Dead and Gone (4 page)

‘I have to go,’ she explained. ‘When I phoned my parents last night, I promised I’d be home for lunch. Will you walk with me to the bus station, like you did before?’

‘Of course I will. You didn’t tell them you were staying the night here, did you?’

‘I’m not that daft. It wouldn’t have gone down at all well, especially if I’d mentioned your name. As far as they know, I stayed over in York.’

As Dean reached to unlock the door, she stopped him, her hand on his. She stepped closer and kissed him, gently at first, then with increasing fervour, her tongue exploring his mouth,
entwining with his. ‘Now you know why I wanted you to clean your teeth.’ She smiled at him, a trifle shakily. ‘I’m not that keen on whisky.’

‘If it’s a trade-off, I’ll never touch the stuff again,’ he promised.

When they reached the street, it seemed quite natural for Naomi to take his hand, and to continue to hold it all the way to the bus station. As they waited for the bus to arrive, Naomi kissed him again. ‘That’s to say sorry for being so nasty to you. I thought about what you said and realized I was being completely unfair. If you got the flak from what your sister did, you must have suffered along with everyone else.’

She kissed him once more. ‘And that’s to say thank you for not telling the police about what happened that night.’ Instead of letting go, she put her hand on the back of his neck, the flames of desire kindling between them, like the flickering forks of lightning before a storm. ‘And that’s from me to you, until we have that date. That is, if you still want to?’

He released her several minutes later as the bus pulled up alongside. ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then,’ Naomi gasped. She walked towards the steps of the bus. ‘I’ll phone you and let you know when I’m coming home again,’ she promised.

Dean wasn’t certain if he walked or floated back home. He noticed one or two people looking oddly at him, which he found slightly puzzling. That was because he could not see what they could, which was the idiotic grin on his face that had one or two of them worried about his sanity. His first act on reaching the flat was to pour the rest of the whisky down the kitchen sink. He placed the bottle for recycling and, as he turned to walk back into the lounge, caught sight of himself in the mirror. There was a large scarlet stain on his face, from Naomi’s lipstick. It looked as if she’d branded him. Which in a sense perhaps she had. He went to wipe it off – then changed his mind.

Philip Lacey and his wife had booked a holiday. Nowadays they could more or less go when they wanted, and this was the trip they had promised themselves for years. ‘Do you remember when we used to look at travel brochures and the adverts on TV that started on Boxing Day?’ Philip asked her.

His wife smiled. ‘You mean in the days when all we could afford was to look at them? When we had to save up for the TV licence?’

‘That’s right, and the holiday we fancied above all others was that cruise around the Norwegian fjords. Well, you’d better get packing, because I’ve booked one.’

‘Philip, that’s wonderful. When do we go?’

‘Ten days from now.’

‘What about the business?’

‘Andrea can cope. She’s well into the way of things now, and it isn’t exactly rocket science. Besides, she’s a bright lass.’

Andrea Lacey, their only child, was secretly delighted. Not only was she pleased for her parents, but she would be glad of the opportunity to show she could look after the family business.

Many years ago, whilst working as a salesman for an agricultural equipment dealer, Philip had spotted a niche in the market. Although the area had several farm supply companies, there was none dedicated to the specific needs of the equestrian community. This was surprising, bearing in mind that the region sported a greater proportion of horse riders than almost
anywhere else in the country. In addition to those who rode purely for pleasure, there were the needs of the horse racing fraternity to be catered for.

After much heart-searching, and with the aid of his meagre savings added to a second mortgage on their house, Philip set up Lacey’s Equestrian Supplies. In the early days, his wife had run the business whilst Philip continued his work selling agricultural machinery. The business had struggled for some years, and on more than one occasion, they had considered closing it down, but eventually, as word of mouth spread, their reputation for reliability, quality, customer service and value for money brought them an ever-increasing flow of new and repeat business. Eventually, Philip had been able to hand in his notice, and they had moved from the small, semi-detached house on the outskirts of Netherdale, where the garage served as a showroom and warehouse combined. They had bought an old farmhouse close to Bishop’s Cross, where the former stable block and barns would serve their needs admirably.

On the Monday following her parents’ departure, Andrea Lacey was in the office early. Getting there presented no problems, for it was no more than a fifty-yard walk from the house to the stables. On reaching her desk, Andrea’s first task was to switch on the computer and check for incoming emails.

Philip Lacey had reached the point where most of the business was from previous customers, the majority of whom Philip knew by their first name. Andrea had persuaded her father that in order to extend both the area and turnover of the business, they should build a website and take online orders. Although Philip readily agreed, Andrea regarded it as her pet project, and was always keen to demonstrate its value in additional sales or enquiries.

She was gratified to see at least three emails enquiring about items in their online catalogue, plus a couple of confirmed orders. That would be a good start to the week, she thought, especially as one of the orders was for an item that ranked as almost the most expensive in their range. In addition to these, there was an email from a source Andrea didn’t recognize, the subject being saddles.
She opened it, but was disappointed to find that the message was from someone interested in supplying bicycle saddles.

Andrea framed a short, polite response and sent it, before deleting the email, and within minutes, when the sister of one of the nearby National Hunt trainers arrived to collect an order, she had forgotten all about it.

The week passed swiftly for Andrea. For the first time, she was aware of how much work was involved in running the business, especially single-handed. It was Friday morning before an email arrived that caused Andrea a few minutes’ anxiety. The message subject was shown as computer fraud, and was from the local police force. Andrea read the body of the email with a sinking sensation in her stomach.

Andrea followed the instructions and sent the response, glad that she had no unusual activity to report. Once that was done,
she turned her attention to paying bills. It was the month end, and her father was scrupulous in ensuring that suppliers received their money on time. It was part of the reputation that the business had become noted for. Nowadays, online banking ensured that most of their suppliers could be paid without resorting to cheques, but once Andrea had dealt with those, she took the chequebook from the safe and started dealing with the rest.

DS Mironova was studying the files her boss, DI Mike Nash, had left on her desk, when the phone rang. It was Sergeant Binns. ‘I’ve a young woman in reception asking for you. She seems to be in a bit of a state.’

‘Asking for me? By name? Who is she? Any idea what it’s about?’

‘Something to do with her computer and a load of money that’s gone missing.’ Binns paused, then added, ‘She says she’s had an email from you about it.’

Clara blinked in surprise. ‘I’ll be right down.’

She left the office and headed downstairs to reception, introduced herself and listened to the young woman with mounting astonishment. ‘You say you had an email from me? But I haven’t sent any emails out. Certainly not in the last few weeks, and definitely nothing to do with computer fraud; I wouldn’t know where to start, to be honest.’

‘It is true,’ Andrea insisted. ‘Early last week I got one from someone supposedly selling bicycle saddles. No use to us, we deal in equestrian supplies.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it would be.’ Clara had a fleeting image of someone mounted on a chestnut gelding with only a skimpy racing-bike saddle for support. She dismissed it and concentrated on Andrea’s tale of woe.

‘Then on Friday, I got another email, this time from you, asking if I’d had the first one, and what action I’d taken. I had boxes to tick. I followed your instructions and didn’t think any more about it until I got a call from the bank this morning,
warning me we were close to going overdrawn.’ Andrea paused and swallowed, and Clara could see the girl was near to tears. ‘Someone’s accessed our online banking and taken over £25,000 out of the account. My mother and father are away on holiday. Dad will kill me when he gets back.’

The tears she had been holding back spilled over. Clara looked round for support, and was relieved to see Nash entering the building. ‘Mike,’ she called, ‘I think you’d better hear this.’

Nash looked from the distraught girl to his sergeant, noting Clara’s grave expression as she introduced him. ‘This is Detective Inspector Nash. I’d like you to tell him what you’ve just told me. Mike, this is Andrea Lacey.’

He listened to the story, and when she finished, asked, ‘Did you print off a copy of the email that you thought came from Sergeant Mironova?’

Andrea produced a sheet of paper from her pocket. Nash scanned it. ‘Very convincing,’ he agreed, ‘as it was intended to be. Unfortunately, that isn’t one of our email addresses, and certainly not one of DS Mironova’s. As for computers, Clara has to get the instruction book out to switch ours on. Which, I’m afraid, means you appear to have been the victim of a very clever fraud. Tell me something, the first email you got, is that still in your recycle bin, or have you emptied that?’

‘No, I think it will still be there. The computer is programmed to delete them, but only once a month, and that isn’t due for another week at least.’

‘In that case, I’d like to send one of my officers round to see you. One that does know something about computers.’ Nash smiled. ‘He will retrieve that and with luck we’ll get the sender’s IP address. In the meantime you’ll need an incident number. If I was you, I’d check with your bank. As your online banking account was hacked, and as you didn’t release the password, I think you might be lucky. They might well reimburse you for the money that’s been stolen.’

Had Clara been at all paranoid, by the end of the day she would have been stressed beyond belief. Following Andrea
Lacey’s visit, she received four more complaints about computer fraud, all of them from people citing her name and demanding to know what was going on.

Nash called on Pearce’s expertise to help tackle the problem. ‘How exactly do you think they did it?’

‘It sounds like something called phishing. I’d say the first email can almost certainly be ignored. The part where the trap was placed would most likely be in the second email, where it requested a response from the recipient, asking them to tick certain boxes, or to leave comments. In doing that, they probably triggered a tracking cookie.’

‘What on earth’s one of those?’

‘Tracking cookies are used by online marketers to identify shopping habits and websites that users visit. Then they target people with products or services tailored to their specific interests. In this case I’d say these were highly sophisticated tracking cookies designed to target the victims’ online banking, and to identify the passwords used to access the accounts. Once they had those, all they needed to do was input the relevant information and withdraw sums of money that they could send to accounts they had already set up.’

‘That’s bloody cunning. I noticed that in all the cases, they left sufficient in the account to prevent it tipping into overdraft, which might have set alarm bells ringing earlier. How they did that, I wasn’t sure, but if your theory is correct, and I believe it is, they would know exactly how much the victim had in their account. The next questions are, how do we stop them, and how do we identify them?’

‘That’s a lot harder to answer. The software program the scammers installed within the victims’ computers would have to be designed specifically for the purpose. Finding it is way beyond my sphere of knowledge. Nor will we get much joy out of tracing the accounts where the money ended up.’ Pearce shook his head. ‘Because I’d be willing to bet the money didn’t stay there longer than the time needed to clear the funds, and by the time we got to hear about it the money could have gone around
the world and back several times. To be honest, when I said it was more than I could cope with, I’m not even sure whether our computer specialists would be able to solve this one. I could ask them, if you want?’

‘I don’t think we’ve any choice. Please do that, Viv, and make it a priority. We don’t know if that’s the end of it, or how many more people might have been targeted. Some may be in the process of being hacked even as we speak. I think we should issue a public warning as well’ – Nash smiled wryly – ‘but not by email. I’ll ring Superintendent Fleming and tell her the bad news.’

Following his explanations, Jackie Fleming was exasperated. ‘Damn it, Mike, that’s the last thing we need. Do you reckon we’ll have to get the specialists in?’

‘I do, but more to the point, Viv does. And he knows far more about these things than I do. At the moment he’s gone to visit all the known victims to examine their computers. However, if his theory about how the scam was set up is right, Viv thinks the fraud is so sophisticated, even our computer experts might struggle to get anywhere. For now I’d like you to sanction the release of a public warning. As things stand, all we can do is to try and limit the damage, because every day that passes gives them opportunity to access more bank accounts. I think the warning ought to be on every media outlet we can think of, even over the Internet. Poor Clara’s getting so twitchy, she hardly dare pick the phone up because she’s been made the focal point for one or two people’s anger.’

‘Leave it with me. I’ll handle the media and hopefully we’ll get something out today. Fax me a copy of the offending email and I’ll get it distributed to the press and shown on TV.’