The Whitehall Syndicate: A time travel conspiracy thriller by Malhar Patel Page A

over and scooped up her phone. “Hello?”
    “Kim?”
    “Who is this?”
    “Are you interested in what the project directors are doing?” Kim instantly grew quiet, that same chill from her dream now beginning to materialise down her spine. “Yes,” she replied dryly.
    “I have details that may interest you. Meet me in one hour outside the Philip K. Dick wing of the Literary Museum. You had your staff Christmas party there last year.”
    The line went dead before Kim had a chance to ask anything. Not used to bizarre, shadowy meetings with mysterious contacts late at night, the anticipation filled her with a buzz of excitement.
    She quickly sprinted to the dining room table and began typing on her laptop, trying to access a street map. Locating the museum was easy but she would have to leave fairly soon to get there on time. Running on a cocktail of caffeine and adrenaline, she grabbed her black leather coat and headed out the door without another though.
    Furiously determined, she roared off the curb, and it was only when she was safely on her way that she began feeling slightly less giddy. As she drove she reminisced about the Christmas party. It was as awkward and cheap an affair as she'd expected, right down to the plastic tree, which couldn't hold all the gifts. Maybe the person contacting her had been there. As Kim continued driving she knew that she had crossed a line. They would fire her without question for this and she was beginning to suspect that the men she worked for were capable of a lot more besides. She gulped nervously. She would be there soon.
     
    Old-school detective Frank Wilkinson scratched the sandpaper stubble on his leathery skin and spluttered out a cough. He hated the Sunday night shift. It was common practice for lazy rookies working during the day to leave more difficult crimes as backlog and head off home. Inevitably Frank would get called in and find yet another case sitting on his desk.
    Being a policeman wasn't what it used to be. He remembered his great granddad telling him about the days before surveillance, when detectives actually had to use logic and reasoning to solve crimes. Now it was all just surveillance monitoring, sorting through forensics and ID matching. He was little more than a glorified administrator.
    His partner Tony Slade walked up and handed him his coal-black coffee. Tony was a smaller African-American man, with pale chocolate skin. His hair was short, black and painstakingly styled. He was the younger partner, perfectly content with the system, and his role in it. Cameras told a story but there were often blocked views and bizarre angles, not to mention the wildly varying audio quality. It was his job to build a case where the film failed.
                  As the both of them chatted trivially in the hospital ward, a nurse finally came over and ushered them in. “He won't be saying anything for at least a weak. He's under deep sedation while he recovers.”
    Taking immediate statements had become increasingly infrequent since BioMod's new range of drugs had been approved. They provided a whole range of patients immeasurably better medical outcomes than their predecessors, but left them virtually comatose for the vital first week after a crime. Luckily surveillance meant there was also no rush to take statements these days. The disparate partners had gone along anyway, just in case the victim was awake. As expected, they were out of luck.
    After some speculative bickering they walked back outside and waited for surveillance to send them the logs of Bob Winchester's apartment, starting from an hour before he had phoned for the ambulance. One more set of videos to process; faces to identify. Another routine crime, or so Frank thought.
     
    Gliding elegantly over the worn tarmac, the large sliver car lethargically skulked to a halt next to a huge poster of H.G Wells. Kim got out shakily and checked her watch. She had a few minutes yet to get to the meeting