Shallow Water

by Hunter J Walker

  The DCI stood up and moved to stand beside Nicola. ‘Right, the tasks for today are: DI Collins and DC Bryce, DC Ashburner and DC Vidak interviews at the workplace; DS McCray and DC Innes the neighbours; DS Bob Wyatt and DC Curtis find any CCTV. And finally PC’s Symonds, McKimm, Dale, Sayers, Bennett, Frechoso and Mack, continuing search of the crime scene. The HOLMES team are also tasking people to support this enquiry.’

  Julie leaned over Douglas and spoke to Tanya for the first time. ‘How the hell do you get Saint George and I get the Dragon?’

  *****

  ‘A word, Ashburner,’ Nicola said as she strode past towards her office.

  Inside her office he stood holding the door, knowing they had to be off shortly.

  ‘Close the door, we haven’t got long for this.’

  He closed the door.

  ‘You were pawing Tanya Vidak last night and it’s no’ something you can do around here,’ she said as she stabbed an index finger in his direction.

  ‘We’re supposed to be man and wife,’ Douglas retorted.

  ‘You’re getting carried away with this undercover lark…anyway the operation has been postponed. We have our hands full at the moment and we don’t have the manpower, or womanpower, to cover everything at the moment. I know you’re keen to get on with it, but you’ll just have to wait.’

  Douglas left the office and found Tanya sitting on his desk. ‘Looks like the undercover operation is off for the moment.’

  She put her finger to her lips for a second before speaking. ‘I’ll catch up with you this evening, where can we go that’s quiet?’

  ‘Not tonight – can it wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘Pity, but it can wait,’ Tanya said and stood up off the desk. ‘I’ll go and get ready for today’s big event.’

  *****

  In the light drizzle, Douglas stood next to Tanya outside the glass door labelled Computing & Software Utilities and watched Nicola shouting into her mobile phone. On the other side of the doorway a huddle of workers stood disconsolately – two of the men had thought to bring umbrellas and the others were clustering close to them. They were all waiting for the key holder to arrive and today this was Fiona Grey, and she was late. It was also cold and the plain-clothes police shuffled their feet in an attempt to keep warm while the uniformed police bore the chill more easily in their thicker clothing.

  Julie shuffled over and muttered to Douglas: ‘Why don’t we get the battering ram out the car and just knock the bloody door down?’

  Douglas stamped his feet to bring some feeling back into them before he replied quietly: ‘We need some co-operation from these people and smashing down their door is likely to make them less helpful. Although I could do with the exercise, my feet are freezing.’

  Nicola put her phone away and turned to face the crowd. ‘Ms Grey has had an accident, her car is being picked up now and she’ll get a taxi for the remainder of the journey.’

  ‘Why don’t we pick her up in the wagon, we could stuff her in the cage,’ Julie muttered.

  ‘She couldn’t help the accident,’ Tanya said.

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  Ten minutes later a taxi pulled up next to the crowd and Fiona Grey got out, wearing a long grey coat over a dark blue skirt suit and a white silk blouse. She unlocked the door and the crowd followed her inside. Before anyone made it out of reception Nicola stood on the stairs and faced the crowd in the entrance hall:

  ‘We are here to interview everyone in connection with the disappearance of Marcus Triffit. We will call you individually to take a statement, in the meantime go about your normal work.’

  *****

  Nicola and Julie started by cornering Fiona Grey in her office.

  ‘Is Marcus the one on the news last night?’ Grey said.

  ‘We can’t comment on that at present,’ Nicola replied.

  ‘On the news they said the body in the Clyde was tortured before he was killed. Do you really think that someone from here did that? The most this lot would do is throw a hissy fit and chuck some pens around.’

  ‘When did you last see Marcus?’

  ‘On the Thursday, I went to talk to our accountant after lunch and I saw him at his desk on the way out. He was gone by the time I returned about six.’

  ‘What project was he working on for the company?’

  ‘A new form of market analysis that can predict instability in the market – a way of predicting a boom or bust basically.’

  ‘Was he successful?’

  ‘The project was in the early stages and the work was progressing.’

  ‘Who is this project for?’

  ‘The Scotia Investment Bank.’

  Nicola stopped, her mind racing through the implications of the connection. ‘Does the name Annabel Sutherland mean anything to you, or to anyone in your company?’

  Fiona Grey looked puzzled. ‘No, should it?’

  ‘Have you have ever met, or spoken to, or corresponded with Annabel Sutherland?’

  She shook her head impatiently. ‘No, I have not.’

  ‘Did Marcus Triffit have any sort of contact with Annabel Sutherland?’

  Fiona Grey leant forward across the desk and glared at her. ‘Look, who is this Annabel Sutherland?’

  ‘Another missing person, who is connected to the Scotia Investment Bank,’ Nicola said and sat back in her chair. ‘Julie, get onto the DCI, we need to get a forensic team in here.’

  When Julie had left the office to make the call, Nicola started on Fiona Grey. ‘I want the details of the work Triffit was doing and the names of every person in this company who worked on every job you are doing, or have done, for the Scotia Investment Bank; and the names of every person this company has ever contacted at the Scotia Investment Bank.’

  ‘This is commercially sensitive information!’

  Nicola snorted. ‘In the last week you have one murdered employee, one more maimed for life and the daughter of the Scotia Bank’s CEO has gone missing…join the dots?’

  ‘Oh God.’

  Nicola noted the look of shock on Fiona Grey’s face and judged it was genuine. ‘Just get me the information; it won’t take me an hour to get a search warrant…if I have to.’

  *****

  In the small office they’d been allocated Douglas and Tanya made themselves as comfortable as they could. They started with James Cameron-Smythe.

  ‘When did you last see Marcus Triffit?’ Douglas asked, while Tanya started to take notes.

  ‘Eight days ago on the Thursday afternoon when he left work.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  James paused before answering: ‘About five.’

  ‘Did he usually leave at that time?’

  ‘No, he usually worked until seven or eight, but occasionally he would stay past midnight.’

  ‘Did he get paid overtime?’

  ‘You would have to ask the management that, but as far as I knew he didn’t.’

  ‘Did he seem anxious or worried about anything when he left work on the Thursday afternoon?’

  James shook his head. ‘No, he just seemed anxious to be away, that’s all.’

  ‘Was he meeting someone?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he own a car?’

  James sat back and paused before replying. ‘I honestly don’t know. He could drive and he hired cars when he needed to travel on company business.’

  ‘Did he have a computer he used for personal stuff?’

  ‘You wouldn’t get anything off his computers, he encrypted everything.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘That’s what he did.’

  ‘Could you expand on that, please?’ Douglas said.

  ‘That’s what he did, he created encryption systems – it was his day job.’

  ‘Whom did he create these encryption systems for?’

  ‘Banks, credit card c
ompanies, computer companies, secure memory systems; basically any company that uses or sells secure data storage or transmission systems.’

  ‘Did he do work for the government?’

  James shook his head. ‘I’m not the person to ask about that.’

  ‘Could you get into his protected files?’

  ‘The man was an Einstein, a twenty-two carat genius, the stuff he did was so far ahead of everyone else, and I mean everyone, that I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘I thought Einstein wasn’t very good at the mathematics.’

  ‘OK, bad analogy.’

  Douglas decided to change tack with his questioning. ‘What was his background?’

  ‘I only know a little of it – he was quite a shy person and didn’t talk much about it. Both his parents died when he was a small child and a grandmother raised him. I think she died recently. He did Computing and Mathematics at university, had a government job, somewhere down south, for a while and then he moved up here for some reason he never disclosed to me.’

  ‘Do you know of any other relatives?’

  ‘No…well, none that he told me about.’

  ‘Did he have a girlfriend?’

  James looked at him with a curious expression and Douglas wondered if that was the right question and he added: ‘Or boyfriend?’

  James smiled thinly. ‘I wondered if he was a bit Turing when I first knew him, but after a while I changed my mind and decided he wasn’t interested in sex. However, recently I started to wonder if there was a girl: I took an outside call from a girl for Marcus last month and from her accent she wasn’t the sort of a woman I would have expected him to know.’

  ‘Did she leave a number?’

  ‘No, but he had her number and he rang her back from an office phone – you lot might be able to get the number.’

  ‘What sort of accent did she have?’

  ‘Upmarket, not local, not quite an old BBC accent, but not far off it.’

  ‘How did he spend his time outside work?’

  James smiled. ‘Have you seen his flat? He spent most of his time on his computers or online. He probably had more online friends than real-world ones. He built his machine for his pet project the mathematics of factorisation – it was his real life’s work.’

  ‘Did he get anywhere?’ Douglas asked. ‘And even if he didn’t, did someone have reason to think he had got somewhere?’

  James recoiled slightly. ‘I didn’t think a policeman would understand the reference.’

  ‘The days of Mr Plod are coming to an end, we have people who are just as good as those in the private sector and we can also access the best in the world if we need to.’

  ‘Ah…I was forgetting the spooks.’

  Douglas grimaced and he voiced a thought: ‘Did anyone have reason to think he succeeded …now that would be a reason for killing him?’ He felt Tanya nudge him with her knee under the table and he expanded on his thought. ‘It’s the codebreakers Grail Quest – a fast method of factorisation would break public-key encryption and all banking and credit-card transactions would become an open book to whomever possessed it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ James said.

  When Douglas didn’t ask any more questions and he didn’t respond to another nudge with her knee she took over. ‘Did he use any social networking sites, blogs, or online discussion groups?’

  ‘His computers will have any of that stuff on them if you can get past the encryption.’

  ‘Was he anxious, different from normal, excited, high, unusual activity, unusual phone calls or messages?’

  ‘Apart from the one phone call from a girl, no.’

  ‘Financial problems, gambling, drugs or alcohol?’ Tanya continued.

  ‘His job was well paid and he didn’t gamble, take drugs or drink very much.’

  Tanya fell silent and before Douglas could think of another question Nicola entered the room and coughed loudly. He looked round at the sound.

  ‘A word, Douglas.’

  He stood up and joined her in the corridor. She closed the office door before speaking. ‘Triffit was working on a project involving the Scotia Investment Bank. It’s too much of a coincidence the Sutherland’s daughter goes missing at the same time. I’m getting a forensic team in here to find any trace of her in this place. Wind up here and then get over the Annabel Sutherland’s flat and find something with her fingerprints and DNA on it. And get hold of any more CCTV that Shona Doherty has. And make sure Tanya stays with you at all times.’ Nicola stopped to poke him in the chest with her index finger. ‘And I mean all the time.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘And I thought you were the bright one – was Triffit ever in Sutherland’s flat or was Sutherland ever in Triffit’s flat?’

  Douglas opened the door and put his head into the room. ‘Thank you James, we’ll be in touch.’

  Tanya stared at him.

  ‘We have to go.’

  *****

  ‘It never ceases to amaze me how your car gets anywhere,’ Tanya said while Douglas rang the doorbell.

  ‘It’s never let me down.’ Douglas replied.

  They waited and waited for an answer and finally Douglas felt he had to explain: ‘She works nights and gets up late.’

  Finally the door opened and to Douglas’ relief Shona was dressed in a pair of jeans and a white shirt. Her jet-black hair neatly combed and pulled back into a ponytail. ‘Douglas, what a surprise…and this is?’ she said.

  ‘DC Tanya Vidak,’ Tanya said.

  Shona ran her eyes down Tanya’s body and back up again to her face. ‘I can see who wears the trousers in this partnership,’ she said and stood back for them to enter. She followed them into the living area and waved a hand towards the seating. ‘Sit yourselves down; I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Tanya sat in the chair and Douglas went to look out of the window while Shona busied herself in the kitchen area.

  ‘Sit down, Douglas,’ Shona said when she’d poured the boiling water into the cafetiere.

  He took off his coat and laid it on the arm of the large white sofa before sitting down. Shona placed three coasters and a plate of mixed biscuits on the polished chest. ‘I would offer you alcohol, Tanya, but Douglas is a stickler for the no drinking on duty rule.’

  ‘It’s a no-no,’ Douglas said.

  ‘Of course, it was different in my father’s time: CID were all so pissed after their pub lunches they couldn’t see straight,’ Shona said as she returned to the kitchen area.

  ‘Coffee’s fine,’ Tanya said.

  ‘Yes, with a name like Vidak I couldn’t see you as a tea drinker.’

  Douglas watched her pour the coffee into three mugs. ‘We need another look at Annabel Sutherland’s flat,’ he said when she’d put the cafetiere down.

  ‘Of course you do, Douglas, you never come here to socialise,’ Shona replied and carried the three mugs to the chest and placed them carefully on the coasters. She sat down next to him – her thigh touching his.

  ‘I’ll get you the keys when you’ve drunk your coffee.’

  ‘We also need all your CCTV files going back as far as possible.’

  ‘Anything for you, Douglas, we’ll have a look at that later. Now Ms Vidak there must be a story attached to you being in Glasgow Police with a name like that.’

  ‘My grandfather arrived in the Second World War and never went back,’ Tanya replied.

  ‘At a guess there is a tinge of Polish in your accent?’

  ‘Yes, I went back to Poland for a few years when I was young.’

  Shona nodded and smiled at her. ‘Let me get the key,’ she said and stood up.

  When she had disappeared out to the hall Tanya lent forward. ‘She’s not what I expected.’ she whispered.

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘A slapper.’

  ‘She’s not that.’

  Douglas looked up and saw Shona standing over him holding out the keys. ‘Do you want to do the
computer before or after rummaging through Annabel’s drawers?’

  ‘How big is the hard drive?’

  ‘Four terabyte, enough for two or three thousand hours of video on two channels, when it’s full it starts writing over the oldest stuff.’

  ‘I’ll call for a techie guy to swap it for another one.’

  ‘Is he qualified to do that?’

  Douglas stepped back. ‘He would be most offended to hear you say that.’

  ‘He might be Douglas, but can he do it without damaging my computer?’

  ‘I guarantee he will not break your computer.’

  *****

  ‘She’s very friendly,’ Tanya said as they looked round Annabel’s living room cum kitchen.

  ‘A friendly person that’s all,’ Douglas replied.

  ‘That door of hers is pretty solid, I’d guess its steel.’

  Douglas shrugged and began to pull on a pair of thin forensic gloves. ‘If you had Tony Doherty as an uncle you’d have a pretty hefty door.’

  Tanya put on her forensic gloves. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Has the dishwasher been run?’

  Tanya walked over to the kitchen area and opened the dishwasher door to look inside. ‘Yes, all the stuff is gleaming,’ she said.

  ‘OK anything not in the dishwasher; mugs or cups on the shelves could have her prints on them, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, ashtrays and cigarette ends, also diaries, computers, phones, memory pens. Any pads of paper, or note blocks, can have writing impressions on them.’