The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Author:Sarah Pearse [Pearse, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

46

The intimate body language, their postures—it looks like more than polite conversation.

“Adele and Lucas knew each other socially,” Will says slowly.

Elin feels a creeping sense of unease: they definitely knew each other, certainly more than Lucas had implied.

Could the falling out have been over him?

The thought, its depressing predictability, disappoints her.

“What are you looking at?” Isaac asks. He peers over her shoulder. Once again, she catches the bitter scent of beer on his breath.

“I found this.” She tilts the screen of the mobile toward him. “Lucas and Adele, together.”

Isaac sits down beside her. Grabbing the phone from her hand, he pinches the screen, zooming in. “Looks pretty cozy, doesn’t it?” He gives a brittle laugh, eyes igniting with a familiar intensity. “Maybe he was at it with her too?”

“We can’t say that,” Elin replies, her tone carefully neutral.

Isaac continues flicking through Laure’s Instagram. The speed of his movements, the erratic gestures, they bother Elin. She reaches for his hand. “Isaac, stop. We were going to go through the laptop.”

He opens his mouth, about to protest, then closes it.

Elin pulls the laptop toward her, flips it open. This time she decides to work more methodically, starting with the desktop, the folders stacked in neat rows across the screen.

She stares glassily at the sheer number of them, the similarities in labeling—date, names. Most look like work files—Health & Safety, Trainings, Travel. She clicks into them regardless.

Halfway through the list of folders she finds one with a more generic name: Work.

Clicking on it, rather than a series of files, she finds another folder with the same name. Elin’s finger hovers over the file, clicks again.

Another folder, but this time, it yields something.

Her pulse is racing.

A list of files.

She can tell right away from the file names that they’re encrypted.

Why? Why encrypt files on her personal laptop?

“What have you found?” Will leans over the table.

“Some of the files on her desktop, they’re encrypted.”

“Can you open them?” Isaac peers at the screen.

“No, but I know someone who can, an old colleague, Noah.”

The head of the Digital Forensics team, Noah had been a key part of several big cases Elin had worked on, first as a DC, then the last case as a DS, after her promotion.

“I’ll message him, see if he can do it quickly.” Reaching for her phone, she types:

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