His proxies never left any evidence of their intrusion, and merely copied whatever data they could find that related to the search string McLeod had loaded into their programs. When they’d completed their mission, each proxy automatically accessed one of several web-based email accounts and pasted the results into email messages. But these messages would never be sent, because all emails leave an electronic trail across the internet. Instead, all the messages were left on the servers as drafts, and McLeod was then able to access each email account, copy the contents of the draft messages and afterwards delete them, which left no trace at all.
The whole process was automated, and McLeod would only get personally involved if the hacking software he’d designed failed to breach the defences of a particular network. Then he’d flex his hacking muscles and spend a pleasant few hours working out how to get inside that system. But normally, he just scanned the results when they were displayed on his monitor, weeded out the obvious rubbish, and sent the rest up to Donovan’s workstation on the top floor of the building.
Because it was a Monday and the offices had been closed since Saturday morning, there were dozens of results to analyse. As usual, most of them were of neither interest nor relevance, but when McLeod looked at the nineteenth search result he sat back in his seat and whistled.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he muttered to himself.
He checked the source of the data, but that turned out to be no surprise at all. He’d seen immediately that the information had been posted on the front page of a small local newspaper, and the version his proxy had located had been in the on-line version of the journal, hosted on an entirely unprotected server.
McLeod read the article in its entirety, and one short paragraph caught and then held his attention. He sat in thought for a minute or so, then clicked his mouse button a couple of times to bring up an internet search engine. He entered a simple search term and looked at the results, which gave him the name of the website he was interested in. He opened up one of the hacking programs he’d written himself and started probing the distant server, looking for a way inside. There was something there he definitely needed to get a look at.
In less than fifteen minutes he was looking at a list of police case files, listed by number. Then he changed the parameters and generated an alphabetical list of the names of the claimants or victims. Most of the files were small, the incidents fairly pedestrian — muggings, car thefts, burglaries, and so on. And then he saw something big. There were numerous statements, reports by the attending officers, forensic analyses and the like, and a whole sheaf of crime-scene photographs, all neatly labelled and catalogued.
He flicked through the forensic stuff until he found the one that related to the paragraph in the newspaper story, and made a copy of it on his hard drive. Then he glanced through everything else he’d found, and despatched the original newspaper report up to Donovan’s computer with the rest of the stuff. When his boss got in, he guessed he’d get a call.
But he had a completely different recipient in mind for the forensic report he’d copied from the police database.
4
Two hours later, Angela had turned off the M25, where the traffic was actually moving, for a change, and was heading up the A10, the old London Road. Her satnav had protested when she made the turn, but she’d decided to take the scenic route because she had two ulterior motives. First, she wanted to treat herself to lunch in a country pub somewhere, and there were no such facilities on the M11. And, second, she wanted to be able to stop somewhere and ring her ex-husband, Chris Bronson, to explain why she’d be out of town for the rest of the week. She’d called his mobile from her flat in Ealing before she left, but it had gone straight to voicemail. Knowing Chris as well as she did, she knew she’d be able to reach him at lunchtime.
Nearing the village of Wendens Ambo, she spotted an old pub and parked her Mini in one of the few remaining spaces in the front car park.
She ordered a Caesar salad and a bottle of Perrier, and carried the drink over to a seat right beside a window that overlooked the main road outside. While she waited for her food to be served, she pulled out her mobile. This time, Bronson answered almost immediately.
‘Hi, Angela. Where are you?’
‘How do you know I’m not in my office, slaving away over a broken pot?’ she said, a little annoyed with herself for feeling pleased to hear his voice.
‘I’m a detective, remember. Actually, I called your office. So where are you?’
‘Suffolk, I think.’ She looked up and nodded her thanks as the barman placed an enormous bowl of salad on the table in front of her.
‘Suffolk?’ Bronson was clearly surprised.
‘Yes. I’ve just stopped for lunch in a pub near a village called Wendens Ambo, and I’m heading for a country house somewhere near Stoke by Clare. Wonderful names, don’t you think?’
‘A country house party, is it?’
‘Sadly not. Actually, I’ve been sent up here to work. An elderly minor aristocrat named Oliver Wendell-Carfax was murdered in his home near here about two weeks ago-’
‘I know about that,’ Bronson interrupted, sounding concerned. ‘I saw one of the reports. Somebody strung him up from the staircase and then beat him, but the autopsy showed that he actually died of a heart attack. I think the local police have drawn a blank on the case so far — no obvious suspects and no apparent motive, though somebody had searched the house. It’s a nasty business. But what’s it got to do with you?’
‘Well, the museum has now become involved — not because of who Wendell-Carfax was, or how he died, but because of what he did. He was pretty much the last of a long line of avid collectors of antiques and ancient relics. Apparently his country house is full of the things. He was also, according to Roger Halliwell, a typical grumpy old bastard. Over the last ten years or so he managed to alienate just about every member of his family, and almost everybody else who knew him. When he died, the firms of solicitors he’d used opened up his last will and testament and had a bit of a shock.’
‘ “Firms of solicitors”?’ Bronson asked. ‘In the plural?’
Angela sighed. ‘Yes. Over the last year Wendell-Carfax visited four different solicitors in Suffolk and deposited his last will and testament with each of them.’
‘Different wills, I suppose?’
‘All completely different, and each cutting out one or more different family members. The trouble was, each time he made a new will, he never bothered telling the new solicitor acting for him about the earlier ones, although he made sure he told the beneficiaries of the new will.’
‘But not the people he’d just disinherited?’
‘Of course not. That wouldn’t have been any fun, would it? So as soon as he was found dead, various family members crawled out of the woodwork, each of them expecting to inherit about two hundred acres of prime Suffolk real estate and a country house stuffed full of antiques.’
‘So who is the beneficiary?’ Bronson asked, sounding puzzled.
‘For the house and land, I’ve no idea — but in his final will, or at least the last one that’s turned up so far, the old man gave everything inside the house — the entire contents, that is — to the British Museum.’
‘So you’re up there to assess the bequest?’
‘Yep.’ Angela drove her fork into the salad and took a mouthful. ‘The Suffolk Police have finally allowed museum staff to go into the house. Until now, it’s been out of bounds as a crime scene.’
‘So you’ll be away all week, then?’ Bronson asked.