This time she had her arms up. Ryan had no idea if he could beat Mya again, but he didn’t have anything to gain by fighting and the car belonged to CHERUB, so he didn’t much care about the mirror either.

‘I’m too much of a gentleman,’ Ryan said, bowing sarcastically as he got into the car.

Mya flipped him off with both hands as he drove away.

23. SKY

‘Yo!’ James said, as he let Ryan into the flat.

James had gone full slob, dressed in shorts and his lucky Arsenal shirt, watching Soccer Saturday with a bottle of beer and a half-eaten Domino’s.

‘Pepperoni,’ James said. ‘Gone a bit cold, but you can zap it.’

‘Plates?’

James opened a cupboard over the sink and passed Ryan a plate.

‘So how’d it go?’ he asked, as Ryan grabbed two slices and set the microwave for ninety seconds.

‘Mixed,’ Ryan admitted, as the pizza rotated. ‘I didn’t get inside Uncle’s cabin, but I might have a lead. There was a shed with a whole bunch of oil pumps and drilling equipment. And these consoles, all manufactured by a company called Offshore Marine Exploration.’

‘Did you ask Uncle what they were?’

Ryan nodded. ‘He said they strip the equipment for parts. I just found it interesting that half the hangar was full of oil stuff.’

‘Definitely interesting,’ James said, as he grabbed his laptop from under pizza boxes. ‘I had a preliminary report from the forensic accountant. The scrapyard is Uncle’s biggest earner by far, but it’s reported big losses for the past three years. He said it was because they’d been purchasing a lot of gear at auction, but only realising a small fraction of its cost at resale.’

‘Money laundering?’ Ryan suggested.

‘That was my first thought,’ James said. ‘Channelling profits to an overseas subsidiary to avoid UK tax. I’ll give the accountant a call and see what he can find.’

As James grabbed his mobile, Ryan opened his phone, Googled Offshore Marine Exploration and began to read a Wikipedia entry.

Offshore Marine Exploration (OME) was an Aberdeen-based company, specialising in the design and manufacture of oil drilling equipment … OME was a technology pioneer during the development of deep-water oil fields in British and Norwegian waters in the late 1970s … Company expanded aggressively in the 1980s, with over 300 employees producing oil drilling and extraction control systems for oil markets throughout the world … Floated on the London Stock Exchange 1986.

Shares hit hard in the Black Monday crash of October 19th 1987. OME was declared bankrupt in 1991 and assets bought by Texas-based rival GeoPump Inc … GeoPump moved production of OME equipment to Mexico … Manufacture of OME-designed equipment ceased in 1995, when GeoPump filed for bankruptcy.

‘Hey, Georgiou,’ James told his phone. ‘I want you to run a search on the accounts of Uncle’s scrapyard. Any invoices related to oil drilling equipment, especially if it says it’s manufactured by OME … Really … ? Really … ?’