Catwalk Criminal (20 page)

She pushed through the crowd, ignoring the glares and loud tutting. She had to get to the security detail before it was too late. But Bree was already striding down the runway, a vision in gold. Within seconds, she'd reached the end and tipped her head back as cameras flashed. Another model had reached the halfway point on the catwalk while a second emerged, striking a pose.

A loud scream rang out. “Dad!”

“Help the president!” someone shouted.

Bree hesitated slightly and then sashayed back up the runway as another female model emerged, followed by Zak. Jessica elbowed her way to the front. The president was slumped back in his chair, his face a horrible grey colour.

“Dad, Dad!” Lydia shook his shoulder while a secret service agent felt the president's neck for a pulse. A photographer shifted position and Jessica noticed Christine standing at the end of the runway. Her eyes were locked on the president, her mouth curled into a smile.

What had she done?

Jessica hurled herself on to the catwalk. “Get away from him!” she yelled at the models.

Bree tottered on her high heels and almost fell over, but the other girls froze to the spot.

Zak sprinted towards Jessica. “What's happening?”

“Get back!” she cried. “Keep away from the president!”

“What?” he faltered.

She glanced at the president. Secret service agents were easing him on to the floor to perform CPR while others created a human shield.

“The clothes are attacking the president somehow. You have to keep your distance and get the others off the runway.”

He fell back a step. “Tell me. Quickly.”

“Christine, the dressmaker.” Jessica pointed at the throng of snappers, but she'd vanished. “She's sewn the clothes with high-tech thread that hacks computers and phones. Somehow she's using it to hurt the president.”

Zak's face paled as he walked backwards. “Check his insulin pump. The hacks could have affected the dosage. I'll find Christine.” He shouted over to the secret service agents. “Jessica's good. She's with me. Let her help.”

He ran back up the runway, shouting at the models to follow him. Jessica jumped off the stage and pushed through the agents. She knelt down by the president, next to Lydia.

“Your dad's insulin pump could be malfunctioning. Do you know how to work it?”

“I think so.”

The secret service agents had swelled in number, preventing anyone from taking photos as Lydia ripped open her dad's shirt. The insulin pump was attached to his belt; a soft plastic tube ran from it to a needle that was inserted into the skin close to his belly button. Jessica remembered the interview Lydia had given about the condition; the pump fed insulin into the body to control the blood glucose levels.

Lydia studied the monitor. “Dad's overdosing. Way too much insulin is being pumped into his body.”

“Can you fix it?” Jessica said urgently.

“I think so.”

Lydia fiddled with the monitor. “It's back to normal levels, but it's too late. He's had a massive dose. He has to get to a hospital.”

The secret service agents swung into action, heaving up the president and carrying him to the nearest exit.

“Thank you.” Lydia brushed away her tears and ran after them.

Jessica stood up. Where was Christine?

Hundreds of people had spilled out into the courtyard. Jessica frantically looked about, but it was impossible to spot Zak or Christine. She had to calm down and think logically. Christine must have hatched an escape plan after attacking the president. How would she get away? She'd have known she couldn't have got very far on foot if secret service agents were in pursuit. Relying on hailing a passing taxi was too risky, as was using the Underground.

Jessica turned around. She'd walked along the river to get here a few hours ago. Christine had to be escaping by boat along the River Thames. She ran out on to the river terrace and made her way down the steps to Victoria Embankment. She darted across the road, dodging traffic, and made it to the pavement. Christine couldn't be far; she must have moored a boat nearby. Her eyes were drawn to an abandoned jetty, which used to belong to a river cruise. As she pelted towards it, she spotted Zak lying sprawled on the gangway next to a docked speedboat. Christine stood over him, an arm raised above her head.

“Stop!” She clambered over the railings.

Christine sprang away, dropping a metal pipe, as Jessica sprinted towards them. The dressmaker untied the rope fastening the boat to the jetty and jumped aboard. Jessica reached Zak and knelt down. He was mumbling incoherently as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Blood pooled around his head. She stood up, fists clenched.

“Keep back!” Christine shouted as she attempted to start the engine. “That's what happened to your boyfriend when he tried to stop me.”

“He's not my boyfriend.” She leapt aboard. Before her feet had touched the bottom of the boat, a hot, agonizing pain ripped through her body. She crumpled into a heap, her limbs like jelly.

Christine loomed over her, holding a small device that fitted into her cupped hand. “Bad choice. Have you forgotten what this can do?”

Jessica tasted blood in her mouth. She'd bitten her lip as the electric current poleaxed her. She couldn't fight back, not yet anyway. The only option was to keep Christine talking long enough for them to be discovered by the secret service. They'd have to come looking for Zak when he didn't check in and would figure out Christine's escape route the way she had.

“That was you at Henry Murray's boarding house?” she said, panting. “You attacked Henry and knocked out Natalia with that device?”

Christine gave a curt nod. “She received a higher dose, poor girl, but she shouldn't have got in my way. Sometimes if you need something doing, you have to do it yourself. Other times it pays to have hired help.”

“You mean the thugs that attacked us at Charing Cross?”

She tried to start the engine again, but it spluttered and failed. “I'd like to say they were the best money could buy, but clearly they weren't.”

“And you've made a lot of money from all those hacks in the US, haven't you?” Jessica attempted to sit up. “You ploughed millions into the launch of Ossa Cosway Ltd as a front for your hacking business.”

“Get down!” Christine pushed her back as a lifeboat powered past. She waved at the crew, her ornate gold necklace swinging from side to side.

“Nice pendant,” Jessica breathed. “Is that a phoenix engraved on it? As in a phoenix rising from the ashes?”

Christine ignored her as she fiddled with the boat's controls.

“You recorded that message for MI6 using a voice disguiser so you'd sound like a man, didn't you? All that stuff about wanting to bring about total freedom of information on the internet was rubbish. You don't believe it for a minute. You needed a distraction, which is why you incited all those hackers to cause mayhem. It all came down to this, didn't it? Releasing Lee Caplin and killing the president of the United States who'd refused to give clemency to a dangerous cybercriminal.”

“He is not a danger to anyone,” Christine snapped. “He's just a teenage boy. A sweet but misguided boy who didn't think through what he was doing.” Her voice wavered as she tried the key again and again. “I had to do something. Lee didn't deserve to be jailed.”

“What do you mean?” Jessica's fingers trembled as she felt in her pocket. Blast. Her key ring was in her handbag. For once, she had no gadgets on her. She'd changed out of her taser trainers into ballet pumps when she arrived at the venue, and removed her watch. Personal jewellery had been banned for today's show.

Christine's fingers slipped from the controls as she turned around.

Yes! Lee was her weak spot. Jessica had to continue to distract her. She stared at the device in Christine's left hand and back to her necklace again.

“I think I've seen that pendant before. It's quite unusual. It was in a photo. Lee Caplin's mum was wearing it.”

Christine took a deep breath. “Louise Caplin was my half-sister.”

So that was the connection! “You were doing all this for your family?”

Christine's grip on the electrical device loosened as tears filled her eyes. “I had to do whatever it took to free Lee, even if it meant setting up Ossa and hurting people who got in the way. I owed Louise that much.”

“Why? I bet she'd never have wanted you to hurt Henry Murray, another teenage boy, even younger than Lee.”

Christine brushed her tears away with the back of her hand. Jessica's eyes remained glued on the gadget. She couldn't defend herself properly in this position. She needed to get back on her feet, but her legs were too shaky to move.

“Don't you see?” Christine said fiercely. “I was responsible for
everything
that happened.”

“That can't be right,” Jessica said gently. “It's not your fault that Lee got himself arrested for serious computer crimes and Louise died.”

“But it was,” Christine sobbed.

“I don't believe you.”

“Four years ago my husband, Harry, was dying of cancer. He worked in IT for the civil service, earning a pittance. He was good at what he did in the office, but he was brilliant at something else out of hours.”

That could only mean one thing. “As in hacking?”

“It began as a hobby, but he'd found a way to send out phishing emails and obtain personal passwords. I was shocked when I first found out, but then he became too ill to return to his IT job and was fired. My dressmaking wasn't paying enough to cover the mortgage. Harry trained me up and hacking became our main source of income. It paid for his cutting-edge private cancer treatment in the States. When he died months later…” Her voice broke. “When Harry passed away, I wasn't going to carry on, but then Louise's husband had a heart attack and died. I was financially supporting her and Lee through hacking as well as carrying on with my dressmaking. It was regular hours and allowed me to spend more time with Lee after school. He was massively into computers, but Louise wouldn't let him have his own. Lee used to come over to my house to go online.”

Jessica caught her breath. “You taught Lee how to hack, didn't you? The family business continued after your husband died.”

Christine nodded. “Lee wanted to learn and was good at it. Eventually, I confessed how I was making so much money. He wanted to help. Together, we made a good team – not that we ever told his mum. Louise would never have approved. Before long, we were making crazy amounts of cash.”

“That's when you started money laundering?”

“I couldn't exactly pay hundreds of thousands of pounds each month into my current account or Louise's. The bank would have reported me to the authorities. I had to find a way to recycle the cash. Investing in a fashion business seemed like a logical step. I could continue dressmaking and get a return on my investment as a silent backer.”

“Why Ossa?”

“I worked with him in his final year at college and genuinely liked and respected him. That wasn't a pretence. He's a true fashion genius, but I realized he'd do absolutely anything to get to the top. He was also totally useless with money, preferring to focus on his designs rather than the nuts and bolts of how he'd actually get a business off the ground. I guessed he'd take millions unquestioningly if it meant he became a superstar. I was right. It all worked out very well.”

“Except Lee got caught.”

“He didn't stick to my rules and became careless. He bought his own computer to use at home. He stopped targeting people for money and performed ever more risky hacks to show off to his cyberfriends. He hacked into the Pentagon and downloaded files about new weapons and spy technology: superconductive thread that could be sewn into soldiers' uniforms to allow them to download information on the battlefield without the need for devices; high-tech electrical stun guns and grapnels that were far superior to anything ever created before.

“He also deleted files on other warfare techniques he found abhorrent and hacked into the missile system to show how easy it was to manipulate, how close countries could come to war by the push of a button. He never had any intention of firing those missiles. He was just making a point. A really silly, life-changing one.”

Jessica managed to ease herself into a sitting position. “Which led to his arrest? The authorities had evidence of those hacks, but not the ones where you scammed people and targeted their bank accounts. Those were performed on
your
computer, which meant you could let Lee take the fall.”

“I didn't want to but I had no choice. Don't you see? I was far more useful on the outside than locked up. I recruited an army of hackers that I knew could help me wreak havoc when the time was right. Plus I thought, because of Lee's age, that the president would take pity on him and intervene, especially if they looked into his background and saw that he was strongly anti-war. He'd never have started World War 3. Instead, the president did nothing and the Americans built a case around him being a dangerous cybercriminal. His extradition killed Louise. The president killed Louise.”

“You could have come forward and confessed to your involvement. Lee would have got a lighter sentence if you'd explained what you'd done and provided a character testimony.”

“But I'd have been behind bars. I remembered some of the documents Lee had downloaded and realized there was another way. If the military could use superconductive thread in uniforms, why couldn't I stitch it into couture clothing? I had a list of military suppliers I could secretly buy it from. I experimented using Ossa's US clients, and it worked. It helped fund the legal costs to fight Lee's extradition. When that failed, I knew I could use the same method to get him out of prison – using superconductive thread stitched into clothing to hack into the jail's security system. I just had to pick a journalist at random who'd be thrilled about receiving an expensive freebie and then entice them to the prison with the offer of an interview. It worked.”

“You failed. Lee's been recaptured and he's probably going to serve an even longer jail term, thanks to you. Your assassination attempt on the president didn't work either. Give yourself up, Christine, and help free Lee another way, by coming clean about your involvement. You could help reduce his sentence if you take the blame. He shouldn't have to do this alone, not when he's lost his mum.”

“Why would I volunteer to be jailed when I can do this my way? I have the technology. I can break Lee out again and we can start a new life together, far away from the US and here.” Christine tried the engine again. This time it started.

Jessica felt a scorching pain in her chest and fell on to her back. Christine knelt over her, waving the gadget.

“You should never have followed Zak. This device was designed by the US government to fire electrical pulses. It can take out the glass in any window from a range of a hundred metres. When it's ramped up to full power, as it is now, it can also stop hearts. I'd estimate you have about thirty seconds left before the blood stops pumping around your body.”

Waves of excruciating pain washed over Jessica. It felt as though someone was sitting on her chest, crushing the air out of her lungs. Christine stared down, smiling. Then a look of confusion flickered over her face. The dressmaker's mouth opened into a scream and she fell sideways as blackness flooded behind Jessica's eyelids.

 

A sharp pain stabbed Jessica's forehead. She tried to open her eyes but a flashing light made her swiftly shut them again.

“Jessica? Jessica Cole? Can you hear me?”

Her tongue felt too heavy to reply.

“She's with us again.”

She opened her eyes. This time they managed to stay open longer. Faces stared down at her. She didn't recognize any of them. Then it went dark again.

 

She realized she must have blacked out again because when she woke up for the second time, she was lying in a bed. The stiff sheets scratched her bare arms and legs. A bright light seared through her eyelids and she could smell disinfectant. She opened her eyes slowly.