There were two people playing table tennis.

  ‘The work can get pretty intense, sometimes.’ Ravi (‘call me Rav’) Varma nodded, like he spent his days defusing bombs or trying to cure cancer. ‘The hours are long, too, so it’s important to have a relaxing working environment and to have some fun. To even be a bit . . . wacky sometimes.’

  Miller nodded towards the pair wackily playing table tennis. ‘I’m guessing that Barry Shepherd wasn’t the best ping-pong player in the office.’

  ‘Well, you guess wrong,’ Varma said. ‘Barry was a demon, mate.’

  ‘Are you pulling my leg, Rav?’

  ‘I’m serious. Barry took a lot of money off us on that table.’

  Miller was genuinely shocked, having presumed that the man he’d seen on that IT tutorial video was not even the type to watch sport, and certainly not someone who’d engage in anything more physically demanding than tiddlywinks. His business partner was not what Miller had been expecting, either. Varma was at least ten years Shepherd’s junior and, based on Pippa Shepherd’s description of her late husband, a lot more outgoing. There were tattoos and a piercing or two. His hair was shaved at the sides and floppy on top and even though, fashionwise, the look was what you might call don’t-care-casual, he’d clearly gone to a great deal of effort putting it together.

  He spun the silver bangle on his wrist as he studied Miller and Xiu. ‘I have to say, I’m not altogether sure why you’re here.’

  ‘Well, you’ve already told us one thing we didn’t know about Mr Shepherd,’ Miller said. ‘We’re hoping you might have a few more surprises.’

  Varma nodded, like he got it. ‘So, you don’t think Barry was an accidental victim.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Xiu said. ‘You’re the first person we’ve spoken to who’s even suggested that.’

  ‘Well, only because you’re here. When I heard about it, I didn’t know what had happened, same as everyone else. We were all just so . . . shocked, you know? Then I read about it in the papers and found out who the other bloke was, so I assumed Barry was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He sat back, nodding as though he’d worked something out. ‘But here you are asking questions about him, so it’s obviously not quite that simple.’

  Miller stared. And neither are you . . .

  ‘So, what’s the set-up at Tech That!?’ Xiu asked. ‘Or rather, what was it, before Mr Shepherd was killed?’

  Miller was not surprised to hear Xiu asking exactly the right question. The teaching videos Shepherd had recorded were clearly only a small part of what the company did. The premises themselves had certainly not come cheap (Miller had checked) and looking around him, neither had the ‘wacky’ interior. With all that state-of-the-art computer equipment and at least a dozen people employed to use it, there was evidently a fair bit of money sloshing about.

  ‘Basically we do anything and everything,’ Varma said. ‘Broadly speaking, I’m on the systems side of things. I design them, oversee the installation, all that. Big companies, small businesses, rich kids who want flashier gaming set-ups than their mates, whatever. It’s bespoke, yeah?’

  ‘What about Mr Shepherd?’

  ‘Barry was more about the maintenance. His team looked after the contracts and sorted things out for our customers when they went wrong. That could be anything from a major system overhaul to one-to-one advice over the phone.’

  ‘Does turning it off and on again ever really work?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Sometimes, but we can’t really expect our customers to pay good money for advice like that, so we prefer to say things like “software reboot” or “hard restart”.’

  ‘I could do with one of those myself,’ Miller said.

  Varma smiled and spun his bracelet.

  ‘Had you noticed any change in Mr Shepherd’s behaviour recently?’ Xiu asked.

  ‘No. Not really . . .’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, everyone can be a bit moody now and again, can’t they? Not themselves for one reason or another.’

  ‘We’re not talking about a bad day at the office,’ Miller said.

  ‘No . . . yeah, right.’ Varma thought, or pretended to think. ‘I suppose he had been a bit . . . guarded, the last month or so. Keeping himself to himself more than he normally did.’

  ‘Like there was something on his mind?’ Xiu asked.

  ‘I suppose so, yeah.’ Varma inched his ergonomic chair a little closer to the table. ‘One day I needed to talk to him about something and he clicked off his screen really fast, you know? Like there was something he didn’t want me to see. I never said anything, but it was kind of obvious.’

  ‘Any problems moneywise?’ Miller asked. ‘The company, I mean. Is there any possibility that Barry was taking money out that he shouldn’t have been?’

  Varma shrugged. ‘Look, he certainly had the computer skills to do something like that, but why would he? Barry could probably have hidden any kind of fraud, but if he had, me and most of the people working here have got the skills to have found it.’

  ‘I can see why that wouldn’t make a lot of sense,’ Xiu said.

  ‘He’d have been stupid to do anything like that at work, and Barry certainly wasn’t stupid. If he was doing something he shouldn’t, it would be far easier to do it at home.’

  ‘Did you check?’ Miller asked.

  Varma said ‘No’ a little too quickly, but even if the man was lying, Miller wasn’t sure there was much he could read into it. Varma would have been being no more suspicious than they were, after all. A business partner gets murdered in the room next door to a major gangland figure and it’s probably only natural that you’d want to have a quick look to make sure there weren’t any financial discrepancies and check that no fluffy beanbags had gone missing.

  Varma got to his feet and waved a colleague across. ‘You should probably talk to Jonah Nixon. Jonah spent as much time with Barry as I did. More, actually . . .’

  The man in question was one of those chatting by the coffee machine. He nodded, then walked somewhat tentatively over to join them.

  ‘These detectives are asking about Barry,’ Varma said.

  Nixon was thirtyish; tall and balding, with watery eyes behind thick glasses. He was dressed rather more soberly than his boss, in black trousers and a black sweater, and he sported a flashy-looking toolbelt stocked with tiny screwdrivers, a variety of pliers and a large vape.

  Miller and Xiu introduced themselves.

  Nixon looked at Varma. ‘What do they want to know about Barry?’

  ‘If you’d noticed any strange behaviour, maybe,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Like keeping a deadly weapon in his briefcase,’ Miller said. ‘Whispered phone conversations or furtive meetings with mysterious visitors. Notes left lying around saying “Remember to hide money”. We’re just asking if anything struck you as odd or out of character.’

  ‘Not that I can think of.’

  ‘Nothing at all? Just bowling along being completely normal until he was shot in the head, that right?’

  Nixon just stared. ‘Barry was Barry.’

  Pippa Shepherd had said much the same thing, but coming from her, the emotion it expressed encompassed a decade or more of marriage and the memories that went with it. It had been loaded with love and pain and a blinding incomprehension at what had been done to her husband. Trotted out now by this screwdriver-festooned SAS wannabe, the same observation made Miller want to chuck a wireless mouse at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ Nixon said. ‘It’s just . . . I still can’t get over what’s happened.’

  ‘None of us can,’ Varma said.

  On the way out, Xiu said, ‘Anything?’

  ‘Yeah . . . something,’ Miller said. ‘Something about Barry Shepherd that we’re not seeing.’

  ‘What, just because he played table tennis?’

  ‘Maybe it’s all about the table tennis.’ Miller took out his phone and began to dial. ‘Some of these ping-pong players can be vicious bastards.’

  Xiu struggled to find a response, then gave up when she saw Miller raise a finger.

  ‘Hey, Dec,’ Mackie said, when she answered the call.

  Miller pushed through the door. ‘Fiona . . . can you talk me through what happened when you found that flash drive?’

  ‘I already told Sullivan.’

  ‘You might just as well have told the station cat.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a station cat.’

  ‘Please . . .’

  Five minutes later, once Miller had ended the call, he fired off a text message to Carys Morgan. He knew that she would be sitting at her desk, swearing quietly and drinking more coffee than was good for her as she sweated over the password to Shepherd’s flash drive.

  Miller texted:

  Try SEAHORSE

  Thirty seconds later, Morgan texted back:

  BINGO.

  Miller replied immediately:

  No, not BINGO. SEAHORSE!

  FORTY

  The station was crowded with tourists heading home. Knackered-looking men and women were hanging about, carrying bags a lot heavier and wallets significantly lighter than when they’d arrived. Kids full of sugar ran around in cardboard hats and plastic sunglasses, a few brandishing giant sticks of rock that, in a different situation, might well be classified as deadly weapons. Moving to avoid a young lad waving one around like a stripy lightsaber, Miller found himself wondering why more people weren’t beaten to death with them, because it was always handy if you could eat the evidence afterwards.

  Carys Morgan called as Miller and Xiu were walking down on to the platform. The train they were there to meet was only a minute away.

  ‘Tell Xiu she was right about that file on the flash drive being a bank account.’

  ‘I don’t want her to get big-headed,’ Miller said.

  Xiu mouthed a ‘What?’ and Miller waved it away.

  ‘Just working through all the transactions now,’ Carys said. ‘Lots of medium-sized deposits . . . a hundred and fifty here, two hundred there, then a withdrawal of three grand, two days before Shepherd was killed.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Miller saw the train come slowly around the corner and approach the platform. ‘What about the bigger file?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s an operating system. I’ve started digging around, but there’s nothing as straightforward as a conventional search history.’

  ‘He was too smart for that,’ Miller said. ‘Very good at table tennis too, if that helps.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. So, what’s your best guess?’

  ‘Well, put it this way, I don’t think Shepherd set all this up just so he could spend time on Google.’

  ‘Somewhere a bit . . . darker?’

  ‘Every bloody chance.’ Carys sighed. ‘Always a treat to head down that rabbit hole.’

  ‘You know you love it,’ Miller said. The train had stopped and the doors were opening. ‘I need to go, Carys. I’ll talk to you later . . .’

  They watched as the passengers spilled from the train; a flock of fresh holidaymakers or stag- and hen-nighters, over-excited and bang up for it. New blood. Once the crowd had thinned out a bit, the people Miller and Xiu had come to meet were easy enough to spot.

  Miller pointed and waved. ‘There he is . . .’

  Xiu stared at the two men walking towards them. She had already worked out who the one wearing the hat was. ‘That bloke with him . . . the Met officer, right? Is he really tall?’

  ‘Not especially,’ Miller said. ‘It’s just that Chesshead . . . isn’t.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention that?’

  ‘I don’t think being a bit on the short side is his most distinguishing feature, do you?’

  The officer escorting their witness introduced himself as DS David Holland and announced that he’d be spending the day in town. Miller told him the model village was not only way cheaper than the pleasure beach but a lot more fun, recommended two chippies and a kebab shop, then introduced Xiu to Gary Pope.

  ‘Oh, right,’ Pope said. ‘Like that fancy gravy in posh restaurants.’

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ Miller said.

  ‘I’m not here for long, Mr Miller.’

  ‘Talking of which.’ Holland announced that he and Pope were booked on the nine o’clock train back to London and that he fully expected Miller or someone else to make sure Pope was at the station in good time. Miller assured the man from the Met that it wouldn’t be a problem, and as Holland walked away, clearly looking forward to spending the day as a tourist, he shouted after him, ‘Tell your boss he’s a miserable bugger.’

  Holland shouted back. ‘He knows.’

  They left the station and sat down on a bench in the park opposite.

  ‘You didn’t need to have me arrested, Mr Miller.’ Pope looked a little hurt. ‘If I’d known you wanted to speak to me I’d have come anyway.’

  Miller liked the fact that Pope always called him Mr Miller. It was endearing, in spite of everything. ‘It wasn’t my doing, Gary. What did they arrest you for, anyway?’

  ‘Receiving stolen goods.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not the point I’m making.’

  Pope reached beneath his battered trilby to scratch his head and Miller clocked Xiu trying to sneak a peek. He hadn’t seen this particular hat before (it was usually a baseball cap or something woolly or, on one notable occasion, a pith helmet), but otherwise Gary Pope looked much the same as he had the last time Miller had seen him. A long coat over a tracksuit, worn somewhat bizarrely with highly polished shoes. The face was as uniquely . . . striking as ever. It was one of which not even Pope’s own mother could be awfully fond (especially now that her husband only had half an ear), and even without showing off those famous scars or waving a claw hammer around, it was easy to see how the man had made a tidy living out of frightening people. Diminutive though he was, Chesshead could look scary if he was asking you the time and carrying a slice of Battenberg.

  ‘Come on then,’ Pope said. ‘I’m not here very long and there’s a few people I’d like to catch up with.’

  ‘We were hoping you might be able to help us with a case.’ Xiu took out a notebook. ‘We’re investigating—’

  ‘I know what case it is, miss. London isn’t that far away. People have phones.’

  ‘So, what exactly have you heard?’

  ‘Well, I know who you’ve been talking to.’

  ‘So, are any of them the people we should be talking to?’ Miller waited, but Pope seemed hesitant. ‘How about if I reel off the names and you just touch your nose when I say the right one?’

  ‘I’m not sure Ralph Massey would have got much out of having Adrian killed, except maybe getting himself killed. You know he’s not daft as well as I do.’

  ‘What about Adrian’s wife and brother?’ Xiu asked.

  ‘Well, everyone knew that Adrian liked to play away and Michelle’s certainly got a temper on her,’ Pope said. ‘Some woman cut her up once when she was dropping her kids off at school, so Michelle followed her home. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I know there was an “incident” on the doorstep and that Wayne had to give the woman five hundred quid to keep her quiet afterwards.’ Pope shook his head. ‘It strikes me that if Michelle had wanted to hurt Adrian for messing her about . . . kill him, even . . . she’d have done it herself. She’d have enjoyed doing it.’

  It was much the same conclusion Miller had come to.

  It was also what Alex had said.

  ‘Justin I don’t know so much about. I do know him and Adrian weren’t close, but that’s how it goes with brothers sometimes, isn’t it?’

  Miller was aware that Xiu was looking at him.

  ‘He was definitely a bit less flashy than Adrian was . . . but it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, isn’t it? So yeah, it’s possible I suppose, but I haven’t heard anything to back that up.’ Pope looked at them both. ‘I have heard that you’re looking into the other bloke that was killed at the same time . . .’

  ‘We’re exploring all possible avenues of enquiry,’ Xiu said.

  ‘I think you might have to.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Nothing, really.’ Pope waved at a little girl who was walking past with her mother. He stopped waving when the little girl started to scream and the woman drew her daughter quickly away. ‘I just heard a whisper that what happened at that hotel might not be . . . straightforward. It’s probably rubbish, because criminals are worse than hairdressers when it comes to gossip, so . . .’

  ‘Would you be willing to tell us who was doing the whispering?’ Xiu asked.

  ‘I’m struggling to remember, I’m afraid. To be honest, it was probably just some stupid remark I heard in a bar.’ Pope sniffed and stretched his shoulders. ‘Opinions are no problem, I’ve got loads of them, but I’m not so good with names.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Xiu was looking at Miller as she thrust her notebook back into her bag. ‘You think that’s why we brought you all the way up here? Just so we could ask your opinion?’