He clicked on a multicoloured icon at the foot of the screen. ‘Yes,’ he murmured with satisfaction as a window opened. ‘Big surprise, I don’t think; the Rondar mail order site is his home page. Let’s see what else he’s bookmarked. Okay, he’s got a Google account for his email.’
He clicked on a red envelope, with a two-word description alongside. ‘Byron mail.’
‘Auto sign-in,’ he murmured. ‘Lucky us, otherwise we’d have had to go back to the IT technicians to crack his password. His email address is Byron at Rondar dot co dot UK. Here we go.’
He inspected the second window. ‘That’s his inbox. He’s got three unopened messages. . What the hell?’ He opened one headed ‘National Lottery’. ‘Oh dear.’ It was half sigh, half laugh. ‘The poor bastard’s lottery ticket came up last Wednesday; he matched four balls and won ninety-nine quid.’
He hovered the cursor over an arrow and the next message opened. It was from someone called Mike, confirming a squash court booking on the following Thursday for a semi-final tie in the club knock-out competition.
‘Lucky boy, Mike,’ Mann muttered. A wicked grin crossed her face. ‘Let me in,’ she told Paterson, leaned across him and keyed in a reply. ‘Can’t make it, have to scratch; good luck in the final.’ She hit the send button.
‘Should you have done that, boss?’ the DC asked, as she backed off.
‘Maybe not, but the guy deserved to know. Go on.’
He moved on to the last unopened message. The sender was identified as ‘Jocelyn’ also using the Rondar mail system. ‘The mother-in-law, as I understand it,’ the DI told him.
‘Mother-in-law from hell, in that case,’ Paterson replied. ‘Look at this.’
Mann peered at the screen, and read:
I have just received the latest quarterly management accounts. These show an operating loss of just under seventy-seven thousand pounds and make this the seventh successive quarter in which this company has lost money. Our auditors estimate that at this rate we will be insolvent by the end of the next financial year.
I have analysed the situation and have reached the inescapable conclusion that we have been on the slide since your father-in-law passed away. He and I always knew that the key to this business is not only what we sell but, as importantly, what we buy. We have to offer our customers attractive products at attractive prices while maintaining our profit margins. When Jesse was our buyer, we were able to do so very successfully. He was sure that when you took over from him, this would be maintained, but it is now clear to me that this confidence was misplaced.
I cannot allow this situation to continue, simply to sit on my hands and watch my company go out of existence. Son-in-law or not, I am going to have to relieve you of your duties and to declare you redundant. You and I both know that you are not suited to this line of work and never have been. So does Golda but she is too loyal to admit it. I intend to handle the buying function myself, with the assistance of my niece Bathsheba. When we are back in profit, Golda can expect to receive dividend income, but until then you are on your own.
‘Lovely,’ the DI said. ‘Byron Millbank doesn’t seem to have had a hell of a lot of luck.’
‘Neither did Beram Cohen,’ Paterson pointed out, ‘culminating in them both being in a cool box in the mortuary.’
‘Aye, but we’re not so lucky ourselves. This doesn’t tell us anything about Cohen, and that’s what we’re after. How about old emails? Could there be anything there?’
‘I’m checking that, but I don’t see anything. There’s nothing filed or archived, not that I can see. I’ve checked the bin and even that’s empty. He must have done that manually, the sign of a careful man.’
‘What about the rest of it, other than his correspondence?’
‘Gimme a few minutes. Please, gaffer.’ He looked up at her. ‘I don’t really work best with somebody looking over my shoulder.’ He smiled. ‘A mug of tea wouldn’t go amiss, though.’
‘You cheeky bastard,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m the DI, you’re the DC; you’re the bloody tea boy around here. However, in this situation. . how many sugars do you take?’
‘Me? None, thanks. Just milk.’
She left him in her room and crossed the main office. She glanced across at Provan, but he had his back to her and a phone to his ear. She shook the kettle to check that it was full, then switched it on. And watched. And waited.
As she did, her mind wandered to her shattered family. Scott had been remanded on bail to a future court hearing, and to its inevitable conclusion. He had shown some contrition when he had come for his clothes, but she had smelled stale alcohol on his breath, and that had been enough to maintain her resolve. There would be no way back for him, no way, Jose.
And for her? There would be nothing other than her career, and bringing up her son. I will not be making that mistake again, she told herself. There are no happy endings; sooner or later fate will always kick you in the teeth. . and very much sooner if your husband is an alcoholic gambler who was shagging another woman within the first year of your marriage.
The forgotten kettle broke into her thoughts by boiling. She made the tea, three mugs, one for Provan, stewed, as he liked it, distributed them and sat at her desk, waiting patiently for Banjo to finish his exploration of the dead man’s double life.
Eventually he did, and turned towards her. ‘Byron Millbank,’ he announced, ‘liked Celine Dion, Dusty Springfield, Black Sabbath, Alan Jackson, and Counting Crows, at least that’s what his iTunes library indicates. He loved his wife and child, respected his late father-in-law but had no time for his mother-in-law. That’s obvious from a study of his iPhoto albums. There’s only one photograph of her on it, it’s as unflattering as you can get and it’s captioned “Parah”, which I’ve just discovered is Hebrew for “Cow”.
‘He was a fan of Arsenal Football Club, not unnaturally, given where he lived. He had an American Express Platinum card, personal, not through the company. He had an Amazon Kindle account and his library included the complete works of Dickens and Shakespeare, the biography of Ronald Reagan and a dozen crime novels by Mark Billingham, Michael Jecks and Val McDermid.
‘He had an Xbox and liked war games, big time. His most visited websites were Wikipedia, Sky News, the BBC and ITV players, the CIA World Factbook, and a charity called Problem Solvers.’
‘Wow!’ Mann exclaimed, with irony. ‘How much more typical could this man have been? You’re just described Mr Average Thirty-something.’
The DC nodded. ‘Agreed. There is nothing out of the ordinary about him at all. . apart from one thing. The charity: it doesn’t exist. And that’s where he does get interesting.’
Sixty
‘It’s not a charity at all, sir,’ Paterson ventured. ‘If you ask me, it’s more of a doorway.’
‘Explain,’ Skinner said.
‘It’s the website, sir. It’s called www dot problemsolvers dot org. Dot org domains used to be just for charities, but these days that’s not necessarily so. To be sure I checked with the Charities Commission; they’ve never heard of it.
‘On top of that,’ the DC continued, ‘it’s weird in another way. It’s password protected. I only got in because Millbank was careless in one respect: he saved his passwords on his computer, thinking, I suppose, that nobody else would ever use it.’
‘When you did get in there, what did you find?’ the chief constable asked.
‘Nothing much; it’s very simple. I’m sure he set it up himself. There’s just the two pages. The home page has only six words: “Personnel problems? Discreet and permanent solutions.” Then there’s a message board. But there’s no history on the site at all. He’s wiped it all. However, there is one message still up on the board. It’s possible that he left it there because the reply will go automatically to the sender, without Millbank ever needing to know who he was.’