Eventually, on the outskirts of Oban they struck pay dirt.
The cyclist drew up to a parking area on the left of the street heading out of town, behind a large red Ford estate hatchback.
They watched him open the back of the car, put the bicycle into the back of the car, and then get into the car and drive off.
A red box automatically appeared around the number plate at the back of the car, and a drop-down box appeared on the right of the screen, which soon populated with details of the car from the DVLA.
It was a rental car from one of the top rental firms.
Within seconds, one of the analysts working the data feeds had opened up a direct link to the database of the rental firm and was formally requesting information on the car which had been identified from the rental company. The analyst also provided details of the warrant which had been organised by DCS Wilkinson and signed by the Home Secretary in the past thirty minutes. The warrant gave UK law enforcement agencies the requisite permission to access numerous databases and request information from partners with respect to their named Subjects of Interest.
Once the warrant details had been entered into the system, cooperation from the rental agency was swift.
In took only a few minutes for the digital interface to the rental agency to provide details of where the car had been hired from, the name of the driver, the address of the driver, a mobile number for the driver, his age, date of birth, a copy of his driving licence, and his credit card.
Dean’s heart began to thump faster and faster.
This was it.
They’d done it!
Eureka!
“Hang on a second,” the analyst cautioned him. “Before you get too excited, we need to verify the details.”
“What do you mean?” Dean asked.
“Watch the green box on that screen. Keep an eye on it… ” the analyst directed, pointing to one of the large monitors on the desk. “If it stays empty, you can celebrate.”
Dean didn’t understand, but his eyes stayed glued to the green box.
Fifteen seconds passed, then text began to stream into the box.
“Sorry,… but it’s a stolen identity. Very professionally done, but as you can see the credit card was cloned about two months ago. The driver’s licence and everything else is fake. We see this a lot now.” The analyst pushed back in his chair and swore.
“Shit… and worst of all, if you look at that, it tells us that the phone is a burner. No details. A SIM card bought in Tesco. For cash.”
“So, what, we get nothing from this? No intelligence at all?”
“A little. We have the number. And even though it’s a burner, we may be able to do something with it. Keith, can your pals in ACT do anything with that?”
The analyst pushed back in his chair and looked over at his colleague Keith. Keith was nodding, but already passing the details from what they’d learned from the hire car over to his colleagues in London.
“What now then?” Dean asked.
“Now we try to track the rental car back to where he drops it off. Then see if we can follow him on CCTV and find out where his real car is, and try to get the plate number of that. This guy’s a pro. He’s not going to drive the rental car home and park it outside his house. He may even dump it somewhere without returning it, but I doubt that. Even though he’s got a false identify, I don’t think he’ll want to draw any undue attention to himself, by having the rental company report a theft. Personally I wouldn’t get my hopes up on this, but you never know. We should still do the plod work.”
Dean nodded.
“He only has to make one mistake, and we might have him.”
The analyst laughed.
“Too bloody right!” he agreed. “It doesn’t matter how clever these bastards think they are. It only takes one mistake and we’ll nail them hard!”
-------------------------
12.55
McKenzie finished the Greggs sausage roll and wiped the corners of his mouth with the white paper napkin provided.
He felt guilty, and in his imagination he could hear Fiona’s voice telling him off for eating such rubbish. “That stuff just clogs up your arteries and Little One will need a Dad all his life, not just until you drop dead with a heart-attack.”
She was right, he knew, and he just wished she was here now to tell him off in person.
He promised himself then and there, that when he brought her home with Little One later that day, he would give up Gregg’s sausage rolls on the spot.
He felt a message arrive on his phone and he pulled it out of his pocket.
A voice message. Dial 121.
Licking the rest of the grease from his finger, he tapped in ‘121’ and prepared to listen.
“You have one voice message, left today at 00.56 a.m. The caller withheld their ID.”
McKenzie instantly recognised the voice after the first syllable and a cold shiver shot down his spine. He immediately tensed in anticipation of what was to come.
An evil, computerised, deep voice.
“With No.4 out the way, I wonder what will happen today?
Hint: it’s not long to go until we reach five,
At which point GasBag will no longer be alive.”
McKenzie’s hands began to shake. The room began to spin, and he found himself struggling to breathe. His heart was beating wildly.
Breath. Take long. DEEP. Breathes.
Focus. Breath. Focus.
Find. The BASTARD. The BASTARD!
Focus.
Breath.
Another deep breath.
Gradually the room slowed down, and the world began to stop moving.
His heart started to beat slower. More steadily.
A few minutes later he was able to think clearly again.
He listened to the message once more, and then forwarded it to Ray Luck at ACT.
McKenzie knew that theoretically he should now inform DCS Wilkinson, but he had no intention of doing so.
He’d spoken to Luck at twelve o’clock. Luck was confident that they were making great progress and that it was a matter of hours, not days, before they would track Hamish Hamilton down.
McKenzie dialled Ray’s number.
“I just finished listening to it,” Ray said, without any formalities. “So, you reckon we only have until five o’clock?”
“That’s what it looks like,” McKenzie admitted.
“Okay, I’ll tell the team to pull out all the stops. We need a name and address in the next hour if we’re going to be able to arrange a rescue.”
“He may not be holding her at his home. That would be unlikely.”
“True, but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, DCI McKenzie.”
Then Ray hung up.
-------------------------
Henderson’s Restaurant.
Edinburgh
13.00
Marie was smiling again.
Stuart had just walked into the restaurant carrying the biggest bouquet of flowers she’d ever seen, and she couldn’t help but notice that everyone was turning their heads as he walked past them.
“For me?” she asked, hopefully.
“For you.” He offered them to her with both hands. “And I’m sorry. For leaving you last night, when I had to go. And for being late just now.”
It was just then that Marie saw the big scratch on Stuart’s face.
“How did that happen?” she asked, reaching out to stroke it as he sat down beside her and kissed her. Rather passionately. Full on the lips.
“The scratch? Oh, it’s nothing. I went to the gym first thing this morning, and I did some sparring with my coach.”
“I didn’t know you could box?” she asked.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Marie. Not all of it good. But with you beside me I hope to put my bad boy days behind me and turn over a new leaf.”
“Does that mean you’ve decided to come with me to Poland and work for yo
ur company there with our charity?”
“If you’ll let me?”
“Stuart, yes. Definitely! Can I tell your company the good news?”
“Yes. By the way, did you get that cheque they promised you?”
“No. Not yet. But they promised that they’d give it to me this evening. By the way, are you free this evening? Ben Venue Capital Assets is going to introduce me to the First Minister of Scotland, and she’s going to present me with a cheque tonight. They asked me to invite my other half.”
“You want me to be your other half?”
“Please?”
“I don’t know. Meeting the First Minister. I don’t know if that’s my scene… ”
“Don’t be shy, I’ll hold your hand!”
He laughed.
“I’m sorry, I’ll be tied up with meetings until after six. I’ve got something happening then. I don’t know if I can get out of it.”
“It’s not till six-thirty.” She said, and paused. “Please come. But I’ll understand if it’s short notice, and you’ve other things to do.”
Stuart looked deeply into her eyes.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to be there. If I can, I promise I will, but if I can’t, then please don’t be upset with me. What would I have to wear, anyway?”
“You’d be meeting the top person in Scotland. Smart! Dess smart!”
“I’ve already met the top person in Scotland,” he said, truthfully, and kissed Marie. “And I made love to her last night. Twice.” He whispered in her ear.
Marie blushed. Then after sniffing the flowers and putting them down on the bench seat beside her, she looked at Stuart, quite seriously.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you. Is this too fast for you? I’m not scaring you away, am I?”
“First of all, Marie, it would take a lot to scare me. And second, my only regret so far, is that this didn’t happen twenty years ago. This… ,” he said, “is just amazing.”
He kissed her then. Long and passionately.
When he pulled back, it took a moment for Marie to be able to open her eyes.
Almost as if she’d been hypnotised.
For a moment, she was speechless.
Then she said one word.
“Wow!”
Chapter 52
Wednesday
ACT
London Bunker
Room 2
13.05
Ray looked at the clock.
Several hours had already passed.
Things had not been progressing as fast as he’d hoped for.
The SoI, Hamish Hamilton, was obviously very clever at what he was doing, and seemed to have covered many of his bases.
Ray knew that if he had twenty-four hours, Hamish Hamilton would have no chance.
With the technology now at his disposal, no human being could hide any more. It was always just a matter of time. Normally minutes. Seldom hours.
Time was not on their side, however. It seemed that from the warning just received it would all be over by five o’clock this afternoon.
There were three teams in the room today. The Green Team, The Blue Team, and The Red Team.
He summoned them all together.
“Okay, things have changed. We have less than four hours before we’re rescuing a corpse. Forget the competition between you. From now on, you’re talking to each other. One person from each team is keeping the other teams aware of what you’ve each got or have found. I want cooperation. If we find Mrs McKenzie and bring her home alive, I’ll treble what’s in the pot, and we’ll all get drunk tonight. Okay? Good. Make it happen!”
Hannah from the Red Team considered the latest news. The number of anchors had just increased. Their team-member in Edinburgh had passed down the information they’d found from the rental company.
She knew, as did other members of ACT, that there were two ways of going about this now.
The SoI had started committing a series of murders in the past week. He’d probably been planning it for a while. As a result, it was likely that most of the subterfuge he was using to cover his identity and tracks was probably recent, intended for the time during which he was committing the murders.
Hannah knew that if she went back in time far enough, she would be able to find a period when the SoI would most likely have been acting normally, just being himself. At that point he would probably have had nothing to hide. He’d be driving his own car. Making calls on his own mobile. Living in his own flat or house. If so, they would be able to track him down. However, going back in time would take longer. And there was no guarantee how far they would have to go back.
They would be able to do it, no doubt, but could they do it in the next few hours? She didn’t know.
On the other hand, if Hannah and the others started ‘pairing’, then they may come up with the answer they needed sooner by analysing more recent data.
Pairing was basic training for those in ACT. It was based upon the basic principle that when people started committing crimes, criminals in the digital age mostly now started to use burners - pre-paid mobile phones which they could use during a crime and then throw away afterwards. However, almost all criminals still kept their own private phone. The cleverest ones didn’t carry their private phones with them when they used a burner. But most criminals didn’t know that modern technology enabled the law enforcement agencies to find and track a mobile phone even if the phone was switched off and the battery was taken out. Most just switched it off and didn’t use it. Sometimes they didn’t even switch it off.
This meant that when the law enforcement agencies were able to detect a burner on an SoI, they mostly also found a second mobile number, sometimes even a third, belonging to a second phone or third phone which the criminal was carrying.
If you knew the locations where criminals were operating, and you could get the CSPs to identify all the numbers for all the phones in that area, then simply by comparing the lists of phones detected in each area, and then finding which phones were also appearing in the other areas, would the analysts be able to determine which phones were owned by the criminal.
When Hannah had first been trained on it, she’d found it a little confusing, but as soon as she started to work it in practice, she’d understood it completely.
And now, looking for Hamish Hamilton, the principle should, in principle, help them find what they needed.
In principle.
The only way to find out if it would work here, was to try.
Glancing across at Kyle, she saw that he was already hard at work. Although Ray had said the competition was over, if anyone was going to beat her to the answer, it would be him.
First of all, she took note of the physical location that Hamish Hamilton had rented the car from which he had then subsequently driven to Oban and then parked, before offloading a bicycle. From the information that the rental firm had made available to DI Dean in Edinburgh, Hannah then noted the time that he had signed the document in the office. She then put the time and location into Audirex and waited for it to give her a list of all the mobile phones active in the area at that time.
There were about ninety numbers on the list.
Hannah then took the location of the caravan from where Fiona McKenzie had been abducted, as well as the time the neighbour had told the police that they had heard a commotion coming from the caravan. She put both into Audirex.
A few minutes later, she was sent a list of twenty mobile numbers.
Hannah then took both lists, copied them and dropped them into another app which compared the lists and pulled out any numbers which appeared in both of the lists.
There were two numbers on the list. She called them ‘A’ and ‘B’.
One of them was the number DI Dean had learned about from the official application form for the rental car. The other one was a new number.
Maintaining her momentum, she ran the location of the original petrol station where the SoI had been seen receiving a phone call,
and she generated the list of phone numbers again.
She then copied that list of numbers and compared it with the list of numbers from the car rental firm. This comparison generated two numbers as well. One of the numbers was the one found originally in the rental firm application by DI Dean, but the other was a new one. She called them ‘A’ and ‘C’.
Lastly Hannah then took the list of all the numbers found at both the Caravan and the Petrol station and dropped them into the computer app which compared them and she found that two numbers popped up. She already knew both of these numbers. They were ‘B’ and ‘C’.
From this work, Hannah had found that Hamish Hamilton had at least three phones. She knew that he was the person carrying those phones and that he had two of them at each of the places he visited. What she didn’t yet know was the name he had used on the records as the owner of those phones, or the address he had used on the mobile phone service application forms.
DI Dean had already got the details of the owner of phone ‘A’, but as of yet she knew nothing about the identity recorded against the ownership or mobile phone service subscriptions for phones ‘B’ and ‘C’.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Entering both numbers ‘B’ and ‘C’ into Audirex, she pushed back in her chair and crossed her fingers.
She only had a minute to wait, then Audirex answered her question.
Unfortunately, it turned out the ‘C’ belonged to a burner phone. There was no subscription associated with it with any telephone company. The number belonged to a pre-paid SIM Card which Hamish had bought over the counter in a supermarket.
‘C’ however, was a different kettle of fish altogether.
According to Audirex the phone belonged to a Neil Macbeth. He lived on a farm on the outside of a village about ten miles from North Berwick. The good news was, that unlike number ‘A’ which had turned out to belong to a stolen identity, Neil McBeth’s name was not triggering any alerts. It could be the real deal!
Hannah was excited.
The news seemed really promising, but she was trained to remain calm in these circumstances and to also check the facts as much as she could.
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