Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) by Alan McDermott

call.  “I understand you are
doing some investigation into Simon Baines and Len Smart.”
    “And just how would you know
that, James?”  Ellis asked, her curiosity aroused.
    “Well…obviously…I want to be
kept abreast of developments, and as you haven’t done a very good job of
finding my two fugitives I decided to look through the logs to see what your
team had been doing all this time.”
    Farrar was relieved at having come
up with such a good excuse, yet angry for leaving himself wide open like
that.  In future he would think it through before calling Ellis: She was
nobody’s fool and one day he was going to dig himself a hole too deep to climb
out of.
    “We’ve been doing what you
asked,” Ellis said, indignation in her voice.  “We know there is an
obvious link between all four men and we want to —”
    “Forget about them,” he
interrupted. “Baines and Smart have nothing to do with this case, so stop
wasting valuable time on them and concentrate your efforts on finding Levine
and Campbell.”
    “James, we have to investigate
all possibilities if —”
    “Veronica, I want you to drop
it !”  He shouted.   “ Now !”  
    Farrar took a few moments to
calm himself , the phone shaking in his hand. 
“I’m sorry,” he eventually said.  “This whole case is being closely
watched by the Home Secretary and he wants results sooner rather than
later.  I can’t have you sending your people on wild goose chases when
resources are so limited.”
    It was Ellis’s turn to pause,
and for a moment Farrar thought she’d already hung up.  Her voice came
back, the tone one he recognised from their time together: Compliance, but not
wilful.  “Okay, James, we’ll ignore Baines and Smart and concentrate on
your two suspects.”
    Farrar started to thank her but
found himself talking to a dial tone.
    Great, he thought.  Just
when the day couldn’t get any worse, a quick chat with Veronica and it turns to
complete shit.  He was wondering for the umpteenth time how they’d managed
to stay together for so long when his phone rang.  The caller simply gave
him a twelve-digit number before hanging up.
    Farrar recognised Palmer’s voice
and logged into his computer, and then brought up the website he had used
earlier in the week.  After entering the code he was redirected to a page
with a short message that improved his mood a little:
     
    Sorry about the delay in
replying, was waiting for the right moment.  Spoke to subject 1
yesterday.  Knows that they travelled by boat (Huang Zhen) to Durban but
no onward itinerary available.  Subject 2 confirmed same. 
Additional: there are now 4 (four) passengers heading your way.  Names unknown.
     
    Farrar wondered where the hell
this fourth person had come from, but the more pressing issue was how to track
them once they reached South Africa.  He opened a new browser and searched
for a website offering shipping itineraries. Once he found one he entered the
name Huang Zhen and found that it was due in to Durban on the seventh of
May, a week from today.  That was plenty of time for Palmer to get to
South Africa and head them off.
    He wrote a quick note in reply
to the message and hit the Send button.
     
    *
* *
     
    Ellis was still fuming when
Small knocked and entered her office.  Before she could even begin to
complain about the intrusion he gave her some much-needed good news.
    “Farrar logged on and the
software has been activated.” 
    He hit a couple of keys on her
laptop to minimise the open files and clicked the icon he had placed on her
desktop.  A new window filled the screen and Ellis soon found some
human-readable data.
    “What are these other
characters?”  She asked Small, pointing to what appeared to be random
keystrokes.  He told her that they were non-alphanumeric keys, such as
Backspace or Shift.
    “I can filter them out if you
like, but it will take time and you’ll have to wait until he logs out and back
in