Free Playing the Game by Simon Gould Page B

to answer his question. ‘No, no I don’t think so’, she was searching through the possibilities in her mind. Then, just maybe, a glimmer of hope. ‘Oh wait, I think, yes I’m sure, well her email address’.
                ‘What about it?’ Charlie asked.
                ‘I’m pretty sure three-sixteen is part of it’, she realised. ‘In fact, I’m certain’.
                There it was - the next piece of the puzzle, the next part of the game. ‘Laura,’ I asked, ‘where is Stella’s computer?’

20

                Upon relaying this discovery to Captain Williams, he decided to send Dave Ferguson directly down to the Edwards house. This was a good call; we didn’t want to overlook anything. They hadn’t had any more success with the code, and they had Bradshaw there now anyway, and he seemed to be the code expert. ‘If there’s anything on that computer, I’ll find it’, he assured us. Still, he had only just left the PD, and we were eager to uncover what we could.
                ‘Leave this to me, man’, Charlie advised, ‘I might not know how to break a code, but I can boot the fucking thing up and we can look at her email, no problem’.
                I was all for that. ‘Let’s just hope she doesn’t have a password’.
                Three minutes later, it was moment of truth time. We held our breath as Stella’s laptop went through the final stages of booting up, both of us let out an audible sigh of relief as it went through to Windows with no password prompt. One break there, at least. A couple of clicks later and we had signed on to her email.
                ‘Well, her mother was right Patton’, Charlie confirmed. ‘There it is man, right there, look, [email protected] , that’s gotta be it.’
                ‘Well there must be something’, I was searching the screen. ‘Hell, try her inbox’.
                Charlie made the necessary clicks and took us her inbox. There was just one email in there. The header read ‘Good morning Detectives’.
                ‘Fuck me …’ Charlie couldn’t hide his surprise. I had to agree, although I was aware that this brought us a step further into the game, it also established that we were right about Stella. Her mother would have to know. I might leave that one to the psychologist, after all.
                ‘Well, do we open it or not?’ I asked. I really wanted to know what that e-mail said.
                ‘I don’t know, man’, Charlie was doubtful. ‘How long before Fergs gets here?’
                ‘About fifteen minutes’, I reckoned.
                ‘Thing is, man, the thing might be booby trapped’. Seeing my blank face, he needed to clarify. ‘It might have a virus that wipes the email off the computer as soon as you read it. Permanently. It might have information we need to read more than once. If we open it, we might not get it back’.
                ‘Game over’, I nodded. It was agreed that we wait for Ferguson. Despite time being of the essence, I knew Charlie was right. We couldn’t afford to potentially destroy a vital piece of evidence. Stella couldn’t afford us to either.
                By the time Ferguson got there, we’d already relayed the information to him and he had concurred. After assessing the laptop for several seconds, he started plugging in wires, routers and boxes before he’d even said hello. It seemed he was just as keen to play a part in this.
                ‘You wanna tell us what you’re doing there, techno-boy?’ Charlie had a way of cutting straight to the point, ‘and in language we can actually understand, man’.
                ‘If the email has a virus linked to it, then this box right here, will copy the email in real-time, as we open it. If it suddenly disappears, then we have