Chapter 21

21

" A ny luck getting ahold of Sara?" Thompson asked. Luke almost choked on the strongly brewed tea he was drinking, his third cup that wretched day.

It was safe to assume that at some point during the last two months, Thompson had learned how to read his work emails, even if he hadn't figured out how to send one. But Luke, with all his supposed investigating skills, hadn't caught on to that fact.

"Not really. I've tried calling her office at Meshflixx a couple of times, and she's never there."

Luke was in T&T's conference room with his two bosses, as well as Divya and Sanjay. The full team in charge of the Meshflixx case was holding their weekly debriefing meeting.

"She's very busy, isn't she?" Thompson said, a knowing tone in his voice. Was Luke being scolded? You could never tell with P. "What did you want to double-check with her?"

Divya sent Luke an inquisitive look from the other side of the big table around which the five of them were seated. Luke needed to tread carefully. Her gaze told him to avoid involving her in whatever was going on.

"I just…" Luke started to look for something on the dossier of the Meshflixx case. "Here! I wanted to go over the timing for that afternoon. According to your notes from Sara's interview, she said Josie's class was running a bit long that evening, but Sara left the studio at half past six sharp nonetheless."

"Yes…" Thompson conceded.

"I wondered why she left early and also about the other attendees' schedules. Did someone else leave with her? I'm assuming someone, if not the majority of them, stayed at the studio for the whole class. They are quite a devoted group." He decided to be straightforward with his managers. "Also, could we perhaps interview the attendees we've been following? They could tell us about their movements for that night."

"Yes, yes, that's all very interesting, but we don't have the bandwidth to follow through," Thompson dismissed him. "Meshflixx wants us to check on Leonardo Pascual because of his behavior. We suspect they may be cross with him for reasons unrelated to this case, but they still want us to eliminate surveillance hours at the same time and spend the minimum on this affair. We'll have a report ready for them in the upcoming days or weeks."

"But we haven't made much progress in discovering who stole the script," Luke said.

"Haven't we? We were hoping you'd throw some light since you've been in Barcelona for several days and the bill for that is, as I'm sure you're aware, quite hefty," said Thomson. Sweatshirt tended to remain quiet until it was time to show teeth.

Luke couldn't quite believe his ears. The idea of leaving London in pursuit of Sol hadn't been his but P's. The whole time he'd been there, Luke had been in constant communication with his managers to try to get back home—even if he'd been enjoying his stay and wished the visit had taken place under different circumstances.

He'd only been allowed to return because he was needed to follow a new person. But now he was supposed to have made some sort of miraculous break? Luke was reminded once again of his precarious situation at the agency. An image of his parents' crammed and musty spare room flashed in front of him, and he shook it off.

"The only light I can throw on this is that we should be looking into a different person. I managed to interview Sol," Luke continued, preferring to leave the details of his conversation with her as vague as possible. "And she had no idea about the script being stolen at the studio."

"You're aware that thieves know how to lie, right?" countered Thomson.

Luke's heart rate increased slightly. It was never a good thing when Sweatshirt not only joined but remained in a conversation.

"And she still finds herself inexplicably out of a job and linked to Voyeur, " Thomson added.

None of his managers had been listening to him. But he still had to try.

"I broached the Voyeur subject with her," he said, hoping no one would ask about the particulars of his so-called interview with Sol. "She volunteered the information that she'd worked there. She doesn't publicly advertise it on her LinkedIn account because I gathered it's not something she feels especially proud of."

"You gathered ." Sweatshirt could always find a way of exasperating Luke. He knew he should have never used such an imprecise term.

"I deducted based on our conversation. Plus, her connection with Voyeur occurred two decades ago. For all we know, not a single person she used to work with is still there." A cold sweat gathered along Luke's chest and armpits, under the same clothes he'd worn on the plane that morning. He'd had no time to change.

"Is that all you have to report from your three days in a foreign country?" Thomson continued. He wasn't even looking at Luke, his stare buried in his mobile phone, his demeanor annoyed.

"Yes," Luke said. He chose to leave out the part where he still wasn't one hundred percent certain of Sol's total lack of involvement in the case.

"We shouldn't be surprised though, right?" Divya interjected, to Luke's relief.

"I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about, Divya. I am surprised," Thomson said, strengthening his reputation as a total tosser. He lifted his gaze from his device to look at Divya inquisitively.

"I was here the morning Thompson made the discovery of Sol's trip to Barcelona," Divya continued, making sure to clearly pronounce the p in the last name. "Luke and I thought that perhaps Sol's move demanded a reaction on our part."

Luke was about to protest. He'd never thought such a thing, and he didn't remember her doing it either. But Divya's look prevented him from contradicting her.

"Thompson proved to be more of an experienced investigator, of course," Divya said.

"Did he now?" Sweatshirt asked doubtfully, and both Divya and Luke knew she was playing a dangerous game. It was no secret that no one at the office, not even Sweatshirt, trusted P's good nose.

"He manifested his doubts about Sol's involvement but still thought it was an unusual move on her part. He deemed it worth making sure we could eliminate her as a suspect, which is what Luke just did," Divya said.

Luke looked at his colleague across the table, conveying a thank-you with his expression. She didn't have to get involved. In fact, the smartest thing to do would have been to stay away and let Luke get himself out of a situation that he'd never wanted to be involved in in the first place. And Divya always made the smartest move, yet she'd decided to go against her own personal policy and risk it for him this time.

What was worse, he wasn't even sure the ruse was going to work. P was absent-minded enough that he could forget something he'd said or done three days before. And he was self-absorbed and conceited enough to believe he was not only a good detective but also an excellent mentor figure to his employees, but would he really buy Divya's carefully crafted tale?

"Yes, yes. I'm glad to have guided that side of the investigation and, of course, I was correct, wasn't I?" said Thompson. The man's delusional grandiosity had no limits and, for once, Luke was grateful for it. "But let's not get ahead of ourselves in eliminating the Stringer or anyone else from the investigation. I'm sure we can include all the info we have in our final report."

The many junior detectives the agency employed were normally in charge of writing the first drafts of reports for clients. And they took turns doing it depending on the case. Divya was in charge of writing this time. After that, the founders at T&T would make their best embellishing efforts so it looked like their staff and themselves had worked non-stop.

But Luke wasn't sure what would go into the content of this particular report with what they had. It was going to be a thin piece of writing for sure.

"I know I keep bringing this up." Sanjay utilized the silence to finally speak. "But Mark keeps looking shady to me."

"What is it now?" asked an eternally annoyed Sweatshirt.

"I heard him on the phone again. He was disparaging Meshflixx and their lack of transparency toward creators," Sanjay explained. "I think he was talking to a journalist."

"Yes, yes. He likes blabbing around. Sadly, I don't think we have the time—or the inclination, really—to follow this up," Sweatshirt answered, once again checking his phone. "We need to wrap this thing up, remember?"

"Why does Meshflixx want to wrap up the investigation?" Luke asked.

It was probably the fact that he'd had to wake up excessively early to make his flight that day and he wasn't thinking straight. But even if asking that last question hadn't been the most self-preserving thing to do, Luke needed to understand the sudden rush behind Meshflixx's decision.

"Is money not a good enough reason for you, Luke?" asked Sweatshirt.

It almost sounded personal, as if Thomson knew Luke's family wasn't wealthy and that he'd always been—and still very much was—on a tight budget.

"Of course, but why now? I never understood why they hired us in the first place, to be honest. The script was stolen but had also leaked. The damage was already done when they came to us."

"Thompson and I think they wanted to appease their creators and prove to them that they cared deeply about the show." For once, Sweatshirt was being helpful.

"So they hired us, unaware of how long these types of investigations normally take, and now that they have reached a certain budgetary threshold, they realize they don't care about The Privateers that much?" Luke asked, genuinely trying to understand the logic behind their client's decision.

Thomson nodded. "Pretty much. But I don't think they stopped caring about The Privateers. They just weren't expecting things to take this long to get resolved and, in their defense, I wasn't expecting it either." His arsehole side was showing again. "When they first approached us, I thought we'd be dealing with a fairly easy case, with a limited number of suspects. I still don't understand what's taking so long."

The meeting was dismissed shortly after, once Thomson finished dispensing his trademark hostility.

Luke still had lots of questions about Meshflixx's decision. If only he could ring his own private entertainment consultant again and get her perspective on the case.