The Family

by P. R. Black

  Becky was squeezing a rubber ball in her right hand; she switched it to her left, smiled again, and took the pass while the young man on reception buzzed her through.

  She was perfectly calm as she followed the lift to the third floor, as directed, and was prepared for someone ambushing her on the first and second floors. No one appeared; nor did the lift plunge near the top, a scenario which she had envisaged as being unlikely but not impossible.

  The foyer was bright, well-lit and thickly carpeted; even the security door seemed warm and inviting. ‘Information Technology’, said the sign.

  Becky waved her pass in front of a sensor, and the door clicked open.

  She strode through the corridor, scanning every face she passed. One tall, broad man in a plaid shirt was pouring coffee at a machine set up on a counter. He turned to flirt with a girl who stood alongside him, and his shy grin, as much as his pudgy face and blond beard, told Becky he wasn’t the one she was looking for.

  Third door on the right was his office; a silver sign proclaimed the name. Before she could knock, the door opened, and Mr Nicolas Arthur appeared.

  His face registered shock. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She took a second or two to recover. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Nicolas Arthur.’ He extended a hand; Becky took it. ‘Won’t you come in?’

  He offered her a seat at his desk. The office was tidy, almost obsessively so. The glass in a set of broad internal windows allowed only the merest silhouettes to pass along the corridor outside. Along with the sparse furniture, it reminded Becky of a Japanese dojo. Robes, steaming cups of tea and gorgeous, servile women would have completed the picture.

  ‘Well, this is unexpected,’ Nicolas Arthur said, sitting opposite Becky at the desk. ‘What can we do for you?’

  It wasn’t him, of course. How could it have been? If Nicolas Arthur wasn’t the brother of the boy on reception, then he could easily have been his classmate. Finding that policemen were getting younger and younger was an old canard, but thinking that the IT guy was young was a new one on Becky. He was thick around the face, but it looked like puppy fat rather than good living, as if his flesh was taking a while to settle into its surroundings. He was about an inch shorter than Becky, thick round the chest and shoulders, and a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles clung to his nose. The accent was thick, and difficult to place – Polish, perhaps – but it wasn’t the voice she knew.

  In a prominent position on the desk – perhaps a little too prominent – was a picture of Nicholas with a pretty blonde girl with a gap in her teeth. A compact desktop computer and monitor were the only other things on the desk – no folderol, no notepads, no coffee rings. His hands, folded on the desk in front of him, were tiny, pink and babyish. It simply wasn’t him.

  She hadn’t actually prepared for this eventuality. ‘I just wanted to give you some information about the missing data in the investigation.’

  ‘Oh!’ He leaned forwards. ‘That’s causing us quite a headache.’

  ‘Yes… I believe you were hacked.’

  He paused. ‘I’m not authorised to give you any information, of course, but… yes, it’d be safe to say we’ve been accessed.’

  ‘I have a tip from an anonymous source that your personal data has been hacked.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing serious, just your personal profile. Apparently you are from Bucharest?’

  He laughed. ‘Something I am asked a lot. I was born there, but my family moved after Ceaușescu died. I’ve lived in Germany most of my life. The accent is odd, I know.’

  ‘Nicolas Arthur is your real name?’

  ‘No, my real name is Angelo Ianescu. My mother changed it when we moved abroad. Wanted to sound English, would you believe. Thought it would open doors for her.’ He shook his head, laughing.

  ‘And it also says you were born in 1954?’

  ‘Really?’ He turned to the computer. ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s buried in an old version of the main site. Not cached, I might add; it must have been dumped during a redesign.’

  ‘I wasn’t born in 1954,’ he chuckled. ‘I was born in 1984. For all our firewalls and passwords and encryption, there is no defence against a typo.’

  ‘You’ve been working here a while?’

  ‘Ten years. Long enough to get laugh lines,’ he deadpanned. Becky smiled, unable to help herself.

  ‘I found it odd that there’s no mention of you anywhere.’

  ‘Well, there’s a reason for that,’ he said, becoming serious. ‘IT is important to police investigations, I don’t need to tell you that. Our department and others across the service are becoming more and more like undercover operations. We’re under attack by hackers all the time – we’ve got to be alert and stay on top of the game. We’ve got people placed with various networks, of course, but we have to make sure we don’t get broken into. In your case, it looks like we were unsuccessful.’

  ‘Could the breach have come from inside here?’

  Arthur drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘We can’t rule that out. But we do know that the breaches pre-date our move to this office, and there appears to have been nothing in the past ten years. Our old offices were just round the block. It was so much easier to hack information then – if you knew what you were doing. There is another explanation, one that’s quite embarrassing for us, if true.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Carelessness. A lot of the data in your case files was scanned or re-typed manually from handwritten reports, or placed on old computer discs which became corrupt over time. It has happened before, and the trail of missing files does follow a recognisable pattern. Documents are misplaced, or filed in the wrong place, or records are not properly digitised. There are crimes committed every day; it’s a big task to feed everything into a computer system from incidents which happened decades ago. But,’ he added, raising a hand, ‘your case was particularly high profile and it has always had active elements. So we would never rule out something fishy going on.’

  ‘I see.’

  It wasn’t him; it couldn’t be. She only had to look at his face. The realisation was taking its time to sink in. ‘Well, I thought I was bringing you some more information.’

  ‘And, I’m guessing, you came to see the guy in charge, too. Would that be right?’ He was still pleasant and open, still smiling. ‘I’m also guessing you’re investigating in your own right. Well, let me say – I don’t blame you at all. I would, if it was me. But I want you to know that this isn’t just a matter of showing up for a job, for me. People are absolutely appalled by what happened to you, appalled. There are decent people out there, and decent people in this building, too. We’re desperate to help you find this guy. And we will.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, in a voice close to a croak.

  When he saw her to the door, she almost expected him to hug her, but he only shook her hand and passed a business card. ‘Please don’t hesitate to call me if there’s anything you need. As you can see, where you’re concerned, you don’t need an appointment.’

  Twenty minutes later, she was having coffee with Bernard and Rosie Banning.

  ‘Not him,’ she said simply.

  ‘Definitely?’ Rosie arched an eyebrow. ‘Could it possibly have been him? Height, voice, anything that matches at all? You were drugged, the last time you met.’

  ‘No, it’s not him. He was young, pudgy. Quite sweet.’

  ‘How about the profile we dug out?’ Bernard mumbled, midway through a forkful of three bean salad. ‘What about his age, the name? It all ties in with the guy you’re looking for.’

  ‘He explained that – the date of birth is a typo, apparently. And they don’t show faces or data on the website. Security issues. Strange that they should for so many of his colleagues. Loads of them have official Facebook and Twitter accounts, explaining exactly what they do.’

  Rosie’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘He was telli
ng me an absolute pack of lies,’ Becky said. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  52

  Becky was just in time. She’d already seen a van go down the driveway and took advantage of the open gate to walk up to the door. The house was two storeys, bulky and sprawling, dumped in the middle of suspiciously trim lawns. The curtains on the lower level were drawn back from the windows to show a house cleared of furniture, floorboards bare, walls magnolia. Becky imagined she could smell paint.

  A small woman emerged from the front door, blonde and in her fifties but extremely fit-looking with high, severe cheekbones. Becky supposed she wore casual clothes, but they still looked expensive; the jeans alone looked very high-end. She was followed by a young man carrying a pile of box files, the uppermost balanced beneath a fashionably stubbled chin. ‘Just in the back of my car with those,’ the woman said, unlocking a Land Rover parked on the driveway for him. Then she saw Becky, and she frowned.

  ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

  ‘My name is Becky Morgan. I’m here to talk about your husband.’

  The frown deepened. ‘I recognise you from somewhere, don’t I?’

  ‘I was with your husband shortly before he died.’

  Realisation smoothed the frown on her face. ‘I know you, now. Becky Morgan. That’s your name. They identified you, you know. From the CCTV with my husband. Then there were more stories. That business with your family. I’ve been reading lots about you.’ Mrs Galbraith’s tone was neutral.

  The young man with the pile of box files glanced uneasily at Becky as he struggled to release them one by one into the boot of the Range Rover. She moved to give him a hand, instinctively.

  ‘No, don’t bother,’ the woman said, raising a hand. ‘Stay exactly where you are. You’re a reporter, yes?’

  ‘I work for a newspaper, yes.’

  ‘Then you can turn round and leave my property, please, or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘I’m not here on a story.’

  ‘I don’t care why you’re here. Get out.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about the day he died.’

  The woman sighed, and her neck muscles tensed; she was gym-strong, toned thanks to a lifestyle of spin classes and pilates, but the lines on her neck gave away her age. Now what does that remind me of?

  ‘There’s nothing you have to say to me about the day he died, I can assure you.’

  ‘There is. The inquest verdict was suicide, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You know very well what the verdict was.’

  ‘I don’t believe Edwin Galbraith committed suicide.’

  The woman took a step closer. Becky suppressed a desire to put some distance between her and Mrs Galbraith. Her face was very close to Becky’s, and two grey eyes peered into hers. ‘And just how do you think he died?’

  ‘I think he was murdered. By the same person who killed my family.’

  The man with the box files called out; Angelica Galbraith dismissed him with a wave and he disappeared back into the house. ‘I read about your family,’ she said, at length. ‘Dreadful business. I can’t imagine having to go through something like that.’

  ‘It’s all relative. I can’t imagine having to go through what you did, either.’

  ‘Finding him… hasn’t been good for me,’ Mrs Galbraith said. ‘Not that it was a violent scene, of course. Exhaust pipe through the window. Classic, really. He looked as if he was fast asleep. I’m only glad our children weren’t home. So how do you think someone managed to kill Eddie?’

  ‘Your husband was mixed up in something horrible. He was the weak link, and he was about to be exposed. So he had to go.’

  ‘I’ve read all about you,’ Mrs Galbraith said, brisk and businesslike as a school headmistress. ‘It seems you’re writing a book about your experiences, aren’t you? Your search for the killer.’

  ‘I’m not really writing a book. You may be mixing me up with a colleague. But I do want to find the man who did it. I am almost sure your husband was killed. Maybe to order; maybe because he knew too much. There were drugs in his system, weren’t there? A cocktail of opiates, something to sap him of energy, to knock him out for a while.’

  ‘Yes. He took something to make his passing… comfortable. Hardly a method chosen by a psychopathic killer, is it?’

  ‘He might have been drugged. The killer’s clever, Mrs Galbraith. And he’s always well prepared. He’s got all the cards. But he’s starting to play them badly, and he’s getting worried. Your husband was murdered. I aim to prove it, in time.’

  ‘And my husband associated with a killer, did he?’

  ‘Yes. He was mixed up in a bad business. I’m sure of it.’ Becky took a half-step forward. It gave her no satisfaction when Mrs Galbraith flinched. ‘And you know he was, don’t you? You found something. Or suspected something. What wife wouldn’t?’

  Angelica Galbraith glanced down towards the paving stones, plucked free of weeds and altogether too bright for a well-trodden pathway. They’d been cleaned. ‘Come inside,’ she said.

  *

  There was a kettle and some cups left in the kitchen, a room roughly the same size as Becky’s entire flat. Mrs Galbraith offered to make tea. Becky chose to have a glass of water.

  The man in the plaid shirt passed by the doorway, boxes braced on his shoulders. ‘Is that your son?’ Becky asked Mrs Galbraith.

  The woman ignored this. ‘So. You were saying?’

  ‘You found something. About your husband.’

  ‘It wasn’t something I found,’ Mrs Galbraith said. ‘It was something that was missing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Not a physical thing… just a lack of something. Files had been deleted on our desktop computer. He had them encrypted. I never pried into those, believe it or not, but I was always curious.’

  ‘If he killed himself, I guess it could be possible he deleted something he didn’t want you to see before he did it,’ Becky suggested.

  ‘That crossed my mind. Then it turned out that my computer had been tampered with, too. I got my son to look into it – he works in computer technology. He showed that someone had accessed the computer while I was out, at roughly the same time as the desktop computer was last accessed.’

  ‘What would they have been looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was odd, though. Eddie didn’t even know where I kept my machine, that’s the thing. And the locks on the balcony door stick a little now, where they hadn’t before. It’s possible someone broke in.’

  ‘Did you have any suspicions about your husband?’ Becky said gently. ‘I’m sorry to ask. I need to know. If there’s anything, anything at all… it could help find the man who killed him.’

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ Mrs Galbraith said. ‘Just suspicions. The things you get suspicious about, but don’t follow up on. Times that didn’t add up; when he was working late, apparently, except I called his office and he wasn’t in. I suspected an affair. What do you think he was mixed up in?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Is there anything at all in his personal papers that can help? Did he have any interests or join any clubs?’

  Galbraith shook her head. Then she brightened. ‘He was into classical music – that’s about all I can think of. I don’t like it. Too dull. Our house sounded like a dentist’s waiting room at the best of times. I like rock n’ roll stars, myself. Bad boys.’ Her smile was brittle. ‘But classical was his passion. He was forever going to shows and recitals. Concert halls, orchestras.’

  Several beats passed. ‘Did he have any concerts lined up?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he did. He got tickets through for a show of some kind.’

  ‘Do you still have them?’

  ‘Right over here in the drawer. Found it wedged in between the bills. You’d think he’d hidden it.’

  She crossed over to a drawer set underneath the slate-coloured kitchen worktop, and brought out an envelope. Inside was a ticket, black embossed cardboard with golden lettering. It looked like i
t had been hand-crafted, not printed and torn off. ‘Here it is. Ticket for one. Doesn’t mention a venue, though.’

  Command performance, said the golden lettering.

  January Orchestra.

  No venue, and barring some filigree round the scalloped bordering, there was nothing save for an odd cruciform symbol in the bottom left hand corner.

  53

  She was a tall girl with glorious glossy black hair that induced an alien kick of jealousy in Becky. She had a delicate nose, full lips, coffee-coloured eyes and an almost maddeningly perfect complexion.

  She’s still got some growing to do. She’ll get lovelier still. She’s a real credit to him.

  Still clad in her school uniform, the girl had gone into a newsagent’s to buy a magazine; outside, she’d said goodbye to some friends – among them two or three spotty, scampering males who jabbed and elbowed each other, so far out of her league it was tragic. The girl perched on the seat in a bus shelter and idly watched their performances. The front cover of her magazine was completely dominated by a brutal close-up of a glossy, ebony face, a study in feline cool. Becky didn’t recognise the model, but she clearly needed no introduction to readers.

  The expression on the model’s face and on the girl’s above were curiously matched. Becky started the car and crept down the street, pulling up alongside her. The teenager squinted, an unconsciously hard expression in which she most clearly resembled her father, as Becky rolled down the window.

  ‘Hey, Lisa.’

  ‘Becky?’

  ‘You heading home? Get in, I’m on the way. I’ll take you.’

  Lisa slid her long frame into the passenger seat with some difficulty, having to adjust the seat to allow her legs.

  ‘Sorry,’ Becky said, ‘usually that seat’s just for my bag and pints of milk I pick up at the shop. Is your dad home today?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said. The girl seemed ill-at-ease next to her, but then she always had, after she’d grown old enough to be told what happed to Auntie Becky.

  It was a short journey from the town centre into the village, set in the midst of farmers’ fields and tussles of forest. It was a quiet little town with whitewashed brickwork and even one or two thatched roofs, a place that warmed your heart despite its clear tweeness. Sullen stacks of smoke climbed from chimneys, even in these warmer days, and Becky recalled with a shudder a very bleary night or two in The Cherry Blossom pub a decade or so ago.