Wilde Card, page 9
“LEAVE!” she shouted at the man’s bland face.
Cauley dragged her far away to an enclosure of thin trees by the side of the church, blocking her vision of the funeral. She struggled in his grip until he let her go, sure that if she ran he could catch her. And being half the age of Andy, and twice as athletic, he probably could. Tia glared as she smoothed down her black skirt and adjusted her shirt.
“You are embarrassing your family.”
She knew she was; she didn’t need him to tell her that. The problem was that she didn’t care.
“I understand that you’re angry but you can’t take it out on Hills. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Why is he here? He doesn’t give two shits about my father. You said so yourself, he didn’t even know him. I want him gone. Now.”
Cauley shook his head and gave her a pitiful glance. “It is imperative that members of your father’s staff are at this funeral, to show their respect and commemorate how brilliant a man he was. You know this, Valentia.”
She did know this. Andy had told them about the procedure, that all the staff attended and the government paid for the expenses. She didn’t understand why but she knew that was how it worked. Right now though, she wasn’t in any mood to be logical. She hadn’t seen logic for weeks. Frustrated, she pushed him away, heading back to the church, away from the funeral, towards peace and quiet. She didn’t care that the service wasn’t over. She’d said her goodbyes to Andy weeks ago and she knew her whole family had too. The funeral was just a show for the government, for the staff – a way for them to believe they had a place in Andy’s life.
“Valentia, your father loved you very much. I don’t think he’d be happy to see you walk away from a service such as this, not when your mother needs you.”
Tia froze where she was, her jaw clenching. What did he just say? She didn’t think she would ever feel anger like she had when Jackman had touched her. But lately she just kept breaking new limits. The fury seared her cheeks, curled her lips into a sneer. She spun around and marched back to Cauley. He backed away from her as she poked her finger into his chest. “Don’t you dare talk to me about what my father would be happy about. You don’t get to fucking talk about him. At all. How many years did you know him and you still don’t know that he would never touch that lab without double checking safety precautions. If an explosion happened, it was your fault. You and that whole shitty team. He was the most diligent person in that whole goddamned lab. You don’t know him-” she caught her breath. “You didn’t know him-”
Cauley tried to calm Tia down, taking her hand and trying to get her to sit. She didn’t want his help. She was already calming down. Her mind was racing, spinning and tumbling over itself as she thought about what she’d just said. He would never touch that lab without double checking safety precautions. And what had they told her about Andy’s death…? ‘He didn't double check the seals on his hazard suit and used an incorrect amount which resulted in an explosion’. Except she knew, with every fibre in her body, that Andy would never be so stupid. He was constantly complaining about the useless assistants they kept assigning to him, how many of their mistakes he had to correct daily. He’d been a chemist for over two decades.
“He would never be so stupid,” she muttered to herself. She scrambled away from Cauley, her mind on other things, heading away from the funeral, away from the church. She had to do something. She had to get away from these people. This time Cauley let her go, watching her rush away with the wind in her long hair, whipping her skirt around her calves. She didn’t care what he told Jessie. She'd deal with her mum later. She snatched her phone out of her pocket and dialled Kal's number with trembling fingers. It went to voicemail. She dialled again, and again, until he answered.
"Hello?" He sounded irritated. Well, she guessed he had every right to be. She hadn't spoken to him for weeks, though not for lack of trying on his part. He'd come around several times but she always had Jessie send him away. She hadn't wanted to see anyone.
"Kal, look I'm sorry for ignoring you. I know you just wanted to check on me but I couldn't talk to anyone. I...I shouldn't have shut you out," she rushed out before he could say anything further.
There was a silence and for a second she thought he'd hung up. She wasn't the best at apologies, she didn't know if she was doing it right. Kal was her best friend, she didn't know if she could handle it if he couldn't forgive her. But then he sighed and said, "Yeah, not cool, Tia. But of course I forgive you. How are you doing?"
Relief. Guilt. The faint touch of joy.
"I'm...better."
"Wait, aren't you at the funeral?"
The details for Andy’s funeral had been broadcasted on the news. Tia hadn't wanted them to but Jessie made the ultimate decision and she had apparently decided to let Cauley do whatever he wanted. Tia looked behind her at the procession - she could feel her mother’s eyes on her - and carried on walking. "No. I need your help."
◆◆◆
Kal pulled her into a big bear hug. She laughed a little as she tried to extricate herself from his grasp but it soon wheezed into nothing. Her laugh was a ghost of itself, like Andy had taken it to the grave with him. Kal noticed but kindly didn't say anything. They set off down the street. Tia had replaced her skirt with black jeans and flats. Kal was wearing black too, though she hadn't told him to. She gave his outfit a sideways glance and he caught it, smiling sheepishly. "He was a good man."
She supposed she had been selfish in assuming that only her family were grieving Andy's death. Kal had sat through many dinners at their house, bombarding him with questions. She winced at the fact that she'd left Kal, of all people, in the dark, allowing him to find out through the news. Andy was - had been - well liked and respected by everyone. Even Natalia had tried to pay her respects - Tia had told Jessie to send her away too. A second passed before Kal began interrogating her.
"What are we doing right now, exactly?"
"We're going to my dad’s lab. I have a few questions that I need the answers to," Tia stated.
"And you're sure they'll let you, us, in?"
"Positive. They still have some of dad's things. Cauley - he was one of his assistants - said we could come and get them if we wanted. Neither mum nor I felt up to the task so they're still there."
"And they'll let me in why?"
"You're my muscle. I'll tell them you're here to help me. Then we start snooping."
Kal stopped walking and stared at her as if she had lost her mind. "Snooping? In a government owned building? Are you out of your mind? Tia!"
Tia simply shrugged and kept walking. He wasn't done scolding her but she wasn't listening anyway. He followed closely behind her.
"Something about my dad’s death isn't right. I'm going to find out what it is. You don't have to help me but I just thought you'd like the excitement. You do love reading all those old spy novels after all..."
Kal blew his lips out in a raspberry. He thought about it. He shoved his hand through damp hair. He hummed. "Okay, okay, dammit, I'm in."
"Good, because I brought two pairs of gloves and I only have two hands," Tia smiled.
"You knew you were going to manipulate me all along," he muttered.
She had; there was a reason why Kal was her closest friend. The only person she trusted fully, he was always there when she needed him. She also knew him inside out - she knew he was excited for an adventure, though he wouldn't admit it to her. "I suppose we're going to be hacking into his computer?"
Tia nodded.
"Good thing I got that A* in computing then."
The compound loomed over them. Bloc 2 was one of three government buildings in London, so called because it was a tall and ugly block of concrete. It housed several departments, and from what Andy had always told her, was split into different floors. The only time everyone wasn't segregated was in the canteen where chemists ate lunch with physicists, engineers with journalists. They were stopped in front of two big gates, guarded on both sides by burly men in Kevlar suits. Tia was used to the sight but Kal was taken aback. The bloc was tucked into the corner of London but it was so ugly that it was conspicuous anyway.
"What...?" he hummed.
"If you knew what they keep in here, you wouldn't be surprised that it's guarded," Tia snorted.
The guards were watching them suspiciously. She took out Andy's ID badge and flashed it at the telecom to her left. The screen flickered to life, scanned the card and then began to beep. The words 'Andrew Reese' flashed up alongside his picture. A voice filtered through the speaker. "I know for a fact that's not Andy. Let me take a wild guess...Valentia?"
"Yes," she tucked the card away. She ignored his pun.
"I'll be down in a minute."
True to his word, a small man appeared at the gates and waved the security guards away. He ushered Tia and Kal in before the guard closed them again in a timely fashion. There were two more guards standing on the inside of the gates. Three black cars were parked to their right, one of them adorned with a flag Tia didn't recognise. She turned back to her father’s friend. The top of the man's shiny head only reached Tia's shoulder but the wise eyes behind the glasses had always made him feel two feet taller to her.
"Quentin," she breathed, finding that her eyes were watering a little. He pulled her down into a hug and held on for dear life. She'd known him for nearly as long as she could walk.
"I'm so sorry."
She pulled away and forced herself to regain composure. "Why weren’t you at the funeral? You knew him the longest, you were his best friend." She asked him this gently, knowing she had no leg to stand on because she wasn't there either.
Quentin gave her his most sardonic look, “Come on. We both know that funeral is bullshit.”
She laughed, despite herself. It was so odd to hear this old man swear. He wiped his glasses on the bottom of his lab coat before adorning them again.
"Anyway, if I had gone, I wouldn't be seeing you now, would I? Gosh it's been too long Tia, far too long."
Kal shuffled awkwardly beside her. "Oh! Quentin, this is Kal. Kal, this is my father's oldest friend."
The two men exchanged handshakes and then they were heading up the wide, grey steps and making their way into the building. "What brings you here?" Quentin asked. He swiped them through a security barrier using his card.The corridor was bare, with blinding white walls and artificial lighting. There was a mosaic of people walking briskly around and a caretaker mopping up in a corner. The air was acidic with the smell of bleach. There was a low hum coming from beneath the floor, and the light murmur of voices.
Tia didn't know how much she could tell Quentin. Her father had always trusted him but this was a tricky situation. An armed guard walked past them, patrolling the floor. She glanced at Kal, who made it very clear with his grimace that he did not want to get caught.
“Collecting dad’s things,” she replied.
“Ah. I knew you'd come for them eventually.” He took them left and up some well hidden stairs to the second floor. From there, they took a lift.
“Why couldn’t we just take the lift from the ground floor?” Kal asked, confused.
“You can’t get to the labs or the offices from the ground floor. It's a security measure; we get a lot of visitors,” Quentin puffed, sweating from the single flight of stairs they’d climbed.
“It seems to me you have an awful lot of ‘security measures’ here,” Kal muttered, so low Tia knew only she had heard it. She squeezed his arm in warning. He rolled his eyes but he was prone to blurting out his opinion - just like Tia - in awkward situations. The lift deposited them onto a carpeted floor with a much more homely feel. The lights weren’t so bright and the walls were a creamy colour. They passed a small staff room with a functional kitchen and a small sofa, even a small TV. This was where they came to relax, drink a cup of tea, catch up on the news.
Tia gulped as they approached Andy’s office, the last door in the hallway. It felt like stepping into his arms. Tia half expected him to turn around in the swivel chair and grin at her. She let out a shuddering breath and forced herself to find composure. He’s not here. Quentin flicked the light on and Tia sneezed as dust flew into the air. The feeling passed.
“Sorry, it’s a bit dusty, no one’s been in here since…well.”
Tia headed for the chair behind the desk, lowering herself into it. She jumped up instantly, feeling a sharp jab in her thigh. She saw that underneath her was a hand sized model of a DNA molecule. She smiled - she’d made it for Andy when she was in secondary school, it was her design technology project. He’d always kept it, placing it on his desk when he needed inspiration. It was plastic so its little body hadn’t broken. She picked it up and put it back on the desk. God, she could feel his very essence in this office. She looked up at the door to see Quentin looking at her softly, and Kal pouring over the bookshelves on the other end of the room. Typical.
“Can I get some time alone in his office? I just want to-“
“Of course. You know how to use the phone. It’s extension 3 to reach me when you’re done.”
Quentin nodded and then disappeared. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Tia shoved the chair back from the desk and started rifling through the drawers. Kal stared at her for a second before he had the mind to start searching too.
“Wait,” he said as he shook the pages of a book out. “What are we looking for?”
“Anything,” Tia replied.
“So…you don’t know?”
“Anything. Anything that looks suspicious, out of place, whatever.” She was flicking through letters, scraps of papers, notes. Nothing was catching her eye, she wasn’t finding out anything new except the fact that Andy made a lot of to-do lists. She bent down and up-ended the wastepaper bin by the side of the desk. It appeared that no one had bothered to send a cleaner up because it was still half full. Kal had finished one bookshelf and was onto the next one when she threw her hands up in the air, a cry of frustration. “There’s nothing.”
She helped him search the bookshelves, aggressively slamming the books back into their places. Kal grabbed her hands and held on. “Hey, calm down. There are other offices on this floor,” he warned.
She said nothing, just pulled her hands free and stalked over to the computer. It was password protected, but she had expected that it would be. She called Kal, who gave the screen a once over and then got to work. She watched him do his thing, messing around with codes and systems until all she could see was a blur of numbers and letters. Ten minutes later, he sat back with a triumphant smile. The computer began to load and Tia tapped her fingers on the desk impatiently. Looking at her watch, she saw that they’d already been in there for half an hour and they’d found nothing. Soon Quentin would be back up here, with or without a call, and they’d be out of luck.
“Uh oh,” Kal whispered, drawing her attention back to the computer. It was a different background, a family picture of Andy and the girls...another password.
“Shit. The first password must be company generated, the second is personal.”
Tia laughed a little and pushed him out of the way. If he was right then they had nothing to worry about. Andy used the same password for everything. She’d been calling herself in sick from his phone for years. Safe to say, he was useless when it came to his own security. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and she pressed enter. Less than a second later, they were in.
“Jessie? Really?” Kal sniggered.
“I know. Trust me, I know,” she laughed.
Where was the best place to look for something he would have wanted to hide? Tia began by opening all the documents. She scoured his email account, downloads and pictures. She even checked his browser history and favourites. Nothing. Angry again, she pushed her hand into her hair and felt like yanking it out at the roots.
“Tia, maybe it was just an accident,” Kal shrugged. She shook her head but didn’t contest it. Maybe it had been. Maybe it hadn’t. Either way, there wasn’t any evidence in Andy’s personal files to prove either. Defeated, she picked up the DNA model and the navy blue coat hung on the back of the door.
“What do I grab?” Kal flexed his arms, admittedly trying to make her laugh. Quietly, she pointed to the cabinet in the corner of the room where Andy kept his apparatus. He found a satchel in the cabinet to place them in and slung it over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” Tia started for the door.
“Wait,” Kal said. “The computer wasn’t on when we came in.”
Tia sighed and turned to tell him to leave it. She just wanted to get out of the building - at least they’d logged off, Quentin wouldn’t assume the worst. From the door, her view of the room wasn’t so narrow. She could see the desk as a whole. Realisation hit her like a freight train. “It’s on the right!” she muttered.
“What-”
Tia shoved past Kal, unceremoniously hitting the desk with her leg and ignoring the pain that zinged up her thigh. She grabbed the computer and yanked it to the other side of the desk, disturbing the dust by the edges. Whilst she coughed, she flicked the remainder of the surface with shaking fingers. She stood back and smiled. It wasn’t very obvious but there was a faint outline on the surface that told her of a secret compartment. She used a pair of scissors to pry one corner up until she'd pulled a jagged cube out of the desk.
