The Courier. Ava McCarthy
guy was passing information to a competitor. But what was she looking for on Garvin’s laptop? Some clue to ‘Beth’? Or to the man in the baseball cap? Suddenly, the idea seemed far-fetched.
She checked on Imogen. Still on the phone. She’d jammed the receiver into the crook of her neck, her hands free to fiddle with her rings. Harry turned back to her screen and launched her forensic toolkit program.
Small hairs rose on the back of her neck. She was about to cross a line. Garvin’s hard drive was evidence in a murder investigation, and she’d no business trespassing on its data. Whatever way you looked at it, she was probably about to commit a crime.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She thought of the trouble she was already in: of Detective Inspector Lynne, still stalking her past; of Hunter, who’d pegged her as guilty of theft, or maybe even murder; of the killer on her tail, and Hunter’s indifference to the danger she was in. She balled her fingers into fists. Was she supposed to clock up brownie points before she qualified for police protection?
To hell with it. Maybe it was time she protected herself. She jabbed at the keys and leapfrogged into Garvin’s files.
She took a few moments to scout out the landscape, eyeballing the installed programs, skimming through the logs and noting the most recently used files. It was like nosing around someone’s house while they were away, and it took effort not to look furtive. She picked her way around, until gradually she’d built a picture of how Garvin had used his laptop.
It was standard stuff. Mostly he switched between spreadsheets, a word processor and the internet. The everyday tools of the ordinary user. And with them, he’d produced thousands of files.
Harry leaned back in her chair, hands in her pockets. Analysing files was as much instinct as science, but right now she was all out of hunches. Her fingers touched the rounded pebble she’d found inside her bag. It still felt cold. She worried at it for a moment, then let it drop, leaning back into the keyboard. Sometimes the most obvious was worth a try.
She keyed in a search for the word ‘diamonds’.
Thousands of filenames rolled up the screen, and Harry groaned. She refined her search, filtering by date stamp, concentrating on files that Garvin had accessed in the week before his death. The list shrank to seventeen. That was more like it.
Harry flipped open the first file and scanned through it. It was an invoice from a company called Safari Diamond Corporation for ‘twelve rough 1.5 carat whites’. The invoice was addressed to Garvin Oliver Trading Limited and amounted to $90,000.
Harry skipped into the next file. Another invoice, this one originating from Garvin Oliver Trading Limited to a Dutch company called Staal Precision Cutters. Garvin was charging them €30,000 for a shipment of eight uncut yellows, ranging from 0.75 to 1 carat.
Harry flicked a glance at Imogen. She was winding up her call, pushing away from her desk. Harry skimmed through the next few files. More invoices and orders, and a handful of spreadsheets that looked like profit-and-loss accounts. Garvin was clearly in the diamond-trading business, and her eyes widened at his bottom-line numbers. ‘Beth’ was right. Garvin had been making money.
‘Want another coffee?’
Harry jumped, and snapped the files shut. Imogen stood behind her, yawning and stretching like a cat.
‘Thanks.’ Harry scrambled for another errand to keep her friend out of the way. ‘I skipped lunch, so maybe a doughnut, too?’
‘Good idea. You need the calories.’
Harry waited till Imogen had left the room, then poked through the rest of the files. More invoices, orders and correspondence with suppliers. Garvin had been busy the week before he died.
Finally, she opened the last file, a spreadsheet called ‘Stock Inventory October 2009’. It had been accessed earlier that morning.
Rows of data flashed on the screen. Harry blinked, trying to make sense of them. It looked like a list of stones that Garvin had bought and sold. He’d recorded the quantity and colour of the stones, along with their weight in carats, noting suppliers and customers against each entry. The largest stones weighed up to four carats, and a few of them even had names: Apollo, The African Star, Egyptian Sunrise.
Some of the entries had digital photos embedded in the data. Harry zoomed in. Images of smooth, crystal-like stones filled the screen. Some were foggy white, like the one in her pocket; others a duller yellow or brown. One photo showed a cluster of six misty whites, set beside a matchstick for scale. Each stone was listed as 0.25 carats, no bigger than the match’s head.
‘Here you go.’
Imogen plonked a mug down on the desk, along with a creamy doughnut. Harry spun round to face her, obscuring her view of the screen.
‘That was ChemCal on the phone,’ Imogen said. ‘They’ve decided to prosecute.’
Harry raised her eyebrows. Imogen had been working on a forensics investigation for ChemCal Labs. The MD had suspected his chief accountant of embezzlement, and had hired Blackjack to scour his laptop for any tell-tale signs.
‘Do they want you to testify?’ she said.
‘They’re talking it over with their lawyers.’ Imogen fiddled with her ring. ‘I’ll pencil in some time, just in case.’
Harry sipped her coffee, willing her screensaver to kick in behind her. She nodded at Imogen’s fidgeting fingers. ‘How’re you doing with that ring?’
Imogen made a face, then splayed out the fingers of her left hand. ‘It’s making me grumpy.’
‘I’d noticed.’
Imogen had announced her engagement the week before to an architect she’d been dating for six months. From the outset, she’d declared it was only an experiment to see how getting married would feel. Harry had been sceptical. In her view, it was long-term commitment that probably made marriage such a chore. Treating it like a new dress you could take back if it didn’t fit seemed to be missing the point.
Not that Harry felt up to long-term commitments, either. She couldn’t imagine herself taking that leap, plummeting into a world where wills clashed and two lives were locked together. Just thinking about it made her feel short of air.
Imogen wiggled her fingers, appraising her ring. ‘I’ll probably give it back today.’
Harry glanced at the twinkling stone, her awareness of diamonds heightened. It was a small solitaire, about the size of a peppercorn. From the little she’d learned, she put it at less than half a carat.
‘What about Shane?’
‘He’ll get over it.’ Imogen smiled and put her head to one side, her long ponytail springing out from her crown like an S-hook. ‘He’s looking a little twitchy himself. The word “hasty” keeps coming up.’
Then she flapped her hand, dismissing the subject. ‘I’ll send you the ChemCal report.’
‘Any surprises?’
‘Not really.’ Imogen headed back to her desk. ‘He’d tried to cover his tracks with some hidden files, but it didn’t take long to sniff them out.’
Harry stared after her for a moment, then snapped her eyes back to the screen. Hidden files. She could almost feel her brain shifting.
She’d taken Garvin’s files at face value up to now, only considering those in plain view. And why not? After all, he’d been killed during the course of a burglary, hadn’t he? Wrong place, wrong time. Just like her.
But what if there was more to it than that? Gooseflesh buzzed along her arms. What if he was killed because he had something to hide?
There