Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective

by Michael Hillier

  “What the -” roared the man.

  “Since you have no interest in our progress on the Cynthia Adams case, I should be grateful if you would stop interrupting me,” said Charlotte, “and let me get on with the work in hand - sir.” She turned her back on him and sat down, shaking with fury.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this, Faraday,” said Lasham in an ominously quiet voice. “If you don’t find this murderer in double-quick time, I’ll see that you’re finished.”

  And with that, he left the office.

  - 5. Thursday -

  Charlotte drove herself to the station next morning in the car which had been delivered for her the previous afternoon. She encountered Stafford Paulson on the stairs.

  “I hear you had a visit from our revered Chief Superintendent yesterday afternoon,” he started.

  Charlotte took a breath. “That man is impossible.”

  “I warned you he could be difficult.”

  “Difficult? He was plain bloody rude.”

  “Still,” he grinned. “I hear you didn’t let him walk all over you. Apart from that, how are you getting on?”

  She looked at him suspiciously, not sure if he was on her side or against her. “I’m getting there slowly. I finished putting the information on the computer at two-thirty this morning.”

  “The important thing is this,” he said, “does it tell us anything we don’t know already?”

  “It doesn’t quite work like that.” Charlotte decided to take a chance on him being interested. “Look. If you like, I’ll show you how the information is recorded and then what use the computer makes of it.”

  Paulson shook his head doubtfully. “I told you that I’m not much good on computers. It’s about all I can do to fill in my daily log sheet. Young Prendergast is probably the only one who understands the things.”

  “You don’t really need any particular skill to find the programme helpful. The real talent comes in knowing what questions to ask.”

  “Are you telling me that anyone can use this programme of yours?”

  “That’s right - as long as you go on a short training course. I think I’m starting to get an interested response from the top brass. Two county forces have booked me for demonstrations when I’ve finished here.”

  That made Paulson halt in mid-stride. “Do you mean Cynthia Adams is holding up the adoption of this system elsewhere in the country?”

  “I hope so.” She smiled sweetly at him.

  “Blimey,” he said with feeling. “That’ll mean we’ll be even deeper in the shit if we don’t get a move on and sort the case out.” He hurried forward to open the door into the CID general office, as if imbued with a new sense of urgency.

  Charlotte preceded him into their shared office. “Speed is the main thing the computer system gives you. That is because it can cope with so much information in a short time. I’ll show you how it works.” She paused and faced him. “Why don’t you bring the others in on it as well? Then they’ll understand the point of all the apparently silly questions I’m going to tell them to ask when they go out and do interviews.” She turned back to her desk and switched on the strange-looking computer without a keyboard which sat at the back. While it was booting up, she opened her two brief cases and took out her lap-top computer and the files.

  Paulson came in with the other two CID officers. “Greg Mallinson hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Oh, he’ll have to ask the others if he’s got any questions.” She pushed the lap-top into the docking bay in the main computer and pressed a couple of keys.

  The machine started whirring and clicking. She looked over her shoulder at the others. “Good morning,” she said. “I thought I’d just show you some of the things that this fearsome looking piece of equipment does, now that I’ve got enough information loaded for it to get its teeth into. At the moment the portable is just down-loading its data onto the main hard disk.”

  “What capacity is the hard disk?” Obviously John Prendergast was interested in computers.

  Charlotte looked up at him. “The lap top is three hundred and twenty gigabytes, the main computer has a stack of interacting hard discs. The total capacity is about eight terabytes.”

  “Wow. That’s the biggest one I’ve ever come across.”

  “How much is that?” asked Paulson, mystified.

  “It’s enough space,” Charlotte said, “to contain about five million full-length novels. Or, put it another way, it would take the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica more than ten thousand times.”

  “But why do you need so much space?”

  “Well,” she explained, “the computer is capable of logging much more than just the information directly connected with the Cynthia Adams case. You may have noticed that yesterday afternoon I was using this high speed scanner,” (she indicated a piece of equipment which looked like a small photocopier) “to load a lot of photographs about the Torbay region. I’ve put in links to fit them to the maps of the area. I already have the appropriate extracts from the Ordnance Survey office loaded in digital form and all the street maps of the towns and villages throughout the country superimposed on that. That takes over thirty gigabytes of space just by itself. The photographs are another hundred and sixty gigabytes. Photos take up a lot of space but can be very valuable in deciding what course of action to take when things hot up. It now means the computer is able to react in spatial logic to any data which is logged from Exeter to Plymouth, including the majority of Dartmoor. That may become important later on.” She grinned briefly. “Of course, to handle all this data, the main computer needs quadruple ultra-fast processors.”

  Prendergast let out a breath. “That is awesome,” he muttered. “Who designed this system?”

  Charlotte sat down in a business-like way in front of the machine. “I did of course. That’s how I got my promotion.” She laughed. “Well, to be truthful, the concept and the detection logic was mine. The programming was done by two chaps at Cambridge who are now working for Microsoft.” She wrinkled her nose. “They got a much better deal out of it than I did.”

  “Can anyone learn to use it?” asked the young man.

  “I don’t see why not,” she said, “if you respond satisfactorily to the training course. The point is, in the hands of a fool, the system will be virtually useless. To get the best out of it, you have to develop your own detective logic. You have to understand what power the computer can hand you. Then one person is able to cover more ground in a day than a team of twenty can do in a year. But it only manipulates data and it is only as good as the data you put on to it.”

  “How does it work exactly?”

  “Well,” she said, “there are a number of formats for entering data. Look at this.” She pressed a few keys. “This is the format for entering data about a person which we can of course take straight from the interview data. You can call this man a suspect, if you like. You see that the front page just contains the basic data about the person - age, size, weight, contact address - all that sort of thing. This one happens to be Giles Adams, Cynthia’s son.” She gestured at the screen. “Now - if we go onto page two, it requires you to enter the data about the person’s relationship to all the other main people involved in the case in first detail, including spatial relationships at the time of the murder.”

  “What are spatial relationships?” asked Paulson.

  “Sorry.” Charlotte grinned at him. “That’s a bit of computer talk. It means the precise location of the person in relation to all the other people who are involved in this case.” She turned back to the screen. “Now, if we look at subsequent pages, it goes into all Giles’ previous personal relationships in much more detail.” She pressed a key. “You see, there it is highlighting information that it considers to be important to reach conclusions about the person. For instance, when I move the cursor to this item and click the right-hand button, it tells me it wants to know a lot more about the accounting business and the other property which was
given to Giles Adams by his father. It has obviously decided that this information is important after the interview that Inspector Paulson and I had with Giles yesterday morning. If I now hit the print icon you’ll see that it prints out a detailed questionnaire for one of us to take along to him in the next few days so as to obtain all the relevant information from him.”

  “You don’t need to be a bloody computer to work that out.”

  Nobody had heard Greg Mallinson enter the room. There was a pause when even Stafford Paulson held his breath. Charlotte looked up at the sergeant. She guessed that her row the previous afternoon with Lasham, which was no doubt all round the station by now, was encouraging him to be difficult. She decided she would keep cool.

  “You’re quite right,” she said. “The computer is doing no more than asking the questions a good detective should be asking, taking into account every scrap of evidence gained on the case to date.” With a slight smile she held up the first page of questions while the printer continued to spew out paper. “No doubt Sergeant Mallinson has already asked these questions of his colleagues,” she said to the office in general.

  “Nothing to do with me,” said Mallinson. “I wasn’t in charge of the investigation.”

  Paulson was stung to respond. But before he could do so, Charlotte jumped in. “Are you trying to say that you were desperate to point out this line of enquiry to your boss, among the thousands of other possible lines, but that you were too shy to speak your mind?” There were grins all round as she continued, “The point I’m making is that the computer can come up with this line of enquiry, with a fully detailed request for data within seconds of completing the previous entries. Nobody but Sergeant Mallinson could do it faster than that.”

  The sergeant realised it was wise to shut up, but his face was like thunder.

  “Now, I’ll show you what happens when you put in some answers to those questions,” Charlotte went on, pressing a key. “Here is the questionnaire on the screen. Now I’ll type in fictitious data and see what the response is. Let’s say the business has a turnover of a million a year and makes net profits of a hundred thousand. We’ll assume his father left Giles and his sister a quarter of a million each in his will and left a million to his mother. Let’s also assume there is an ongoing income of fifty thousand a year coming from the father’s business investments in London. That’ll do for now. I’ll assume there are no replies to the other questions at the moment.” She finished entering data and pressed another key.

  Almost immediately the screen flashed up with a message. It said, “This data does not correspond with G.Adams financial situation as recorded. That situation needs further investigation. Press print icon for detailed questionnaire to be answered by G.Adams. Press enter for next screen.”

  She hit the enter key.

  The next screen message said, “This data does not correspond with information entered about Cynthia Adams’ legacies.” And there was a further list of follow-up messages.

  There was a further screen waiting to be displayed. When Charlotte pressed enter the screen said, “There is good reason to think that the data recently entered is false or that previous data is false. G.Adams needs to be very carefully questioned, both in connection with the murder of Cynthia Adams and the linked cases. The senior investigator on the case should be informed so that he/she may be present when the next interview is conducted. Press ‘Next’ key for full list of information which must be checked with G.Adams.”

  Charlotte looked up with a laugh. “There you are. It shows what happens when you enter silly data. It starts alarm bells ringing all over the place.” She shrugged. “Obviously that was a bit extreme, but it shows the importance of getting very factual replies to the questionnaires.”

  Stafford Paulson scratched his chin. “What does that comment mean? - Cynthia Adams and linked cases? Are those the things raised by Julian Brace? I thought you’d decided there was no reasonable link between them.”

  “Ah, well spotted.” Charlotte took a breath. “Well - when I scanned in all the data from our interview with the journalist, Stafford, the computer brought up a string of queries raised by Brace’s article which might repay investigation. I am particularly interested in the suicide of Julia Hillman. So I decided to put that information on as well and ask the computer to tell me what it needs to know to suggest some sort of link between any two of the five cases.”

  Paulson looked at her carefully. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that there’s so little to go on in the Cynthia Adams case. This isn’t a sort of desperate bid to try and turn up some sort of coincidental link, is it?”

  “Yes, it is,” she admitted and sighed. “Normally I would agree with you, Stafford, that it was an unwarranted waste of police time to go off on side issues like these. But the great thing is that this machine here will let us have the luxury of doing this without wasting unreasonable amounts of investigation time.” She laid her hand on his arm. “What I want to do, is borrow the whole section for today and then I hope that I can handle the remainder of the investigation myself with occasional help from you and one other - maybe young John here. Is that reasonable?”

  “I don’t know about being reasonable,” said Paulson. “But I’ve got my orders. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get.”

  Charlotte looked at him for a second then decided not to argue with him about his attitude. “Right,” she said. “Well - in that case, these are our plans for today. We’ve already booked for you to see Montessori at the hotel at two o’clock. Then can you please go and see the coastguard who boarded the Billiere boat on Slapton Sands and the security man at the marina who saw Joanne take the boat out? I’ll print out lists of questions to help you in the next few minutes.”

  “Now, Greg.” She turned to Mallinson. “You did the original investigation of Mariella Prince’s death. I want you to see Hugo Farmer - the solicitor who used to be her father’s partner and the man who handled her estate. Again I’ll give you a questionnaire in a short time.”

  Mallinson nodded curtly and left the room. Charlotte could imagine him muttering under his breath about her ordering him to go on what he regarded as some sort of wild goose chase. She forgot him as she turned to DC Howell.

  “Bobbie,” she said, “I want you to remain here during the day but can you see if you can arrange an interview, probably late tomorrow or on Saturday, with Raymond Parsons - Stella’s husband. I’ll come along with you to that one. All right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Roberta Howell addressed her very correctly and scuttled off, looking a bit scared. Probably she was expecting to be treated to an ear-full of Mallinson’s vented fury.

  “Now, young John, this afternoon I’d like you to come with me. First of all I want us to go back to see Giles Adams. Then we’ll be paying a visit to the Hillman family home and then back to the Burrows to see what they’ve been able to remember about Cynthia’s old friends.” She turned back to the computer. “I’ll have all the questionnaires ready for you within a half an hour.”

  * * * * * * * *

  Susannah had been sitting in the cafe for three quarters of an hour before she decided to give up on Richard. It was true that they’d made no positive arrangement to meet this morning. All he’d said on leaving her on Tuesday was that he wouldn’t be able to see her the next day but would be in touch on Thursday..

  She was annoyed with herself for being offended at apparently being forgotten by him. She was aware that there was no commitment of any sort on either side. Besides, she reminded herself, she was a married woman. She had no business becoming fond of another man or getting upset when he lost interest in her.

  In fact she could hardly blame him for crying off from further contact with her. She’d confessed an awful lot about her past to him, together with the fact that she didn’t have a very happy marriage. The poor fellow had probably been frightened off. After all, he’d been a bachelor for nearly ten years now and his previous experiences
with women had been rather tragic. He was perhaps worried that he might get involved in some high-profile, expensive divorce case and feel that, as a result, he might not be able to get out of a permanent relationship with her.

  She mentally shook herself. She was going to forget about Richard and carry on living her life as though he was just a chance acquaintance whose company she had enjoyed for a few hours. That’s right! She’d do a round of the local fashion shops, find something new to wear, go home and ring Moira or one of her other friends and suggest taking a drive down the coast with them - do some research into the treasures of the local area. That was much more sensible than getting involved with some man she hardly knew.

  She waved at the waitress and asked for her bill. When it came a few minutes later, the woman placed an envelope on the table with it.

  “A gentleman left this for you first thing this morning, miss,” she said.

  With trembling fingers Susannah tore open the letter. The contents were brief:

  I’m sorry I can’t call in to see if you’re at your usual seat this morning, as I had intended. Unfortunately something important has come up which means I can’t meet you, even though I would have much preferred spending today in your company.

  If you get this and are still interested, I would like to take you to the theatre this evening. The waitress tells me the cafe normally closes at about half past six so I will be sitting at your table at about six o’clock. I thought we might have a meal somewhere before the play. If you are delayed, I will wait outside until seven .

  She refolded the letter and pushed it back into the envelope. She looked guiltily round as she poked it into her handbag. She took out a five pound note and tucked it with the bill under her saucer. It was ridiculously large tip but she didn’t care. She stood up, hitched her bag over her shoulder and walked out into the sunshine feeling ridiculously happy.

  * * * * * * * *

  Giles Adams showed barely-concealed irritation as DCI Faraday and DC Prendergast were ushered into his office. “Well,” he said, “it’s a bit unusual to see you again, for the second morning running.”