“Yes,” said Ingrid. “Never a dull moment.”
She launched her opening salvo against the Secret Sharer early the next morning. Gabriel and Peel, who were capable of offering nothing more than moral support, spent the day relaxing by her pool. DCI Chapel rang sometime around three o’clock, but Peel allowed the call to go to voicemail. He listened to the message while drinking an ice-cold Peroni.
“He’s wondering where we are and what we’re doing.”
“Perhaps you should tell him,” replied Gabriel from the shade of a parasol.
“But we’re notdoinganything.”
“Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least.”
“The lofty genius,” replied Peel, “is now locked in her office.”
“Trust me, it’s better that way.”
“How on earth did she pay for this place?”
“Ingrid comes from a wealthy family.”
“What sort of work does her father do?”
“He’s a schoolteacher, I believe.”
“They make a lot of money, Danish schoolteachers?”
“Evidently.”
She made her first appearance at half past four, in a one-piece swimsuit that clung to her taut, athletic body. She plunged wordlessly into the pool and swam twenty laps, seemingly without effort, then performed a perfect handstand on the sun-drowned terrace. On her way back to her office she announced over her shoulder that the kitchen was closed and that her houseguests would have to see to their own supper. They dined that evening at a beachfront taverna in the windswept village of Ornos. Returning to the villa, Gabriel left a bag of takeaway outside Ingrid’s office. It was still there when he awakened the following morning.
The ensuing day was a repeat of the previous one, though Gabriel and Peel spent part of the morning touring the island in Ingrid’s BMW. She was still hard at work when they returned to the villa so they once again repaired to the pool. It was approaching five o’clock when she took her swim, this time in a stunning two-piece suit. Peel was sorry to see her go.
“Is she seeing anyone?” he asked.
“I thought we’d covered this ground.”
“Refresh my memory.”
“She’s not your type. Besides, it’s never wise to mix business and pleasure.”
Peel pried the cap from another bottle of Peroni. “What do you call this?”
“We’re pacing ourselves.”
Ingrid, however, worked without a break—and without offering Gabriel a clue as to her progress. It was no matter; having watched her hack the computer network of the Geneva Freeport, one of the world’s most secure storage facilities for art and other valuables, he was more than confident of a successful outcome. And so he passed the following day as he had the previous two, relaxing with his old friend Detective Inspector Timothy Peel at the luxurious Greek villa owned by a professional thief. The sun was dangling low over the Aegean when she finally appeared, in a pair of jeans and a cotton pullover against the encroaching evening chill.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Brutal,” answered Gabriel. “Yours?”
“Quite productive,” she said, and opened her laptop.
29
Psarou Beach
As it turned out, Ingrid’s illicit cyber activities extended far beyond a single silent donor service based in the Dutch capital. She also breached the data networks of a number of dubious financial services firms, all located in or around the Caribbean Basin, along with the records departments of two prestigious British institutions of higher learning. Based on material gathered during these digital raids, she could say with certainty that the recent charitable donations to a number of UK-based relief and human rights organizations had all been made by a shell company called Regency Holdings.
“It’s a subsidiary of a shell company called Trident Resources,” she explained. “And Trident Resources is a subsidiary of something called Pavilion Capital.”
