5

       Farnborough, Hants

      Pete Carr worked out of a discreet industrial unit in Farnborough. The board listing the companies at the end of the road was full of electronic and aviation small businesses. But there was a blank next to Unit 46.

      Max knocked and waited. A square of glass set in the door looked on to a narrow staircase. The place appeared to be empty. After a couple of minutes, a pair of feet descended the stairs. The door was unlocked and opened.

      ‘Carr?’ said Max.

      ‘Pete, please. Sorry about the delay,’ Carr said jovially. ‘Only me here this morning. Stuck on the phone. The boys are working on a tricky one. Someone’s nanny’s been a bit naughty. They’re out wiring up the kids’ schoolbags.’

      Pete Carr didn’t mind what sort of business he took on as long as it paid. He sailed close to the wind. Broke the law, provided the client made it worth his while. Sometimes it was surprising who was prepared to sub-contract out illegal jobs. Governments, lawyers, even the police.

      Max smiled. He liked him immediately. Carr was someone who clearly loved his job.

      ‘Come on through, mate. Coffee? Tea?’

      ‘Tea would be great, Pete. Thanks.’

      Max followed him through to the back room. Got him talking.

      ‘Had a close shave yesterday,’ said Pete as he made the tea. ‘I was bugging a finance director’s computer – commissioned by his CEO. Wasn’t sure what he was up to. Anyway, bugger me, the bloke walks into his office as I’m halfway through the job.’

      ‘Trouble?’

      ‘Nah. Told him I was working on the IT system. So you’re one of Tryon’s spooks?’

      ‘Tryon? Never heard of him.’

      ‘Very good.’ Pete laughed. ‘I’ll tell him you said that.’

      Max looked around the workshop. It was in stark contrast to the empty appearance of the front of the unit. The place was heaving with stuff.

      ‘How much is this kit worth?’

      Pete did a comedy blow through his teeth.

      ‘Probably cost you four hundred grand at today’s prices. I’ve added to it as I’ve gone from task to task. Reason I get so many jobs is because I have everything here.’ Pete pointed around the room. ‘Bugging stuff, scanning gear, jammers, mikes, cameras … This jammer’s worth a few quid,’ he said, picking up a small box.

      ‘What would you use that for?’

      ‘I take it on the train. When some twat starts wah-wah-wah-ing it, I jam his phone.’ Pete grinned. ‘Doing loads of cars at the moment. The thieves have worked out where the manufacturers put the tracking devices, so they have them off and ship the cars over to Qatar before you can blink. They won’t find ours though. Only trouble is, most of the time it takes two trips. Nobody’s making bumpers out of metal these days, so we have to go round the night before and glue a metal plate inside the bumper. Then we fix the tracking device the next day with magnets. You see, the tracker has got to be able to see the sky.’

      Pete would have chatted all day. He liked people. But he could see Max was ticking. ‘What can I do you for then, mate?’

      ‘How small a tracker have you got, Pete?’

      ‘What for? A human?’

      ‘A painting.’

      ‘A painting. Hmm. That isn’t so easy.’

      ‘And it needs to be hidden.’

      ‘Frame?’

      ‘No,’ Max said, shaking his head. ‘We don’t have access to the frame. Only the canvas and the wooden stretcher.’

      ‘You might be in luck. Got the very latest miniature tracker in, a couple of weeks back.’ Pete delved into a drawer, pulled out a few cardboard boxes and then held up something the size of a very thin box of matches.

      ‘How about this?’

      Max nodded. He was pretty confident they’d be able to hide it.

      ‘That should be okay.’

      ‘Power, though. That’s the problem with trackers. They need power. How often do you need to contact it?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Well, if you want a constant signal, the battery will run out very quickly. But if we programme it to give off a signal, say, once every five minutes, the battery will last much longer.’

      ‘Once every hour is more than enough.’

      ‘How about geo-fencing it?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I can get it to tell you when it’s leaving a certain location.’

      Max thought about that, but it sounded too complicated. ‘Once an hour, Pete, that’s all I need.’

      ‘Okay. We can turn it off, anyway. Which is not a bad idea. It saves the battery and makes it harder to detect. We’ll follow the tracker on the Internet. Through a server based in France. Don’t worry, it will have its own account. No one else can see the information.’

      ‘Can you follow it for me?’

      ‘Sure. No problem.’

      Nothing was a problem for Pete. Drilling into hotel bedroom walls to place listening probes, installing keyboard loggers into computers, or scanning rooms for listening devices. It all came easy to Pete, as long as he was paid.

       Eton

      It felt weird, driving under the archway into College Yard. The place hadn’t changed much since it was built in the 1400s. Max appreciated it more now than he had done when he’d walked there every day for the best part of four years.

      He pictured himself rushing under the arch in his tails and scholar’s cape. Terrified of being late for a lesson and placed on Tardy Book. Max Ward: one small insignificant dot in Eton’s history. A sometime scholar who’d completely wasted the opportunity to really make something of himself.

      He looked at the immaculate lawn – showing the effects of winter now, but he remembered how regimentally striped it always was in the summer. Boys, of course, weren’t allowed to walk on it. He was tempted to saunter across it and see if anyone shouted at him.

      You can leave Eton, Max mused, but Eton never leaves you: the ethos, the discipline, the respect, the fear of failure – even when you know you’ve already failed. Ten