Cherringham--Thick as Thieves (9 page)

“Sure wasn’t like this in the old days,” said Jack.

“In the old days you would have kicked the door down, dragged the suspect into the street and cuffed him.”

“And you wouldn’t?”

“Are you kidding?” said Sarah. “I can’t imagine anything more fun.”

Jack laughed.

“Even if he’s not guilty?”

“Oh he’s guilty all right.”

“No need for a trial?” said Jack, smiling.

“Members of the jury — the accused was seen creeping out of the house in the middle of the night carrying a heavy bag …”

As she was talking, the heavy oak door of number 23 opened, and Sitwell emerged carrying a briefcase. The door slammed and he walked briskly towards them.

“Oh shoot,” said Jack, spilling his tea and pulling out a map — any map — to read. Sarah pretended to lose something under the steering wheel and dropped her head out of sight.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Sitwell approach the car … and then stride past, heading towards the Banbury Road.

“Phew,” he said, sitting up. “I thought he’d spotted us.”

Sarah didn’t answer — and then he realised it was because she was laughing too much.

“What’s funny, huh? Look at my trousers. I got tea all over them.”

Sarah wiped her eyes.

“Very professional, Jack. I can see I’ve got a lot to learn about surveillance.”

Jack grunted. He didn’t like looking stupid. But — he had to admit — he’d been too casual.

Need to sharpen up a bit if I’m going to do this kind of thing.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve still got an hour’s parking left on the ticket. Let’s see where he goes.”

And, grabbing his coat from the back seat, he climbed out of the car, his eyes on the now distant figure of Lawrence Sitwell.

With Sarah tracking him on the other side of the road, the professor had been easy to follow.

Scurrying along, head down, Jack saw that Sitwell had the determined look of someone with an appointment to make — and he felt confident they wouldn’t be spotted.

Jack had been to Oxford a couple of times before — once years ago with his wife Katherine, just before she’d died — but they’d only visited the centre, the colleges, the parks. These wide avenues, criss-crossed by tiny terraced streets, were a maze — but a fascinating one.

Sitwell clearly knew the area well, taking little short cuts, avoiding the students on bikes who flew by, a silent hazard. Jack and Sarah stayed a hundred yards behind, occasionally looking in shop windows, using other walkers as cover.

Eventually they hit a little street full of shops and bars — and a smart cafe into which Sitwell disappeared.

Jack waited in the doorway of a newsagents until Sarah joined him.

She had a woollen hat pulled down over her hair and he was sure Sitwell would never recognise her. Across the road they could see the academic being shown to a table for two in the window. The place was empty — and Jack realised it was still early, too early for dinner and too late for lunch.

Afternoon tea
, thought Jack.
How terribly quaint.

“There’s another cafe just a bit further down,” said Sarah. “We can watch him from there.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, it’s a bit of a parents’ hangout — but it serves the best cakes in Oxford,” said Sarah. “No way am I walking down Walton Street without having one. I’ll get us a table.”

Jack watched her slip down the street then followed briskly behind.

He pushed open the door of the cafe and breathed in the smell of fresh coffee.

Worth the trip just for that,
he thought.

The place was bustling, crowded with mums and kids and buggies. Amazingly Sarah had found an empty table in the corner by the window. He joined her. It was perfect — Sitwell was clearly visible across the street, but they would be hidden by the angle of the window and the various theatre posters stuck all over it. Jack ordered a coffee and felt virtuous declining the offer of cake, though when Sarah’s cake came he didn’t reject the offer of a mouthful.

“So, what now detective?” said Sarah, licking her fingers.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know, really,” he said. “The whole point of this is just to get a sense of him. Who he is. What he does. Who he lives with — or not.”

“So if he does have the plate, we can figure out where it might be?”

“Exactly,” said Jack. “God, this coffee’s good.”

He kept his eyes on Sitwell, waiting impatiently at his table just across the road. The waiter had come over to him, but it looked like he’d declined to order — so Jack guessed he was waiting for someone to join him.

“You know, I should have suspected something was up when he came by to tell me the plate was worthless,” said Sarah.

“Sounds like he’s got some kind of grudge against Cartwright, too.” As Jack watched, Sitwell pulled a laptop out of his briefcase and set it on the table.

“What I wouldn’t give to know what he’s up to on that thing,” he said.

“Oh really?” said Sarah.

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a tablet, flicked it on and swiped the screen a couple of times.

“How’s your moral compass these days Jack?” she said, looking at him with a mischievous smile.

“Depends.”

“Not much of a compass then …”

“What are you asking me, Sarah?”

“What if I could tell you what he’s ’up to’ on that laptop?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Couple of years ago, when my marriage unravelled, I er … acquired … a few extra computer skills. The sort of skills you need if you’re going to hack into your cheating husband’s email and web history and nail the lies that will remove him from your life for good.”

“Ouch,” said Jack. “Sounds like that still hurts.”

“Oh, it does. Of course, when people ask me if I’m over it — I always say yes.”

Jack hadn’t taken his eyes off Sitwell, but he did now. He could see that Sarah was angry just recollecting those raw emotions.

“I guess that’s why I’ve never asked you,” he said. “I just assumed you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“And I appreciate that.”

Jack nodded and looked back at Sitwell, tapping away at his computer.

“So. Let’s be clear here. You can access that guy’s laptop from this distance? On that?”

Sarah nodded.

“The cafe’s got an open Wi-Fi network. I can see it. It’s not encrypted. He’s the only person in there right now — and I’d bet he’s just logged on. I can get his sign-ins and passwords for pretty much everything he’s doing. Without compromising any innocent bystanders.”

“And you’ve got time to do it?”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “It’ll take about two minutes, max.”

Jack considered the situation … and then laughed. “So what are you waiting for?”

Jack sipped his coffee while Sarah tapped away at the keyboard. After a minute she sat up straight, turned off the tablet and put it away in her handbag.

“Have you done it?” said Jack, surprised.

“Yep. I don’t have time to check it out now. But when we get back home — and I’ve done tea for Chloe and Daniel — I’ll let you know what I find.”

“That easy huh?” said Jack. “No wonder kids are playing around inside the NSA and stealing secrets.”

“You think what we just did is wrong?”

“Of course. But sometimes that’s what you have to do.”

“I don’t make a habit of it, Jack. But in this case I feel sure enough he’s involved to justify it.”

Jack felt uncertain. He knew sometimes the end justified the means — but this was different. Somehow … sneaky. He turned to look at Sarah again.

“Dangerous path,” he said.

“I know.”

“What if he’s totally innocent?”

“He isn’t.”

“You sound pretty certain.”

He could see that Sarah was smiling at him and he couldn’t quite work out why.

“I am now,” she said, nodding toward the cafe across the street. “Look who’s just arrived.”

Jack turned, just in time to see that someone had joined Sitwell at his table. The man had his back to them. He gave the professor an affectionate hug and the briefest of kisses on one cheek, before pulling out a chair and sitting down.

Then, as he turned to call the waiter, his face was clearly visible.

It was Professor Peregrine Cartwright.

“Well, how about that,” said Jack.

Sarah got to the office by six — the sun had only just risen as she parked in the square and the streets of Cherringham were totally deserted.

She was early for two reasons. Firstly, she wanted to access Lawrence Sitwell’s online life while he was most likely still asleep — just in case he tried to log in too and realised he’d been hacked.

And secondly, she didn’t want Grace to be in the office while she did it. Grace had signed up to be an assistant in a web design agency — not become sidekick to a hacker with no regard for the law.

Although she’d been hoping to give Jack the results of their little adventure to Oxford the night before, by the time she’d picked up Chloe, cooked the kids’ dinner, helped with homework and put a wash on it was eleven o’clock and she was exhausted.

So she’d rung Jack and told him to drop by the office in the morning — and then fallen fast asleep.

She’d woken up on the sofa at two in the morning, with the lights still on and dragged herself off to bed.

Now, with the sun streaming in, a pot of coffee brewing in the office kitchen, her headphones on and her favourite playlist running, she knew she could really make some progress.

She pulled her chair up to the main computer, copied the user names and passwords from her tablet, and started to explore the virtual world of the eminent Professor Lawrence Sitwell …

Jack leaned in and tapped the side of the computer screen and Sarah jumped back in her seat in surprise.

“Didn’t meant to frighten you — but I’ve been saying ’hi’ for the last couple of minutes. You’ll damage your ears playing it that loud you know.”

“Morning, Jack,” she said, taking off her headphones, grinning. “That’s what I tell my kids.”

Jack handed her a fresh cup of coffee and she took it gratefully.

“What time is it anyway?”

“Nearly nine,” said Jack. “What you got?”

“A lot,” she said.

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“Okay,” she said, quickly assembling her thoughts into some kind of order. “Professor Sitwell retired. And Professor Cartwright retired. Coincidence? No. The two of them have been colleagues for the last ten years or so, working in the same field.”

“So Sitwell’s attack on Cartwright is just a sham, huh?”

Sarah nodded.

“On the surface, they cultivate a kind of professional rivalry — each one publishing a book that rides on the back of the other, critiques it, moves the ideas on. But really they’re not rivals. They’ve been partners all that time.”

“Partners in crime too, huh?”

“Definitely. It seems both of them took early retirement two years ago after certain ’irregularities’ were discovered in the finances of a charity they were involved in.”

“What kind of charity?”

“It was set up to rescue ancient artefacts from war-torn Middle Eastern states.”

“Very convenient.”

“Exactly,” said Sarah. “When the Charities Commission began to make noises, the University got worried that they might be drawn into some kind of scandal, so our two professors were ’invited’ to leave — without a pension it seems.”

“No criminal charges?”

“The police never got involved. I’ve got email threads going back to the beginning. They started off pleading their innocence. Then they said it was all a mistake. Then in the end they owned up to ’diverting’ some funds — but only ’to save great pieces for mankind’.

“You believe that?” said Jack.

“The university clearly didn’t. But they did agree to hush the whole thing up. Which was foolish really.”

“Why?”

“Because — as I have found from exploring various websites that Professor Sitwell has signed up to — he and Cartwright have been pretty active in selling those same artefacts for cash. To support their own project.”

“Let me guess — that project is their retirement?”

“Yep, for the last year, the two professors have also been sharing details of Greek villas for sale. Six bedrooms, swimming pool, private jetty, olive trees, vineyards — you know the kind of thing?”

“Of course, even with the crash — Greek villas don’t come cheap …”

“Exactly,” said Sarah. “Which is why the Cherringham Plate must have been so tempting.”

“Irresistible. So when Pete Butterworth saw Sitwell leaving the house, he hadn’t broken in — he’d popped round to take the plate off Cartwright’s hands for safe-keeping.”

“The two of them must have come up with the plan together,” said Sarah. “I suspect they did it by text and phone mostly — but there are enough emails here to prove pretty conclusively that they stole the plate themselves.”

“And they smashed the window at the back?”

“Exactly — and Sitwell left with a random assortment of Cartwright’s coins and miniatures.”

“Just enough to make it look like a genuine theft,” said Jack.

“The big surprise for them both was the damage to the front door. They’re still emailing each other about that, wondering who did it.”

“Poor old Jerry,” said Jack, shaking his head. “If he hadn’t tried to break in, the police might have been more suspicious of the back door damage.”

“They couldn’t believe their luck when the investigation pointed at the art gang. In fact, they’re still gloating about it. Not for long though.”

“What do you mean?” said Jack.

“Well — we’ve bust them wide open, haven’t we?” said Sarah. “All we need to do now is pass on the emails to the police — and Alan gets his arrests.”

“As if.”

Sarah felt confused — all this work — it was a rock solid case, wasn’t it?

“What do you mean?”

“Sarah — that’s the very last thing we can do.”

Jack stood up, went to the office door and pressed it gently shut.

“If you show this stuff to the police, it won’t be them that gets arrested — it’ll be you.”