Looking Good Dead

said. ‘And I have a feeling we’re not going to find it for a very good reason. We’ve already run a fingerprint test, which is negative. We’re sending off for a priority DNA to Huntingdon labs, but that will be a couple of days.’
    ‘I’ve found her,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘I’ll put money on it.’
    ‘Janie Stretton?’ Grace said.

    ‘Janie Stretton.’
    ‘She’s probably in bed, shagging some three-grand-an-hour brief.’
    ‘No, Roy,’ the Detective Sergeant insisted. ‘I think you’re looking at her.’

12
    Tom spent the afternoon at the offices of a major new client, Polstar Vodka, shaving his prices – and profit margin – down to the bone to avoid a competitor getting the business. Further handicapped by not having his laptop with him, he left glumly with an order for 50,000 engraved martini glasses and overprinted silver coasters which he had originally been banking on to give him a good profit. Now he would be lucky to even cover his costs. At least it was turnover to show the bank, but he was painfully aware of the old adage, ‘Turnover is vanity, profit is sense.’
    With luck it would lead to more profitable business in time, he hoped.
    Arriving back at the office shortly before five o’clock, he was relieved to see his laptop up and running again. But at a cost of seven hours of the techie’s expensive time that he could ill afford. Peter Chard’s desk was empty and Simon Wong was on the phone; Maggie was also busy on the phone. Olivia brought him over a pile of letters to sign.
    He dealt with them then turned his attention to Chris Webb, who had managed to retrieve some data. He talked him through the system upgrade he had done and the new anti-virus software he had installed – at further expense, of course. But he was still unable to explain where the virus that had wiped the database had come from other than from the disc Tom had found on the train, which he was going to take away to analyse further.
    After Chris had left, Tom spent half an hour catching up on his emails. Then out of curiosity he opened his Explorer Web browser, and went to the recent history section, which showed him all the websites he had looked at in the past twenty-four hours. There were a couple of visits to Google, several to ask.co.uk and one to Railtrack when he had looked up train times yesterday. There was also one to the Polstar Vodka site he had visited yesterday, in order to brief himself for this afternoon’s meeting. Then there was one he did not recognize at all.

    It was a long, complex string of letters and slashes. Chris Webb’s parting words as he had left were that he should not log on to any unfamiliar website, but Tom had been using the internet for years and years now and had a good understanding of it. He knew that you could pick up a virus from opening an attachment, but he just did not accept you could get one from a website. Cookies, yes. He knew that many retailers used the unscrupulous trick of sending a cookie when you logged on to their site. The cookie would sit in your system and report back to them everything you subsequently looked at on the net. That way they could build individual customer profiles on their database and learn what products people were interested in. But viruses? No way.
    He clicked on the address.
    Almost instantly the message came up on his screen:
    Access denied. Unauthorized login attempt.
    ‘Anything else you need tonight, Tom?’
    He looked up. Olivia, holding her handbag, was standing by his desk.
    ‘No, that’s fine, thanks.’
    She was beaming. ‘Got a hot date. Have to go to the hairdresser!’
    ‘Good luck!’
    ‘He’s the marketing director for a magazine group. Could be some business there.’
    ‘Go kill!’
    ‘I will!’
    He looked back at the screen and clicked on the address again.
    Within moments the same message appeared.
    Access denied. Unauthorized login attempt.
    Later that evening – after a larger martini than usual, dinner and almost an entire bottle of a particularly yummy Australian Margaret River Chardonnay, instead of his usual couple of glasses – Tom sat down in his den, opened his laptop, went to his email in-box and started working. More emails came in every few minutes.
    Two in succession contained decent repeat orders, which pleased him. One was from the marketing director of one of their major clients, thanking him personally for all his help in making their recent half-centenary such a success.
    Feeling