Free Stealing People by Robert Wilson

people in the same world,’ said Boxer. ‘Has there been any unusual movement in the accounts to which you have access?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So you’ve been checking?’
    ‘I’ve been waiting in a hotel room for three days and Mark Rowlands told me to keep an eye on them and to tell him if anything happened.’
    Silence.
    ‘Don’t think for a moment that I’ve forgotten: you still haven’t given me your word,’ said Boxer.
    ‘All right, for fuck’s sake, I promise to leave Amy alone,’ she said, trotting it out. ‘We didn’t do anything except snog … that’s all.’
    ‘She’s only just got her life back together,’ said Boxer, logging the revelation of a kiss.
    ‘After what?’
    ‘Too complicated.’
    ‘Look, it was only sex, we weren’t about to elope or anything,’ said Siobhan. ‘I can’t help it if people get a thing about me, can I?’
    ‘People do, do they?’
    ‘Well you haven’t,’ she said. ‘Which is probably just as well.’
    ‘You’re trouble and you and I know it. You’ve taken this beating as if it’s happened to you before.’
    ‘People don’t like confusion when it comes to sex.’
    ‘That was a heavy beating. Forty-five minutes according to Amy,’ said Boxer. ‘What did they want?’
    ‘To know where my dad was … what do you think?’
    ‘How did they know where to find you?’
    ‘Followed me, probably.’
    ‘You’ve had some training on that front,’ said Boxer. ‘If you know how to follow you must know when you’re being followed.’
    ‘Not when my mind’s on other things,’ she said, trying a grin but wincing away from it.’
    ‘Be serious, it’s important,’ said Boxer. ‘Do you think they already knew you were living here?’
    ‘They didn’t follow us from the gallery. So they definitely knew I was here.’
    ‘How did you book this place?’
    ‘Online. A holiday rentals site.’
    ‘How did you get the key?’
    ‘The owner of the flat met me here, told me the other two flats were empty but tenants were arriving tomorrow.’
    ‘And you took a cab from the Savoy with your luggage.’
    ‘This morning around eleven o’clock.’
    ‘Any tail?’
    ‘Not that I could see.’
    ‘What did you bring with you?’ asked Boxer. ‘Your own things and presumably whatever your father left behind?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Siobhan, thinking.
    ‘Was there any of his business paraphernalia in his stuff, like a laptop, papers …?’ asked Boxer. ‘I mean, they’ve tossed the place completely. Were they looking for something specific? What questions did they ask you in their interrogation? And Amy says the one that spoke to her was a Londoner. Is that significant?’
    ‘You’re asking too many questions for somebody who’s had the shit beaten out of them,’ said Siobhan.
    ‘Sorry, take your time.’
    ‘First of all my father does everything on his phone. He doesn’t like information being left around in computers or filing cabinets. He likes it all next to his chest. All his deals – the legal ones at least – are done on his phone.’
    ‘And the illegal ones?’
    ‘In person.’
    ‘You could expand on that if you wanted to.’
    ‘There’s not much to expand. I was never invited … as you can imagine.’
    ‘Who was he doing illegal deals for?’
    ‘Not illegal exactly … just stuff below the radar, as he called it.’
    ‘OK, but for who?’
    ‘The Americans were the only people he worked for. If he was doing stuff for anybody else I didn’t know about it.’
    ‘Did you ever see any of these Americans?’
    ‘People would come to the flat in Dubai. Some of them were American.’
    ‘Anybody recently?’
    ‘A guy came to see him twice before we left. That’s the tenth and the eleventh of January.’
    ‘Name?’
    ‘Mike with a weird surname like Klink or Klonk … something onomatopoeic.’
    ‘Do you know what they discussed?’
    ‘ Nada .’
    ‘You talked about seeing data from these offshore accounts. What about payments made into or