“What about her web traffic?” Colin asked.
“Minimal.” Francine shrugged. “That’s no surprise. She didn’t advertise anywhere and no one in their right minds would spend time on this site with these prices. Not if they were really shopping for perfume. I must admit that I’m surprised her website isn’t on the dark web. Here, we can trace traffic and the IP addresses of people who visited her site.”
“What I would like to know is where Iran comes in.” Vinnie leaned back in his chair. “I mean, I know that Adèle got the wine from Iran and the wine had the heroin, but who is her connection in Iran?”
“And is this only about drugs?” Colin raised his index finger. “Not that I’m saying drugs aren’t bad enough. But is this a security threat? We all know that Iran has all kinds of nuclear issues with the world.”
“Holy hell.” Manny looked at me. “Found anything new in those photos, Doc?”
“A lot, but I’m not willing to speculate.” I wasn’t. I needed more time. It felt like there were small streams of water in my brain and they were about to converge into a river. I was waiting for that moment when all the seemingly disconnected elements flowed into a motivation for these crimes.
“Dan and I checked the security cameras in Jace’s building.” Vinnie straightened when we all looked at him. “We used the metadata...” He sighed when Francine faked a coughing fit. “Franny helped us by giving the metadata from Jace’s smart glasses. We used the timestamps to search for anything or anyone suspicious on the security feeds, but nothing.”
“So he came up through the basement like we thought,” Colin said.
Francine turned the conversation to outrageous theories and I lost interest. I got up and returned to my viewing room. Something about the photos was niggling in the back of my head. I sat down and cleared the monitors. I’d been through all the photos the crime scene technicians had taken of the house.
It was the photos of the organisational chart that had my interest. There was a lot to study and try to understand. I opened the photos of her chart on my monitors. A photo of the wine bottle in Adèle’s basement was in a prominent place next to the chart photos and deserved attention, but first I needed to understand the code Adèle had used when making her chart.
I adjusted my keyboard so it was perfectly aligned to the edge of my desk and narrowed my eyes at the monitors. After all the distractions yesterday and this morning, I was pleased to return to the chart. I zoomed in on the photos of the other wine bottles Adèle had pinned next to the chart.
“What do you make of the labels?” Colin was sitting next to me. Every now and then he entered a search for something on his laptop, but so far neither of us had uncovered any significant information.
I zoomed in even more on the bottles. “The resolution is not good enough to see the detail of the labels.” I turned to him. “The label on the bottle we found in her house had a watermark. I can’t see if there’s a watermark on these bottles.”
“Huh.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “I didn’t think much of the watermark. Do you think there’s something to it?” He looked at me and smiled. “Don’t answer that. I know we’ll have to see the bottles to determine that.”
I looked at the photos on the monitor next to the wine bottles and zoomed in on the photo with the best quality. The mystery man Adèle had secretly photographed in a few places was standing at a pedestrian crossing talking on his phone. It was summer and he was wearing a fitted black shirt hanging over tailored khaki trousers.
His bearing was that of a confident man, his spine straight, his shoulders back. My eyes were drawn to his hand holding the phone to his ear. Stretching from his wrist and disappearing between his middle and ring finger was a birthmark. The brown colour of the oval-shaped mark blended in well with his skin. None of the photos gave an indication of his race, so his tanned skin could be from the sun or heritage.
I shook my head in frustration and moved my attention to the monitor next to the photos of the man. These were the handwritten notes that appeared to be receipts of some kind. As I zoomed in, the elevator opened and Daniel walked into the team room, nodded at Manny and joined him at his desk.
Vinnie walked into my viewing room and sat down in the chair on my other side. The chair Manny usually occupied. “Whaddup?”
“Bored?” Colin asked.
“Nope.” He stretched out his legs and crossed his feet at the ankles. “You two just looked like you need my expertise.” He ignored Colin’s snort and looked at the monitors. “What are we looking at?”
“Photos of the chart in Adèle’s basement.”
“Ah.” He frowned and pointed at the monitor with the handwritten slips. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know.” And it was most vexing. “These appear to be receipts, but it’s not clear for what.”
I zoomed in on the top receipt until it filled the monitor. There was only one word. The rest were numbers. The four numbers at the top of the receipt could easily indicate a date—day and month. Below that a word was written in Arabic. The handwriting was strong and slanted to the right. I was confident that a man had written these notes. Under the word were two strings of numbers. There was no punctuation separating the numbers to indicate whether these were phone numbers, IP addresses, GPS co-ordinates or something else.
“Well, fuck me.” Vinnie’s soft curse took my attention away from the monitor. He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. His eyebrows were high on his forehead and a small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I know what this is.”
“Then don’t play games.” Manny walked into my room and glared at Vinnie. “Tell us what this is.”
Vinnie turned his back on Manny to face me. “These are Hassan’s hawala slips.”
Chapter NINE
“Who’s Hassan and what the hell is lalala?”
Colin shook his head and looked at Manny. “Hawala is a very old manner of transferring cash. It started as far back as the eighth century between Arabic and Muslim traders as protection against theft. It’s an informal system operated by hawaladers—money brokers. And even though hawala follows Islamic traditions, its use is most definitely not limited to Muslims.”
“I heard it described as the ‘working man’s Bitcoin’.” Francine walked into my viewing room and stood next to Vinnie. Daniel walked past them and walked straight to the back of my room. I was grateful.
“Hawala was the first manner in which money changed hands without changing hands,” Colin said.
“Huh.” Manny scratched his stubbled jaw. “I’ve heard of that. It has been used by terrorists to get funding from Western countries to their home turf.”
“It’s still being used,” Daniel said. “A lot. It is estimated that around four hundred million dollars is moved through the system each year.”
“Holy mother of all.” Manny looked at Colin. “Explain the system. Without a history lesson and poetry.”
“You’re such an arsehole.” Colin exhaled loudly. “You want to send money to Vinnie who is in Russia.”
“No, I don’t.” Manny scowled.
Colin ignored him. “But you can’t or don’t want to use banks or any financial transfer institutions. So you come to me, a hawala broker, and give me the one million dollars.”
“Yeah, baby.” Vinnie’s smile widened when Manny’s scowl deepened.
“Along with the money, you give me a password.” Colin waited until Manny nodded impatiently. “I call my counterpart Francine who runs her hawala brokerage in Moscow. I give her the amount and password. In the meantime, you’ve called Vin and given him the password and Francine’s address. He goes to Francine, gives the password and she gives him his million dollars. Both Francine and I will take a small commission which is usually less than the banks charge.”