DARKMARK

But JiLsi's activity on the board became less frequent - his carding days were coming to an end. Although he had yet to work out what to do next, he was pretty sure that it was time to go straight. He had to extract himself from the mess he was in.

Renu's sixth sense was also telling him that something strange was happening. He would watch, listen and smell for the faintest rustle, like a deer alert for danger. He thought he had noticed a couple of animals stalking him. From the corner of his eye he became convinced he could see a pack of lions around the Java Bean café. He would also scan the heavens for circling vultures.

Was this paranoia, or were his two parallel lives as Renu and JiLsi in danger of colliding? Whatever the truth, it was best to plan for all conceivable outcomes. He could no longer blithely dismiss the obvious signs: a car parked near the café for too long; strangers dropping into the shop who just didn't fit - wrong demographic, wrong clothes. After a couple of weeks Renu started varying his route to and from the Java Bean. Sure enough, he had company. These were the lions.

The vultures were members of a less-organised but equally threat- ening team who had issued warnings regarding certain financial obli- gations that Renu had assumed after the disastrous episode with the memory stick more than a year earlier. They now wanted their pound of flesh. Might either group be willing to negotiate? Or would he have to flee them both?

Mick Jameson had taken over as lead officer for the JiLsi case a couple of months earlier, in March. For more than half a year his employer, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), had been tracking JiLsi following a tip-off from Keith Mularski. Both the US Secret Service and the FBI had been targeting JiLsi for a long time, thanks to his hyperactive posting on virtually every criminal website out there (almost to the point where, if JiLsi wasn't on your site, you weren't really kosher). His distinctive chirpy avatar, the pirate with an eye-patch and tricorne, was irrepressible.

SOCA was the only police agency that was privy to both the FBI and the Secret Service DarkMarket operations and, to a degree, Britain's anti-organised-crime force acted as a passive peace-maker, at least ensuring that the arrest date for Lord Kaisersose and Theeeel in France should be the same one as that for Matrix in Germany and JiLsi in England.