A Truth for a Truth by Carol Wyer

Author:Carol Wyer [Wyer, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

Felicity beckoned Kate into her glass-fronted office. She took the offered seat, her back to the large glass windows overlooking the laboratory, where three white-coated individuals were bent over desks, working on various electronic gadgets.

Placing her elbows on the desk and leaning forward conspiratorially, Felicity lowered her voice. ‘The phone is unlocked but you aren’t going to be happy. I only succeeded in retrieving twelve contact numbers in total. They’d been deleted but not completely obliterated, which leads me to suspect everything other than that list was professionally erased at some point in the past, probably using a specialised program. Ten numbers have been assigned Greek letters, beta to lambda, rather than names. I assume alpha would be the phone owner’s code name.’

‘No text messages?’

She shook her head. ‘I matched one of the two unnamed numbers to DC Jamie Webster’s phone, and the other with Heather Gault’s. As for the remaining ten, I can only tell you they belong to unregistered pay-as-you-go phones.’

‘They’re all burner phones?’

‘It would appear so.’

‘Is there any chance of obtaining a call log, so we can establish when calls were made?’

Felicity pulled a face. ‘Possibly. You’d have to request it from the provider and . . . well, you don’t want to alert too many people to the fact you have this phone, do you?’

Kate chewed on her bottom lip. Dickson had been extremely cautious. Interestingly, only Heather and Jamie had not used burners. Could they have been mere soldiers, used for Operation Agouti but who fulfilled no other role? Whereas those with untraceable phones were all part of the syndicate? Maybe those members with code names also had soldiers in their contact list. Kate paused to consider the scale of corruption that might exist.

‘Kate?’

Felicity was staring at her.

‘I was just trying to get my head around this.’ Another thought struck her. ‘Felicity, could somebody work out that the mobile is here? I mean, you had to turn it on, didn’t you, to get the information?’

‘Don’t fret. We techies have software to unlock phones without a password or PIN or access broken phones to recover data, photos, contacts, etc., without having to switch on the device. If I had turned it on briefly to recover the contacts then turned it straight off again, that might have resulted in a signal to the nearest mast. Even then, that information would only be available to the phone service provider at that time and would only cause a problem if someone else rang the number while it was switched on. Don’t worry. I erred on the side of caution. Best in these situations, don’t you think?’

Kate felt her lips stretch into a smile that matched her friend’s.

‘I’m not sure what to do with this information,’ Kate said. ‘Could you place a watch on these pay-as-you-go numbers?’

‘For what it’s worth, I think they’ll remain switched off until the superintendent reappears. I doubt the owners of those numbers will want to be associated with him at present.’

Kate sighed. Felicity had made a good point.

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