Ockham's Razor: A Deductive Riddle

Chapter 61

"Rab, Dean, Moussa, this is Ian, can you meet us at the gazebo?" Ian was trying to communicate over the Bluetooth headset, but was not sure if anyone was listening on the other end.

Bill was speaking directly into his microphone, obviously thinking that one of the others was at least listening in on the conversation.

"We're here", came a voice on the other side of the gazebo, away from where the three of them were supposed to be standing.

"Why were you there?" questioned Bill.

Moussa replied, "We were at the planned spot. But after about five minutes, security came around. They did not like the look of a black man, an Arab and a criminal looking dude, no offence Dean, standing around the Grandstand. So, they told us to move off."

Lauren had the next question. "Were you able to hear and play the Benefactor's conversation with us?"

Dean answered "No. The breeze was hell on the microphone, so we could not hear anything other than the occasional half sentence. Then when we were forced to walk, I shut off the speakers because we were starting to get people to stare at us."

"Well, there was no impact to our plan with the loss of communication." Bill started to tell the others about what had been said between the Benefactor and them. He was not sparing any detail. Ian tried to sort out his thoughts. He tried to clear the emotion from what he had heard, and do an analysis to see if what he knew matched the circumstances as laid out by Danny Corcoran.

The more he thought of it, the more he was convinced. Corcoran was not lying. Sure, he did organise a bank robbery to get his documents back, but he seemed truly shocked to find out about Dean's arrest. Immediately after hearing that, he lost his confidence as the dominant member of the conversation. He kept his gaze constantly scanning for... what? Smooshface and the Bulldog? Something else? The one thing that jumped out to him was that Gillies had manipulated them into bringing Corcoran down. And all this mess was done to stop being manipulated.

The only possible reason was that Gillies played them. Gillies needed a reckoning.

Ian rejoined the conversation with Lauren explaining that she is going to kill the blog and podcast and ditch her burner phone.

Rab spoke right after Lauren, "How was our assessment so off? Where did we go wrong?"

Ian, fearing that this would be a rant against him jumped in, "If you look at it, we were not really that far off. We were good with the information we had. But that information was incomplete."

"Do you think he's telling the truth?"

"I do. If we apply Ockham's Razor, the simplest solution is that he is telling the truth. Anything else is too complicated. Compare possible stories: Gillies stole some industrial and personal papers from Corcoran. Corcoran managed to find out where they were being kept in the security deposit box. How did he get the number? I don't know. Even Bill could not get that information until afterwards. So, Corcoran needed to have someone on the inside, someone else involved in this conspiracy. That person fed Corcoran the information he needed, whereby he used Kate to get the six of us to hit the bank, causing Gillies to lose his business, and then bringing himself down in the process. Or, on the other hand, this is all part of a big scheme whereby Corcoran is manipulating us all through carefully laid plans so that we take down Gillies' empire. Even with complications, accepting that Corcoran is telling the truth is the simplest."

Moussa summed up his thoughts. "Corcoran kept legal papers to keep his daughter safe. They were stolen, so he hired us to steal them back. He says Gillies is using the crooked cops to extract revenge against us. Sounds like we've all been victims of Stephen Gillies."

Ian was so glad that Moussa had expressed this. It was his thoughts exactly, but he would not be the one to have to convince anyone about it.

"Let's bring him down, then. I'm tired of not having any say in my own life." Rab seemed more intense than usual.

"I'm in," added Dean. "Let's finish this."

Something told Ian that for once, the group was going to act without his prompting.