Imposture (DI Gardener 6)

“Do you really want to know?” asked Farrah.

“I don’t think so,” replied Gardener.

The computer switched images and then zoomed in on the white 4x4, and the rear registration plate as it sped away.

Chapter Twelve

As quickly as the information was digesting, Gardener’s phone rang. He listened to a message before glancing at Reilly.

“That was Winter in cyber, he’s found something interesting.”

“I wouldn’t have banked on this much good luck when I woke up this morning,” said Reilly. “Let’s head to his office.”

“Thank you, Mr Farrah,” said Gardener, “I really appreciate what you’ve done for us.”

“Keep me posted,” he said.

Gardener and Reilly left Farrah’s office. On the way to his new destination, Gardener phoned Edwards and gave him the registration of the vehicle. Five minutes later and one floor down they were sitting with Winter and Pearson. Gardener denied the offer of a drink but Reilly’s eyes widened when it was offered with mince pies.

Once seated, Winter went on to summarise what they had so far picked up. “We’ve been really busy in the last few days, digging into David Hunter’s computer, his phone records and the information we found in the attaché case. We’re pretty sure now that he was being blackmailed because of the evidence we’ve found to support it. He was clever enough to recognise what was going on. He’d managed to start a trace; made a note of the Bitcoin wallet the blackmail money was moving to.”

That had answered one of Gardener’s questions so he remained silent for the time being.

“Are you saying that you have real names for these people now?” asked Reilly.

Shona Pearson nodded and raised her eyes. “We think so. It’s taken since we spoke to you last to get past all the firewalls and secret codes embedded in some of their programming. What we’ve come up with is, James Henshaw, Zoe Harrison, Michael Foreman, and Anthony Palmer.”

“And why do you think they’re real?” asked Gardener.

“We managed to unearth them through the cryptocurrency transactions,” said Winter, “and David Hunter’s computer – although that took some cracking.”

“Stands to reason, he worked for a bank,” said Reilly.

Winter nodded. “We continued to dig into the initials DPA. We’re still not sure what it stands for, or whether or not they have a website yet, but what we did find – at least we believed we did – was that they operated from a business premises in Leeds called V-Tech.”

“Leeds?” questioned Gardener.

“However,” said Shona Pearson, “when we checked, it didn't exist. It was a bunch of derelict buildings on a waste piece of land at the end of a small side street. So they are still managing to cover their tracks – every step of the way.”

“What about home addresses?” Gardener asked. “Were you able to get anything on those?”

Shona Pearson passed him a printout of all the information they had so far uncovered. Whether or not the addresses were real was another matter.

“Thank you for this, you must have been working around the clock.” Gardener had to think quickly. “We obviously have two cases here, with two specialist teams. The cyber crime is certainly all yours and I suspect you still have a long way to go before you uncover all of that stuff.

“The hit and run, and the murders of David and Ann Marie Hunter are ours. To save us all running round, we need to put a SPOC in place: one from your team in my incident room, and one from ours in yours.”

Winter nodded. “Would you like to do that, Shona?”

“Yes, I’m up for it, be interesting see how you guys work.”

Glancing at the time it was midday. Gardener was on the phone immediately requesting a callout for every member of his team back in the incident room within the hour for a briefing and fresh tasks.

Chapter Thirteen

Another two days passed before the team assembled again to give Gardener the results of his previous actions, following Farrah’s and Winter’s revelations. Finally having a registration meant he wanted to know more about the vehicle: where had it been bought; what they actually knew about it and where was it now.

As far as people were concerned, he wanted everyone who lived near the DPA team questioned as to their whereabouts. Were the addresses real, or a dead end like the business premises? Were the cyber crime scammers at home, or had they too disappeared like the vehicle? Had they left the country? Airports needed checking. He wanted his team all over it because it was very late in the day to gather information from an old crime scene. Everyone knew the first twenty-four hours were the most important.