Matthew leaned forward to kiss her belly and speak to their unborn baby. ‘As much as we’re looking forward to meeting you, you need to stay in there a few more weeks. We don’t want to see you until then and especially not today.’
‘Yes, Dad,’ Libby replied on their child’s behalf.
When Libby had purchased her strapless ivory column dress following her acceptance of Matthew’s proposal, she wasn’t aware she was pregnant. Now, with five weeks left until the due date, she had frequently returned to the bridal gown shop for it to be let out.
Matthew entwined his arm with his wife-to-be’s. ‘Ready?’ he asked and Libby nodded.
‘Let’s go then.’
Once outside the home they had bought together earlier that year, they saw the awaiting vintage black polished Mercedes Benz on the driveway. Libby appreciated it was the model she had hired, an old-fashioned Level One car and that the hire car company had attached ivory ribbons from the wing mirrors stretching to the grille. A chauffeur in a smart grey suit appeared and opened the rear door for her. She climbed inside, careful not to crease her dress. Then once Matthew joined her, she settled into her seat as the car began its journey from their home in Hove towards Brighton’s register office.
Many of Libby’s friends admitted to being bags of nerves before they married, but she hadn’t shared theirfears. She knew instinctively that they belonged together, even following Alex Harris’s claims they were DNA Matched. When Commander Riley had debriefed her after Alex’s death, he’d revealed that during a digital forensic search of his phone, an email confirmed Alex had received the test results and he’d asked if she wanted to know the outcome.
Libby had shaken her head. As much as she believed in the truth, this time it would serve no positive purpose in her life. Now, on her wedding day, she was never more convinced she had made the correct decision. Sometimes ignorance could be bliss. Test or no test, Matthew was Mister Right.
Recognising that had come out of the blue. When the story of her confrontation with Alex reached the news wires, the death of the man behind the hacking collective had made international headlines. Days later, Matthew was the only member of the jury to have checked up on her welfare.
Email exchanges became text messages, text messages became video calls, and it wasn’t long before she realised he was nothing like the man she had served with on that infamous jury. Then later, when he was attending a medical conference in Birmingham, she accepted his invitation to dinner, and Libby realised there was more to it than a friendship. It was only as they sat opposite one another sharing tapas that she recalled how on the day of the hijacking, Matthew had shown her more attention than she realised at the time. He had stood up to Jack Larsson on her behalf and comforted her when Bilquis’s car was detonated.
Two more dates had followed before Matthew had kissed her. Within five months, she had thrown caution to the wind, put her home in Birmingham up for rental and moved three hours to the south coast where they’d bought their first home together.
It was far enough from London to afford them privacy but comfortably commutable for her media commitments. Libby’s work had begun to quieten following Alex’s death and the release of the results of the police investigation into the manipulated software. With Jack Larsson in the midst of a very public trial and Level Five software now available for scrutiny by licenced officials and independent bodies, Libby was finally beginning to realise the normality she craved. Once the baby was born she would resign as spokesperson and her new job as a mother could begin. Eventually, she hoped to return to nursing.
Despite the love and safety her new life afforded her, there were occasions when Libby dwelled on the past. Alex’s face appeared to her at the most random of times. She once saw him in the face of a stranger in a dental surgery waiting room, other times as she closed her eyes and sank into a deep bath. On occasions he appeared in her dreams, specifically the last moments of their violent confrontation. She relived spotting that tiny red light shining on his Adam’s apple; the whoosh of the police sniper’s bullet that shattered the glass and tore through his throat, and the sound of his panicked hand slapping against the gaping wound as if it might stem the blood flow. Then, when police smashed the shop door behind her and she was pulled to safety, she would dream how from the opposite side of the road she couldn’t stop from staring wide-eyed at paramedics as they attempted to resuscitate him. She could only breathe again when they had signalled that he was unable to do the same.
The circumstances behind the death of the real Noah Harris would likely never be known, but investigators confirmed his decomposed body had been discovered in woodland close to a barn in West Ireland. A coroner ruled he had likely been suffocated at around the same time period as the hacking, not months earlier as Alex hadsuggested. Inside the barn was the vehicle used to film the interior shots of ‘Jude’ throughout the hijack.
Elsewhere, slowly and surely, arrests and charges were being made around the world as the international investigation began to penetrate the hacking collective. Sometimes Alex’s words returned to haunt her, specifically the threat she would never be a free woman and that the Hacking Collective would always be watching her, biding their time, ready to strike when she least expected it. But she knew that she could not live under the shadow of ‘coulds’ and ‘mights’ or that would be no life at all.
Today, however, was not a day to dwell on the past or to be asking questions she would never hear answers to. Libby snapped herself back into the present and spread her fingers, holding them up to the sunlight coming in through the passenger window. She took in her diamond engagement ring, twisting it around and around, barely able to wait until Matthew slipped a wedding ring onto the same finger.
Outside, her attention was drawn beyond the expanse of beach and towards the rhythmic pulse of the sea. In the sun’s winter gaze, it had transformed from its usual dark blue to white with flecks of silver. Having spent much of her life living in the land-locked Midlands, she would never take for granted their proximity to the coast.
She closed her eyes and imagined how it might look to see her brother Nicky waiting at the register office with their parents to watch his little sister get married. Now, when she thought of him, she didn’t feel his pain or shed a tear. Instead, she smiled, grateful for the time they had together instead of the years they had apart.
Libby opened her eyes when she felt Matthew entwining his fingers within hers.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘I lost you there for a moment.’
‘I’m good,’ she replied, and squeezed his hand in return. She knew that with him she would never be lost again.
The sound of a bell ringing from Matthew’s watch caught their attention.
‘It’s nothing important, just a news alert,’ he said. ‘It can wait.’ However, it was rapidly followed by the sound of a text alert, then many, many more.
‘What’s going on?’ Libby asked as Matthew read the screen. His face fell and he shook his head. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said.
‘Believe what?’ she replied as he moved his wrist towards her, her eyes widening in disbelief as she scanned the messages. When she had finished, she stared at Matthew.
‘How the hell has he got away with it?’
Chapter 69
Jack Larsson’s stance was defiant at the top of a set of stone steps. His arms were folded across his chest, his eyes filled with steely resolve, the corners of his mouth lifted but stopping short of a smile.
He was flanked by half a dozen burly bodyguards, three male and three females, clad in matching charcoal-coloured suits. Each wore Smart glasses and earpieces. Their eyes constantly scanned the faces before them toidentify potential threats to the most talked about former Government minister in the country.
Behind them, stone arches surrounded the doors they had used to exit London’s Old Bailey, the 130-year-old central criminal court of England and Wales. For five long months, Jack had spent each weekday inside that building, listening intently as the prosecution attempted to destroy his reputation while his defence team debunked their allegations. Sometimes, with little else to do, he caught himself, from the dock where he sat, staring at the twelve-strong jury of his peers – seven men and five women. He held them in little regard. They were no closer to being his peers than he was to being the first man on Mars. He was better than all of them.
