Sophie knows Colin from freshers’ week; they were in halls together all those years ago. She’d liked him instantly. He was studious but fun, with a fondness for Star Wars and flaming sambucas. She’d bumped into him again in the first year of her PhD and discovered that he was back at Reading, now in the IT department. And a man who knows computers is always useful. Laptops fail, files are lost, operating systems crash.

And videos are deleted.

‘So,’ Colin says, not shifting his gaze from the screen. ‘You’re in luck. I can log on remotely, so we don’t need to go to the server room.’

A row of windows and file names appears on the screen.

‘What are we looking for?’ he asks.

Sophie frowns. ‘Start with any video files recorded last Tuesday night.’

Colin turns, his hand paused on the mouse. ‘The night of the storm?’ he asks slowly.

Sophie nods.

It’s clear Colin has realised she’s lying. There’s a long pause. Everything is completely silent, bar the tap of keyboards. And then: ‘Did you know,’ he says, quietly, his eyes back on his screen, ‘that Lego released a special edition Snowspeeder in 2019, to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Lego Star Wars?’

‘Did they?’ Sophie replies, innocently.

‘Hmm. And it’s a retired product. So you can’t get it from shops. But I found one on eBay. New and sealed in its box. One of a kind.’ He lifts his eyes for a second, meeting Sophie’s gaze. ‘Would you like to see it?’

Sophie suppresses a smile. ‘Sure,’ she replies. ‘Send me the link.’

He nods, picks up his phone and taps quickly. Then goes back to his computer.

Sophie’s phone beeps. She opens it up. Seventy-six bloody quid. For a Lego set. But it’s worth it. For Finn.

Colin’s still moving between windows, typing commands into the search function.

‘The police were in,’ he says, under his breath. ‘Spoke to Jimmy.’ He points to the office on the far side. ‘My boss.’

Sophie pauses. ‘And?’

‘He couldn’t find the video files. Whoever got in before us did a good job. Backups gone, too.’

Sophie holds out her phone to Colin. ‘So why have I just ordered a Battle of Hoth Snowspeeder?’ she hisses.

But he smiles. ‘For the event log.’

She turns quickly. ‘You can see who logged in and when?’ He nods. ‘And why don’t the police have that already?’

‘Because Jimmy’s a dickhead and didn’t give it to them, and the police didn’t think to ask.’

He starts typing something incomprehensible to Sophie, his fingers flying over the keys.

‘It was the nineteenth last Wednesday, right?’ he asks, without looking up.

She cranes forward towards the blue screen and the line of code.

Get-EventLog security | Where-Object {$_.TimeGenerated -gt ‘05/19/2021’} | Where-Object {($_.InstanceID -eq 4634) -or ($_.InstanceID -eq 4624)} | Select-Object Index,TimeGenerated,InstanceID,Message | Add-Content C:\Downloads.txt