Free Chasing the Dark by Sam Hepburn Page A

whose names were in the files, hearing their side of what happened to them, stuff like that.’
    The Professor pushed a few strands of longish grey hair off his face and gave a spot on the carpet a kind of faraway smile. ‘Sounds like Ivo. He was marvellous at that sort of human story.’ His watery blue eyes drifted back to me. ‘But how does that back up your conspiracy theory?’
    I took a breath. OK, here goes . ‘What if he found something in the files, some secret information about KGB spies that someone powerful didn’t want him to write about?’
    The Professor raised his palm as if he was trying to push the idea away and said slowly and stiffly, ‘Everything in those files has to be at least twenty years old. I think it very unlikely that anyone would kill to keep their contents quiet.’
    â€˜Unlikely. Not impossible.’
    â€˜Well, no,’ he said wearily. ‘Not impossible.’
    I picked up the notebook. ‘This writing, can you understand it?’
    The Professor let out a sigh. ‘No. It was Ivo’s private shorthand. It made things much safer for him and his sources when he was reporting under cover.’
    I turned the notebook towards him. ‘Look at these dates. First one’s the eleventh of February, last one’s the day before the crash, the third of March. So this is all stuff he wrote in Ukraine.’
    He nodded.
    â€˜â€™So why bother writing it in code if he wasn’t writing something secret?’
    A tiny frown creased the Professor’s forehead. I grabbed a pen and paper from his desk. ‘OK, so think about it. Ivo goes to Kiev on the first of February. On the tenth of Feb he emails The Times about doing a story on the KGB archive. On the eleventh he starts investigating something and writing secret notes about it in this book. On the third of March, just as he’s about to leave Ukraine, he has his laptop stolen. He flies home and buys a new one. The following night he goes to see my mum and they both get killed.’
    I felt his eyes on me as I flicked through the notebook. ‘Oh, yeah, and on the eleventh, right at the start of hisinvestigation, he jots down these mobile numbers. They’re probably contacts he was interviewing. Can we call them?’
    â€˜All right.’ His voice was steady but his hand trembled as he handed me the phone.
    I put it on speaker and rang the numbers. Each time I got a recorded voice telling me I’d dialled incorrectly. The Prof went over to his desk and tapped his computer.
    â€˜Try them again using the country code for Ukraine, that’s 00380, and the one for Russia, which is 007.’
    I looked up. ‘You’re not serious.’
    â€˜I’m afraid I am. It looks like someone in the Russian phone industry also had spies on the brain.’ He tried to smile but didn’t quite make it.
    I dialled every combination – no luck.
    â€˜Maybe they’re not mobile numbers at all,’ he said, thoughtfully.
    â€˜Eleven digits, starting with an 0. What else are they going to be?’
    Even as I said it I was getting this niggling feeling I’d seen another set of numbers just like them. Recently, too. I just couldn’t think where. We tried writing them out, swapping the numbers for letters to see if they were some kind of code. All we got was a jumble of rubbish. The Prof heaved himself out of his chair. ‘I don’t know about you but my brain always works better on a full stomach. Come on. We’re having lunch in the Senior Common Room. Better not be late.’
    The Senior Common Room was like something out of Hogwarts; two long wooden tables down the middle anda lot of old portraits hanging round the walls. I was half expecting some wizened old gnome to hobble in and serve up stuffed swan and I was a bit miffed when it turned out to be a help-yourself choice of liver and bacon or breaded fish. I had the fish with rhubarb tart