Okeke inspected the items that were spread out neatly on the duvet. She suspected his mum had arranged them like this, ready for the next time he dropped by… to tell her what he wanted to keep hold of and what could be thrown away.

  Mrs Whitehead picked up a sweatshirt that had an anchor logo on it with the name Sea Lotus underneath. ‘He liked crewing on those big luxury boats out there…’

  Beneath the sweatshirt was an iPad. Okeke bent down to touch the screen lightly, hoping there might be a residual charge. But it was dead. Obviously. She reached into her jacket and pulled out some nitrile gloves. ‘The iPad might be helpful,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if I took it away with me?’

  Mrs Whitehead shook her head. ‘Take whatever you think might help.’

  ‘You’ll get it back when we’re done with it,’ Okeke said, carefully lifting it up. ‘Do you have a carrier bag I can put it in?’

  ‘I’ll go and get you one.’ She went to go.

  ‘Do either you or your husband use an iPad or an iPhone?’ Okeke asked on a whim.

  ‘Jeremy has an iPad,’ Mrs Whitehead replied. ‘He plays Solitaire on the silly thing.’

  ‘So you’ve got a charge cable?’ Okeke said.

  ‘Yes, in the kitchen. Do you want me to bring it up?’ she asked.

  Okeke nodded. ‘Please.’

  Once Mrs Whitehead had disappeared downstairs Okeke looked around Robin’s bedroom more carefully. It was frozen in the nineties; there were several framed movie posters on the wall: Reservoir Dogs, Terminator 2 and the like. There was a bedside table with a dusty lava lamp on it, and an even dustier CD player. She glanced out of the window at a garden that was way too big for the old couple to maintain. Tufts of nettles were in danger of overtaking the shaggy lawn, and unruly brambles choked what were once flower beds round the edge. A collection of CDs lined a shelf beneath the bedroom window – mostly nineties bands, she noted. She was carefully flicking through them when Mrs Whitehead returned.

  ‘Here you go. A plastic bag, a cable and the plug it came with,’ she announced.

  Okeke checked the end of the cable – luckily it was the right one. She plugged it into the iPad and after a few moments the screen came to life, revealing a wallpaper image of a marina filled with ridiculously large pleasure boats. The screen showed a request for a four-digit code to unlock it.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to know what his PIN was, would you?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Good God, no. I’ve got no idea,’ Mrs Whitehead replied.

  Okeke tried a couple of obvious ones without any luck. ‘What was Robin’s date of birth?’ she asked.

  ‘Fifth of August, 1975,’ Mrs Whitehead replied.

  Okeke tried it without success. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘We have techies back at the station who will know how to get in.’

  ‘Do you think there might be clues about where he is on that thing?’ Mrs Whitehead asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ Okeke said. ‘If we’re lucky. Apple devices link together. If he’s bought a new one and taken any pictures or downloaded anything on it since he’s been missing… this may well tell us.’

  ‘Oh God, I hope so.’

  Okeke unplugged the iPad and bagged it. ‘Like I said, you’ll get this back after we’ve cloned the data.’

  ‘Thank you, love.’

  Okeke left the Whiteheads feeling guilty that she’d left behind a thread of hope for Robin’s parents. Because it was looking increasingly likely that John Doe number three was going to be their son.

  She was halfway back to Hastings when a thought occurred to her. She pulled her Datsun into the next layby she came across and pulled out her phone. She scrolled through her ‘recent calls’ list and found the number she was after.

  The phone rang several times before it was answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  She tried to recall the woman’s maiden name. It came to her just as the protracted silence pushed into spam-call territory. ‘Marjorie Barlow? It’s DC Samantha Okeke. I came to see you the other day about your… about Mark?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ came the reply.

  ‘I’ve got a quick follow-up question, if that’s all right?’ Okeke said. ‘You mentioned that Mark used to have a once-a-year reunion with his old schoolmates.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Was it on the same day each year? The same date… I should say,’ Okeke asked.

  ‘Yes. Always,’ Marjorie replied.

  ‘Could you remind me what that date was?’ Okeke held her breath.

  ‘August twenty-first,’ Marjorie said.

  Okeke thanked her and hung up. ‘It’s worth a go,’ she muttered, pulling on her gloves and easing the iPad out of the plastic bag. She tapped the screen. It had gained enough of a charge for it to reluctantly stir to life.

  She tapped in the numbers 0, 8, 2 and 1.

  The unlock screen disappeared to reveal a screen full of icons.

  ‘Bingo.’

  Before she could do anything else, it went blank again, the residual charge now exhausted.

  36

  Okeke placed the iPad on Boyd’s desk.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘Robin Whitehead’s iPad,’ she said smugly. ‘It was in a box of stuff he left behind in Qatar. His sister sent it on not long after he came back to the UK.’

  ‘Great. Well, let’s get Sully to crack it open,’ said Boyd, reaching for his desk phone.

  ‘No need,’ she said with a grin. ‘I guessed the PIN. But it needs charging. It’s dead and they wouldn’t let me have the cable – Mr Whitehead needs it to play solitaire on his.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Do you happen to have an old-style Apple cable on you?’

  Boyd shook his head, then stood up. ‘Anyone in here got an old-style Apple charging cable?’ he called out.

  A few heads turned in response. DI Abbott raised his hand. ‘I have.’ He rummaged in a desk drawer for a moment and stood up triumphantly, dislodging a small avalanche of pastry flakes from his shirt. He walked over to Boyd and Okeke, a kinked cable dangling from one fist like a cornered and captured grass snake.

  ‘Here you go, sir.’

  Boyd nodded a thanks, then plugged in the cable, careful not to smudge his fingers on the screen or the sides. He popped the USB connector into a port in his computer’s docking station, and after a couple of seconds the screen blinked to life.

  Okeke, gloves on, typed in the PIN and the screen changed to reveal the app icons that she’d glimpsed earlier.

  ‘How’d you get the PIN?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘It’s their reunion date. A wild guess,’ she said.

  ‘So that date was clearly significant to Robin,’ he mused. ‘Interesting.’

  The email, phone and message icons all showed red dots, indicating hundreds of unread messages and missed calls.

  ‘Nice one, Sam,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, so it’s Sam when I do good, is it?’

  He looked up at her with a faint smile. ‘Okay, Sully’s lot can fingerprint it, swab it and clone it –’ he looked at his watch – ‘over lunch, then we can get stuck into those messages this afternoon.’

  They returned from lunch to find that Sully had returned the iPad with a Post-It note stuck on the evidence bag it was sitting in.

  Prints and swabs done. Data backed up. (Emailed you the link.) All yours, Boydy. Hope you enjoyed your lunch – I’m charging mine to your account. Thanks. S

  Boyd picked it up, along with Abbott’s cable, then called out to Minter, Warren and O’Neal to join him and Okeke in the Incident Room. Five minutes later, he had the iPad plugged in and connected to the projector and the station’s Wi-Fi. The window blinds had been pulled down to kill the worst of the daylight, and his team were sitting around the conference table gazing up at the washed-out projection on the whiteboard.

  ‘Let’s start with the texts then,’ Boyd said.

  Okeke tapped the icon. The most recently active thread was titled ‘Sis’.

  ‘Okay. So that’s Caroline Hussain,’ said Boyd. ‘Let’s have a look at those first.’

  Okeke opened the thread. The projection screen displayed a stack of unanswered blue speech bubbles on the right. Okeke scrolled up to start with the earlier ones. These were long and mostly Caroline venting her anger at her brother. As she scrolled down to the more recent ones, the tone changed from anger to growing concern. The last dozen or so had tumbled in once the iPad had detected the Wi-Fi over in Sully’s domain and were dated after she had reported him missing. The very last of them was short, to the point and achingly futile: Robbie, please… just let us know you’re alive.

  ‘All right then, let’s see who else has been messaging,’ said Boyd.

  Okeke returned to the list of message threads; the next one down was ‘RickMeister’.

  ‘Looks promising,’ said Minter.

  The thread appeared on the screen. This one was a balanced exchange of blue bubbles on the right and white bubbles on the left: an active conversation with timestamps above each message, indicating that this was a thread that had been ongoing in the weeks leading up to Robin’s disappearance.

  ‘Scroll back as far as it goes,’ said Boyd.

  Okeke swiped the screen downwards and after a moment’s hesitation the message thread updated, jumping back in time. She swiped again, then again, taking them to August 2010.

  RickMeister: Was good to see you, mate. You get your plane back okay?

  Robbie: You too. Yeah. Still fucking hungover. Good to be back in the BIG HOT.

  RickMeister: Ha. Nice one. We’re the ones that got away.

  Robbie: Unlike some. Christ, speaking of which… Andy’s a shitshow, right?

  RickMeister: M says he’s a right fucking alcoholic now. I knew he was always going to end up like that.

  Robbie: Mark needs to watch him. He’s a loose cannon.

  RickMeister: Indeed. I reminded him. Told him to keep his shit together. Don’t end up like Andy.

  Okeke scrolled down. There was a further, brief exchange on New Year’s Eve: just the usual bland messages about the year past and the year ahead. The next back-and-forth was on 7 August 2011.

  Robbie: Won’t make it this year.

  RickMeister: Shit. Why not?

  Robbie: Client’s booked a yacht for the week. It’s a ‘do it or pack your bag’ scenario.

  RickMeister: Great. I’m stuck with dumb and dumber then.

  Robbie: Lol.

  The next exchange was from 22 August, 2011.

  RickMeister: Just me and Mark bothered to turn up this time.

  Robbie: And then there were two. Why the no-show from Andy?

  RickMeister: No idea. Mark said he was after some money a few months ago. But nothing since.

  Robbie: You’ll find him in the bottom of a wheelie bin, no doubt.

  RickMeister: LOL. Probably. Mark was worried. Said Andy been getting stupid ideas in his head.

  Robbie: What do you mean?

  RickMeister: Well, for one thing, he was thinking of tapping me for money.

  Robbie: Shit.

  RickMeister: Right.

  Robbie: That’s mental. Blackmail? We’re all in this.

  RickMeister: But I suppose he thought he had less to lose if it all came out.

  ‘Past tense,’ noted Boyd, breaking the protracted silence. ‘Had… not has.’

  ‘Right, guv, I spotted that, too,’ said Okeke. She picked her phone up and took a picture of the projection on the whiteboard.

  ‘Scroll on,’ said Boyd.

  Robbie: What are we going to do?’

  RickMeister: Well… maybe he’s walked in front of a bus. Or his liver’s exploded or something. If he reaches out to you, I’d recommend you block him. Don’t give him the space to make a threat.

  ‘Well, now Rick’s talking like Andy’s still alive,’ said Minter.

  ‘He’s arse-covering,’ said O’Neal. ‘He knows he slipped up in the previous message and now he’s trying to make it look like he’s none the wiser.’

  There was no reply from Robin Whitehead, and no exchange between the men until six months later.

  Robbie: Mark’s missing.

  RickMeister: What?!

  Robbie: I tried getting in touch. Got hold of his missus. Said she’d reported him missing months ago.

  RickMeister: Fuck. What happened?

  Robbie: She said he didn’t return home from work one day.

  RickMeister: Shit. That’s weird.

  Robbie: You think it might have something to do with Andy?

  RickMeister: Maybe. Maybe he came asking for money again.

  Robbie: What. And he killed him. Lol

  RickMeister: Wouldn’t be the first time things got out of hand. Especially if Andy was pissed out of his little skull at the time?

  Robbie: Shit. That’s making me feel twitchy mate.

  RickMeister: Look on the bright side. If one of them did the other, then that’s one less moron to worry about.

  Robbie: Do you really think…?

  RickMeister: Andy’s always been a weak link. If he’s done something stupid we’re best keeping our distance. I’d lie low if I was you.

  Robbie: What about you?

  RickMeister: I’ll be watchful. I don’t have any links with him. I might block him/switch my FB page to private. Might even delete it. You should probs think about doing the same thing, mate.

  ‘So, looking at the timeline,’ began Sully, ‘we know that both Andy and Mark are dead and boxed up at this point?’

  Boyd nodded. ‘Yes. And our RickMeister is beginning to look decidedly suspect.’

  Okeke backed out of the thread and looked at the other chats in the log. The next one down was a conversation with someone called Captain Jack. She tapped on that. It appeared to be a conversation between Robin and some other expat friend, bitching about the building work going on everywhere in preparation for the looming World Cup. She returned to the log and spotted an interesting-looking thread further down the list. The date on the first entry was 5 May 2021.

  RPL: Hello mate. It’s me. New phone number. Been fucking ages, eh. You still in the Land of the Living?

  Robbie: Ricky? Shit. Yeah it’s been a while. How the fuck are you and where the fuck are you?

  RPL: London, still. Kind of. Moved out of the city to the burbs. Fancied getting myself someplace bigger, more kerb appeal.

  Robbie: Things going well then?

  RPL: Really well. Set up my own business. It’s hay-making time for investments. How’re things with you?

  Robbie: Working for my sister now. In real estate.

  RPL: Carol? I remember her. Cute with a fucking big gob right!

  Robbie: Lol. Caroline yeah. It’s a fucking nightmare having your little sis as your boss! Tbh… I’m thinking of knocking it on the head out here.

  RPL: In the land of milk and honey?

  Robbie: It’s not all that, mate. It’s getting harder to get a toehold. She married some local Emirati with ‘family connections’ so it’s all good for her. I’m her fucking lackey now.

  RML: You seriously thinking about coming home?

  Robbie: Yup.

  RPL: Then maybe this was good timing.

  Robbie: How do you mean?

  RPL: Things are going well. Better than well, mate. I need more bums on seats here. Smart people with a bit of nous. Most important, people I can trust.

  Robbie: You offering me a job?

  RPL: If you want it.

  Robbie: Doing what?

  RPL: It’s Richard Ledger Investments Ltd. Cold-calling granny investors to shovel money into my big fat investment pot.

  Robbie: Lol. I don’t know shit about that sort of thing.

  RPL: It’s piss easy. I can get you up to speed in an afternoon. Any muppet can do it.

  Robbie: Flattered. Lol.

  RPL: Good basic. Great sales commission. It’ll be fun.

  Robbie: How much?

  RPL: Basic 50k plus commission. My lesser-performing bods pull in another 100k PA. My superstars do way better.

  Robbie: I could live with that.

  RPL: You wanna talk about it? I can skype you.

  Robbie: Sure. My name plus 2108 at the end.

  ‘Two, one, zero, eight,’ said Minter. ‘Again.’

  ‘The reunion date,’ said Okeke. ‘It seems to have been big deal to Whitehead.’

  ‘Hmm,’ muttered Boyd. ‘Is there any more?’

  Okeke swiped the screen. That was it for the thread. Boyd got up and wandered over to the half of the whiteboard that wasn’t being used to project onto. He grabbed the marker, put a line through ‘Leeder’ and wrote ‘Ledger’.

  He smiled. ‘There we go, then. Richard Leeder didn’t vanish; he just changed his name.’

  So, we’ve finally found you, Mr Richard Ledger.

  37

  ‘Here it is…’ said Okeke. ‘The website.’

  She had the Richard Ledger Investments page up on her phone within about a minute of them pushing back from the conference table. Sully and Magnusson excused themselves, with Sully announcing that they needed to have a department meeting of their own and pointedly reminding them all that Boyd’s case wasn’t their only one.

  Okeke texted Boyd and Minter the link so they could pull it up on their phones too.

  ‘What about us?’ complained O’Neal.

  ‘It’s RLedgerInvestments.com,’ she replied. ‘Google it.’

  O’Neal tapped the name into Whitehead’s iPad and the webpage appeared on the whiteboard. He smirked at Okeke, who glared back.

  Boyd swiped through the various pages: ‘What We Believe’, ‘What We Do’, ‘How We Care’, ‘Meet the Team’ and so on. He clicked on the latter and they found themselves looking at a page of smiling, friendly faces. At the top of the page was ‘Richard Ledger, founder and CEO’. It was unmistakably Richard Leeder, a little older, a little greyer and somewhat paunchier than his old LinkedIn profile picture.