The Manhattan Puzzle Read Free

a sleeping waif, his hair all over the place, his skin shining, ruddy from the warmth of his duvet.
    She should have told Sean to skip the stupid merger celebrations.
    She stared out at the back garden, shivering at the thought of how cold it had to be out there.
    In the far corner there were remnants of the inch of snow that had fallen the day before. This winter was shaping up to be the worst in the city in years.
    It reminded her of Decembers in Somerset, before her mother died. She shook her head. Those days were long gone. And anyway, they used to get proper snow then, a winter coat of it, not a thin veil like they did in London. At the bottom of the garden there was a snowdrift piled up against the six-foot-high red-brick wall at the back.
    Something tightened around her, as if a ghost had hugged her.
    Yesterday, as the afternoon light had been fading, she’d been out in the garden. In the corner, by the back wall, there’d been a mound of pristine whiteness. Now it all looked trampled.
    Her nose twitched. That faint lemony smell was in the air again.
    She glanced around the kitchen for anything else out of place.
    Then she remembered the creak that had woken her during the night, the feeling that there’d been someone in the house.
    She hadn’t experienced anything like that in a long time.
    The buzz of the landline sent her flying to the phone. She held it to her ear, ready to scream at Sean as soon as he opened his mouth.
    There was no one else she could think of who’d be ringing at this time.

5
    Henry Mowlam scratched his head. The lights in the Whitehall meeting room were down low and everyone was looking to the front, so no one in the group of ten senior MI5 staff attending the presentation would see him, but still he moved his hand quickly back onto the table.
    Major Finch was giving the morning presentation.
    ‘The information we have out of China is that there is something big brewing in the financial arena. New banking legislation, the biggest change since their Commercial Banking law of 1995, will negatively impact many of the richest men and women in China. The knives are out. Literally. Two middle-tier officials connected with this new law have already disappeared.’
    Henry tapped the table hard with his red MI5 biro. ‘What’s the likely impact outside China?’ he said, when Finch paused to let others speak.
    ‘We’re still assessing that. But our current best guess is a big rise in Chinese firms taking over major companies in the West, as new sources of income and places to invest their surplus cash are sought out. I expect there’ll be a few hiccups.’
    Henry looked down at the shiny mahogany table. This should be fun, he thought, monitoring managers trying to impose Chinese six-days-a-week work practices.
    ‘But the cultural impact of Chinese takeovers is not what we’re really concerned about today. Our concern is that this might lead to a backlash against Chinese communities in the United Kingdom. That’s why I called you to this meeting. We have reason to believe that has started.’
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Henry. ‘Is the Ebony Dragon hedge fund on the list of companies being monitored?’
    ‘No,’ said Major Finch.
    ‘You do know I submitted a report about the activities of its chairman, Lord Bidoner. Ebony Dragon has a source of funding in China now. They’ve been buying up British companies, even a few well known ones.’
    Finch sighed. ‘You are barking up the wrong tree, Henry. I know you’ve been researching Bidoner’s link to that book that was found in Istanbul – what do they call a section of it?’
    Henry looked at the faces around him. A few of them had heard what the title of a certain part of the book had been translated as. Their faces were even more expectant than the others, as if they were looking forward to a diversion.
    He smiled back at them, then spoke. ‘The book of dark prayers.’
    Major Finch threw her eyes up to the low ceiling as a few coughs in