“You’re joking? The dirty cu–”
“Yeah, I know, Dave,” Gareth cut him off. “I know. If he was still about, there’d be a line of people queuing up to let him know what they think, with me at the front of it.”
“I’d join that queue,” David replied. Looking at him, Gareth realised that he was deadly serious. “So, that’s why your sister’s being blackmailed? Someone knows about Philip?”
“Looks that way, but I don’t know for sure. That’s where you come in. Grab your laptop, let’s go.”
Twenty minutes later, Gareth nodded in satisfaction as Dave finished copying Annette’s hard drive.
“So,” Dave explained, “I’ve now got a complete clone of your laptop so I can work on it without needing to access your computer.”
“Has Philip got a computer?” Gareth asked, annoyed that he’d only just thought of that.
“Crap, he has,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll go and get it. Never thought about that.”
“You and me both, Annette,” Gareth mumbled as she left the room. “I’m losing my bloody touch, Dave.”
“No, you’re not, boss,” Dave replied, squinting at the screen of his own computer, “but don’t forget to ask her if he’s got any hard drives or USB sticks as well when she gets back.” Gareth suppressed a grin as Dave’s fingers flew over the keyboard.
“What’re you up to, mate?”
“E-mail first, I guess,” Dave replied. On the screen in front of him, the home page for Gmail appeared. Dave tapped in Annette’s username and password, and her inbox flashed up on the screen. “She needs to change her password.”
“What is it?”
“Password, all lowercase, with a zero instead of an ‘o’,” he said.
“Very imaginative,” Gareth replied. “What’ve you got? Can you get into the deleted items?”
“I can, and I can do it properly this time. You sure you want me to do that?”
Gareth thought about it for a moment. He wasn’t sure what Annette had been sent, and didn’t want Dave to see something that he would never forget. Also, he didn’t know what the law was about this sort of thing. If they retrieved an e-mail with paedophilic images, would that be breaking the law?
“Let’s wait for Annette and ask her what’s in them.”
“What’s in what?” It was Annette. She had walked back into the lounge with another laptop tucked under her arm.
“Your deleted e-mails?” Gareth asked.
“There’s only one other one, apart from the text this number one. The rest of it came in the post.”
“Have you still got the other stuff?”
“No,” Annette replied. “I burnt it.” She looked at Gareth. “Well, technically you burnt it.” Remembering helping her with the garden incinerator, Gareth groaned.
“It would have been really useful to still have that, Annette,” he said.
“It was disgusting,” she replied in a whisper. “Totally disgusting. I didn’t want anyone seeing those photographs, ever.”
“What’s in this one?” Dave asked, pointing at the screen. “This is the other deleted e-mail from the same address. There’s an attachment?”
“It’s just a photo of Philip sitting with a girl. Nothing explicit,” Annette said. “Open it if you want to.”
Dave looked at Gareth for confirmation before opening the image. Seeing him nod his head, Dave tapped on the track pad to open the image. When it opened, Gareth could feel a vein at the side of his forehead pulsing as he looked at the terror on the young girl’s face. Annette had turned away from the screen, and Gareth glanced over at her before returning his attention to the photograph.
“Can you zoom in on that bit?” he asked, pointing at an area of the screen. It was in the photograph's background and showed a plug socket.
Dave used his fingers to enlarge the section of the image. The section now on the screen was grainy, but still fairly clear.
“Not a British plug, is it?” Gareth said. Dave zoomed in closer. The socket had two round holes instead of the traditional three pins that plugs in the United Kingdom have.
“That doesn’t narrow it down much, Gareth,” Dave replied. “Most of the rest of the world use them.”
“Okay, well, it’s a start. Annette?”
Annette looked round at Gareth at the sound of her name being called. She fixed her eyes on his, and he realised that she was doing whatever she could not to look at the screen.
“What?” she asked.
“What do you want to do next?”
“I haven’t got a sodding clue, Gareth,” Annette replied. “I was hoping you might have.”
47
Ronnie blinked his eyes in the bright sunshine as he stepped out of the police station. He looked around, not sure where he was. There had been no windows in the police van that had brought him here. He walked a few hundred yards down the road, zigzagging in and out of the locals who were mingling on what passed for a pavement until he found a street sign.
Reaching into his pocket, Ronnie pulled out the clear plastic bag the police had put his belongings in. He’d had to sign a piece of paper with text in a language that he didn’t understand before they would return it to him. Ronnie opened the Ziplock fastener and pulled out his main phone which was nestled next to his passport. It still had plenty of juice in the battery, and he knew that it was safe enough to use. He didn’t normally take it on meetings like the one he’d had last night, but by the time he remembered that he had it with him, it was too late anyway. He googled the name of the street into the maps app on the phone, realising as it zoomed in on his position that he was right in the middle of Denpasar. It wasn’t an area he recognised, but he put in the address of one of the Internet cafes he used to see how far away it was. When he saw that it was less than twenty minutes by foot, he set off.
As he walked down the street, he thought about his main phone. It was clean, in that he didn’t conduct any business on it. But it was now compromised. In fact, he thought, if the police were tracking the phone then they could know where he was heading now. Ronnie slowed, realising that he would have to get rid of it. The other phone he was carrying would definitely have to go. It was a burner phone, bought from a market stall for a few rupiah with the express intention of using it to communicate with the bitch McGuire. He reached into his pocket and powered it on, waiting with anticipation to see if there had been a reply to his e-mail while he’d been locked up. To his relief, there wasn’t. He fiddled with the phone and eventually got the back off to take the SIM card out. Ronnie bent it back and forth several times until the small piece of plastic snapped in two, and he threw the pieces in different directions. The battery went into a dumpster that he walked past a few moments later, and he dropped the body of the main phone into a storm drain a few hundred yards further down the road.
Ronnie thought back to his conversation with the policeman. How quickly Sukarba had managed to roll him over. Ronnie knew that he couldn’t really complain—that was exactly what he was doing to other people—but at the same time it was irritating beyond belief. The main problem was that Ronnie didn’t have anywhere near that amount of money, but he couldn’t afford for his personal details to get anywhere near the justice system. Would Sukarba continue trying to extort money from him? Probably, Ronnie thought. If the roles were reversed, he knew he would.
He needed money. Lots of it. He could either pay Sukarba his fee and hope for the best, or disappear somewhere else. Either way, he needed cash. Ronnie thought through his options as he walked. If his passport had a flag on it, he would struggle to go anywhere so wouldn’t be able to run away and regroup somewhere new. Ronnie didn’t like it, but he would have to trust the corrupt policeman. The minute they arrested him the previous evening, Ronnie knew that his time in Bali was coming to an end. But he needed time—and money—to safely relocate himself
On the other side of the road, Ronnie saw a line of ramshackle stalls, selling everything from v
egetables to clothing. He ran his eyes down the row until he saw what he was looking for. There was a stall with a hand-printed sign leaning against the barrow that read A1 Techno Service. A bored looking callow man was leaning up against the stall, smoking and watching the world go by. Ronnie crossed the road, ignoring the indignant horns of moped drivers as he did so, and approached the stall.
“English?” Ronnie said as he looked at the array of electronic devices on the barrow, seeing the young man nod his head in reply. There was everything from cameras to dictaphones on the stall, as well as what he was looking for. Ronnie picked up a battered Nokia phone and held it up in the air. “How much?”
“Two hundred thousand rupiah,” the young man replied with an enthusiastic grin. Ronnie frowned. That was about a tenner, which was way more than the phone was worth. The man powered the phone up to show him it was working. Knowing that he didn’t have much choice, and couldn’t be bothered to barter anyway, Ronnie reached into the plastic bag to get his wallet. The minute he put his hands on it, he knew that someone at the police station had emptied it of cash.
He opened the wallet to find a couple of banknotes left. They were crumpled, purple, and had the dour face of an Indonesian politician staring from them. Ronnie swore under his breath. They were about the lowest denomination of notes available—ten thousand rupiah—which meant the police had left him with about a quid to his name. Ronnie never carried much money in his wallet as being a westerner, he knew he would be a target for pickpockets, but he hadn’t been expecting to be mugged by the police.
“Do you buy phones?” Ronnie asked the young man. He shook his head with an approximation of a sad expression on his face.
“One hundred fifty?” he replied, smiling again and pointing at the Nokia. “Good price?”
Ronnie looked at the other phones on the man’s barrow before selecting five of the better looking phones on it. Then he laid his own iPhone next to them. It was far from the latest model, but a thousand times better than the sorry collection he was trying to swap them for. He needed to get rid of the phone anyway, and he knew he couldn’t sell it in a proper shop as that would leave a trail.
“Exchange?” Ronnie asked. The young man’s face lit up in excitement as he regarded the iPhone.
A few moments later, Ronnie left the barrow owner playing with his new acquisition as he walked to the end of the street. It would be a long walk home, but at least the police had left him enough money for thirty minutes in an Internet cafe.
It was time to get in touch with the slut McGuire.
48
Laura pulled up outside Gareth’s office and parked her Mini. She could see him and Dave through the window of the office, both deep in conversation in front of a laptop. Neither of them had registered the fact that she was parked right outside the office, so she took a moment to watch them.
Gareth looked angry about something, that much was plain to see even from this distance. As she watched, he jabbed a finger at the screen of the computer they were looking at. Dave said something to him, and Laura saw Gareth put his hand encouragingly on the younger man’s shoulder. At least whatever Gareth was wound up about, it wasn’t Dave. Although she’d been angry when she had found out it was him who had told Gareth about her and Kate in the club, when she’d had a chance to think about it, her initial anger had disappeared. He was looking out for his mate, that’s all it had been. If it had been her in the same situation, Laura hoped that she would have done the same thing.
She thought back over the events of the last few days. When she had gone into the office on Monday morning, she was exhausted—she had Gareth to thank for that, but hadn’t complained in the slightest—and then Paul had dropped his bombshell. It seemed so unfair, him getting sick like that. He didn’t deserve it. Not that anyone deserved a diagnosis like that one, but especially not him.
Laura’s thoughts turned to Gareth as she watched him unobserved through the window. She remembered the look on his face when she had suggested he come back to her flat. It had been a mixture of relief, anticipation, and fear. Much like Laura’s own feelings. It had taken them hours to actually get into bed, as if they were both putting off the inevitable for some reason. She hadn’t said anything to Gareth, but Laura wasn’t particularly experienced in that respect—with either gender—but when they finally made it that far, none of that had mattered.
What had surprised Laura when things did start to get properly serious was how attentive Gareth was. He’d seemed determined to make sure that Laura was satisfied before he was. And she had been, several times. She had never been with anyone like that before, and as she sat in the car watching him, she could feel her face flushing at the memory.
She watched as Gareth stretched, placing his arms behind his head and flexing his biceps. As he did so, he glanced out of the window and saw Laura’s car. Any trace of anger on his face disappeared in an instant, and he beckoned to her to come into the office. Laura opened the car door, trying to compose herself, and walked over to the office.
“Hey, Laura,” Gareth said as she walked in. He took a couple of steps toward her and then seemed to change his mind at the last minute. “You finished early?”
“Yeah, I did,” Laura replied. “Any chance of a cuppa?”
“Sure,” Gareth replied, turning on his heel and walking toward the kitchenette. A few seconds later, she heard him banging mugs about.
“You okay, Dave?” Laura said, turning her attention.
“Um, yes,” he replied. “Listen, Laura? I’m sorry about the whole club thing. Telling Gareth what I saw, and all that.”
“Don’t, Dave,” she said. “Nothing to apologise about.” Laura waved a hand in Gareth’s direction. “We’re all cool, so don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, nice. So are you two, er…”
“Are we what?” Laura said, an image of Gareth in a particularly tender moment flashing across the back of her mind. She could feel her cheeks starting to colour again and blinked a couple of times to try to make the memory go away.
“Um, I mean, well. Okay?”
“Yes, Dave,” Laura replied with a smile. “We’re fine.”
Dave’s awkwardness was saved by Gareth walking back into the main office, two mugs of tea in his hands.
“Here you go,” he said as he put one of the mugs down on the desk in front of Laura. “Milk and two sugars.”
“Lovely job,” Laura replied. “Cheers.”
“Are you okay?” Gareth asked.
“Yep, fine. Why?”
“You just look a bit flushed, that’s all.”
“It was a bit warm in the car,” Laura replied, looking at him. He regarded her carefully, and she realised that he’d caught the lie.
“Really?” Gareth said, a faint smile crossing his face. “I’m sure I’ve seen that look before.”
“So,” Laura said quickly, keen to change the subject. She nodded at the laptop on the desk. “What are you two up to, then?” As she started walking around the desk to look at the screen of the computer, Dave closed the lid. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be nosy.”
“That’s fine, Laura,” Gareth replied. “It’s just a bit sensitive, that’s all. We’re looking at a client’s computer, and some of the stuff on it might be a little bit, well…” His voice tailed away.
“That doesn’t make sense, Gareth,” Laura said, mildly irritated that she was being taken for a fool. “If whatever’s on there is that bad, then your client wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place. Would he?”
“Dave, could you give me and Laura a few minutes, mate?” Gareth said. Laura watched Dave glance at his watch.
“I can finish this up at home if you want?”
“No,” Gareth said, sharply. Laura raised her eyebrows. Something wasn’t right, that much was obvious. He pointed at the computer. “That thing stays here.”
“Okay, well, I’ll just nip to the Costa over the road for a bit then.”
&nbs
p; “You might as well knock off early, mate. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Laura pressed her lips together so that Gareth didn’t see her smiling. Dave’s not very surreptitious look at his watch had done the trick. She waited as he gathered his things together and disappeared through the back door of the office. A few moments later, she saw him cycling past the front, his hand raised as he waved at them.
She turned to face Gareth. He still looked angry, but it was more resignation than anger now.
“Spill the beans, Dawson,” Laura said, folding her arms across her chest and nodding at the still closed laptop. “Whose is that and what’s on it? Because it obviously doesn’t belong to a client.”
“It does, kind of,” he replied. “It’s Philip’s laptop.”
“Does Annette know you’ve got it?”
“Yeah, she gave it to us. There’s a complete copy of her laptop on that hard drive as well.” Gareth gestured to a small black portable hard drive on the desk.
“What’s going on?”
“She’s in trouble, Laura,” Gareth replied with a deep sigh. “That’s why we’re going through Philip’s computer and her stuff.”
“What sort of trouble?” Laura asked, frowning as she looked at him. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure, to be honest.”
“Gareth, stop bullshitting me and tell me the truth. What are you looking for?”
“Indecent images.”
“Pornography?” Gareth’s reply chilled Laura to the core.
“Indecent images,” he said, “of children.”
49
Annette doubled over the bowl of the toilet and retched, groaning as her stomach contracted again. She spat a stringy glob of bile into the bowl. There was nothing left in her stomach to throw up. She sat back on her haunches, a thin sheen of perspiration on her brow.
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, wondering if she was going to vomit again or if her body had decided that she’d had enough. When she decided it was the latter, she listened hard for a few seconds to see if the audio on her laptop had finished. Hearing nothing but silence, Annette got unsteadily to her feet and made her way to the kitchen to pour a glass of cold water.
Gareth Dawson Series Box Set Page 80