By All Means (Fiske and MacNee Mysteries Book 2)

by Alan Alexander

  ‘Come on, guys! How often do my sitreps bring me news of two murders? We’ve only got two businesses in Scotland and I’m looking at a dead body in each of them on the same fucking weekend. What’s going on? What’s the connection?’

  Jack Eisner, Burtonhall’s Director of Security, looked up from the sitreps. ‘I just don’t know, Cy. I’ve had no security concerns about either of these businesses. But I can see that it looks like one hell of a coincidence.’

  ‘Yeah, you could say that! And here’s another couple of things to add into the coincidence mix. Both of these businesses are giving me some concerns. Vermont One is way short of the production targets we promised. And the profit margins from managing that goddam socialised hospital are so thin you can hardly see them. None of that is known outside of this building, and I’d like to keep it that way. I need to be sure that we’re managing this on the ground. Who’s handling PR for these operations?’

  Don Hamnett, the head of HR, looked uncomfortable. ‘Hedelco has no local PR function. We took it out to reduce overheads and safeguard profits. The press relations of the hospital are looked after by the Health Board.’ Packard looked pained. ‘And PR for Vermont One is handled by local management. Tammy Wootten.’

  ‘I really don’t want to wind this up by flying to Aberdeen unless it’s absolutely necessary. Apart from the fact that you don’t know if they’re connected, Jack, what details have you got on these killings.’

  ‘Absolutely none. Only what’s in the sitreps.’

  ‘Christ, I don’t pay you not to know about this kind of thing. You need to get over there, find out what the fuck is going on, and get back here by the end of the week, if possible. You can be in Aberdeen by tomorrow noon their time. And I want progress reports at least every day. More often if you turn up anything I should know, which is everything.’

  *

  The local press in Aberdeen had got wind of the hospital murder by the Saturday afternoon and of the body on Vermont One by Sunday morning. The North East Constabulary press office had confirmed that the two bodies had been found and that the deaths were being treated as suspicious. The need to wait for the post mortems to be completed made it possible to fend off questions about how the victims had died. None of he local crime reporters or the general reporters who worked as stringers for the nationals made any connection between Hedelco and Vermont One. A couple of the brighter sparks had expressed some scepticism about two murders on the same weekend being a coincidence. One of them had also mentioned the American connection to both of the crime scenes, but that was as far as it had gone, until early on Wednesday morning.

  Harry Conival, the press officer assigned to both murder investigations, took a call from a financial reporter on one of the London-based broadsheets.

  'Thanks for taking my call, Mr Conival.' That was two more surprises, Harry thought, on top of a call from a finance hack: a polite journalist and one who called him "Mr".

  'Pleasure. What can an almost innumerate PR man do for you?'

  'I was talking to one of my colleagues on the news desk about the two suspicious deaths over the weekend. Wouldn't normally interest me, but when he showed me the reports from our stringer and from the agencies, I couldn't help noticing that one body was found in a hospital run by Hedelco and the other on a platform run by Ebright.'

  'That's right.' Harry had no idea where this was going.

  'Do the investigating officers know that these companies are both owned by the same private equity company, Burtonhall?'

  Harry had only the vaguest understanding of what a private equity company was, but he was experienced enough to know, first, that he should respond non-committally, and, second, that Fiske and MacNee had to be told. It was for them to decide if this information, if it could be confirmed, was relevant to their enquiries.

  'I'll need to check on that, and come back to you, Mr ... I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, not used to dealing with new customers.'

  'Aaronson. Ben Aaronson'. He gave his mobile phone number and Harry promised to get back to him quickly, possibly within the hour.

  *

  Fiske and MacNee were already in Esslemont's office discussing how best to respond to the information that Hedelco and Ebright were owned by the same company. There was no reason to believe that this established a connection between the two murders, especially given the very different causes of death. However, as the DCS immediately pointed out, they needed to be able to respond effectively if they were. His first suggestion was that the two investigations should run in parallel, with two SIOs, reporting to him as Head of CID in overall charge.

  Vanessa, partly because of her past slightly abrasive relationship with Esslemont, but mainly because she didn't think it would work, had to find both a tactful way of arguing against it and a viable alternative. Ideally, she would have liked to discuss it with Colin, but it was vital that they make a decision quickly.

  'Sir, given your wider management responsibilities, wouldn't it be better, and more economical (‘Nice touch, that’, Colin thought.), if we simply brought the two murder investigations together, with me as SIO and Colin as Deputy SIO? We would each continue to lead our own part of the enquiry, with our own team in the field, but with regular broader team meetings and combined administrative backup. That would make it easier to record information and to identify and investigate any substantive connections.'

  Vanessa was uneasily aware that she was employing a style of argument and vocabulary that the DCS sometimes called 'Met speak', in a disparaging reference to her training and experience in London. Colin MacNee nodded his assent, but before the DCS could respond, Harry Conival appeared at the door.

  'Sorry to interrupt, but I've got something that you should know, if you don't already.' Vanessa had noticed before that Harry, who called her "Vanessa" or, if he wanted to be formal, "Chief Inspector", or, if he wanted to annoy her, "hen", never called Esslemont either "Sir" or "Chief Superintendent". She assumed that this was to emphasise his position as a civilian outside the chain of command, but she had never asked him. However, it was the kind of cussedness that would be wholly consistent with his general outlook: he had his job to do and the police had theirs. As long as his work supported theirs he could get away with quite a lot.

  Harry told them about Aaronson's call.

  'Thanks, Harry. As it happens, we did already know, but we didn't think anybody else did. What have you told the reporter?'

  'Just that I'd get back to him within the hour. What do you want me to say?'

  'Give us ten minutes and we'll give you a line. Vanessa or Colin will let you know and you can draft a release, if we think that's the way to go.'

  Harry nodded almost imperceptibly and left, heading not for the press office but to the car park for a smoke.

  Vanessa decided to get in first. 'That doesn't establish a connection, sir, but it does put the possibility in the public domain, or it will do when it goes up on the paper's website. We should pre-empt that by saying that we've established a possible connection between the murders, that it will be one among several lines of enquiry, and that we are now engaged in a single joint investigation. We'll still be reporting to you, and through you to the Chief, as you rightly suggested might be more necessary than in the case of an 'ordinary' murder.'

  She was pushing her luck, or pressing the advantage that Harry's information had brought her. She was also laying on a little flattery. Esslemont looked a little peeved, but he was a man for choosing carefully where to stand and fight.

  'All right. Get it done. We should get a press release out before Harry's deadline. Up to him to finesse depriving the reporter of an exclusive.'

  *

  As they walked back to the detectives' room next to Vanessa's office, Fiske and MacNee discussed who they needed on their team.

  'I've got Sara and Aisha and you've got Duncan and Stewart. We probably need another DS and we need to be able to deploy uniform to do the legwork. Could you come up with
a plan, Colin, with some idea of who should be doing what?' Colin nodded and Vanessa went on. 'Neil suggested that we might need some real financial experience on this, someone who can find their way quickly through company accounts, annual reports and the like. We need to know pretty quickly if there's anything in Hedelco, Ebright or indeed Burtonhall that might go to motive for either or both of these murders. And we need someone to analyse the content of these encrypted emails.'

  They had reached Vanessa's office. 'One more thing. We need to find out what happened to Keller's laptop.'

  *

  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.'