by V Clifford
‘Sure, I’ll check all my spam Viv, but I get so much crap, not exactly hate mail, but minor threats all over the place . . . You’re right, though, we should both check. I wonder if it would help if we swapped laptops . . . I stop seeing stuff. I could easily have missed it.’
‘Not a chance. What? Have you been scanning through my correspondence? I don’t think so, matey.’
‘Got something to hide? Too much lovey-dovey stuff?’ He grinned.
Viv tossed a cushion at him. ‘No, I’ve just got more netiquette than you.’
Mac awkwardly dodged the missile and walked towards the front door with his arm up, guarding his head. ‘Mind, I’m walking wounded.’
Viv clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘OMG, I’m sorry, I forgot.’
‘No worries. Right, I’ll head up to the dig while you do your stuff. I’m guessing if Sal gets back you’d like a cosy dinner for two?’
The idea made Viv’s belly clench. ‘No. Don’t be daft. Come and eat with us. Sal will be jet-lagged anyway. If you don’t hear from me, come round at seven and we’ll swap what we’ve got, if anything. I’ll do pasta.’
Chapter Eleven
Viv watched as Mac slowly manoeuvred his car out of its tight space. She stood gripping her upper arms until his tail-lights had entirely receded, and wondered where to start. Decision made, she tried Sal’s number. Still no answer. She checked the fridge. Nothing much. A trip to the village was in order if she was going to cook for three.
Within half an hour she’d returned from the post office, which in Doune was a euphemism for a shop that sold everything you’ve ever needed, including the ingredients for carbonara and a salad - a high-risk meal, since Mac’s parents were Italian and excellent cooks, a talent which he had inherited. She chewed the inside of her cheek, recalling all the delicious meals he’d cooked her, then thought, beggars and all that.
She was about to settle down with her laptop when her phone buzzed. An empty text from an unfamiliar number stared back at her. Viv was pretty careful about who she gave her details to, and in the circumstances couldn’t just give this up as a wrong number. She’d get Mac to run it through a check later. She sighed and began scrolling emails from three months back. Whoever was threatening her, if it really was her, would surely be cooking up their next efforts by now.
Her spam was bursting at the seams with promos for anything from high protein drinks to penile extensions. Viv snorted, murmuring to herself, ‘What you get for having an androgenous name.’ She couldn’t find any emails that were remotely threatening. Her inbox was much the same, although there were one or two that she should have answered, and hadn’t yet. She marked them as unread and kept scrolling.
Her phone rang and she answered it, still distracted by the screen. Sal’s exasperated voice gave her a reality check. ‘Hi, Viv, it’s me. I’m in Heathrow, hoping to board any minute. I’ll take a train to Dunblane and a cab up to Doune.’
‘No way! I’ll get in the car and by the time you touch down I’ll be waiting.’
‘No, Viv. I’m going into HQ. I want to have something checked.’
‘Okay. I’ll come into Fettes and get you.’
‘Don’t be daft. I’ll beg a lift from Mac . . .’
Viv interrupted, ‘Mac’s already up here.’
Sal hesitated. ‘He is? . . . Well, I can take a train to Dunblane and you can pick me up from the station. I don’t know how long it’ll take at Fettes.’
‘Is something wrong?’
Another hesitation made Viv sit up. ‘What is it, Sal?’
‘I’m not sure if it’s anything, but I’ve had a few dodgy emails and I thought I’d get the guys to look at their source. And they can’t unless they’ve got my phone and my laptop. If I do it now it means I can relax for what’s left of the weekend. I’ll not be long.’
‘But you know that I could do that.’ Viv heard the echoing voice of an airport tannoy in the background.
‘I’ll have to go. I’ll ring you when I get to Fettes.’
Viv knew that there must be something more going on for Sal if she wanted to get the Fettes guys involved, and felt panic rise that Sal mightn’t be safe even to travel on the flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh.
She rang Mac. ‘Hey. I’ve just had a call from Sal. She’s on her way up from London and wanted to go straight to Fettes with her phone and laptop. Said she’d had some dodgy emails or something, but if that was all that was wrong she’d have let me take a look at them.’
Mac interrupted. ‘Slow down, Viv. She’s doing the right thing.’ He sniffed. ‘Wonder what it is? She’s not daft. She must realize it needs something from the cyber team.’
‘Excuse me! I’m the frickin’ cyber team, remember? When they fail you come to me, so why doesn’t she let me take a look at it? She won’t get anything from them that she couldn’t get from me and . . .’
‘Whoa! There could be. But there’s little point in speculating, or falling out over it until we know a bit more. When is she getting in?’
‘She was boarding, but I don’t know who she’s flying with.’
She typed Edinburgh airport into Google and clicked on Arrivals and Departures. It didn’t really matter which carrier Sal was flying with, the flight took under an hour so she’d be landing in about fifty minutes.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Checking the arrivals. I’ll head down now. I’ll keep you posted.’ She cut the call. She knew that mentioning the emails was the way to get Mac to alert the cyber guys in his unit so they’d be ready and waiting. But if she could get a look first she had ways and means that would be a last resort for them.
It struck her that the stuff she and Mac had been experiencing might be to do with Sal and not them. It made sense, since Viv hadn’t found a shred of anything in her own emails. Now Sal as a target would be a different ball-game altogether. As a profiler Sal had worked on some really ugly stuff in the last few years. Viv had learned a great deal from her, and understood how that kind of work put Sal in the firing line of some total psychos. Luckily most of them were doing time, but the odd one could easily have got out with a tale of good behaviour. Sal wouldn’t forget any face and working someone’s profile didn’t leave too many stones unturned. There would be nothing she didn’t know, from scars to the type of fillings in their molars. Information was currency, a unique power, which definitely opened Sally-Ann Chapman up to threats.
It occurred to Viv that since Sal was almost on home soil she could be at more risk. She grabbed her rucksack, keys and phone, and was about to jump into the car when she opened the front door again and called Moll, slipping a lead off the hook.
It took five minutes to get to the motorway and forty minutes to reach the airport. The airport’s new streaming system meant there were huge signs announcing that you could only wait for five minutes, and had to pay for the privilege. She decided to drive round to the new taxi pick-up on the edge of the main route out. Viv’s adrenalin was pumping, so she abandoned the car and ran inside the terminal in the hope that she’d find Sal at the luggage carousel.
She scouted around, read news of the Heathrow flight, and found where the baggage was coming in. Sal wasn’t tall and would be swamped by people elbowing to get their cases, but she spotted her going at a pace towards the exit pulling a case like a black armadillo behind her. Viv waved and grinned, but Sal’s shocked look wasn’t the picture of happiness she’d hoped for. Nonetheless Viv bounced forward and saw Sal soften slightly. They kissed, a chaste effort, and Viv stretched to take hold of the handle of the armadillo. Sal resisted but quickly allowed it.
‘Follow me.’ Viv marched them back through the taxi rank shelter, full of people waiting with tickets, to her car, which was on a double yellow line with a guy in uniform next to it speaking into a microphone on his head-set.
He glared at them as they approached. Viv pressed the fob and the lights flashed. She opened the boot and swung the case inside, then gestured to Sal to hop i
n. Sal threw her handbag in beside the case and jumped into the passenger seat, making a fuss of Molly, who bounced all over her. Within seconds Viv had them on the road to Edinburgh, with a quick look in her rear-view mirror to see the irate officer take a photograph of the retreating number-plate.
‘So what’s with the visit to Fettes?’
Sal was distracted by Moll. ‘I said. I had some dodgy communication and I’d like them to check it.’
‘Sure, I got that. But why not let me have a look? I’m the one they’ll come to if they have any problems.’
Sal didn’t respond and continued to fuss over Moll, who was finding it difficult to contain her enthusiasm. They hit traffic at the Gogar roundabout and halted. The silence became difficult to sustain.
‘Okay, Sal, what’s going on? I’ve been trying to ring you and it’s always gone to answering service or no signal. Did you have it switched off?’
Sal still didn’t reply. She sniffed and rummaged around in the glove compartment, grabbed a tissue, but didn’t answer, just looked straight ahead.
Viv blew out a huge breath. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
When Sal remained silent, Viv, about to explode, suddenly sensed that there must be an answer in her not answering, so she thought through the possibilities. There was no way Sal would behave like this without good cause. What could this mean? Once Viv had reminded herself to be rational she calmed, and thought straight. Eventually it struck her that the correspondence sent to Sal must relate to her, Viv, in some way, and because Sal was employed by Police Scotland she had an obligation to take it to them first.
As they pulled into Fettes car park, Sal spoke. ‘So you got there in the end?’
Viv, peeved, nodded with reluctance. ‘I still think if you trusted me you’d have let me see it first.’
Sal looked pissed off by this but hurried round to the boot, grabbed her kit, and strode off to the building. Viv wasn’t sure whether to follow or wait in the car, until she spotted Sal wedging the door with her boot as she spoke to the duty sergeant over her shoulder.
Viv skipped up the steps and took hold of the door. This was good. Both Viv and Sal had the same clearance at Fettes; not the highest, but high enough to get into the basement and through the first two sets of doors. Sal had warned the techie guys that she was coming in with whatever cloak and dagger issue she had, but they’d be surprised to see Viv, who was strong competition for them in their role as cyber analysts, the polite name for ethical hackers. Viv had been here a couple of months back working a case for Mac. One of her hair clients, a surgeon, had been discovered dirty dealing in organs and she’d been tasked with acquiring incriminating material to corroborate their suspicions. Viv succeeded in getting hold of the info, but not before she’d taken a serious kick in the kidney.
She trotted to keep up with Sal, whose pace didn’t reflect a woman who should be suffering from jetlag.
Chapter Twelve
Sal laid her ID card against a small digital panel and the door of the bunker slid open. Viv thought of the miles of corridors running beneath the Edinburgh Accies’ playing fields and could only guess at what they were used for. This was the DFU, or Digital Forensic Unit. The whole underground building had been designed during the Cold War. Scotland was peppered with redundant secret bunkers. This one was big enough to hole up lots of dignitaries for long periods of time. They had another door to release before stepping through into a buzzing, blue-grey technical haven. Monitors ran from wall to wall, each screen with a body, equally blue-grey for the want of sunlight, staring at it. Mostly pale, stale males, but also a couple of females who’d obviously picked short straws, otherwise they’d have been bagging Munros or windsurfing on this early spring bank holiday weekend.
Sal headed straight to one particular bloke, who looked up and smiled until he spotted Viv. ‘You . . .’ He quickly clicked his mouse and his screen went blank. Viv smiled, guessing if he clicked it again all that they’d see was a game of solitaire.
Sal didn’t give him time to continue. ‘I had to do it by the book, that’s why. I know she could do it . . .’ She hesitated. ‘But that’s not the point.’ She handed him her laptop. He booted it up and synchronized it with his own console − easier to read detail on his large screen.
Viv now knew that whatever had been sent to Sal, she’d thought it worthy of prosecution. There could be no other reason for doing the analysis in-house. Sal would want a clean history, meaning she’d not want Viv to tinker around leaving any kind of unusual cyber trail. Not that she would, but people who weren’t techie always believed what they saw on the TV. There are ways of cleaning up as you go with a computer, which only another hacker with a certain understanding would know. Viv belonged to a group called ‘Hacker Crackers’, but the fewer people who knew about that the better.
‘Bingo!’ The bloke looking at the laptop smiled up at Sal. ‘Not a professional job, thank goodness.’ He beckoned to Sal who looked over his shoulder. Viv stepped closer to view the screen and could see what he meant. On a largely black screen there was a list of numbers and symbols, among those lay the key to the servers through which the transaction had had to pass before it reached Sal’s inbox. On seeing that it was an easy process, Viv wandered across to a seat and rolled it over to the guy’s left. Everyone had their own way of tracing information but there were short routes and long routes. She favoured the former but was keen to see what kind of meal he’d make of it.
‘Sal, you do realize that this can’t take us to the person who struck the keys. Only to the account. This is only the beginning.’
Sal nodded to Viv. ‘They’ve really got it in for you, Viv, and whoever they are they know far too much about both of us.’
Viv screwed up her eyes. ‘What exactly did the email say?’
‘Once we’re through here I’ll show it to you. But the person was light on grammar. Not a comma or full stop to be had.’
‘So the question is, are they young and don’t do punctuation? Or trying to make us think that they can’t use it? Who, or what kind of person would do that? Let’s say they are young. It would be their norm to write without punctuating but they’d more likely use text speak.’
‘No, it wasn’t like that. But I’ll show you when Gordon’s through.’ Sal’s irritation was barely disguised.
Gordon didn’t look up from his task, rapidly tapping on keys and staring at the screen.
Viv was getting tetchy and tried to take a deep breath without being noticed. Sal gave her a severe eyeballing. Viv glanced round the room, intrigued by the other analysts with their heads down, and thought that if she had to do what they were doing all day she’d go mad. For her it was the joy of breaking a system whose designer believed it impenetrable that gave her a kick, but, like having a vindaloo, if she had to have one every night it would soon lose its appeal.
‘Bingo!’ Gordon exclaimed again.
Viv raised her eyebrows but wasn’t too hopeful. He turned and gestured to her to check the screen. He had traced both the server and the system that had sent it. The next tricky job was for him to find the actual machine that had been used. Machines, like most things these days, had a kind of DNA but within a corporate setting their numbers could be so close that it could take an age to find.
Sal said, ‘So what now?’
Gordon glanced at Viv then across to Sal. ‘Well, there are different ways of getting into a big system, of which this is a part.’ He hesitated.
Viv stepped in. ‘I think what he means is that there’s a quick way which is high risk and a slow way which is less risky but infinitely more dull.’
Gordon nodded. ‘And you forgot to mention that both leave a trail that could be traced back to my console at Police Scotland, which they’re not going to like unless there’s a conviction. So if this is for your personal attention and you’re not going for . . .’
Sal interrupted him. ‘Oh no. This is war. They’ve managed to get details about finances and legal advisors .
. . they couldn’t have got those without illegal means.’
Viv raised her eyebrows again, confused at Sal’s vagueness. ‘What do you mean, Sal? You think they’ve hacked into a bank account or solicitors’ system or what?’
Sal nodded. ‘Yep. I do. All of the above. How else could they have that kind of information? I don’t . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Wait a minute. In the early days when I first started here I used another account. I never use it now and I think I deactivated it.’
‘Let’s see if we can get that up.’ Viv edged closer to Gordon’s side and said, ‘May I?’ then continued, ‘It could be someone on the inside, an employee.’
Gordon, only concerned with minding his own back, ignored Viv and Sal’s exchange and said without sincerity, ‘No problem. But I’ll have to follow every move you make in case I have to justify the access − you’re on my login.’
In an attempt at being gracious, Viv rolled her chair back. ‘Sorry. On you go. I just thought . . .’
Sal shot her another glare and Viv didn’t finish her sentence. This kind of attitude was exactly why she wasn’t a permanent member of staff here or anywhere else. Viv was known not to play by team rules unless her arm was twisted up her back, but it was for those very same reasons that Mac and the NTF employed her.
The windowless room was making her feel claustrophobic. The whirr of air-conditioning units and cooling fans on computers maintained a constant hum. A galley type kitchen situated at the far end of the room had floor-to-ceiling glass along one side with no door, and a small sink, a microwave, and a kettle were built in to make sure no one could hide. To the right of this an area for relaxation was laid out with two sofas and a large, square coffee table with newspapers and magazines strewn over it. Liquids and computers were a lethal combination, and it was compulsory to keep drinks away from consoles. Viv glanced round the room and counted three, out of a couple of dozen desks, without cups at them. She smiled, delighted that she wasn’t in a room full of arse-lickers, although there was no evidence of Gordon rebelling.
