The Victim

by Jane Bidder

  ‘Keep going, Mum,’ she heard her say.

  So she did. It was the only way.

  After all, Joly had given up his lifestyle for her. He had traded his comforts for her freedom. She owed it to him. She also owed it to Georgie. And she owed it to her husband.

  This was no time to be a victim.

  She had to stand up for herself.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  I’ve got a bad feeling about this new job. It feels I’m being watched.

  ‘Losing your nerve,’ one of the others said to me.

  No one accuses me of that. So I kept going even though my fingers shook over the keyboard.

  I should have stopped.

  Should have listened to that voice inside me.

  ‘Never break the law,’ my gran used to say to me. ‘Then no one can get you.’

  She knew what she was talking about. It’s why she brought me up instead of my mum. She was doing time in Holloway.

  At first I listened. But when I got a job at the factory after leaving school, I began to realise why Mum had done it.

  You just can’t seem to pay the bills with an ordinary job.

  That’s why, even though every bone in my body is warning me that something’s going to go wrong, I’m still doing it. Still doing the only kind of work I know.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Six months later

  ‘How was your mother?’ asked Sam as she walked in the front door, tired and sticky from the long drive.

  ‘Much the same,’ Lyndsey answered for her with that bright, cheery smile that made Georgie determined to count her blessings rather than have a moan. If her friend could smile her way through remission, she could put on a brave face about a mother who blew hot and cold.

  ‘One minute she accused our Georgie of running away as a kid. Fair enough. But the next, she told her that she didn’t want her living at home any more because …’

  ‘Because I wasn’t my sister,’ finished Georgie.

  Sam gave her a cuddle. One of his wonderful hugs which made her feel instantly better. Things like this, she decided, were more important than the Other. That part had only recently started to come back. Both had been wary. Both still needed time.

  But now it looked as if it might be all right.

  As for Nick, he’d been suitably repentant. ‘I know it was wrong,’ he kept saying. ‘But everyone gambles. I kept thinking that if I went on, I’d win enough to pay off my debts.’

  Then he’d given her a look which made her blood run cold. ‘I asked you for a loan, Mum. Remember? If you’d given it to me, none of this would have happened.’

  Sam had been furious. ‘Was that why you picked on your mother? Because you felt she’d let you down?’

  He’d shrugged. ‘Sort of.’

  Was this her son? How could he have changed so much?

  So they’d sat him down and had a family discussion about the importance of honesty. Even Sam had held up his hand. ‘We all get it wrong at times, son.’ For a man who constantly tried to be perfect, this was a big deal.

  Yet Nick was still adamant that he hadn’t had anything to do with the other card thefts. He was so convincing, swearing his innocence! Surely she had to believe him.

  Sam wasn’t so sure. ‘There’s more to this than meets the eye,’ he kept saying.

  Georgie had another saying. ‘The young are not yet wise.’ It was one an aunt of hers often used. And it was true. Nick was young. He’d made a mistake. Just as she had. But it wasn’t a matter of life and death as it had been with her. He knew he’d done wrong. And a parent’s role, as she kept telling Sam, is to forgive as well as educate.

  He also allowed them to talk to his tutor. ‘Fat lot of good that will do,’ said Sam. ‘Personally, I blame student loans. They get thousands at the beginning of term and think they’re rich.’

  Meanwhile, the headlines had disappeared, thank goodness. The press had long left them alone to chase other stories. But the old adage ‘Any publicity is good publicity’ seemed to be true. Georgie had had several phone calls from prospective clients after the trial, many of which had borne fruition as commissions. She’d even had to take on an assistant.

  ‘Don’t you want to move?’ Sam had said on more than one occasion.

  She’d shaken her head. I’m tired of running. I just want to stand still. Grow roots.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  For a minute, he looked as though he was going to kiss her before changing his mind. Georgie swallowed the hurt and reminded herself of what Lyndsey had said. ‘These things take time.’

  She only hoped her friend was right. After all, how would she feel if Sam confessed he’d stolen someone else’s life? To forgive something like that was a big ask …

  Then Ellie had come downstairs one day with a strange smile on her face and asked if they could possibly lend her the fare to go to Perth. There was a psychology conference which her tutor was speaking at and it just so happened that Mac, the Australian lawyer, was going too.

  Both Georgie and Sam had exchanged knowing looks. They made her feel warm. United. Almost like a proper family again.

  But all of this paled into insignificance with the knock on the door one evening. It was the computer man.

  Shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said. ‘But I’ve just been reading about a new scam on what the wife calls my geeky online forum site.’

  There was another shifting from side to side. ‘Mind if I take a look at your computer again?’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  ‘Amanda Jones. You are accused of computer hacking on twenty-three counts and conspiring to rob …’

  No comment. No comment.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Twenty-three-year-old single mother convicted of hacking nineteen online banking accounts and stealing thousands of pounds.

  Amanda Jones – known as Mandy – turned out to be part of a wider ring, involving computer experts and ‘runners’ from all over the country. They had been preying on small businesses for the last four years.

  Other personal stolen possessions were also found, including jewellery and photographs, said to be of a sentimental nature.

  Extract from The Times

  FIFTY-NINE

  There’s only so long you can go on saying ‘No comment’. Besides, I got fed up in the end. I’m a mother now. The other jobs were before I had Ryan.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ my lawyer asked me.

  ‘’Cos it’s a job, isn’t it?’

  And ’cos people are so vulnerable. I didn’t tell him that bit. But they get careless. They lose their credit cards – cash machines are the best place to look – and someone in the team copies them.

  It’s their own fault. They shouldn’t keep details of other people’s accounts in their bags for anyone to nick.

  Or else they’re carrying too much stuff and they drop a car key in the road. If you’re alert – like me – you pick it up.

  ‘Thank you,’ that blonde woman with the Volvo had said, as if I was doing her a favour. It was like picking a plum off a tree.

  Still, I’ll be out soon. They have to – or else someone will come and get me for splitting.

  It’s worth the risk. I’m getting a new name. Fresh documents. And a place of my own.

  Then I’m going to turn straight. Anything to get my kid back. He’s in care now. Someone else is putting him to bed. Waking him up. Getting him dressed. Teaching him his letters.

  Shit. I can’t talk any more.

  I just want him with me. I just want to be a good mum with enough money to give my boy a nice life.

  Amateurs! Bloody amateurs.

  If it wasn’t for that girl blabbing our names, we might have got off.

  Stupid little cow.

  Five years I’ve got. But I’ll be out.

  Then there’ll be more computers to hack. More unsuspecting middle-aged women. More victims.

  Including that girl if I find her.
r />   Watch this space.

  SIXTY

  ‘I still don’t quite get it,’ said Lyndsey.

  They were sitting on the hotel’s private beach overlooking the Amalfi coast: a girls’ weekend in Italy. Georgie was reflecting. Lyndsey was doodling on a sketchpad as part of her cancer rehab therapy to help her relax.

  It had been Stephen’s idea. ‘My wife needs a break after everything she’s gone through. And something tells me you could do with one too.’

  Sam backed him up. ‘Get away from all the publicity. By the time you’re back, it might have died down.’

  There were certainly enough headlines.

  ‘Massive UK crime ring cracked’.

  ‘Kids as young as 12 swept up in identity fraud.’

  ‘British housewife from Thai murder case was victim along with hundreds of others’

  The papers – keen to have some good news for a change – had been ecstatic.

  But the actual mechanics were all so complicated to explain! Georgie poured out another glass of fresh lemonade for them both before starting. ‘Our computer man – who used to be a techie hot-shot in the City – came across a new scam in America.’

  Lyndsey moved back into the shade, reminding Georgie that you couldn’t be too careful; anything could take you by surprise in life, whether it was illness or betrayal. ‘I know that bit. It’s the next part I don’t understand.’

  Georgie shrugged. ‘Nor do I, really. That’s because identity fraud is what they call a “constantly-evolving crime”. Kevin explained …’

  ‘Kevin?’ Lyndsey raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re on first-name terms with the computer man, are we?’

  ‘Yes! When someone has saved you thousands that were stolen from you in the first place, a surname seems far too formal. Anyway, Kevin managed to tap into a ring of fraudsters by pretending to be one himself.’

  ‘Stolen identity again?’ Lyndsey was scribbling it down. ‘It seems to be all the rage.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her friend’s comment stung. Even now she was terrified that Georgina’s adoptive family might contact her – even though her parents were dead. She’d have to tell them the truth. Admit that she’d borrowed someone else’s identity.

  That was, she’d explained to Lyndsey, why she hadn’t wanted to come back to the UK a few years ago. A hidden ex-pat life had been safer. There had been less risk of bumping into people who knew her past.

  ‘Sorry.’ Lyndsey looked repentant. ‘I didn’t mean to be thoughtless.’ Her eyes gleamed, as though she was a mischievous teenager again. ‘Georgina is far too formal, anyway. Georgie is much more you.’

  Even her mother, who had slipped very fast into a rambling incoherency during the last few months, no longer talked about the old Georgina. It was as if the return of her surviving daughter had laid the ghosts to rest.

  In a strange way, Georgina Peverington-Smith had merged into her own body now that her killer had finally been caught and justice done. Perhaps, she sometimes mused, her sister had ‘sent’ her old friend Lyndsey back to her. For the first time in years, she felt comfortable in her own skin. As though her identity had been restored to her.

  Until now, she hadn’t realised just how important one’s true identity really was. Without it, you were nothing.

  Just as important, she and Sam were slowly but surely rebuilding that wall of trust. They’d gone beyond the cuddling stage now …

  ‘Kevin managed to get evidence on this ring,’ she continued, ‘by pretending to be one of them. It was incredible. There are all those people out there who surf the net, looking for idiots like me who use their pet’s name as a password or who answer unsolicited emails that pose as genuine questions about your private details.’

  Lyndsey sucked in her breath. ‘But what about the car being moved and the credit card inside the handbag?’

  Georgie still felt stupid over that. ‘It’s what they call an “opportunist ruse”. Thieves bump into you in the street and apologise while taking your purse in the confusion. Or, in my case, they look out for anyone who drops their bags or needs help getting off a train or crossing the road. That’s been going on for a while, but Kevin says it’s become more sophisticated. Sat Navs are often used to find out where the real owner lives. All you have to do is punch in “Home” and the address comes up. Luck comes into it too.’

  She drew a deep breath, thinking of the slim woman in jeans and trainers with the pushchair. No tattoos. No earrings in her nose. Barely any make-up. Shoulder-length mousy hair, tucked behind her ears. Hardly your average image of a female thief – whatever that might be.

  ‘I assumed that the mum with the stroller was just being kind when she helped me pick up the things I dropped outside Vanda’s house. But she hung onto my car key. Apparently her brother – who’s a bit of a computer geek – had dragged her into this ring. I can’t help feeling sorry for her. She must have been desperate. Maybe that’s why she was the first one who crumbled, so she’d get a lighter sentence. If it wasn’t for her, the police told me, we wouldn’t have got the other names.’

  Lyndsey wrinkled up her nose sympathetically. ‘You don’t expect a woman to do this kind of stuff, do you?’

  ‘No. You don’t. In some ways, that makes it worse.’ Georgie still felt terrible about it. ‘Who’s going to look after her child when she’s in prison?’

  She stopped, remembering the little bundle in blue with a globule of snot running down its nose. He might have to go into care. Then the whole spiral might start again. And what would happen when the girl got out? Would someone try to hurt her because she’d ‘grassed’? Or would the police give her a new identity?

  So many questions. Not enough answers.

  ‘I still don’t see,’ mused Lyndsay, ‘how your card could have been used when it was still in the bag when you got home.’

  It was clever, Georgie had to admit. Very clever. ‘Apparently, this Mandy Smith’s brother rang someone else in the ring. He copied my card on a special machine and then drove the car home.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Apparently it makes some people think they’re going mad – that they hadn’t gone out in the first place.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘It did it for me. It also buys the thief more time to use the card because you don’t realise that a duplicate has been made.’

  ‘How devious.’

  ‘Apparently that’s the way it’s going.’

  She gave a short laugh ‘There also the so-called business friends, like Vanda and Jonathan, who use their “privy information”, as it’s known, to empty your account.’

  ‘Were they ever caught?’

  This was still a bone of contention. ‘Sam refused to take action. He said it would lead to more publicity and we’d had enough of that. Besides, I’m not sure where Vanda and Jonathan have gone. Rufus reckons it might be Australia. But according to my computer man, they were the ones who’d put that awful thing on YouTube. They were trying to discredit me.’

  ‘Don’t you want to sue them?’

  Georgie had thought about that. ‘I think they’ve suffered enough.’ She went silent for a minute, wondering – as she’d often done – what hell it had been in a Bangkok prison. How could she take their freedom away again?

  ‘So many people were involved!’ added Lyndsey, cutting into her thoughts. ‘I bet there are some stories behind them all.’

  ‘Probably. They all work for someone at the top, like a proper business. But very few of them know each other. It’s called organised crime.’

  She breathed out deeply at the complexity of it all. ‘Then, apparently, acquaintances – and even friends of the victim – latch on. Vanda said it was when I told her about my handbag and the missing car that she and Jonathan thought of pretending to be me and emptying my husband’s account.’

  ‘What about the man who used your card? Right at the very beginning? The first one who took money from Jo’s as well?’

  He still haunted her, to be honest. Maybe she shou
ldn’t have gone to the trial. His defence had spared no details in eliciting sympathy. ‘He came from a really bad background. You could say he’d learned credit card fraud at his mother’s knee. He was in goodness knows how many foster homes. And then he fell into bad company. Apparently, the man towards the top of the chain was the pillar of his local community. Everyone thought he’d made his money through his company but it turned out to be a front for the huge fraud ring. There were loads of others too. Goodness knows what their backgrounds were.’

  ‘And Nick?’

  Georgie felt a lurch at the pit of her stomach. Out of everything, this was the biggest betrayal. ‘He, too, got the idea from the other card thefts when he ran up those gambling debts. Ellie had unwittingly told him about it because she was upset. Sam thought it was her, you see. Like I said earlier, the police said it often happens like that. Others – connected to the victim – think they’ll cash in. I just didn’t think my own son would do that kind of thing.’

  ‘They say we never really know each other, don’t they?’ Lyndsey was still scribbling in the shade, under the striped parasol. ‘You could write a book about it.’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing?’ Georgie sat bolt upright. Her friend had always wanted to be a writer as a little girl. Teaching had clearly been a safer bet.

  ‘I’m thinking of a children’s spy novel, actually.’ Lyndsey coloured up.

  ‘Will I be in it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Only as a nine-year-old girl. Don’t worry. No one will recognise you.’ Her eyes grew dreamy as she stared over the sea towards the horizon where a white sailing boat could just about be seen. ‘I thought it might take my mind off the next hospital appointment.’

  How could she deny her friend that? Even so, it made Georgie feel a bit uneasy.

  Just like the computer man’s warning. ‘Be careful every time you go on the net or hand over your credit card in a shop or buy something on the phone. You never know who’s going to be the next victim.’

  Georgie shivered. Then her hand closed over the small, hard object in her pocket.