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

later and one floor down they were sitting with Winter and Pearson. Gardener denied the offer of a drink but Reilly’s eyes widened when it was offered with mince pies.

Once seated, Winter went on to summarise what they had so far picked up. “We’ve been really busy in the last few days, digging into David Hunter’s computer, his phone records and the information we found in the attaché case. We’re pretty sure now that he was being blackmailed because of the evidence we’ve found to support it. He was clever enough to recognise what was going on. He’d managed to start a trace; made a note of the Bitcoin wallet the blackmail money was moving to.”

That had answered one of Gardener’s questions so he remained silent for the time being.

“Are you saying that you have real names for these people now?” asked Reilly.

Shona Pearson nodded and raised her eyes. “We think so. It’s taken since we spoke to you last to get past all the firewalls and secret codes embedded in some of their programming. What we’ve come up with is, James Henshaw, Zoe Harrison, Michael Foreman, and Anthony Palmer.”

“And why do you think they’re real?” asked Gardener.

“We managed to unearth them through the cryptocurrency transactions,” said Winter, “and David Hunter’s computer – although that took some cracking.”

“Stands to reason, he worked for a bank,” said Reilly.

Winter nodded. “We continued to dig into the initials DPA. We’re still not sure what it stands for, or whether or not they have a website yet, but what we did find – at least we believed we did – was that they operated from a business premises in Leeds called V-Tech.”

“Leeds?” questioned Gardener.

“However,” said Shona Pearson, “when we checked, it didn't exist. It was a bunch of derelict buildings on a waste piece of land at the end of a small side street. So they are still managing to cover their tracks – every step of the way.”

“What about home addresses?” Gardener asked. “Were you able to get anything on those?”

Shona Pearson passed him a printout of all the information they had so far uncovered. Whether or not the addresses were real was another matter.

“Thank you for this, you must have been working around the clock.” Gardener had to think quickly. “We obviously have two cases here, with two specialist teams. The cyber crime is certainly all yours and I suspect you still have a long way to go before you uncover all of that stuff.

“The hit and run, and the murders of David and Ann Marie Hunter are ours. To save us all running round, we need to put a SPOC in place: one from your team in my incident room, and one from ours in yours.”

Winter nodded. “Would you like to do that, Shona?”

“Yes, I’m up for it, be interesting see how you guys work.”

Glancing at the time it was midday. Gardener was on the phone immediately requesting a callout for every member of his team back in the incident room within the hour for a briefing and fresh tasks.

Chapter Thirteen

Another two days passed before the team assembled again to give Gardener the results of his previous actions, following Farrah’s and Winter’s revelations. Finally having a registration meant he wanted to know more about the vehicle: where had it been bought; what they actually knew about it and where was it now.

As far as people were concerned, he wanted everyone who lived near the DPA team questioned as to their whereabouts. Were the addresses real, or a dead end like the business premises? Were the cyber crime scammers at home, or had they too disappeared like the vehicle? Had they left the country? Airports needed checking. He wanted his team all over it because it was very late in the day to gather information from an old crime scene. Everyone knew the first twenty-four hours were the most important.

Although they had finally started to move, he still didn’t feel like they were any further on. Once his team was assembled, Gardener told them that he and Reilly had visited the address of James Henshaw the previous afternoon.

“Don’t tell me,” said Rawson, “it was false, probably a care home or something.”

“No, believe it or not,” said Gardener. “But James wasn’t home.”

“Who was?” asked Rawson. “And where was he?”

“That’s where it all gets complicated,” said Reilly.

“Don’t tell me,” said Sharp, “he doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, he does,” said Reilly.

Gardener took over. “We forced DCI Briggs to get us a warrant and we searched the house, took everything we could lay our hands on – which wasn’t much: the family computer and Rosie’s mobile. His wife, Rosie, said he was in Brussels on a business trip. We interrogated her, she wasn’t very happy. Judging by what she said, she’s as much in the dark about her husband’s activities as anyone else. He’s a very successful businessman going by their standard of living but she doesn’t seem to know half and a quarter of what he’s up to.”

“And she certainly doesn’t believe he was involved in any of this,” added Reilly.

“Was he in Brussels?” Sharp asked.

“Not that we found. We checked the details she had: where he was staying, where he’d left from, and when. Nothing matched up. He is most definitely not at the hotel, and he was not on the flight he was supposed to be on.”

“Bet that pleased her,” said Rawson.

“She wasn’t in the best of moods when we left,” said Reilly.

“Have you any idea where he is?” asked Benson.

“No,” said Reilly. “Here’s another good one, the wife confirmed they had a Range Rover Overfinch that had been involved in an accident, which was being repaired in a garage in Skipton. We took the details, paid the garage a visit, they’d never seen it.”

“Did she say anything about the