The Impossible Fortune

19

‘And I can still do sit-ups,’ says Ibrahim, topping up his glass of wine at the contemporary upscale restaurant at Coopers Chase. ‘I still have both the muscle mass and the flexibility.’

‘I see,’ says Holly.

There is nothing Ibrahim likes better than somebody new to talk to, but Holly Lewis is not proving the easiest customer. But she has just been summoned to dinner by four pensioners, so perhaps that’s understandable.

Elizabeth brought him up to speed before the dinner. Nick Silver had information. Somebody planted a bomb under his car and then Nick disappeared. The lady opposite them, Holly Lewis, is Nick’s business partner, though even Elizabeth is currently hazy as to exactly what their business might be. Storage. A very profitable business all round. People always needed storage, didn’t they? Ibrahim currently has some pots he’s not sure what to do with, for example.

Also, if Elizabeth is to be believed, Holly Lewis is one of three main suspects in the attempted murder of Nick Silver, so it’s possible he is making small talk with a psychopath.

Not for the first time.

‘You are very kind to come and see us, Holly,’ says Joyce.

‘I don’t know if it’s kindness,’ says Holly. ‘I want to find Nick. I thought perhaps you could help.’

‘Even so,’ says Joyce, ‘I baked you some brownies to say thank you.’

Joyce hands over a Tupperware box. Ibrahim notes that the box looks quite heavy.

‘They’re a bit dense, I’m afraid,’ says Joyce. ‘But I didn’t have a lot of warning you were coming, and I accidentally overdid it with the flour.’

Holly nods a thank you, and puts the brownies in her bag, Ibrahim noting the handle of the bag straining on the chair as they land.

‘Are you Joyce?’ Holly asks.

‘For my sins,’ says Joyce.

‘Joanna’s mum?’ Holly asks.

‘Yes,’ says Joyce. ‘I mean, more than just Joanna’s mum, a woman in my own right, but, yes. Are you friends?’

‘No,’ says Holly. ‘I know her by reputation.’

‘All good I hope!’ says Joyce.

Holly doesn’t reply.

‘Of course strength training is important too,’ says Ibrahim. ‘May I pour you a glass of white, Ron?’

‘Not this evening, thanks,’ says Ron. ‘Wedding headache.’

‘It really was a terrific wedding, Holly,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I’m so sorry you couldn’t come.’

‘Work,’ says Holly. ‘And once you’ve been to one wedding –’

‘You’re not married, Holly?’ Joyce asks.

‘Am I wearing a ring?’ asks Holly.

‘Well, no,’ says Joyce. ‘But Joanna says not everybody wears a ring, so I didn’t want to assume.’

‘Is Joanna wearing a ring?’ Holly asks.

‘She is,’ says Joyce.

‘I’ll bet,’ says Holly. ‘Good for her.’

Ibrahim is not sure he remembers the last time that Joyce met someone she was unable to charm.

‘No kids, Holly?’ Ron asks.

‘They’re not compulsory,’ says Holly.

‘Don’t blame you,’ says Ron.

‘Haven’t met the right man, perhaps?’ says Ibrahim.

‘Something like that,’ says Holly. She turns to Elizabeth. ‘They said you can help me find Nick?’

‘Yes, if you can help us, I think we can help you,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Nick tells me you work in “cold storage”, and I can’t quite get to the bottom of it. In my line of work “cold storage” was where you kept corpses until it was politically expedient to return them to their mother country, but I’m guessing that’s not what you do?’

Holly stops eating her broccoli tart for a moment. ‘No, that’s not what we do. We work for companies, individuals, and we look after the security of their computers or their files. Anything they want kept secret.’

‘Ah,’ says Ibrahim. ‘That’s what I suspected. Online security, firewalls, the cloud. I have read around the issue.’

‘The exact opposite,’ says Holly.

‘Yes, yes,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I thought as much, the exact opposite. Three hundred and sixty degrees.’

‘What do you mean, the exact opposite?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘We’ve all got so used to security being online,’ says Holly. ‘Financial details, corporate secrets, crypto trades, all hidden behind walls.’

‘Crypto is Bitcoin,’ says Joyce, tucking into her shepherd’s pie. ‘You mustn’t tell Joanna, but I lost fourteen thousand pounds.’

‘I don’t really know Joanna,’ says Holly. ‘I told you.’

‘Oh, she’s terrific,’ says Ibrahim.

Holly ignores him and continues her train of thought. ‘But at the very, very top level of security, because of hackers –’

‘Computer hackers,’ says Ibrahim, nodding wisely.

‘Companies and individuals turn to “cold storage”. Whatever secrets they want to keep, they never go near any sort of connected computer. Instead they use companies like us, and they store their documents, more usually their hard drives, with us. We physically lock them up.’

‘What’s the advantage in that?’ Ron asks.

‘It’s easier to keep out robbers than it is to keep out hackers,’ says Holly. ‘However well protected you might think your information is behind whatever firewall you’ve installed, there’s always someone in Russia, or Dubai, or Brazil, working out how to access it. Whereas if it’s in a locked box, with an impossible combination in an unknown location, it’s a lot easier to protect.’

‘So if you want to steal the secrets,’ says Ron, ‘you have to steal them physically?’

‘You do,’ says Holly. ‘That’s cold storage. And with the system we have in place, I would say stealing them physically is impossible.’

‘That’s very useful, Holly, thank you,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Confirms a lot of my thoughts.’

‘It’s been a tough day today, you understand that?’ says Holly. ‘I discover my business partner has gone missing, could be dead as far as I know. Then I’m told Joanna’s mum and her friends would be able to find Nick for me.’

‘We can certainly try,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Nick thought that either Davey Noakes or Lord Townes was trying to kill him. Does that sound reasonable?’

Holly looks away, looks back, then nods. ‘Very reasonable. They both knew.’

‘Knew what?’ asks Elizabeth. ‘That’s the piece of the puzzle we’re missing.’

Their desserts arrive. Along with another bottle of wine. Ibrahim does the honours.

‘You’re sure I can’t tempt you, Holly?’ he asks.

Holly hovers her hand over her glass. ‘Driving.’

Ibrahim nods. Very wise.

‘This whole thing is all about one single safe,’ says Holly. ‘The Compound is one room, a vault, and the walls are lined with safes. Each one about the size of a shoe box. Nick and I have one.’

‘What’s in it?’ asks Joyce, enjoying her Eton mess. ‘Jewels?’

‘It’s always jewels with you, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth.

‘One of our first jobs,’ says Holly, ‘was for a company –’

‘What company?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘We never ask,’ says Holly. ‘That’s one of our selling points. We stored some bits and bobs for this company, and the yearly fee back then would have been twenty grand, something like that, and this company asked if we’d like to be paid in Bitcoin. And we talked about it, and I was interested in that sort of thing, and Nick was interested, so we said why not? We’ve got two hundred units in the vault, why not take a punt with one of them?’

‘When was this?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘2011, something like that,’ says Holly. ‘And the twenty thousand price worked out at about five thousand Bitcoin, give or take, and occasionally you’d read something or other about it, but, really, we forgot about it. We stopped dealing with this company –’

‘Went to prison, did they?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Probably,’ says Holly. ‘Didn’t need our services any more, certainly. We had these five thousand Bitcoin, or a string of numbers that represented our ownership of the Bitcoin, literally written on a scrap of paper in one of our files.’

‘That’s how it works,’ says Joyce. ‘It’s a string of numbers, not a real coin. They call it a key.’

‘I know that,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Sounds like a racket,’ says Ron. ‘Numbers on a bit of paper.’

‘All money is just numbers written on pieces of paper,’ says Holly. ‘A couple of years in, things started to get interesting. And these Bitcoin, which were worth about four pounds each when we first got paid, were suddenly worth forty each, and we had two hundred thousand pounds on our hands. We discussed selling them there and then, but we’re both gamblers, so we said let’s keep hold of them. But we decided to use one of our safes at The Compound for the key. Lots of people store these keys online, but hackers steal Bitcoin, and, you know, that’s the whole point of the company, so we locked it away. Anyway, there was lots of toing and froing, the price was very volatile, but a couple of years later it went up to five hundred and fifty, and that single piece of paper was worth two point seven five million.’

Ron whistles through his teeth. ‘Still a racket though.’

‘I say at that point that we should sell,’ says Holly. ‘But Nick says we hold on. That’s how it’s always gone. One of us says sell, the other says hold on. As I said, it was very volatile, and sometimes it would lose half its value in a week, but the peaks were getting higher and higher. Knowing what we had locked away now, we agreed two things. We’d sell only when both of us wanted to, and we’d figure out a way to stop one of us from ripping off the other. So, from around 2016, there was no way that safe could be opened without authorization from both of us. Nick can’t open our unit without me, and I can’t open it without Nick. That’s what we agreed.’

‘The six-digit codes Elizabeth was telling us about?’ says Ron.

‘Sounds like Nick told you a lot,’ says Holly. ‘I hope he was right to trust you?’

‘Might I ask,’ says Elizabeth, ‘what its value is today? If it was worth nearly three million then, what is it worth now?’

‘Varies day to day,’ says Holly. ‘It had a big peak a few years ago, about seventy thousand a coin.’

‘That’s when I bought,’ says Joyce.

‘But within a year,’ says Holly, ‘it was back down at sixteen thousand.’

‘That’s when I sold,’ says Joyce.

‘But, again, whenever it collapsed, the peaks kept getting higher, and in 2024 it was up at around seventy-five thousand a coin. If we sold today, that key would be worth about three hundred and fifty million pounds.’

That quietens everyone down.

‘Why haven’t you sold?’ asks Ibrahim.

‘Nick kept saying we didn’t need to,’ says Holly. ‘He’d say the business is doing well, we have nice houses and nice cars. But he changed his mind earlier this week.’

‘Earlier this week?’ says Elizabeth.

‘We had a long lunch and Nick said, “It’s time,”’ says Holly.

‘So you sold?’ asks Joyce.

‘My shepherd’s pie’s on you,’ says Ron.

‘No,’ says Holly. ‘Although we agreed to cash out, selling hundreds of millions of pounds of Bitcoin in one go isn’t simple. So we started asking around, making it known we were looking to trade.’

Elizabeth looks thoughtful. ‘Nick and Holly suddenly very popular.’

‘Holly and Nick,’ says Holly. ‘Always Holly and Nick. “Nick and Holly” sound like a tiresome couple you meet on holiday.’

‘So,’ says Elizabeth, ‘the people you asked for advice were Davey Noakes and Lord Townes?’

‘They were,’ says Holly. ‘Lord Townes was a banker and knows the traditional way of dealing with these things –’

‘And Noakes knows the untraditional way?’ says Ron.

Holly nods. ‘We thought that was a good combination.’

But Ibrahim is sensing the issue. ‘Did you tell them how much it was?’

‘We might have let it slip, yes,’ says Holly.

‘So Nick agrees to unlock a couple of hundred million, and, before you know it, someone tries to kill him,’ says Ron.

‘And then he disappears,’ says Holly.

Elizabeth has something on her mind. ‘Might I make an observation, Holly?’

‘Can I stop you?’ Holly asks.

‘You seem very keen to find Nick?’

‘Of course I’m keen to find him,’ says Holly.

Elizabeth continues, ‘But you don’t seem particularly worried that someone might try to kill you too? That would be at the forefront of my mind if I was in your position. I’d be asking for our help to protect you.’

‘You don’t know me,’ says Holly. ‘I don’t frighten easily.’

‘If Lord Townes or Davey Noakes had put a bomb under Nick’s car,’ says Elizabeth, ‘why wouldn’t they put one under yours?’

‘Perhaps they’d found out Nick’s code?’ says Holly. ‘They haven’t found out mine, so they have no reason to kill me.’

‘Is your code not written down anywhere?’ Joyce asks. ‘I always write mine down.’

‘Codes,’ says Ibrahim, trying to sound enigmatic.

‘Our solicitor has them,’ says Holly. ‘In case of our deaths.’

‘Then your solicitor would be a suspect?’ says Ibrahim.

‘He doesn’t know he has them,’ says Holly. ‘He just knows he has something to pass on if either of us were to die. He’s a nobody.’

‘So if Nick is dead, you’d get his code?’ Ron asks. Ibrahim is glad that Ron has said this. Holly was not at the wedding; Holly seems to be the only person who might profit from Nick’s death; and, Elizabeth is right, she doesn’t seem to be worried that whoever placed the bomb under Nick’s car might do the same to hers. And might the reason for that be because she was the one who planted it?

‘He’s not dead,’ says Holly. ‘We’ll find him together.’

And then what, Holly Lewis? thinks Ibrahim.

‘I don’t wish to be morbid,’ says Joyce, ‘but who gets the codes if you both die? Who does this solicitor pass the codes to then?’

Holly turns on Joyce. ‘Why are you asking me that?’

Joyce has been taken by surprise. ‘I just … I’m ever so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. I just wondered.’

‘No,’ says Holly. ‘Why are you asking me that? And not one of your friends?’

‘I just …’ says Joyce, ‘I just thought I hadn’t said anything for a while. I was trying to be useful.’

‘You were being useful, Joyce,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Holly is under a lot of stress. I’m sure she didn’t mean to snap.’

‘So who would get the codes?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ says Holly, who seems to be regaining some composure. ‘No idea.’

If you were to ask Ibrahim, who likes nothing better than cracking the codes of the mind, he would say she’s lying. Quite why, though, he couldn’t tell you.

‘Well, if you really don’t know,’ says Elizabeth, ‘the two of you should start to think about writing your codes down somewhere safe and sound, so someone you trust could find them if you do die.’

‘Might be too late for Nick,’ says Ron. ‘You could just tell me your code if you like though?’

‘No one is going to die,’ says Holly. ‘And, if you’ll excuse me, I might call it a night. I’ve told you everything I can. You’ve got my number if Nick gets in touch.’

‘Of course,’ says Ibrahim. ‘You’ve been very kind indeed to come to see us.’

Holly stands and swings her bag over her shoulder. Ibrahim sees that Joyce feels guilty about the weight of the brownies. That’s what happens when you bake hungover, Joyce.

Holly gives stiff handshakes to Elizabeth and Ibrahim, and then refuses hugs from Joyce and Ron. She walks towards the exit, listing under the weight of the bag. The gang watch her go, waiting for her to be out of earshot.

‘I knew that’s what cold storage was,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Somebody is after that Bitcoin,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And is willing to kill for it,’ says Ibrahim.

‘But Holly was right,’ says Joyce.

‘Right about what, Joyce?’ Elizabeth doesn’t like her train of thought being broken.

‘Why try to kill Nick if you don’t know his code? Why plant a bomb under his car? If it was me, I’d kidnap him and then torture him.’

‘You used to be such an innocent woman, Joyce,’ says Ibrahim.

‘No, she didn’t,’ says Ron, and raises his wine glass to her.

‘If you wanted to steal the money,’ says Joyce, ‘you wouldn’t try to kill him. You’d try to get his code.’

‘Unless killing him was a way to get his code,’ says Elizabeth.

Exactly what Ibrahim had been thinking. They are all on the same page.

‘The solicitor,’ says Ron, taking his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘That’s clever. It’s always the solicitors, isn’t it? I bet it’s the same guy who did my first divorce.’

Okay, so maybe Ron isn’t on the same page.

‘I’d better head home,’ says Ron. ‘Pauline’s looking after Kendrick. I’ll leave you to catch the solicitor.’

‘Ron, not all solicitors are evil,’ says Joyce. ‘If Holly kills Nick, Holly has Nick’s code handed to her.’

‘Worth three hundred and fifty million pounds,’ says Ibrahim. ‘That’s quite the motive.’

‘Wait, Holly planted the car bomb?’ says Ron, struggling with his jacket, then realizing the sleeve is inside-out. ‘The morning of the wedding?’

‘I did wonder why she wasn’t there,’ says Joyce. ‘They’re all supposed to be friends. But you wouldn’t come to a wedding if you’d just planted a car bomb under the best man’s Volvo?’

‘Lexus, Joyce,’ says Ibrahim. ‘But precisely.’

‘And now,’ says Elizabeth, ‘having failed, Holly is asking our help in finding Nick Silver.’

‘Or delivering him to her,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Surely, if Nick’s code was secret,’ says Elizabeth, ‘it wouldn’t make sense for Davey Noakes to plant the bomb. Or for Lord Townes to plant the bomb.’

Joyce nods. ‘Holly Lewis planted the bomb.’

Ron isn’t buying it. ‘I bet it was the sol–’

They feel the explosion before they hear the noise. A rush of wind that knocks them from their seats. And then the noises, a huge thunderclap, followed by rolling booms. The night sky outside is lit by intense orange flames. Elizabeth is first to her feet, and moves as fast as she can to the door and into the heat now filling the evening air. Residents are peering out of windows, and they are all peering at the same thing. The remains of a car, blown apart in the overspill visitors’ car park. And Elizabeth knows just which visitor it will be. Joyce and Ibrahim are close behind her, Ron lagging a little. The heat becomes unbearable as she reaches the remains of what was Holly’s Volkswagen Beetle.

The pain as Elizabeth moves ever closer is becoming unbearable, but Elizabeth feels pain differently now. Unbearable is the norm.

‘Get back!’ shouts Ibrahim. ‘She’s dead!’

I know she’s dead, thinks Elizabeth. I can see she’s dead. It would have been instant – that’s something at least.

‘You can’t save her, Elizabeth,’ shouts Joyce.

I’m not trying to save her. I’m trying to solve a murder.

And then she spots it, already starting to melt into the frame of the car.

Holly’s mobile phone. Wrapping her scarf around it, she throws the scalding hot phone clear. The phone is destroyed, but, if she got there in time, the SIM card will have survived. There’s always something useful.

So they were trying to kill Holly Lewis too?

Elizabeth knows what Nick has told her and she knows what Holly has told her. Perhaps the phone will tell a different story? She needs information. About The Compound. About Davey Noakes. About Lord Townes.

Somebody is willing to kill for all that money. But who?