‘Ben thinks . . . he might have a problem inside his company. A mole. Various key bits of code have turned up in other people’s apps and he thinks someone inside is selling it on. He’s narrowed it down to three possible culprits on the development team, and wanted some advice on employment law. About how fast he could get rid of them and make sure the dismissal is watertight. He’s also on the point of getting the police involved and wanted advice on that.’

‘Hasn’t he got an HR adviser he can use internally?’

‘She’s married to one of the guys under suspicion.’

‘So he turned to you instead?’

‘He wanted someone on the outside. Someone he trusted.’

Mel had worked in human resources for a number of large companies since I’d known her, and was currently with one of the big high street chains. She was often used as a troubleshooter, dealing with issues quickly and quietly before they escalated. ‘Dealing with’, in the sense of ‘paying off or firing’. At her previous employer she had acquired the nickname ‘Machete Mel’ for her style of chopping people off – figuratively – at the knees. She didn’t take many prisoners.

‘He couldn’t wait till tomorrow?’

‘He rang me this afternoon – three times – said it was urgent and wouldn’t wait. You know how he is.’ She gave me a little smile. ‘Everything has to be now now now. And he insisted on face-to-face, off-site, because he’s paranoid about phone conversations being recorded and didn’t want to risk tipping off his guy who’s selling code on. He said he learned a lesson three years ago when he dismissed an employee for gross misconduct. Do you remember that?’

‘Vaguely. Matthew something.’

‘Matthew Goring. He saw what was coming, that meetings were happening behind closed doors. Then the whispers started and he put two and two together, saw that he was going to get the chop. And even though he only had a couple of hours before they walked him out the front door, it was enough time to code a series of extreme pornographic images into the game app that Ben’s company was developing at the time. These images were programmed to appear at various stages during the game when you unlocked a new level. Really vile stuff – women with farmyard animals, that kind of thing.’

‘I don’t remember hearing about that.’

‘He’s sensitive about it, as you can imagine. They discovered the images right at the last stage during final hygiene checks. If the app had got out there into the market, it could have sunk Ben’s company. Bearing in mind the game was aimed at five- to nine-year-olds.’

‘Sounds like something Ben might do himself,’ I said.

‘Exactly – he thinks the same way they do. That’s why he’s wary of the culprit getting wind of what’s going on.’

‘When I saw you talking to Ben, he seemed agitated.’ I remembered the aggression on his face, his finger pointing. ‘Like he was really angry.’