Andy said nothing. He had no need to. His half smile and the look he gave the youngest member of Century Consulting was enough. It reminded Spence of the look her father gave her whenever he caught her in the midst of violating any of the rules he imposed upon her in a well-meaning but often stifling effort to raise her without the benefit of a mother or anything resembling a stable home life as they wandered the globe from one posting to the next.
Determined to finish what she’d started, consequences be damned, Spence went back to carefully picking through the clutter Tommy Tyler nested in, clearing away as much as she could as quickly as she could, for he would not be nearly as forgiving as Andy had been if he found her disturbing the unique, if somewhat hideous, ecosystem he found comforting.
For his part, Andy made no effort to stop the fastidious young woman wearing a frumpy gray Keep Calm and Carry On T-shirt from finishing her self-appointed task. Besides appreciating the fact it saved him from having to badger Tommy into doing it himself, Andy enjoyed watching the sparks fly whenever his two employees, who were rapidly becoming more family than subordinates, went at it like a pair of Kilkenny cats. Though he never dwelled on it, he appreciated they were the closest thing to children he would ever have, so he enjoyed their antics as a father would whenever the opportunity to do so came his way.
Only when she was finished clearing away as much as she dared and while she was washing her hands at the small sink set in a counter where they kept their tea, biscuits, and such did Andy inform her he had a new mission for her.
“I’m not quite finished translating that programmer’s guide from geek-speak to English yet,” she replied as she gave her hands a quick shake over the sink before toweling them off.
“That can wait. Besides, this shouldn’t take all that long,” Andy added as he watched Spence saunter back over to her desk and flop down into her chair with an ungainliness he found to be lamentable when he saw it in a young woman who had as much going for her as Spence did.
Setting that sad thought aside, Andy went on to the matter at hand. “The chief administrator of Kirkland Hospital has asked if we would do a top-to-bottom security inspection of his facility’s IT system. You’re to pay particular attention to those workstations and devices that are used to manage medications.”
“Anything in particular I’m looking for?” Spence asked innocently.
Holding her in a steady gaze for a moment, Andy found himself wondering if she was being serious or simply winding him up. Only an appreciation that Karen Spencer was not in the habit of joking when discussing a case kept him from responding with a flippant comment. “Kyle Lewis, the chief administrator, believes the woman the media has taken to calling the Angel of Death is innocent.”
“Innocent of what?”
This time, Andy simply couldn’t help himself. “Seriously, Spence, don’t you pay the least bit of attention to the news?”
“No. Should I?”
Rather than waste his time responding to her reply, Andy simply filled her in on all the background information he felt she would need, including the names of the members of Metropolitan Police’s Computer Crimes unit who’d conducted the initial investigation. “I don’t expect they missed anything, but one can never be sure,” he concluded. “When dealing with such things—”
“I know, I know,” Spence muttered before Andy was able to finish reciting one of the innumerable bits of wisdom he routinely peppered her with. “Two sets of eyes are better than one.” At least he’s using English today, she told herself as she set about gathering up what she’d need to take with her, and not Latin as he so often tends to when offering up what he considers sage advice.
3
Spence did not head over to the hospital straight off. Instead, after giving Detective Sergeant Marbury a quick call, she made her way to the New Scotland Yard building where the Met’s Police Central eCrime Unit, or PCeU, was based.
“I gather you’ve been brought in to conduct a security review of their system,” Hannah Marbury said as she nodded to Spence and handed her a mug of what the Metropolitan Police liked to pretend was tea. “My boss was not in the least bit pleased to be leaned on by the Home Office, but I guess with all those well-heeled foreign patients at Kirkland, it should have come as no surprise.”
She paused and smiled at the young woman she had first met at a British Computer Society meeting on “The Forensic Challenges of Steganography,” where the two of them had been the only ones still awake by the end of the presentation. They had struck up a companionable relationship right off, for Spence reminded Hannah of herself when she was just starting out as a young constable, and Spence saw in Hannah the sort of self-assured and successful professional woman she would love to be.
“Just as well I didn’t tell him you and I knew each other,” Hannah added. She took another sip of her tea and grimaced. “God, this is awful. How do you fancy a nice cuppa ’round the corner?”
“As I’m on expenses, that sounds good to me.” Spence grinned at the thought of Andy having to sign off her claim for a full afternoon tea at the very posh St. Ermin’s Hotel as the two women dumped their mugs and grabbed their bags.
An hour later, over a very elegant china cup of Earl Grey and an equally indulgent chocolate éclair, Marbury finally opened up about what she’d done to find out if there was any truth in the story the night nurse persisted in clinging to despite the evidence.
“She claims she followed the prescribed dosages to the letter,” Hannah explained before taking another bite while trying to keep the cream oozing out of the éclair from dropping down her blouse. “But I went through the audit logs on the SharePoint server — where the master drugs files are held — with a fine-tooth comb,” she continued after taking a moment to savor her sinfully rich pastry. “The master file matched the paper records to a tee. Neither had shown any indication of being altered. The only access made that night to the SharePoint server was from the iPads the medical staff use whilst on duty. The link between it and the system’s mainframe is an encrypted Wi-Fi connection. In order to access the system, the staff have to use two-factor authentication. Then, just to put the cherry on the cake, the whole system is air gapped from the Internet whilst every workstation tablet and laptop all have their USB ports and DVD drives disabled. The whole system and their procedures are pretty damned impressive.”
“So you think she did it?” Spence posed the question even as she herself was beginning to think Nurse Morgan’s alibi was looking decidedly shaky.
DS Marbury sighed. “To be honest, I don’t see any other explanation, and God knows I looked. She’d just come off sick leave for stress. She was breaking up with her boyfriend, and the audit logs showed no changes. It doesn’t take the brains of an archbishop to figure out with all that going on in her life her mind was elsewhere.” DS Marbury sighed again as she recalled all the times when her attention had been diverted by personal problems when she should have been focused on what she was doing. Then, with a shake of her head, she set those thoughts aside before helping herself to another éclair.
Later that afternoon, having learned all she could from Hannah Marbury and with a good idea of what she would be dealing with, Spence finally made her way to the hospital. While she was waiting at the receptionist’s desk for the hospital’s IT specialist to come out and meet her, Spence took a quick look about. Behind the receptionist was a big multifunction printer and a half dozen or so desks with workstations squeezed into an open-plan office space where the hospital’s admin staff worked. Entry into this area was achieved by passing through a secured door with a keypad lock just to the left of the receptionist’s desk.