Free One Last Lesson by Iain Cameron Page B

third world countries of their natural resources. In Jon Lehman’s mind, this laudable moralist stance raised him up above something he might find at the bottom of a pond, but only just.
    Lehman was holding the recently printed email and after a cursory glance said, ‘these growth numbers look suspect to me.’
    ‘Eh?’ He said without taking his eyes off the screen.
    ‘They look too high. We’ve almost doubled the hit rate in three months. Surely that’s not right?’
    ‘The fuck you know? Of course it’s right ; comes straight off the web stats.’
    ‘Ok, ok I’ll take your word for it and look at them more closely later.’ He paused, thinking. ‘What about that request for new kit you sent me?’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘You’ve asked for a new Apple IMac, additional hard drives for two servers and another printer. Do you really need all that? You’ve got more computer kit here than it takes to run…I don’t know, CERN.’
    ‘What the fuck’s CERN? Something you picked up in a sci-fi movie or something?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter but do you really need all this kit just to run a web site?’
    ‘You joking, man? It's not just a web site. I need to store thousands of pics and vids. They’re all in high-def so it takes huge amounts of disk space. That extra kit is needed to cope with the growth that’s there, in black and white, in your fucking mitts.’
    He looked vacantly down at the paper he was holding. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Just order it man; don’t give me grief.’
    Why a boy from Worthing spoke in a pseudo-Bronx accent was beyond him and only confirmed his opinion that the prick was watching too many DVD’s when he should have been working. He was out of new cards to play, cards that would encour age this man to open up and so he decided to show his hand, the real reason for him being there.
    ‘ I can see that Sarah Robson’s pictures no longer appear on the web site but have they also been removed from the servers, back up files and the off-site storage?’
    He was not trying to expunge Sarah from his life, far from it as there were still plenty of pictures of her on his home computer and memories in his head but in the light of her murder, he and his fellow investors did not want to encourage the police to come snooping round or alert the university authorities as to their activities.
    D eeZee turned to face him, his black greasy hair plastered across his forehead, a lollipop stick protruding from the side of his mouth and the hint of a grin spreading across his pale, podgy face, revealing an uneven row of yellowing teeth. In the Middle Ages he might have been mistaken for a carrier of Black Death or TB and be put down; chance would be a fine thing.
    ‘Why d’you wanna know, man? You been shagging her or somethin’ and startin’ to feel guilty about it now she’s dead?’
    The cheeky little bastard. If it were not for the fear of ending up naked in a skip with an axe through his head, he would have thumped him. ‘Have some more reverence for the dead, Calder.’
    ‘I told you not to call me that, ’ he said, his face momentarily crumpled like a collapsed soufflé.
    ‘Oops must have slipped my mind. So have you?’
    ‘Have I what?’
    ‘Taken her pictures off the server and all the other places in this...’ he said sweeping his arm around expansively around the room, ‘this expensive box of tricks?’
    ‘Yeah man, I told you. It’s all been done. It’s all cool.’
    ‘It better be,’ Lehman said, his anger rising at this insolent slob’s impudence and off-hand attitude. ‘The police are looking for a murderer and if they come calling here, I don’t want to find anything that links her to me, Alan Stark or good old Uncle Dom or you’ll be dropped in the shit, or more likely, the Channel with weights in your pockets. Do I make myself clear?’
    ‘Yeah, yeah, I hear you man.’
    Even if he said so himself, he thought as he walked away, he had been masterful. He told