Meyer-Hofmann AG

31

Lisa had arrived at work before 6:00 am, surprised by how many of her colleagues were already at their places at that time of day. Flexible work patterns allowed the staff to come and go as they pleased, a simple system on each desktop computer tracking their weekly hours. Lisa’s plan was to get Steve Walker’s password to the PricewaterhouseCoopers intranet and find out as much as she could before he got to the building. He was rarely in the office before midday, preferring to do the late shift than be the first through the door. Whether she would find the password would be the plan’s main stumbling block. His office was locked, but she knew the cleaners had keys to all the offices, and their store room on the ground floor was never locked. She went directly to the cleaners’ office, arriving just as a Turkish woman was leaving.

“You couldn’t help me, could you? I have forgotten my key.” She had given the woman one of her most painful looks, a cross between Bambi and an injured kitten.

“Which room you need?” The woman’s heavy accent made her German more difficult to understand, but Lisa guessed what she said.

“Three hundred and twelve.”

“Is manager.”

“Yes, yes, I am new here.”

“Yes, you wait.”

The woman had disappeared back into the room before returning with a small bundle of keys.

“Is one of these, I not know which.”

“Oh, thank you. I will bring them straight back.”

Lisa smiled and headed off to the lift before the cleaner could change her mind. Waiting until she was out of sight, she doubled back to the car park and made a quick trip to “Mr Mint”. Copying the whole key ring took over forty-five minutes, and she was starting to get anxious, but with both sets carefully zipped into her handbag, she returned to the building. Lisa found her friendly cleaning lady after a door-to-door search of the offices, returning the originals, along with a ten-euro tip.

Theoretically, she could have accessed all the information she needed from her office workstation, using her own password. But she was worried that the company may have some tracking software that would lead them back to her, should anyone become suspicious. It was also likely that Steve would have a higher security clearance level, and therefore, access to data she did not. Standing in front of Steve’s office door, she said a quick prayer before thrusting one key after another into the locking mechanism, hoping she would get in before anyone noticed. The third of the copied keys rewarded her with an audible click, and a quick twist of the polished handle allowed her access to Steve’s inner sanctum. Stepping quickly inside and pressing the door quietly shut with the palm of her hand, she turned and looked around the room. It was large but spartan; a steel and glass table stood in the centre, supporting an iMac and keyboard. With exception of a few files and a mouse pad, the table top was empty. Lisa had hoped for an obvious hiding place for the password, desk drawers or filing cabinets. A small cabinet on wheels under the desk offered little hope, holding just a collection of pens and office regalia in one drawer and useless files in the others. As she rifled through the bottom drawer of the cabinet, the sound of voices at the door caused her heart to make a brief attempt to escape her chest. There was nothing she could do, nothing but freeze and stare guiltily in the direction of the door.

No, please. Don’t open! she prayed.

One of the voices was Sophie’s, the others were male colleagues she didn’t recognise.

“Look, I’m sure he will understand when we explain what happened,” Sophie was saying in a half-whispered voice.

“I’m not so sure, now shush!” Lisa could imagine the man holding a finger up to his lips, asking Sophie to be quiet.

The knock reverberated from the door to Lisa’s teeth and down to her toes.

God, please don’t let them try the door, she prayed again.

She had forgotten to lock the door after she had entered.

They could just walk in. I will be caught red-handed.

A second knock had less conviction. More of a we-are-still-here knock than an are-you-there kind of knock. Go away. Lisa had to stop herself saying the words out loud.

“Come on, we’ll have to come back later.” Sophie’s voice confirmed the group’s departure, and Lisa sat down on Steve’s office chair with a sigh of relief.

Swivelling around to face the large panorama windows, she had a clear view of the building’s entrance. There was still little activity in the street below, and the multiple railway lines of the Munich City Station saw only the shunting of locomotives into position before their journeys up to the north of the country. Looking back into the room, she saw that one of the office walls housed the obligatory book shelves. Steve had not got round to filling it, and more than half of the shelf space was empty. The opposite wall incorporated a small bar with a Jura coffee machine and fridge. Finding his password had always been an outside chance, and Lisa satisfied herself with a rummage through the books and the bar. Only as she was about to give up and leave did she think to start up the computer. Like all the computers in the firm, it was left on all night in idle. A touch of the space bar woke the Mac, and she dialled straight into the company intranet. The customary password box appeared, and she considered a pot luck entry.

What would he use?

Thinking through possible combinations of name and birthdate, mother’s maiden name or place of birth. She accepted she didn’t know him well enough to wager a guess. Then a post-it on the bottom of the screen caught her attention. WLKER78 was written in blurred pencil. Steve’s family name without the A and his birth year. The sticker looked older than the screen.

That couldn’t possibly be it, could it?

Entering the seven digits, she winced as she pressed the return button, but was instantly rewarded as the PricewaterhouseCoopers logo went spinning around the screen before offering the usual buttons of the company intranet system. Her heart skipped a beat, as it furiously pumped more adrenalin-filled blood through her veins. A feeling of euphoria filled her brain, making her slightly dizzy. Logging out, she checked that everything was in place and went back to the office door. Cautiously pulling it open, she looked through the small crack at the open plan office beyond. Only one place had been taken since she had entered the room, and she could only see the top of a young man’s prematurely balding head. Slipping through as inconspicuously as possible, she locked the door and took off in the direction of the company library.

There were more desktops in the library, which allowed staff to browse the many shelves whilst working through the history they held. Lisa picked a terminal at the end of a row, filled with files that charted the Company’s financial history during the sixties. She sat with her back to the wall, giving her a clear view into the library’s centre. Logging back into the intranet as Steve Walker, she started the search.

If Meyer-Hofmann has anything to hide, I am going to find it, she assured herself.

The records stretched back over years, the bookshelves’ files duplicated for eternity on the company servers. She was not looking for tax avoidance schemes or bookkeeping irregularities. PricewaterhouseCoopers would not condone that. She was looking for money that was being syphoned off for unwarranted or strange, unrelated purposes. If Meyer-Hofmann were running any clandestine operations, it would need to fund them.

Time had flown, and a brief look at her watch told her it was almost midday.

I will have to stop soon, she said to herself, whilst rubbing her face and eyes.

Then she got her break.

A company called Phoenix IT had been invoicing over fifteen Meyer-Hofmann companies on a monthly basis at over 5,000 euros a month for the last five years. Before that, the company had been called Phoenix Office and had received similar sums. It was a service company owned by Meyer-Hofmann, delivering office supplies to almost every one of the company’s German-based holdings. After closer scrutiny, she found that the customers were regularly overcharged for the supplies, at anything up to five hundred percent. Since the company’s name change, their services had also changed, Computer Hardware and Software replaced the staplers and hole punches. The new products were far more difficult to price, allowing their billing to move off into the world of fantasy. Software installation and update orders did not describe what the software did, nor did it justify the benefits of the upgrades. Lisa was sure she had found the leak she was looking for, but she needed more time to find out what Phoenix was doing with the money. Her iPhone was vibrating, and she knew that Steve was in the building. She had made a friend of the doorman, who alerted her to his arrival. Unfortunately, not the fact that he was heading towards the library. She was just getting up from the terminal as a nonchalant Steve Walker came into view. He headed in her direction with a small wave and a smile.

“Hello, Beautiful, what are you doing down here?”

“Oh, I prefer it down here. It’s quiet, and I am not as likely to be disturbed.”

“Got something to hide?” he asked mischievously.

“A girl always has something to hide, Steve, you know that.” Giving him her best smile, she pressed past him and headed back towards her office. She was sure that Steve knew what the company was up to, and it made her feelings for the man turn cold.

“Fancy some lunch?” he called after her.

Turning, she gave him another smile and a shake of the head.

“No, thanks. I am watching my figure.”

“No need for that, darling, it looks just great from here.”

Another smile and she was around the bookshelves and on her way out of the library.