It was another week before Dan got in touch. There were no progress reports, no contact of any kind, and then he called her from the lobby and told her that he had someone with him she’d really like to meet. A few minutes later they were standing facing each other in the sitting room of her suite.
Dan was wearing his usual lethal styling but the guy with him was dressed in sloppy jeans and a hoodie. He was quite young but it was hard to see it through the long scruffy hair and what looked like the uncertain beginnings of a beard.
She felt her body tighten uneasily with the thought that this wasn’t some associate of Dan’s but the employee with a grudge she’d hoped for. He looked like he could fit that bill but she didn’t want it to be him. The guy in front of her was too unassuming, too inconsequential, to have caused her this much pain, to be deserving of the wrath she would have to direct at him.
‘Take a seat, Jim.’ Dan smiled at her then, dispelling her fears as he said, ‘Don’t worry, he’s a friendly.’
‘Jim Catesby. How do you do?’ He shook her hand before taking a seat.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ She turned to Dan and said, ‘I take it you found something?’
‘My mate Jim, that’s what I found. Works for Larsen Grohl, testing computer security, as luck would have it. But provenance first. Jim, tell Ella how you got your job.’
Jim cleared his throat and said, ‘Of course, yeah. Summer I finished college, couple of years ago, I was flying home from Chicago—my dad lives out there. Anyway, I got bumped off my flight so they put me on the next one and upgraded me to first class. That’s how I ended up sitting next to your dad.’
‘My dad?’ It saddened her suddenly to hear a stranger saying he’d known him.
‘That’s right. We talked a lot on the way back, mainly about computers, the Internet, security, and I was telling him about the hacking we did at college. He was really interested in that bit. Anyway, by the time we touched down he’d offered me a job. I couldn’t believe my luck: a cool job, good money, all from talking to a guy on a plane. I only met him a few times after that but he was always interested in what I was doing, you know, not just at work, but like, my life. He was a cool guy. I’m really sorry he’s dead.’
‘Thank you.’ It made her want to cry because it reminded her of the kind of man her dad had been.
Dan sat forward now and said, ‘Obviously, in theory, Jim here could be lying but the one other person I spoke to at the company seemed to back up his story, and anyway, I’d know if he was lying.’
‘So would I,’ said Ella. ‘So where’s this going?’
‘I gave him the info Lucas gave me, to see what he could do with it.’
He gestured towards Jim, who hesitantly took over the telling of the story, saying, ‘Yeah, the account you’re talking about was marked for external relations.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just the name they attached to it. The only people with access to it were your dad and your uncle. I did some unauthorized digging—which, I stress, is something I wouldn’t normally do.’ She waved away his concern. ‘Your dad was the one who used the account. Last year, for example, he’d used it five times, then once in January of this year. Your uncle hadn’t used it in eighteen months, but this June he used it to make two payments.’
She heard the words like she’d been punched in the face with them.
‘Is it possible someone else pretended to be my uncle?’
‘Theoretically. I could have done it, a couple of other people if they’d been determined and lucky enough not to get caught. In other words, no.’
She looked at Dan and said, ‘Does he know what this is all about?’
‘The basics.’
‘So you know what you’re telling me, that my uncle killed my family?’
‘That’s how it looks, I know.’ On the verge of saying something else, he halted, then built up the courage again. ‘Your dad and your uncle, they always seemed to get on well enough but your uncle was always very much the sidekick. The feeling at LG was that he resented that, felt undervalued.’ Jim’s earlier doubts appeared to resurface now and he added, ‘I’m not saying that explains anything. I resent my brother but I wouldn’t kill him. I’d probably risk my life for him.’
Ella nodded. She’d never noticed any bad feeling between Simon and her dad, but then she’d managed to live for twenty years knowing almost nothing about her own family, how it did business, its wealth and where it had come from.
She thought of Ben, too, wondering if he’d resented her. Perhaps it was the prerogative of the younger child to resent the elder, just for being first, for gaining freedom and privilege ahead of them. It made her wish she’d given him more time in the last couple of years, shown more interest, as pointless as it was to wish for something like that.