IMPOSTURE: Hunters become the hunted in this gripping murder mystery by Ray Clark (book series for 10 year olds TXT) 📕

“These guys must be good,” said Gardener, “if they’re confident enough to leave a trail without concern of being found.”

“Oh, they are,” said Shona Pearson.

“Head office contacted Brian Jennings,” said Winter. “Naturally, he knew nothing about it, and he could prove exactly where he was when it had happened. He was attending a lunch in the Queen’s Hotel in the city centre. Despite being annoyed about it, head office realised they could do very little other than beef up security, but it was supposed to be the best, considering the money that they had paid.

“Three days later, DPA broke into the system again, this time at the Leeds branch. On that occasion they really disrupted things by moving around lots of money and contacting customers about possible losses. The bank discovered that £350,000 could not be accounted for. The login had come from head office.

“Brian Jennings called in David Hunter before consulting head office. Despite his obvious embarrassment, Hunter couldn’t offer an explanation. The manager of head office, Bill Patterson, came under suspicion and had been suspended with full pay until the matter was resolved. Hunter had been told to be on his guard for anything else suspicious and, at the same time, maintain the utmost secrecy. He couldn’t tell anyone.”

Winter continued, “Two days prior to the death of the Hunters, DPA visited both mainframes on the same night using David’s log in, and the infamous Octopus Trojan software. That’s when the ‘anything else suspicious’ came into play. Three million pounds disappeared without trace. As far as Brian Jennings could ascertain, it had David Hunter’s footprints all over it. What he simply couldn’t understand was why.

“We’ve spoken to Jennings. Hunter had no answers, which caused him some serious concerns. He asked Jennings not to call the police immediately. Firstly, he was not guilty, and secondly, he said he wanted a chance to see if he could find out who was responsible. Against his better wishes, Jennings offered Hunter four hours to provide a solution. After that, head office and the police would be informed. All the money had been transferred into Bitcoin accounts.”

“So what happened, then?” Gardener asked.

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” questioned Reilly.

“Other than the four names you have, do you know anything else about this company?” Gardener asked.

“No,” replied Winter. “Whoever they are, they’re absolute specialists. Other than what they wanted us to see, they have left no trace of themselves whatsoever. They floated in and out like cyber ghosts. I can’t tell you who they are, where they started, or even where they are located. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Gardener shook his head, wondering what on earth he was supposed to do about it all.

Chapter Ten

“DPA?” repeated Dave Rawson. “What the hell does that stand for?”

“We don’t actually know, yet,” replied Gardener.

It was early evening and the team were in the incident room, following a long and demanding – not to mention, unproductive – day. After Gardener and Reilly had spoken to Winter and Pearson, the pair of them had driven to Burley in Wharfedale to speak to Roger Hunter.

David Hunter’s brother was as amazed as anyone at the revelations of blackmail and cyber crime. They questioned him about any phone calls he’d had with his brother recently, and how he felt about the tone of the conversation. Roger said they were fine and he couldn’t detect any problems David might have been having.

He went on to explain the only unusual snippet he could recall was talk of a foreign holiday, because they were homebirds who rarely travelled abroad, unlike Roger who seemed to be somewhere other than the UK most of the time.

He’d never heard of DPA, or the four names they had, nor could he think of anyone with a white 4x4 in the village; but then he didn’t live there. As they were leaving, Gardener could see something was bothering him. When questioned, Hunter had said that for some reason he couldn’t think of, the name Alfie Price rang a bell.

“Didn’t cyber give you anything to go on?” asked Colin Sharp, sipping a coffee.

“Other than the four bogus names,” said Reilly, “no. They mentioned a lot of technical shite about Trojans and Bitcoins and God knows what else.”

“What about a website?” asked Julie Longstaff, smiling at Reilly’s terminology.

“They don’t appear to have one,” said Gardener.

“Rubbish,” said Longstaff, and then quickly apologised because the comment wasn’t aimed at her superior officer. “Everyone – especially an outfit of their calibre – has a website these days. It’ll just be very well hidden.”

“If you’re offering a service, what’s the point in hiding it?” asked Rawson.

“Depends what the service is,” said Longstaff.

“Maybe we should google it, Julie,” said Sarah Gates.

“Good idea,” said Gardener, figuring that if cyber couldn’t find anything he doubted they would, but he knew they were both quite experienced in IT.

“And other than the four names, we have nothing else to go on?” asked Paul Benson.

“We don’t even have four names,” said Reilly. “At least not names we can check.”

“We’ll check them out anyway, sir,” said Gates.

“I’ve just had a thought,” said Rawson. “We probably have four false names, but it might not necessarily be four different people. Could be one.”

“Good point, Dave,” said Gardener, “but until we know more there’s not a lot we can do. So there’s another task, continue checking out those four names, see if they do lead us somewhere.”

“This stuff about the Bitcoins,” said Patrick Edwards, “did they give you any references, or account numbers?”

Now Gardener actually thought about it, neither Winter nor Pearson did mention anything. Whether or not they didn’t know, he wasn’t sure, but he would follow it up because they had mentioned something.

Reilly glanced at Gates and Longstaff. “Anything?”

“Not really,” said Longstaff, glancing up from