Free Dead on Demand (A DCI Morton Crime Novel) by Sean Campbell, Daniel Campbell Page A

less than four hours. The financial papers had dubbed him a guru, able to foresee market movements with pinpoint precision. In reality, it was less to do with luck or skill than it was to do with networking. Over the years he had built a huge circle of acquaintances who would scratch his back in return for a favour. Some served on company boards as directors, others were at financial institutions such as banks and hedge funds. The commonality between them was that they all had their pulse on the heartbeat of the London Stock Exchange.
    Some of it was perfectly legitimate. Brokers and fund managers often trade rumours. The price of a stock is based as much on perceived value as it is the intrinsic value of the company's assets.
    That perception could be manipulated, to pump and dump certain shares, or to crash their value when short selling them. These were unethical, but the law rarely caught up with those involved. Instead it concentrated on those involved in insider trading. Having knowledge of a company that the public doesn't possess allows for a huge potential profit. Good news means buying up all the stock you can, and flogging it for a hideous profit. Bad news was even easier. Traders borrowed stock from institutions such as pension funds, paying them for the privilege. They then sold them, and rebought the same number and type of share within the loan period. If the stock fell, then the trader made a profit.
    This was what Peter and his coterie did. By trading tips on the innermost workings of public companies he and his cronies were able to manipulate prices to their own advantage every day. The industry average growth was around 8%, and Peter promised investors 15%. He kept every penny above this, and it had made him rich.
    The genius in the system was how they communicated. In the past the system would have been open to wiretaps, police surveillance and counterintelligence measures. Now, they simply used the darknet to communicate, a private network hidden deep in the Internet.
    The set-up had been suggested by the son of one of the parties to the project, and it allowed them to exchange information without anyone else ever seeing it. It was private, anonymous and heavily encrypted. Codenamed the Aesop Network, it allowed the group to openly share confidential information for profit, and they did. It took a while for Peter to become proficient with the technology, but once he did, the sky was the limit.
    ***
    Edwin's way out was confirmed. The previous message seemed serious. The guy was asking for two kills, his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. A two for one deal was insane really, but Edwin had no intention of following through so it didn't hurt him to agree. Of course he needed the other guy to come through first.
    'Multiples no problem, as long as you go first,' he typed.
    As long as the guy agreed to that, Edwin was free and clear. The contact had no possible way to find out who he was, so it was highly unlikely the police would ever trace it back to him.
    Detective Chief Inspector Morton struck Edwin as thorough, and his record was impeccable, but no one could link Edwin to a man whom he had never met, nor had any reason to meet. He'd also make sure he had a solid alibi for the night of the kill, one even Morton wouldn't question.
    ***
    The plan had seemed clean even if it was amoral, but Edwin had not expected it to be so hard to break the news of Eleanor's death to Chelsea. He wondered how he could do it and more importantly how he could continue to lie to his little girl, every day, for the rest of his life.
    It was too late now. What was done was done, he rationalised, but the guilt stayed with him. He tried to justify it as self-defence, that he was defending his relationship with his little girl, and that financially it was just self-preservation. Deep down he knew that he would never convince himself, but he could at least explain to Chelsea why Mummy wasn't around anymore.
    Chelsea had never