CHAPTER 9 LATE OCTOBER                                              He settled in to a routine, cycling to work each morning and bringing back each evening a set of charged batteries for his micro. Rosa seemed to like the cottage. She came often in the late evening and they would work together until after midnight. Increasingly she left the detailed work to him preferring to sit in his old armchair by the fire drinking soup, discussing possibilities.          But the business of Jack and the tapes was still lurking in his mind. Not many computer installations would have the software for what he wanted to do, but doing it at MCI was out of the question. What he needed was a cooperative university department - a real computer science department - not a statistics outfit like Hamish's. His old department would do nicely but he did not want Karl Wellington, his former supervisor, to have any suspicion that he was operating - as Jack would have put it - ‘outside normal parameters’.          The solution came by post. As a research student he had been the target for computer junk mail. Conference announcements, advertisements for new technical books, cut price software and the like poured though his letterbox, and the stuff still kept coming, redirected to him ‘Care of A. Jamieson - Easter Howe Farm.’          One day this buff envelope came with an invitation to an academic seminar on software testing. It was to be held in his old department and as he read it Allan recognised an excuse to drop in on Karl and the lads. He smiled a wicked smile. They always liked to show off their latest toys. Once the discussion got going it would not be hard to introduce his own problem. Trouble with the slowness of an old version of the dis-assembler (he would name a rather old version). Bit of a bore really. Did they have a more up-to-date version? (they would have) Would they mind if he did a comparison of processing speed? A little flattery would help. That's a nice machine. It's faster than ours (it wouldn't be). Just these couple of tapes - it won't take long. Then maybe a printout - for comparison. Not important really. Just if they could spare a little computer time - for comparison you understand.          A seminar on software testing. Yes. Rosa would wear that. A day off for ‘staff development’ would look good on the departmental progress report. So he asked her.          Deception was becoming surprisingly easy and he was looking forward to seeing the results at last. Then maybe he could put behind him all this nonsense that Jack had wished upon him and concentrate on important things.          *      *      *      *      *          ‘Are you all right Allan?’          ‘It's a bit airless in here. Open a window Sam.’          ‘When did you eat last - want a cup of tea? You'll remember it. It's still the glorious stuff we used to have when you were here. Takes the lining off your stomach.....Sorry!’          ‘I'll get some water.’          ‘No. No need. I'm ok. I'm ok. Honest. I think I may have a virus or something. I should be hitting the trail.’          ‘Sure you're ok,’ said Karl. ‘I'll give you a run to the station if you like.’          ‘No. I'll be all right. The air will do me good. Sure I'm fine. I'd better not forget my tapes though. I'll read the printout on the train.’          ‘Do you want them both? They look identical to me.’          He stuffed the tapes into one pocket of his anorak and the thick roll of printout in the other. It stuck out quite a long way.          ‘I'm ok. Honest.’          On the way to the station he bought a `Scotsman' and wrapped the printout inside it.          The train was deserted but he chose a corner seat nevertheless. He felt safer with a partition behind him. Carefully, he unwrapped the printout. He didn't need to check them line by line. The two were identical in almost every respect. He rolled the stuff up again.          The implication had hit him the instant the second printout had started chattering off on the serial printer. He knew now why Tommy Harkness had been killed. Tommy had had a copy of the same the program which Jack had stolen. If Jack was right that was the program which was cheerfully putting a stamp of approval on all of MCI's chips - chips with a secret passage built into them. So there would be no need to trace each chip to its destination. Every computer would have the same type of chip and every chip would have the same modification - the same password - everywhere.          Want a pay increase? Just say the word. I'll modify your payroll record. Need a small boost to the finances? Name your figure. I'll write you a cheque with the compliments of any bank you care to mention. Promotion? Hang on a tick. I'll stick a few stars on your personnel records. See that guided missile. Let's misguide it. Want revenge? Give me his name. I'll change his records so that he becomes an alcoholic, child-molesting murdering rapist with a low credit rating.          Know the password and you had the key to Aladdin's cave and the evidence that such a password existed was here in his hand, wrapped up in a newspaper. Men had been killed for less. *      *      *      *      *          Telegraph poles glided in procession, wires dipped and rose in endless curtseys, fields with placid cows rotated and allotments with cold-frames and cloches slid by in ordered sequence.          The wings of the seat caught him awkwardly in the shoulder blades so he squiggled down on to the tail of his spine with his body half under the black-topped table and his feet under the seat opposite. He shut his eyes. A face floated before his. A thin face from a tabloid front page. It had narrow eyes and a squint nose and a calm knowing smile.          The method of Tommy Harkness's death was a reproach, so gratuitously brutal, so ... so ... disdainful of that thing which had been a person with feelings, done, not in a fit of powerful emotions, but dispassionately, a task to be fulfilled, a quota to be completed. Tie a rope round his neck. Hold him. How many men involved? Two? Three perhaps? Pin his arms. While his legs kicked and he struggled for air, hitch the rope to a hook on the back of the door. Then pull downwards adding the weight of several men. Watch his eyes bulge while the life was squeezed out of him. Then walk away and call it suicide. Official!          Official! What was his name? - Detective Inspector Chalmers had thanked him for saving the life of his nephew. And he had walked away from Tommy's death and called it suicide.          A door slammed and a man with a briefcase brushed past. Allan watched through half shut eyes as the man hesitated and then sat down on the seat across the passage and diagonally opposite. The carriage was empty. Annoying. There was no need for the man to sit there. The man took a book from his case and settled to read.          Allan shut his eyes again and thought furiously. No one but he and Jack knew he had the tapes. Was that true? Bugging, according to Jack, was a way of life at MCI. He had to get rid of the stuff. Knowing what he did he could not now dump it on Jean.          ‘Tickets please!’          He put the roll on the table and struggled upright. As he searched his wallet the bundle unrolled. The ticket collector ignored it but the man across the passageway looked straight at it. As Allan gathered it up their eyes met before the man returned to his book. At Queen Street Allan pretended to be asleep to give time for the other man to get clear, but the man touched him on the shoulder.          ‘We're in Glasgow!’          ‘Oh! Oh Thanks!’          The man alighted and walked past the window. Allan followed, keeping thirty yards behind, noting each passenger and porter. The man turned right and made for the newsagents. Allan went straight ahead for George Square feeling ashamed of his panic reactions. He couldn't go through life being suspicious of every stranger. No one else knew about the tapes. He could not have been followed.          The Main Post Office was on the other side of the square. It had a display of stationery so he bought a padded envelope, stuffed the tapes and printout inside and had it weighed and priced. For a moment he considered removing one copy of the printout. He had not yet read it all the way through, analysed the content for proof of deliberate malpractice. But he sealed it as it was, addressed it to himself, Poste Restante at - he hesitated again - the main post office in Edinburgh and dropped it into the parcel mail chute. Then he walked to Central Station to catch the Gairnock train.          On the train down to Gairnock he began thinking more clearly, going over recent events and assessing the extent to which he might have drawn attention to himself. Computer records? He was sure he had left no pointers except for that simple file contents list which would not be noticed unless someone was looking for it specifically at the time. Bugging? Suppose Jack was right and bugging was a way of life at MCI. All their conversations about the tapes had been in Alphonso's Pizza Parlour or in the park across the road from Jack's flat. Jack himself? His friendship with Jack was common knowledge. What traces had Jack left behind him with his stupid ploys? Jack had to be persuaded to cut out the hacking completely. Not easy. Jack was the weak link.          Did he want to get involved at all? Should he not just sink out of sight and forget the whole affair? Somewhere - yes - he dug deep into an inside pocket - he had a card. He pulled it out.          Havelock Home Securities - A.G.Simpson - Sales Director          What was it Harry had said - loud-mouthed Harry - that day in the pub when the bald-headed man had offered him his card? A pair of Lurex Tights and an advertisement for double glazing and earn some of the crinkly stuff. There was the escape tunnel - if he wanted it. What would he lose?          The project with Rosa. Nothing else. No emotional ties. Yet. Damn it!                   *      *      *      *      *          There was a dark blue Ford Escort parked in the lay-by opposite the track to Burnside Cottage. Allan dismounted and stood quietly in the dark, listening and looking, but it was his nose which registered. Pungent wood smoke. He pushed the cycle silently up the track. There was a loom of light from the windows. He leant the bike against a tree and tip-toed to the window. A cheery wood-fire was burning in his grate. The room looked unusually tidy and the tilly-lamp was alight and standing on the mantlepiece. Someone was sitting in his chair. He could see an elbow and the top of the head - dark hair. It had to be Rosa for only she knew that he kept a key in an old milk can in the tractor shed.          She was slumped comfortably in the chair with her legs crossed, a book in her lap and a glass of wine in her hand. As he pushed open the kitchen door she raised the glass in toast and said, ‘Hello! How were things in Edinburgh?’ She was wearing jeans and a heather mixture pullover with a deep wide collar that enveloped her in loose folds. The sleeves were pushed up to expose her slender forearms and a lock of her hair, normally so tightly controlled, had fallen over her forehead. She pushed it back with her wrist. Allan knew his mouth was open.          Rosa said, ‘I took the afternoon off. Wensley was having one of his bloody meetings so I threw a headache. I think there should be a law against working on Friday afternoons.’          He hung his jacket on the back of the door. ‘I didn't recognise your car. I nearly burst in with the wood chopper in my hand. I thought you had a Rover.’          ‘The Rover is Maurice's car. The Escort is mine.’          He sat down on the upright chair by the table.          ‘Something smells delicious.’          She raised her eyebrows and a finger like a stage magician and eased herself out of the armchair. With a cloth she pulled opened the oven which was built in to the old iron kitchen range and lifted out a chipped black casserole dish. She put it on the table before him. An aroma of chicken, thyme, marjoram and onions wafted up as she lifted the lid. Dark mushrooms bobbed in the bubbling gravy.          ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now you see that I am not just a pretty face’ and laughed. ‘After making you buy that microwave I felt I owed you a meal. I've never used one of these old ranges before. It was quite a challenge.’          There was wine for her and apple juice for him. She had also brought a pavlova and fresh ground coffee which she made in an enamel saucepan on the open fire. At her suggestion he lit candles and turned off the harsh white light of the tilly-lamp. She asked him about the seminar and he managed a plausible account of the talks, though he found it a strain to remember what they had actually been about. He said nothing about the tapes. Then, when it was quite late, she said, ‘Well, shall we do some work?’          Warm, well fed and relaxed he had been on the point of falling asleep but he washed up while she set up the two micros.          ‘I thought we might explore an alternative approach,’ she said. ‘I had an idea last night.’          So they explored her idea and for an hour they went round in logical circles. Then she said, ‘It's no good. My brain is pickled tonight. But you go on.’          ‘I don't want to chase you but it's after midnight. Won't Maurice be worried?’          ‘Maurice flew to Brussels this afternoon. He won't be back until Monday. Julia has gone to stay with friends in London and Bob is driving that buzz-bomb of his in some rally or race or something down in the Borders all weekend.’          She settled down again into the armchair.          ‘Which is just as well,’ she went on, ‘because I've had too much to drink and you can't drive me home can you?’          His hands froze on the keyboard and he looked at her.          ‘It's all right Allan. I won't assault you. I'll just curl up in this chair for a few hours. Could you put a few more logs on the fire?’          He took the log basket outside and filled it. As he bent over the pile of logs in the dark he felt his face flush red and then to his alarm he started to have an erection. There was a loom of orange light in the sky in the direction of Gairnock. In the other direction a few stars blinked clear. He stood for a while in the darkness, in his shirt sleeves, calming himself before he returned with the basket.          ‘Do you mind me staying Allan?’          As he passed the chair she ran a hand over his forearm raising a tingle in the hairs. ‘Gosh you're cold,’ she said and gripped his arm more tightly. The log-basket was still in his arms. He put it down and turned to face her. She stood up and put her arms round his neck.          They built up the fire, spread the mattress and quilt before it and dowsed the candles. His strongest memories were of the way the flickering firelight drew a golden line round her naked silhouette as she knelt, sitting upright on her heels, head back, one erect nipple caught in the light; of drawing his open mouth and tongue along the line between the black and golden halves of her body from her thigh, over abdomen and breast to her open lips.          In the morning while it was still dark he rose, slipped on his trousers, pullover and shoes and went out into the chill of the pre-dawn to return with more logs. There was still a glow among the embers and shortly, after he had slipped, naked once more, into the warmth of the down-filled covers, the logs crackled and burst into flame. Later, as the early light of dawn filtered through the window, they made love again.          Later still he woke to the aroma of coffee and the yeasty smell of fresh baked rolls. She had been down to the village a couple of miles away in her car and was now sitting in the armchair with her book open in her lap. She looked up as he stretched.          ‘So! The sleeper awakes.’          After he had dressed she said, ‘We've got two days to ourselves Allan. What would you like to do? Go for a walk? Visit a historic castle? Swim naked in a river?’          They walked. He had such energy. She had to restrain him from bounding up the heather. They lay among ancient stones and kissed and dined on apples, cheese and cold burn water.          They made love again that night. She went at midday on Sunday. He walked her to the lay-by and stood there waving until the car was gone and aware that he was also waving goodbye to his escape tunnel.          The cottage was now a lonely as well as a happy place to be. For the moment work on ‘the project’ was impossible. He mooned about, taking pleasure in simple routine chores, trying to tidy things but in reality simply shifting the untidiness to new places. All this business with the tapes and Tommy Harkness was now just a bad dream. The tapes and the incriminating printouts were safely stashed. Here was nothing further to worry about on that score.          The microcomputer was sitting in a corner with a box of floppy discs. He picked up the box to put it with the others and then he remembered. He had made a copy of one of the tapes on to a floppy disc or rather Tom had made the copy for him. and he had forgotten all about it. He had not put the floppy in a safe place as he had done with the tapes. It had been there all weekend and with Rosa in the cottage by herself for a part of that time. He opened the box. It wasn't there. He looked again refusing to believe. Definitely not there. He pulled out the other boxes and searched. Not there either. Again he looked - still not there. He sat down thinking furiously. It had been unlabelled. It was impossible that Rosa would bother to read through the contents of his files and recognise an unlabelled disc with unprintable jibberish as something sinister. And yet it wasn't there. He had last seen it the night he went to see Jack and was given the second tape. He had put it in his pocket.          And he had never taken it out! His anorak was on the back of the bedroom door. He ran through to the bedroom and searched it quickly feeling the exterior of the garment for the hard square shape. And of course it was there after all.          So he put the disc in an envelope and addressed it to himself - Poste Restante, Motherwell. Then he cycled down to the village and slipped it into a pillar-box.