I, Spy? (Sophie Green Mysteries, No. 1) (Sophie Green Mystery)

office was empty, but Luke just walked straight through into One’s office instead. I followed, slightly nervous. I didn’t know why I should be in trouble for receiving a severed finger in the post, but it felt like being a receiver of stolen goods—really not your fault, but still a sure-fire way of getting police attention.
    “Well, well, Miss Green,” said One, straightening up from where he’d been looking over some paperwork with Alexa. “Second day on the job and already you’ve had one body and a severed finger.”
    “Call it beginner’s luck,” I said.
    They stared at me. Okay, not funny.
    “Um,” I said, “technically, I think they’re all part of the same body.” Either that, or someone completely unrelated to this thing was sending me body parts. What a charming thought. “I can’t see why it would be anyone else’s finger. If it is, then that’s a whole other mess of crap to be dealt with.”
    Probably I shouldn’t have said “mess of crap” there. Why doesn’t my brain intervene with my mouth?
    “Also, if he was killed because he was involved in the Brown apprehension, then this is probably a threat to stop me becoming involved. I mean, more involved. It’s probably from someone who knows I’m involved with SO17.”
    I sort of trailed off towards the end, because they were all staring at me. Or maybe because I used the word “involved” four times there in three sentences.
    “I mean, maybe,” I said, and Luke shook his head.
    “Told you,” he said to One.
    “What?” I said.
    “Smarter than she looks.”
    I preened a little at that.
    “Okay,” One said, “so who do you think it is?”
    It was my turn to stare.
    “I have no idea! I mean, I guess… Someone inv-—er, connected to the Brown brothers?”
    Alexa nodded. “We have a list of contacts.”
    Of course we do.
    “Alexa,” I said, sensing a day ahead of looking through meaningless names and guessing at things randomly—at least, on my part—“do you have a copy of the BAA footage from Monday night? I mean, Tuesday morning—you know what I mean.”
    “When Chris was killed?”
    “Yes.”
    She nodded and pulled One’s keyboard over to her. She hit a few buttons, pulled up a window blind, and there on a large pull-down screen in front of me was a grainy shot of the undercroft. So that was what the projector was for.
    “This is 0155,” she pointed to the time in the corner, “we have the death narrowed down to somewhere between two and four in the morning.”
    “But you have the rest of the footage?”
    She nodded. “Basically I’ve got access to all the BAA cameras and all their archived footage. Here—” she tapped the computer screen, “—I’ll show you how it works.”
    The way it works is this—I don’t have a problem with computers, but they have a problem with me. A brand new machine will happily go into nervous meltdown the second I touch the keyboard. Most of the system-wide computer failures at the airport have been on my watch. I can barely check an e-mail at home without the screen suddenly going blank and error messages appearing all over the place.
    I have, therefore, become something of an expert at rebooting a computer in less than the time it takes for someone to notice it’s all gone wrong. I can find and dismiss a Help file in seconds and I know just where to go online for PC dilemmas. I’m on first name terms with quite a few of the forum hosts at www.helpmycomputerisdead.com.
    So it didn’t take me long to find my way around Alexa’s computer system. I discovered, to my utter delight, that she hadn’t just downloaded the BAA files, she had complete live access to them.
    And—yippee!—she had Broadband.
    For the rest of the afternoon I was, if not a happy little bunny, then at least a busy one. Luke watched about ten minutes of footage with me, then shook his head, waved the repackaged finger and said he was going to speak to the police who’d been at the crime scene.
    I barely noticed he was gone.
    I watched hour after hour of footage. I watched it live. I watched it from different angles. I replayed bits over and over. I felt like my dad watching Ford Super Sunday . I totally understand how men can watch the same goal over and over again. Every time you see something different.
    Or in this case, I saw something the same.
    By the time Luke came back mid-afternoon, I was sure of it.
    “Watch this,” I said as he walked in, having shown it to One about five