Black Mail (2012) (23 page)

‘What happened to the DVD?’

‘I’ve got it. Mike didn’t want to keep it in the house in case Laura stumbled across it.’

‘So Simon talked Laura into hiring someone to kill Mike – and now he’s leaving her to carry the can?’

‘That’s what it looks like. Once the blackmailer had been dealt with Simon thought his problems were over, so he washed his hands of Laura.’

‘He really is a first-class prick!’ Helen seethed. ‘But that doesn’t explain why he was threatening to blow the gaff on your fiddle.’

‘I couldn’t bear to see the smug bastard get away with it so, to scare the living daylights out of him, I sent him another email yesterday morning, purportedly coming from Liam Black, demanding fifty grand. Mike told me he’d nicknamed Simon “Pervert”, so I used that name in the message. When he got my email he came scuttling round to the bank and tried to talk me into paying a dodgy cheque from his firm into my bank account and transferring the money to him. When I poured
cold water on that idea he turned nasty and demanded that I give him fifty thousand quid or else he threatened to expose my scam.’

‘Did you give him the money?’

‘You have got to be joking! I played along with him and told him he’d get the money today in order to give me time to unravel my program changes and make sure they couldn’t be traced, then I phoned him last night, using the voice synthesiser. He tried to persuade me to accept the money in instalments but I said that wasn’t good enough and I told him I was going to expose him in the newspapers. I wouldn’t imagine he got much sleep last night.’

‘I’ve got to tell Dad and Laura about this, Bjorn. They have to know what Simon’s been up to. And so does Jude. I’ll call her straight away.’

Charlie Anderson had to drive round the block twice before he found a parking place at the bottom of Woodlands Terrace. Rummaging around in the glove compartment for change, he fed a few coins into the parking meter before trudging up the hill to Park Terrace. When he rang the Ramsays’ bell Jude came to the door, a cup of coffee in one hand, a cordless phone in the other.

‘I’ll have to go now, Helen,’ she said into the mouthpiece. ‘Inspector Anderson has just arrived. I’ll call you later. Thanks for letting me know about that.’ She cut the connection.

‘Sorry to disturb you so early, Mrs Ramsay,’ Charlie said. ‘I was hoping I might catch your husband before he left for work.’

‘Simon didn’t come home last night.’

‘Where was he staying?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ She shrugged. ‘And, to be quite honest, I couldn’t care less.’

‘Perhaps I could come in for a minute?’ Charlie said, blowing into his gloved fists and huddling into his overcoat.

‘Of course! How rude of me.’ Jude stood to one side to allow him to step across the threshold before closing the door behind him. ‘Would you care for a coffee? I’ve just made a pot.’

‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’

Charlie tugged off his overcoat and gloves as he followed Jude into the kitchen. Presented with a mug of coffee, he sat down, blowing on the piping liquid and warming his hands on the mug.

‘I don’t know who I’m upset with more, Inspector, Simon or Laura.’ Jude took a seat on the opposite side of the table. ‘You sort of expect it of husbands, don’t you?’

Charlie raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you?’

‘But not of sisters. I could perhaps have accepted a drunken one-night stand, but the fact that the two of them have been going at it hammer and tongs for the past couple of years is more than I can stomach.’

‘Have you spoken to Laura about it?’

‘I heard her side of the story from Dad.’ Jude averted her eyes. ‘I’ve no wish to talk to her about it.’

‘Do you believe her version of events?’

‘If by that you mean, do I believe Simon put her up to hiring McAteer to kill Mike, the answer is yes.’

‘Is that based on feminine intuition?’ Charlie enquired as he stirred two lumps of brown sugar into his coffee. ‘Or hard facts?’

Jude paused. ‘Simon was out of the house at the time Mike was killed.’

Charlie froze in mid-stir. ‘Really?’

‘He told me he’d nipped out to the shops to buy cigarettes because he’d run out, but that was a lie. I found a half-full carton of Marlboro in his desk drawer.’

‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’

‘My sister wasn’t under arrest before.’

‘If Laura’s telling the truth, then your husband received an email from a blackmailer. On the other hand, if he’s telling the truth, no such email exists.’

‘What are you driving at?’

‘If we had access to your husband’s computer we might be able to establish the facts once and for all.’

‘If Simon had received such an email I’d credit him with having enough nous to have deleted it by now.’

‘It’s still worth checking.’

‘Do you know how to do that?’

‘Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. I’d need to take his computer back to Pitt Street and let one of our boffins loose on it. Of course, I don’t have a warrant.’ Charlie broke off and sipped at his coffee. ‘I couldn’t remove a computer from these premises without the owner’s permission.’

‘This house, and everything in it, Inspector, belongs to me.’

As soon as he got back to his car Charlie phoned O’Sullivan. ‘Get a search warrant authorised for the Harrisons’ house, Tony. I want Mike Harrison’s computer shipped to Pitt Street as soon as possible.’

‘Hi, Sue – just calling to say thanks for the grapes.’ Tony held the mouthpiece of the phone down low to avoid it brushing against his nose.

‘It would appear that my chilli con carne’s reputation has spread further than I thought.’

‘Come again?’

‘Or were you just too scared to pit your measly football knowledge against Jamie’s?’

‘How about I hang up and call back and we start this conversation again?’

‘You could at least have phoned to say you couldn’t make it, Tony,’ she said tetchily.

‘I’m not with this.’

‘You mean – you mean you didn’t get my note?’

‘What note?’

‘I left a note for you in the fruit bowl on your bedside table, inviting you round for dinner last night. I asked you to give me a call if you wouldn’t be able to make it.’

Tony exhaled noisily. ‘I never saw any note. They woke me up in the hospital at five o’clock and told me I could go home. Everything had been cleared away, including the fruit bowl. As far as I remember the only thing on the bedside table was my watch.’

‘Sod’s law strikes again! What did you get up to last night?’

‘I picked up a takeaway and went back to my flat to watch the telly. By the way, have you ever tried the pakora from The Balti Club in Woodlands Road? It’s fantastic! There must be at least twenty different fillings to choose from.’

‘You’re not doing my chilli con carne’s complex any favours.’

‘Sorry, Sue. I don’t suppose …’ Tony hesitated. ‘It’s a silly question, but I don’t suppose you’re free tonight by any chance?’ ‘Afraid not. Christmas Eve is panto night. Family tradition. Big treat for Jamie. We’re going to see
Jack and the Beanstalk
at the King’s.’

‘Do you like pantomime?’

‘I love anything to do with the theatre. I used to be involved in amateur dramatics before Jamie came along and panto is a great excuse to let your hair down. There’s nothing I like better than sitting near the front in the stalls and screaming out “Behind you!”with the best of them. How about you?’

‘When I was a kid the panto at Ayr Gaiety was the highlight of my Christmas – until I got disillusioned. When I was eight, the Principal Boy turned down my proposal of marriage. I haven’t been back since.’

‘One ticket – for tonight, you said?’ Tony nodded in confirmation. ‘It’s virtually a sell-out,’ the girl at the King’s Theatre box office said as she checked her computer screen, ‘but I should be able to find you something. There are always a few singles dotted around. Stalls or circle?

‘Stalls, please.’

‘Here we are, front stalls, row Y. Would that be okay?’

‘Anything nearer the front?’

She scanned her screen. ‘Sorry. That’s as good as it gets.’

‘I’ll take it,’ he said, handing over his credit card.

‘You didn’t have to lug across the whole kit and caboodle, sir. The hard drive would’ve been enough.’

Charlie eyed the serious-looking, bearded constable who had just walked into his office. ‘I wouldn’t know a hard drive if I found one in my porridge, Donald.’ He indicated the seat opposite. ‘Did you find anything of interest?’

‘All the data that’s readily accessible is innocuous enough,’ he said as he sat down. ‘A few spreadsheets, emails, business letters,
family photos. But some of the images that had been deleted are dynamite. A veritable pornographer’s paradise – most of it, but not all, paedophile in nature.’

‘How did you manage to access the images if they’d been deleted?’

‘When you issue a “delete” command on a computer all that happens is that the entry on the file allocation table, effectively the pointer to that particular file, is suppressed and the space is flagged as available for re-use. The data itself isn’t removed until it’s overwritten by another file. If the storage on a PC isn’t heavily used, deleted files can remain on the hard drive for some considerable time.’

‘How can you access the files without the pointers?’

‘It’s all a bit technical. If you’ve got a spare couple of hours I could take you through the basics.’

‘Aye, right!’ Charlie waved his hand back and forth in front of his face. ‘Will you be able to print out the stuff he tried to delete?’

‘The images are being run off downstairs even as we speak. I’ll bring them up as soon as they’re ready.’

Tony O’Sullivan walked into the office as Donald Porter was getting to his feet. ‘Looks like you’ve been in the wars, sir,’ Porter said, eyeing Tony’s face.

‘If you’re hoping to pick up observation credits for your sergeant’s exam, Donald, forget it!’

‘No need to take it out on Constable Porter, Sergeant,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s not his fault you got cuffed with your own handcuffs.’

‘Why don’t you announce that over the tannoy, sir? One of the cleaners might not have heard the story.’

‘What do you think, Donald?’ Charlie winked at Porter. ‘Would that be worthwhile?’

‘Shouldn’t think so, sir. I’m pretty sure all the cleaners know by now.’ Porter left the office with a smirk on his face.

‘How much longer am I going to have to put up with this snash?’

‘I’m thinking of including the incident in my “things not to do” section in the next graduate trainees’ seminar. An excellent case study – you could be immortalised.’ O’Sullivan let out a snort. ‘Should you be here?’ Charlie asked. ‘Are you not still signed off?’

‘The doc said I could go back to work as soon as I felt up to it. But if I’m going to have to suffer this crap I think I might have a relapse.’

‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get the coffees in and I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening. By the way, we got a breakthrough. A student has come forward to tell us she saw a Jag with LAM in the licence plate – which matches Ramsay’s car registration – parked in Kelvin Way at eight o’clock on the morning of the murder. And the icing on the cake is that Mrs Ramsay is prepared to testify that her hubby was out of the house at the time of the murder.’

Charlie was briefing O’Sullivan when Donald Porter arrived back in the office carrying an armful of photographs. He spread them out in two rows on the desk.

‘That lot,’ he said, indicating the top row, ‘are downloads from paedophile internet sites. Disgusting – but we’ve seen most of them before. These,’ he said, pointing to the bottom row, ‘seem to be the same guy screwing several different women.’

‘This is our friend, Simon Ramsay,’ Tony said, picking up one of the prints and examining it.

‘He seems to be a fan of home movies,’ Charlie said. ‘Do you recognise any of the women?’

O’Sullivan studied each photo in turn. ‘This one’s Laura Harrison,’ he said, holding up a print. ‘I don’t know any of the others. He seems to be the type who likes to watch himself perform,’ Tony added drily.

‘And this particularly nauseating specimen,’ Porter said, dangling a print from his fingertips at arm’s length, ‘was attached to an email sent to him on the fifteenth of December by someone calling himself Liam Black. The email was a barely coded blackmail threat.’

Charlie took the photo and examined it. ‘This explains a lot,’ he said. ‘This is the photo the blackmailer sent to Ramsay, but he knew if he showed this to Laura Harrison there was no way she’d get involved. So he printed off a different photo from his collection – one of Laura and him in bed together – knowing there was nothing she wouldn’t do to avoid her husband seeing it – even to the extent of hiring a hit man to kill the blackmailer.’

‘What a charming guy!’ Tony said.

‘What age do you reckon that lassie is?’ Charlie asked, shaking his head in disgust as he handed the print across.’

‘At a guess, about eleven or twelve,’ Tony said. ‘She looks Asian.’

‘Check with the airlines, travel agents, the passport office etc. Find out if Ramsay’s been to Asia anytime in the past few years and, if so, when it was and who he went with. Anything else for us, Donald?’ Charlie asked.

‘I did a scan to see if there were any more deleted emails from Liam Black on Ramsay’s computer. I found one – sent yesterday. I’ve printed it out for you. This time the blackmail threat was spelled out in no uncertain terms. I’ve done a trace on the source
of both these emails via the service provider,’ Porter added. ‘The first one was straightforward enough. It was sent from the computer that was brought across from the Harrison’s house. However, the second email sent yesterday was routed through Serbia and Georgia and the trail fizzles out somewhere in Latvia. Whoever sent that one certainly didn’t want it to be traced.’

‘What about Harrison’s computer? Did you find anything incriminating on it?’

‘No, but that’s a different kettle of fish. It looks like a lot of stuff has been deleted recently, but by someone who knew what he was doing. He didn’t just suppress the file allocation table, he overwrote the data on the hard disk several times with a random binary series of zeroes and ones. I’ll have another go at it, but I’m not optimistic about being able to re-create any of the files.’