Read Online Chasing the Dark by Sam Hepburn - Free Book Online Page A

forced down a couple more mouthfuls and scarpered upstairs, trying to work out what was going on. Doreen snapping at me was nothing unusual but after all that ‘ What an honour, she’s a remarkable woman’ stuff she’d been giving Pritchard on the phone, the sudden downer on Norma Craig was more than weird. Still, I’d got bigger things to worry about.
    I pulled Lincoln’s laptop on to my knees and went back to his emails, checking for messages to or from newspapers, sent around the time he was in Ukraine. I waded through loads from girls with names like Chloe, Emma, Zara and Abbie, all badgering him with invites to dinnersand parties. I don’t know why they bothered; half the time he never even replied.
    I kept going and nearly missed a message he’d sent to a man called Stephen Dawes at The Times . It was dated 12 Feb – three weeks before the crash.
    Stephen ,
    What would you say to a piece on Kiev’s latest tourist attraction – the recently opened KGB Archive? I’d like to follow up some of the human dramas documented in the files, interview survivors and/or their families and compare their take on events with the official government version. I could do a bit of groundwork while I’m here and come back after the energy summit .
    Ivo
    The KGB archive ? That didn’t sound like much of a tourist attraction. Though I s’pose Mum might have been tempted. She’d always loved spy thrillers, ’specially those old black and white ones with blokes in hats and trench coats lurking under lamp posts. Personally I prefer movies with a bit less hanging around and a bit more action. But even Mum might have been put off by the photo Ivo had attached of the grim-looking KGB headquarters, not to mention the caption that came with it:
    â€˜The secret service of the Soviet Union, the KGB, was responsible for terrible crimes against humanity. The Soviet Union is no more; and the KGB sank into oblivion with it. But it has left behind anenormous amount of archive material which the government of Ukraine has now made accessible to the general public.’
    But it looked like this Stephen Dawes had been up for an article.
    Sounds good. See what you come up with and we’ll talk when you’re back in UK .
    S
    My heart speeded up. So Ivo had been working on a story in Ukraine, or at least thinking about it. A search for Stephen Dawes turned up about twenty more messages but they were all at least three months old and didn’t even mention Ukraine.
    I Googled KGB archive Kiev and got a news clip of a reporter walking down a long row of neatly numbered cardboard boxes, pulling out yellowing files and chatting away to a smiley, clean-cut curator who’d got his answers all prepared.
    â€˜Opening the archive is part of the healing process,’ he said in bumpy English. ‘It is a way of coming to terms with difficult aspects of our country’s Soviet past.’
    â€˜I understand there’s been some resistance to a complete declassification of the material,’ the reporter said.
    â€˜Yes, and I admit we have had to be somewhat selective about declassifying more recent files, given that some of the agents involved may still be alive. However, I amconfident that, with time, all such obstacles will be removed.’
    Yeah, right. Whatever the government was saying about openness it didn’t look like they’d be leaving any real secrets lying around for just anyone to look at. Even so, when the final shot froze on a close-up of one of the boxes, identical to the millions of others stacked on the shelves, I got a burning urge to know which ones Ivo Lincoln had opened and exactly what he’d found inside.
    Given the atmosphere at Laurel Cottage I reckoned it would suit Doreen best if I skipped breakfast and kept well out of her way till dinner time. So you can guess what a surprise I got when I was slinking past the kitchen next morning and she