Chasing the Dark by Sam Hepburn Page A

London?’
    â€˜How long was he off work?’
    â€˜A month. I wanted him to take longer but there’s a big energy summit coming up and he’d been asked to profile some of the delegates.’
    â€˜Did he go away anywhere?’
    â€˜Yes. Kiev.’
    â€˜Where’s that?’
    â€˜Ukraine. It’s the capital. He’d studied there for a while, got to know it pretty well.’
    â€˜Ukraine . . . that’s in . . . Eastern Europe?’ I said, wishing I’d kicked the habit of nodding off in Geography.
    â€˜Yes. Part of the former Soviet Union.’
    â€˜So they speak what . . . Russian?’
    â€˜For the most part. Some local dialects as well, I believe.’
    Was that Russian Yuri had been muttering in his sleep? Had Ivo methim in Ukraine? My heart punched my ribs so loudly I was sure the Prof could hear it down the phone. I needn’t have worried. He was too busy warbling on about Ivo getting a first class degree in Slavonic studies – whatever they were.
    I knew nothing about Ukraine except for this documentary me and Mum had watched about a macho undercover reporter on the trail of a huge money laundering operation. He’d ended up in Kiev and got beaten up by a gang of sleazy thugs who’d discovered his secret camera and didn’t fancy being on telly.
    â€˜Aren’t journalists always on the lookout for stories, even when they’re on holiday?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t there masses of gangs over there?’ Cogs whirred in my brain. Gangs run by the kind of ‘bad people’ who were after Yuri .
    â€˜Joe, I know you’re confused and unhappy, but think about it logically. If Ukrainian mobsters wanted to get rid of Ivo, why wait until he got back to England? And why pick a method as risky and uncertain as running his car off the road? It makes no sense.’
    â€˜It would if they wanted to get rid of Ivo and Mum.’
    The words hung there, raw and shocking. I couldn’t believe I’d actually thought them, let alone said them out loud.
    â€˜You’re not telling me your mother had links with the Ukrainian Mafia, are you?’
    â€˜Not that she was letting on.’
    He made a grunty noise, like he almost laughed, and his voice relaxed a bit.
    â€˜As far as I know, Ivo wasn’t working on anything at all in Ukraine. So you see: no sinister investigations on thego, no forays into the criminal underworld.’
    I wasn’t buying that but I’d sworn to Yuri I wouldn’t betray him so I trod carefully,
    â€˜I . . . er . . . still wouldn’t mind having a look in his laptop.’
    I heard a sigh and then a scratchy sound like he was rubbing his chin. ‘Oh, very well. If it will set your mind at rest.’
    Yes! I jabbed the air but tried to keep my voice calm. ‘Do you know his password?’
    â€˜I think he used Bitsy241 for pretty much everything. It was a family joke, you see. Bitsy’s his twin, two for one.’
    Why did posh people have such weird names?
    I pulled Ivo’s laptop towards me. It was top of the range, even had built in mobile broadband. I typed in Bitsy241, pressed Enter and felt a nervous buzz as his desktop flashed on to the screen. ‘Brilliant. Thanks.’ My fingers brushed the keyboard, itching to get into his files.
    â€˜When did he go to Ukraine?’
    â€˜The beginning of February.’
    â€˜When did he get back?’
    â€˜The day before the crash, which meant I hadn’t seen him for over a month before he died. And that was just for a quick coffee on a fleeting visit to town. You never think, do you, that it might be the last time?’
    A stab of pain snatched my breath. The last I’d seen of Mum was the edge of her coat whisking through the door as she’d rushed off to the Trafalgar Arms. On her way out she’d kissed the top of my head and told me not to