Ava McCarthy - The Courier

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 were plenty of ways to make a file disappear. The question was, which would Garvin have used?

Harry hitched her chair in closer to the desk, her fingertips tingling. There were lots of commercial tools out there that kept your secrets safe, camouflaging your files till they melted out of sight. You couldn’t view them, delete them or modify them. As far as the operating system was concerned, the files just didn’t exist.

Harry plunged back into her forensic toolkit. The operating system may have been gullible, but her box of tricks wasn’t. She rattled her fingers across the keys, setting up a search. Her copy of Garvin’s hard drive was more than just a replica of recognizable files. It was a bit-by-bit image, and that included deleted data, unused memory and hidden information. She wouldn’t be fooled by a bunch of skulking files claiming to be invisible.

She launched her search for camouflaged files, then sat back in her chair and waited.

Her eyes roamed the room, coming to rest on the office safe. It was smaller than Garvin’s, about the size of a filing cabinet, and she used it to store evidence from Blackjack’s investigations.

Security and privacy.

Harry shook her head. Technology was supposed to safeguard your secrets, but did it really? She thought of Garvin’s vault, protected by his own fingerprint.

Something you know, something you have, something you are.

The security mantra ran through her head. Something you know: a password. Something you have: a keycard. Something you are: your fingerprint.

Harry shuddered, picturing Garvin’s killer scrabbling at the dead man’s fingers. Biometric security had its uses, but there was nothing she wanted hidden badly enough to put her own body parts on the line.

The computer beeped, and her eyes shot back to the screen. The search had come up empty.

Harry frowned. No covert files. Most likely it meant that Garvin had nothing to hide, but she shoved the thought away. Right now, hidden files were all she had.

‘Harry?’

Imogen was holding the phone out to one side, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s him again, you sure you don’t want to take it?’

Harry’s skin prickled. She shook her head, registering Imogen’s frown as she turned to make excuses into the phone. It was probably a legitimate caller, but disclosing her whereabouts to anyone right now seemed like a bad idea. Harry tried to ignore her drumming heartbeat, and dragged her gaze back to the screen.