Chapter 96
Aniacalled back ten minutes later. The news wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either.
‘Mr Howey doesn’t know the code to the strong room, Poe,’ she said. ‘But, he did say Elcid was scared of his memory fading. His father had suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s, apparently. Mr Howey said if the code isn’t written down, there’ll be something in the room to jog his memory.’
‘Like what?’
‘That’s all I have, I’m afraid.’
‘What we have here, is a puzzle,’ Poe said.
Bradshaw and Lee looked at him quizzically.
‘Not only that, it’s anumberpuzzle,’ he continued. ‘We have a zero-to-nine keypad. With the star and the hashtag that’s twelve buttons Elcid could have used.’
Poe looked at Bradshaw expectantly.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Well, go on then – solve it.’
‘Solve what?’
‘The safe-room code.’
Bradshaw’s jaw dropped. ‘Are you simpleminded, Poe! This isn’t something I can solve!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, even if he’s only using a four-digit code, there are still ten thousand possible combinations. And if he’s used a six-digit code there are well over a million.’
‘Can’t be that many, surely?’ Poe said.
Bradshaw sighed. ‘Poe, did you know that if you shuffle a deckof cards correctly, mathematically speaking, the likelihood of that precise order ever having been seen before is almost zero?’
‘But didn’t you lecture me the other week about the PIN on my phone being one-two-three-four?’
‘I did.’
‘And you said lots of people use that PIN.’
‘I actually said lots ofidiotsuse that PIN. Just over ten per cent.’
‘There you are then.’
‘There you are, what?’
‘Ania said Elcid would have used something easy to remember—’
‘I thought she said there would be something in the room to jog his memory.’
‘Yeah, but there isn’t.’
Bradshaw paused.
‘OK then, I’ll give it a go,’ she said.