The Courier

She cruised through Killiney Village, cutting left down a rough track tucked in behind a row of new builds. She pulled up in front of the only house on the lot: a small, stone cottage with double-glazed windows and matching white UPVC door. She stared at it and felt herself droop.

Six months ago she’d been renting an apartment close to the city, where she’d basked in Dublin’s lively buzz and felt that she belonged. But lately she’d had an urge to buy her own place. She’d rented the cottage as an experiment. Living close to the sea was supposed to be soothing. But instead, there was something unsettling about the greyness of the beach and the isolation of her new home.

Harry sighed and climbed out of the car. Maybe it wasn’t just her professional instincts that were becoming unreliable.

She hauled her case out of the boot and trudged inside the cottage, passing through the narrow hall into the cramped kitchen beyond. She dumped the case on the table, then flung open the small windows at the rear of the house. Sharp, salty air perked up the room, but she didn’t stop to enjoy the view. Right now, she had other things on her mind.

She eyed up the case. Beth had only been interested in the diamonds, but the laptop must have had some importance if Garvin locked it up in a vault. She wiped her palms along her thighs. It was a long shot to hope it might lead her to Beth, but it was worth a try.

Harry slid the laptop out of the bag. Something small rattled out with it, clattering on to the floor. She peered under the table, and her whole body froze. Almost invisible against the stone tiles was a smooth, pea-sized pebble. Harry bent to retrieve it, then rolled it between her fingers, holding it close to her face. Beth’s uncut diamond. It felt cold, as though it had been kept in the fridge. She watched its steely lustre catch the light for a moment. Then she buried the stone in her fist.

Beth must have slipped it deliberately into her bag. Had she been leaving her a gift, or planting evidence? Harry was inclined to believe the worst, but either way, it’d be hard to explain to the police. She shook her head and dropped the pebble into her jacket pocket. She’d work out what to do with it later, but right now, she had a laptop to cross-examine.

She reached out to flip open the lid, then hesitated. Any snooping she did on the laptop could probably be traced. Worse still, her activities might overwrite valuable data on the hard drive. Apart from getting caught, the last thing she wanted was to compromise a murder investigation.

She frowned. Then she marched to the spare bedroom where she kept her field kits and retrieved a stash of hardware: a digital camera, a screwdriver, a sanitized hard drive, a spare laptop and a bunch of cables and switches. Adding a clutch of paperwork to the mix, she set the lot on the kitchen table and went to work.

First, she grabbed the camera and took some shots of the laptop, recording the make, model and serial number and documenting her actions as she went. Next, she unscrewed the laptop chassis, exposing the hard drive and releasing it from its caddy. She photographed the disembowelled hardware, labelled each component, then photographed it all again. It was tedious work, but she needed a record of her activities. If the integrity of the hard drive was ever in doubt, at least she could prove chain of custody. Inwardly, she winced. Her own integrity might be a little trickier to establish.

Snatching at the cables, she hooked up the hard drive to a set of switches, connecting it to the blank drive which in turn was plugged into the spare laptop. She powered everything up, worked the keyboard for a moment and then stood back. It would take a few hours, but soon she’d have a duplicate of Garvin Oliver’s hard drive.

Odd to think that somewhere the police were putting her own laptop through the same paces. Acquiring a forensic duplication was the first step in analysing a hard drive for evidence. She’d worked her share of computer forensics cases in her last job with Lúbra Security. Of course, that was before she’d got sidetracked by a crooked trader who’d tried to kill her for her father’s money.

Harry shivered. Her eyes swept the room, taking in the slanted ceilings and exposed oak beams. She’d thought it was the need for a slower pace that had taken her out here. She suspected now it was more to do with having somewhere to lick her wounds.

She shook her head. Godammit, enough introspection. The need to pace up and down jerked through her limbs, but the cottage just wasn’t built for it. Instead, she flung herself into a chair and thought about Beth. Or whatever her real name was.

She scribbled down everything she knew about her, which didn’t amount to much: her physical description; her intimate knowledge of the contents of Garvin’s safe. She recalled the woman’s likeness to the passport photo belonging to the real Beth, and her story of Garvin’s beatings. She was family, she should’ve known.

Harry frowned. Were she and Beth sisters?

She thought of the next-door neighbour who’d seen Harry poised for flight. Neighbours usually had plenty to tell, as long as they were asked the right questions. Would the woman next door know anything about Beth’s family?

Harry tapped a fingernail against her teeth. Talking to the neighbour in person was out of the question. She’d hardly chitchat to someone she’d just witnessed fleeing the scene of a crime. On the other hand, what choice did Harry have? She had no name or phone number. All she had was an address.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She snatched up her car keys and headed for the door.

Sometimes, an address was all it took.

7 (#ulink_368ae93a-193a-5f59-ba89-d5130e192df4)

The closer Harry got to Garvin Oliver’s house, the harder it was to breathe. She cracked open a window and sucked in the sea air. Ahead of her, yellow police tape snapped in the breeze, and an officer stood on guard by the railings. Traffic slowed to a crawl as motorists rubbernecked at the scene. Harry inched her car in behind them.

Her stomach was taut, as though braced for a punch. An image flashed before her: Garvin kneeling, head bent as though in prayer; the gun barrel touching his skull.

I never leave witnesses.

Sweat spilled down her back. The notion that someone out there wanted her dead jammed up her brain.

The officer on sentry duty waved the cars on, bending low to inspect the occupants as they passed. A fair-haired man, lean and athletic, stepped out of the house to join him. Harry caught her breath. Hunter. Shit. How bad would it look to be caught coming back for a voyeuristic eyeful? She yanked at the steering wheel and veered up a side road, her heart banging against her chest.

She’d been stupid to even think of driving past the house. What was the matter with her? She detoured away from the coast road, taking the long way round. Five minutes later, she’d pulled up at the library closest to Garvin’s home.

As she pushed through the door, she inhaled the smell of ageing, plastic-bound books. A lot of people thought libraries were dull, but to Harry they were hidey-holes full of free information. And information was artillery for a social-engineering attack. Which was double-talk for executing a scam.

She smiled at the librarian behind the desk. ‘Hi there. Do you keep a hard copy of the electoral register?’

The librarian smiled back. He was tall and stooped, with the gentle-giant look that often went with large men.

‘You can check it online, you know, to see if you’re registered.’ He pointed over his shoulder. ‘The computers are back there.’

‘Yes, I know, but I’d prefer the hard copy if you’ve got one.’

She’d tried the online system before. For honest citizens just checking they were registered to vote, it certainly made life easy. But for snoopers like Harry it blocked you right at the get-go by demanding both a name and address. No off-course browsing allowed. The printed version, on the other hand, dumped everything right in your lap.

The librarian nodded, and ambled out from behind the counter. That was the other great thing about libraries. No one ever asked you why.

Harry followed her jumbo helper as he wound his way between the rows of shelves. Behind her, scanners bleeped and date stamps thumped. Eventually, the librarian stopped by a filing cabinet and pointed at the stacks of paper perched on top.

‘That’s most of it for this area, I think,’ he said. ‘If we don’t have the one you need, we can check with the other libraries.’

Harry thanked him and watched him lumber away. Then she hefted the mound of paperwork to a nearby desk and pulled up a chair. She thumbed through the pages. They’d been stapled together in bunches, organized by district and adjoining roads. She traced a finger down the columns of data. The houses were listed by road number, with the occupants’ names recorded against them. She smiled, her mouth almost watering. All that juicy information. Then she fished a pen and paper out of her bag and went to work.

It didn’t take long to find Garvin Oliver’s road. She scanned the house numbers. There it was, last on the list: 91 Seapoint Avenue. Occupants: Oliver, Beth; Oliver, Garvin. The register must have pre-dated her death. No mention of the daughter, which made sense. As a schoolgirl, she wasn’t eligible to vote.

Harry’s eyes slid back to number 90. There was only one occupant: Cantwell, Margot. Since the Olivers’ house was an end-of-terrace, there were no other immediate neighbours. Replacing the stack of paper on the filing cabinet, Harry returned to the front desk where she borrowed a telephone directory and looked up the name Cantwell. None listed for 90 Seapoint Avenue. Damn. Ex-directory. Why did people do that? Did they really think it kept their number private?

She chewed the end of her pen for a moment. Then she swapped the directory for the Golden Pages and looked up video rental stores in the area. There were two, but MaxVision was the closest to Garvin’s home, located just around the corner. Harry noted the phone number, along with that of the MaxVision store across town in Malahide.

Then she flipped to the florist section and ran her finger along the page till she found one close to Seapoint. She jotted down the name and number, and was about to return to her car when she spotted the row of computers behind the desk.

Beth Oliver died four months ago.

Harry contemplated the screens. Surely if there was a sister, she’d be mentioned in Beth Oliver’s death notice?

Two minutes later, and after a brief chat with the librarian, Harry was logged into the national newspaper archives. For the next hour, she scanned through the death notices. She expanded her search to stretch back more than six months, just to make sure. But Beth Oliver’s name wasn’t there.

Harry frowned. Then she shrugged it off and headed back out to her car. Settling herself in the driver’s seat, she dialled the number for the MaxVision store located in Malahide.

‘Hello, MaxVision Rentals.’ The voice was male, but just about. A bored teenager, by the sound of him.

‘Hi there.’ Harry smiled widely. The bigger the beam, the better it transmitted to your voice. ‘I was in with you a couple of nights ago and I just wanted to say how helpful the girl behind the counter was. Really, she went to a lot of trouble and recommended a great movie.’

There was a pause while the teenager seemed to grope for a response. Satisfied customers probably weren’t covered in the training manual.

‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘Well, glad we could help.’

Harry kept the smile going. ‘I just wondered, could I get her name so I can thank her, maybe write a nice letter to the manager?’