‘Nah.’
‘So . . .’ I prompted.
‘Inside job.’
God it was like pulling teeth. ‘What does that mean, Dom?’
‘It weren’t a hacker. Someone did this here.’
‘What here at my desk?’ asked Emily horrified, taking a hasty step back from the computer as if it might bite her at any second.
‘Yeah,’ said Dom.
‘What, they just used my computer?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said.’
‘How?’ I asked.
He looked at me. ‘Durr, like this.’ He took the mouse and with a few quick clicks the screensaver was changed back to the default one. ‘It would have taken ’em less than a minute.’ He leaned back in Emily’s chair. ‘You ’ad a bit of a row wiv someone?’
Emily and I exchanged glances. I called over to Cara who sat at the desk next to Emily’s. ‘Has anyone been near here while Emily was out at lunch?’
Cara’s sleepy brown eyes looked puzzled. ‘No,’ she said, hesitating for a second. ‘Only the plant man.’
‘Plant man?’
‘You know, the people that come in and water the plants, polish the leaves. One of them came in — didn’t say much. The other girl’s much friendlier.’
‘What did he look like?’ I asked sharply.
‘Baseball, I think it was green... or it might have been red.’ Cara pulled an apologetic face. ‘Sorry, should I have said something to him? I thought he was quite helpful. When he knocked Emily’s bag on the floor he put everything back.’
She turned to Emily and shrugged. ‘I knew you had your purse with you so I wasn’t worried he was going to nick anything.’
Emily looked anxiously at her bag.
‘Do you think he’s... you know?’ she asked me, reaching out and touching the conker-brown leather.
‘What?’
‘You know, tampered with it or something?’
‘What, booby-trapped your bag?’ I asked, although given the computer stunt it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. He could have left something in there.
We looked at her pride-and-joy bag. It appeared innocuous. Was there anything nasty lurking inside, like a dead mouse or a mouldy sandwich? Had he emptied his watering can in there or tossed in a couple of handfuls of compost?
Emily poked nervously at it. ‘If he’s put something in my Fendi bag, I’ll kill him. This bag cost me a fortune.’
Didn’t we know it? It was a limited edition — one of only fifty in the country.
Gingerly she started removing everything, which took some time — she had half of Sephora’s product lines in there. Finally she reached the bottom.
‘That’s all right then. I was worried he might have ruined it.’
That was so like her, whereas I would have been worried about him taking something. Had she checked everything was there?
‘Emily, is anything mi—’
