“Very urgent,” I said.
She relayed this to him. “He would also like to know if it can wait.”
“It cannot.”
“They say it can’t,” she told and paused to listen to his answer. “I’ll do that. I’ll take you up to Mr MacDonald’s office,” she said as she hung up.
“He’s not happy with us, is he?” Fletcher asked, offering the receptionist a disarming grin.
“He is not, no,” she answered. She gathered a bundle of keys and stood, stepping out from behind her desk to lead us to the lift.
“I’m sorry if we got you in any trouble,” Fletcher continued as we hurried after her.
The receptionist glanced over her shoulder just long enough to give Fletcher a smile. “Mr MacDonald is usually mad at someone about something. I’ve learned not to worry about it too much.”
Jonas MacDonald sounded like a first-class boss.
We rode the lift all the way to the top floor in silence. The receptionist tucked herself into the corner by the control panel and stared down at her shoes, making it clear that she wasn’t comfortable talking to us, and when the door slid open, she practically leapt out.
MacDonald’s office took up the entire floor and was a fine example of rich privilege. A glass wall separated his actual workspace from the sleek treadmill, fully equipped kitchen, and TV area boxed in by sleek leather sofas. MacDonald’s desk dominated most of the floor on the other side of the glass, far larger than seemed necessary, topped by a new and no doubt top of the line dual monitor computer setup.
MacDonald himself watched our approach from the moment the lift doors opened to when we stepped into his office. He was surprisingly young, considering the size of the company he ran, and he was yet another man in a power suit worth more than my monthly salary. His black hair was curly, and he allowed them to roam free, the style giving him a friendly, almost roguish look that didn’t fit with his cold and distant boss persona. He cocked an eyebrow as we entered, lacing his fingers together under his chin.
“The inspectors,” the receptionist announced rather unnecessarily.
“Thank you, Jane. That will be all,” MacDonald said, waving one hand to dismiss her before returning it to the spot under his chin. Jane left as quickly as she could, and then we were alone with MacDonald. “Please, sit. What can I do for you Inspectors…?” he trailed off to let us fill in the blanks.
“Callum MacBain and Tara Fletcher,” I supplied. We each settled into a chair across the desk from him, and I made sure to drape myself across it as casually as I could so I wouldn’t seem intimidated by the overly expensive surroundings.
MacDonald smiled at the display, well aware of what I was doing. “How can I help you?” he rephrased his earlier question.
“You’re aware that an employee of yours was murdered last week? A coder named Jacob Greene?” I watched MacDonald’s face closely. He didn’t look surprised, but a seriousness distilled across his features as he set his hands down on the desk and nodded.
“Yes, Dexter emailed me about the unfortunate news. I have, of course, sent my condolences to the family.”
“And were you also aware that Jacob was preparing to go to the press about the serious implications of data mining and invasion of privacy he found within the Active Eye project?” I asked.
MacDonald blinked once. He hid his surprise well, but he went almost a little too still after I asked my question. “I… didn’t know that, no.”
“He went to a Far Reach Industries analyst named Skye Arnott for confirmation of his findings, and the two of them brought the story to Hamish Murray, a journalist with the Inverness Courier.” I paused for effect. “Those two are now also dead.”
His stillness dissipated, replaced by a quiet tremor of rage. “And you think I had something to do with it?” he snapped.
I shrugged, his anger washing over me like waves over a rock. “I know you have a deal with Raymond MacPherson for what I can only assume is a hell of a lot of money. You have a lot to lose if a scandal breaks loose.”
“And far more to lose if it came out that I murdered one of my employees, not to mention two others,” MacDonald pointed out, voice quaking with barely suppressed emotion. “I am not a fool, Inspector MacBain. Or a murderer.”
If he thought even a little bit that I was still accusing him, he would shut this interview down faster than a dog snaps its jaw shut on a treat, so I gave him a placating smile and swapped topics. “Do you know why Raymond MacPherson is interested in the Active Eye project?”
MacDonald settled back in his chair and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. What do I care how my investors use my products?”
“You should,” Fletcher shot back. “You’re responsible for how your creations are used.”
“Am I?” MacDonald replied. “Is the seamstress responsible for how her shirt is worn? Is the cow responsible for how its beef is eaten?”
I didn’t think the cow thing was really the right metaphor for what he was trying to say, but I nudged Fletcher’s foot with mine to make sure she didn’t decide to point that out. “Surely, he mentioned something about his plans? We spoke with him before coming to see you--he seems like the kind of man who likes to talk.”
“He mentioned having ‘a grand design,’ I suppose. He wanted to revitalize Inverness, whatever that means. I honestly don't care. I just want his money.” MacDonald had gone almost dead-eyed again, shark-like.
“Did you know about the data mining coding?” I asked.
He smirked as if I had asked a stupid question. “Of course. That’s where the money comes from. Advertisers pay good money for stored data.”
I would have to ask Fletcher to remind me to throw my phone into the ocean the first chance I got.
“From Jacob’s notes, it sounds like your program goes way over the line into full on surveillance,” I said. “Gathering information on people’s social media, religion, sexuality, political beliefs, and then what? Selling it? Are you okay with that? Would you want someone doing that to you?”
MacDonald leaned forward again and fixed me with a mocking stare. “I’m sorry to break it to you, but this is how the world works. Everything is for sale.” He sat back, propping one ankle up on the opposite knee. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I believe this conversation is finished. If you would see yourselves out?”
He grabbed his computer mouse and turned his attention to one of the monitors, dismissing us from his sight. I sat there a few seconds longer, trying to decide if I wanted to press the issue, but I was pretty sure MacDonald wasn’t in cahoots with MacPherson, at least when it came to murder.
“Thank you for your time,” I said finally and stood, Fletcher following suit a beat later. MacDonald didn’t reply, so we walked ourselves out of his office and back to the lift. Once the doors had shut, Fletcher contorted her face into a silent scream, hands frustrated claws in the air before her.
“He is the absolute worst!” she spat.
“But not our killer,” I pointed out. “He would have thrown money at the problem, not an assassin.”
Assassin. That was a big word that didn’t usually come out in casual conversation. It made me shiver just to say it.
Fletcher dropped her hands and slumped back against the wall. “I guess. It’s definitely easier to picture MacPherson’s first thought being ‘hey, murder is a great solution.’”
I nodded my agreement, and we fell silent as the lift deposited us on the ground floor. Jane, the receptionist, had her coat on and bag in hand, clearly waiting for us to leave so she could dash as well.
“Sorry to have kept you,” I said as we passed her.
She fell in behind us to follow us to the main entrance. “I should be used to it by now.”
“Did you know Jacob Greene?” I asked, curious.
“Just to say hi to,” she answered. “It’s horrible, what happened to him. I hope you catch whoever did it.”
She left us on the front steps to hurry
towards her car in the employee car park, and Fletcher and I ambled more slowly in the direction of our own ride. “I sort of wish MacDonald was our guy. I’d love to wipe that smug look off his face,” Fletcher admitted. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket, warding off the chill beginning to seep into the evening.
“Is MacPherson not smug enough for you?” I joked.
“Fair,” Fletcher said with a light laugh. “Then I wish they were working together so we could nail them both.”
“I’m sure MacDonald will still get what’s coming for him when this story breaks,” I said, and Fletcher looked pleased by the idea.
We grabbed takeaway sandwiches from a nearby cafe and ate them on the bonnet of my car, watching the sun slowly sink towards the horizon.
“So, Rayla,” Fletcher said around a bite of her dinner, wiggling her eyebrows at me, and I groaned, dreading where this was going. “Are you going to ask her out? Or are you still all hung up on Lena?”
“I was never hung up on Lena,” I corrected, though that wasn’t exactly true. “And I don’t know. I like Rayla a lot; I just don’t know if I want to get involved with anyone right now.”
“Casual dating does exist, you know,” Fletcher said. “You don’t have to be in a ‘relationship.’” She made air quotes around the word, sandwich gripped awkwardly in one hand. “Why not just have a bit of fun? That’s what I do.”
“That’s actually… not a bad idea,” I admitted.
“That’s because I’m the smart one in this friendship.”
“You’ve got mayonnaise on your shirt.”
Fletcher cursed and wiped the spot away with her napkin.
We threw our rubbish away once we were done and then climbed into the car. It was still a bit early to head to Bee MacPherson’s flat, but we could always loiter outside like weirdos until it was time.
Rush hour traffic had just about petered out, though we caught the tail end of it as we made our way out of the city centre. The rays of the descending sun washed over my windshield, dazzling my tired eyes each time as we followed the curve of the River Ness for a little while. My eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror more often than I cared to admit. With the tumbling darkness, I felt my paranoia reignite. It had slumbered while I was focused on the investigation, but now, the gathering shadows, able to hide so many different things, coaxed it out of its hiding spot once more.
“Callum, ease up,” Fletcher said when she noticed the way my grip had tightened on the wheel as I changed lanes too sharply.
“I’m trying,” I said, and forced my hands to loosen. I had to go one finger at a time, but I eventually got them relaxed. “That whole thing with the Kraken has me rattled.”
“Rightfully so.” Fletcher dug a Werther’s Original from her bag and offered it to me as if that would make things better. The sweetness actually helped calm my nerves and focusing on not crunching into it immediately helped me bat the paranoia part way back into its box. I tucked the sweet into the pocket of my cheek and nodded. “As soon as we’re done with this case, we’ll figure out who attacked you, yeah?”
“Thanks, Fletcher.” I grimaced. “Not looking forward to explaining to Dunnel that I was there.”
“Do you necessarily have to?” Fletcher wondered.
“If I want access to Owens’ investigation then yes.”
“Or you could just coerce Owens into telling you,” Fletcher pointed out, propping one boot up on the dash in a way she knew I hated. “The guy basically worships you.”
I spun the wheel as gently as I could with my jittery grip, taking us through a busy roundabout. “That feels a little wrong,” I said.
“Maybe,” Fletcher agreed. “Problems for another day, right?”
“Right.”
A few minutes later, I parked outside Bee’s flat, twenty minutes too early for our meeting. We didn’t get out of the car but studied the building from inside. It didn’t look like a place where the daughter of the ridiculously rich MacPherson family would live. The outside was plain, dull brick, the path leading up to the front door unevenly placed and cracked. The lawn was mowed but plain with nary a scrap of gardening around the building. I assumed that she paid for this place on her own, and from that simple fact, I had a lot more respect for her than for the rest of her family.
Fletcher played on her phone, and I stared into the dimly lit street until it was almost five to nine, and I deemed that close enough to the meeting time to make our slow, meandering way up to the flat. I took my sweet time walking towards the door even as Fletcher gave me a series of increasingly confused looks, because I was trying to find that balance between early but not too early.
The first door opened, letting us into the cramped entrance that held the post boxes and the panel of buzzers. I skimmed my finger down the names until I found ‘MacPherson’ then rang it once.
“Hello?”
“It’s DIs Macbain and Fletcher,” I called into the speaker.
A few seconds later, there was an answering buzz and the second door clicked open, allowing us into the main entrance. We went up to the second floor and down the hall to Bee’s flat where she was waiting for us with her head poked out the door.
“You made it,” she said, sounding relieved. “Come in.”
She opened the door the rest of the way, and we stepped into her modest flat. Where the MacPherson estate had been rich and overly sumptuous, Bee’s place was simply eclectic, most of her decorations clearly from charity shops. The pillows on the sofa were mismatched, and it was covered by a blanket clearly made for a bed rather than a decorative throw. There was art on the walls, but it looked as if she’d demanded that her friends paint her something, and they’d done so with varying degrees of skill. It felt lived in, unlike the vast MacPherson estate, no doubt why she’d decorated it this way.
“My parents don’t know about this place,” Bee explained, folding herself into the corner of the sofa and tucking her feet under. “I pay for it with money I make myself, not any of their trust fund.” It sounded very important to her that we understand that, so I nodded and smiled.
“It’s nice,” Fletcher said, and Bee motioned for us to sit.
There was a rocking chair and a battered armchair, and I practically shouldered Fletcher out of the way to claim the armchair. She gave me an offended look but didn’t fight me. “You wanted to speak with us privately,” I said, turning to more serious matters.
Bee took a deep breath, rubbing her palms on her thighs. “Yes. I know what my father is planning to do with Active Eye, I know that Jacob Greene, Skye Arnott, and Hamish Murray were investigating it and planning to break the story to the news, and I believe that my father orchestrated their deaths.”
That was a whole lot of things to throw out all in one breath. Bee’s eyes were wide and overly bright, lit from within by her anxiety. “Okay,” I said slowly. “Why don’t we take it one step at a time. What’s your father’s plan for Active Eye?”
“In a word, gentrification. It’s about control. With all that private data, he believes he can control who lives where, who gets what job, who goes to what school, and he wants to use that power to push those he believes ‘undesirable’ out, making more room for people he thinks better uphold the Scotland of the past.” Fury descended over her face, carving canyons into her otherwise flawless skin, turning her blue eyes dark. “I grew up with his stringent belief that there was one right way to be, but then I went away to uni, and I quite frankly got my arse handed to me. My brother, he’s never really left Inverness unless it was with the family. He won’t listen to me when I try to talk to him about the problems I have with them. He’s like daddy’s little clone.”
“And your mum?” I asked.
Bee scoffed. “She doesn’t have opinions of her own.”
As brutal as her words were, I could see the truth of it. Mary MacPherson had seemed a bit… empty when we spoke with her.
“So you met with Jacob and the others?” I said, leaning
forward to brace my elbows on my knees since the chair was trying to swallow me whole.
“Yes.” Bee nodded. “Hamish Murray, the journalist, came to speak with my father. He tried to do what you did, make it seem like he was there for a different story, but he wasn’t quite as smooth as he thought he was, and my father caught on in an instant. I--this is a little embarrassing.” Bee pressed two fingers to her temples and let out a huff of laughter. “I’ve been, well, spying on my father. I’ve had this grand, stupid plan of trying to mess up his projects. It was stupid. I knew I was never going to succeed, but I liked to feel like I was doing something.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” Fletcher promised her, and Bee smiled at her gratefully.
“Thanks. Anyways, I happened to be listening in to my father’s conversation with Hamish. I’d had similar suspicions about his plan for Active Eye. When Hamish left, I sent Alexis after him.”
“Your mum’s maid?” I asked for confirmation.
“Yes. I sent her to confirm their suspicions. I would have gone myself, but… I was afraid.” Bee drew her legs in closer, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Of your father?” I said quietly, and she nodded.
“The next day, when I could get away, we all met to try and come up with a plan. Hamish thought my word would really help sell the story. But they were all scared. Later, Jacob texted me that he thought someone was following him. I told him to get out of Inverness. Then, on Thursday, he showed up dead.” She dropped her head to her knees, hiding her face, and her shoulders shook. Fletcher moved from the rocking chair to the sofa so she could rest her hand on Bee’s back, rubbing comforting circles there.
“It’s okay,” she said, but Bee shook her head vehemently.
“It’s not! It’s my fault they’re dead. If I had been more careful, if I had done… something…” She floundered for what that something might be. “If I’d stood up to him, or told the three of them to back off, let me handle it…”
The Hidden Eye Page 24
