The Borough

by Steve Dockray

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When he woke on Boxing Day, Winner was relieved to see that the first light of day was breaking over a clear horizon. Christmas day had been deadly quiet, the isolation of the main public holiday being accentuated by the driving rain that had poured down continuously from daybreak to dusk. He had spent the morning making a traditional Christmas dinner, largely so that he would have the cold meat for Boxing Day, though by the time he came to eat it he didn't feel particularly hungry, being still somewhat hung over from Christmas Eve at the Dog and Duck. The afternoon and evening had been wall-to-wall television, relieved only by telephone calls from Toby and Sally. It wasn't the way he would have chosen to spend Christmas, but at least he'd had Boxing Day to look forward to.

  Sally arrived first, just before ten. When Winner opened the door she flung her arms around him.

  "I missed you yesterday," she said. "All the time I was at my mother's, I was thinking that I'd rather be with you."

  "Christmas is a family day. It was right for you to be there, but I missed you too."

  "What are we going to do today? Is Toby here yet?"

  "He'll be here soon. I thought we might just go out for a walk down through the town and along by the river. There's a Chinese dragon boat race at half past eleven that we could watch."

  They went into the living room and Sally walked straight over to the window.

  "I didn't know there was such a good view. It was dark before."

  "Not quite as desirable as an estuary view, I'm afraid. All you ever see is the occasional yacht or distant supertanker. Here, a little surprise for you. Merry Christmas."

  She turned round and he pressed the small package into her hand. She looked up at him as her fingers pulled away the holly decorated paper.

  "It's lovely," she said. "You shouldn't have."

  "Well, easy come, easy go," he said, as he hung the thin gold chain round her neck, so that the small fiery red stoned pendant rested against her winter-pale skin.

  "I only got you something small," she said. "This pendant's so lovely, I feel embarrassed to give it to you."

  She opened her handbag and pulled out a slim parcel. Winner pulled open the paper and held up the contents. A dark blue tie, decorated on the front with a large seagull head that stared back at him.

  "I hope you like it," said Sally. "I know it's a bit odd, but as soon as I saw it I thought it was just right for you."

  "It's perfect," he said, smiling. "I shall definitely wear it for my meeting with Charles Forbes."

  A moment later the doorbell rang and Winner left Sally looking at the view. He was back very quickly and Toby followed him into the room.

  "Hello, you must be Toby. I'm Sally." There was a moment's pause while they sized each other up.

  "Dad says you're a computer expert. Have you cracked the password yet?"

  "Not yet, but we could have a go together this afternoon."

  It was a strange sort of day. One minute the sun would be out and it felt mild, not really wintry at all, then a few minutes later it would disappear behind a cloud, and a cold breeze would bring a reminder that it was late December. The quayside was almost as busy as a summer's day, with everyone glad to get out and enjoy the fresh air as a break from over indulgence. The three of them had managed to find a small gap among the people lining the waterside railings. This was the third year of dragon boat racing at Sharmouth and Winner could tell that it was starting to get much more professional. Four races so far and no collisions or capsizing. Only two more races and then the final. There were four teams altogether and they all had to race against each other to decide the finalists. It was already looking as if the Council team wouldn't make the final. Winner thought it was a bit unfair letting the local rowing club enter the races. They looked set for a third consecutive win.

  It was all over twenty minutes later, but Winner wasn't too interested in stopping to watch the presentation to the victorious rowing club.

  "Come on," he said to Sally and Toby. "Let's get moving before we seize up with the cold."

  They walked briskly along the quayside, following the river upstream. After about three hundred yards the buildings fronting the river came to an end where the ornamental gardens formed a summer picnicking and sunbathing area.

  "How much of the gardens will go if they build the theatre complex?" Sally asked.

  "I'm not really sure. Just the far end, I think, plus a chunk out of the car park and the waste land at the corner of the recreation ground."

  "Do you think it will ever be built?"

  "There are some councillors really pushing for it, but there are a few who are against. I think it's to do with the commercialism of it. The Council might be able to put together a financing package to get it built, but they can't afford to cover running costs and loan financing charges. That means they'd have to agree to include retail space, and offices perhaps. Local traders aren't keen to see an increase in retail space, especially since they're threatened with the superstore on the outskirts as well."

  "So there's going to be some political argument before they reach a final decision?"

  "More than that. Westerman's given them the impression that we can find the money somehow, but I'm not so sure. Did Nigel tell you about the transaction blunders that lost us half a million?"

  "I knew about that. Nigel was worried, because it was really his scheme. Westerman was sticking by him, saying it was something the whole team had agreed to, but Nigel was afraid that when councillors got wind of it they'd want a scapegoat. He didn't want that to happen before he'd had time to straighten out the accounts."

  "Westerman's looking to me to find a way of glossing over it all before the end of March, so let me know if you've got any good ideas."

  Toby had been looking to see what the anglers had been catching. He came back over and asked what they were having for lunch.

  "Just cold turkey, salad stuff," Winner said, then glanced at his watch. "We should be starting back now."

  They walked more quickly as a cold breeze cut into them, the sun having temporarily lost its battle with the clouds. The High Street was deserted, the Christmas decorations already looking out of date. A few unlucky staff had been drafted in to prepare for sales, some of which were advertised to start on Monday. Toby ran ahead to look in the shop windows where they sold computer stuff. He was already thinking of software he could buy with the money he had been given for Christmas.

  "What about that key?" asked Sally.

  "I wondered if it might be a locker key from a sports club."

  "How about a left luggage locker?"

  "There are some steel cabinets in the Town Hall basement store. It might fit one of them. It may not be anything important, anyway. We'll probably never know."

  "It's got to be the key to something important, or else why would it have been hidden like that?"

  Winner put his arm round her waist as they walked.

  "Let's have another look at the diary and the diskette after lunch," he said. "We'll try to crack it together."

  Cold turkey and salad hadn't seemed too attractive a prospect out on the windswept quayside, but back in the tropical climate of his flat it didn't seem such a bad idea. Winner had bought a range of pickles and salad vegetables that went well with the cold meat, sausages and stuffing from the day before. Toby had Coke to drink and Winner opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, which left them finishing the meal in a pleasantly relaxed state.

  After lunch Toby turned on the computer and spent his time zapping Martians while Winner and Sally cleared up.

  Sally perched herself on the tall stool in the kitchen, watching as Winner packed away the remains of their lunch.

  "This is rather exciting, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, this detective work to find out what Nigel did with the rest of the money. I'm afraid my worries about my relationship with Nigel were dragging me down, but now that I've got a bit of cash and you, things are looking up con
siderably."

  Winner smiled. "You know, we may never find the rest of the money. Nigel might have buried it somewhere."

  Back in the living room, the Martians were all dead, and Toby was quite happy to abandon the game for another go at the diskette. They started off with all the new password variations that Sally could think of, including Nigel's interests and the names of his wife's pet rabbits. The list of password errors grew longer. Winner left the other two sat in front of the screen and discreetly retrieved the diary from the airing cupboard. He came back in and sat down beside Sally, handing her the diary.

  "We've tried all the numbers and odd words that don't make any sense. Can you think of anything?"

  "We could try them backwards," she said, and read out the first likely looking candidate to Toby, who keyed the digits in.

  It was about twenty minutes later, when they were starting to get bored and thinking of other ways that they might spend the afternoon, that the spreadsheet finally unlocked its secret. A telephone number in reverse plus Nigel's initials surprised them by failing to trigger another error beep. At last they were able to see the details on screen.

  "It's just a list of accounts and cash totals," said Sally, her disappointment evident in her voice.

  "See if it's got any more sheets."

  Toby tried to move to sheet B, but the computer just bleeped at him. Then he used the 'End' and 'Home' keys to find the bottom right hand corner of the data, but the cursor just went to the bottom right of the screen.

  "That's all there is, Dad, just what you can see on this screen."

  Winner studied the names of the accounts, but it just looked like regular Council business.

  "I can't understand why he'd have bothered to protect it with a password," said Winner. "Leave it on screen for a minute while I make us a cup of coffee."

  Winner went into the kitchen, while Sally slipped out to the bathroom, stopping on the way back to retrieve a box of chocolates that she'd left in a carrier bag in the hall.

  "Hey, Dad! I've found something."

  Winner came out of the kitchen. Toby was still sat at the keyboard. He had moved the cursor to the top figure in the column and was pointing his finger at the data entry box at the top of the screen. Sally came and leant over Winner's shoulder.

  "The figures are annotated," she said. "Run down the column."

  Toby tapped at the down arrow key. All that could be seen on the main part of the screen were the numbers, but the data entry box showed that each number was in fact followed by a semi-colon and then a note.

  "I didn't know you could do that," said Winner.

  "It's a feature of the software, so that you can make notes about the origin of the figures," explained Sally. "Can I have the keyboard for a moment, Toby?"

  She ran down the column of figures, editing them by turning them into text labels, so that the notes could all be seen on screen at once.

  "It still doesn't make a lot of sense." Winner winked at Sally behind Toby's back. "I'll just print it out for reference. You did really well, Toby. I'm sorry the result is so disappointing."

  Sally unwrapped the chocolates and went off to finish the coffees, while Winner showed Toby how to print off the details.

  Ten minutes later, equipped with mugs of coffee and a supply of chocolates, they settled down at the dining table to an afternoon of Monopoly. By the time Toby's mother arrived to collect him he had bankrupted Sally, and his hotels all along the side leading to Mayfair were waiting to catch Winner.

  After he had handed over his son, Winner came back into the room to find Sally busy bundling up the notes and property cards.

  "Your Toby should go far," she said, pointing at the heap of assets on his side of the table. "He certainly has a ruthless business streak. He's a nice boy, though."

  "I thought we'd better leave looking at the list until after he'd gone. It wouldn't be right to get him involved in any of this."

  They finished packing away the pieces, then settled down on the sofa to study the list.

  "What do you think these first few lines are?" asked Winner.

  "They don't look like individuals' names. Companies, perhaps? Businesses of some sort?"

  "That one looks familiar. Cameron Peters. I'll look it up in the phone book."

  Winner reached out for the directory and thumbed through it quickly.

  "Here we are. Cameron Peters, Land Agents and Surveyors, Gorston."

  There were four other names for Winner to look up. One was a land company, two just gave addresses and the last one wasn't in the directory.

  "Probably outside the area," suggested Sally.

  "This next entry looks like a bank sorting code and an account number. That could be the bank in Gorston where Nigel was banking the Westake cheques. There's a book of sorting codes in the office that we could use to check on that."

  "These next few lines are dates and amounts, probably notes to keep track of the fifty thousand. Look, the last one is minus ten thousand at the beginning of the month. That could be the money you found. If we could work out where he was on the days with the plus entries, we might be able to work out where he had taken the money. It looks as if he might have had another account to pay it into somewhere."

  "So what's that number at the bottom? It doesn't look like an account number. It's not the right length."

  "We'll have to think about that one. Pass me the diary."

  Winner handed over the slim blue-covered book. He waited while Sally went through it looking at the dates recorded on the spreadsheet.

  "Every day that he withdrew money is marked with a small 'g'," she said eventually. "The days that he presumably deposited money are all marked with a 'p'. Where do you think 'p' might be?"

  "There's only one town starting with 'P'. That's Petermere. I'll have a look back at his time-sheets when we're back in the office. It would take at least two and a half hours to get there and back, so he'd have had to be on holiday or made some other excuse for being out of the office."

  "Petermere's quite a big place. There must be loads of banks and building societies. How could we possibly pin it down?"

  "I don't know," said Winner, "but at least we've made some progress. You know, if Nigel hadn't bothered to password protect that file, I would have just glanced at it and deleted it from the disk."

  "Is there anything more we can do?"

  "We could try to find out what all these companies are and try to work out what interest Nigel might have had in them. Not today, though. How about a cup of tea and some Christmas cake?"

  "You don't want to throw me out then?"

  "You can stay as long as you like. I've got nothing planned for the next two days."

  "I might just take you up on that," she said.