The Jason Green series Box Set

by Gordon Wallis

  I glanced at the computer screen. Richard was steadily making his way towards Liverpool Street. If he was going to his shop, it would give me a plenty of time to get into his flat and have a look around. I glanced at my watch, I figured if that was where he was going he would arrive in five or ten minutes. I would wait and see. I lit a cigarette and waited hopefully as the radio played some dreadful 80s tune - I won’t let the sun go down on me, by Nik Kershaw. I shook my head in disgust.

  Chapter Six - Home Invasion

  As expected, the screen showed Richard had parked right outside his shop near Liverpool Street Station. I had at least an hour to get into his flat and have a look around. I quickly planned how I would do it. I turned my phone off, packed my computer, locked the car and made my way to the front door. I always felt a bit jumpy entering a house on a job. This wasn't helped by the strange events of the afternoon. There were five flats in the building, one to each floor. I decided to start with flat number three. I pressed the button on the intercom and waited for an answer. Fifteen seconds passed. Nothing. I then pressed the button for flat number two. Result. The voice was of an elderly lady on the other side.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh hello, I’m so sorry to bother you, I’m afraid I've been locked out, would you mind buzzing me in?”

  There was no reply, only the clatter of the receiver being hung up in frustration and a loud buzzing sound as the door was opened. I was in. The interior was as grand as the exterior. Fully carpeted with a wide staircase. The old wooden bannister was chunky and shiny, and there was a large chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. I had to be quick, I didn’t need a nosy neighbour to see me. Thankfully, the stairs were also fully carpeted and I darted silently upwards. I was already fishing in my bag for my lock picking set as I reached the top floor and the door for flat number five. I would have to be careful. It wouldn’t be unusual for an address like this to have an alarm system installed. Panting slightly from the run up, I went down on one knee, opened the green canvas lock picking set and went to work.

  It was a standard Yale lock setup from the early eighties, probably installed when the grand old house was converted into flats. I suspected that Richard wouldn’t have bothered to lock both the door and the latch so I concentrated on the brass latch. After two minutes with some fine tools, I heard the hammers in the lock click. I took a deep breath and tried it. Success. The door opened silently and slowly. I packed away my tools, stood up and peered inside, looking for an alarm or motion detector. There was nothing. The stairway behind me was silent. The coast was clear.

  I walked into the flat closing the door behind me. It was huge compared to my small place.

  There was a hallway leading to various rooms, all with the doors open. It had pale wooden flooring and, as I had suspected, a minimalist theme to the decor. The first room on my right was the kitchen. In keeping with the area there was an Aga cooker, a Smeg fridge, and a hanging metal central unit for utensils positioned over a central granite work surface. There was a pile of pizza boxes and takeaway cartons near the sink. Moving back into the hall, I got a bit of a shock when I saw a dark silent figure standing in front of me. It turned out to be my own reflection in a large mirror. Quietly cursing, I moved on.

  Next was a dining room that was furnished with a black table and chairs for eight people. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while. I touched the back of one chair, my finger came back with dust on it. Blowing it off, I moved on. The next room was the lounge. It was huge with high ceilings and decorated in an oriental theme. There were large, low throw sofas and beanbags surrounding an equally low and very ornate antique table. All this on a Persian carpet. To the right of the room was a huge flat screen television. I had been right about the bluish light I had seen from the street. On the centre of the table was an oriental box in dark wood. I leant over to open it. Inside were several packets of rizlas, tobacco scraps, and a bag of weed. You're a smoker then Richard. I needed to find a computer so I moved back to the hallway, looking for the main bedroom.

  I found it in the door to my immediate right. It was a stark, almost bare room, again with wooden floors. There was a king size Swedish bed with an unmade dark grey duvet to the centre and two bedside units to either side. Directly below the window, facing Southwall Road was what I had come for. The desk was untidy and covered with papers. Richard had left his computer on and as I sat down I noticed the screen saver. There were action pictures of bikini clad women riding surfboards. The pictures changed every ten seconds. I glanced around at the papers that were strewn about the desk. I didn’t want to disturb anything. They were a mixture of invoices for the shop, utility bills, parking fines, and scraps. There was also a landline telephone. Nothing of great interest to me. I opened my bag and removed my laptop to see what was going on with the Aston. Placing it on the bed behind me I saw that it was still parked at Liverpool Street outside the shop. Good. I had some time.

  I wanted to have a look at his private emails so I moved the mouse to clear the screen saver. Instantly the surfing pics disappeared and the icons of the desktop showed. I clicked on Gmail but much to my disappointment the programme was password protected. I was faced with the same problem I had been having since I started. Next, I decided to have a look at his internet history.

  There were literally thousands of sites visited. I pulled the cursor slowly down through them, looking for anything that cropped up frequently. There was a well-known porn site and various social networking sites. Then I noticed a few extreme sports equipment manufacturing outfits cropping up here and there. One was called Lenny’s Surf Works. I noticed the domain name showed the company to be in South Africa. This one cropped up quite a few times. Various airlines and travel agents were present. Nothing seemed to be of massive importance. I glanced at my laptop to check on the position of the Aston. To my alarm, the flashing blue light was on the move already and was travelling back in my direction. Shit. He was more than likely on his way home. I knew I had about forty minutes to finish up and get out, so I decided to quickly have a look at his internet bookmarks.

  I opened the browser and quickly grabbed my digital voice recorder from my bag. As I scrolled down through the sites I read the names out loud into the hand held recorder. There was no time for browsing them. I would do that later on my own time. BBC News, South African Airways, Lenny’s Surf Works, Tropic-air, live currency converter, British Airways - the list went on and on. There were at least fifty of them and it took a full minute to record them all. I turned the recorder off, threw it in my bag and made a quick check of the desk to see if everything was as I had found it. It all looked fine. I closed the windows I had opened on Richard’s machine and checked the screen of my laptop again. The Aston was making steady progress through central London, still in my direction. There was no need to panic but I realised that I had less than half an hour to finish up and get out. Bagging my laptop, I decided to have a quick look around the bedroom and the rest of the flat. I made a beeline for the set of cupboards to the back of the room. As I opened them, the first thing I saw was a huge amount of clothing and shoes. Richard was indeed a dedicated follower of fashion. The next thing I saw was a strong box. It was a medium-sized office safe with an electronic access system. I crouched down to have a look at it. There was no way I could ever crack such an item. The bag I had seen Richard carrying and exchanging earlier was lying to the left of it on the floor. It killed me that the answers to all of Gareth Lewer-Allen’s questions were now probably less than ten inches from my face. I opened the bag to find it empty. Whatever it had been that he was moving had been removed. I carefully closed the cupboards, made a quick check that everything in the room was as I had found it and moved on.

  The rest of the flat was just spare bedrooms, bathrooms, showers and toilets. Nothing grabbed my attention. Now acutely aware that the Aston was fast approaching, I walked back to the lounge windows. I quickly looked out onto the service lane below. It was all quiet.

&nbs
p; I knew I still had time but I didn’t want to run into any of the other tenants either. It was time to go. I crossed the room and entered the hall. As I opened the front door, I stopped to listen for any activity on the floors below. There was no sound. I made my move and descended the stairs at speed. With relief I reached the ground floor and the front door of Grimsby Mansions. One more obstacle and I would be out. I took a deep breath, casually opened the door and waked out onto the street. I gasped as the freezing air rushed into my lungs. It was like suddenly sucking on a mouthful of extra strong mints. The temperature outside had dropped drastically. My periphery vision told me that no cars had arrived in the service lane since I had looked out from the window. This was all good. Although I hadn’t found anything of earth shattering importance, it had been a successful foray into Richard's home. There was no doubt he was doing very well for himself. His father most certainly had been right.

  The day was darkening rapidly and I was feeling famished. I decided to cross Southwall Road and grab some food at the cafe I had been to earlier. I had been living on a diet of junk for the past few days and I was feeling it. I hunched into my jacket in an effort to fight the chill and took the short walk across the street to the shop. The lights were on and luckily my old table was free. I sat, opened my laptop, and looked at the menu. Presently a waitress arrived. I ordered a fillet steak with blue cheese sauce and a side salad. To drink, I ordered a large fresh orange. As I had expected, the flashing blue light on the laptop’s tracking page showed the Aston was still heading in my direction. Probably five or ten minutes away. Richard was heading home after an interesting day at the office. I spent the next ten minutes idly flicking between the tracking page and the internet on the laptop. I was still toying with the idea of using a password cracking program to hack Richard's email address. Eventually I decided that they were mostly a waste of time and I would have to persist with good old fashioned guesswork.

  The steak arrived at the same time as the Aston. It came as ordered. Rare and cooked to perfection. As I ate, I saw the front lights as the car parked in the usual place on the service lane across the busy road. I counted down a minute in my mind and right on cue, the lights on the fifth floor were turned on. I felt a light sweat and a wave of nausea come over me. I was feeling decidedly unhealthy. Physical exercise was something I couldn't live without. It had been that way since my school days back in Africa. I kept a membership at the local gym and visited at least three times a week. I needed to get my head straightened out and try and make some sense of what I had seen that day. An hour in the gym would take care of that. I felt more relaxed and my thoughts had more clarity after a good workout. I decided to drive straight there after the meal.

  The waitress walked up to me to ask how the steak was.

  “Very good, excellent, thanks very much,” I said as I finished it.

  I ordered a mineral water along with the bill and she made her way back to her station to prepare it. I opened the Gmail window on the laptop. Richard’s address was still in the address box and the scolding red words ‘password incorrect’ were also there. Idly I started guessing passwords once again: snowboard - incorrect, skateboard - incorrect, Grimsby incorrect, astonmartin - incorrect, dinnerplate - incorrect. The waitress arrived with the bill. I thanked her as she put it on the table and she left. I continued with the passwords. All my guesses were incorrect. Having had enough of this, I picked up the bill for the food. It was £14. I opened my wallet, took out a £20 note and put it on the plate. My mind was swimming with the events of the day. I stared out at the lights of the fifth floor flat across the road. I snapped out of my daydream and prepared to leave. I put my scarf around my neck and reached over to close my laptop. The same red words ‘password incorrect’ were staring me in the face, taunting me. As I was closing the screen of the laptop my mind flicked back to Richard's bedroom. His computer. His screen saver. Surfboard. I had to give it a go. Slowly and with one hand only I typed in the letters and clicked on the log in button. Instantly the screen changed in front of my eyes. The background was suddenly replaced and the words ‘Welcome Richard’ appeared to the left of the screen. I was in. I had hacked it. Yes! I clenched my right fist in victory.

  I realised that there was a chance that Richard might be accessing his email from the fifth floor across the road at exactly the same time as me. With a feeling of smug triumph I quickly logged out and closed the laptop. I bagged it, stood up, put my jacket on and left the restaurant. Surfboard, why hadn’t I thought of that before? I had a spring in my step now. The job was moving along, keeping me interested, and paying very well. I couldn’t complain. It was now totally dark outside and the yellow glow of the street lights gave an illusion of warmth. The frigid air stung my face with a slap. The traffic was thick as I drove back towards Seven Sisters but this didn't worry me. The radio played away and I tapped my fingers to the tunes for a good forty minutes until I reached Haringey and the car park for the gym. I made my way inside, put my bag into my locker and changed into some gym clothes. The place was empty save for maybe seven or eight people. I guessed the weather had broken their spirits and they had succumbed to their warm lounges. A lot of the punters at the gym treated the place like a social venue. I had never subscribed to this and preferred to get in, hit it hard for an hour and get out. I kept an mp3 player in my locker.

  I put the earphones in and chose some music as I walked towards the weights circuit. The hard rock sounds of Motorhead blasted into my brain as I attacked the circuit. After one and a half albums I was done and headed for the shower. I had sweated out all the junk food and booze of the past few days and I was feeling good and tired. The steaming hot water blasted my face and shoulders. I stood, motionless, facing up into the water for a good two minutes. After washing vigorously I rinsed off and headed for my locker where I kept a change of clothes. Quickly I dried myself off and got dressed. I bagged my used clothes and headed out to the car park. I felt like a new man. My muscles were warm and my brain was crystal clear and focused. Ten minutes later, I arrived at the entrance to my building. I unlocked the heavy front door and headed to the lift using my keys to press the buttons. My flat was looking spick and span. The Polish cleaning lady had been in again. I spent the evening in deep thought. My mind going through the events of the day. There was no doubt the exchange of bags that Richard had made with the Asian men in Notting Hill was important. They had all been extremely nervous and tense at the time. I was certain that what had transpired was illegal, although I had no idea what it was. I knew part of the answer lay in the safe in Richard's cupboard. It was frustrating but compelling at the same time. The case had fired my enthusiasm. Renewed my interest. The list of insurance fraud cases in my inbox would certainly be put off until I had cracked this one. I felt drained and exhausted and decided to sleep. As I lay down I turned on the television in my bedroom in an effort to take my mind off the events of the day. That was hopeless and I ended up blindly staring at the screen as my mind raced. I was now totally absorbed in the case of Richard Lewer-Allen. There was nothing that was going to stop me from cracking this one. I decided I would track Richard's car in the morning and once I saw he was on the move I would take a look at his email. They would surely shed some light on his dubious activities. But were they dubious? Were they illegal? It could be anything. It might be totally innocent, it could be he was dealing in rare stamps. I put a sleep-timer on the television as I felt myself drifting off. In my last dream-like random thoughts before sleep, I saw the same image I had seen the previous night - Richard Lewer-Allen was walking towards me in a dark hallway. In his hands, he carried a white dinner plate. On the plate was a pile of money and on his face was a warm smile. He offered it to me and I accepted it. Then there was darkness.

  Chapter Seven - An Unexpected Journey

  I awoke to the usual sound of children screaming on the street below. Obviously the shocking weather of the previous day had calmed and the kids were able to go to school. The noise didn
't bother me as much as usual. I reached for my glass of water and took a long drink from it. As I lay back and stretched, I could feel the effects of the previous evening’s workout. A slight stiffness in my muscles told me it had been a good one and I decided that I would wait a while before succumbing to my first cigarette. My brain was still clear and I felt rejuvenated. I got up and took a hot shower. I opened my laptop, and as it booted up, I turned the television on and flicked to Sky News. Immediately, a cheery Irish girl was presenting the weather report. It was total doom and gloom as usual. Rain, rain and more rain topped with a maximum of three degrees Celsius and a minimum of minus six. Warnings of ice on the roads and no change in forecast for the next few days. How super. I made some coffee and headed to the curtains for the habitual grand opening. There were no surprises. I sipped the coffee as I stared out at the dark shiny greyness in front of me. That morning at least, I wasn’t treating it with my usual abject hatred and disgust. I opened the window a section, lit a cigarette, and stood feeling the frigid air rushing in to the warmth of the central heating behind me. Even the annoying music of the news channel that hadn’t been changed in ages wasn’t bothering me. With the computer booted up I walked back to my desk to start work. First I opened the tracking programme. It took a few seconds to start up and revealed what I was expecting. Richard was still holed up at home on Southwall Road and the Aston was parked outside as usual. I was sorely tempted to log into his email account, but had to force myself not to. It was too much of a risk. There might be some conflict of interest that would make itself obvious if he was logged in at the same time. I had no idea what kind of computer knowledge Richard had. It wasn’t worth the risk. I would wait until I knew he was out before logging in. It was frustrating, especially knowing the relaxed and casual way Richard went about his average day. I glanced at my watch, it was 8.30am. I decided I would take a walk down to the newsagent and buy a paper. It would kill some time and give me some fresh air, plus the rain was holding off for now. I put on my jacket and scarf and headed downstairs.