The Insider. Ava McCarthy

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       7

      ‘Are you sure that’s what he said?’

      Harry shivered and shook her head. ‘I’m not sure of anything right now.’

      She closed her eyes and sank lower into the seat of Dillon’s car, trying not to mark the upholstery. Her suit was streaked with grime and black dust, like something that belonged in a skip, and she guessed her face must be the same. Her whole body ached, and her right knee had swollen to the size of a grapefruit.

      She peeked at Dillon’s profile. His nose always reminded her of Julius Caesar’s, strong and straight with a high, aristocratic bridge. He was dark, almost as dark as she was, and his six-foot frame slotted easily into the driver’s seat of his Lexus.

      ‘So come on, tell me again,’ he said. ‘What exactly did this guy say?’

      ‘It was more of a whisper, really. Sort of rough and sandpapery.’

      Dillon turned to look at her. He had a habit of setting his mouth in a straight line, with an upward tuck in one corner as if he was holding back a smile. ‘Okay then, what did he whisper?’

      ‘I can’t be sure, but it was something like: “The Sorohan money, give it back to the ring.”’

      ‘But what the hell does it mean?’

      Harry shrugged, and examined the palms of her hands. They still stung where the gravel from the railway tracks had dug into her flesh.

      ‘And he didn’t say anything else?’ Dillon said.

      ‘There wasn’t time to say anything else. I was falling, remember?’

      ‘I can’t believe someone tried to push you under a bloody train.’

      ‘I’m finding it kind of hard to deal with myself. Not sure the police believed me, either.’

      A tall young police officer with a bobbing Adam’s apple had arrived at the train station to question her. Someone had wrapped her in a scratchy blanket, and she’d told her story between sips of hot sugary tea. All except for the words that she’d heard before she fell. That would have to keep for a while. When Dillon had phoned and insisted on coming to get her, she’d been glad for once to let someone else take charge.

      Dillon swerved to avoid a cyclist and Harry’s stomach flipped, taking a moment to catch up with the rest of her insides. So far, it had been a jerky ride. Dillon alternated between pumping the accelerator and slamming on the brakes, with no real let-up in between. At this rate, she’d be lucky not to get whiplash.

      She’d worked for Dillon for less than a year. He’d head-hunted her the previous summer from another software firm, hounding her with the same restless energy he seemed to apply to everything. It was the second time their paths had crossed in the last sixteen years. The first time, she’d only been thirteen.

      That seemed so long ago. She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes, flashing on an image of herself at thirteen: fists clenched, wild hair, caught up in a kind of double life. Come to think of it, maybe she hadn’t changed all that much.

      She’d figured out early on in her childhood that she’d need a means of escape to survive her home life. Her solution had been to live two lives: one as the girl she called Harry the Drudge, whose mother opened her letters and read her diaries, and whose father wasn’t around enough to be much of an ally; the other she lived as Pirata, an insomniac who sat in the dark and prowled the electronic underground where she was both powerful and respected.

      That was in the late eighties, before the internet had taken off. Pirata spent her time dialling out over slow modem connections to bulletin-board systems, electronic message centres where people shared ideas and downloaded hacker tools. By the time she was eleven, she’d taught herself how to penetrate almost any kind of system. She trespassed lightly, never pilfering, never causing harm. But by the time she was thirteen, she was ready to take things to the next level.

      Harry could still remember the night she did it. The room had been dark, the only light a greenish glow from her computer screen. It was two o’clock in the morning and she was war dialling, programming her computer to make continuous phone calls until it found a number that allowed it to connect. She sat curled up in her chair, hugging her knees for warmth, listening to the thin screech of the modem as it dialled and disconnected. She wasn’t worried about her parents waking up to find her. They were too busy with their own problems to pay much attention to her.

      Suddenly she’d had a hit. The caterwaul of chatty modems was unmistakable. Another computer out there had answered her. She straightened up, tapped out a command on the keyboard and hit Enter. СКАЧАТЬ