CODE TO MURDER, page 26
“That is simply a coincidence,” said the solicitor. “Do you have any evidence he was in the room where Mr Anderson was killed?”
“Well said, mate. See, I told you he would snarl and growl.”
“We’ve looked at the schedule of work you had for the day. You were supposed to fit new handles on every door on the second floor. We checked and you fitted them on every door until you got to room 202, where Anderson was, but you didn’t do his. I’m guessing when he came to the door and you saw who it was, you took your chance to give him a piece of your mind, but it went beyond that and you sorted him out for good,” said Ben.
“Not me. It was time for me to go get ready for the night out. I didn’t go near 202 and I didn’t know Anderson was in there.”
“Like I said, Chief Inspector – any actual evidence?”
“Now you come to mention it, Mr Keevins, we do have some evidence.”
Ben put down an evidence bag on the table, containing two screws and a metal backplate.
“What, that’s it? Those screws and plate could be from anything,” said Hendry.
“Funnily enough, that’s what I thought when I saw them at first,” replied Ben.
“But when I was told what job you were doing, I checked and found they are the same type of screws and backplate you used to fit every door handle on this floor. What’s more, we have CCTV of you coming out of the lift next to reception, holding a door handle clearly with no screws or backplate on it. So, I suspect what happened is you had the handle out ready to fit it, put the screws in ready to go, then knocked on the door. Anderson answered, you pushed your way inside, dropped the screws and plate, killed Anderson and did a runner. We’ve checked fingerprints on them and they are yours.”
Hendry went quiet. He glanced over at his solicitor, hoping he would come in with a response, but he too said nothing.
“Right, I was in the room. I had the handle ready to fit and the door was open, so I popped my head round and saw Anderson lying on the floor with blood on him. I recognised him straight away and knew I would get the blame, given the aggro I had with him, so I ran straight back out of the room, down in the lift and out the front door. That’s why I finished early!”
“Here we go again,” said Ben. “Déjà vu – I’ve heard this story already.”
“Eh?” said Hendry.
“Have you any physical evidence of the assault by my client?” asked the solicitor.
Ben was getting exasperated. All these criminals must be generating their excuses by AI – first Manson now Hendry with the same thing.
“Let’s take a break,” said Ben, and he and Emma ended the interview.
They headed upstairs to get a coffee and Emma said, “You know he could be telling the truth now, sir.”
Not what Ben wanted to hear. But he thought about it for a minute, then it struck him.
“You know, you could actually be right, Emma. Have a look at the CCTV of the lift again and speak to anyone who was in there – even Phil Martin if you have to. Ask them what floor the building maintenance guy got on. I’ll phone Joan. If I’m correct, this will solve at least one piece of the puzzle.”
* * *
An hour later, Ben and Emma re-entered the interview room and restarted the recording.
“Okay, Mr Hendry, so you went into the room, saw Anderson, dropped the screws and ran out. Take me through what happened next. First of all, did you close the door?”
Ben was looking closely at his expression when he asked that.
“No, I left it open.”
Ben figured that was probably the truth. It was found like that later.
“Then what?”
“I ran along the corridor to the lift.”
“Did you see anyone else in the corridor?”
“No, but I heard a door opening behind me and a kid coming out. She sounded like she was playing with a ball.”
Given what they knew, this again sounded reasonable to Ben.
“Did you see anyone waiting near the lift or approaching from the stairs?”
“Nobody.”
As Hendry spoke, Ben noticed him fidgeting with his hands and saw the slightest change of expression and eye movement. He also dropped eye contact with Ben as he said it.
Ben’s experience of interviewing suspects over the years, not to mention a good few training courses, told him Hendry was lying. He continued.
“And did you go straight into the lift at the end of the corridor on the second floor?”
“Yes, and took it downstairs to reception.”
Same again, noted Ben – he’s lying.
“Why are you lying, Mr Hendry? Emma has spoken to the other people in the lift. Tell him which floor they said he got the lift from, Emma.”
“Fourth floor.”
“Let me ask you again: did you see anyone on the landing?”
“Nobody.” Same answer, but Hendry moved in his seat, suspecting Ben knew what had happened.
“That’s strange, because a young waitress won’t ever forget how someone who looked just like you pushed her down the stairs, causing her to hit her head and fall unconscious.”
Hendry didn’t say anything, but beads of sweat started to appear on his brow.
“What’s more, forensic analysis of the clothing the waitress was wearing shows small touches of powdery cement, like those on your jacket. Not to mention two small hairs – canine hair. Again, like those on your jacket. They must have rubbed off when you pushed past her, knocking her down.”
“If you are in any doubt, I hope you won’t mind if we get Barney to give us a DNA sample?” said Emma.
The solicitor looked at Emma, bemused.
Hendry put his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to do it. I was running and as I was about to head down the stairs she appeared out of nowhere and I accidentally bumped into her and she fell. I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t mean it. A pure accident.”
“Even if it was, you didn’t try and help her. You didn’t phone an ambulance, and you didn’t tell anyone she was lying there unconscious with a fractured skull. You ran away like a coward, up two floors in fact, in case anyone saw you. And then you came back down in the lift to make it look like you’d never been there,” said Ben, angrily, and with disgust flooding through his voice.
“She’s alright though, isn’t she?”
“No, she is not alright! She hasn’t regained consciousness and is still in a coma,” shouted Ben. “Charge him, Emma.”
Ben got up to leave, but added. “If she dies, the charge will be increased to manslaughter, and if I find anything that even hints that it was you who killed Anderson, you’ll be going down for murder as well.”
Ben left the interview room, slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER 76
Mid-afternoon, Pettigrew was still recovering at home. The message he had been dreading flashed onto his screen.
Lights go out, servers hum their last,
The criminal trapped in a blockchain cast.
AI victorious, the die has passed,
The thriller ends – a shadow over the past.
One day to go. The world will surely see.
That’s it, it’s going to happen tomorrow. I feel like I should have a final meal.
Once the message disappeared, Pettigrew heard some music.
At first, he couldn’t make out what it was. It had been a while since he had heard it. It was a song by The Clash, dating back to 1982. It was a bit before their time, but James, Colin and he had all loved it and played it loads on loop in their flat when they were at university. It was coming from the playlist on his laptop.
What I wouldn’t give to be back there with those guys now.
The song was ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go.’
The lyrics hit him like a thunderbolt and summed up exactly how he felt.
If I do a runner, I will lose everything I have worked for. If I hang around, I will probably still lose everything, but I might also end up in the Forth like Williams – though I’ll be wearing concrete shoes.
He felt fear like never before in his life.
He was trembling uncontrollably, but at the same time, somewhat perversely, it was as if he was paralysed, unable to do anything.
He had no idea what to do next or where to go, and now he had nobody to help him.
CHAPTER 77
Back upstairs, Kevin was waiting for Ben.
“Sir, one of the residents in the cottages near Kennetpans saw someone get out of the car that morning around eight-thirty and get picked up by a taxi. The car was still there late evening when he took his dog for a walk, but had gone by the next morning when he got up.”
“All good, Kevin. I think we are starting to get somewhere,” replied Ben. “Does he think he would be able to recognise the person he saw?”
“Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure, sir. Said it was a man, reasonably tall and sharply dressed, but that he didn’t get a good look at him.”
“Some data from the smartwatch just in, sir,” said Emma.
“Oh yes?” said Ben in anticipation.
“There was a lot of data stored on the cloud. The watch was recording pulse, heartbeat and so on. According to the data feed, that stopped at three-nineteen.”
“Which puts Pettigrew right in the frame,” said Julie.
Ben was still waiting patiently for something to come back from Steve Lyons at Ian’s company, but he knew it might take some time. If they could come up with something, it would be the key to unlocking everything else, and would potentially provide the motive they needed.
Later that morning, Ben received an email from Steve Lyons to suggest a conference call at two with him and some of his team.
Before lunch, Emma brought more good news. “In terms of the assault on Pettigrew, one black BMW 5 series, with the same last three letters as the registration Millar gave us, is registered to a sister company of SCL. Intelligence suggests the driver is a known henchman for the company that operates the pubs.”
“Okay, Emma, thanks.”
“Quite brazen though, sir, isn’t it? You would think, given we had just visited them and suggested we might be on to them, they would back off and keep their heads down,” said Julie.
“They think they are untouchable,” said Ben, “and have a total disregard for the law. Kevin, take some officers and find the driver of the car quickly and arrest him and any others you find with him. The only chance of making a charge stick will be any blood or Pettigrew’s DNA on clothing.”
“What about Eddie Hogarth?” asked Julie.
“He won’t have got his hands dirty. We’ll come back to him later.”
Back in his office, Ben had some thinking to do. He had been on the verge of arresting Pettigrew, who was now looking like the main suspect in both the murders of Williams and Anderson. However, this SCL crowd had thrown a spanner in the works. If they were involved in cybercrime, was it them who had authorised the hacking of Trade-IT systems? If so, were they working with Pettigrew and have now had a falling out, or were they working with Anderson? But killing Anderson would seem an odd thing to do as he was the brains behind the software – they would surely have needed him. And what about Pettigrew? They were almost certain it was him on the bridge pushing Williams over the barrier, so how does that all fit in? Are SCL running the show and giving orders? Have they bought or are they still trying to buy Trade-IT? Or is it a total coincidence and they think they are so above the law that they are giving Pettigrew a message for having dared to mention their name to the police?
Ben figured they would just have to follow the evidence and run with both strands of the investigation, and that meant both Pettigrew and SCL.
* * *
Ben and Julie were sitting in Ben’s office waiting on the call from Steve Lyons. It had been a busy day and neither Ben nor Julie had yet mentioned the conversation from Saturday evening.
Ben was focused on whether the call would be the breakthrough they needed. Would Steve Lyons and his team have been able to crack the software code? And would that help Ben and his team to crack the murder case?
The code to murder.
Soon the call came through.
“Hi, Steve, it’s Ben here. I also have DS Julie Taylor with me.”
“Hi, Ben, I have Alex, an IT security specialist, and John, a commodity-trading specialist, with me. We have been working flat-out on this assignment and there is still work to be done, however the findings thus far are such that I thought we’d better let you know as soon as possible,” said Steve.
“Sounds ominous,” said Ben.
“Indeed,” continued Steve. “The work was complex and I will issue a full written report of what we did, but I’ll give you the key points now and will try to avoid technical jargon as much as I can.”
“That would be a good idea,” said Ben.
“The first thing we did was analyse all contents of the software on the laptop. The laptop was used by Anderson as the main development platform for the AI components of the Trade-IT commodity-trading software. We checked and the core software on which the AI module was applied was the same as the standard software running on all of our clients’ servers. We went through it in some detail, but the functionality, number of lines of code and so on is identical. We found nothing at all unusual – in fact, it works really well. By all accounts, James Anderson was someone who not only understood software, but very much the commodity-trading business. So far so good,” said Steve.
“Okay,” said Ben.
“It was when we came to look at the AI module itself that things started to get interesting, just as you suspected,” continued Steve. “On the laptop, there were two different AI modules – the first one was the core module and we will come back to the other one in a minute. I’ll let John talk you through what the core module does.”
“Thanks, Steve. The core module used AI functionality in many different ways to improve the efficiency of different aspects of the operations. However, it was with regard to the trading of commodities, both physical and futures, that the AI module came into its own. In essence – and in simplistic terms – the AI software analysed lots of data, both historical within the company’s own trades, as well as external data from different publicly available and third party sources. It then evaluated potential trades and gave recommendations as to trades and pricing based on the analysis, which could be either accepted or rejected by the traders. I spoke to some of the companies who were beta-testing the software and they were raving about it. They felt it could give their businesses a competitive advantage and increase their profitability. I managed to look at the the beta version of the AI software and it is the same as what we are calling the core AI module on the laptop,” said John.
“So to be clear here, John, this is all above board – nothing untoward?” asked Ben.
“Yes, all good Ben. I expect all of Trade-IT’s clients to be clamouring for it. It will no doubt make Trade-IT some healthy revenues and attract new clients,” replied John.
“Okay, that would explain why Pettigrew was pushing Anderson to get it all done and out in the marketplace,” said Ben.
“Yes, and that brings us on to the second module, which is where it starts to get much more interesting,” said John.
Ben and Julie looked at each other in anticipation.
“I shouldn’t be saying this, given what it does, but it is very, very clever. Again, trying to explain it in layman’s terms, on the core module there are elements of the software coding that are hooks that this second module can be dropped on to. That is probably what the guy you spoke about meant by ‘missing code’. These hooks make you think something else should be there, but the code is absent. Are you with me so far, Ben?” asked John.
“Yes, so far, John,” said Ben, who looked at Julie and she nodded.
“Right. Well, what Anderson appeared to have been doing was logging on to the customer’s servers and attaching the second module to those hooks. He would then run the software, which would pull all the data and analysis from the core AI module specific to that customer, including all the recommendations for trades. He could also seamlessly remove the second module so there would never be any evidence of it having been there in the first place,” said John.
“That does sound clever, but why would he want to do that?” asked Julie.
“That’s what I’m getting to,” said John, getting more excited than he probably should.
“It looks like Anderson did the same thing for all the clients who had the beta version – twenty-five of them in total – and, we imagine, would aim to roll it out to all clients, probably over a hundred of them.”
“I think I can guess what’s coming next, but carry on,” said Ben.
“What that means is that Anderson, or whoever, would have all the data and predicted trades from all their clients at any given point. He also has other software built in, which analyses all of this data and the AI provides an optimal strategy for trading, factoring in all this inside information. And trading is exactly what Anderson – or Trade-IT – has been doing through a third party company they have set up,” said John.
“So we are talking about insider trading?” asked Ben.
“Spot on, and on a massive scale,” said Steve. “Usually, when there is insider trading, one rogue employee may make some purchases in advance of his company ones to line his own pockets. But in this case, they are using data from all of their clients and are using AI—”
“—Extremely clever AI,” interrupted John.
“Extremely clever AI, to maximise the profitability of trades,” said Steve.
“Wow, that is clever. AI is as dangerous as it is often made out to be,” said Julie.
“Only in the wrong hands,” said John.
“And would Anderson be able to get in to all of his customers’ accounts as easily as you say, John?” asked Ben.
“If I can perhaps answer that one?” asked Alex. “Most companies will readily allow their software company access to their servers, for updates and so on. But it looks like Trade-IT have coded some back doors into the software, for use when they could not get in officially. You also need to remember that Trade-IT hosts the software on their servers for many of the clients, so they already have that access.”
