Play Dead (D.I. Kim Stone, #4)(92)

‘How did you know that?’ Dawson asked, following the zigzag pattern of the light source. There was no denying the kid’s intelligence.

‘A flaw in that particular software meant that once it reached any calculations using over one trillion it began to round the percentage up from point four of a whole instead of point five.’

Dawson was happy to take his word for it.

‘I offered him a repair patch for the program, and he offered me a job.’

‘Jameel, I’m not kidding about that torch,’ Dawson snapped. The darkness was disorientating, but his senses told him they had to be getting close to where he’d placed the ‘wet floor’ signs to prevent any unsuspecting feet from falling into the shallow grave that held the delightfully rotting corpse of Cher.

‘Sorry, I’m just looking for any clues.’

Dawson got the feeling he’d been landed with the booby prize. Give this guy a grocery bill and he could probably analyse your finances for the next ten years. But had the security guard turned in for work Dawson would have felt just a touch more secure in his partner’s suitability for purpose.

‘So what did Darren say when he called in sick?’ Dawson asked. He had not yet seen Curtis Grant to question him.

‘Said he’d got some kind of stomach bug. Went into a bit of detail, which was gross so I kinda stopped listening. The boss wasn’t very happy and mentioned the contract renewal for the security provision being imminent.’

‘What, he’s going to change provider?’ Dawson asked.

Jameel raised the torch so Dawson could see him shrug. ‘Maybe, but the guy isn’t that bad. He said he’s arranged for the shift to be covered so somebody’s coming, but then you guys arrived, so I just got off the phone.’

‘Mate, shine the torch down,’ Dawson instructed, slowing down. The light seemed to be aiming everywhere except at the ground on which they walked.

He took out his phone to call Stacey and inform her that a replacement security guard was due.

‘You know, you could have bloody mentioned this earlier,’ he said, scrolling to his colleague’s number.

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Jameel said, as a fork of lightning lit up the dark sky, illuminating a face that didn’t look sorry at all.





Eighty-Six





The lightning lit up the Portakabin and temporarily blinded her like a brief explosion.

For a second the space fell into silence before Stacey realised the lightning strike had caused a surge in the electrics.

She counted to five before the whirring started as the backup generator kicked in. So it was more than a surge. The electrics had been temporarily disabled. The system was instructed to revert to backup only if a delay of five seconds elapsed. A surge was a split second or less.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Stacey whispered to herself and waited for her heart to return to its normal rhythm.

She didn’t mind storms, quite liked to watch them – from the safety of a brick building with all electrical appliances switched off.

One by one the systems began to switch themselves back on. If it resembled any programming she’d ever seen it would be done in order of importance. Lighting, heating, communication equipment, security and then, finally, appliances.

Surprisingly the lighting hadn’t failed, but Stacey knew that lighting was often worked from a separate circuit to everything else.

The heating wasn’t switched on so there was no delay there.

The handheld phone in the charging cradle offered a single beep. The phone was back.

Next, the green light on the side of her radio base station flickered twice and then held. Great, she had radio communication from the base station. The handheld radios carried by the three teams would have continued to work amongst each other with the batteries attached but her own ability to communicate with them and vice versa would have been severed.

That only left the cameras. The screen to her right remained blank.

‘Come on,’ she urged.

It was not the most important of the systems but Stacey liked to know she had every tool at her disposal. Seeing the activity outside the gate and just inside the property was unlikely to assist her colleagues, as they were all at the furthest points away, but having eyes around the building and immediate area offered her comfort.

It suddenly dawned on Stacey that she was the only member of the team who had been left alone. But not for long, she realised, as the intercom beside her sounded. That would be the replacement security guard Kev had just called her about.

She smiled as the screen beside her flickered into life. It had reverted to split-screen display, showing the two camera views. Even before the voice sounded through the tinny speaker she could see the shape of the Aston Martin waiting at the gate.

Curtis Grant announced his arrival, and Stacey buzzed him through the gate.

The camera pointing over the fence to the lane beyond looked exactly as it had before the power failure. Along that lane sat a van with a team of backup officers.

A sound on the gravel outside the door met her ears.

‘Hey Stacey, how’s things?’ Curtis Grant asked as he entered the Portakabin. ‘I’m here to cover Darren’s shift. Tried everyone I could think of but no takers because it was too short notice, and this isn’t the easiest gig to sell, especially at the moment.’