The Bat(109)

He was woken once by a bang that might have been a gunshot, and lay listening to the rain and the hum of life in King’s Cross. After a while he went back to sleep. Then Harry dreamed about Kristin again, or so he imagined, for the rest of the night. Except that, in brief moments, she had red hair and spoke Swedish.





52


A Computer


NINE O’CLOCK.

Lebie rested his forehead against the door and closed his eyes. Two policemen in black bulletproof vests stood beside him watching closely. They had their weapons at the ready. Behind them on the stairs were Watkins, Yong and Harry.

‘There we are!’ Lebie said and carefully withdrew the picklock.

‘Remember, don’t touch anything if the flat’s empty,’ Watkins whispered to the officers.

Lebie stood to the side and opened the door for the two officers, who entered the flat textbook style, each holding a gun in both hands.

‘Sure there’s no alarm here?’ Harry whispered.

‘We’ve checked all the security companies in town, and no one has anything registered for this flat,’ Watkins said.

‘Shh, what’s that sound?’ Yong said.

The others pricked up their ears, but couldn’t hear anything unusual.

‘There goes the bomb-expert theory,’ Watkins said drily.

One of the officers came back out. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. They breathed a sigh of relief and went in. Lebie tried switching on the light in the hall, but it didn’t work.

‘Odd,’ he said, trying the light in the small but clean and tidy sitting room, but that didn’t work either. ‘A fuse must have blown.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Watkins said. ‘It’s more than light enough in here to do a search. Harry, you take the kitchen. Lebie, you take the bathroom. Yong?’

Yong was standing in front of the computer on the desk by the sitting-room window.

‘I have a feeling . . .’ he said. ‘Lebie, take the torch and check the fuse box in the hall.’

Lebie went out, and immediately the light came on and the computer sprang into life.

‘Shit,’ said Lebie, as he returned to the sitting room. ‘There was a piece of thread tied round the fuse that I had to remove first. I followed it along the wall and it goes into the door.’

‘That’s an electronic lock, isn’t it? The fuse was connected to the lock in such a way that the electricity went off as we opened the door. The sound I heard was the fan in the computer switching off,’ Yong said, pressing the keyboard. ‘This machine has rapid resume, so we can see which programs were on before it turned itself off.’

A picture of the earth appeared on the screen, and a cheery jingle rang out through the speakers.

‘Thought so!’ Yong said. ‘You crafty bastard! Look there!’ He pointed to an icon on the screen.

‘Yong, for God’s sake, let’s not waste time on this now,’ said Watkins.

‘Sir, may I borrow your mobile phone for a moment?’ The little officer snatched Watkins’s Nokia without waiting for an answer. ‘What’s the number here?’

Harry read out the number on the phone beside the computer while Yong tapped it in. Then he pressed the call key. As the phone rang a buzzing sound came from the computer, and the icon on the screen became larger and jumped up and down.

‘Shh,’ said Yong.

After a few seconds a beep sounded. He quickly switched off the mobile phone.

Watkins had a deep frown between his eyebrows. ‘What in the Lord’s name are you doing, Yong?’

‘Sir, I’m afraid Toowoomba has rigged up an alarm for us after all. And it’s gone off.’

‘Explain yourself!’ Watkins’s patience had clear limits.

‘Do you see the program coming up? That’s a standard answering phone service connected to the phone via a modem. Before Toowoomba goes out he reads in his welcome message to the computer through this microphone. When people ring they activate the program, play Toowoomba’s message, and after the little beep you heard, you can leave your message on the computer.’

‘Yong, I know what an answerphone is. What’s the point?’

‘Sir, did you hear a message before the beep when I rang just now?’

‘No . . .’

‘That’s because the message was given, but it wasn’t saved.’

Watkins began to see the light.

‘What you’re saying is that when the power went and the computer turned itself off the answerphone message went, too.’

‘Exactly, sir.’ Occasionally Yong’s reactions were unusual. Like now. His face was beaming. ‘And that’s his alarm system, sir.’

Harry wasn’t smiling when he grasped the scope of the disaster. ‘So all Toowoomba has to do is ring his own number and hear the message is missing to know that someone has broken into his flat.’