Dead and Gone

by Bill Kitson

  ‘I thought you needed one of those card reader gizmos before you could do that?’

  ‘Unfortunately that’s only true for certain banks. Sadly, a lot of them, even some of the bigger ones are by no means as security conscious as they should be. In most cases, all you have to do is enter the payee’s account detail, the amount and then press go.’

  ‘That sounds as if it was made simple for the thieves.’

  ‘That’s certainly so with the ones I’ve looked at so far, but I haven’t looked at many of them yet. I’m having to work very carefully, which is why I reckon this guy is cleverer than a lot of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another level to this fraud that I haven’t got to yet. One thing I do know, he’s built in certain safeguards against people like me tracking him.’

  ‘What sort of safeguards?’

  ‘We call them bear traps. If someone tries to follow the trail of the money he’s got some nasty surprises for them. The sort that will infect your computer and wipe your hard drive clean.’

  ‘You keep saying “he” or “this guy”, does that mean you’ve a clue as to his identity?’

  ‘No, it’s more a generic term. Although most of the hackers like this are loners, working in some solitary room away from prying eyes. Anyway, I must get on with the work. As I say, it’s slow going.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Nash paused at the door. ‘There is one thing. Let me know when you’re about to start work on the Bishopton Investment files. There’s some paperwork to look through to decide if any of it might be useful or not. It isn’t here so I’ll need to make arrangements.’

  Patricia struggled across the footbridge between platforms, the wheeled case proving more of a hindrance than a help. Only when she had descended the steps at the far side did she look back. There was no one she recognized in sight. Her relief would have been short-lived if the angle of her vision had included the middle of the footbridge, where Ivan had stopped until he could see his target board the train. He waited, noting that she had opted for the rear compartment. That suited his purpose admirably. He strolled down the steps and entered the first of the two carriages.

  He took a seat facing the rear of the train and immediately opened the newspaper he’d bought at the station kiosk. It was a broadsheet, ideal for masking the reader from all but the closest surveillance. Ivan turned the pages, eventually selecting one that contained meaningless lists of figures. His command of English was limited, but he could make out that these were stock market prices. He had no interest in such matters and had never owned a share in his life, yet he studied that page with all the diligence of the most avid investor.

  It was only when the train began to move that Patricia relaxed. Her nightmare was over. The unwelcome admirer was a thing of the past, the distance between them increasing with every turn of the wheels. She would already be several miles away from the horrible creature.

  Little more than thirty feet away from where she was seated, Ivan ceased his pretence of reading. He decided it was time to check the other compartment, to ensure the woman was still on board. He didn’t for one moment believe she would have been clever enough to trick him and get off the train, but he had to make absolutely sure. He was being paid far too much to take chances.

  He reached the division between compartments and stood far enough away to avoid activating the automatic doors. As he peered through the glass panel he could see there were only a few passengers in the other compartment. And there she was, her head bowed over the screen of her little computer. Ivan’s excitement grew. ‘Soon, my pretty lady. Very soon you will become mine. You will be Ivan’s play toy.’

  A passenger nearby stared at Ivan, wondering what the crazy foreigner was jabbering on about. All foreigners were mad, that went without saying, but those that mumbled away to themselves definitely needed locking up.

  Ivan returned to his seat. He hadn’t intended to speak aloud, hadn’t realized he’d done it until he saw the man staring at him. It didn’t matter. The likelihood of anyone on that train understanding Slovenian was extremely remote.

  A dozen or so passengers got off the train when it reached Netherdale. Ahead of the rest of them, Ivan hurried to the barrier to surrender his ticket. He knew the woman would have to wait half an hour for her connection to Bishopton. But he didn’t want her to see him. Not yet. Not until he was ready for her. After that, she could see all she wanted of him – for a short while.

  Once he was outside the station, Ivan located the car that awaited him and drove to Bishopton, where he parked alongside the tiny single-platform station. Shortly before the Netherdale train was due, he walked across the car park and paused alongside the taxi rank, which contained only one vehicle. Noting the company logo, he dialled a number on his mobile. ‘I am at Bishopton station. There is taxi. I need it moved. You can do this?’

  ‘Yes, of course, give me the number.’

  Ivan read out the number from the door panel of the taxi.

  ‘Remember your instructions. Don’t do anything; not until I’ve found out how much she knows.’

  ‘What you want me to do?’

  ‘Just keep her out of sight, and let me know when you have her computer. I want it switched on, then leave the rest to me.’

  Ivan wondered again about the person he was working for. Apart from the one mobile phone number, he knew absolutely nothing about them. They had never met, and although he had been paid in advance for his services, the payment was made directly to his account. His employer was obviously keen on their identity being kept secret, and Ivan wondered why this should be. Still, it didn’t matter, as long as the money was good. Ivan’s business philosophy was simple. He was happy to do whatever was asked of him, as long as he got paid.

  Within five minutes, the taxi moved off to collect the phantom passenger. All was now ready. He hoped there would be no other passengers on the train. However, with luck, even that should pose no problem.

  Patricia alighted from the Sprinter and struggled to place her suitcase on the platform. Bishopton railway station was little more than a wayside halt. The single platform contained a no-longer-manned, dilapidated ticket office and covered waiting area, with three long benches that appeared to have been designed with the intention of causing maximum discomfort. The platform sat squarely between two sets of rails, and at one end, a broad set of steps led upwards, before they branched at a footbridge over the lines. Patricia groaned: not another bloody footbridge. There was no other way to exit the station. The only other passengers had already vanished. She hoped they hadn’t commandeered the taxis. That was, of course, if there were any taxis to meet this train. The thought chilled her, but she felt sure even such a small junction would at least have a Freephone. She certainly didn’t fancy walking into town dragging her suitcase along an unfamiliar route in the late evening. When she reached the top of the steps, she read a sign on the bridge. It told her that if she followed the arrow, she would find a public footpath leading to the town centre, a mile and a half distant. ‘No, thank you,’ Patricia muttered, and headed for the car park. Half a mile might have tempted her, had she been desperate. She wasn’t that desperate – not yet.

  On reaching the car park, one of her fears was realized immediately. There were no taxis waiting, no vehicles at all apart from a solitary car that was parked, probably belonging to a commuter who was catching a later train. In the gathering gloom, Patricia could just make out the skeleton stalk of a phone stand and the plastic waterproof bubble above it. She manoeuvred her suitcase over the low kerb and across the rough tarmac, trying to avoid potholes that were barely visible. By the time she summoned a taxi and waited for it to arrive and by the time it had ferried her to the Mitre Hotel, the restaurant would be sure to have closed. In such a small town during the middle of the week, the choices for a diner would be limited. Either chance an ethnic restaurant or hope that the hotel’s room service could provide a snack that was approaching palatable. She set her suitcase into th
e upright position, and reached out for the handset.

  chapter nineteen

  Late on the second morning that Tina had been working at Helmsdale, she reported progress. ‘I’ve done about as much as I can. I’d better tell you where I’ve got to, which isn’t very far. The problem is I’ve had to examine the software piece by piece. I’m trying to put this in layman’s terms otherwise I’ll have to spend half of the time explaining the technical details. This isn’t the work of a standard hacker, but someone with an advanced knowledge of programs and how to write them. What they’ve done to protect themselves is to insert various devices, for want of a better word, which, if triggered, would activate a virus.’

  She saw Nash’s puzzled expression. ‘Think of it as if you were a soldier walking across a minefield. If you took a slightly wrong turning, or walked ahead without looking down, you could hit a tripwire which would explode a bomb. If I were to miss one of their booby traps, it would wipe all the hard drives and erase any trace of the money trail.’

  ‘Is there any way round the booby traps?’

  Tina gave him a cold, piercing stare. Nash was secretly amused that she seemed offended by his lack of faith. ‘Of course there is, if you know what you’re doing and you don’t spoil things by being impatient. The program writer probably thinks his system is foolproof, but it isn’t; not against someone like me. All it means is that the process will take longer than I anticipated. The reason I’m telling you this is because I’m intrigued by the level of protection built into the scam. There’s no way the designer could have foreseen that they would have been chased down by someone of my ability. Parts of the software suggest someone with a level of knowledge few people who set up these scams usually possess.’

  ‘Belt and braces sort of thing?’

  ‘More like two pairs of braces, a belt and a piece of string. In the meantime, you mentioned going to look through some papers to spot anything that might be relevant to the other case.’

  ‘OK, I’ll try and fix it up for this evening, if that suits you. I’ll speak to Dean Wilson and I suggest we go there after work if that’s OK with him.’

  ‘That’s fine. I have no plans.’

  It was almost 6 p.m. when Nash and Tina pulled up outside Dean Wilson’s flat. Dean opened the door and gestured for them to go ahead of him down the hall. When they reached the lounge, Nash made the introductions. Dean and Naomi had set out a stack of boxes on the dining table. ‘There they are,’ Dean said a trifle ruefully. ‘I hope you can make more sense of them than I can.’

  ‘I’ll leave it to you, Dr Silver,’ Nash said.

  Tina gave him a glint of a smile at the formality.

  Nash chatted to the young couple whilst Tina began her painstaking search of the papers crammed into the boxes. ‘Have you seen your parents since you told them about Dean?’ he asked Naomi. He thought it was still not up to him to reveal her true parentage.

  ‘Not yet,’ Naomi admitted. Her expression was one of fierce determination, much like the one Nash had seen when she’d spoken up in defence of Wilson. ‘They can either like it or lump it,’ she told him. ‘Dean and I are going to be together no matter what they think his sister did or didn’t do.’

  Tina was now examining the third of the boxes. ‘I think you can safely say that Dean’s sister didn’t have anything to do with the fraud at Bishopton,’ she announced.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Nash asked, getting his question in just ahead of Wilson.

  ‘Because the papers I’ve set aside’ – Tina gestured to a small pile on the table – ‘show that she was checking Bishopton’s customer accounts files. There are lots of figures circled in red and some comments scribbled alongside that make very interesting reading.’

  ‘And your line of reasoning is that if she’d been the one committing the fraud, she wouldn’t have needed to print this information off and check it. She would already know the details. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, and that seems to indicate that she was not involved.’

  ‘I’m going to phone your grandfather tomorrow and tell him that we no longer believe Linda Wilson was in any way connected to the fraud,’ Nash told Naomi. ‘Then your father will be certain to know. That may help to heal the rift.’

  The young couple expressed their thanks, and shortly afterwards, Tina announced that she was finished. By then there was a quite sizeable stack of paperwork on the table. ‘I should have brought my briefcase,’ she said ruefully. ‘I didn’t expect there to be as much as this.’

  ‘I’ll get you a carrier bag,’ Naomi offered.

  Nash winked at Dean. ‘Getting to be quite at home, isn’t she?’

  Dean smiled back. ‘She is, and I love it.’

  ‘I think you’re a lucky man.’

  Outside, Nash asked Tina if she’d care to go for a drink. They opted for the Fleece Hotel, where they took their drinks to the seat in the bay window of the lounge bar, overlooking the cobbled market square.

  ‘Dean and Naomi seem a nice couple,’ Tina said.

  ‘Yes, they are, and they had a bit of a rocky start when Naomi found out that Dean was Linda’s brother. Naomi’s family were the biggest losers in the Bishopton fraud. That’s why it’s important that I drive the message of Linda’s innocence home.’

  ‘I’ll remind you in the morning,’ Tina promised.

  ‘Anyway, enough about work. Things have been so busy I haven’t had chance to ask you how your family are.’

  ‘They’re fine. Gran seems to have taken on a new lease of life since Dad recovered his health. He’s doing really well. He’s set up his own business as a market gardener and enjoying every minute of it.’

  ‘How about you? What made you decide to go it alone?’

  ‘Circumstances changed at the firm I worked for. We lost a large American contract when the people we were working for decided to source the business within the United States. That side of our operation was overstaffed, and when they had to make redundancies, the offer was far too tempting to refuse. So I took the money and set up on my own.’

  ‘Are you still living in Leeds? It’s a long way to drive home if you’re going to be working here for a while.’

  ‘No, I gave the flat up and moved back in with Aunt Margaret. She’s really edgy about living on her own after … well, you know what happened as well as I do. I figured I owed her that much after she’d taken care of me all those years, and it helps keep my overheads down until I get properly established. The other advantage is that it isn’t so far to travel when I go to Dad’s or Gran’s. I see my father every week or so, and make sure I visit Gran at least once a month.’

  Tina reached forward and put her hand on Mike’s. ‘I owe you more than I can ever repay. That’s why I’d have done this job for nothing. I was happy to take it on when Superintendent Fleming asked.’

  ‘I was only doing my job at the time,’ Nash protested.

  ‘That’s not how I see it. You gave me a family. The family I’d always longed for and never had. I used to be really envious of other girls at school or university when they talked about brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and grandparents. That isn’t all, though. Both Chief Constable O’Donnell and my grandmother told me the lengths you went to in order to keep my father safe. If you hadn’t, we all feel certain he would have been killed. To me, that seems over and above the line of duty.’

  All the time she was speaking, Tina was caressing the back of Nash’s hand. A gesture of gratitude and no more, he thought.

  ‘We can consider that debt paid if you can recover all those missing millions.’ Nash spoke lightly, to cover the confusion he felt by the warmth of Tina’s words and the thrilling contact of her hand on his. He was still wondering if he had misread the message in her eyes when they left the hotel and he bade her goodnight. Nor was he any nearer resolving his feelings when he reached home. A home that seemed a little colder and emptier than usual.

  ‘Viv, I’ve got a job for you. In fact, both of you c
an do it. I want everyone who worked at Bishopton Investments interviewed. Ask them about this Mark Tankard character. At present, we know very little about him, apart from that description Diane Carlson gave us. Make that your priority.’

  Once they had left, Nash brewed some coffee and took a mug through to Tina. ‘Have you had another look at the stuff we got from Dean’s place?’

  ‘Yes, and it looks as if Linda Wilson was highly suspicious about what was happening at Bishopton Investments. From what I can gather, without checking the disk you got from Farrell, I think she’d printed off a set of account details for every one of Bishopton’s customers. More than two-thirds of them’ – she indicated a pile of papers on the corner of Nash’s desk – ‘had figures in red biro scribbled on them, but until I access the Bishopton system, I can’t be sure what they refer to.’

  ‘Still, it looks as if we’re right in thinking that Linda wasn’t involved in the fraud. I’ll make that phone call to Christopher Macaulay.’

  Once he’d spoken to Naomi’s grandfather, he sat behind Clara’s desk in the outer office going through the reports that she and Pearce had written up, concentrating on the interviews they had conducted with Dean Wilson, Diane Carlson, Peter and Christopher Macaulay and the CEO of Security Solutions, Jonathan Farrell. His reading produced little more than a vague feeling that there was something he was missing. He heard the phone in his office ring.

  The normally easy-going chairman of Shires Financial Services had reached the group’s head office in Bishopton much earlier than normal. It was no exaggeration to say that Sir Stuart Crawshaw was annoyed. He’d been careful to arrange his first meeting of the morning well in advance of the arrival of any members of his workforce. It wasn’t that he suspected any of them of wrongdoing, but such was the nature of the work he had commissioned that forewarning them could have been counterproductive.