from the sharp end pretended your gender and ethnicity didn’t matter. It was prejudiced, but it was honest. She could put up with that because what Stacey loved more than anything was the opportunity the police service gave her to fiddle around inside other people’s computer lives. She could nose around in people’s emails, wriggle her way through their perversions and dig up the secrets they thought they’d buried. And it was all legal.
The other thing about police work was that there was no possible conflict between her salaried life and her freelance work. Her monthly pay packet barely covered the overheads of her city-centre penthouse, never mind the made-to-measure suits and shirts she wore to the office. The rest of the cash–and there was a lot of it–came from the code she wrote in her home office on her own machines. That was one kind of satisfaction. Poking her nose into other people’s privacy was the other. These days, she had what she wanted, but by God, she’d earned it.
The only downside was that from time to time, she had to deal with people face to face. For some reason, the police still believed that you got better results when you were breathing the same air as the people you were questioning. Very twentieth century, Stacey thought as her GPS system announced, ‘Destination road reached.’
The headquarters of Best Days of Our Lives didn’t look like any software company Stacey had ever visited. It was a suburban semi on the outskirts of Preston, a short but traffic-choked distance from the M6. It seemed odd that a company which had been the subject of a multi-million dollar buyout attempt only months before was based in a 1970s box that couldn’t with the best will in the world have been worth much more than a couple of hundred thousand. But it was the address registered at Companies House and the one they’d given her via email.
The front door opened as Stacey climbed out of the car and a woman in her late twenties dressed in fashionably ripped jeans and a Commonwealth Games rugby shirt smiled cheerfully. ‘You must be DC Chen,’ she said in a West Country accent. ‘Come on in.’
Stacey, who had dressed carefully in geek chic Gap chinos and hoodie, smiled back. ‘Gail?’
The woman pushed her streaked blonde hair back and held out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, come on in.’ She ushered Stacey into a living room crammed with sofas and chairs. Children’s toys were piled in a random heap in the corner by the TV set. A coffee table was strewn with magazines and print-outs of lists. ‘Sorry about the mess. We’ve been trying to move for about a year now but we never seem to have the time to look at houses.’
The idea of not having children ever was fine with Stacey. She loved the clean lines of her loft, its space and its harmony. Living here would drive her nuts. No two ways about it. ‘It’s OK,’ she lied.
‘Can I get you a drink? Tea, coffee, herbal tea, Red Bull, Diet Coke…Milk?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Stacey smiled, her dark almond eyes turning up at the corners. ‘I didn’t realize you guys ran the business from home. Cracking idea, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’ Gail dropped on to one of the sofas and pulled a face. ‘It started as a hobby. Then it took over our lives. We have big corporations contacting us pretty much every day, wanting to buy us up. But we don’t want it to change and become all about making money. We want it to stay about people, about lives reconnecting. We’ve had people come together after a lifetime apart. We’ve been to weddings. We’ve got a whole cork board of photos of Best Days babies.’ Gail grinned. ‘I feel like a fairy godmother.’
Stacey recognized the quote. She’d read it in a couple of online interviews Gail had given about the business and its impact on people’s lives. ‘It’s not all sunshine, though, is it? I’ve heard marriages have broken up as well.’
Gail fiddled with the frayed cloth on the sofa arm. ‘Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’
‘Not good publicity, though, is it?’
Gail looked slightly baffled, as if she was wondering how this conversation had derailed itself so quickly from the sunny and warm. ‘Well, no. To be honest, we try to avoid talking about that side of things.’ She grinned again, but less certainly this time. ‘No need to harp on about it, I say.’
‘Quite. And I’m sure the last thing you want is to be associated in a negative way with a murder inquiry,’ Stacey said.
Gail looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘Murder? That can’t be right.’
‘I’m investigating the murder of Robbie Bishop.’
‘He’s not one of our members,’ Gail said sharply. ‘I’d have remembered if he was.’
‘We have reason to believe that he was drinking with somebody who is one of your members on the night he was poisoned. It’s possible…’
‘Are you trying to tell me one of our members
‘Please, Gail, just listen.’ Stacey’s patience was wearing thin. ‘We believe the person he was drinking with may have seen something, or Robbie may have said something to them. We need to trace that person and we think they were a member of Best Days of Our Lives.’
‘But why?’ Gail looked frantic. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because Robbie told another friend he was having a drink with someone from school. And we found a scrap of paper with the website url in the pocket of the trousers he was wearing.’
‘That doesn’t mean…’ Gail kept shaking her head, as if the movement could make Stacey disappear.
‘What we want you to do is to send a message to all of your male subscribers who were at Harriestown High with Robbie, asking them if they were the person who was drinking with him on Thursday. And because they might be nervous about admitting it, we also want them to send you a recent photograph and an account of their movements between ten in the evening on Thursday and four in the morning on Friday. Do you think you can do that for us?’ Stacey smiled again. It was as well the children were not at home, for her expression would surely have reduced them to terrified tears.
‘I don’t think…’ Gail’s voice trailed off. ‘I mean…It’s not what people sign up for, is it?’
Stacey shrugged. The web is, by and large, a positive place. I think people will respond well to being asked for help. Robbie was a popular guy.’ She pulled out a phone with email capacity. ‘I can email you the message we’d like you to send out.’
‘I don’t know. I need to talk to Simon. My husband.’ Gail leaned forward, reaching for the mobile on the coffee
