By All Means (Fiske and MacNee Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

Soon after arriving in Aberdeen from the Met, Vanessa Fiske had followed the advice of her former boss and sought out a senior officer to be her informal mentor.   Her relationship with Assistant Chief Constable Chris Jenkinson continued after Chris was promoted to become, as a Deputy Chief Constable, the most senior woman police officer in Scotland, and Chris had recruited Vanessa into the Women's Police Network Scotland, an informal support group that helped individual women officers deal with discrimination and prejudice, as well as lobbying to make equal opportunity a reality rather than an aspiration.

On Wednesday evening Chris and Vanessa were driving together to Perth for a WPNS meeting.  It was some time since they had spoken and they spent the first part of the journey catching up and talking about the agenda for the meeting.  As they approached the ring road round Dundee, Vanessa took a deep breath.

'I have some news, Chris, and you're only the second person in NEC that I've told.'

'You're not leaving, I hope.

'Nothing like that, no. I'm pregnant. Just over six weeks.'

'Well, I didn't expect that. I want to say "Congratulations" but I suppose I should ask if you're happy about it.'

'Very. Neil and I decided quite quickly that we wanted kids. I'm no spring chicken and we didn't expect it to happen so soon. I need to work out when to take my maternity leave and how I'm going to deal with the so-called "Work/life balance".  I can’t think of anyone whose advice I'd value more than yours.'

'I'm not going to pretend it's been easy or that my life is perfect. But it's been OK.  The hardest thing has been not having my husband here all the time.  You won't have to deal with that.'

Chris had a son in secondary school and a daughter in primary.  Her husband, a history professor in Manchester, spent weekends and university vacations in Aberdeen.

'Let me give you two pieces of advice.  Make your maternity leave as short as you can and try to find reasons to come into the office - without the baby - occasionally.  Maternity leave is supposed to have no effect on your career, but don't bank on it.  You'll be surprised by some of the attitudes your pregnancy will flush out. And make sure, before the baby is born, that you have absolutely reliable childcare in place.  Colleagues will promise support, but it'll disappear the first time you take an unscheduled day off because childcare has fallen through.  I managed to avoid that, but I've seen women try to do it on a wing, a prayer and granny, and it doesn't work!'

'One granny's in Warwickshire and the other's in Devon, so that's not on!  Thanks for the advice.  I may want to talk about it again.'

'Any time!  I'm really pleased for you.'

Vanessa smiled and involuntarily rubbed her stomach.  'Can I ask you a personal question that you might not want to answer?'

Chris grimaced. 'Go on.'

'Are you applying for the Scotland job?'

Chris guffawed. 'God, no! Not for me, not now.  But I don't mind the Chief thinking I am. He's frightened to ask me in case he doesn't like the answer.  Keeps giving me knowing looks. Great fun.'

*

As Chris Jenkinson parked the car opposite the Salutation Hotel in Perth, Vanessa's phone rang.

'Sorry to phone when you're off duty, Vanessa, but I thought you'd want to know.'   It was Harry Conival. 'I've just had a call from the crime reporter of the
Gazette & Times
asking me to confirm that the guy murdered at GRH - Keller - was killed by lethal injection, and I don't know what to tell him, because I don't know whether he was or he wasn't.  I said I'd get back to him before the first edition goes to press.'

'Did he say where he got the information?'

'He said something about a reliable source.  Nothing more specific.  Is he right?'

'He is, as it happens, but I was hoping to keep the details out of the public domain for a bit longer.  Can you stall him until we have a press briefing tomorrow?'

'I can say I couldn't find you. He won't believe me and he'll run with his exclusive anyway.  And what's this about a press briefing?  Did I know about that?'   Harry's questions were heavily ironic.

'Sorry, Harry.  Just decided on it.  Can you get a note out to the usual suspects? Let's make it noon.  That'll make it harder for the hacks to complain about short notice.'

Vanessa hung up and turned to Chris to apologise.

'Don't worry about it. Problem?'

'Possibly. I've been sitting on some details about the GRH murder - cause of death - because it's so out of the normal run that I think it might be key to the case. Now Harry Conival's had a reporter on asking to confirm it.  Somebody's leaked it.  I hope it's come from someone involved in the
post mortem
, because if it hasn't, it has to be someone on my team.'

'But why?  What's in it for them?'

Vanessa looked, and sounded, really fed up. 'About a hundred quid, I think.  That's the current going rate.'

*

Colin MacNee spent the rest of the afternoon, after the meeting with the DCS, going round the other Detective Chief Inspectors trying to identify a Detective Sergeant who might be attached to the murder investigation.  He needed an experienced detective with skills in either financial investigation, or information technology, or both.  IT was more likely, and hoping for one person with both kinds of expertise was just daft. 

It became clear pretty quickly that there was no-one in NEC with the kind of forensic accountancy skills that the information about the ownership of Hedelco and Ebright suggested might be necessary.  In the past, such specialised knowledge had had to be brought in from a much larger force, more often than not Strathclyde, but occasionally the Met or West Midlands. A call to the fraud squad in Glasgow produced a couple of recommendations of detective inspectors who might be up for a short-term secondment if they could be released.  A formal request would have to come from Esslemont.

More than one DCI identified NEC's in-house computer nerd, Detective Sergeant Don "Dongle" Donaldson, as someone who could break into any computer and who was a genius at recovering deleted files and deciphering encrypted ones.  Colin went to see him in his office, more like a lab, in a satellite building in the centre of Aberdeen which housed a variety of specialist units: computer crime; forensic anthropology; photographic and video analysis; voice recognition.

'DS Donaldson...'

Donaldson interrupted. 'Call me Dongle, everybody else does.  What can I do for you, Inspector?'

Colin smiled. 'The first thing you can do is tell me why you're called Dongle.'

'Maybe because I'm the key to all computers?  Or maybe because a guy called Don Donaldson who's into computers just invited the nickname.  I can't remember, but I don't mind it.  Helps me to stay doing what I'm good at and what I enjoy.  We've nailed quite a few bad buggers on the basis of my ferreting about in their hard drives.  What's your problem?'

Colin outlined the investigation of the two possibly related murders, emphasising the similarities in the jobs the victims had been doing and the identical protocols that appeared to have governed their reporting back to the USA.

'We've got one laptop and we're trying to locate the other.  We're also trying to get copies of the encrypted reports that the dead men had already sent back.  But we're dealing with some very edgy and secretive people and they're likely to try to block us, so we need to know if the deleted and encrypted emails can be recovered.'

'Almost certainly, but it may take some time. Two or three days, possibly.  If you think you can get copies from the recipients quicker than that, I'm not your man.  Assuming you can't, the fact that you've got one laptop is really helpful.  If they were both issued by the same organisation, it's almost certain they both used the same encryption and deletion software. Crack one, and we crack the other, if you find it.'

'The companies are separate but share an owner, a private equity company that stays well away from publicity.'

'Still likely that they use a common IT system.  Cheaper that way.  And as I understand it, private equity is a byword for cost reduction and profit maximisation.  I read that in the
Economist
and I've just shared with you the full extent of my knowledge.'

Colin liked Dongle's style. 'Do you want me to bring the laptop here or do you want to join our happy band at HQ?'

'Better for me to work on it here, where I've got all my magic tricks.  I'll look after it.  I've got a safe here for when I'm not working on it, so it'll be secure.'

'I'll get it to you by the end of the day, first thing tomorrow at the latest.  We'll check that you're here before we bring it.'

*

As soon as Keller had been identified as the GRH body, DC Duncan Williamson went to hospital security to collect the CCTV recordings for the five days that Keller had been there. Because of the nature of his work and the secrecy with which it had been done, it wasn't possible to put together a definitive account of where he had been.   They would have to look at all the recordings.  There were twenty CCTV cameras recording 24 hours a day: 2400 hours of recordings that  might enable them to build up a picture of where Keller had been.   They needed to know when his laptop had disappeared.

Because of staff shortages it was unlikely that the work could be covered entirely, or even mainly, by CID.  Colin decided that analysis of the recordings could be done by uniformed officers supervised by Williamson.  He already had a high definition picture of Keller. He had enough copies of it printed for distribution to the officers who would examine most of the footage and he had, from Donovan, a detailed description of the bag containing his laptop which, Donovan had said, Keller always had over his shoulder.   Colin told Williamson that he should personally and urgently examine the recordings from the camera at the end of the corridor that led to the crime scene.  He needed his findings by the end of the day.

*

Jack Eisner, Burtonhall's head of security, touched down at Aberdeen Airport on a BA flight from Heathrow just after 1030 on Wednesday.   He had caught an overnight BA flight from Dulles International Airport with plenty of time to make a connection to Aberdeen just before nine.   He had called Tammy Wootten at Ebright just after eight and then Bernard Donovan at GRH. 

Eisner arrived at Ebright just after 1100 and went immediately to Wootten's office.

'What the fuck is going on, Tammy?  Cy Packard is going postal.  He needs to know whether the Vermont One murder is related to the one at the hospital.  What can you tell me?'

Wootten's response to this was curious. 'Why should they be related?  Nobody's suggested that they are anything but coincidental.  It's a big city. Two murders on a weekend can't be that unusual.'

'This isn't New York City, Washington or Phillie.  And even if you were right, and you're not, it stretches coincidence somewhat that both deaths happened in facilities owned by Burtonhall.'

Wootten was obviously shaken.   'I had no idea the hospital was owned by Burtonhall.'

'It isn't. It's managed by an HMO - Hedelco - that Burtonhall bought last year.  But you haven't answered my question.  What can you tell me about Jamieson's murder?'

'Not much.  He was found dead at the bottom of an inspection chamber and the autopsy confirmed he had been murdered.  The police have been here asking what he was doing on the platform.  I've told them to get in touch with head office.  But they've got his laptop and they're refusing to return it.'

'What was he doing on the rig?'

'An independent audit of all systems and processes.  It's done without notice a couple of times a year. Reports go straight to Ebright's Audit and Risk Committee in Providence. I thought they went to Cy as well.'

'If they do, he didn't tell me, and I think he would have, before sending me here. What had Jamieson found before he was killed?'