Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) Page 4

  Crooner42: Thanks everyone for the offers of help on SWY.

  Matt_The_Hatter: It’s okay Crooner-boy, you can let them know who you’ve asked to do the work. I’m not modest.

  Crooner42: Didn’t think you’d want everyone to know, Matty-boy. But okay, yes. It’s official – you got the job.

  Brody allowed himself a self-satisfactory smile and sipped his coffee, appreciating the strong flavour and smooth viscosity. Crooner42 must have chosen Matt_The_Hatter based on the self-penned profiles on the forum. If he’d bothered to look through the posts written in the various forums, he’d have realised that Matt_The_Hatter was arrogant, confrontational, rude and probably the last person you’d ever choose to help you do anything. But Matt_The_Hatter’s arrogance wasn’t unfounded. He was damn good, possibly even in Brody’s class. It was just that his hostile nature and self-importance got in the way. Brody inferred from Crooner42’s ‘Matty-boy’ retort he may already be regretting his choice of penetration tester.

  A few members offered Matt_The_Hatter their congratulations. Brody sportingly offered his, as well.

  Fingal: Yes, well done Matt

  Most hackers carefully devised their online monikers, which had to be completely unique. Few had any similarity to their real name; usually a closely guarded secret, but the chosen username would often reveal something about their interests or style. Two of the most famous hackers in history were ‘Cha0s’ and ‘MafiaBoy’, their names chosen to reflect their antisocial approach to the world. Numbers were often used instead of letters to reflect geek-speak and to achieve uniqueness, but Brody believed it showed a lack of imagination.

  Brody had based his Fingal username on the hero of some old Scottish poems, secretly referencing that Brody’s ancestry was from Scotland, something that was very visible in the real world because of his blond hair and freckled skin. And if that wasn’t enough, the meaning of the name Fingal was ‘white stranger’, which Brody mentally linked to his own chosen profession of being a white hat hacker. There was one other reason for choosing Fingal, but only his best friend Leroy was privy to this.

  He was about to click away, when —

  Matt_The_Hatter: So come on then Crooner. Who else offered their services? We all wanna know.

  Brody waited. Surely Crooner42 wouldn’t be dumb enough to list everyone? That was against online etiquette.

  Mawrpheus: Yeah, Crooner. Who else offered?

  Random_Ness: Sure. Let’s see. Who did Matt beat for the job?

  Brody knew that Mawrpheus and Random_Ness wouldn’t have responded to Crooner42’s request for penetration testing help because they didn’t have the skills. They were ‘script kiddies’, whose hacking skills were limited to using pre-packaged tools written by others: proper hackers, like Brody. They were just stirring up trouble. He wanted to type something that would deter Crooner42 from replying, but couldn’t think how to word it without giving away that he had been one of those who had proffered his services.

  Crooner42: Well, there was only one other . . .

  Brody couldn’t believe it.

  Just one? Shit, that was him.

  He was about to be named. And worse, shamed into losing to that arrogant prick, Matt_The_Hatter. And the forum members all knew he was online because, just two minutes ago, he’d naively offered his congratulations to Matt_The_Hatter.

  No one posted anything.

  Brody and thirty-one — no, word was spreading as the total now showed thirty-five — other hackers from all over the world held their collective virtual breath.

  Crooner42: . . . it was Fingal

  “Fuck!” shouted Brody loudly. “Crooner, you fucking idiot!” He became aware of other customers in the café turning to stare at him. Behind the coffee counter, Stefan paused from frothing milk and looked over. Brody apologised, lifting both hands in the air in supplication.

  Matt_The_Hatter: Awww, unlucky Fingal. The best man clearly won.

  Mawrpheus: Loser!

  Doc_Doom: Fingal, ignore them. They’re just fucking idiots. Crooner42, you should be banned from these forums. I’m reporting you to the moderator for breaching forum etiquette. Matt, grow the fuck up.

  Brody appreciated Doc_Doom stepping in. He was a good friend.

  How could Crooner42 have named him like that? Stupid things like this could negatively affect everyone’s perception of him. And perception was the only reality in cyberspace.

  Matt_The_Hatter: Fingal? We all know you’re there. Got anything to say?

  Brody considered his options. Attack or bow down gracefully? Brody’s fingers flew over the keys.

  Fingal: Fuck off Matt. I offered my congratulations earlier. That should be enough. The fact that Crooner chose you over me for a job like this already shows how dumb he is. And if he’s that dumb, that means SWY will have holes so big in it that even you might be able to help him.

  Matt_The_Hatter: Fuck you Fingal.

  Random_Ness: Fight! Fight!

  Crooner42: Shit, I’m sorry everyone.

  Matt_The_Hatter: There’s no way you’re better than me, Fingal.

  Fingal: Matt, you couldn’t hack your way into a lidless jam jar.

  Brody was indignant. In all his years online, he’d never found himself in such a ludicrous predicament. And in full view of his hacker peers. This whole episode reminded him of the school playground. After his older brother had died, Brody’s childhood had been full of bullies with him as a defenceless victim. This type of goading brought it all back. The only difference was that, online, he could fight back. But the emotions were still the same. His fingers shook as the adrenalin coursed through. He downed his coffee in an attempt to calm himself. It had gone cold.

  Crooner42: Perhaps if you both did it?

  Matt_The_Hatter: No fucking way. You already made your choice.

  Doc_Doom: Crooner does have a point. I believe there’s an obvious way to settle this. Matt. Fingal. We treat it as a pwning competition. The first one of you that gets root on Crooner’s SWY site reports back here. . .

  ‘Pwning’, derived from typing in ‘owning’ incorrectly — the ‘p’ and ‘o’ keys being next to each other on a standard Western keyboard — was geek-speak for hacking in and taking ownership of a system. ‘Getting root’ was taking full administrator control of it and achieving the highest level of security access: meaning you could do anything to it. Brody had done both many times, but these days it was becoming much harder as website security defences became stronger. Crooner42 may be an idiot, but he was bright enough to have done a thorough job in protecting his webcam site before publicly asking for a pentest from some of the world’s best hackers.

  Doc_Doom: . . .and then, live with us all watching, you run a script to replace SWY’s front page with your own username in massive fonts. Then we’ll all know for sure who pwned the site and, once and for all, we’ll all know who’s the better out of the two of you. Do you both accept the challenge?

  Brody laughed out loud at the puerility of the situation. Stefan looked up from behind the huge coffee machine, and two nearby patrons stopped talking. Brody held up his hand in apology again.

  Crooner42: Come on everyone, there’s no need for this.

  Doc_Doom: Crooner, keep out of this. Anyway, you’re the one who came on this forum asking for a comprehensive pentest. Now you could get two for one, from two of the best.

  Matt_The_Hatter: I’m in.

  Brody was caught and he knew it. Failure to accept the challenge would look bad, especially as he really had offered to carry out the pentest in the first place.

  Doc_Doom: Fingal, you in?

  But if he lost the challenge, it would irretrievably ruin his elite status in the hacker community, something every hacker prized far more than anything else. He typed his answer, deliberately flippant, although he felt nothing like it.

  Fingal: Sure, sounds like fun. I’m in.

  * * *

  Jenny found DCI Raul Da Silva on the twelfth floor in an empty office
he’d temporarily requisitioned as his base of operations. Leaning all the way back in a leather executive chair behind an impressive oak desk, he’d swung around to take in the view of a dank, grey London. The incessant rain caressed the floor-to-ceiling windows, rivulets of water streaming downwards. He chatted loudly on his mobile, his back to her.

  “I don’t care what they’re complaining about, DC Malik, you make damn sure that the constable at the front door understands that he’s not to let any press in. Got it?”

  Jenny walked around the desk and pressed her head to the window. She welcomed the bracing cold on her forehead. It helped clear the brutal images of the murdered girl six floors above. Far below, a colourful bunch of umbrellas had gathered outside the entrance. Media vans were double-parked on the road nearby. Television cameras poked out from under rain covers and pointed at the building.

  Da Silva noticed Jenny, straightened his chair and ended his call.

  “Can you believe this? The press has arrived and want to be allowed in the building — our crime scene — so that they can get out of the rain.”

  “It is very wet out there,” she said absently. A barge powered slowly along Regents Canal, a barely perceptible wake behind it.

  “What’s with you, DI Price?”

  “Nothing, guv.” Jenny pulled herself together and took a seat on the other side of the desk. Da Silva pivoted round, placed his massive hands on the table and leaned forward. On the desk stood an improbably huge Starbucks takeaway cup.

  “Have we tracked down the other receptionist yet? Looks like she’s the last one to have seen the victim alive.”

  Jenny didn’t bother correcting him with the fact that surely the killer last saw Anna Parker alive.

  “Alan . . . I mean DS Coombs is picking her up now.”

  She’d corrected herself because Da Silva didn’t like using first names. Being both newly promoted and newly transferred to lead Holborn’s MIT, addressing everyone by rank and surname was a technique he employed to reinforce his seniority. Hopefully, he’d one day figure out that facing adversity as a team, day after day, forged a natural closeness that necessitated the informality of forenames and nicknames.

  “What about time of death?”

  “One of the tenants on the floor below recalled hearing music on Friday evening just as he was leaving for home. Even though it was faint, he remembered as it was out of the norm. He just assumed it was part of a computer presentation”

  “What time was this?”

  “About six-thirty. He knows because he made his usual train at Paddington.”

  “So she was alive at six-thirty.”

  “And dead not long after, according to Dr Gorski, the pathologist.”

  “What about CCTV?”

  “It only covers the reception area. Mr Evans, the building manager, says it’s stored and managed remotely at the Flexbase headquarters in Docklands.”

  “Next of kin?”

  “Trinity College gave us her home address. She’s originally from Torquay. Devon police have been informed and they’re informing the parents. She lives with some other students in Charlton, just round the corner from Greenwich. I’ll send DC Malik there in a minute. I’m going to head there too when I finish here.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  She hadn’t asked his permission, but he acted as if he’d deigned to grant it. He took a sip of his coffee through the hole in the plastic lid. Jenny took the opportunity to jump in and ask her own question before he could hit her with another of his.

  “Anything from the guy who found the body?”

  “Barry Pitman? He says he had the meeting room booked first thing this morning, showed up, discovered the body, reported it and then buggered off. I tracked him down to the Starbucks round the corner. He’d relocated his meeting to the coffee shop as if nothing serious had happened. Can you believe it? There were eleven of them huddled around his laptop. He didn’t like me taking him to one side in the middle of his sales pitch, that’s for sure. Wouldn’t stop moaning about some big deal he was trying to close.”

  “Anything to link him as a suspect?”

  “I doubt it, but let’s check him out fully.” Da Silva leaned forward and lowered his voice, conspiratorially. “Pitman was really insensitive about the murdered girl. Talk about self-obsessed. Know what I did? I dragged him back from Starbucks then and there on the pretext of getting his prints to eliminate him. It could easily have waited. He moaned all the way back about how I’d ruined the deal he was doing. Certainly made me feel much better!”

  Jenny was astonished. Not at Da Silva’s actions — she probably would have done much the same — but that he’d let his barrier slip a little in front of her. She couldn’t decide whether he was opening up a little or if he was just showing off. The fact that he’d somehow had time to order himself a grande caffè latte made her think he’d stretched the truth a bit.

  Someone knocked at the door behind them. DC Fiona Jones leant on the doorframe, her black bob neatly in place, precision-cut fringe unaffected by the weather. Fiona had been appointed to Da Silva’s team just a month ago; her first detective post. She was eager to please, worked long hours, and seemed to have already become ‘one of the boys’ without losing her femininity – a rare achievement.

  Jenny still felt bedraggled from the soaking she had endured running between her car and the Flexbase office building. As she’d arrived on the twelfth floor to meet up with Da Silva, Jenny had spotted the ladies’ toilets and dived in, relieved to spot a hand dryer rather than paper towels. She’d contorted herself under its downwards blast of hot air, and managed to dry out her blouse, grey suit, shoes and even her hair. A retouch of lipstick and mascara and she’d felt ready to re-join the investigation. But seeing Fiona still made her feel inadequate. Jenny wondered how she managed to stay perfectly pristine all the time.

  “I checked out WMA Associates as you asked, Jenny,” said Fiona. “They’ve got nothing to do with music. They’re a tax audit firm. Apparently, WMA stands for Wilfred MacDonald Advisors. I’ve got Lawrence MacDonald here. He says he runs the London practice. His dad is Wilfred MacDonald, but he retired years ago.”

  “Okay. Bring him in,” said Da Silva.

  Fiona returned with a middle-aged man, so dull and grey that if Jenny had had to guess his occupation, accountant would have been top of the list. The only exception was the flash of luminescent green from the frames of his designer glasses.

  “Is it true about the poor girl? Some kind of murder?” he asked.

  Jenny looked Fiona in the eye, but she shook her head.

  “What makes you say murder, Mr MacDonald?”

  “Only because of the questions the press asked me as I arrived at the office a few minutes ago.”

  “Shit!” Da Silva stood up, leaned on the window and stared down twelve floors. Jenny had never heard him swear before. “I’d better sort this out before it gets out of hand. Detective Inspector Price, you take it from here. Excuse me, Mr MacDonald.” Taking his mobile phone from his pocket, he left the office. His coffee was left on the desk.

  “Did the press say her name?” asked Jenny, standing so as not to be the only one left sitting down.

  “No? Please tell me it wasn’t one of my employees.”

  “No, we don’t believe so. Her name was Anna Parker. Do you know her?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “What about a W. Webber?”

  MacDonald thought for a minute. “No. Not a name I recognise. Should I?”

  “The signing-in book has a W. Webber from your company down for the victim’s arrival last Friday evening. Do you know anyone with the surname Webber? A friend? A client, perhaps? A supplier? Someone who knows WMA?”

  MacDonald thought for a moment. “None that comes to mind. But we can go downstairs and check our contacts database if you like.”

  Fiona said, “Thanks. Let’s do that in a few minutes.”

  Jenny walked up and down the length of
the window. She slowly articulated a line of thought that was forming in her mind. “Okay, let’s assume this Webber person was pretending to be from your company. How could he do that? He’s booked a meeting room. And yet you know nothing about it?”

  At that moment, Jenny saw Alan through the interior glass wall of the office, accompanied by Evans. She waved them over.

  “No, why should I? Any of my staff can book a meeting room. We just phone reception.”

  Alan and Evans entered the office.

  Jenny said to the building manager, “Walk me through how you book a meeting room in this place.”

  Evans ignored Jenny. “Hello, Mr MacDonald. I’d like to apologise for this inconvenience. I’m sure we’ll have everything back to normal in an hour or so.”

  Jenny wanted to slap him. He acted like a tube driver announcing a short delay to his passengers. “As I said to you in the lift earlier, Mr Evans, someone has been murdered. It’s a very serious situation, and not one we can take lightly. I think you’ll find it might take more than an hour or so to get back to normal.”

  Out of Evans’ line of sight, Alan winked at Jenny and said gravely, “Maybe as much as the whole day. Perhaps two.”

  Evans’ face whitened.

  MacDonald mediated. “The more you can do to help the police, I’m sure the quicker they’ll be done.”

  “Well, uh yes. I’m sorry. I know it’s more than an inconvenience, but what I was trying to say was —”

  Alan persisted, “Meeting rooms, Mr Evans. How do they get booked?”

  “Uh, yes. Let me see.” He took a breath. “Meeting rooms can be booked by any of our customers already leasing space in this building or any Flexbase customer leasing space in any of our other serviced offices around the country. Well, saying that, anyone could phone up and book a meeting room. All they’d need is a credit card. We have this concept called Local Meeting —”