Imposture (DI Gardener 6)

It was early evening and the team were in the incident room, following a long and demanding – not to mention, unproductive – day. After Gardener and Reilly had spoken to Winter and Pearson, the pair of them had driven to Burley in Wharfedale to speak to Roger Hunter.

David Hunter’s brother was as amazed as anyone at the revelations of blackmail and cyber crime. They questioned him about any phone calls he’d had with his brother recently, and how he felt about the tone of the conversation. Roger said they were fine and he couldn’t detect any problems David might have been having.

He went on to explain the only unusual snippet he could recall was talk of a foreign holiday, because they were homebirds who rarely travelled abroad, unlike Roger who seemed to be somewhere other than the UK most of the time.

He’d never heard of DPA, or the four names they had, nor could he think of anyone with a white 4x4 in the village; but then he didn’t live there. As they were leaving, Gardener could see something was bothering him. When questioned, Hunter had said that for some reason he couldn’t think of, the name Alfie Price rang a bell.

“Didn’t cyber give you anything to go on?” asked Colin Sharp, sipping a coffee.

“Other than the four bogus names,” said Reilly, “no. They mentioned a lot of technical shite about Trojans and Bitcoins and God knows what else.”

“What about a website?” asked Julie Longstaff, smiling at Reilly’s terminology.

“They don’t appear to have one,” said Gardener.

“Rubbish,” said Longstaff, and then quickly apologised because the comment wasn’t aimed at her superior officer. “Everyone – especially an outfit of their calibre – has a website these days. It’ll just be very well hidden.”

“If you’re offering a service, what’s the point in hiding it?” asked Rawson.

“Depends what the service is,” said Longstaff.

“Maybe we should google it, Julie,” said Sarah Gates.

“Good idea,” said Gardener, figuring that if cyber couldn’t find anything he doubted they would, but he knew they were both quite experienced in IT.

“And other than the four names, we have nothing else to go on?” asked Paul Benson.

“We don’t even have four names,” said Reilly. “At least not names we can check.”

“We’ll check them out anyway, sir,” said Gates.

“I’ve just had a thought,” said Rawson. “We probably have four false names, but it might not necessarily be four different people. Could be one.”

“Good point, Dave,” said Gardener, “but until we know more there’s not a lot we can do. So there’s another task, continue checking out those four names, see if they do lead us somewhere.”

“This stuff about the Bitcoins,” said Patrick Edwards, “did they give you any references, or account numbers?”

Now Gardener actually thought about it, neither Winter nor Pearson did mention anything. Whether or not they didn’t know, he wasn’t sure, but he would follow it up because they had mentioned something.

Reilly glanced at Gates and Longstaff. “Anything?”

“Not really,” said Longstaff, glancing up from her phone. “All I can see at the moment is a load of stuff about data protection, and a company who make top end microphones, who are actually called DPA.”

“Well that’s probably a task for you two ladies tomorrow,” said Gardener. “Stay here, in the IT room, and see if you can figure anything out. It’s possible that a fresh set of eyes and minds on the job might uncover something.”

Gates nodded but didn’t actually take her eyes from the screen.

“Until then,” continued Gardener, “we’re going to need more people like Alan Braithwaite who might be lucky enough to stumble across a piece of evidence. That reminds me, we recovered David Hunter’s computer and his mobile from the house but we haven’t heard anything from IT. There must be something on those.”

Gardener turned around and made notes on the whiteboards of the actions

he had mentioned.

“Did anyone follow up with Edward Makepeace to see if he has remembered anything else about the night in question?”

Longstaff raised her hand. “We did but he had nothing new to add.”

“It’s not surprising,” said Reilly. “We still don’t have anything concrete from the witness statements either. Problem is, it was the wrong time of night – or morning – for people to be out.”