Ryan looked round at James, who seemed properly excited.

‘So?’ Ryan asked, when the call ended.

James was grinning. ‘I think you’ve lucked into something on your little tour, mate. Georgiou says he’d already noticed that Uncle’s yard was making large purchases of surplus equipment from oil exploration companies in Scotland and Norway. In 2015 almost two million pounds went out, but then all the equipment gets written off as scrap in the company accounts.’

Ryan looked baffled. ‘Which means?’

‘No idea,’ James said. ‘But Georgiou did give me a number for a company called OME911. Apparently they were paid to do some repair work on OME equipment at Uncle’s scrapyard about two years back.’

Ryan found a link to the OME911 website through Google, but the link bounced to a domain registry: Buy this and thousands of other domains from just $99.

James was peering over his shoulder. ‘Use Wayback Machine.’

Ryan quickly found a 2012 version of the OME911 site on Wayback and read aloud, ‘OME911 is the leading solution for onsite repair and maintenance of Offshore Marine pump and control systems. Our three engineers are former OME employees. We are the only company with full access to OME schematics and software diagnostic tools.’

James tried a phone number on the site’s contact page, but it rang dead.

‘Looks like they shut up shop,’ James said. ‘Print off the contacts page.’

James took his laptop and logged into the security service database. This gave him back door access to company, tax and banking records for most EU citizens. It took a few minutes for James to interrogate tax databases and make a Word document containing the names and last known addresses of the UK employees of OME911.

Ryan grabbed a printout of these details from an inkjet in James’ bedroom, settling back on the sofa as James began checking out the names, hoping to find someone who might have a clue why Uncle was buying up OME equipment.

‘Holy crap,’ James said, as he turned the laptop to show an article from an Aberdeen newspaper.

Oil man Chris Carlisle dies after drug overdose in Birmingham Airport Hotel.

Ryan realised Carlisle was one of the three engineers pictured on the OME911 website, as James started Googling the other two.

‘Birmingham airport’s only a couple of miles from Uncle’s scrapyard,’ Ryan noted.

James nodded excitedly as his fingers tapped keys. ‘Big coincidence, or what?’

Ryan grabbed a tablet and started his own Google hunt, as James used the MI5 database to access tax and mobile phone records for the other two engineers.

‘Gordon Sachs, Kam Yuen,’ James said, as he looked at a pair of Vodafone bills on his laptop screen. ‘Neither filed their personal tax return this April. Both stopped making calls on their mobile phones – Gordon in October last year, Kam stops a few weeks earlier. And that’s around the time Chris Carlisle was found dead in his hotel.’