The king was not a chess piece at all; or at least, if it was, its appearance was one of disguise. Because in removing the cap, Bliss had exposed its true identity. The chess piece was, in fact, a USB stick.
Forty
Impatient to discover more, Bliss had fetched his backpack from the boot of the car. From its largest zipped pouch he withdrew his spare laptop and powered it up. He and Chandler sat at the tiny dining table, trawling through the contents of the chess USB stick.
‘I bet you anything you like most of this is also in the cloud somewhere, synced from her phone automatically,’ Chandler said as Bliss scrolled down a list of folders.
‘I’ll take that bet.’
‘You would. Old people like you and young people like Abbi think differently. It’s second nature for them to let their technology do the heavy lifting.’
Bliss nodded, ignoring the jibe about his age. ‘I know all that. But you’re forgetting who probably has her phone. He would’ve wiped the storage clean.’
Chandler sucked on her lip. ‘Of course. But I bet it’s backed up, so we might still be able to retrieve it.’
‘He probably deleted that as well. The provider may have backups themselves, but if the more recent files were only removed last week, I’m betting they’re gone for good.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to rely on data retention rules, so let’s hope she kept everything on here.’
‘Let’s hope.’
Bliss saw nothing obvious in the list of folders, and so navigated back to the top of the list and opened up the first. With his partner looking over his shoulder and remarking on the content as they waded through the stored data, they had reached one labelled Misc before they struck gold.
The third image was the first to also feature a man. It looked like a selfie, taken by Abbi. She wore a full-lipped pout. The man was smiling, but had a hand raised to partially obscure his face. The next one seemed to have caught the same man unawares. This time he was sitting in Abbi’s living room. Above average height and build, with thick dark hair; if this was Des, he looked like an everyman. His lips curved upwards into a smile, but the rest of his face told Bliss the response was not genuine. The man’s eyes, in particular, were narrowed in concern.
‘What does this one say to you?’ Bliss said.
Chandler bent forward to study the picture. ‘I’d say he’s not as happy as he might first appear.’
‘My thought exactly. I wonder if Abbi noticed it.’
‘You think this could be him?’
‘Candid shots, here in her home. He’s not a client. Not at the moment this was taken, anyhow.’
Chandler leaned on Bliss’s shoulder. ‘There are no clients at all so far, I’ve noticed. No people other than Abbi herself.’
‘That’s to be expected. Would you allow yourself to be photographed if you were about to carry out some sordid act on a young girl?’
‘True enough. So why did he?’
Bliss started clicking through the rest of the images in the folder. ‘Because by this stage he’s moved on from being her client. He’s something else to her now, and he has to play along. If he’s pretending to be her boyfriend in order to lull her, take himself off the books so nobody knows they’re seeing each other, he can’t react negatively if she takes the odd snap of the two of them together. Besides, he knows he’s about to have full access to her phone and all of its data.’
Bliss scrolled back a couple of shots. He made the image larger and centred it over the man’s chest. ‘Can you make out what that says?’
Chandler leaned in closer, forcing Bliss to move his head out of the way. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It breaks up more the further you zoom in.’
Bliss resized smaller and squinted. The man wore an olive-green fleece. On the left-hand side of the chest was some writing over what appeared to be a small image. The whole thing looked like a logo of some description, but the poor quality made it indistinct.
‘You think Gul might be able to do something with it?’ he said.
‘Absolutely. Our tech guys taught her well.’
Bliss had never been a fan of hope, but he began to feel its grip, a tightening claw swelling his chest. He nodded absently, as if to himself. ‘I think this is our man,’ he said. ‘I reckon this is Des. And if that’s the case, then that logo might be the stroke of luck we were looking for.’
***
Upon their return to the incident room at Thorpe Wood, Bliss immediately took a call from Belmarsh. He was desperate to reveal their breakthrough to the team, but was equally intrigued to find out why he was being contacted by the prison. Lewis Drake’s solicitor explained to him that they were being joined in a conference call by the deputy governor. This was in response to DS Bishop’s earlier conversation with prison staff concerning Lewis Drake’s contact with the outside world, following the visit by Bliss and Chandler.
Drake’s solicitor announced herself as Geraldine Murray. She wasted no time informing Bliss of her concerns regarding the interview having taken place without Lewis Drake having the benefit of legal representation. She was hardly pacified when he reminded her that not only had her client agreed, but also her office had been informed prior to the prison offering its own approval. Even so, Murray moved on to assure him that Drake had neither taken nor received any phone calls since the interview.
‘How certain can you be that he had no use of a mobile phone?’ Bliss asked.
‘I object to the implication!’ Murray snapped. ‘My client
