Control: Escape - take a look inside

Control: Escape is the follow up to Iceline, with more about life at the Grange, Bill Jardine, Don Steel, Josie Burke and introducing a few more characters.

Steve Arkwright is the guy who fooled around nipping over firewalls to see what was on the other side, until the men in suits made him and offer. A well paid job with security is just another form of prison, with ever shifting bars, until a way out becomes available.  Try this for starters, and read on...

Chapter One


Malcolm Baker touched a finger to his lips and slid it across his throat as he sat down and lobbed his cap on the desk. Bill Jardine reached under the desk and flicked a switch. “Sound is off.”
“Thanks.” He unclipped his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.
Jardine leaned forward and pressed call on the intercom. “Josie, coffee for two, large Thermos, and if anyone asks I'm not”
“OK Boss.” The speaker crackled and he released the button.
“I’m imagining all this?”
“Very lucid dream,” Baker grinned and sat in the buttoned leather chair. Jardine closed the file on his desk and creased the spine with his thumb before he put it away in a drawer. “Out with it then, what’s the problem?
“Not certain you can help. That’s why I'm doing this quietly.”
“Seven thirty and in uniform, wouldn't call that quietly.”
“Uniform makes me invisible, so who cares about the time.”
Josie came in with the coffee on a tray. Two heavy mugs and a two litre pump action Thermos flask; milk and sugar. Jardine pumped the coffee into the mugs, spooned two heavy teaspoons of sugar into one and handed it to Baker who stirred it well.
“Go on,” Jardine waited until Josie had left the room, “what’s happening.”
“I have a problem with your old firm, Hoplite; I’m working with special branch on their latest project because we think it may have policing possibilities.”
“Why not take it up with Michael Spear?”
Baker scratched the side of his head. “That is the problem; he may be implicated. There’s a security breach somewhere in the company and I can’t find it yet, I have my suspicions but nothing more at the moment.”
“And you want me to spy on my best mate?” For a moment Jardine’s voice carried the accent of his childhood in the north east. “That’s asking a lot.”
Baker drank a mouthful of coffee and gave himself time to think. “No, I don’t want you to spy on him, look, I want to help. I can’t really believe that he is tangled up in whatever is going off, but I have to be sure, and for that I need to know more than I do at the present.”
“Alright, but how can I help?”
“It may not amount to anything, but if Michael Spear drops in can you talk to him, see what you can prise out of him and persuade him to talk to me at least?”

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