Page 71 of Zero Days

Eros was lonely, that was the legend, or so Gabe had recounted it to me. And so the gods created him a twin—Anteros, counterlove. Because what does love need, except someone to love back?

It had seemed almost too perfect, that day. A meeting under the god of requited love. Was there any sweeter omen? And now I was here alone. Waiting for Jeff.

That’s when I saw him—almost exactly as the clock struck seven—walking nonchalantly across the traffic in front of a speeding taxi with a swagger that still made my jaw clench involuntarily. The taxi beeped angrily; Jeff grinned at the driver and put up two fingers, and then made his way over to the fountain, where he lounged, for all the world like he was waiting for a date, the way Gabe had once waited for me. I glanced around the circus. There were no police officers—or none that I could see. There were people, of course, dozens of them, leaning against the Tube railings, waiting for friends, standing at the pedestrian crossing. I had no way of knowing if any of them were plainclothes officers. But Jeff himself looked to be alone.

“I guess it’s go time,” I said, very quietly, and I began to move, hurrying down the stairs of the shop, my heart thumping in my chest.

As I walked, I tried to imagine the scene as he would see it—the small figure crossing the stream of traffic, hood up, face in shadow. I saw his head go up, that shit-eating grin I hated so much spreading across his face.

“All right, Jack,” I heard, and then a slow, almost amused, “Well, well, well, what do we have here.”

I saw the cuffs too late—but there was nothing I could have done anyway, nothing I could have shouted, no movement I could have made to stop it happening. Jeff was a professional, with a professional’s training, even though he was unnecessarily rough as he went through the steps. He’d done this a hundred times before; subduing and cuffing a woman half his size was child’s play. The cuffs were on almost before I had realized what was happening—and far before I had the wit to cry out or try to prevent it. In any case, to do so would have been pointless—more than pointless—and I knew it, but I still couldn’t stop myself wailing internally at what was unfolding. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. And yet I’d still hoped against hope.

“I am arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting…” I heard above the ringing in my ears, which was back, and louder than ever. People were turning and staring now, looking at the woman facedown on the grubby Piccadilly pavement and the man kneeling on her spine, but, typical Londoners, they weren’t interfering, just backing away from the scene unfolding in front of them.

“… have the right to remain silent,” Jeff was saying, “but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned—”

The words were hazing in and out, drowned beneath the sound of angry panting breaths.

“Fuck you, Jeff!” I heard, as though from very far away, the words muffled by the pavement. It’s hard to speak with someone’s knee in your back and your face shoved into the ground. And I heard Jeff’s laugh, goading and irritable.

“You want me to add using obscene and profane language in a public place to your rap sheet, Cross? Because I will.”

“Oh seriously screw you,” I heard, and a part of me wanted to cheer. “And by the way, please do split my bottom lip as well as the top, because I’ll be adding that to my official complaint. I want you to call my solicitor.”

Jeff laughed again.

“You can call whoever you like. It’s going to be a long night for you, Hel.”

And I stood and watched as Jeff hauled my sister ignominiously to her feet and led her away in handcuffs, the rubber earpiece still dangling from her ear.

* * *

I HAD KNOWN I COULDN’T trust Jeff. But I had also known that I had no choice. If there was even a chance that he was going to give me what I so desperately needed, I had to try. But to turn up myself, in person, was too stupid even for me.

And so I had called Hel, and asked her something I couldn’t ask anyone else.

“You do know he’s probably going to just arrest me?” she’d said resignedly, when we’d met up just before six, and I’d nodded.

“I know. But I don’t know what other option I have. I have to get this number. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve booked the girls into afterschool club in case I end up with a night in the cells, but Rols doesn’t think they’ll charge me with anything much. I mean what, you sent me a message to go and meet your police officer ex in Piccadilly Circus, it’s not exactly the Great Train Robbery, is it? For all I knew, you were planning to turn yourself in. That’ll be my story anyway.”

We had agreed, I would scope out the scene, and if Jeff looked to be alone, I would give Hel the green light via a Bluetooth headset she had bought from a phone shop en route. Hel, meanwhile, would come out of the Tube wearing a black hoodie similar to mine, so as not to spook Jeff too soon. I would be just inside the store, watching, a safe distance away, ready for Hel to read the code aloud if Jeff handed it over. We couldn’t afford to meet up again afterwards. There was a very strong chance that Jeff would give Hel the code and then see if she led him straight back to me.

As soon as I had the code, I would drop the Bluetooth earpiece into a display and walk out through the store’s other exit, the opposite direction from Hel. No contact and, hopefully, zero risk to me if Jeff had someone tailing Hel.

Of course, in the event, Jeff hadn’t bothered with anything as elaborate as that—he’d simply arrested Hel before she’d even said hello. Given a competent solicitor, which Roland’s colleagues certainly were, I didn’t think she’d be in custody for more than a few hours, let alone charged with anything. But that was pretty cold comfort. In terms of accessing Gabe’s backups, I was back to square one—and the thought made me want to cry.

I had only one option left, an option which had been playing at the edge of my mind ever since I’d thought ruefully of the Bitcoin sitting inaccessible in Gabe’s private wallet. Because that wasn’t quite true. It wasn’t quite inaccessible. I couldn’t get it out. But I could transfer it. And twenty thousand pounds… well, that was enough of a bribe to buy me my one remaining option. The only problem was, it was even more risky than trusting Jeff. And I had no idea how to go about it.

I knew the basics. Tor. Dark marketplaces. I even knew the names of some of them—Versus was one, AlphaBay another. The problem was I couldn’t for the life of me remember half of what Gabe had told me. He had done his fair share of noodling around on the darker corners of the internet, not to buy, at least not after his teenage conviction for hacking, but just to keep an eye on what was being sold—admin passwords, data dumps, software hacks. Anything that might affect our clients. And sometimes he had talked about it—which markets sold what, which seemed trustworthy, and which had been infiltrated by the feds or taken over by scammers who might put your Bitcoin in escrow and then run off with the cash. Truth be told, I had never found it very interesting—it had felt like a shittier, druggier version of Craigslist, filled with an even worse combination of chancers and dickheads. Now I wished beyond anything that I had listened more carefully. Because there was no friendly Rough Guide to Tor that I could buy on Amazon. No Which? guide to dark markets.

I was about to go somewhere I knew nothing about and offer a lot of money to a complete stranger. And I had no idea if it would work or end up with me dead in a roadside ditch.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11 MINUS ONE DAY

This is it, I think,” I said to the lorry driver as we neared the service station on the M1 where I’d agreed to meet M4dR0XXX600—or Madrox, as I was calling him in my head, which was a lot easier to say. “Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.”

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