Roommates - Not in Bangkok anymore [completed]

Chapter 37

Tin's POV

The situation didn't feel any different from a scary exam.

Tin hadn't had any time to think about Lucinda's suggestions, and her thinly veiled threats. Mr. Yaxley had taken out his Laptop, connected it to a projector and had started going over the findings they had so far.

Yaxley and his team had been able to connect quite a few more dots that Tin couldn't trace to a useful source.

"Hold on, Puffin. Are you saying Mr. Medthanan was able to find all of this by looking at accounting data?"

Coach Lavinia had asked, halfway through her husband's presentation.

Nodding proudly, Mr. Yaxley had confirmed it and seeing the incredulous faces of several people in the room, he had asked Tin to show an example of his approach.

Now, Tin was suddenly standing in front of the president of the board, the headmistress, three teachers and... whatever Lucinda's job description was, trying to keep his head together as he prepared to speak.

The only reassurance he could feel was from Can, who had held his hand until he had needed to get up to make his presentation – and now he could at least rely on Can's supporting and adoringly cute, proud smile.

"Well, I guess... the swim team is pretty straightforward," Tin said and waited for Mr. Yaxley to open the file for him.

It gave him time to think it through again.

"In a first step, I usually look through the data to establish a baseline pattern: transactions that happen regularly, that are always the same and thus a priori uninteresting – though I have had at least one case where the anomaly was hidden in one of these. But for the swim team, you can see the pattern here, recurring equipment costs, accommodation and transport for competitions, on the other side earnings from price money, donations, ticket sales, and even a bit of merchandise; and of course the contribution the team gets from the school's overall budget."

He pointed out a few entries for everyone to understand what he meant. The spending and earning for these baselines were pretty stable, only fluctuating a bit depending on how far away a competition was for example, or how many competitions there were in a month.

"Now that I have a baseline, I can look for anomalies. Bookings that are noticeably different. Not all of these are suspicious, though. It might be that there had been a competition overseas or in an especially expensive place, or the price money at a particular competition was exceptionally high or low. But, if I can't see an explanation, I look for context."

With a wave of his hand, he signalled Mr. Yaxley to show the file he had sent to the investigation team.

"This entry caught my eye because the transportation cost was a lot cheaper than for similar competitions. When I checked it out, I found that they had used a different bus operator for their journey than usual. I looked through the documentation, like correspondence, offer and contract. At first glance, it looked like they had only switched, because the invitation for the competition came so late that the usual operator was out of capacity."

While he paused to take a breath, Tin noticed that the people who hadn't known about his research before were staring at him as if he was performing some kind of magic. He really didn't get why everyone thought this was so exceptional – it was clear as day, wasn't it? He wondered why nobody else had seen it.

"When I checked the details of that particular competition, I wasn't surprised anymore to find out that it was the one last spring, where they found banned substances in the swimming coach's bag. You all remember the scrutiny the entire swimming team had to endure after that for months, until they were cleared for lack of proof. I now tend to believe the story that they were framed."