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I smiled, sympathetic but not trying to hide my triumph.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m afraid you owe me that drink.”
“Ugh. Anything else?”
“Just the usual. Don’t let your staff buzz people through. Don’t let secured doors swing shut behind you without checking they’re actually closed. Definitely don’t reuse passwords.”
“Reuse…? Oh God, Jack, do I want to know?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t look at anything sensitive.” I gave her a one-armed hug and hitched again at the borrowed trousers. “Right, sorry, I have to get going. I need to return this uniform and retrieve my bag before one of your staff blows it up in a controlled explosion.”
“I wish,” Malik said with a groan. “It sounds like it could have had a ticking clock pasted to the top and they wouldn’t have noticed, judging by everything else. Go on then, get out of here. Give Gabby a squeeze from me. No… hang on.” She seemed to remember something. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Do you not trust me to get off the property?” I said, laughing, and she shook her head.
“No, it’s not that. There’s something… something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Look, give me five minutes and I’ll meet you in the locker room. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, a little puzzled, and then Malik buzzed me out of the custody suite.
* * *
MALIK CAUGHT UP TO ME in the locker room a few minutes later, but we were all the way out to my car when I finally said, “Well, you said you had something to say. So spit it out, whatever it is. I have to get going.”
“I know,” Malik said. She looked grave. “It’s—well, it’s actually two things. I’m not sure…” She stopped, and I felt a flicker of alarm pass through me. Habiba Malik and I were something close to friends now, but after what had happened last year, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be completely comfortable in the company of the police.
“Look, what is it? You’re worrying me.”
“It’s Cole Garrick,” she said, turning to me. Her face in the sharp February light looked older than it had when we first met, fine lines around the corners of her eyes. “He—well, he’s died, in jail. Awaiting trial.”
“Fuck.” I had been trying not to swear so much, for Gabby, but now the word slipped out of its own volition, and honestly there wasn’t anything else I could think of saying, so I repeated it. “Fuck. So he’ll never stand trial?”
“No. I’m so sorry. They had him in protective custody, as you know, but evidently he found a way…”
“He found a way? Are you saying he did this to himself?”
Malik shrugged.
“He was found hanging. How you interpret that…”
“Fuck,” I said again. I pressed my fingers to my eyes. Images flickered through my head—Cole on the beach at Brighton, laughing and diving through the waves. Cole on the balcony of his apartment, drinking dirty martinis and grilling giant prawns on the barbecue. Cole’s face in the candlelight of the cottage, his lips on mine. His expression that last time I had seen him, in the darkness of the penthouse, his features twisted with anger and despair. His voice: Stay back or I will shoot you, Jack.
Would he have done it? I still didn’t know.
“I’m sorry.” I heard Malik’s voice as though from very far away. “I know this isn’t what you wanted. It isn’t what we wanted. We wanted to see justice done.”
Justice. The word had a sour taste in my mouth. Some might argue it was a kind of justice, what had happened to Cole. A life for a life. All I knew was it didn’t feel like it to me.
“What about the people behind him?” I said now. “Do they think… did they do this?”
“It’s being looked into very carefully,” Malik said. She was watching me, her face grave and patient, and full of sympathy. “And you know, Cole had given a huge amount of testimony before he died. Believe me, every thread is being followed up at the highest level.”
I nodded. I believed her. I didn’t flatter myself that MI6 were particularly bothered about the death of a lowly hacker. But who knew how many journalists and dissidents had had their phones compromised by Watchdog, their whereabouts tracked by Cole’s software. Who knew how many people had been quietly assassinated at a time they had believed they would be safe, how many diplomats’ children now had their photographs in biometric databases in some far-off country, thanks to Puppydog.
What had happened to Gabe—that was on Cole, and now he had paid the ultimate price. And the men who had cut Gabe’s throat, well, I would never know for sure, but last summer two corpses had been found floating in the Thames, with DNA that matched microscopic traces recovered from the bathroom window. When Malik had told me the news, I knew what she’d wanted me to feel—that it was over, that the people who had killed Gabe had been, if not caught, at least run to ground, and in a way it was true, but though it was strange to admit, I had never been that interested in the men who’d wielded the knife that night. To me they’d always felt like bullets in a loaded gun—killers, yes, but in a strange way, not the ones ultimately responsible for Gabe’s death. To me that had always been Cole… and his handlers. And now Cole was dead. But the group behind him was a more shadowy, amorphous thing, and in spite of what Malik was saying, I didn’t know in my heart whether a group like that could ever be pinned down, let alone brought to justice.
Whoever the individuals were behind the Puppydog hack, they were just one part of a vast dark web of unseen players, a network that encompassed everyone from national security agencies to organizations like the Lazarus Group, right through to some kid in his bedroom in Canada or Poland or Bangladesh, pressing buttons and causing havoc because he could, just like Gabe had once done. And yes, they could be fought, maybe some individuals might even be arrested, but you might as well try to prosecute cancer. They would always exist. Slippery, shadowy, forcing their way through the cracks in our online security and the doors we left open for them in our digital lives.
All I could do was tell myself that I had closed one door—the door Cole had carved out for them—and thousands, maybe millions of people were safer for it. And now I had to let it go.
