“Nowadays, what is?” Mills grunted in response.
“It’s going to take time, and it isn’t going to be cheap. Are you aware of what our services run?”
“I’m aware,” Mills replied calmly. “But if you can save a company that has been in my family for three generations, it’ll be worth every penny. Besides,” he added as his voice took on a mischievous tone. “You’re the only firm that does this sort of thing that isn’t run by a bunch of poncey bloody southerners or hires kids who are still living with their moms and dads.”
Having worked with more than a few northerners who had little use for anyone from the Home Counties, Andy couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, if you’re looking for a crew that’s anything but, you came to the right people.”
3
To call Karen Spencer an Anglophile was a mistake. Those who did were immediately informed she was a tried-and-true, red, white, and blue ’Merican, through and through. It was a claim no one believed. Not even Tommy the Oblivious was taken in by her jingoistic rants. “I expect in another couple of years I’ll be able to get her to stop rooting for that team of hers and start following one that plays proper football.” While Andy suspected it would be a cold day in hell before Spence gave up following her precious New York Giants, he couldn’t help but smile at the excitement she made no effort to hide whenever a case he assigned to her provided an opportunity to travel to a part of the UK she’d not been to before.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to see more of a country that had been her home for the past several years, Spence avoided the motorways whenever she could, choosing instead to meander her way along B roads and country lanes, if for no other reason than to enjoy the Tolkienesque charm of the English countryside. As neither Andy nor Tommy was going up to Morpeth with her, she followed the trace of the Great North Road, stopping from time to time when she came upon something that struck her fancy.
Her whimsical wanderings came to an end the moment she crossed the threshold of Northumberland Haulage’s office. Having prepared to deal with the people there using the same no-nonsense approach she’d employed at TI Modeling, Spence found herself having to quickly adjust how she went about her business the second she met the owner.
Greeting her with a broad smile and a welcoming handshake only slightly less energetic than Tommy’s, Charlie Mills went out of his way to make her feel at home. “You must be the young lady Andy Webb said he was sending up to have a look at my computers,” he exclaimed broadly in an accent that tagged him as being a northerner. “I expect you’re needing a cuppa after driving all the way up from the Great Wen. I know I could use one.”
Without waiting for her to answer, Mills turned around and headed back toward his office past several abutting desks occupied by men and women Spence suspected were responsible for tending to the affairs of Northumberland Haulage. When he stopped at one of only two desks that was not paired off in the open space they’d been meandering through, Mills introduced Spence to the woman seated at it. “This is Sarah,” he declared as he waved his hand vaguely at a woman Spence’s age. “In addition to being my youngest daughter, she’s the one who really runs the business. She oversees that lot,” he declared as he stuck his thumb up over his shoulder to indicate the people he and Spence had just passed. “Everything from sorting out all the paperwork and documentation needed to make sure everything gets where it needs to go on time and under cost goes through her when she’s not off making sure I have lots of grandsons to take care of me when I’m too old to look after things here myself.”
Sarah responded to her father’s introduction by regarding him with a scathing glare. “You really know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you,” she groused before turning to Spence and extending her hand. “Just call me the curator.” When she saw the look on Spence’s face, Sarah grinned. “You’re going to find there isn’t a computer in this place that doesn’t belong in a museum somewhere,” she declared mockingly as she nodded her head toward the paired-off desks. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they found some of our computers in the back of that army surplus truck my great-granddad and his brother bought after the Second World War.”
“They work, don’t they?” Mills protested before Spence could say a word.
Sarah was having none of her father’s justification. “So does Big Ben, but that doesn’t mean we can skip investing in a better way of keeping track of time.”
“She’s been like this since she returned from university,” Mills grumbled as he turned toward Spence. “Always after me to buy this or that. ‘We’ll be able to do so much more, faster and easier,’ she says,” he muttered as he shook his head, telling Spence that there was something of a running dispute going on between father and Northumberland Haulage’s next generation of owners. “Be a darling, Sarah, and fetch us some tea. Then join us.”
With that, Mills continued on to his office even as Sarah took to rolling her eyes as they passed. “Yes, Papa. Whatever you say, Papa,” she muttered in a tone no different than one Spence had often used whenever she was not at all pleased by how her father was treating her.
Once they were all settled in his office and after Mills had explained the nature of his business in much the same way he had to Andy, Sarah told Spence of problems they were having with their computer systems she suspected were somehow related to the issue at hand, one she tried to explain to her father but was unable to get a man raised as part of a generation that ran on pistons and gears to understand. “After coming back from staying home with Little Charlie until he was old enough for Mum to look after him, I noticed e-mails were taking much longer to go back and forth than they had been before Little Charlie came along. At first I didn’t think anything of it. It was only when we started having problems with shipments going through Antwerp that I noticed some of the documents coming back to me weren’t matching up with copies of the originals I’d prepared. I ran the antivirus, security, and diagnostic programs we have, even one I bought on my own,” she added while glancing over at her father. “But found nothing more troubling than a game one of the lads had managed to download the second I started my maternity leave.”
Right off Spence suspected she knew what the problem was. “Who took your place while you were on maternity leave?” she asked cautiously, without bothering to explain why she was asking.
Mills answered before Sarah had a chance to. “There wasn’t anyone already working for us who had the skills needed to fill in for Sarah, so I had to go outside the family.”
“I contacted a temp agency in Newcastle to see if they had someone with the necessary skills and experience to deal with the odd assortment of computers we use here,” Sarah interjected. “They sent a young girl I guess wasn’t much older than you or I the very same day I called. She seemed to know her stuff.”
“Do you still have this woman’s name and how she can be contacted?” Spence asked as her apprehensions began to grow.
“Of course,” Mills replied before Sarah could in a tone of voice that told Spence her question had been the silliest thing he’d ever heard. “Bridgette, who handles all the secretarial duties around here and is my wife’s niece, will have that information.”
“I’ll need to have that,” Spence informed Mills before turning her attention back to Sarah. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start with the computer she used.”