Free The Fashion Police by Sibel Hodge Page B

centering my chakra. You have to let it flow. It gives you better concentration.’ After a moment or two, he turned back to his computer, and his fingers whizzed across the keyboard.
    I tried the deep breathing and knuckle thing, but it didn’t do much except give me a hand ache.
    ‘Mmm,’ he said as he brought up one program after another, scrolling down and studying them with intense eyes.
    ‘What’s that?’ I eyed his screen.
    ‘This is Fandango’s bank account.’
    ‘You can get into his bank accounts? Cool.’
    ‘This is just one of them. There may be more. I’ll keep checking, but look at this.’ He pointed to the screen.
    For the past six months, a company called Longshore Holdings had been making payments into Fandango’s account. There were hundreds of them, each for ten thousand pounds, and they matched up with the payments filed under EF on the spreadsheets.
    ‘Smurfing,’ I said, nodding and smiling.  It all made sense now.
    ‘Huh?’ The Hacker looked over his shoulder at me like I was mad.
    ‘It’s a kind of money-laundering scheme. If transactions go over a certain amount, there’s a statutory limit that requires banks to report the transactions. It’s basically a way of monitoring international financial transactions for the purpose of investigating money laundering,’ I said. ‘Anything over that limit gets reported to the government. Guess what the limit is?’
    ‘Ten thousand pounds?’ he asked with a smile.
    ‘You got it in one.’ I grinned. ‘The bad guys keep the payments to ten thousand pounds instead of making larger payments, and they can get away without setting off alarms, and therefore an investigation.’
    Hacker stared at the screen, stroking his goatee. I half expected him to break into an excited rap.
    ‘So, Fandango is into money laundering?’ he mused.
    I shook my head. ‘I don’t know yet. It’s possible that someone in Fandango’s organization is using him as a blind. Longshore Holdings probably are money laundering, but who are they?’
    ‘I don’t know. But give me some time, and I’ll find out.’
    ‘Can you try and find out who this EF is, and look to see if you can find out what CB means?’
    ‘No problem. I’ll let you know when I come up with something.’
    As he bent back over his keyboard, Brad silently crept up behind us like a Stealth Bomber. ‘Hi.’
    I jumped and bit my lip, feeling hot and flustered as I remembered what happened in the kitchen last night.
    ‘Yo,’ Hacker said, engrossed in his work.  Brad answered him back and then turned to me.
    ‘What have you found out?’ he asked.
    ‘Smurfs,’ I said.
    ‘What?’ Brad looked at me like I’d just been let out of a mental home for the day.
    ‘You know – little blue creatures who live in Smurfsville and wear white trousers and itsy-bitsy white caps. Some of them have funny little–’
    ‘Foxy, have you lost it completely?’
    I fought the urge to whack him over the head and filled him in.
    ‘So, Longshore Holdings is laundering money by paying Fandango for a fashion collection?’ Brad asked.
    ‘That’s certainly how it looks, but if you really think about it, something about the whole situation just feels off. Because if that was the case, why steal the collection and kidnap Fandango?’
    Brad frowned, looking as puzzled as I felt. ‘Did you find anything on the computers in his office?’
    I pulled a face. ‘They’ve been wiped.’
    ‘Mostly people just think they’ve wiped off the files, but usually the information is still stored on the hard drive somewhere. If there’s anything on it, I can find it,’ Hacker said. ‘I’ll go back with you later, and we can check.’
    ‘OK, it’s a date,’ I told him, impressed.  I turned to Brad. ‘Have you got any night vision goggles?’
    ‘No, I’m fresh out of them this week. Why?’ Brad asked.
    ‘I need to check out the Cohens’ warehouse at night, and it would be easier to see things with some goggles.’