I was pensive about meeting with Symonds and I wasn't sure why. I couldn't shake the feeling there was more to it. He and the paramedics had arrived minutes after I found the body, there was little else I could tell him about it he didn't already know.
I arrived at the station and signed in with the desk sergeant. A few minutes later, Detective Symonds appeared and ushered me into one of the interview rooms and closed the door. He motioned for me to sit down opposite him, facing a large mirror. I'd watched enough police shows to know there was almost certainly someone sitting behind the one-way mirror watching the interview.
"Good morning, Ms. Shaw," Symonds said. "Thanks for coming in." He opened a thin folder on the desk in front of him. He started flicking through the pages inside.
"Of course," I replied. From the opposite side of the table, I could see my name on the top of the pages he was reading. "How can I help, Detective?"
He was silent for several seconds as he examined the contents of the folder. With a flourish, he closed it and looked me straight in the eye.
"I just wanted to go through the sequence of events that led you to be in the basement the other day."
"There's not much I can add to what I told you the other day, but I'm happy to go through it again." I explained how Jack Myers, the project's chief engineer, and I had gone to the basement car park to investigate the water seeping through the wall.
"When I took my phone from my handbag to photograph the wall, my purse must have fallen out on to the ground."
"Can Jack corroborate your story?"
I looked at him, unimpressed. "If he'd seen my purse on the ground, I'm fairly sure he would have said."
"Just establishing the facts, Ms. Shaw. So what you are saying is that nobody else can confirm that your purse was actually left in the basement, resulting in your returning later to retrieve it, correct?"
"You mean apart from Elliot Walthers?"
"Walthers?!" Symonds exclaimed. "I thought you told me that he was dead when you got there."
"He was, but he must have found my purse because he left this in it." I reached into my pocket, withdrew the note and held it out for Symonds to see.
Hastily, he pulled an evidence bag from his jacket and held it out. "I'll take that, please." I dropped the note into the bag, which he sealed and placed on the desk in front of him.
"GEO. What does that mean?" he asked.
"We think it's short for geological survey. W.."
"Who's "we"?" Symonds interrupted.
"Dave Forrester, my partner and me," I answered.
"Ah, the ex-cop turned private detective who was looking for Walthers. Apparently."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He pasted a smile on his face. "Nothing at all, Ms. Shaw. Again, merely stating the facts of the case."
"Look, Detective, if I'm being accused of something..."
"Let's get back to the note. You said it was something about geological surveys."
I looked at him sharply for a moment, then continued. "We think that Walthers uncovered something about the geological surveys on Samuel Olsen's construction site. We believe that Olsen found out and had him killed."
Symonds sat back in his chair. "Wow, that is an interesting theory, Ms. Shaw," he said. "Let me tell you my theory. Walthers uncovered something. We found his car around the back of the building. I think that you arranged to meet with him and came back to the site. I don't know if you planned to kill him or if it just happened."
My throat felt as though it had closed up and my heart thumped in horror as he continued, "I believe you concocted the story about losing your purse to explain why you returned to the basement. I think if I check this note, we'll find only your fingerprints and maybe your boyfriend's on it."
I managed to find my voice and replied, "But I didn't even know Walthers!"
"Your boyfriend did. Maybe he found himself in the right place at the right time when Walthers' wife hired him to track him down. Maybe he did, and set up your meeting with Walthers."
"But that doesn't make any sense. Why would I kill someone I don't know?" I exclaimed.
Symonds grinned in triumph. "Oh, that's easy. Who was responsible for the plans of the building? Who collated the geological surveys? The chief architect, right?"
"Yes, but..."
He opened the file in front of him again. "And I can see here that you are the chief architect for this project."
"This is crazy. What would I have to gain? I examined the geo surveys and there were no issues. Check them for yourself!"
"Oh, I intend to. But they can be changed easily enough, especially if you have ready access to them and need to cover up a mistake."
"But I didn't do anything!" I said desperately. "It was Olsen who killed Walthers, I've told you why I was on site."
"And I'm sure if I check, the crumbs you left us to find will line up." He tapped the folder on the desk. "I've read your file, Ms. Shaw. You're not above bending the rules when it suits you. You got away with it last time because we made arrests."
He leaned forward in his chair. "I don't have enough evidence to arrest you. Yet. But I'll find it, Ms. Shaw."
"You've got this ass-backward, Detective. You're chasing down the wrong suspect. It's Samuel Olsen." I couldn't believe what was happening.
"I'll be checking him out too, you can count on that. But I think I have the right person." He stood up, walked to the door and opened it. "You may go, for now, Ms. Shaw. Don't leave town. Your boyfriend either."
I stood up and gave him a hard look. "You're making a terrible mistake, Detective. I haven't done anything."
Symonds shrugged. "We will talk again soon, Ms. Shaw."
I walked out. In the space of two days, I had gone from being a witness to the prime suspect in a murder investigation.
I cursed my bad luck at dropping my purse and being thrust in the middle of all of this. A moment later, I realized that it may not have mattered. The dots that Symonds had connected did link to the construction project but had led him to me instead of Olsen.
Symonds' determination to accuse me was not illogical if you looked at the facts in isolation. If there was a problem with the geological surveys, then I was the person in the middle. If I didn't know I was innocent, then I may well suspect me too.
With the police determined to pin it on me, I knew one thing: I needed to find out who the hell really did this and fast before I ended up going to prison for a very long time, convicted of both fraud and murder, neither of which I had committed.
Chapter 10
Half an hour later, I walked into my office, feeling like I'd been hit by a bus. The conversation with Symonds had gone exactly as I'd feared. There was little chance I would get any work done, but the evidence to clear my name had to be here at Andersons and Andersons.
Or so I hoped. Either way, I had little choice but to try to find what Elliot Walthers had uncovered and why it had cost him his life. Samuel Olsen must have wanted to protect that secret very badly indeed.
There was a knock on the door to my office as I sat down. Pete Larson, my boss, stood in the doorway, his face full of concern.
"Hey, Nat. How are you holding up? You sure you should be here?"
"I'm sure, Pete. Thank you," I smiled crookedly at him. I had considered telling Pete about Detective Symond's belief I was involved, but on the drive from the police station, I felt that the fewer people who knew of that, the better. If I needed his help with my search, I would talk to him about it then.
In the meantime, he had enough on his plate with the delay this whole thing was causing. Pete had been my manager and also my friend for years. I knew he would give Symonds a piece of his mind for accusing me. While satisfying, it likely wouldn't do me any favors.
"All right," he answered gently. "I will admit that I'm glad to have you back at work. Old Man Olsen is crawling all over me to get things moving again."
"I bet he is," I said simply. Inside, I raged at t
he arrogance of the man. To dismiss the death of a man, and one who he had quite probably killed himself or had someone kill, it showed just how cold and single-minded he was.
"Well, let me know if you need anything from me," Pete replied. He turned and walked back to his office.
After he had left, I stared blankly at my computer screen, deep in thought. How could I find the evidence I needed to exonerate myself and to unmask the real killer?
It had to be related to the note left in my purse with "GEO" written on it.
The cramped room was a few doors from my office. I looked through the large printed maps and geological surveys hanging in cupboards around the walls; after finding the right one, I placed it on the angled desk sitting in the middle of the room.
I had brought a copy of the plans with me to the map room, so I sat down and carefully compared the location of Olsen's building on the plans against the geological survey. The survey showed a fifty-meter buffer between the site and the clay deposit.
That tallied with what I had found when first submitting the plans. The site was nowhere near the clay deposit that could destabilize the corner of the building. Yet there was water seeping through the concrete in a way that was consistent with clay.
It just made no sense.
I thought back to when I was creating the plans for the building, there had been a question mark on the corner where the water was now seeping through the wall. I had been worried, and so I had checked just prior to submission.
At the time, I was grateful that my concerns appeared to have been unfounded. Now, however, I was beginning to suspect there was more was going on here. I had been worried enough to double-check in the first place, there must have been a good reason.
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I HAD found an issue. The reason that it didn't appear later was that someone had replaced the geological survey with one that had been modified to hide the clay deposit now causing all the trouble in the basement.
If the corner really was deep in a clay deposit, there was far more to worry about than a little bit of water seeping through the concrete wall. It could destabilize the foundations of the entire building and lead to catastrophic structural failure.
With horror, I realized that if my theory was correct, there was sufficient motivation for killing to keep it a secret. I was going to have to be very careful with my investigation; wrongfully ending up in prison may be the least of my problems.
I had to find the link back to Olsen and fast. I needed to locate the original geological surveys, assuming they still existed, and how they were switched out. It had to have been before I'd checked it, the day before submitting the final proposal.
The question was, how could I prove that the map had been replaced? The large print on the desk in front of me had been stored in this room, however, it was impossible to tell for how long. But... I drew my breath in sharply. There may be another way.
In addition to the printed copies, there were high-definition electronic copies stored on the company file server. Perhaps Olsen had forgotten to also replace the digital image. I put the print back in its place in the cupboard and returned to my desk.
I sat at my laptop and searched for the appropriate file. Every satellite image and geological survey was carefully cataloged and linked to the relevant projects. They were expensive to produce and were always reused whenever possible.
After a few moments of searching, I found the geological survey I was after. I opened it eagerly, hoping that it would be different from the printed copy. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that they had been more thorough than I'd liked. Both images matched.
Frustrated, I sat back in my chair. I was getting nowhere. Could I be wrong? But then, it suddenly occurred to me. If the file had been replaced on the server, there should be a timestamp indicating when the file was changed. That was something Olsen may have missed.
Leaning into my screen, I checked the properties on the file. It showed that it had been modified just two days before I had submitted the proposal and well after I had commenced drawing up the plans. So the map had been replaced since I’d first seen it. But I still needed to find the original and evidence of who replaced it.
Now that I knew there was an updated file, the old one would have to have been recorded somewhere in our company's systems. Backups of all of our important data were kept for a year. While I was moderately competent with computers, I couldn't obtain the relevant backup myself.
But I knew who could.
Chapter 11
I rode the lift down to the floor below my office. All of the administration and IT support staff worked on this floor, and I needed the help of one person who could find the information proving the geo report had been modified.
Simon Fielding was the company's system administrator. As usual, he wasn't sitting at his desk, so I walked across to the server room where he seemed to spend most of his time. The sound of humming computers was audible through the closed door.
My swipe card had no access to the server room; only Simon and the company directors were authorized, so I rapped on the door sharply. There was no answer. It was common for him to not hear over the servers, so I waited a few moments and knocked again.
I was about to knock a third time when the door handle twisted and the door opened. The muffled hum from the room suddenly became a cacophony of servers, fans, and air conditioners. Simon slipped out of the room, quickly closing the door behind him.
If it were possible for Simon Fielding to be more the stereotypical computer nerd, it wouldn't take much. He was in his early twenties and wore a black Space Invaders T-shirt and jeans, his thin, pale face behind large glasses and messy, greasy hair.
"Hey, Nat," he said as he walked back to his desk. Simon was far more comfortable around computers than other people, but we shared a love of science fiction so he was usually chatty with me. Today, however, he seemed stressed and sullen, unwilling to make eye contact.
"Is everything okay?" I asked, concerned.
He waved away the question. "Yes, just stressed," he replied, staring intently at the screen in front of him. "One of the... one of the servers has issues, trying to find it." Simon had days where social interaction was difficult, so I didn't press further.
"Look, I can see you're busy and I wouldn't ask if it weren't urgent," I said, "but can I please get you to check something for me?"
Simon finally tore his eyes off his screen and looked at me. He paused before answering, "I suppose so, as long as it doesn't take too long."
"Thanks, Simon," I said, relieved. "It shouldn't take long." I reached into my pocket and took out a post-it note with the file name and the modified date on it. "I need a backup copy of this file," handing him the note, "from before this date."
Simon stared at the note for a moment, his expression uncertain. "Look," he said, "Let me take a look, but there are no guarantees I'll have it."
"I thought we had to keep all of this information for at least a year after the project ends," I replied.
"Oh yeah," he said, his face unreadable. He paused for a moment. "That's just for the, umm, latest versions of the info. It might be there. Give me an hour and I'll check for you."
I opened my mouth to challenge his assertion but decided to let it go.
"Thank you," I smiled as I turned to leave. "Look forward to hearing from you soon."
Simon had already turned back to his screen and didn't respond. I hoped that he could find that backup, it could be the key piece of evidence I needed.
I returned to my desk, starting to feel more optimistic. Even without the backup copy, the fact it had been modified during the course of the project would at least raise questions. However, I really did need to see what it had contained beforehand.
It had been a rather eventful morning. Eventful most of the day, I corrected myself, checking the time on my computer. It was two o’clock. I started to idly check through my emails, both in an attempt to do something product
ive and to distract myself while waiting for Simon.
The time passed slowly. I considered phoning Dave to let him know what I had found but decided it was better to wait until I had had a chance to examine the earlier geological survey report. Assuming it was still available, I thought to myself.
The existence of the earlier file didn't give any real evidence as to who changed it. But knowing how much money Olsen had riding on this project, there had to be a significant amount of motivation for ensuring that it went ahead without delay.
Of course, that blasted Detective Symonds could assert that I changed it to hide a mistake when I was drawing up the plans, that I informed the police to throw suspicion from myself. From his perspective, I realized, it was a plausible chain of events.
I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. The first thing was to find out what was on that geological report. Once I had that and could see what was different, then I could show the motive for changing it and how Olsen benefitted from hiding it.
It was nearly four o’clock, and I began to steel myself against the likelihood that Simon couldn't locate the old backup of the report. But finally, an email flashed on my computer. It was from Simon. It read, "Found your thing, come down and pick it up. S."
I blew a sigh of relief. "At last," I whispered to myself. I sent a short "Be there in a tick," in reply, then grabbed my swipe card and a memory stick and headed to the lift. Finally, I might be able to see what Olsen was so eager to hide and even kill for.
Two minutes later, I approached Simon's desk. He looked up, seeming ill at ease. "Sorry it took longer than expected," he said shortly.
"I'm just glad you found it," I said as I handed him my memory stick. He grabbed it and plugged it into his computer.
"I hope it has what you're after," he replied. He copied the file onto my USB stick, then unplugged it and handed it to me. "Don't tell anyone I gave you that, I'm not supposed to extract backups without an RFB," referring to a Request From Backup form.
The Body in the Building Page 5