“We’ve had reports of shots fired, of intruders running through the backs of these properties.”
“Gunshots? Here? You’re joking? Jesus, I heard thunder but...gunshots?”
“Have you seen anything out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing at all, sorry. Hope you get to the bottom of it.”
The officer rejoined her partner and they tried another door. A woman answered—the woman who’d seen them. Samira pulled the umbrella lower.
“What if she gives a description of us?” she whispered. “What if she spots us?”
“Walk faster.” Sweat had popped across Jamie’s brow. She reached up and wiped it with her raincoat sleeve, which just smeared it.
“Now you’re the one who looks terrified,” she said.
“Maybe you’d better kiss me.” The joke couldn’t hide his graying complexion. “I think the adrenaline ran out.”
She wasn’t sure how he managed to navigate them to the car—with all the parallel rows of terraced houses, she couldn’t be sure which street they were in—but they made it, just as the sun broke through the clouds.
“They let themselves in with a key,” Samira said, as he unlocked the doors. “What does that mean?”
He was silent a beat too long. “Shall we try her mobile phone? It’s not like we’re stealth anymore—they seem to know why we’re here.”
“I don’t know her number.”
“How about her work number? Maybe she’s just sitting in the office and has no idea about any of this.” He pulled his phone from a pocket.
“Oh, how I wish that were feasible.”
“Worth a try though, right?”
“Of course. She does work shifts, so she could be there on a Sunday. But we shouldn’t use that phone—we should protect your number. Does London still have phone booths?”
They drove stiltingly through a few suburbs and parked outside a strip of shops—nail salon, dry cleaner, fish-and-chips shop... Sharp chemicals failed to kill the heavy, stale stench of grease.
“Do you even know how to use one of these?” Jamie said as they approached a fat red phone box.
“I have a master’s degree in management of secure information systems. I should be able to figure it out.”
He pulled open the door and stopped short. “I don’t think even that’s going to help here.”
No phone. Just shelves of dog-eared books.
“It’s a...library?”
“How about the offy?” Jamie pointed at a shop window papered with posters. A handwritten sign read Internet Café.
“What did you call it?”
“The offy—off-license. A corner store—you know, next to the chippy and across from the greasy spoon and the bookies’.”
“O-kay.”
The “café” consisted of a desktop computer in a dingy corner of the store, squeezed between a pay phone and a milk fridge. Worth the risk. Even if they triggered an XKeyscore selector, they’d be well away before anyone caught up.
She pushed her sunglasses onto her head and lifted the phone. “Now, how does this thing work?”
“Well,” he said. “That’s the handset. And those buttons, they’re the numbers. You dial the number you want, and—”
