Chapter 19
Pressure Points
Their holiday might have ended in rain, but Gareth considered their week off a success.
Nobody had mentioned Manville, school, or work.
Nico and Daniel had left Aidan speechless.
He’d talked to Jack. And thanks to a man he’d never met, he now had an incentive to spend more time in his study.
Even the towering stack of reports on the corner of his desk couldn’t dent his contentment.
“Boss, do you have a moment?”
Frazer grinned like a naughty schoolboy as he popped his head around the door of Gareth’s office.
Gareth waved him inside. “Sure. Help yourself to coffee.” He’d long given up asking any of his staff if they wanted coffee.
Or biscuits. Each of them had a brain that ran on caffeine and a bottomless pit for a stomach.
He pulled the biscuit tin from his bottom drawer and set it in front of Frazer. “What’s up?”
Frazer ate three biscuits and drained half his coffee before he spoke. “Ronald Nancarrow and his missing laptop.”
“Ah, yes. You were going to check the backups.”
“In a way, yes.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end.
The hand trembled ever so slightly, and Gareth wondered when Frazer had last slept.
“You know we image all remote and mobile machines when they log onto the network, right? Especially those that connect infrequently. It gives us better data granularity, and we have extra restore points if—” Pink tinged his cheeks, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “And you don’t need to know all that.”
“How good of you to notice,” Gareth drawled, grinning. “Do I need to call for breakfast? When did you get in?”
“Um.”
Frazer bit into another biscuit and Gareth wanted to roll his eyes. As if he hadn’t seen that one coming. “Have you been home since Friday?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. When did you get in?”
“Midnight?” Frazer’s cheeks bloomed pink. “I was about to go to bed when I had an idea and… and then I wanted to see if it worked.”
“Since you’re nearly vibrating, it has to be something good. Tell me what I need to know.”
Frazer nibbled on another biscuit while he sorted his thoughts.
“Ronald Nancarrow’s laptop last connected to the network while he was here for the November shareholders’ meeting.
At that point, he’d saved a bunch of project information to his hard drive, and they’re all projects we now have competition on.
And the security software we installed when we issued the laptop had been disabled. ”
“Before it went AWOL?”
“Yes. I found snapshots proving that all protections were off when the laptop was last on the premises.” He shrugged. “The weak point in any security measure is the idiot using the system, right?”
“Can’t argue that. And, I suppose, with security turned off, any Tom, Dick, and Harry could have accessed the data.”
“Yes. Nobody tried to connect the laptop to the network, but what he had on the hard drive is damaging enough.”
“Do we know when Roland disabled the security? How long it was off?”
“I can’t say exactly, since he only connected so infrequently, but we keep offsite incrementals—” Frazer raised an eyebrow in question.
“Go on.”
“They’re older backups we move into protected storage for recovery and to keep audit trails. Checking those will give us a window.”
Gareth made a note of that. “That’s time-intensive, I take it?”
“It is. And it needs a trip to Wiltshire.” He tipped his head to the side. “You know we keep the backups in a cave in the Downs, right?”
“Yes, I know that much. These incremental backups… they are physical?”
Frazer grinned. “Jack’s paranoia’s rubbing off on you, boss. They’re on tape, yes. Date stamped and sealed, too, so we can prove nobody’s tampered with them.”
“Excellent. We’ll keep them in reserve. Now tell me what really has you standing all on end.”
“I’m not standing all on end!”
“Could have fooled me. Tell me.”
“It’s… maybe not strictly legal and I know you want things done by the book, but—”
Gareth rolled his eyes at the half gleeful, half apologetic tone. “I said I’m happy to stick my neck out for you guys, provided I understand the risks and rewards. At the moment I understand neither.”
“It’s useful, I promise,” Frazer hastened to explain.
“Then by all means, Don, explain it to me.”
Frazer took a deep breath. “I said earlier we image each remote or mobile device connecting to the network, right?”
Gareth blinked, got it, and couldn’t hold back his grin. “You got his phone! You little beauty!”
“He connected to the in-house Wi-Fi.”
“Well, if he’s daft enough to do that… any data exchanged inside Nancarrow Mining is monitored for breach of confidentiality and training purposes,” he quoted company policy, then leaned forward. “What did you get?”
In answer, Don Frazer held out a sheet of paper.
Gareth took it and read messages exchanged between Ronald and Cecily Nancarrow. “That is fucking gold dust!” He had to remember to update Jack. And Aidan.
“It proves that the laptop is missing,” Frazer agreed.
“More importantly, it proves that Ronald was aware of the loss and didn’t report it, and that Cecily knew and didn’t report it, either.” Gareth rose and waved Frazer to do likewise. “Come along. Let’s cheer up Julian. You realise you’re handing him a hefty stick, right?”
“I was hoping that’s what it might turn into,” Don admitted as they made their way upstairs. “Shame Donovan wasn’t part of that conversation.”
Gareth dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Slow and steady, kid. Patience and the opposition’s arrogance will get us there.”
“Miss McTavish is here. And… I have Julian Nancarrow on the phone for you.”
Aidan sighed. It never rained, but it poured. He hated the phrase, but he couldn’t argue its accuracy. “I’ll take Julian’s call first, please.”
“Of course. Tea?”
“That would be lovely.” Aidan waited for the click of Julian’s call connecting. “Julian. Good morning.”
“Indeed, it is. We need a planning session.”
“About?”
“My cousins. Ronald and Cecily, to be precise.”
Aidan sat straighter. Julian was prone to endure and accommodate his family, but his tone just then suggested something else. “What happened?”
“Frazer found proof that Ronald’s laptop held information on all our compromised projects, and—guess what?—the security features were off when he attended the November shareholders’ meeting. Frazer can also prove that Ronald told Cecily in early December that he lost the laptop.”
“And neither reported it.”
“And neither reported it. Which I consider ‘conduct detrimental to the company’s best interests’.”
The quotation marks came through loud and clear, and Aidan smiled as he flipped through his diary.
“I would agree.” The Nancarrow family had tormented Julian and impeded the company’s growth for long enough.
He didn’t want to pull the brakes when Julian was finally in a mood to do something about them.
“I’m in court Tuesday and Wednesday, but I can free up most of Thursday. Would that suit?”
“Perfectly. I’ll call an online shareholders’ meeting for Thursday afternoon, and we can meet in the morning to plan strategy.”
“Excellent idea. I’ll see you mid-morning Thursday.” He made a note in his diary, then picked up the phone again. “I’m ready for Miss McTavish now. Oh, and could you please re-schedule my Thursday afternoon meeting? I’m needed at Nancarrow all day.”
Aidan stood and stretched, using the movement to switch mental tracks from changes at Nancarrow Mining to a case that grew more tangled every time it touched his desk.
Nico’s notion had seemed preposterous, but he couldn’t deny that it suited the data. If the dead woman wasn’t Margot McTavish, then all the discrepancies Skylar had observed were easy to explain.
He turned as the door opened and Claire McTavish came through, followed by his PA with a tea tray. She set it on the table by the window and disappeared in her usual efficient way.
“Thank you for making time for me, Miss McTavish.” Aidan shook hands, then offered her a seat. “I have a few additional questions.”
“I’m perfectly happy to answer whatever I can.” She settled into the sofa, a neat portfolio by her side. “What do you want to know?”
Aidan took the seat opposite her. “I’m not quite sure how to explain this.”
“You can be blunt.”
“Thank you. That will help, though you won’t like it.” He paused. “We have reason to believe that the body found in your aunt’s flat wasn’t your aunt.”
The sunlight slanting through the tall windows into Aidan’s office did nothing for Claire McTavish’s complexion. The young woman, who’d so impressed him with her poise at their first meeting, was pale as milk.
“What do you mean, it wasn’t her? I can’t… I can’t imagine—”
“It’s difficult, I grant.” Aidan poured tea and handed her a cup, wishing he could offer her a stiff drink instead. “If you remember, you came to me because you felt your aunt’s death wasn’t what it seemed.”
“Yes, but… I didn’t expect you to say the dead woman wasn’t my aunt!”
“Of course not. Tell me, though—did your aunt ever mention a sister? A twin sister, to be precise.”
Claire McTavish shook her head. “She didn’t speak about her family. I suppose I assumed her parents were dead, and I never asked.”
“You never heard your aunt mention a sister’s name? Or an address?”
“No, never.”
“How about your late uncle?”
“Not to my knowledge. But Mr Conrad, really. My aunt was seventy-two when she died. She’d lived an active, busy life. How likely is it that a sister, even if it was a twin, would still look like her?”
“That’s exactly what I meant to ask you. When you identified your aunt—”
“Oh, but I didn’t. My mother… I see.”
She picked up her teacup and sipped, more for something to do with her hands if Aidan was any judge. “You think your mother might not have looked too closely.”