Finding Milly

by Nathan Burrows

  More photographs were hanging on the walls of the lounge, and an enormous flat screen television lurked in the room's corner. If he were a proper burglar, Jimmy thought, he’d have that in an instant. A large sofa with a purple throw sat opposite the television, the dented cushions in the centre of it identifying what would be the optimum viewing position. On a small table between the television and the sofa was a remote control and gaming console controller belonging to the PlayStation under the television.

  ‘I’d have that too,’ he mumbled as he turned his attention to what he’d come here for. The large iMac computer that was sitting on a narrow table against one of the walls. He felt round the back of the screen for the power switch and pressed it, slipping his hand into his pocket for the tiny external USB drive that Dave had given him. On the drive was a piece of software that would copy the entire contents of the hard drive onto it. While he waited for the computer to boot up, he looked around the kitchen before deciding to help himself to a beer from Max’s fridge, and once the software on his USB drive was up and running, he sat on the sofa to drink it, wondering what the score was at the football.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ a shrill voice barked behind him, and Jimmy almost spilt his beer. He snapped his head round to see a woman standing in the doorway of the lounge. Her mouth was half open, a look of terror on her face. It was Max’s girlfriend.

  His heart thumping, Jimmy got to his feet and turned to face her.

  ‘Um, I’m a friend of Max’s,’ he said, not sure what else to say.

  ‘Like fuck you are,’ she replied, reaching a trembling hand into the gym bag she was carrying and pulling out a mobile phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’ Jimmy took a step toward her, his hand out, and she dropped the bag and her phone on the floor and raised her hands to her face. ‘Please, don’t,’ she said, half screaming, half whispering. His heart sank as Jimmy realised that this was a woman who was used to being hit.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ Jimmy said, using the same voice that he’d used when Milly was a child and had woken up from a nightmare. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ The woman looked at him through a gap in her fingers.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked him again. ‘Are you from London?’

  ‘No,’ Jimmy replied. ‘My name’s Jimmy Tucker, and I live just outside Norwich.’ She lowered her hands and her forehead creased into a frown. She glanced over at the iMac, and Jimmy wondered if she realised what he was doing with Max’s computer.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ the woman asked, her voice strengthening. He knelt down, picked up her phone, and handed it to her.

  ‘Give me five minutes to explain, and then call the police if you still want to. I won’t stop you.’

  It didn’t take Jimmy five minutes to explain to Max’s girlfriend why he was in her boyfriend’s flat. He told her about Milly, about how she’d vanished, and about how he was convinced that Max had something to do with it. He told her about the photographs that Max had taken of the other girls and of Milly, but didn’t tell her he was convinced Milly had slept with Max to pay for hers, nor that several of the other women probably had as well. Jimmy didn’t think she needed to know about that. When Jimmy got to the part about meeting Simon, and discovering that his own daughter was a prostitute, he had a lump in his throat.

  ‘Your Max is involved. I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but he’s in it up to his neck.’

  When he had finished his story, he looked at the young woman. She was perched on the sofa, not in Max’s central position but on the edge. She looked at her phone, and Jimmy thought for a second about grabbing his USB drive and running. There was no way she could stop him. The only thing that stopped him doing it was the fact that while he’d been telling her the whole sorry story, she hadn’t looked surprised in the slightest. If anything, she looked resigned.

  The woman got to her feet, wobbling for a second on her heels as she put her phone on the coffee table next to the PlayStation controller.

  ‘Do you want another beer?’ she said. ‘I think we probably need to talk.’

  ‘Er, I don’t know how much time I’ve got,’ Jimmy replied, glancing at the lounge windows and the light from the stadium that was highlighting the closed curtains.

  ‘He won’t be back until the early hours,’ she said, slipping her shoes off and padding into the kitchen area. When she returned, she had two opened bottles of beer in her hands. When she walked past the computer, she paused and looked at the screen. ‘It’s nearly finished copying.’

  Jimmy thanked her as she handed him the fresh bottle.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said as they sat on the sofa. To his surprise, she laughed. It was a short, sharp bark of a laugh with no humour in it at all.

  ‘Jesus, what a night,’ she said. ‘I come round to my boyfriend’s flat to discover a burglar.’ She raised the bottle to her lips. ‘Not only that, but an incredibly apologetic one.’ The bottle tilted, and she half emptied it in one go. Jimmy was almost expecting her to wipe the back of her hand across her mouth and belch. ‘I’m Fiona, by the way,’ she said instead.

  Fiona had met Max, as he had told Jimmy, in London. They’d not moved back to Norwich together, though. He had followed her back, and then wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  ‘It flattered me at first, I suppose,’ Fiona said. ‘He was so sweet, so attentive. I would leave work and he’d be there, waiting for me with a bunch of flowers. I don’t meet many men, and I’ve got no family left, which I guess makes me an easy target.’

  ‘He didn’t stay sweet for long, I take it?’

  ‘Nope. But I didn’t realise that until later. Next thing I know, he’s moved up here lock, stock and barrel from London. He told me it was because he wanted a change of scenery and wanted to be closer to me.’ Fiona sighed and looked at Jimmy. ‘I found out later he’d been run out of London after some trouble down there.’ Jimmy waited to see if she would say any more about Max’s “trouble”, but she didn’t. ‘It was fun at first, I guess. We were both into the same things.’

  ‘What, like music and films?’ Jimmy asked. Fiona paused before replying.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking down at her lap. ‘In bed. But Max started pushing the boundaries further and further.’ Jimmy wasn’t sure exactly what to say to that. He’d broken into this woman’s flat, and she was now discussing her sex life with him.

  ‘Is that when you moved in together?’ he asked, more to change the subject than anything else.

  ‘I don’t live here,’ Fiona replied, laughing. ‘I only come round here when he summons me. Like tonight. He’ll be at the football, then the pub, then he’ll roll in here—pissed out of his head—expecting me to be in his bed with my legs open.’ Her laugh died, and she continued in a whisper. ‘Whether or not I want to open them. That’s why I’m leaving.’ She glanced at the gym bag that she’d dropped when she’d seen him, and Jimmy realised that it didn’t have any gym kit in it. It was empty.

  Jimmy looked at Fiona, a frown creasing his face.

  ‘I don’t blame you for not putting up with that,’ he said. On the table, the iMac pinged, and they both looked at it at the same time. The file transfer was finished.

  ‘The other night, I came round here, but I really wasn’t feeling well. I told him that, and he said it didn’t matter.’ A single tear trickled down her bruised cheek. ‘I told him no, but he didn’t listen. He just said “Okay, we can play that game if you want”. But I didn’t want to play a game. It didn’t stop him.’

  ‘That’s rape, Fiona,’ Jimmy said, a cold feeling in the centre of his chest. If Max walked in at that moment, Jimmy knew for sure the photographer would be leaving again through the window. ‘You should go to the police.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Fiona replied, ‘but when I said that to him he said he’d got enough videos to show that I like that sort of role play.’ She looked at him, tears now in both eyes, and as he watched her face hardened. ‘But do you know what? Fuck him.’ She
wiped the tears away and sniffed hard. ‘If I’d known what you just told me about your daughter, you wouldn’t have needed to break in. I’d have let you in myself.’ She picked up her phone and tapped away at the screen. Jimmy watched, concerned for a moment. Was she calling the police? ‘It’s okay,’ she said, picking up on his concern. ‘My mate’s waiting for me in the car. I’m just texting her to tell her I’ll only be a few minutes.’

  ‘So you are leaving him, then?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘By the time he gets back from the pub, I’ll be at Stansted Airport.’ She looked at him, a grim smile on her face. ‘When Max got the studio up and running, he had to have a co-signatory on the business accounts. Otherwise they wouldn’t have given him any money.’ Jimmy felt a smile of his own. There was more to this young woman than he’d realised. ‘I went to the bank this afternoon. He was doing quite well.’

  ‘You’ve cleaned him out?’

  ‘He can’t even buy a newspaper,’ Fiona replied, her smile becoming almost genuine. ‘Whereas I have a plane ticket and a healthy balance in my own off-shore account.’

  ‘You going anywhere nice?’ he asked. Fiona looked around the lounge for a few seconds, a distant look in her eyes.

  ‘It’s not here, it’s not with him. So, yeah. Somewhere nice and somewhere no-one from this shitty country will ever find me. Wait here for a sec.’

  Fiona got to her feet and grabbed something from the top shelf of one of the kitchen cupboards before picking up her gym bag and walking into the bedroom. Through the open doors, Jimmy could see her throwing some clothes into it. She knelt in front of the wardrobe and unlocked the top drawer, picking something up.

  ‘Max’s biggest problem is he thinks other people are stupid,’ she said a few seconds later, slipping a book-sized external hard drive into Jimmy’s coat pocket. ‘But I’m not. Everything’s on there. I’ve not looked on it, as I don’t want to know what else he’s been up to, but it’s all there. Could you do me a favour, though?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jimmy replied, feeling the drive through the material. It was heavy, solid. He couldn’t wait to see what was on it, but at the same time he was terrified of the thing.

  ‘If you’re going to give it to the Old Bill, just delete anything with me in it first.’ Fiona’s phone buzzed in her hand. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to miss my flight.’ Jimmy looked at her, wanting to give her a hug.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, ‘and good luck wherever you end up.’

  ‘I don’t need luck, Jimmy,’ she said with a smile. It was the first genuine smile he’d seen since she’d caught him in the act. ‘I’ve got money. Lots of money.’

  Chapter 42

  ‘Joe? It’s Jimmy.’

  ‘Yeah, I kind of guessed that when your name popped up on the screen. What you doing? You out for a run or something?’ Jimmy slowed his pace down. He was hurrying along Riverside toward the taxi rank by the station. There was no need for him to hurry, but he couldn’t wait to get back home and find out what was on the hard drive that Fiona had slipped into his pocket.

  ‘No, I’m just hurrying. Listen, mate. I’m down on Riverside. There’s this flat I just walked past, and the bloody door’s not locked. Anyone could just walk in there and clean the place out.’

  ‘Really?’ Joe replied, and Jimmy could hear the grin in his voice. ‘Let me just grab a pen.’ Jimmy gave him a couple of seconds and then continued. ‘It’s one of the ones in the block behind the River End. Number three hundred and fourteen. Third floor.’

  ‘Haven’t they got a central door?’

  ‘Some scrote’s wedged it open with an empty beer bottle.’

  ‘Bloody hell, some people.’

  ‘I know. I mean, there’s all sorts of nice stuff in there just waiting to be nicked.’

  ‘That would be criminal, Jimmy,’ Joe replied. ‘Absolutely criminal.’

  With a smile, Jimmy ended the call and walked toward the taxi rank.

  Twenty minutes later, Jimmy was safely back in his house. If he knew Joe, and he knew Joe very well, every part-time thief within half a mile of Carrow Road would be on their way to Max’s flat. He would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Max got back later that night, expecting a warm and perhaps willing Fiona tucked up in his bed, only to find a very empty flat. While he’d been in the back of the taxi, he’d texted Joe to let him know that the word on the street was that the flat belonged to a paedophile. Joe had replied with a thumbs up emoji, and Jimmy figured that Max’s flat would not only be cleared out, but redecorated by Norwich’s finest.

  Jimmy had still been grinning at the thought when he’d paid the taxi driver, giving the man a healthy tip.

  He stared at the laptop on his kitchen table, a cup of coffee in his hand. Next to the grey computer, the hard drive that Fiona had given him was whirring into life, a green flashing LED on the front. A few seconds later, the laptop chirped and the green light stopped flashing and stayed on. On the screen, the icon for an external drive appeared.

  Jimmy clicked on the icon and waited as the laptop thought for a moment. A few seconds later, a box appeared on the screen asking for a password.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered to himself. Jimmy tried a few of the more obvious ones—‘Password’, ‘Passw0rd’ with a zero to replace the letter ‘o’, and a few more variations on the same theme. Each time, the box looked at him blankly.

  Jimmy glanced at the clock on the wall. It wasn’t too late to call Dave.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ Jimmy said when Dave picked up the call.

  ‘Jimmy, hi,’ Dave replied. In the background, Jimmy could hear voices over the top of muffled music. It sounded like he was in a pub or at a party. ‘Give me a second.’ As Jimmy listened, the voices and music became less distinct.

  ‘Hope I’m not disturbing you,’ Jimmy said when Dave’s voice came back on the line.

  ‘Not at all,’ Dave replied. ‘I’m at the Waterfront watching some band that Charlotte’s mad keen on. Not my thing, to be honest. What can I do for you?’ Jimmy explained his problem, briefly telling Dave about Fiona.

  ‘He sounds like a right tosser, that Max bloke,’ Dave said. ‘It sounds like the drive is an encrypted DMG.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean much to me, that doesn’t,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Can I get into it, though?’

  ‘Not without the password, no,’ Dave said. ‘It’s like with the phone. One thing that Apple does very well is privacy. There was a story I was reading on a tech website about the FBI or CIA or someone wanting to get into one, and they took Apple to court to make them open the drive.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jimmy replied, trying not to let the disappointment creep into his voice. ‘That’s not something I can do.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Dave said. ‘Apple said no anyway, and they won the case. Something about one of their amendments in America. Have you looked at the copies of files from his computer yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Fiona said that everything was on the hard drive, so I thought I’d look there first.’

  ‘Fair one. Have you got her number? Maybe she would have an idea what the password is?’

  ‘No, and I don’t know where she is. She made some comment about going somewhere sunnier, but I don’t even know which country she’s in.’ Jimmy thought back to his earlier conversation with Max’s girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend—and realised that she was probably still in the air. Even if he had her number, he wouldn’t have been able to call her, anyway.

  ‘I would have a look through the copied files,’ Dave said. ‘Max might be stupid enough to have an un-encrypted file called Passwords or something like that. You’d be surprised how many people do stuff like that.’ Jimmy said nothing. He had a file with exactly the same name and contents on his laptop. ‘Even if he hasn’t, you might get an idea. And have a look for other files with passwords on them.’

  ‘How’s that going to help?’ Jimmy replied. ‘I won’t be able to get into them, either.’r />
  ‘You won’t, but I probably can. If he’s got a password-protected Word document or something like that, I can get into it and find out what the password for it is.’ He paused, and Jimmy could hear his teeth chattering. ‘Chances are it’ll be the same one.’

  ‘Are you outside?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m in the smoking area. It’s chuffing freezing.’

  ‘You go inside, mate,’ Jimmy said. ‘Warm yourself up.’

  ‘Text me later, let me know how you get on?’ Jimmy could hear the voices and music getting louder in the background.

  ‘Will do, thanks,’ Jimmy said as he ended the call. He closed down the window asking for a password and slipped the USB drive with the copied files into the computer. When he opened it, the screen filled with hundreds of folders and files. It was going to be a long night.

  It was almost three in the morning by the time Jimmy got into bed. His search through Max’s files had been interesting, but at the same time useless in terms of finding a password for the hard drive. One of the most interesting folders he’d found had been full of bank statements. Jimmy had printed them all out, exhausting his printer’s ink, and was now sitting in bed propped up on pillows reading through them. On his bedside table was a tumbler with a generous helping of whisky in it.

  His reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose, Jimmy started with the most recent statement for the operating account. The thing that jumped out at him was the balance—almost two hundred thousand pounds. Jimmy grinned as he imagined Fiona walking into a bank and transferring it all into her own account. If she was still in the air, and there was every chance she would be, he hoped she was in First Class—courtesy of Max.

  The studio outgoings were standard for a business account, as far as Jimmy could tell. Rent on the studio, utility bills, insurance, that sort of thing. The Money In column was a lot more interesting.