Page 49 of Death on a Scottish Train

I noticed that Ewan’s team were putting very little into the boxes in the way of files in Burns’s office, but they were taking several photos of the contents.

I sat down in Burns’s chair and went through his desk drawers with a pair of gloves on. There wasn’t much to find. A bottle of good Scotch in the bottom right drawer, and the assorted office supplies one might expect.

The bottom left drawer held several files, but the inside appeared shorter than the right side. Once again, my skills from watching too many mystery shows made me curious.

“That’s strange,” I said as I pulled out the files and set them on the desk.

“What’s that?” Ewan, who had been going through one of the file cabinets, walked over to me.

“There is something weird about this drawer. There was a small piece of fabric near the front of the drawer, and I pulled up on it. The false bottom lifted and there was a small laptop hidden underneath. Just as there was in Jacks’s desk.

I assumed it would be password protected, but I opened the lid just the same.Property of Donald Jacksflashed across the screen.

“Why would Burns be hiding his partner’s laptop?” I asked. “And how many laptops did our victim have? This is weird, right?”

Ewan’s eyebrows went up. “Definitely strange, and a very good question about the multiple computers.”

“It is password protected, but I have an idea,” I said.

“We have a specialist who can come in from Edinburgh.” Ewan frowned. “I dinnae want to chance getting locked out.”

“I’ll just try twice and then I’ll stop. I was able to open the other one, right? Let me give it a try.”

Ewan didn’t look happy, but he nodded.

I typed in, locomotive, but it didn’t work. It beeped loudly, which was annoying.

I glanced up to find Ewan smirking.

“One more and then I’ll stop.” I typed in trainspotting1, and it worked. I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d read in one of my investigative books that most people weren’t very clever when it came to their passwords. Of course, Jacks had chosen a different version of the same one.

“I’m in,” I said. I clicked on some of the files. They were spreadsheets with loads of numbers and what looked like accounts. But none of it made any sense to me.

I went to his email and, luckily, he was still signed in and had several unopened ones.

“Do you mind if I look through his email?”

“Flag any you think might be interesting.”

“Will do.”

I was surprised by how many unopened emails he had in the last week. Some were ads, but many of them appeared to be from clients who wanted to know about their investments. His clients sounded worried. If things in Scotland were like home, people usually received monthly or quarterly statements for their investments. Some of the ones he’d already opened showed his clients were quite worried, and he hadn’t bothered responding.

One email had me raising my eyebrows. The note was from BlueBird320, and the client was not happy about a recent turn of events where they had lost more than a hundred thousand pounds in one of Jacks’s schemes.

One phrase stuck out.You will pay for what you’ve done. The problem was, there wasn’t any sort of name on it. Still, it would be easy for Ewan and his team to figure out.

Ewan had walked out of the office, so I flagged it as he mentioned. But I also took a picture of it with my phone.

A few emails down, I found another threatening one. This one from HighlandFarmer26. Again, no name, but threats about losing some of their retirement funds.

While I understood the ups and downs of the market, as I kept track of my own retirement investments, it seemed as though the dead man was more prone to losing his clients’ money than making it.

“He wasn’t very good at his job,” I said under my breath.

“What’s that?” Ewan asked as he came back into the room.

“It’s like before with the papers we found at his place. For someone in charge of his clients’ money, he seemed to lose money in excessive amounts. It looks like one bad investment after another. Most of these emails are from angry people who were ready to kill him. I’m afraid as we go through these, your suspect list will grow. I’m flagging some of them for you.”