“And the £23,847?”
As for Clara, she received a quiet commendation and a new assignment: a railway ticketing system in Milan with "minor anomalies." She smiled and packed her bag. The needles were always there, hidden in the hay. She just had to look for the £14.87 invoices that didn't belong.
And Leo? He was charged with fraud, but the judge, reading Clara’s note about his mother, gave him a suspended sentence and community service—teaching digital hygiene to retirees. epay airbus uk
The problem? Bay 12 didn't exist. Clara had cross-referenced the Broughton plant’s 3D BIM model. Bay 12 had been decommissioned in 2017, replaced by a composite curing oven.
And then came the art of the small steal. Not millions—that triggers alarms. But £14.87 here, £32.10 there. A box of wipes. A torque wrench. A roll of Kapton tape. Each under the €50 automatic approval threshold for ePay. Over fourteen months, the Phantom had siphoned £23,847.82 from Airbus UK. “And the £23,847
That evening, Clara filed her report. It was titled:
But Clara knew the money wasn't the real story. The real story was what else the Phantom had accessed. Because ePay wasn't just a shopping cart. It was a gateway. From there, the Phantom had peeked into the inventory system, learning exactly when the Broughton plant was low on carbon-fiber prepreg—the expensive, sensitive material used for wings. And Leo
A pause. “T. Ashworth? That’s Tom. He retired last April. Why?”
In a sterile interview room overlooking the A380 final assembly line, she sat across from a young man named Leo. He was 24, a temp in the logistics office, with glasses and a nervous laugh. He wasn't a criminal mastermind. He was a kid who’d found a key.
“I was going to pay it back,” he whispered. “My mum’s medical bills. The NHS waiting list was two years. A private surgery cost exactly £23,847.82. I looked it up.”
Clara sipped her tea and called the plant’s procurement officer, a weary man named Derek. “Derek, who’s T. Ashworth?”