Sitting opposite – and, Joyce suspects, the reason for the cologne – is a very charming young lady called Tia. Ibrahim is being fairly coy about what she is doing there, only that it is a favour. Perhaps the daughter of a client at the end of her tether. Either way Tia was full of questions about making bombs. In fact, most of her questions were about defusing bombs, which Joyce thought was very much to her credit. Some people spend their life planting bombs, and therefore everyone else has to spend their life defusing them. Elizabeth, she planted bombs. And Ron. And Joanna. Joyce defuses them. Cutting red wires and blue wires left, right and centre.
‘Joyce, you’re talking to yourself,’ says Kendrick.
‘Best way to get any sense,’ says Joyce. ‘Has Ibrahim got you searching for his code yet?’
‘What code?’ asks Kendrick, suddenly excited.
‘A bit too complicated for you, this one,’ says Ibrahim.
‘I like codes,’ says Tia. ‘Well, I like maths.’
Who on earth is this girl, Joyce wonders. ‘There’s a lot of money in a safe, and no one knows the code.’
‘Someone must know the code?’ says Tia.
‘Two people know half of it each,’ says Joyce. ‘But one of them is dead.’
‘And the other has disappeared,’ says Ibrahim.
‘The dead one is called Holly,’ says Kendrick.
‘Precisely,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I did tell your grandfather I wouldn’t speak to you about this.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Kendrick. ‘It was Joyce’s fault, and Grandad won’t be angry with Joyce.’
‘Who’s Holly?’ asks Tia.
‘The co-owner of a very well-protected security compound,’ says Ibrahim.
‘Her car blew up,’ says Kendrick. ‘That’s why I was reading about bombs. If you’re scared of something you should find out all about it.’
‘How much money is there?’ Tia asks.
‘A lot,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Certainly a lot more than the half a million pounds you were expecting from your robbery. But don’t get ideas. No one can touch it until they have the codes.’
For some reason Ibrahim seems to be saying this accusingly.
‘Is there like a zillion pounds?’ says Kendrick.
‘Perhaps not quite that much,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Somewhere in the middle.’
‘And if you crack the code, you can steal the money?’ Kendrick asks.
‘Not exactly,’ says Ibrahim. ‘But it might help us catch whoever killed Holly.’
‘Or whoever killed Holly might steal it first,’ says Joyce.
The front door of Ibrahim’s apartment opens and Elizabeth rushes in.
‘But that door was locked,’ says Kendrick.
Elizabeth shrugs. ‘Hello, Kendrick, and you must be Tia. Ibrahim, I have Holly’s code.’
‘Codes!’ says Kendrick, excited.
‘I do too, I think,’ says Ibrahim. ‘The year of her birth, that was the biggest clue. Seventy-six, or, if you flip it around, sixty-seven.’
Kendrick nods.
‘Holly Lewis wasn’t ringing Jill Usher or Jamie Usher,’ says Elizabeth. ‘She was writing down her code.’
‘Nice one,’ says Tia.
‘07941,’ says Elizabeth. ‘That’s the same as Holly’s own number. Then 416617. 416617. That’s her code. It happened to connect to Jill and Jamie Usher, but the person the number belonged to was random and meaningless, which was why we couldn’t find any connection. The number itself was the thing. Holly did exactly what I told her: she wrote it down for someone to find.’
‘That’s very clever,’ says Joyce.
‘I am very clever,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘But you still need the other code?’ says Tia.
‘And perhaps you are wrong?’ says Ibrahim.
‘She had no reason to ring either Jill or Jamie,’ says Elizabeth. ‘She wasn’t ringing a person; she was storing a number.’
Ibrahim nods. ‘And I see it does have a seven in it. And two sixes.’
56
Joyce
Well done, Elizabeth, don’t you think?
We need four things to get to the Bitcoin.
We need Bill Benson’s cooperation, and we have that thanks to Ron.
We need a client to go down there with us. And we have Connie Johnson, thanks to Ibrahim.
We need Holly’s code, and now Elizabeth has cracked that.
So only one thing is missing: Nick Silver’s code.
And only one person hasn’t contributed.
And that’s me.
That final six-digit code could be the secret to everything. But I don’t think I can be much use.
Ibrahim came over yesterday with his pen and pad and was going through all sorts of combinations. He tried to let me join in, but all I really did was make tea. You have to play to your strengths.
I feel a bit of a spare wheel all round at the moment.
Why were Kendrick and Tia at Ibrahim’s flat this morning? No one will tell me anything. Something is going on, and I shall wait to be told what it is. As far as I’m concerned, we’re supposed to be concentrating on finding Holly’s killer and finding the last code, but perhaps I’m missing something? I often do.
Let me think about Nick’s code.
Ibrahim was explaining the Enigma Code to me. The code they used during the war. ‘Unbreakable, they thought,’ he said, but apparently someone broke it. I asked who, but you can always tell when Ibrahim has reached the end of his facts, because he changes the subject.
He was writing down names and numbers and all sorts. Birthdays, that’s the usual one, isn’t it?
When they ask for numbers, I just use the same code for everything. Because otherwise how do you remember? And I have my code written down in my wallet and in my diary. It makes everything so much easier. It’s 6149.
With words it’s more difficult. I wish you could always have the same password for everything, but sometimes they don’t let you. I have used GerryMeadow for so many years, but sometimes you need numbers too, so I use GerryMeadow42, and sometimes you need special characters, and I use GerryMeadow42! When I had to use that one the other day, I got locked out, because I forgot that the exclamation mark was part of the password. I just thought I had been in a jolly mood when I wrote it down.
I had an email the other day that said that the password for my Gardeners’ World subscription had been ‘involved in a data breach’ and I should change it immediately. I don’t know why anyone would try to hack into my Gardeners’ World Magazine account – all I do is buy seeds and occasionally add a comment under one of Monty Don’s articles – but I tried to do as I was told. I put in GerryMeadow and it told me ‘Password not recognized’, so I asked to change my password, and tried to change it to GerryMeadow and it said, ‘Your new password cannot be the same as your previous password’, which didn’t make any sense at all, and so I have simply had to cancel my subscription.
Ibrahim sent Paul all sorts of questions about Holly and Nick, and wrote down the answers in a database. In the end he came up with a list of twenty possible codes that he thought might open the safe. ‘I can say with some confidence it is one of these numbers,’ he said. And, I’ll give Ibrahim this, he did say it with some confidence.
In the end Elizabeth got the better of him, and you could see he was disappointed. Imagine how furious he would be if I cracked Nick Silver’s code. It would be like Venezuela all over again.
How clever though. The phone number was the code. Jamie Usher was a fraudster, but he had absolutely no connection to Holly other than six random digits.
If I’d known when we met him that he was a fraudster, I would have asked him why someone was trying to hack into my Gardeners’ World account. Or maybe ask him to look up my password for me.