by Sam Blake
In the women’s changing room Sarah Jane flopped down on to the slatted bench that ran around the walls opposite a huge bank of steel grey lockers.
‘My God, I’m shattered. What part of me thought getting up this early to train on a Sunday morning was a good idea?’ She put her hand on her shoulder and rotated it carefully, her face taut. ‘The things I do for you, Cat Connolly . . .’
‘How does it feel?’ Cathy indicated Sarah Jane’s shoulder as she hauled a fresh towel out of her locker, running it over her face and neck. She sat down beside Sarah Jane and leaned her back against the cool plaster wall.
‘Much better. Less stiff, but I need to keep moving it and doing all the exercises. The doc thinks I should be able to get back to proper sparring very soon.’
Sarah Jane had had a good session with McIntyre on the pads while Cathy was in the ring with each of the boys, but Cathy knew she was desperate to get back in the ring properly. Sarah Jane interrupted her thoughts.
‘So what’s this about the ERU? You going to transfer there instead?’
Cathy’s text to Sarah Jane about the promotions list had been a long one. She knew precisely how mad Cathy had been, and why.
‘If I can get in, what do you think?’
Sarah Jane laughed. ‘I’ve think I’ve got a lot to thank the ERU for, so I’d say that it’s a brilliant idea. So, what does O’Rourke say?’
Cathy pursed her lips, pausing for a moment. ‘He thinks it’s a good idea.’
‘Did he actually say that or are you trying to read his mind again?’
Cathy grinned sheepishly; Sarah Jane knew all about her obsession with O’Rourke, and exactly how difficult it was to know what he was thinking at any given moment.
‘He said it. Really. Actually did.’
‘He’ll miss you.’
‘He said that too.’ Cathy glanced sideways at Sarah Jane under her eyelashes. ‘He’s transferring to Limerick.’
‘What?’ Her hand still on her shoulder, Sarah Jane leaned forwards and looked around at Cathy, her face incredulous. ‘And how do you feel about that?’
Cathy shrugged. ‘Not great, obviously, but he said I should go down to visit him . . .’ She said it deliberately innocently, not quite looking Sarah Jane in the eye.
‘Really? You have had a busy week. I’m going to need to know every detail of that conversation.’
Cathy laughed and for a moment she was back on her doorstep, seeing O’Rourke out. She could feel herself starting to blush. She’d have to fill Sarah Jane in for sure, but that was a conversation for somewhere more private than the gym changing room, even if they were the only people there.
She needed to change the subject. ‘Tell me what you’re working on, it sounds interesting.’
Sarah Jane took a slug of water from the bottle beside her. ‘Well, I started looking at the whole way the Trump campaign had mined data from Facebook and how they’d crafted their election messages to tick boxes for the broadest number of people. It’s one of the theories behind why he kept changing tack every time he spoke to a different group.’
‘I thought that was because he was nuts.’
Sarah Jane grimaced. ‘So did I, but it’s a bit more sinister than that. So that led me on to a whole load of interesting stuff about personal data and how much information people give away without realising it, how we all leave this online footprint and how easy it is for someone to hack your bank account or get your credit card details with just a few pieces of information.’
‘That’s refreshing. As if there isn’t enough crime in the real world.’ Cathy bent over to undo the laces on her trainers. ‘I was reading something the other day about Bluetooth devices in people’s houses getting hacked. Some guy did an experiment and got this animal toy that talks to the child who owns it, to say all sorts of random stuff. It was a cat toy, and then he gets it talking to an Amazon Echo in the same room and it gets Alexa to buy cat food from Amazon.’
Sarah Jane burst out laughing. ‘My God, but that’s actually terrible, being able to speak directly to a child from outside the house?’ She shook her head. ‘We’ve really no idea of the level of exposure we have, my dad keeps going on about it.’
Sarah Jane’s father, Ted Hansen, was a Pulitzer prize-winning war reporter; he understood a huge amount more about threats, online and offline, than most people. He was one of CNN’s top correspondents, his face familiar with viewers all over the world. It suddenly clicked in Cathy’s head that there was a very good chance Ted Hansen knew Anna Lockharte.
‘He’s dead right. By the way, has he ever mentioned a professor at Trinity to you? She’s originally from New York, but she’s an expert in international terrorism—’
Sarah Jane interrupted Cathy before she could continue. ‘Anna Lockharte? She’s amazing. And gorgeous. I think my dad has a crush on her. He reads all her papers. I think they met originally at some convention somewhere. She’s one of his go-to sources when he needs to fact-check. How do you know her?’
Cathy unlaced the other trainer and kicked her shoes off. She really didn’t have the energy to get into the shower, and suddenly realised that sitting down had been a very bad idea. But she hadn’t seen Sarah Jane in what felt like ages. They had a lot of catching up to do.
‘We’re working on this case – two actually, like I said. A student from Trinity was killed in a hit-and-run and a friend of his apparently committed suicide the same night jumping off Dillon’s Park.’
Sarah Jane raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Dillon’s Park? Seriously?’
Cathy sighed. ‘I know. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but then I don’t think it was suicide. Nor does O’Rourke.’
Sarah Jane had known Cathy long enough to understand what she could and couldn’t say. She didn’t probe more.
‘Wait till I tell my dad you know Anna Lockharte. He’s always talking about her. He’s got this theory that terrorism is going to move into cyberspace. The likes of ISIS will still orchestrate real world atrocities, but they could paralyse a whole country if they attacked it online.’
‘That’s a pretty scary thought.’
Sarah Jane pulled a face. ‘It looks like Russia’s doing it already. There was an attack in the Ukraine that looks like it emanated from an Internet provider whose technical facilities were being serviced by a company linked to the Russian intelligence agency. The attack was a ransomware one, but the virus encrypted all of the files on the computers it infected and some got completely wiped or their files got rewritten. It was a bit like the WannaCry ransomware attack on the NHS in the UK, but there was no kill switch.’ She paused. ‘That UK attack seemed to be a rogue event, but what if it had been perpetrated by a terrorist organisation? Think of the chaos, the lives that could have been lost.’
*
Punching in her pass code, Cathy let the inner door of Dun Laoghaire Garda station’s public office fall closed behind her and trotted up the stairs. She could feel the muscles in her thighs and calves burning. Soon she’d be training twice a day – in the gym down the road from the station in the mornings, and over in Ballymun every evening. She couldn’t afford not to win back her title this year.
O’Rourke was already in his office when she rounded the top of the stairs; she could see his light on over the door. She knocked gently.
‘Come in.’
Sitting at his desk, his shirtsleeves already rolled back, he didn’t look up as she entered but seemed to already know it was her.
‘Team will be in shortly and I’ll brief everyone but we’ve got both sets of phone records.’ He rifled through a pile of printouts next to his desk. ‘Sit. You need to concentrate on this.’
She didn’t need to be told twice. She sat down in the chair on the other side of his desk and leaned forward, trying to get a look at the records. He pulled them out of her view, a twinkle in his eye.
‘Hold your horses.’
She glared at him. ‘Come on, tell me, don’t make me wait. Th
at’s cruel.’
He raised his eyebrows playfully like he was considering making her wait even longer, then cleared his throat.
‘So Lauren first.’ He swung the call record around to face her. ‘She called a pay-as-you-go mobile at 3 p.m., 3:10 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. and then sent a text: NEED TO TALK. V URGENT.
‘That was followed by several calls to the same number that look like they hit the message box, until she tried again at eight that evening. That call was answered, the conversation lasted eleven minutes.
‘That was followed by a text twenty minutes later: Sorry. V tierd. That was spelled wrong. Meet me at Dillon’s Park at 10:30. We can talk there xxxxx.
‘Lauren replied, Where’s Dillon’s Park? Plus a series of emoji hearts and kisses. The response was, Dalkey. Get the Dart, go through the village turn right onto Coliemore Road. Keep walking to the end.’
It took Cathy a moment to process this. She could suddenly see Lauren walking anxiously through the darkness along the road.
‘That works with the time she got off the train and the times we have her on CCTV. She must have gone straight there.’
‘It certainly seems that way. She also called Tom’s own mobile at nine, but doesn’t appear to have left a message – call lasted less than a second.’
‘Like she got his message minder and hung up.’
‘That may be so.’
‘So do you think she was meeting him? That it was his pay-as-you-go she called the first time, and then she mixed up the numbers with his regular mobile? Whatever she needed to talk about seems fairly urgent.’
‘He was a student. Why would he have needed a second phone?’ He frowned. ‘Do you think he used it for Tinder or something?’
Cathy shook her head, smiling. ‘People don’t use a second phone for dating sites, they use their Instagram or Snapchat user accounts to connect with people. If teenagers have a second phone it’s to contact their drug dealers.’
‘So perhaps he was dealing? We need to explore that.’ He paused. ‘OK, on to Tom’s mobile. He called Lauren mid-afternoon and they had a long chat. Then he called another number almost immediately, one he calls regularly – we’re checking that. The call lasted just a few seconds, looks like he got voicemail, he then texted that number: You around? Need to talk to u. No more email. Sounds like he’s as sick of his inbox as I am.’ Cathy smirked as he continued. ‘Then it appears Tom also texted a pay-as-you-go number at 7:30 that evening, with ?xx.’
‘The same one as Lauren?’ Cathy couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.
‘I wish.’ He scowled. ‘A different one, but that’s not to say he and Lauren didn’t have some complex reason for having several untraceable phones. If she needed to talk, his question mark makes sense.’
Cathy looked at him, shaking her head. ‘They were students. None of it makes sense – why all the cloak and dagger stuff?’
‘Maybe one of them was blackmailing the other? Maybe someone was blackmailing them both? Maybe it made things more fun – I don’t know, all I’ve got are the facts.’ He tapped the printout with his forefinger.
‘Keep going.’
‘So Tom receives a reply from the same pay-as-you-go – that could be Lauren’s, we don’t know – saying usual time xxx. Then at eleven there’s the text from his mother, and his reply that we know about.’
‘So what was he doing between eight and eleven? Meeting Lauren at the park when she got off the DART?’
‘Possibly. The timing seems to fit, assuming he went somewhere else first before he went to the park. Perhaps he needed a drink? There was alcohol in his blood, according to Saunders.’
Cathy pulled her necklace from the neck of her sweater as she pursed her lips, her brow furrowed.
‘It was freezing, though, why meet so far from the house, why not meet in one of the pubs in Dalkey?’
‘Maybe they didn’t want to be seen together.’
Maybe – there was that word again. Sometimes she felt like it haunted her. As she was always saying to 007, ‘maybe’ didn’t stand up in court. End of. This wasn’t about maybe, although granted they had to speculate sometimes to understand all the possibilities, to see where to take an investigation next, but ultimately a successful case had to be about the facts.
‘I’m going to get all the calls to these numbers checked for the last month and we can see if we can piece together more from their previous texts. They are probably all to college friends about homework and who’s dating who, but we’ll see.’
Cathy ran her necklace over her nose. ‘Have house-to-house turned anything up on Lauren going into Dillon’s Park? Did anyone see her?’
He frowned. ‘A lad who lives opposite saw a woman with a dog at around 10.30. There were a couple of joggers earlier. No one seems to have seen anyone who looked like Lauren accompanied by anyone else. The dog walker may have seen or heard something, though. I’m thinking of putting out a call on the news for information, I’m sure she’ll come forward if she knows we’re looking for her. It’s looking like we might have to appeal for witnesses to Tom’s accident too, but . . .’ He stopped for a moment. ‘First, forensics . . .’
Cathy raised her eyebrows and looked at him. ‘You sound more like you’re in CSI every day.’
‘Fuck off. Forensics is what they do – the technical bureau, if you want to be correct . . .’
‘Always.’
She stifled a smile, catching his eye. The twinkle was there again. It was like he’d been incredibly tense for the past few days and now he’d told her about Limerick he was back to his old self. She still found the thought of not seeing him every day a tiny bit heartbreaking, but he’d invited her down to Limerick, and she was sure that he’d been thinking about kissing her the night before. Of course she was famous for getting things like that wrong, but something had definitely changed. It was like he was more relaxed or something – happier for sure. She knew he was hungry for promotion, that that would inevitably mean that they’d end up working in different places, but maybe that’s what he wanted.
Cathy mentally shook herself. Where had that thought even come from? Right now she needed to keep focused on the case and her training and on her own next move. There was no room in her schedule to start getting miserable.
There’d be time enough for that when he’d gone.
‘So the technical bureau. . .’ O’Rourke hesitated, ‘aren’t finished yet but they’re collating the data from the collision team.’
Cathy leaned back in her chair, stretching, her abs sore. ‘When will they have an idea of the vehicle involved?’
‘It’s going to be a few more days at least. As soon as they have a make and model we’ll put out a call to see if any of those vehicles have been repaired recently. We’ve got all the local garages on alert already, looking for a vehicle with blue metallic paint and recent damage.’
Cathy looked thoughtful. ‘The thing is, how did the person who hit him know he was going to be there, and at that time, when no one seems to be able to tell us where he went for these walks? Tom must have told them, or arranged to meet them.’
‘That,’ O’Rourke scowled, ‘is a very good point.’
Chapter 19
Sunday, 10 a.m.
It was starting to rain as he waited for the lights to change so he could cross the road. High up to his left a train rattled over the bridge. He glanced up at its green carriages as it slid along the line like some sort of giant snake, empty this early on a Sunday morning. It was quiet at ground level too, no sign of the usual coagulating traffic of the morning rush hour. It was usually crazy here, the diesel engines of buses drowning the cars, the roar punctuated by sirens. He didn’t know how people coped with all the noise.
He’d never get used to the cold either. He winced as needle-like darts of rain bit at his skull through his close-cropped dark hair. For now, Dublin served its purpose. It was close to London, but far enough away for him to feel secure. He thrust his han
ds into the pockets of his dark navy jacket, the shoulder emblazoned with the Superdry logo. It made him invisible in the city crowd, his jeans and Nikes like a uniform, the backpack containing his laptop slung over one shoulder.
He watched a girl across the road hitch her own backpack, a patchwork of button badges, onto her shoulder, the strap pulling her denim jacket open awkwardly, revealing her neat breast, thinly covered by a cheap T-shirt. Even from here he could see the lines of her bra. He watched as she glanced up at the lights, shivering, her long wispy chestnut hair blowing across her face, the ends of it a dark blonde like it had been dip-dyed. She pulled it away from her mouth and the light changed. Head down, she hurried towards him.
As he reached the damp, dark grey paving stones on the opposite side of the street a smile twitched across his face. Girls were always incredibly grateful for his help when their webcams were compromised, and if they weren’t, he made sure that they understood the consequences of what was happening to them, subtly, explaining how badly wrong some of these situations could go. He didn’t need to explain often. They let him into their private spaces to show him the emails on their laptops, and he listened to how their lives would fall apart if the images were made public, how they couldn’t possibly afford to pay the blackmailers, whoever they were.
How they could never tell anyone that this had happened.
He’d nod, warming his hands on the mug of tea they had brought him, telling them in his soft voice how he could solve their problems: that it was better to use their own computer; that it might take a couple of tries but he could usually block the accounts, remove the images remotely from the hacker’s system. Cyberspace was different from the real world; there were walls online but every wall could be breached, and whoever did this wouldn’t be expecting a cyber-attack, had usually left the back door open. He built their trust, speaking ardently in a language they didn’t understand.
