“Of course,” Tommy replied dismissively. “Were you able to track down the name I gave you?”
“Oh yeah,” Carter snipped. “I most certainly did. It also lit up my bosses’ eyes when the security system flagged that someone was rooting around in the file that name is associated with.”
Recognizing the look on his friend’s face and alerted by the tone of his voice, Tommy pushed his drink aside and leaned over the table. “Well?”
Before he answered, Carter eased back in his seat, taking a drink as he studied the expectant look on his friend’s face, weighing, Tommy imagined, just how much he dare share with his friend. Only after deciding on what he hoped was a safe compromise, one that would be enough to satisfy Tommy and allow him to give up the computer components Tommy was exchanging for a little information, Carter also leaned over the table. “What I tell you needs to go no further than you.”
“Can’t promise you that,” Tommy shot back without a whit of hesitation.
“Well, it can’t become known you heard it from me, otherwise my boss will skin me alive and nail my arse to the wall of his office.”
“I can live with that.”
“And you need to tell me what caused you to ask about this woman. If you do come across something my lot needs to know about, you’re not to fuck about like you tend to, waiting to tell me what’s what.”
Now it was Tommy’s turn to consider just how much he was willing to share as he enjoyed a long sup of beer. Upon finally plonking his empty glass down on the table, he winked. “It’s like this, mate…”
Unlike Spence, Andy blitzed straight up the M1, then followed the A1 when he and Tommy headed to Morpeth to follow up on what Spence had discovered. For once she was not in the least bit put out at the thought of having Tommy go over what she’d done. Besides, the tasks Andy had given her left her little time to fret over a perceived slight. While going through public records, searching for insurance claims made by haulage companies for containers lost in the post of Antwerp was unglamorous, if it helped keep Charlie Mills’ company from going under, Spence was more than happy to do it.
Little time was wasted with preliminaries once Andy and Tommy reached the offices of Northumberland Haulage. While Tommy gave every computer and piece of equipment associated with them a thorough going-over in an effort to confirm what Spence had found, Andy headed down to Newcastle. There he managed to wean information about the temp they’d sent up to fill in for Mills’ daughter from the head of the employment agency by using an astute combination of bluff, guile, and hints that it would be best for the agency to cooperate with him rather than deal with a team of no-nonsense investigators from Special Branch who, he assured the agency, would carry out their assigned duties with all the finesse of a newly certified proctologist.
Upon Andy’s return to Morpeth, and before he sat down with Mills, Tommy took him on a tour of the computer systems Northumberland Haulage relied upon. “Like Spence said, it’s a real mishmash, the likes of which I haven’t seen in years,” Tommy pointed out. Tucked away in the corner of the main office was a reasonably new printer and two ancient tower computers on which a pair of equally ancient network devices were balanced. One of the computers had a tattered sticker identifying it as the company’s mail server, whilst the other was an old Windows NT 4 box that, against all odds, was still soldiering on as the primary domain controller that ran the network.
“The original network was set up by a local company twelve years ago. When that company went belly up, other than an occasional upgrade of a program, not much has been done to maintain it. At the moment the owner’s daughter, who has a working knowledge of computers but nothing more, is doing her damnedest to keep the whole thing up and running relying on little more than sticky tape and string.”
Like Tommy, Andy could do little more than sigh and shake his head as he studied the jury-rigged network that, like Charlie Mills himself, belonged to another era.
Only when he and Tommy had finished comparing notes and he was sure he had a handle on what had gone down did Andy sit down with Charlie Mills and go over what they had discovered.
“To start with, let me assure you I am convinced your company was not specifically targeted,” Andy began. “What happened here could have happened to any company like yours.” While he had hoped this preamble would make what he was about to tell Mills more palatable, the look on the man’s face told Andy he’d missed that mark by an Irish mile. So he hastened to finish.
“The woman who was hired to fill in for your daughter while she was on maternity leave was not who she claimed to be.” Rather than betray the trust Tommy’s friend had placed in him, Andy passed the woman off as nothing more than a bit player, a computer-savvy freelancer hired for this one job. “While she was here and had access to the company’s e-mail server with full administrator rights, she routed all your e-mail correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, to an overseas e-mail proxy service that was controlled by a gang that was looking to use containers as a means of importing items they wished to slip past customs.”
Pausing when he realized what he was telling Mills was gaining little purchase, Andy took a second to rephrase his explanation, taking it down a notch. “Everything coming into and out of this office was received by the people running the e-mail proxy service. When they saw e-mails containing coordinating instructions, bills of lading, and customs documents that fit their requirements, they doctored them before sending them onto the brokerage firm in Singapore. The people there, having no idea the documents had been altered, carried on as if they were valid and legal.”
Ever so slowly, Mills’ expression betrayed the stunned disbelief he felt over what he was hearing. Realizing he had little need to go into any more detail and wishing to get back to London as quickly as possible, Andy summed up how things had played out as best as he could. “With all the e-mail traffic concerning a shipment you were contracted to pick up at Antwerp, and the doctored documents in hand, the hijackers were able to pass themselves off as your people, pick up the container, and leave without anyone working for the Antwerp Port Authority being any the wiser.”
Easing back in his seat, Mills averted his gaze a moment as he took in everything he’d just heard and mulled it over. Only when he’d worked his way through it all in his own good time did he glance back up at Andy. “What can we do about this? I mean, this is a police matter.”
Like Spence, Andy had no wish to spook Mills by letting on it was far more than that. Instead he asked that he be given seventy-two hours. “There are some people in London I need to talk to, people who need to get on this. In the meantime, I’ll send Ms. Spencer back up here with the necessary wherewithal she’ll need to sort out you system, as well as recommendations on what you need to do to upgrade and secure it.”
Realizing he was in over his head, Mills didn’t bother to ask if that was going to be expensive. If anything, the only thing he was worried about at the moment was what his daughter would say when he told her she’d been right all along.
Tommy waited until they were headed back to London before he offered up his suggestion on what they needed to do. “First thing I say we do is turn this all over to the Home Office,” Tommy offered.
“That’s a given,” Andy replied dryly. “This is way above our pay grades.”
“While that may be true, what about Charlie Mills and his company? You know as well as I do it’ll take forever for anyone associated with HMG to sort this out. By then a small company like his, one that doesn’t have the deep pockets or a cozy relationship with a big-name insurer that’s willing to cut him some slack, will have lost the last of his coverage, not to mention his reputation. We need to figure out a way of keeping that from happening in double-quick time.”