by M. R. Hall
She arrived at her Jamaica Street offices shortly before five, hoping that Alison would have taken the opportunity to leave early. She hadn’t. Jenny felt the leaden atmosphere even before she stepped through the door.
Alison appeared in the doorway of the corridor leading to the kitchenette pointedly drying up one of the several cups Jenny had allowed to accumulate on her desk. ‘DS Fuller would like you to give her a statement by tomorrow morning.’
‘Fine. Though I’m not sure how it helps anyone.’
‘The dead woman’s husband might not agree.’ Alison turned back into the kitchenette and thumped the cup on the drainer. There was more clanking of crockery – her way of making Jenny feel as guilty as an ungrateful child.
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Of course.’
She was determined not to make this easy.
‘How was he?’
‘Pretty much as you’d expect.’ Alison reappeared and marched across the room to her desk, where she proceed to shuffle her papers into orderly piles.
‘Did he have any idea?’ Jenny asked.
‘He had been worried that she might have been seeing someone, but he’d never dared ask. I get the impression he worshipped her . . . That was probably the problem. No woman likes a doormat.’
‘He didn’t know about her lover?’
‘Not a clue. He’d noticed she’d been a little subdued lately, that’s all.’ Her desk tidied, she turned to face Jenny. ‘I left him the photographs.’
‘Do you think that was a good idea?’
‘Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. I think one thing this sorry episode has taught me is that everyone’s better off hearing the truth, no matter how painful it is.’
Jenny looked at her, trying to fathom the subtext. When Alison was being particularly cryptic she was usually talking about herself.
‘You mean you and your husband—’
‘No, Mrs Cooper,’ she snapped back. ‘I was thinking more about Mrs Patterson and her ridiculous notions. Everyone knows she’s working you like a puppet – it’s all over CID. And they also know how much trouble you’re in with the Ministry. You’ll struggle to find anyone who rates your chances of surviving. They’re taking bets on how long you’ll last – the smart money’s on less than a week.’
‘I’m surprised it’s that long,’ Jenny said, and headed for her room.
‘Don’t you think someone should go and talk to the photographer’s wife?’ Alison called after her. ‘The poor woman deserves to know what was going on.’
Jenny stopped at the door and took a deep breath. ‘I’ll call by on my way home.’
‘Best not,’ Alison said. ‘You seem a bit preoccupied. I don’t think you’d be much comfort.’ She grabbed her coat from the peg and went.
Listening to Alison’s heavy footsteps along the hallway, it felt like a parting of the ways. They had weathered many quarrels, but there was a darkness to Alison’s current mood that Jenny had never witnessed before. Her natural instinct was to chase after her to try to patch things up, but with two bags of stolen evidence in her pockets it seemed a futile, even a dishonest gesture. It was as if Alison had somehow intuited that Jenny had finally put herself beyond the pale and was furious with her.
With her office door securely locked and the blinds drawn shut, Jenny placed the two bags on her desk and took out her cellphone. Switching it to video mode, she sandwiched it between two piles of books, making sure she had a clear picture of the bags and the area in which she was about to work.
She spoke out loud, stating the time and date, and describing her actions as she performed them. It was vital for the continuity of evidence that the film showed the unsealing of the bags and their precise contents. Without such a record, any evidence the bags contained could never be proved in a manner that would satisfy a court.
‘These are two evidence bags that I have today removed from the evidence and effects store at the disaster mortuary for the purposes of my inquiry,’ Jenny began in a dry forensic tone. ‘They were removed from the tray containing the effects of the female passenger Nuala Casey. One contains a brown leather wallet, the other what appears to be a black fabric wash bag bearing the Ransome Airways logo. I will examine the wash bag first.’
She took a pair of scissors from her desk-tidy and snipped through the plastic cable tie which sealed the neck of the bag shut. She pulled the wash bag out. It had the same musty smell that had pervaded the evidence and effects store. The fabric was stained with salt residue from the brackish water of the estuary.
‘I am now unzipping the bag, which is damp to the touch. There are a number of items inside.’ She proceeded to remove them one by one. ‘A toothbrush, travel toothpaste, skin fresheners, a sanitary towel and a small tablet of soap bearing the name of the Cavendish Hotel, Fleetcombe, Berkshire.’ She checked the inside for any pockets or gaps in the lining. There were none. Continuing to describe her actions, she repeated the process in reverse order before sealing the evidence bag securely with Scotch tape.
She turned to the second bag and resumed her dictation. ‘This is a plain brown fold-over wallet, also still slightly damp.’ She opened it. ‘In the pockets on the right there are two credit cards – one Mastercard, one Visa – and what I assume to be a bank debit card. On the left we have a driver’s licence, Heathrow airside ID, a gym membership card and a loyalty card for a coffee shop.’ She turned the wallet on its side. ‘I’m looking into a pocket running the length of the wallet, which contains a number of pieces of paper, all water-damaged.’ She brought them out, separated them from one another and spread them across the desk. There were more than twenty. ‘I can see these are mostly receipts from shop tills and ATMs.’ She went through them one by one. They dated back to mid-December, and contained nothing more remarkable than records of visits to high street stores and sandwich shops; on 24 December, however, she found something bigger. ‘This is a receipt from Linden Electronics for an Oregon GPS device costing £499.’ She assumed it related to the gadget Nuala had stowed in her flight case.
There were several receipts from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day itself from Heathrow and Dubai airports, then none until 29 December. On that day Nuala had evidently filled up her car at a petrol station close to her flat and travelled out to the Cavendish Hotel, where at shortly before ten a.m. she paid for a half-day session in the spa. There followed a few more run-of-the-mill receipts from the first week of January, and Jenny found herself beginning to lose heart: she had taken one of the greatest risks of her career for no benefit whatever. She pulled apart three pieces of paper that had been folded together. The first was for a taxi fare. It was dated 9 January, the day of the plane crash. The second was for a return journey on the Heathrow Express bought at six a.m., and the third was a ticket issued by the Paddington Station left-luggage office five minutes later.
Jenny felt a rush of excitement. She tried not to let it sound in her voice as she concluded her commentary. ‘I am placing all the receipts back in the wallet except the left-luggage ticket, which I will now take to the office at Paddington Station.’ She held it up close to the camera so that every detail could be recorded. ‘I will inform Nuala Casey’s next of kin immediately her items of luggage have been retrieved.’
Her task complete, she turned the camera around to face the small safe which sat on the floor in the corner of the room. She filmed herself stowing the bags inside it and added for the record that she was the only person who knew the combination.
Jenny remained on edge throughout the entire two-hour drive along the motorway, her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel sending shooting pains along her arms and into her shoulders and chest. Her eyes were smarting with the strain of staring out into the wet, moonless night, but she had no intention of stopping until she arrived at her destination.
She tried Michael’s number repeatedly, but he wasn’t answering. Fearing that he might be screening her out, she left a message insisting he call her. He didn
’t. Eventually, a tired-sounding woman picked up the phone at Sky Driver’s office, but after consulting her computer she claimed that Michael had clocked off earlier that afternoon after a return flight to Newmarket. Jenny guessed that meant he was working ‘off the log’ again. It wasn’t the night to be flying a light aircraft, she thought, let alone dog-tired and suffering far more grief than he dared to admit.
It was eight p.m. when she wove through the crowds of bleary-eyed commuters staring hopefully up at the departure screens and made her way to the left-luggage office at the head of platform twelve. Repeated terrorist attacks in recent decades had resulted in a blanket ban on left-luggage lockers, meaning that each bag had to be checked in over the counter and passed through a scanner. The rules printed on the back of the ticket were clear: the checked bag would only be handed back in exchange for the original ticket.
There wasn’t much business being done at this time of the evening, and the Polish girl manning the office was glancing sleepily at a magazine. She took the ticket and went in search of Nuala’s luggage without a word. Jenny glanced up at the security cameras on the ceiling which covered every angle and realized that evidence of her collection would be sitting on the company’s servers for months, if not years, to come.
‘What kind of bag is it?’ the girl asked, walking alongside a row of suitcases.
Jenny had a moment of panic. ‘I’m not sure. It belongs to my friend—’
The girl looked at her uncertainly, but seemed to relent. Besides, there was no clause requiring the collector and depositor to be the same person; whoever presented the ticket was entitled to exchange it for the luggage. The girl wandered further along the row, briefly disappeared behind some racks, then reappeared with a slender black laptop case, which she placed on the counter.
The girl checked the ticket taped to it against Jenny’s. ‘That’s it.’
‘Thank you,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s definitely her case.’
She was climbing the steps out of the station to Eastbourne Terrace when her phone rang. It was Michael. About time.
‘Jenny?’
‘Michael, where are you?’
‘In some dive of a hotel on the M4. I’m flying from Newbury to France and back tomorrow. What’s so urgent?’
‘I’ve got Nuala’s laptop, not the company one, her personal laptop.’
‘Where . . . How?’ He sounded as nervous as she was.
‘By making myself a criminal. I hope it’s worth it.’
‘Jenny, where did you get it?’
‘Paddington. She checked it into left luggage before getting on the flight to the States. Do you want to look at it with me?’
‘Jesus—’
‘Michael?’
‘I thought it must have gone down with her.’
‘It didn’t. Which particular dive on the M4 do I aim for?’
‘No expense spared, eh?’
‘The company gets a discount – you can see why.’ Michael closed the door to his room in the Reading service station and drew over the night lock. As motel rooms went it was adequate, but Jenny felt there was something faintly tragic about a former fighter pilot living no better than a truck driver. He looked worn out and smelt of beer. Dressed in faded jeans and an old Levi’s T-shirt, he could have been a roadie for an ageing rock band.
‘Should you be drinking the evening before you fly?’ Jenny said.
‘Could you sleep in here without a drink?’
It was a fair point. She pushed aside his dirty cup and set the bag on the desk by the TV. Michael let her take the chair and sat on the end of the bed. They exchanged a glance, Jenny wanting to say something reassuring but not knowing what.
‘Just open it,’ Michael said.
She unzipped the bag and pulled out a slender laptop – the kind of upmarket model she had never been able to stretch to. She checked inside the bag. There was nothing else. Putting it to one side, she flipped open the screen and switched it on. As she had expected, it asked for a user password.
She looked to Michael.
Michael shrugged. ‘Tyax?’
She keyed in the now familiar word and the desktop dutifully appeared, revealing a small set of half a dozen icons. Nuala kept her computer as spotless as her flat.
‘Where to first?’ Jenny asked.
‘Look – top left. She backed up her phone.’
He was right – there it was. Nuala had actually bothered to install the program most people toss away the moment they take their new phone out of the box. Jenny clicked open the application and found a number of folders. One held a diary, one a list of contacts, and a third contained photographs. A line of text at the bottom of the window recorded the date of the last back-up as 4 January. Michael insisted on looking at the photographs first. There were shots of skylines taken in shiny new Middle Eastern cities and a handful of Sandy Belling and her baby.
‘You seem disappointed,’ Jenny said.
Michael shrugged. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting. She always used to take lots of pictures.’
That was when she was happy, Jenny might have said, but made no comment. She turned to the diary file. It opened to reveal a month per screen. Starting from the previous June the entries revealed that Nuala had done little except work flat out, flying three or four round trips to European destinations each week until October, when her schedule altered to two runs to either Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The few non-work events entered were usually Meet Sandy, Pilates or Gym. There was nothing out of the ordinary until 6 November. An entry for that date read: Meet AF H/R T1 17.30.
‘Heathrow Terminal One?’ Jenny deduced.
Michael nodded.
‘Any idea who AF is?’
‘No. Try her contacts.’
Jenny opened the contacts file in a separate window and scrolled through the list of names until she reached F. There was no one listed with an initial A.
‘Keep going through the diary,’ Michael said.
There was nothing more in November beyond the usual routine. December, however, revealed something different. Interspersed between flights to the Middle East were five meetings with MD on the 2nd, 7th, 12th, 19th and 28th. More interesting still were the locations: Heston E/B; H’smith Starbucks; Langley Plough; Windsor Costa. The final entry read: Mick D, Datchet Royal Oak.
‘Five meetings with Mick D in one month,’ Jenny said. ‘Do you know him?’
‘No.’
‘Service stations, coffee shops, pubs. All within thirty minutes of Heathrow. Not what you’d call romantic locations.’
‘Look in her contacts again.’ Michael’s tone was curt and Jenny shot him a look.
‘Sorry—’
‘Thank you.’ She worked through the list to D. There were three entries, none of them relating to anyone called Mick. He wasn’t listed under M either. A faint bell rang in the back of Jenny’s mind. ‘Hold on – didn’t Nuala write the initials MD on one of the documents in her files? They’re at my house—’
‘I remember,’ Michael said. ‘It was on the FAA directive ordering Airbus operators to upgrade to heated pitot tubes.’
‘So we’re looking for a pilot?’
‘Not necessarily. Try going online and running a search.’
Jenny connected to the motel’s wireless network and entered her credit card details. Hooked up expensively to the internet she searched Mick D Airbus. In less than two seconds the search engine threw up a list of apparently obscure and irrelevant results.
‘There – number four,’ Michael said.
Jenny looked at the entry. It was listed under Tech Log and in the text beneath it were the words, Engineer Mick Dalton describes his path to becoming . . . She clicked and a page appeared from a trade magazine. Scrolling down, she came to a brief column profiling Mick Dalton, Senior Engineer, Ransome Airways. The photograph was of a balding middle-aged man wearing black-rimmed glasses.
Michael nodded slowly. ‘Remember him?’
‘No—’
Jenny closed the internet browser and clicked on the email tab. An inbox opened and began to fill with newly arriving messages. They were mostly junk – discount and investment offers, but the one midway down the list caught her eye. It flashed with an insistent red exclamation mark and the subject field read: URGENT. It was dated 10 January, the day after the crash.
‘Are you going to open it?’ Michael said impatiently.
Jenny paused, frightened of what she might find, then forced herself to double-click the message. A new window opened and a lot of indecipherable computer code spread across the screen.
‘Stop it!’ Michael called out.
He leaped up and grabbed the mouse from her hand but it was already too late. The computer screen turned solid blue and the cursor vanished. Michael hit the enter key. There was no response.
He slammed the edge of the desk with his fists. ‘Shit!’ He looked at Jenny. ‘You know what that was, don’t you?’
‘I’ve got a pretty good idea.’
Michael switched off the power, removed the battery, then tried to reboot, but the laptop remained frozen on the same blank screen. He quickly switched it off again, reasoning that the damage done by the Trojan Horse contained in the email could be limited and some of the data on the computer’s hard drive retained, but Jenny didn’t hold out much hope. Whoever planted the virus had known exactly what they were doing, and they had acted quickly.
‘We didn’t even get to look at her documents,’ Jenny said.
Michael sat back on the bed with a look of disbelief. ‘Who the hell sent that?’
‘Whoever shut down Airbuzz?’
‘If the left-luggage ticket was in her wallet, why not just go and collect her computer?’
‘You’re presuming whoever it was had access to the physical evidence. Maybe they didn’t?’