Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (15 page)

Harriet was a lawyer, aged twenty-nine, five feet four inches, and lived in Bermondsey. She was a brunette with long, curly locks. She’d even spoken with an upper class accent in her pre-recorded video on the dating site. But it had been her dimply smile that had been the clincher. 

He looked at his watch. He considered where he was up to in the attack. Nowhere near far enough. He had no choice. He’d have to cancel the date. And their dinner reservation. And the hotel room, which had probably been optimistic anyway. 

He thought through a list of excuses and settled on one about delays filming in Morocco . . . only just got back to a place with mobile phone reception . . . first chance he’d had to text her . . . really sorry about the short notice . . . could they reschedule for the weekend? 

Brody typed it all in and pressed ‘Send’.

A few minutes later his phoned beeped. Her response was to the point. 

No, thanks. Your loss.

He groaned and decided to leave it there. He’d work on Harriet again once he got SWY out of the way.

Without a foothold on the other side of the firewall, Brody’s tunnel attack had failed at the first hurdle. He would have to find an indirect route.

For bricks and mortar companies, the public facing website was just one of the numerous routes into their corporate networks. Companies also needed to provide controlled access for customers, suppliers, business partners and employees. A month ago, Brody had broken into a major retail company’s systems by first breaking into a third-party logistics company used by the retailer for store deliveries. Unlike the retailer, the logistics company had very basic defences and, once hacked in, Brody discovered login credentials back into the retailer’s supply chain system. Once logged in there, he identified a vulnerability ripe for exploitation and quickly gained full administrative access. 

The problem with SWY was that there were no obvious indirect routes in. There were no suppliers or business partners. He was already signed up as a paying customer, but that route had already proved barren. And Crooner42 was probably the only employee.

As he mulled the situation over, Brody’s eyes flicked over to the huge television screen displaying the
Au Pair Affair
video feeds. 

Few sites exist in a bubble. Nearly all use widgets and data from external sources. Every time an external source is used, access has to be granted. Surely there must be an external data source?

Following this line of thought, Brody began a thorough review of the website itself, viewing the source HTML on every page. Line by line he searched for external references. 

Time passed in a blur.

Leroy resurfaced but found Brody uncommunicative, buried in his computers. He clunked his way around the kitchen for a while making lunch, or maybe dinner, then he showered in the bathroom and then eventually Brody heard the front door slam as Leroy left, saying something about going to the cinema with Danny.

The HTML scan was getting him nowhere. The external widgets were few and far between and he found no vulnerabilities. 

Another front door slammed.

“Audri! How many times do I have to tell you that the living room is out of bounds?” A woman’s voice.

Brody jumped, looking around his room for the voice’s source. No one was there.

Belatedly he realised it came from the TV, displaying the
Au Pair Affair
feeds. It had been quiet in the household for so long he’d forgotten it was on. 

His movie soundtrack playlist was still going. He muted it and focused on the TV.

He saw movement in the thumbnail image labelled ‘Living Room’ and so clicked it to maximise it on the screen. The wife he’d observed that morning had returned home. The au pair, whom he could still picture naked, jumped up from the sofa. The baby, who had been asleep across her chest, woke up at the abrupt movement and cried out cheerfully, “Ma! Ma!”

Brody wrote
Nanny = Audri
on a notepad. 

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Saxton. I was just —”

“No excuses. You have a TV in your own room and in the kitchen.” 

Brody wrote down
Mrs Saxton
. Next to Audri’s name he wrote
Scandinavian?
, confirming his earlier thoughts about the girl’s accent. 

Audri lowered the baby to the carpeted floor and she crawled towards her mother. Mrs Saxton crouched down and held her hands out. “Do you want your mummy, Izzy? Do you want your mummy?”

The baby reached her mother and was lifted up into the air. 

Audri left the room and Mrs Saxton remained on the sofa, talking nonsense to the baby. Brody lowered the volume. 

Brody realised he was hungry. He didn’t have the time to cook. And he fancied more than a few packets of crisps. He brought up the website of the local Thai takeaway and submitted his regular order: Pad Thai, Panang Beef and Coconut Rice. They estimated thirty minutes for delivery.

Back on the TV, all was quiet. The living room was now empty. He minimised it to display all seven feeds, searching for movement. Spotting activity in the kitchen, he maximised its screen and chose to receive sound from there instead.

The baby sat in the high chair, playing with plastic keys. Audri filled a kettle at the sink. Mrs Saxton opened a pile of letters at the kitchen table.

Brody squinted his eyes to try and make out the address on the envelopes, but the image resolution was too low. Perhaps if a letter was held close to the camera he might be able to read it. 

Mrs Saxton held up two envelopes. “I hate the way American consumerism is ruining this country. Look at this. Two adverts for credit cards at discounted rates.” She put on a fake American accent. “‘You have pre-qualified for our amazing new discount. Sign today and receive a free watch.’ Why can’t we just go back to trusting our banks to look after our interests? Is it the same in Sweden?”

Brody scribbled out
Scandinavian
and wrote
Swedish
. Pleased that he’d been in the right ballpark.

“It is becoming the same. We have four or five main banks and they are learning to fight against each other. In Stockholm, you can see all of the European banks starting to invade.”

“That’s sad. Next it will be McDonald’s.”

“Oh no. There are already lots of them.”

Audri turned the kettle on and leaned on the counter. She was a pretty girl, but not a conventional Swedish blonde. She had dark hair in a bob that hid part of her face. She had a lithe figure, which Brody already knew. Brody could see why Mrs Saxton’s husband was tempted, but not the other way around. 

“Oh. Here’s a letter for you, Audri. Strange. No stamp.” With a shrug, Mrs Saxton handed over the letter. 

Brody wrote
Audrey?
next to the word
Swedish
, wondering if the Swedish spelling would be different. He’d google it later.

“Thank you.” Audri grabbed the letter and stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans.

“Not going to open it?”

“Oh it’s just . . . what is the word?” She thought for a moment. “It’s just a magazine article that my friend Ornetta promised to let me have.”

Brody was getting bored. It was all so domestic. He wished they’d do something interesting. And it was diverting him from attacking the website properly.

Audri made two filter coffees with a carafe, gave one to Mrs Saxton and said she was going to her room. Mrs Saxton turned her attention to the baby and started cooing. 

Brody clicked back to the menu and chose
Au Pair’s Room
.

Audri entered and closed the door, locking it. She jumped on her bed and ripped open the envelope. A single piece of white paper with typed print fell out. It didn’t look like a magazine. She read it and immediately looked at her watch.

She lay back on the bed and stared up. It almost looked like she was looking straight into the camera at Brody.

“Enough of this,” said Brody to himself. 

He pointed the remote control at the TV and muted it. 

Brody logged into CrackerHack and skim read the chat logs. Nervously, he scanned for Matt_The_Hatter’s ID to see if he’d got root already. As he reached the bottom, an electric jolt passed through him. 

There, on the screen, was a post from Matt_The_Hatter.

* * *

This time, Jenny managed to park only a few doors down from Anna Parker’s home, right in front of a Crime Scene Investigation Unit forensic response van. This late in the evening, far more gaps had appeared in Troughton Road; the commuters from the train station around the corner having returned en mass and jumped into their cars for their last leg home. Determined not to let the weather get the better of her, Jenny grabbed her umbrella from the passenger footwell. 

When Jenny left Holborn earlier that evening, she had meant to go home. She wanted to put her feet up, vacantly watch some mind-numbing television, order in Thai or Chinese and slowly finish the half-full bottle of red wine she knew was sitting on the counter in her kitchen. But as the morgue was en-route, she decided to stop by to hear the results of Anna Parker’s post-mortem from Dr Gorski. She soon wished she hadn’t as he was only mid-way through the post-mortem. The wretched sight of Anna Parker’s half-dissected body, the putrid smell of decay, and the contrast of the pathologist’s over-the-top cheerfulness had wiped out her appetite in seconds. She was forced to watch and wait, but left as fast as she could afterwards. 

On the journey from the morgue to her flat in Richmond, she had found herself thinking through the many threads to the case, always coming back to the line of enquiry she believed was key: the way Anna had been targeted and then lured to her death in the Paddington office block. Her killer had exploited her ambition of playing cello in the Royal Opera House Orchestra. To do this, he must have known her. At least well enough for Anna to have shared her hopes and aspirations with him. The promiscuous party girl that Kim Chang had described certainly didn’t sound like the kind of girl who exposed her innermost dreams in idle chitchat. Which meant her killer must have taken the time to get to know Anna intimately. 

As Jenny reached Lambeth Bridge for the fast stretch along the north bank of the Thames, she concluded that she too needed to get to know Anna. If she could gain some insights into her life, perhaps it would expose who knew Anna well enough to construct such an elaborate snare. Instead of continuing straight on in the direction of home, she turned left over the bridge and followed the roads along the south bank parallel to the river, winding her way eastwards towards Charlton. 

Parked up, she bolted up the garden path aiming for the shelter of the arched porch of number 93. The front door opened just as she held her finger over the bell. A crime scene technician, not expecting anyone to be there, walked straight into her. She jumped to one side.

“Whoa,” he said stepping back, holding steady a pile of labelled bags of evidence. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

A second tech walked up behind him, carrying plastic cases of equipment. The first looked her up and down and smiled. She recognised him from the earlier crime scene in Paddington.

“Alright, DI Price.” She had no idea how he knew her name. “We’re done here. Just heading off actually.”

“Hi,” she said, unable to dredge up his name. “Long day, eh?”

“Yeah.” He let out a big sigh. “Look, once we drop this lot back at the ranch we’re heading down to The Dolphin.” He was referring to the pub a few doors down from Holborn Police Station. Most of her team would probably be in there by now. “Need to after a day like today. Fancy joining us?”

It was disguised as a matey offer, but the flush in his cheeks gave him away. She was flattered, but her automatic reaction against mixing business with pleasure kicked in. 

“Thanks, but I’ve still got loads to do.” 

“No worries.” He shuffled past her into the rain.

“Anyone around?” she asked the second technician.

“Don’t think so. There was a girl here earlier. She made us a cuppa then left us to it. Went off with some guy in a white Porsche.”

Kim Chang and Patrick Harper. 

She nodded past him into the house. “Find anything useful?”

“Maybe. Hard to tell right now. Lots of prints and trace evidence.” He shrugged. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get a fingerprint match against the murder scene earlier. And I don’t mean the victim’s.”

“Yeah, we could do with a break. Keep me posted.”

He held the front door open for her with his foot and, once she had entered, caught up with his colleague by the van. As she let the front door close, she heard them squabbling over who had the keys.

She was alone in the house. Other than the dripping rain outside, it was silent. And spooky. But she put that down to feeling uneasy about trespassing in someone else’s empty home. She knew it was also because the image of Anna Parker’s battered body, being violated further in the name of scientific investigation at the morgue, was still fresh in her mind. 

Jenny tugged her coat tighter and headed for the stairs.

Dr Gorski had established the cause of death as exsanguination – bleeding to death because Anna’s throat had been sliced open, severing the jugular veins and carotid arteries. From the length and depth of the single, effortless gash across her neck, the pathologist confidently stated that the blade was about eight inches long and razor sharp. The victim would have taken two or three minutes to die, certainly enough time for the killer to finish the rape he was performing at the same time. This too had been confirmed from bruising and traces of semen. Her assailant certainly hadn’t worried to use a condom, which probably meant he was confident of not being listed by name on any DNA database. 

They would check anyway. They always did.

Anna had also sustained other injuries before the final, fatal slice through her neck. The first trauma was to the side of her head. A hard, blunt object about an inch in diameter had struck her from behind, instantly cracking her skull. SOCO had found nothing at the crime scene that matched the shape of the wound. Jenny suggested the butt of the killer’s knife and the pathologist agreed it was a possibility, especially if it had been an all-metal handle. Gorski explained that she probably lost consciousness for a short time from the violent blow. Holding still in hopeful anticipation, Jenny asked if it were possible that she had not regained consciousness. But her hopes were immediately crushed. Like a child showing off a new toy, Gorski had excitedly drawn Jenny’s attention to the bruising on Anna’s wrists, evidence that the victim had struggled against the rope that bound them together. And, he continued, as she could not have played the cello with her wrists tied, the logical conclusion was she had been bound up while unconscious and had came too at some point after. Jenny had been sickened by Gorski’s detachment; his ability to get excited by the deductions he could make from examining a corpse, while suppressing any compassion for the person that had once inhabited the body or for the suffering endured that had caused death.