Apportionment of Blame (5 page)

“And I found you here at about four thirty. So you weren't in that car for very long.”

“No. I wasn't.”

She began to realise where I was going with this.

“So it didn't go very far,” she said.

“Exactly. If I'm right, the person who set the whole thing up was waiting in the car. As soon as you were bundled in, he or she would have realised they had the wrong person, thought quickly, scribbled out a note and had you dropped off here.”

“That makes sense. But you said he or she.”

“Well, we don't know, do we.”

Joyce looked at me.

“It just doesn't seem the kind of thing a woman would do.”

“Perhaps, but I think we now know that whoever it was may not be far away.”

“No. You have to be very careful.”

“I think we both do.”

Chapter 3

H
aving
cleared away the wrappings from our scant lunch, I lifted Joyce's briefcase onto the desk.
    “Shall we see what this computer has waiting for us?”

Joyce opened the case and took out the laptop, laying it on the desk where we could both see it.

I opened the lid, and, turning it on, was immediately faced with the File Vault screen.

“We need a password,” I said, “and we have three goes to get it right. After that, we are locked out. The File Vault encrypts all the files, so there will be no other way of reaching them.”

“Three goes? Is that all?”

“Yes. It's a good security system. The trouble is we have to think hard. What would Helen be likely to choose?”

Joyce looked at me and shrugged.

“She was very well organised,” she said. “She will have changed her passwords frequently, as we are all recommended to do. Whatever the password is now, I'll bet it was only changed shortly before she died.”

“So, assuming she chose something currently on her mind, what might that be?”

“I don't think it would be a name,” Joyce suggested. “She had more imagination than that. She would have used a mix of lower and upper case letters, and probably numbers as well. So it could be any combination of those.”

“Not necessarily a meaningless combination, though. Passwords are easier to use if they can be remembered somehow, so they need to mean something to the person using them. Otherwise they have to be looked up all the time and that is just a pain. So what had happened to her in the days and weeks before she died?”

“I can't think of anything.”

“Think,” I encouraged.

“I am,” she said, the beginnings of a despairing look appearing on her face.

“Did she have a car?”

“Yes. A Golf.”

“When did she buy it?”

“Er...a few months before she died.”

“Was she fond of it?”

“She was. She loved her Golf.”

“OK. What is the registration number?”

“God, I don't know.”

She looked totally deflated now, then suddenly took out her phone.

“I'll call Mum and ask her.”

She speed dialled the number and waited for only a second or two.

“Hi Mum, it's me. Can you tell me the registration number of Helen's Golf?...We are trying to think of a password to get into her laptop...You don't know? Would you mind going to look?...Thanks.”

Joyce held the phone away from her ear and looked questioningly at me.

“What?”

“Mum's gone to find out. I hope it's useful. I can't think of anything else.

“Yes, Mum. Thanks. Got it,” and she reeled the number off to me.

“Right. Here goes,” and I typed in the registration number.

Wrong password, the screen said.

“Damn. But it would have been extraordinary to get it right first time.”

“Mmm,” was all that Joyce said.

“Realistically,” I said, “with only three goes, the chances of us getting in are remote. If you can't think of any other point of reference for her password, let's stick with the car. If we fail, we fail. There's no use spending pointless hours over this.”

I typed in VWGOLF and the first three digits of the registration number.

Wrong password.

“OK. A bit of lateral thinking, then we're done. How many doors does the car have?”

“Five. When the gang went out together, we liked being able to pile easily into the back seat.”

“How old was it?”

“You can tell from the registration number.”

“Yes, of course.”

I thought for a moment.

“Right. One more go, then we give up. There's nothing more we can do.”

I typed in 2009GOLF5dr.

It worked.

“I don't believe it,” I said and punched the air.

Joyce had a huge smile on her face.

“You're going to be good at this job, aren't you? So what now?”

“Would you mind if I looked at Helen's emails? You wouldn't think I was prying?”

“We need to look wherever we can for clues,” Joyce said. “Helen wouldn't mind.”

I looked at her and could see she was finding this hard.

The mail icon bounced into life and I went into the inbox.

The last few mails were from someone called Stuart. I opened the most recent and it gave me a record of Helen's last email conversation.

“Who's Stuart?” I turned to Joyce.

“The only Stuart I know is Stuart in our gang. Stuart Hemsley. You know him.”

“Do I?”

“You must have met him. Tallish. Fair hair. He was at school with Helen.”

Joyce moved her chair so we could read through the emails together. When we had finished we looked at each other a few times in surprise.

“So they were an item. And you didn't know this?”

“I had no idea,” Joyce said.

“It looks as if Helen was trying to end it, but Stuart didn't want to. In fact his last two messages are quite distressing.”

“Yes. He was obviously very upset.”

“What does he do?”

“He works for a travel agency in the City.”

“He works in London, does he? Interesting. And where does he live?”

“In one of those new flats near the station.”

“Not too far from where Helen died, then.”

“You don't think...”

“I don't know what to think. But those two things about him alone make interesting coincidences, if that's what they are, and it certainly opens up a possibility. It also reminds me that when I got my business going, I passed a lot of new cards round in the pub.”

“So Stuart would have one and know where to find your office.”

“Probably. But let's see what else there is here, before we start jumping to conclusions.”

I quit the mail programme and clicked the calendar feature on the dock. Adjusting the window so it showed a whole week at a time, I examined the days and weeks immediately prior to Helen's death.

“You were right about Helen being organised. She has her calendar divided into work and personal.”

Joyce watched from my side as I clicked through the weeks, moving from work to personal and back again.

There was one date with Stuart in the private section and several meetings showed up under work.

“Look at that one,” Joyce said, pointing at the screen.

We read ‘meeting with FJ to discuss G'.

“Do the initials mean anything to you?” I asked.

“No. But they wouldn't necessarily. If they are people at work, I wouldn't know them.”

“She worked in Colchester, didn't she?”

“Yes. She was a PA. A very good one, in one of those industrial units up in the High Woods area.”

We stared at the screen together, as if expecting it to reveal the reason for the meeting.

“Look at the date,” I said.

“Oh, God. It's the day after....” Joyce's voice trailed off and she turned to face me.

“The meeting never happened.” I said it for her.

“But it was planned and must have meant something.”

We stared at each other.

“What do you know about her work?” I asked her, pulling my gaze away from her eyes with some difficulty. “If she was a PA she might have been party to information that someone wanted kept quiet.”

“It's possible, but it wasn't that kind of company. It wasn't hi-tech, or likely to be involved in industrial espionage.”

“What do they do?”

“They make boxes. All sorts of packaging.”

“I see what you mean. It sounds innocuous enough. But I shall need to go up there and ask a few questions tomorrow. You never know. If she had a meeting with this FJ about someone called G, it suggests that G was causing a problem of some sort. What's the firm called?”

“Colbox.”

“I'll look them up and go and see who FJ and G are.”

I turned back to the laptop, but all I could see was personal finance stuff, files with details about holiday destinations, spreadsheets which seemed to relate to her job and nothing of any significance that we could see.

I put the computer to sleep rather than turning it off and closed the lid. Leaving it on meant I could get in again without the password for as long as the battery lasted. We turned to face each other.

“So,” I said, “we may have a motive involving someone who lives near where Helen died and works in London.”

“And probably knows your office address.”

“That too.”

I turned and stared out of the window, searching for inspiration. It seemed to be in short supply.

“What do you know about Stuart?”

“Not much. No more or less than anyone else in our gang at the pub. He seems pleasant enough. And if he had been out with Helen a few times, knowing how fussy she was.” Her voice trailed away.

I put my arm round her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze.

“I'm sorry. This is hard, isn't it?”

“But it has to be done if we're to get anywhere.”

“Yes. Right. I shall go and see him. See what he has to say for himself.”

“You will be careful, won't you?”

“I shall try to be.”

We left the office again at just after four o'clock. It was cold and grey and the pavements were damp, but there were a lot of people about, and we had to dodge between them and their luggage. I couldn't understand why so many people chose to lift heavy cases up the steps to the station concourse, when there was a perfectly good ramp. A suitcase with wheels has no benefit when it comes to climbing stairs.

Euston Road was as busy as ever and we had to wait to cross at the lights. I was hoping against hope that the person Joyce had glimpsed was on the same bench again. It seemed unlikely on that damp evening, but it was all we had to go on, and I had no idea what I was going to suggest if we came up blank.

I was very aware how much trust Joyce had placed in me, and not at all certain it was justified.

People were pouring down the stairs at the front of Friends House, and there was a lot of animated conversation as we made our way through them.

I almost didn't dare look into the garden, for fear of being disappointed, but there was someone there.

“It's him,” Joyce said excitedly. “At least, I think it is,” she added with more caution.

We descended into the garden and sure enough, a man was sitting on the bench to the left. He was a scruffy individual and there was a definite aroma emanating from either him or his clothing. In other circumstances I would have kept my distance, but in this case I had no choice.

“Excuse me,” I began, looking down at the man, with Joyce hanging back rather nervously.

The man appeared to be half asleep, but lifted his head slowly and looked a question at me with a frown.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” I persisted, “but were you here at about this time yesterday?”

“Who wants to know?”

“There was an incident here yesterday, and I'm trying to confirm what happened.”

“Police, are you?”

How many times would I be asked that, I thought.

“No, I'm not the police. I'm a private investigator.”

“Oh.”

He didn't sound impressed and his frown deepened, but when he moved his attention from me to Joyce he suddenly came to life.