Ashworth was preparing to flee. The packed bags, the car keys – he was a man on the move. But he stood stock still now as Helen crossed the room towards him. He looked scared, blustering about the illegality of what Helen was doing – but not in a convincing or threatening way. Putting her warrant card away, Helen pointed to an empty metal chair. After a brief pause as Ashworth seemed to size up both Helen and the situation, he complied.
‘Why did you do it, Simon?’
Helen had never been very good at pussy-footing, so opted for a full-frontal assault. She laid out the charges – illegally downloading confidential information, compromising an active investigation for financial gain – quickly and crisply, intending to afford Ashworth no time to invent excuses or evasions. To her surprise, he offered a spirited defence of his actions.
‘It couldn’t have been me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because every technical consultant involved in something like this has their own unique access code. It’s the only way in or out for us and you can always tell when we’ve accessed the system and how we’ve used it.’
‘There must be ways round that.’
‘Not for us. Tech support staff move around a lot, sometimes within the police service, sometimes outside it. In order not to compromise an investigation and to deal with the turnover of technical staff, the access system was created. If you check -’
‘So why did you lie?’ Helen butted in. She wasn’t prepared to be lectured.
‘How do you mean, lie?’
‘I asked every person who had access to the investigation to account for their movements that day and you, along with all the other technical staff, claimed to have been on strike. But you weren’t. You broke the strike.’
‘So what? I didn’t agree with the strike, so I went in to work briefly. I wasn’t there for long and when asked about it, I thought it better to tell a little fib so the others didn’t find out.’
‘Didn’t work very well, did it? Who told them?’
For the first time Ashworth looked rattled. Finally, we’re making progress, Helen thought to herself.
‘I don’t know how they found out,’ he muttered, staring at his shoes.
‘Are you ambitious, Simon?’
‘I guess so.’
‘You guess so? You’re very young to be at your pay grade, you’ve got great appraisals. You could really go somewhere. In fact, your move to Hampshire police was a big promotion, wasn’t it?’
Ashworth nodded.
‘And yet, after only four months in your swanky new job, you are returning to your old job. A job which, if your application for the Hampshire posting is to be believed, you felt you had mastered and were bored with.’