The Lost Testament

73

Once Bronson’s laptop had loaded, he quickly clicked on the Skype icon, found a number labelled ‘BTK’, and clicked ‘Call Phone’. As soon as the system began dialling, he picked up his dual-function mouse-phone — a cheap gadget he’d used before and found much more reliable than the speakers and built-in microphone on his laptop — and held it up to his ear.

The one thing he knew was that Billy would answer his call, because his mobile phone was virtually a component part of his body. He never went anywhere, not even, Bronson suspected, to the shower — assuming he took one — without taking the phone with him. His call was answered in under three seconds.

‘Yup?’

‘Billy, it’s Chris Bronson, and I need a favour.’

There was a chuckle from the other end.

‘Long time no see, man. How’s it hanging? I know you only call me when you need help, so what’s wrong? Your laptop exploded or Windows 7 crashed?’

‘Oddly enough, no,’ Bronson replied. ‘Look, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I need you to take a look at a mobile phone for me.’

‘No problemo. Drop it round next time you’re passing and I’ll check it out.’

‘It’s not that easy. I’m in Spain at the moment, and the phone belongs to a suspected criminal. The problem is that I’m not working here officially, so I can’t get the phone examined by the Spanish police. Is there any way you can do it remotely?’

There was a short pause while the man at the other end considered the options.

‘Coupla questions, then. What’s the connector on the phone?’

‘A mini USB, the same as mine, and I’ve got the lead with me,’ Bronson said.

‘No problem. It’ll just look like an external hard drive. OK. You still got that remote access program I gave you? TeamViewer?’

‘Yes. Do you want me to run it right now?’

‘In a sec. I’ll talk you through it, step by step, ’cause I know you’re not too bright at this kind of thing.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ Bronson said.

‘OK,’ Billy went on, no hint of humour in his voice, ‘the first thing is, you need to take out the SIM card.’

‘But surely the SIM card holds all the data?’

Billy chuckled again.

‘Wow, you really are out of date, aren’t you? These days, about all the SIM card usually holds is the phone number. Modern mobiles have big internal memories. They have to, because of all the crap people load onto them: emails, photographs, cached web pages, games and all the rest. If there’s anything useful on this phone you want me to take a look at, it’ll be inside it. So, take out the SIM card, put the battery back in for now, and then plug it in to your laptop.’

Bronson did so.

‘When you’ve done that, run the TeamViewer program and I’ll do the same at this end, then we’ll see what we can find out.’

Within about two minutes, Bronson was able to see the pointer on his laptop apparently moving of its own volition, as Billy took remote control of his machine. Then things started happening quickly, as various windows opened and closed and different images and lists of information popped up and then almost as quickly vanished. Billy, in the meantime, was silent, presumably because he was concentrating.

‘All righty,’ he said finally. ‘There’s good news and bad news, I guess. First, you need to take real good care of Angela Lewis, if that’s who that pretty blonde woman is. There are several pictures of her on that phone, and she’s mentioned by name in a couple of emails as well. My Spanish isn’t that good, but what they’re saying seems to be simple enough. She’s supposed to die. And the man who owned the phone, who called himself Jordi, was supposed to find something, some relic, and hand it over to the man who sent the emails. And his name, before you ask, is Pere, no surname, so it’s probably just the name he’s using for this particular operation.’

Bronson nodded, a pointless gesture, as he realized immediately.

‘Any information about where the handover of the relic was supposed to take place?’

‘No,’ Billy replied. ‘The last email just tells the man whose phone we’re looking at to call when the job is complete, and then Pere will tell him where the rendezvous is to hand over the cash. Seems to have been quite an expensive job. One of the earlier emails quoted fifty grand, euros not pounds, as long as the relic was recovered. And that’s another good reason for you to take care of Angela. Like the advert says, she’s worth it.’

It was Bronson’s turn to smile at that.

‘You don’t need to tell me that, Billy. I already know she’s worth it.’

Bronson glanced at Angela as he said the last sentence, and she looked back at him with a puzzled expression on her face.

‘Tell you later,’ Bronson mouthed, covering the microphone, then turned his attention back to what Billy was saying.

‘Listen, there’s a whole bunch of data on this phone. Easiest thing is if I just pull the whole lot off it and copy it onto your hard drive. That OK with you?’

‘That’d be great, Billy. Thanks a lot.’

‘I’ll expect a more tangible show of appreciation for my services when you get back to London, my friend. Gonna charge you for an hour of my time, and you’re getting away lightly with that.’

‘You can make it two hours, Billy, and I’ll buy you a drink as well. I really appreciate what you’ve done for me.’

‘Deal. OK, I’ll create a new folder on your hard drive, and I’ll just call it “Mobile”. You’ll find everything in that.’

The line went quiet and then, a couple of minutes later, Billy spoke again.

‘Right, that’s done it. Do you want me to delete the data from the phone? Be an idea if you’re planning on using it yourself. I can put it back to pretty much the way it was when the guy bought it, and I could change the language to English as well, if you’d like.’

While Billy had been effecting the data transfer, Bronson had been wondering if he could extract any more useful information from the mobile.

‘No, just leave the phone as it is, Billy. It might be more useful to me to have the information still recorded on it. One other thing. You said that the guy in charge, the one who was pulling Jordi’s strings, was called Pere. I’d quite like to find out where he is, because he’s got something — or rather someone — that I want. Is there any way you can work out where he’s been operating from?’

‘Ah, now that, my friend, is pretty serious hacking. I’ll have to identify which local provider his phone is registered with, and then work my way inside the system to trace which cells it’s been in contact with.’

‘I didn’t ask how you’d do it, Billy,’ Bronson said. ‘I just asked if you could do it.’

‘Of course I can. But before I even start, Chris, you do know that this is completely illegal? You and I could both end up in the slammer if anybody finds out about it. You sure you want me to do this?’

‘Going to jail is the least of my worries right now. Listen, I believe that this man Pere has probably kidnapped a colleague of Angela’s, who was out here in Madrid, and they’re almost certainly going to kill him unless we manage to find him first. This man called me on the phone that you’ve been looking at just over three hours ago, and if you can find out where he was when he made that call, that would be great.’

‘Right, this is your funeral, and if some guy from the thin blue line comes knocking on my door, I’ve never met you and I’ve never heard of you, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Make sure you leave your laptop on and I’ll call you as soon as I get anything.’