If his guess was correct, there was a degree of expertise here. So why hadn’t she emptied the trash and cleaned her computer?
Tom had an idea.
‘What are you looking for?’ Pat asked.
‘I’m no expert,’ he said, ‘but I know a bit about computer security. My brother made an absolute fortune out of it before he died, and I did listen occasionally to some of the less technical stuff he told me about. Do you mind if I have a look round? There’s a couple of things that I want to check.’
Tom clicked a few items on the screen and opened a few menus. It only took him three or four minutes.
‘Bingo,’ he said.
* * *
As Leo reached for the door handle, there was a rush of movement from behind her left shoulder.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ said a voice that she instantly recognised. A voice that usually sounded so timid but which Leo had acknowledged yesterday was a clever act. Still, she would never have expected this.
A sharp, cold point was stuck into the side of her neck, and she could smell the hot, sweaty body that was crouched in the gap between the front seats. ‘Make any move and this knife goes through your throat.’
Leo tried to keep calm.
‘What do you want, Mimi? If it’s money, take my bag. Take what you want, and go.’
‘I need a car. The police will be here soon, so I need to get away, and you’re going to take me.’
The knife pressed sharply against Leo’s neck, and she could feel drops of warm blood running down to her collarbone.
‘Why don’t I just get out? Take the car. You can have it.’
She heard a snigger in her left ear, as if that was a ridiculous suggestion.
‘Because I’m not thick. You’d run straight to your policeman, and this heap of a car would be picked up in no time. If Tom comes out and you’re gone, he’ll assume that you were in a strop and drove off without him, because you are a stroppy bitch, aren’t you? Besides - you’re my insurance. You can be my hostage. But I will get away, Leo - it’s up to you whether you help me or you die right now.’
The mirthless laughter from behind made Leo’s blood turn to ice.
* * *
Tom turned round on the computer chair and looked at Pat’s dazed expression.
‘It’s all there. There’s no doubt about it, I’m sorry to say. Mimi has been setting up false identities on Facebook. She’s the Chloe that the police have been looking for. She knows her way around this stuff somehow, because she’d hidden her tracks pretty well for an amateur. She’s disguised her IP address, and erased most of the files completely. I couldn’t understand why some files were still there when she had been so careful about everything else. But she’d set her files to be wiped on restart, so it was either a mistake or she forgot to shut down.’
‘That would be my fault, I guess.’ Patrick admitted. ‘She started the shutdown process as she was going out, but I interrupted it so I could log onto BBC Sport.’
Tom stood up.
‘I need to make a call, I’m afraid.’
Pat ignored Tom. He looked totally baffled. ‘Why would she do this? Why would she pretend to be somebody called Chloe so that she could be friends with Abbie Campbell? It doesn’t make any sense. And why all those other fake names too?’
‘She had to seem real to Abbie. What do you know about her past?’
Pat couldn’t quite meet Tom’s eyes.
‘Not much. I wasn’t that interested. I had a senseless fling with her that lasted about five minutes. I was feeling sorry for myself. Pathetic. But what could a woman like Mimi want with a young girl like Abbie? Do you think she was in cahoots with a man?’
‘I don’t know, Pat. It’s very unusual for a woman to abduct a child, so she could have had an accomplice. And I imagine we’re not going to know until we find her. I need to get the police here.’
Tom fished around in his pocket for his mobile while Pat continued to talk.
‘I wish I’d never met her. If Georgia hadn’t found out, everything would’ve been fine. But she got some anonymous text. Mimi swore it wasn’t her, but now we know differently I suppose. I never asked Mimi much about herself. If she hadn’t been pregnant, I was going to move out this week.’