disclaimer - I do not own or lay claim to any of the songs mentioned in my story. Nor to any references to characters, movies and shows 


“I don’t know if I can fix it” he said seriously “But I am going to try my hardest to try get you out of it” He looked off into the distance lost in his thoughts.

“Just give me a plan of action or something, Mac!” I begged him hating the fact that I was begging. He turned to face me.

“We need to do a few things. We need to call Tony the Tip and get an extension; one week is not enough time. We also need to find out who had access or knowledge of the money…. We need to figure out why and how they took the money? And we need to find out who took the money. We also need to know why he or she waited a year for the money? We need to find out where Tony’s girlfriend went to? And establish if she is involved in the money stealing or not.” He paused “We also have to find out who killed Maxwell Jackson? And we need a list of suspects...Simple really” he said and rolled his eyes. I laughed then as I realised he was successfully trying to lighten my mood.

“We’ll need help too. We don’t have time to do this legally. I need all the files the police have on Tony the Tip and Maxwell Jackson. Do you reckon they’ll hand them to me?” he asked and grinned at me.

“Oh yes, you look like Detective Geraldi’s type”. I grinned back feeling a bit calmer.

“Give me a minute, Lucy” he said and I got up to leave the room wanting desperately to stay and ‘overhear’ his conversation accidentally. I decided to give him a break. He was trying to save my ass. I went into Sherry’s lounge and switched on the TV.

‘Argggghhh daytime television, kill me now’ I thought with disgust. Some trivially crap daytime show was showing a cheating chav family. Apparent Dave(pronounced Dayyvvvve) had slept with both sisters. He was a horribly greasy, uneducated, scruffy man with a shaved head, a Primark dark blue tracksuit which clashed horribly with a yellow backwards cap and missing front teeth. The two ladies (no one could really call them ladies really) were big and using language that made me even blush. I kept a few choices insults for myself. I liked collecting insults. It was my favourite hobby. I kept an ear out for Mac’s return while half heartedly watching the family start brawling.

“Okay let’s go...” there was silence and he then asked in a disgusted tone “What the fuck are you watching?” I shrugged and walked outside without answer. I quickly sent a text to Sherry with the ‘spy phone’ to tell her we’d be back later. As soon as I ditched Mac I was getting rid of the damned thing.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I threw myself into Mac’s sports car. It was some kind of low slung thing in a dark colour. I never got car types right anyways. Cars were for driving not going on and on and on about. One of my exes, Neville had a car obsession. If he wasn’t tinkering on his mate’s cars or one of his cars (he had three), he was talking about them excessively or dragging me to car shows. We hadn’t lasted long maybe a few weeks. I had got sick of sitting outside in the freezing cold watching him tune up his stupid car. And the continuous requests for tea had gotten old too. Maybe I had one of those faces.

“We’re going to my cyber security expert” he said pulling off in the car.

“Who? I know most of the schlubs you work with and they can’t even ‘control-alt-delete’ properly” I asked nosily.

“He’s an independent contractor. His name is Kyrial. I have to warn you he’s a bit paranoid about strangers” he said.

“I’ve never seen this guy around” I said back.

“He works out of his house” he said giving me the bare minimum of information. Annoying man!

“Kyrial...is that a Russian name?” I asked. He laughed then for a bit (sniggered at me). And then said “Don’t let him hear you call him Russian. He’s from Latvia ”. My geography lessons at school weren’t really good. I figured it was one of the Eastern European block countries.

“How did you meet him?” I asked persistently.

“I arrested him for hacking into the met website and leaving a naked woman as the home page. It took our security expert a week to remove it. We had to shut down the site. It was a bugger trying to find him as well. Crafty fucker! He’s very good at what he does. He decided to work for the police instead of being arrested” he said smiling at me remembering. Did I forget to mention that Mac was an ex DI? He was my father’s partner for a few years. They both decided to retire and become PIs. Bloody walking clichés both of them!

“So how did he start working for you?” I asked.

“I was Kyrial’s handler at the police force. He has serious persecution issues with a healthy dose of paranoia. I was tasked with getting him to do his job” he said “When I left...he left. He does my high level security stuff. Approved system hacking, a bit of background checking and financial stuff mostly. He traces IPs ....” he said trailing off while driving smoothly. I hadn’t even noticed where he was taking me. I was so engrossed in this conversation.

“Why doesn’t he ever come into the office?” I asked.

“He works from home. His computer shit is all there. His believes the government is after him so he hardly leaves his house” he told me. My fate rested in the hands of a conspiracy nut. Marvellous! I sighed then and rumbled in my bag for one of my CDs. I stuck one of my Beatles into his CD player. He looked at me and shook his head.

“Don’t you ask?” he said astounded at my gall. Was he another one of the ‘Don’t touch the car stereo’ brotherhood? ‘With a little help from my friends’ started playing.

“The Beatles?” he asked raising his eyebrow superciliously. I smiled at him.

“I have eclectic tastes” I said not wanting to go into it. He saw right through me and his eyebrow raised even higher. When I tried that eyebrow lift thing I just looked slightly demented.

“Dad was a huge Beatles fan. Did you know he named me for ‘Lucy in the sky with diamonds’? Apparently he wanted to name me Eleanor Rigby but mom put her foot down. My full name is Lucy Eleanor Rigby Bilkins”. He started laughing warmly at this. I laughed with him feeling my stomach clench excitedly.

“Your initials are LERB? Geez kiddo!” He laughed even harder. I cleared my throat.

“Did you know he used to sing ‘Lucy in the sky with Diamonds’ to me when I was ill or hurt?” I asked softly. The emotion this memory evoked was sweet and untouched by bitterness. This was quite unusual for memories concerning my father.

“No. I just knew that he loved you very much, Lucy. He wasn’t very good at expressing those kinds of emotions well. And when you mother died he got even worse at it". I felt tears fill my eyes. I couldn’t deal with this conversation anymore. My emotions were all over the place. I turned into the seat and stared out the window. I needed that music to calm me. To lose myself in it while trying to forget the shit hole that my life was turning into. He must have sensed my need for music and silence. He never said another word until we pulled into a drive way fifteen minutes later.

“I like you this way” he said with a roguish grin and my heart contracted suddenly. He has stopped the car and undid his seatbelt.

“Quiet?” I asked sarcastically my barriers back in place. I was eager to get back to the banter and the superficial stuff.

“Yes...normally you’re going a million miles a minute and being mouthy...It’s nice to see you have a quieter, less manic side”.

“Your approval means sooooo much to me” I said rolling my eyes at him. I wasn’t going to tell him it did actually. He had too much power over me already with those smiles.

“Bitch” he said good-heartedly as we both exited the car. He started walking towards the small little brickwork house. He knocked three times. A small squat blonde woman in her late forties answered the door. She greeted Mac in a thick Latvian (I assumed) accent. He greeted her back and asked for Kyrial.

“This is Lucy, Aija”. She grunted at me suspiciously and shook her head while muttering in her home language. She turned and we followed her down into a basement. I was expecting the worse having worked around developers for most of my IT career. Kyrial was a slightly tubby short guy with dirty blonde hair in a ponytail. He had brown eyes, a button nose and slightly flushed cheeks. He had Download festival t-shirt and dark tight jeans which were tucked into black boots. His lab (basement) had a few servers, three laptops and a desktop in the corner. A few fans were blowing away trying to disburse the heat generated by the servers. There were chocolate wrappers, cans of empty soft drinks and Redbull littered around the place. Nice! I made a silent vow not to touch anything. There were Star Wars, Battle Star Galactica and Transformer models around the room. In the corner he had a life sized model of Boba Fett.

Just once I’d like to meet a tall, dark and handsome developer (think Christian Bale) who didn’t have an adolescent obsession with Sci-fi. I noticed Kyrial was scowling at me.

“Who’s dis?” he asked Mac accusingly (I’d like to apologise, dear reader for my excruciating attempts at an accent. Since I’m narrating this tale you’ll only have to put up with it’s overtones of Bela Lugosi for a bit)

“This is Lucy, Kyrial. She is a friend of mine who needs your help". He quickly outlined the problem and waited on Kyrial’s reply.

“Vot do you vant me to do?” he asked Mac.

“It would be highly illegal and I understand if you don’t have the ability…” Mac said trailing off his face devoid of any expression. I grinned inwardly at his deviousness. Well played, Mac. The conspiracy nut was bristling.

“You will have to hack the Met server and pull notes of a murder. I also need financial records on Tony the tip while not getting caught. First though I need Tony the tip’s mobile number”.

“Real name?” Mac gave it to him. Kyrial was muttering in Latvian. I’d love to know what he was saying. I decided to inspect his model collection. Ten minutes later he scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Mac.

“Three days” he said abruptly. His social skills were in serious need of improvement “Vite down Detectives’ name, victem…” he said in his weird accent. Mac wrote all the information down.

“Now go!” he ordered. Mac pushed me up the stairs as I started to say something. He could probably see my expression.

“Git” I muttered and he growled at me in warning while simultaneously pushing me up the stairs. Who knew! Apparently men could multi-task. He bundled me out of the house and into the car quickly. I’m going to add pushy to Mac’s list of flaws. The list was long. When he had shut the car door he turned to me and said, “He has Asperger's syndrome, Lucy” I wondered darkly why he hadn’t told me that before we met the guy.

“It’s a form of Autism…” he carried on in a mistaken impression that I didn’t know what it was.

“Yes, I know that dude who hacked the pentagon had it” I said interrupting him.

“By dude you mean Gary McKinnon?” he asked and started the car. I nodded in reply.

“I’m going to give Tony the tip a call. I’d like to be alone when I do it. I don’t need any distractions from you”. I refrained from speaking all the way back to Sherry’s house. Sherry was busy peeling potatoes in the kitchen. She had her ‘Tell me or die' face as we walked in. Mac went into her living room and closed the kitchen door behind him. I put my ear against it. Sherry clucked reprovingly at me while shaking her head.

“Use a glass” she whispered and we both started laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

“He’ll tell us when he gets in” I said giggling slightly.

“I know but I’m agog with curiosity” she said.

“Agog…really?” I said and snorted.

“Oh forgive me for having an extensive vocabulary” she retorted back.

“Pretentious, more like”. I ended it with an eye roll.

We giggled again at our harmless bickering. Mac walked in on us and smiled. My stomach did that fluttery thing again. Down, Libido.

“Okay, I was able to get you a few more days and he was adamant about the date. He wouldn’t budge” he said.

“Hmmm…I wonder why he has such a specific date. He’s had all year to get his money. Why now?” I said wondering out loud. Mac gave me an admiring look and said “I suspect it isn’t his money that is missing. We have a meeting at his club tomorrow night. We are going undercover so you’ll have to dress for the part. I’m going in as an investor and you’re my girlfriend. You’ll need to wear something less…” He paused as if coming up with a diplomatic answer “casual. I want you to look hot, easy and dumb”.

“So like your girlfriends?” I asked bitchily.

“No much sluttier and I want to see your legs”. I mentally added man-whore to the list. Oh fuck! I don’t even own a skirt. I’d have to go shopping. I shuddered in horror. What does one wear to a gangster’s club? Cosmo never covered that.