The Medusa Curse

by Gabrielle Lord

  Phoenix led Mike over to a small device that looked like a cross between a set of scales and an old-school calculator. Mike took out a small, square glass container. ‘This is a cuvette,’ he explained. ‘I put some of the sample in here, and it fits the slot in the colorimeter. The machine passes light through the sample and reports on how particular wavelengths are absorbed. This can tell us about the micro- and macro-nutrients in the soil.’

  Mike deftly set the machine going, with Phoenix hovering attentively at his shoulder. After a few minutes, the machine produced a printout. ‘These are the concentrations in parts per million,’ said Mike. He compared the printout with his analysis of the sample taken in the Velocity wing. ‘The samples are very close. I can say with some certainty that the soil you collected from the Velocity wing is indistinguishable from the soil found in the storage area under Dr Zhang’s office.’

  ‘The ram-raid car could have been parked there and brought the sandstone in with the mud,’ said Jazz.

  ‘It’s highly likely,’ confirmed Mike. ‘But there was something else in that first sample, something synthetic.’

  Phoenix nodded. ‘We thought so too.’

  ‘Our guess was carpet,’ added Jazz.

  ‘Not a bad guess. Looking at the results, the fibres appear to be artificial grass.’

  ‘Seems a bit weird for that to be tracked in by a car, doesn’t it?’ asked Phoenix dubiously.

  Jazz tapped her fingers on the bench. ‘Maybe those fibres didn’t come from the tyres. Remember the footprints? Maybe whoever took Sapphire brought it on their shoes. Maybe they play a lot of tennis—’

  ‘Or miniature golf!’ Phoenix joked.

  Jazz glanced at the clock. It was past noon. The first 48 HOURS were melting away; but their net was tightening. Was it tightening fast enough?

  05:00

  The good mood in the lab was soon interrupted as a notification came through on Jazz’s phone. ‘Oh no!’ she cried.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Phoenix.

  ‘There’s a warrant out for Dr Zhang’s arrest!’

  ‘What?’ said Phoenix. ‘Why?’

  ‘It says here he’s wanted for questioning over multiple counts of fraud, as well as an incident at the museum two nights ago.’

  ‘So the police are making the same connections we are,’ said Phoenix. ‘There’s evidence mounting against him and as long as he isn’t around to speak for himself it’s no surprise that the police are becoming more suspicious.’

  ‘Speak for himself . . .’ Jazz repeated thoughtfully. ‘There is one bit of evidence we have in his favour.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Phoenix, curious.

  ‘The phone calls we overheard, and his reaction to them. He wasn’t behaving like someone going along willingly with a scheme.’

  ‘They’re hardly evidence, though. If only we could hear what was being said on the other end of the line . . .’

  Jazz looked at him quizzically.

  ‘The voicemail,’ explained Phoenix. ‘You wouldn’t let me listen to it before, something about following proper procedures, I believe?’

  ‘But it’s too late now. Mack’s given it to the police.’

  Phoenix smiled enigmatically as he pulled his own mobile out of his backpack and started dialling a number. ‘At this point, I’m sure you’ll agree that proving Dr Zhang’s innocence is worth bending a few rules for,’ he said.

  Jazz thought he looked totally smug, but she took the bait and asked, ‘Phoenix, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Before I delivered the phone to Mack, I copied Zhang’s text messages to my own phone and—’ He broke off to laugh at Jazz’s outraged expression. ‘Chill, I only copied the ones from the past 12 months. And I haven’t read them. No desire to! Just . . . you never know. They might come in handy.’

  ‘OK,’ Jazz said. ‘Just remember this is Mack’s dad you’re talking about. How would you like it if he hacked into your phone and read your messages?’

  ‘It’s a totally different situation.’ Phoenix protested.

  ‘I don’t think the police would think so,’ Jazz said. ‘Anyway, what does this have to do with his voicemail?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you! While I was copying the text messages, I realised I could set up a remote access login to his voicemail. I’m sure the police have listened to the message by now, so there shouldn’t be anything wrong with us having a listen too.’

  Phoenix finished dialling the number and keyed in the access codes to log into the voicemail service. Then he placed his phone on the bench and switched it to speaker.

  ‘Your half-hour to reconsider is up, Zhang. We’re taking Sapphire whether you like it or not. No more warnings. No more threats. We’re coming for you, and your family.’

  Silence settled on the room.

  ‘Poor Dr Zhang,’ Jazz finally said, her voice a whisper. ‘They were threatening his family as well.’

  Phoenix flicked back his fringe and grabbed his laptop. ‘Hang on,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Mike.

  ‘That voice—it’s familiar.’ Phoenix clicked on a shortcut to the audio software he used for the recording at Kendricks. ‘There’s a lot of background noise but I’ll fiddle with the levels until I can isolate the voice.’ He moved equaliser bars up and down until Delgado’s conversation with Sammy came through clearly. Next, Phoenix uploaded Dr Zhang’s voicemail message and played both recordings, one after the other.

  During playback Phoenix watched a line on a chart at the bottom of the screen. It went horizontal between words, but each time a voice spoke a patch of vertical lines appeared, varying in height and thickness.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phoenix. ‘You can see the similarities in the waveforms from the two recordings. And if we look at the frequencies, it’s evidence that both recordings are the same voice. That threatening phone call to Dr Zhang was from Delgado. This proves he’s the one pressuring Dr Zhang to help them steal Sapphire.’

  ‘Dr Zhang’s not going to prison for this, no way!’ said Jazz with great determination. ‘Whatever he’s mixed up in, he’s been forced into it. We saw him after that phone call—he looked terrified. If people are forced into an action with threats of violence, that’s not a crime.’

  ‘But what are they going to do with Sapphire?’ asked Mike. ‘They can’t copy it, surely.’

  ‘No,’ said Phoenix. ‘But Sapphire has the capacity to smash through any firewall, any password, any encryption no matter how brilliant, and unravel every security system in every bank, airport, electricity grid, and high-security government department. Sapphire could render all security systems completely useless. A lot, and I mean a lot, of very bad people would pay as high a price as Delgado chooses for that service.’

  ‘But they’d need the frequencies to make Sapphire operational,’ said Jazz. ‘And only Sir Robert knows them.’

  ‘Then how safe is he?’ Mike asked

  ‘We’d better find out,’ said Phoenix. ‘I’ll check with the hospital.’ He made the call and hung up. ‘Sir Robert left the hospital this morning,’ he said.

  Jazz pulled out Sir Robert’s business card and shoved it at Phoenix. ‘Call him! Find out if he’s OK.’

  Phoenix did so. ‘Straight to voicemail.’

  ‘He could be in great danger.’

  ‘But he’s smart. He’ll know his information is vital to the criminals and will stay low.’

  ‘If they get hold of him . . .’ Mike started to say.

  ‘They’ll make him talk,’ Phoenix said in a whisper, ‘and then it’s all over.’

  05:08

  The trio left the lab, binning their personal protection equipment on the way out. Almost immediately, the doorbell rang.

  ‘That’ll be Anika,’ said Jazz, going to the front door.

  Anika was in her athletics gear and carrying a big sports bag. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I can’t stay long, I’ve got training in an hour.’

&
nbsp; In the living room, Jazz, Phoenix and Mike brought Anika up to speed on everything they’d found out so far.

  ‘So, really,’ Jazz concluded, ‘Toby Grimshaw is the missing link. What have you found out from his files?’

  Anika pulled her laptop out of her sports bag and opened it up. ‘There were loads of hits from those searches you set up. So I looked through everything and put anything relevant into a separate folder.’

  Jazz and Phoenix nodded, eager to see what Anika had unearthed. They opened up the folder on their own devices. Jazz started transferring the contents to CrimeSeen.

  ‘OK, the first search results were from “statue”. From what I can see, Toby was the one in charge of organising the shipping of Medusa. His father paid the bill, of course, but Toby managed all the arrangements. There are quite a few emails about it between the two of them.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ commented Jazz. ‘Phoenix, remember Sir Robert said that he thought we would have seen Toby around the museum?’

  ‘Must have been because Toby offered to ship the statue,’ said Phoenix.

  ‘The next document is the shipping invoice,’ said Anika.

  ‘We can guess that shipping cost a bomb,’ said Phoenix, ‘sending something as huge, fragile and valuable as that all the way across the world.’

  ‘It’s not the cost that’s interesting. Look at the route.’

  Jazz and Phoenix examined the document. It showed that rather than being shipped directly from England, the statue had first been sent to France.

  ‘It was taken off at Marseille,’ commented Phoenix.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Jazz. ‘That’s in the south of France, not far from where Toby’s holiday pictures were taken.’ She opened up Toby’s Facebook page. ‘The dates match!’ she exclaimed. ‘Grimshaw was in France at the same time as the statue.’

  ‘Maybe the ship had to stop and refuel. Or some French archaeologists wanted to have a look at it,’ offered Mike.

  ‘Under the same search,’ continued Anika, ‘a name that came up a lot was Camille Wolf-Ferrari.’

  Phoenix nodded. ‘Yeah, we saw her on Facebook too. His girlfriend, I guessed.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Anika. ‘I looked her up. There are loads of news articles about her, mostly in French, but I managed to find one on a British site. She used to be director of Galerie du Sud, in Nimes, but has been completely discredited after being found guilty of fraud.’

  ‘What kind of fraud?’ asked Jazz.

  ‘Illegally copying artworks.’

  Phoenix sat up straighter. ‘Seriously? And Toby Grimshaw was hanging out with her in France, while the Medusa was there?’

  ‘How long was the statue in France?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Just overnight by the looks of the shipping invoice,’ replied Anika.

  ‘Did you find anything about Dr Zhang?’ Jazz asked.

  ‘Yep, plenty,’ said Anika. ‘There were heaps of emails between them from a while ago, lots of stuff about Toby saying he was a huge fan of the museum. What’s odd though was that they were emailing each other almost daily, then all of sudden nothing.’

  ‘Weird,’ agreed Jazz. ‘Anything to suggest why?’

  ‘Here’s the last email between them.’

  Jazz clicked on the link and found herself on the homepage of SecureSpeak. ‘I guess they were worried about online privacy. Without their log-in details we won’t be able to see any more of their messages.’

  ‘I wonder . . .’ said Phoenix, reaching for his phone.

  The others watched as he clicked on an app and opened a document file. It was a list of text messages ordered by date. As Phoenix began rapidly skimming through them, Jazz realised their significance.

  She explained to Anika.

  ‘It’s all of Dr Zhang’s text messages from the past year. Before Mack handed his phone over to the police Phoenix hacked into it to save a copy of them.’

  ‘Is that even legal?’

  Jazz rolled her eyes. ‘It wasn’t my idea, but—’

  ‘Bingo!’ Phoenix cried, cutting Jazz off. ‘There’s a text message from Toby Grimshaw on the same date as that last email. I bet it’s the username and password.’

  Phoenix typed the details into SecureSpeak. The cursor spun on the screen for a few seconds then . . . ‘We’re in!’ he cried triumphantly.

  A thought occurred to him and he chuckled and looked at Jazz. ‘It’s like that old guy said, “Every contact leaves a trace”.’

  Jazz laughed out loud. ‘And Locard could have had no idea about online messaging!’

  They all crowded around Phoenix’s laptop to read the chat between Toby Grimshaw and Dr Zhang.

  DrZ

  I can’t carry on with our endeavour as things currently stand. It’s getting out of hand. From now on, I’ll take my chances with sorting out the museum’s financial issues myself.

  LuckyT

  And how do you plan to do that? By abandoning the money you invested?

  DrZ

  If that’s what it comes to, yes. But the patent is my own. I can find my own suppliers if your industry contacts refuse to do business without you.

  LuckyT

  Maybe we can work this out. What’s got you spooked?

  DrZ

  I visited Kendricks today.

  LuckyT

  And?

  DrZ

  I saw evidence that you are accelerating the project without my knowledge.Your men have removed valuable artefacts from the museum without my authorisation. I saw ten times the number of copies we agreed on! Hundreds more certificates bearing my signature!

  LuckyT

  My associates have been a little enthusiastic. But look on the bright side! The faster we move, the sooner we see the cash.

  DrZ

  I don’t understand how you can be so cavalier about this! Thank you for your work so far, but I’m sorry. This is where we part ways.

  LuckyT

  I’ve got an offer from a potential buyer that might change your mind.

  DrZ

  No.

  LuckyT

  It’s a sure-fire bet.

  DrZ

  I’m not interested in bets. Gambling might be your favourite activity but it’s certainly not mine. It’s an expensive hobby, and from what I’ve heard, one you can ill afford.

  LuckyT

  I’ll do you a favour, just this once, and ignore that. But it would be a big mistake for you to ignore this client. Come to my place at the usual time, and we’ll meet the man in person. After that, if you still want me out, I promise I’ll go quietly. I’ll even return the remainder of your investment.

  CHAT ENDED

  ‘So Toby’s involved in the loaning and forging too,’ said Phoenix. ‘But who is this potential buyer?’

  Anika frowned. ‘Maybe one of Toby’s millionaire mates? Or even his dad? It’s got to be someone with money . . . and power.’

  But Jazz was more concerned about something else. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Dr Zhang wasn’t upset that the artefacts were being copied. He was only worried that there were too many copies being made. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It makes sense if he’s guilty,’ Phoenix said.

  Jazz just shook her head. What was she going to tell Mack?

  ‘It looks bad,’ Mike said gently, ‘but maybe we’re not seeing the whole picture. And if Zhang had a patent . . . well, he couldn’t have a patent to do something illegal.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jazz, suddenly grateful that she’d agreed to include Mike in their investigation. ‘All this evidence is circumstantial. Until we find Dr Zhang—’

  ‘And Sapphire,’ interrupted Phoenix.

  ‘Until we find them,’ Jazz said, talking over him, ‘we can’t make any assumptions. We just need to look at the evidence with an open mind and follow where it leads us.’

  While Jazz was talking, Anika was looking through some more of Toby’s files on her laptop.

  �
�What are you doing?’ Phoenix asked her.

  ‘Looking for something. I didn’t think it was significant earlier, but . . .’ Anika paused, absently tucking a lock of long dark hair behind one ear. ‘Ah, here it is!’ She pointed to her screen. ‘Dr Zhang’s reference to Toby’s gambling means this email attachment makes more sense.’

  ‘That’s a very big debt,’ commented Mike as they read through the letter.

  ‘Phoenix, look,’ said Jazz excitedly.

  Jazz was pointing to the casino logo on the letterhead. She opened up CrimeSeen to show her friends the image Phoenix had pieced together with his Jigsaw app. The symbols on the logo and in the image were a match!

  ‘Of course!’ said Phoenix.

  Mike and Anika looked at one another, puzzled.

  ‘Neptune’s trident!’ he explained. ‘We found it on some broken-up object on the floor of the Velocity wing after the ram raid. Jazz thought it was a piece of ancient pottery knocked over by the car, but it couldn’t have been. It must have come from the casino!’

  ‘So you think whoever stole Sapphire had come from the casino?’ asked Anika, not convinced. ‘But what would break like that? A souvenir? And why would anyone carry around something like that anyway?’

  Mike was looking closely at the image on CrimeSeen. ‘It’s definitely the same logo, but I think Jazz was still right about it being broken pottery. It’s a casino gambling chip. Top casinos like Neptune’s make their chips out of clay. It could have fallen out of someone’s pocket and been stepped on in the rush to get away.’