“Artistic license,” Simon replied. “It simply doesn’t work like that in real life. Let’s turn to the texts and the phone records and see if we can find anything useful there.” With a few more keystrokes the screen changed again. “We know the number that sent the texts, they all came from the same phone, but guess what....”

“It was an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone,” Dee guessed out loud.

“Spot on,” Simon acknowledged with more than a little admiration in his voice. “It gets worse, though.” The analyst paused as he flicked more buttons. “From the phone number we can tell that the phone is a Nokia 2690 and that it was acquired recently. The records show that it was first activated yesterday and it may only have been on the shelf of the shop where it was bought for a matter of hours, rather than days or weeks. I draw that conclusion because that particular telephone number was only allocated earlier this month. We are waiting for confirmation, but my guess is that it was bought at a supermarket in the London area. Some place where they sell phones by the dozen and the sales assistants will have no idea who bought it. Unless Bob is a bit dim, he’ll have paid cash for it. No credit card which could be traced. But you never know. Sometimes people are careless.”

My mind had been racing while Simon had been speaking.

“Simon, you’re probably right to think that the email and texts were sent from the City. That makes sense when you consider that I was photographed in the City yesterday and shot with paintballs in Greenwich last night. I was wondering, can’t we trace where the phone is now? I understand we can track mobile phones by triangulation or cell location or something.”

Simon looked directly at the two of us facing him. He looked into my eyes as he spoke. “Josh, we’ve pinged that number, by computer, every thirty seconds since five o’clock yesterday, and we haven’t had a hit. That suggests to me that Bob knows exactly what he’s doing. If he’s seen any Hollywood movies he will know that we can track a phone, even when it’s switched off, or on standby to be more accurate. However, if you remove the battery......” he let the thought hang in the air.

I looked at Dee, my mood plummeting. “This is hopeless,” I said.

Dee tried to find some positives from the meeting. “If you ping the phone when it’s switched on, can you trace it?”

“Yes, given enough time,” Simon answered, “but Bob has, so far at least, kept his messages short and not so sweet. Nothing he’s sent so far would have given us enough time to track him.” Simon hesitated before offering more negative news. “To be honest, people think that we can get an address from a phone’s location, and sometimes that’s possible in a rural area, but in a place the size of London the best we can do is narrow it down to a diameter of two or three hundred yards. A radius like that will include thousands of people on the street, in shops, offices and hotels, and hundreds of those will be using phones at any given moment.”

“So, what are you saying?” I asked, my frustration bringing hoarseness to my usually controlled voice.

“I’m afraid, Josh, that as an analyst I can’t give you any more information than you could guess for yourself. My guess is that the blackmailer lives or lodges in the City, and is probably within a mile of us right at this minute, but we simply can’t trace him electronically.”

“Wait a minute,” Dee interrupted. “What about his email address, ‘paymaster@48hrs.com’, or whatever it is? It sounds like he might have set up his own domain. Can’t we track him that way?” Simon leaned over and his hands quickly rattled the keys on the laptop until a new screen appeared.

“The web domain was set up from an IP address in South Africa, Johannesburg actually, in 2010, during the World Cup. The IP address leads back to the Intercontinental Hotel which, according to the information on lastminuterooms.co.za, has seven hundred and eleven rooms, all of which would have been full at the time.” Simon clicked again on the keyboard and a page entitled ‘whois’ appeared on the screen. “The site was registered and is maintained by “CoolestDomains” in Thailand. They don’t speak much English but they told us that the owner paid for two years’ worth of domain hosting and for ten email addresses up front by credit card. They gave us his address and card number.”

“We’ve got him then?” I asked hopefully as I sat forward in my chair.

“I’m afraid not,” Simon sighed, obviously reluctant to pile yet more agony on me, recognising that my life span could potentially be measured in hours.

“The address they gave us belongs to Thomas Cook Travel Agency in Uxbridge, where an agent sold a prepaid Mastercard to Michael Lambaurgh, an England soccer fan who booked a trip to the World Cup with them.”

“Surely, they must have a record of where he lives?” Dee interjected.

“Yes, I’m afraid we’re ahead of you again there. The Metropolitan Police who look after the crowds at Stamford Bridge on match days know Michael Lambaurgh very well. It seems that Michael ran out of money after two weeks in South Africa, and was caught causing trouble by British Police who’d been drafted in to help police the World Cup. To avoid his arrest and prosecution in South Africa, he agreed to be deported. Unfortunately for us, the night before he flew back a man with a heavy Boer dialect, probably fake, offered to buy his card from him when it was refused for payment at a bar. The man offered him three hundred rand, about thirty pounds, for the card. Michael took it happily as there was less than a pound of credit left on it.” Simon picked up a printed email that had arrived earlier that morning.

“According to the credit card company, the card was topped up with five thousand rand cash at a Thomas Cook Foreign Exchange point in Johannesburg the next day. An hour ago Michael Lambaurgh described the man who bought the card as white European, about six feet tall with receding dark hair. He couldn’t remember much else about that night, as he was falling over drunk, to use his own words.”

“So,” Dee said, looking at me and then Simon. “We’re nowhere.” Simon frowned again but held his palms up submissively. “I’m afraid that about sums it up. Unless Bob starts to make some serious mistakes, we won’t find him before Friday at noon.”

Chapter 8

Dyson Brecht Offices, Ropemaker Street, London:

Thursday, 12 noon.

I was unhappy about my BlackBerry being cloned by Simon, but eventually accepted that it was necessary. Simon informed me that he would be able to monitor all incoming and outgoing calls and messages in real time, which would hopefully assist in locating Bob. Despite all of this, neither Simon nor Dee were confident that Bob would be found before the deadline expired. I decided I would just have to be careful how I used the phone until Simon terminated the shadowing of my calls and texts.

The countdown on my BlackBerry had reached twenty four hours. It had been only twenty four hours since I had spilled the beans to Toby, my boss, but it already seemed like an eternity. I was now sitting in a conference room with Dee. We sat in silence, each alone with our thoughts.

The door to the conference room opened and Toby walked in with another man. I immediately recognised the second man as Roddy McDougall, the Dyson Brecht contact at Chartered Equitable Building Society. Roddy sat and acknowledged me with a nod. Toby broke the silence.

“Miss Conrad. It’s very nice to see you again. This is Roddy McDougall. He is helping us raise the money for the ransom demand, in a manner of speaking.”

Roddy, a chubby redhead who looked out of place in a suit, spoke directly to me in a Scots accent. “I don’t know what to say, Josh. This is a crazy situation. I suppose all I can realistically do is make your life a wee bit simpler by raising the loan agreement as quickly as possible. To that end I have these papers prepared. Take your time to read them, if you want, but they’re all as we discussed yesterday.” Roddy pushed a sheaf of papers across the table towards me. Toby spoke.