Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) Read online

  Would you like me to come over? messaged Patrick.

  That was so like him. He was supposed to be allowing her time to rehearse for her final end-of-year dance performance. They’d agreed to only see each other twice a week until the end of term.

  Through the kitchen window her attention was caught by a dark blue saloon parking up. An Asian man wearing black trousers and a dark grey raincoat exited the car and walked towards her front gate, hunched under an umbrella.

  The phone in her hand vibrated. Kim? asked Patrick.

  She waited a moment. She prayed it was for next door. They shared the same front gate after all.

  The bell rang.

  She froze solid. It was her bell. A sense of foreboding overcame her. Don’t answer the door.

  But she forced herself to walk down the hall.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

  “Hello. Is this the home of Anna Parker?”

  Unbidden, tears welled up in her eyes. “Yes.”

  “I’m DC Malik from the Met police. I’m sorry . . . ” the man began, solemnly.

  And then she knew.

  * * *

  Derek Saxton returned to his office, a little light-headed but happy with his lunchtime’s work. His prospective client — Arthur Aguda, the London Olympic British bronze medal winning middleweight boxer now turning professional — had taken some convincing that Saxton’s company was the best agency to manage his career. Saxton won Aguda over eventually. It took all of his charm, with a liberal dose of rags-to-riches stories of the many famous sportspeople he managed. A couple of the stories were even true. The message he portrayed was that talent, diet and training only got you so far. To become a household name required access to the best opportunities. And Derek Saxton had the tightest of relationships with the best boxing promoters in the industry. Two years of careful management would lead Aguda to a shot at the WBA title.

  Not that he’d put any guarantee in the contract.

  They shook hands and cracked open a bottle of champagne. Then a second and a third. In Saxton’s rugby-playing days, a few bottles of champagne wouldn’t have touched the sides. Now, walking into his office, he was feeling surprisingly merry.

  And horny. Success always turned him on.

  Jude Parker, his secretary, looked up as he walked through the door. She closed her Perfect Wedding magazine and looked at him over the rim of her thick-rimmed black glasses. Her bright green eyes registered his unsteady progress across the room.

  In her interview a year before, Jude had come across as sexy and voluptuous. She had worn a tight red dress that pushed up her more-than-ample breasts. A couple of months into the job, he finally gave up flirting with her. She was engaged to ‘Her George’, a window cleaner of all things, and nothing was going to distract her from their Caribbean wedding in the summer. She still wore tight dresses, but these days he no longer thought of her as shapely and curvy; instead she’d become more plump and chunky. He wished George good luck. He had thought of replacing her but it turned out that Jude was highly efficient at running the office, calmly kept the clients sweet and methodically organising him and his busy schedule.

  “Hey Jude,” he said to her as he passed her desk. She had stopped smiling at the joke months ago, but he kept saying it anyway. “No calls or interruptions for an hour if you don’t mind.”

  “Not even a cuppa, Derek? My George loves strong black coffee after a business lunch.”

  What the hell was a window cleaner doing having business lunches?

  “No thanks, love.” He yawned conspicuously. “Got a lot to catch up on.”

  “Ah, I see,” she said, knowingly.

  Saxton closed his office door behind him and pulled down the blind. It gave complete privacy. He hung up the jacket of his grey Paul Smith suit and opened another button on his black Hugo Boss shirt. He had an idea far better than an afternoon nap.

  He moved the mouse on his desk and the computer screen came back to life. He brought up an Internet browser. He chose www.HomeWebCam.com from his list of favourite sites and entered his email address and password when prompted. Up popped seven small video images. He squinted his eyes to work out where she was. Ah ha. In the baby’s room. He clicked on the image and it enlarged to fill the screen.

  Audri was busy changing Isabel’s nappy. He could hear her gently murmuring to the baby. Having once changed one of his daughter’s nappies, Saxton was pleased that video was restricted to image and audio. Audri still wore the same white, terry cloth dressing gown he’d seen her in when he’d left home that morning.

  He fished out his mobile phone and texted her: I’m watching ;-)

  While Audri finished with the baby, Saxton decided to check the other webcams to make sure that his wife was definitely out. It was rare for Hilary to come home from work early, but it was sensible to check. No. They were safe.

  Saxton clicked back on the baby’s room. Isabel was in the playpen, happily pressing some buttons on a toy. No Audri.

  His phoned beeped. She had texted him back. It’s my bath time. Come and watch :-).

  Saxton smiled at her deliberate innuendo.

  It had started innocuously, or so he’d initially thought. But then he realised she’d orchestrated everything. The way she kept leaving her bedroom door open when she was getting changed. Or the bathroom door when she was in the shower, naked. How she’d trapped the belt of her bathrobe in the utensils drawer in the kitchen one morning and, as she’d walked towards him carrying two mugs of tea, it had pulled her robe open for him to see her beautiful body. She’d not shown any embarrassment, just smiled coquettishly, put the mugs down on the table and slowly did herself up, while asking him if he liked what he’d seen. Just when he’d begun to write it all off as a series of coincidences that just happened when people cohabited, she’d upped the ante. She’d stretch out on the sofa in front of the TV or while reading a magazine, her skirt riding up her long legs, exposing the fact that she wore no underwear, pretending not to notice it had happened, allowing him to ogle her to his heart’s content. She took to being overly tactile, her fingers always lingering whenever she accidentally touched him. Everything she did like this happened when Hilary wasn’t around. For a couple of weeks, he even took to avoiding being alone in the house with her. He told himself he didn’t need that kind of complication in his life. He’d promised Hilary, hadn’t he?

  And then, one evening, he was innocently walking past her room having just put Izzy down to sleep himself. Hilary was out with friends and, as usual, Audri had left her bedroom door open. He couldn’t help looking in. She lay naked on her bed, noisily pleasuring herself with a vibrator. As it happened, he’d already seen her do this a few times via the webcam he’d had secretly installed in her room, but she was so much more alluring in the flesh. She caught his eye, licked her lips sensually and carried on. On autopilot, he walked into her bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  Now, four months later, their fling was still in full flow. She was amazing. Full of inventive ideas and games for them to play. And with no strings attached. She wanted nothing from him. She didn’t want to break up his marriage. She told him he was convenient, which he’d been angry at initially, but then he realised it really didn’t matter why she kept wanting to have sex with a much older man.

  At his desk, he clicked on the video feed for the main bathroom. There she was, looking up directly into the webcam. She waved and then spoke. “Hello Derek.” Her voice was seductive, but her expression showed she was unsure. After all, she couldn’t see him.

  Audri turned the bath taps on and poured in some bubble bath.

  Saxton was pleased with himself. Although he’d watched Audri bathe many times, this would be the first time she would participate knowingly. Only yesterday, Saxton pointed out to her exactly where the webcam in the bathroom was hidden. She’d been surprised when he’d explained about the cameras and was delighted that he was finally stepping up with some inventive games himself
. She immediately figured out that he must have watched her many times, both before and after their relationship had begun, and lightly teased him that he was some kind of pervert. Then she reminded him that, being Swedish, she was far more sexually liberated and that being naked in public was only natural.

  Saxton licked his lips and unzipped his flies.

  She turned off the taps and faced the camera. Slowly, she slipped the robe from her shoulders. She held it to her, seductively rubbing her breasts hidden underneath. She exposed one, then both, passing her hands over them repeatedly.

  Saxton paused for a moment and considered how wonderfully exclusive his situation was. He was only four miles away but could easily have been four thousand. He was in his own office, enjoying his own private peep show, by his own nanny, from his own house and his wife had no idea. And the security on the HomeWebCam website ensured that no one else could sneak a peek.

  Oh, how he loved the Internet.

  * * *

  Brody leaned back in his cream leather executive chair and forcibly lifted his hands away from the keyboard. He realised he was wasting time simply observing the unwitting inhabitants of yet another SWY webcam stream, which only served to repeat what he’d already learned from all the other streams throughout his reconnaissance of the site. Not a lot.

  He wondered if he was subconsciously procrastinating; delaying the start of his actual hacking session in order to defer potential failure. He was no armchair psychologist, but he knew that a self-diagnosis like that didn’t really make logical sense. He was in a race to get root. To race, he had to take part. But was he in a sprint or a marathon? He didn’t know that yet.

  Brody sat at his desk in his living room. He had got rid of the formal suit he’d worn for his ‘interview’ earlier and was now dressed in smart black jeans and a casual white shirt, all bought from Ted Baker, like the majority of his wardrobe.

  His computer was connected to a bank of three widescreen monitors, each displaying different windows. The left and right screens displayed Internet browsers logged into different parts of the SWY site, multiple video feeds running without audio, the inhabitants silently going about their lives. On the centre screen, he opened a command line interface. The cursor prompt flashed, expectantly awaiting his command.

  He typed “WhoIs SecretlyWatchingYou.com” at the prompt and then, just as he was about to press ‘Enter’, realised something was missing. It was completely silent in his living room. He grabbed his smartphone and brought up the Sonos app that controlled the speaker system installed throughout the apartment. Brody selected his favourite movie soundtrack playlist, set it for random with the volume high and pressed play. The opening bars to John Barry’s Dances With Wolves boomed from floor-standing Bose speakers either side of the huge wall-mounted television.

  Then, like a concert pianist about to perform a solo, he rested his fingers on the keyboard in front of him and centred his right thumb on the mouse trackpad. He hovered his right pinkie finger over the ‘Enter’ key.

  He was ready.

  “Turn it off you fucking knob!” It was Leroy, shouting from his bedroom.

  Shit. He quickly grabbed his phone, fiddled with the Sonos app and realised that he’d neglected to ensure the speakers in the guest room were off. He quickly muted them and, for good measure, lowered the volume in the living room. Brody whispered a curse and waited for the fallout.

  “Morning.” Leroy’s accusatory voice behind him, full of gravel.

  Brody turned around. Leroy stood barefoot by the leather sofa, his bloodshot eyes squinting at the daylight, wearing the same clothes as he’d worn last night: a high-collared white shirt open one button too many, revealing black skin stretched taught over huge pecs, rumpled from being slept in, and dark trousers, also creased, from a slim-fitting two piece suit, the jacket of which had been slung across the back of the sofa. He held his head in his right hand and simultaneously scratched his balls with his left.

  The image of Leroy hung-over first thing in the morning was a familiar sight to Brody, repeated hundreds of times over the years, dating right back to when they were two of five student housemates thrown together while attending university in London. The other three students in the house that first year had been girls, all studying academic subjects and with the sociability of The Three Witches from Macbeth. Forced into each other’s company, Brody and Leroy had eventually hit it off and became the very best of friends.

  “Afternoon.”

  “It is? Fuck me, must have been a good night then.” He climbed over the back of the sofa and allowed himself to fall into the cushions. “Mornings are overrated anyway.”

  Reaching for the remote control on the coffee table, Leroy pressed some buttons and the massive wall-mounted television burst into life. A kids’ cartoon.

  “Leroy, I’m working.”

  “Yeah, well I was sleeping until you put a fucking orchestra in my room.” Selecting Little House on the Prairie, he turned the TV volume up high, trying to compete with John Barry and his orchestra. “Loved watching reruns of this as a kid back in Wales.”

  “Turn it off, Leroy.”

  “Turn it off, Leroy,” he imitated in a high-pitched voice.

  “Now!”

  “Bloody hell,” he moaned. He muted it instead, not quite giving in completely.

  “You act like a spoilt teenager when you’re hung-over.”

  “Yeah, well you act like a nerd when you’re sober. Wait a second, you are a nerd!” He laughed at his own joke and then grimaced as pain shot through his head.

  “Careful, Leroy. This nerd might hack into Facebook and screw with you. Let me see, who’s that guy who keeps trying to come on to you. Joe? John? No, Jordan, that’s right. I can see his post on your wall now: Leroy, last night’s show was soooo good, especially when you sucked my cock dry between act one and act two. You never know who might see it. Danny perhaps?”

  “You bitch!”

  “And then this same nerd might send a friend request from your Facebook account to your Dad, now that your sister’s bought him an iPad. Imagine his reaction to all those photos posted of you and Danny together.”

  Leroy had grown up in a small village in North Wales where he had been forced to suppress his sexuality completely; his only confidante as a teenager being his younger sister, Hope. Leaving Wales to attend university in London, Leroy felt unleashed. He made up for his closeted childhood by having a string of relationships with men of all shapes, sizes and colours. In the first few weeks of their blossoming friendship, Leroy even made a drunken pass at Brody. Brody had reacted instinctively and punched him in the stomach as hard as he could; an action he’d never done to anyone before or since. While Leroy was writhing on the floor, Brody made him promise never to try it on with him again. In a strange way it cemented their friendship completely.

  Most other university students had assumed Brody was also gay, predominantly based on rumours spread by their three boring cohabitants who quickly become frustrated with the two party-animal housemates stumbling noisily into the house at all hours of the night. It had the effect of cutting down Brody’s ability to successfully approach single female students within the university. Brody and Leroy took to going out together, helping each other meet potential partners. Some nights Leroy would pretend to be heterosexual and would chat up pairs of girls in the hope that Brody would strike lucky, which happened enough times to make the charade worthwhile. Leroy was naturally extrovert and loquacious, making up for Brody’s tongue-tiedness when in the company of good looking women. On other nights, Brody would begrudgingly return the favour, pretending he was gay with a camp performance that had Leroy in stitches. The minute Leroy looked like he was in luck, Brody would magically disappear in an effort to avoid being on the receiving end of unsubtle gropes and passes from oversexed men. But, after a few nights of this, Brody refused to re-enact his homosexual sham and played it, quite literally, straight. He still had to fend off just as many advances from g
ay men who took his presence in their midst as a challenge, contending that he wouldn’t be in their club if he wasn’t at least a little bit interested.

  After a few weeks, Leroy started inventing fake occupations for themselves during their nights out. They started off with the classics: firemen, policemen and lawyers. In character, Brody actually found it much easier to talk to women, and even men when out on a Leroy night. Justified by the need to strengthen his improvisation skills for his Drama degree course, Leroy kept upping the stakes, coming up with obscure professions for them both; micro-biologists, key grips – they had seen the job title in movie credits – zookeepers, rocket scientists, politicians and even circus clowns. Brody’s degree had been Film Studies and so he didn’t have the same incentive as Leroy to keep inventing new characters for their nights out. But it had amused him to see how far he could go with the games. So much so that all these years later, false backstories remained a key part of his life. It was strange to consider that Leroy seemed the one who had grown up first. Although looking at him now, slumped on the sofa, he didn’t seem any more mature than the version Brody had first met.

  Leroy finally turned off Little House on the Prairie. “Okay, okay. I give in. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  He stood up, tentatively. “You want a cuppa, darling?” A peace offering.

  “No ta. I’ve already had way too much coffee.”

  Leroy disappeared into the kitchen and banged about. Brody knew better than to try and begin his hacking session until he settled. Eventually, he returned to the living room, carrying a mug and a plate of buttered toast. He perched on the edge of Brody’s desk. Brody sighed audibly, but Leroy ignored it.