“Speaking of which, I’d better let you know what’s been happening here.” She told him about Stella Gregson’s visit to the school and the interview with Haley Smith. “We’ve now established that the father, Michael Smith, manages a bookshop at Gatwick Airport. Stella has gone to interview him.”
“Will she bring him in?”
“Depends what he says. She’ll see him initially in the airport police office.”
“He’d better have a good story. Have you checked him on the PNC?”
“No previous. If we pull him in, do you want some of the action?”
“Try and keep me away. What about his wife?”
“Olga Smith. Done. I sent Stella to see her directly. Stella was all for racing off to Gatwick right away, but I wanted the woman’s angle first.”
“Was it helpful?”
“It filled in some gaps. She’s an ex-nurse who now works just round the corner from the school as one of the check-out staff at Safeway. Claims she was so taken up with Haley being lost that she scarcely registered what was going on with the dead woman. But she confirmed that her husband was the first to do anything about it. He saw that the woman was dead and alerted the lifeguard and helped carry the body to the hut. Afterwards they cleared off fast in their car.”
“Why?”
“They figured they wouldn’t have anything useful to contribute. They hadn’t seen anyone with the victim all day.”
“She’d been there all day?”
“Arrived soon after they did and set up her windbreak and lay behind it sunbathing.”
“Were they close to her?”
“Just a few yards. But there was a time in the afternoon when they went for a swim. And there was also a period when Haley went missing and they were both very taken up with searching for her. The husband went off to look and Olga Smith stood up to be visible. She says she was far too upset to have noticed whether the woman was alone, or if she was dead at that stage.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yes, Stella believed her, but got a strong impression that she’s scared of her husband. He made the decision to quit the scene as soon as possible and he’s insisted ever since that they can’t help us in any way. She knew we were appealing for information. He seems to have put her under pressure to say nothing. And we know he ordered the child not to speak to her teacher.”
“He’s got plenty to explain, then.”
“When we’ve picked him up, sunshine, I’ll let you know.”
“What I didn’t appreciate when I printed all the files is that some of them are encrypted,” Clive told Diamond when he checked with him after the hour he’d requested.
“You mean we can’t read the stuff?”
He nodded. “I guess she had reasons for keeping some of her case notes secure. The text is scrambled. It’s put through a series of mathematical procedures called an algorithm and comes out looking like gobbledegook. If you go through all those sheets I printed out for you, you’ll find some that make no sense at all. They’ll be the encrypted files.”
“So how do you unscramble them?”
“Decrypt them. With blood, toil, tears and sweat. We need to know the key to access them.”
“Key?”
“Password, then.”
“Why not try ‘Sesame’ again?”
“You think I haven’t? She wasn’t messing about here. She really meant to stop anyone from breaking in. Most encryption systems use a secret key and a pass phrase. Some are asymmetric, meaning one key is used to encrypt the data and another to decrypt it. As I think I told you, she was obviously computer-literate.”
“Do we use any of these systems in the police?”
“Of course.”
“And are they listed somewhere? What I’m getting at, Clive, is that she could have been given the police software to use for her profiling notes.”
“I’ll check it out. But even if I know the software, it could still take me weeks to crack this.”
“Better make a start, then.” He rested a hand on Clive’s shoulder and said as it began to droop, “If it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t ask.”
Stella Gregson had only ever been through Gatwick Airport on holiday trips, but she found the right terminal and located the bookshop easily enough. Finding the manager was not so simple. He’d gone for a late lunch, the woman on the till told her, and he should be back soon.
Stella said she’d wait. She’d had no lunch, late or otherwise. She had a young male DC with her and she treated him to a toasted sandwich at the Costa shop, which offered a good view of the open plan bookshop. People with time on their hands and flying on their minds were blankly staring at the shelves, occasionally picking something up, riffling the pages and replacing it.
After forty minutes Stella and her companion got off their coffee stools and started browsing through the magazines.
“Does Mr Smith carry a mobile?” she asked the woman on the till. “We can’t wait much longer.”
“He does, but I don’t know the number.”
“Where does he eat, then? Somewhere in the terminal?”
The woman shrugged. “This is only my second week.”
They asked at the shop next door, a place that retailed shirts and ties. The manager said he thought Smith went home to lunch. He lived nearby, in Crawley. “Is he in trouble, then?” he added cheerfully.
“We just need to check something with him.”
“Police, are you?”
Stella’s eyes widened.
“It’s the way you walk.”
She called Hen Mallin to let her know they were about to leave the airport and would call at the Smiths’ house. Hen was talking on another line, so Stella left a message.
She nudged the DC in the back. He was looking at pink shirts. “Leave it. We’re on the move.”
The house was only ten minutes away, on the north side of Crawley. “I don’t know why,” Stella said to her young colleague as she drove out of the airport, “but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” The feeling got worse when they turned the corner at the end of the Smiths’ street and an ambulance sped towards them, siren blaring, lights flashing. A police patrol car was parked outside one of the houses.
“That’s the one.”
They drew up outside and went in through the open door.
“Who the fuck are you?” a sergeant in uniform asked.
Stella held her warrant card up to his face and said, “So what the fuck is going on?”
He blinked. The words ‘Bognor Regis CID’ seemed to have that effect on people. “It’s a domestic. Some bastard beat his wife unconscious. She’s on her way to hospital.”
“Is he in there?”
“No, he scarpered. She was in a right old state when she was found. We’re trying to get the facts straight. The people’s name, would you believe, is-“
“Smith.”
10
Very late the same afternoon, Diamond heard from Hen Mallin that Olga Smith had been attacked and was in hospital, and the husband, Michael Smith, was missing.
“I’ll come at once,” he said.
“Hold your horses, squire,” she told him. “She’s in intensive care. She took at least one heavy blow to the head. She won’t be talking to anyone until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“The husband did it, I suppose?”
“There’s little doubt. His car was seen outside the house between two and three. A white Honda Civic. It was gone when she was found.”
“He’ll be miles away, then.”
“Could be in another country. Working at the airport as he does, he’d know the likely standbys. Crawley police are checking the airport car parks.”
“Now you’re depressing me. Who called the ambulance? The husband?”
“That’s something I didn’t ask.”
“It’s got to be checked. What could have triggered this attack, Hen?”
A heavy sigh came down the line. “You remember I told you about Stella Gregson visiting the school and speaking to the child? Immediately after, she went to see Olga Smith-at my suggestion.”