrow-hawk’s egg.’

He’d hidden it again beneath a deeper pile of stones until he could figure out what to do with it. One thing was certain: if there was one diamond, there were others. But after several furtive visits to the pit, he still hadn’t found any more.

Then late one night, he’d thought about the waste rock. Most of it was debris, discarded by the crusher and the separation plant. But piled here and there were larger boulders, the kind Van Wycks had been dumping for years. The geologists had tested them but declared them uneconomical to mine. So they fell uncrushed out of the separation plant and ended up in the waste pits along with the rest of the rubble.

But what if the Van Wycks scientists were wrong?

The next time Ezra had visited the waste pit, he’d taken a lump hammer with him.

Mani stared at his brother in the smoke-filled hut, the crackle of the cooking fires starting up outside. ‘You broke up the boulders?’

‘Van Wycks, they were wrong.’ Ezra’s eyes were bright. ‘One boulder, it gave me three diamonds, over a hundred and fifty carats each.’

He went on to explain how he’d smuggled the diamonds out. A cousin of theirs supplied cocaine to many of the mercenaries guarding the mine, and according to him, the x-ray operator was in deeper than most. Volker, it turned out, was more than willing to take payment in diamonds in exchange for clearing Ezra’s x-rays.

Ezra had brought his first stones out of the mine over a year ago and sold them on the local black market.

‘For a day, I was rich.’ Ezra closed his eyes and smiled, his gums a ghostly grey around his missing tooth.

Mani groaned. Like his father, Ezra never held on to money for long. Drink and gambling usually soaked up most of it. ‘What happened?’

Ezra dragged his eyes open, the smile gone. ‘Stones that big, it is hard to keep them a secret.’

Avoiding Mani’s gaze, he explained how he’d woken up in the dark, after several days of celebrating. His drunken friends were gone, and so was all his money. But he wasn’t completely alone. Kneeling over him was a man in dark clothes, his white face smeared with mud. The blade of his knife was pricking Ezra’s throat.

Three other men had crept out of the shadows and held Ezra down while the first man wielded his knife. First he carved it along Ezra’s chin, then sliced it into his shoulder, then worked his way down into the softer areas of flesh, until finally Ezra gave them what they wanted. From now on, he was to act as their courier, funnelling large stones out of the mine and selling exclusively to them. He’d been following their orders now for almost a year.

Mani stared around the dingy shack. ‘But then, where is all the money?’

Ezra swallowed, his throat working hard. ‘He pays me next to nothing.’ His eyes slid over to the hanging sack that served as a door. On the other side of it, Asha was stoking the fire. ‘If I don’t do as he says, he will kill us.’

And then Ezra told him what the man with the knife had said, as he’d left him whimpering on the ground. Go home and see what I have done, just in case you feel like changing your mind.

And so Mani had learned the truth about how his mother had died.

The x-ray machine clanked to a halt. The cubicle door slid open and Mani stepped outside. Volker was still at his console. Mani didn’t know how the guard smuggled out his stones, but white workers weren’t subjected to as many searches as blacks.

Mani exhaled a long breath. His body felt warm and sluggish. Today was his last time. The last time he’d open his gullet to swallow a diamond so big it tore up his insides. The last time he’d cram stones into a seeping wound, tears burning his eyes. The last time he’d drink the foul mixture of water and spoiled milk that would purge his body out.

His brief contract with Van Wycks was up. Tomorrow Volker would clear him and the contraband in his luggage as he finally left the compound. And he was never coming back.

Volker raised his head. ‘You can go.’

Mani nodded, making his way towards the exit. ‘Tomorrow there will be more.’

Volker shrugged. ‘I won’t be here.’

Mani froze. He stared at the guard. ‘But I leave the compound. You must pass me through x-ray, my luggage—’

‘You’ll have to make other arrangements.’ Volker turned back to his console. ‘My time here is up, I leave this evening. It’s getting too risky, Okker’s asking questions. My replacement starts in the morning.’

Mani’s head swam. Heat washed over him as he thought of Ezra in his stinking shack, of Asha whom he’d loved since he was ten, of his mother who’d fought to keep him at school, of Alfredo, of Takata. But most of all, he thought of the killers waiting on the next shipment of stones.

What would they do when he couldn’t deliver?

13

‘Dammit!’

Harry snapped the laptop shut and massaged the corners of her eyes. They felt gritty from staring at the screen.

Wrong place, wrong time. That was supposed to explain her connection with Garvin’s death. Even Hunter had conceded it was a possibility. But with her name chiselled into one of his files, who’d believe her now?

She bundled up her laptop, along with the printouts she’d made of Garvin’s spreadsheets. She noticed she was making a lot of packing-up sounds, just to create some noise. By now, she was alone in the office. The winter darkness had rolled in like a tide, though it was barely five thirty. She’d intended to leave with Imogen, perhaps give her a lift home. Safety in numbers was a theory Harry subscribed to. But Imogen’s fiancé had arrived unannounced and whisked her away before she and Harry had talked.

Now Harry was alone in the dark, which wasn’t how she’d planned it.

She killed the lights, set the alarm and scuttled across the deserted reception as though helped along by a tailwind. Empty buildings had their own ghosts, and Harry’s spine was already tingling. She shouldered her laptop bag. She’d review her findings later on, but right now she had someone to see.

She jabbed at the door-release button and trotted out into the street. The building opened on to Sugar House Lane, a narrow, cobbled alleyway that ran alongside the walls of the Guinness brewery. She scanned the shadows ahead. The alley twisted away into the darkness, forking out to the backstreets that skulked behind the brewery. The right fork led past the entrance to the Storehouse tours. The left wound its way into Marrowbone Lane, which was where she’d parked her car.

Harry hesitated, the malty scent of hops filling her nostrils. Then she hitched her bag high on to her shoulder and clopped over the lumpy cobbles. Ancient building walls closed in on both sides. With their bricked-up windows and rusted bars, they looked like abandoned prisons. Harry hunched her shoulders, picking up the pace.

She thought about her name on Garvin’s files. Was it a coincidence, or had Beth deliberately set her up? She fingered the cold diamond still in her pocket. At this point, she was inclined to believe the worst.

Something rustled in the darkness. She snapped her head around, but all she could see were black, brick walls. Her skin prickled, and she speeded up.

Dawn Light. The name floated into her head. By now, she’d remembered why it seemed so familiar but she needed to be sure, and there was only one person who could help her. She checked her watch. If she hurried, she might catch him before he left.

Feet scuffed on the cobbles behind her. She whirled around and stared into the dark alley. A lone streetlight flickered and buzzed. Her heart thumped against her chest bone. She backed up a few steps. She thought of her car, parked on the backstreet at the end of the lane. She could make it in twenty seconds if she ran.

A shape stirred in the shadows. Harry gasped, her limbs rigid. Then she jerked to life and spun away, breaking into a run. An engine growled up ahead, and feet pounded behind her. A low hum escaped her throat. She bolted down the alley, her shoes smacking the cobbles, her whole body on high alert.

Then she stumbled, pitching forward, and sprawled across the fork in the lane. In the same instant, headlights blazed into the alleyway: an evening tourist coach, revving towards her from the right. Something spat into the darkness behind her, zinging past her ear. She caught her breath. Then she clambered to her feet, grabbed her bag and lunged for the other side of the road. A horn blared, brakes squealed. Her body slammed into concrete. She curled up and rolled, pain shooting down her arm.

Behind her, glass shattered, people screamed. Harry snapped her eyes back to the alley. The coach was angled across the cobbles, its headlights smashed up against one wall. It was barricading the laneway, blocking her view of whoever was on the other side. Harry staggered to her feet, dimly aware of white-faced tourists gaping from the bus.

She blundered through the twisting backstreet. A block of flats loomed on her left, bleak and dark. Ahead was Marrowbone Lane, her car visible in the distance. It was less than a hundred yards away, but was there time? Her breath tore at her throat. Her instincts said to keep running, but her brain told her to hide. Hide where? In her car? Feet slapped the path behind her. Her muscles clenched. She had seconds to decide.

Harry swung left and vaulted over the low wall surrounding the block of flats. An orange glow on the second floor announced a smoker on the balcony. She sprinted the few feet to the building and swung herself over a set of railings into someone’s porch. Running footsteps sounded in the laneway. Harry crouched in the darkness, edging out of sight behind a jumbo satellite dish the size of a tractor tyre.

The footsteps stopped. Something icy squeezed Harry’s stomach, and she shrank back against the wall. She strained for sounds from the laneway.

Nothing.

The sweet incense of burning weed drifted down from the balcony above. Harry squinted through the gap between the dish and the wall, but could only make out shadows. Jeering laughter rang out nearby, and somewhere a glass smashed. Harry darted a glance behind her. The flat was in darkness, the window secured with iron bars. Scorch marks flared out over the blistered porch walls, and from the sentiment of the graffiti it looked as though someone had tried to burn the tenants out. Harry shuddered, a tremor starting up in her arms.

A cone of light cut through the darkness. She stiffened. The beam stretched into Marrowbone Lane, sweeping from side to side like a searchlight. Harry ducked down low, peering out. A man stood with his back to her. He was wearing a baseball cap, and his flashlight had zeroed in on the windscreen of her car.

Harry flinched. Her breathing came in short gulps. More glass smashed. She steeled herself to look again. The man in the baseball cap was poking his arm through the shattered window of her car. He unlocked the door, flung it open and searched the interior with his flashlight. Then he popped open the boot and checked inside. His movements were brisk and economical, unhampered by the gun that he aimed straight ahead at all times.

Harry clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Her stomach churned as she thought of how she’d almost hidden in her car. But how the hell did he know which one was hers? She closed her eyes. Garvin’s house. He’d probably waited outside for Garvin and seen her arrive.

The boot slammed shut and Harry jumped. She kept her eyes shut. Footsteps crunched on broken glass, but after a moment there was silence. She huddled closer to the wall, hugging her knees. Like Beth, cowering in the safe.

She stayed like that for some time, until finally a woman’s voice called down to her from above.

‘He’s gone, luv. Done a runner.’

It was a husky, smoker’s voice, and for an absurd moment Harry thought of her mother. She had the same hoarse throatiness. Tears pricked Harry’s eyes. She opened them and peered out from behind the giant satellite dish. Marrowbone Lane was empty.

Harry hauled herself to her feet. She felt cold and achy, as though she’d spent a night camping outside. Her eyes darted left and right as she clambered over the railings and tottered back out towards the lane. She looked over her shoulder at the ember burning in the dark.

‘Thanks.’

But the woman didn’t reply. Harry wondered what other things she’d seen from her balcony that made her take all this in her stride.

She scuttled over to her car, eyes raking the shadows. Scrunching over the glass, she swept the driver’s seat clear of splinters with her bag. Then she ducked inside, gunned the engine and tore off through the backstreets, zig-zagging left and right until she reached the main road.

The bright lights of Thomas Street felt like a refuge, but the sweat still rolled down her back. Had someone really just tried to kill her? Her head felt scrambled. She shot a glance in her rear-view mirror, half-expecting the silhouette of a baseball cap to appear in the car behind. She swerved left, switching lanes. Horns blasted her erratic driving, and she took a fitful breath, trying to calm down.

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