paused, and his voice took on a graver tone. ‘We are just getting reports that detectives in Fife have gone to a house in Earlsferry following an anonymous telephone call. Earlsferry is a popular holiday resort, and the house is believed to be one of many owned by families from the West of Scotland.’
The bulletin had barely finished when the telephone rang. Martin picked it up, listened, grunted, nodded, said ‘Quick work,’ and replaced the receiver.
‘That was Mario. They’ve found the Toyota abandoned in Cupar, near the bus station. And there have been no other thefts reported anywhere in Fife since Friday night.’
Skinner picked up the telephone. ‘Where was he calling from?’
‘CID room, I think.’
Skinner dialled an extension number.
‘McGuire, is Sergeant Rose with you. Good. Put her on. Maggie, I want you two to go down to the bus station and watch all buses arriving from Fife. If you see anyone of Arab origins, carrying luggage, tail him to his final destination, but do not arrest him. You’d better be armed, just in case. Come up here and we’ll give you SB firearms.’
80
Maggie and McGuire spent three hours in the Metro watching buses pour in from all over the UK. Three of them were from Fife, but none of the passengers looked even remotely Arab. Eventually, they were ordered to stand down.
When they returned their pistols, Martin told them that they would be in different locations for the Syrian visit. Maggie would be at the hotel with Neil McIlhenney, McGuire with Skinner, Martin and Mackie at the MacEwan Graduating Hall.
Maggie made a show of indignation. ‘Why is that, sir? Mario and I work well together.’
‘The boss says so. End of story.’
McGuire smiled. ‘Have to make the best of it, then. Come on, Sergeant, and I’ll treat you to the best spaghetti in town.’
As they left the headquarters building, Maggie was still frowning. ‘Where is the best spaghetti in town anyway?’ she asked grumpily.
The Italian in McGuire smiled again. ‘My place. Where else?’
81
Skinner was about to leave the office, when he remembered that Alex had asked him to call. He dialled the Gullane number. The sound of his daughter’s voice always gave him a lift.
‘Hi, Babe. What was it that you forgot to ask me this morning?’
‘It’s probably nothing, but remember you said this morning at breakfast that, on some case or other, your guys had to check an Amstrad like mine. You said that all the disks looked more or less empty.’
‘Yes, so what?’
‘Well, did whoever did the checking know about the limbo files?’
‘What the hell are limbo files?’
‘I thought not! It’s a software oddity. When you erase a document, you don’t can it completely, at least not at first. All you do is take it off the menu. As it fills up with live files, the disk makes room by jettisoning the dead ones. But until that happens, they can still be recovered.’
‘So you’re saying that if someone had tried to wipe a disk, he might still have left something on it?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Clever girl. How do you check them?’
‘As I remember, you press the option key. Then you press another, F5 I think, and it lets you bring the limbo files back, ready for reading, printing, editing, anything you like.’
‘Alex, that’s great. I’ll have them re-checked. If we find anything I’ll put you up for an OBE or something.’
‘A law degree will be just fine. I must go now. Love you, Pops. Take care.’
82
Martin rang Kenny Duff at 8.45 next morning to arrange for another look at Mortimer’s word processor. ‘You’re just in time,’ he said. ‘The family asked me to give some things to the Social Work Department, or to charities, and that will be one of them.’
The team all arrived promptly. Mackie and McIlhenney looked refreshed; Maggie and McGuire looked even more tired than they had the day before.
Martin told Mackie to begin with Yellow Pages, and to split the hotel and guest-house entries into groups. ‘Then pick up a copy of the B-and-B list from the local tourist office and allocate that too. Do everything by telephone at first. We’ll never get through them all otherwise. Let’s keep the story simple. We can only check one name, and that’ll be Fazal Mahmoud, Lebanese. We say that he is a freelance journalist, touring in Scotland. We need to speak to him because there’s been bad news at home. We tell people to call us at once if the man checks in, but not to mention our call. This is because we don’t want him to panic before we have a chance to break the news. Happy with that?’
Mackie nodded in agreement.
‘Well, go to it, and good luck.’
The weather had broken when Skinner and Martin arrived at Mortimer’s flat. It was cold and depressing, dead like its owner. Skinner switched on the computer, and loaded the software. Eventually, the menu appeared on the green screen.
He loaded the first data disk, and followed the procedure which Alex had explained to him. He pressed F5. The screen changed, and additional files appeared, each with the word ‘limbo’ after its title. He performed the recovery drill, then chose a document and pressed E for Edit followed by Enter. The file related to a holiday booking.
‘This could take a long time,’ he said to Martin. He had no great expectations. But it was part of the search, and it had to be done, even if it meant a long, boring day staring at a computer screen.
As superstition would have it, his third choice was the lucky one. He slid the thin plastic wafer into the drive slot and pressed the disk change button. The menu appeared on the screen. ‘Not much on this one,’ he muttered to himself. There were only three small files on the menu, each titled by a surname, month and year. He guessed that they probably related to criminal trials.
He pressed F5. The choice of options was displayed. He told the machine to ‘show limbo files’ and pressed the Enter key.
Seven new files flashed up before him, each one styled ‘Limbo’. Each was named ‘Israel’, and was followed in sequence by a number from one to seven.
Skinner sensed Martin tense, then stand bolt upright beside him. Carefully, making certain not to press the wrong button and erase them forever, he recovered the documents.
When the ‘limbo’ tag had disappeared from the screen, he checked the size of each document. They ranged in size from 15K to 88K. He totalled them. In all, the ’Israel’ series occupied 327K of memory, more than one third of the disk’s respectable storage space.
He sent the cursor to ‘Israel 1’, and pressed E for Edit followed swiftly by the Enter key. After eight long seconds of clicks and hums from the computer and its printer, the screen changed.
Martin yelled aloud. Skinner grinned broadly, but stayed in his chair. The two detectives read, incredulous, Skinner moving the cursor to scroll the pages.
The green lettering was clear and precise, to match the language of the document.
