The Malhoa Connection

by Estelle Ryan

  I frowned when Francine’s face lost colour under her make-up. Even with her masterful skills, she had not been able to hide her injuries completely. It only made them look less severe. Her left eye was still badly swollen, but at least she could see through it. She had layered her make-up thick enough to hide any bruising, including the dark rings I was sure were under her eyes.

  Today, she was wearing tailored red pants, a black shirt and shiny black boots. But her usual flamboyant style was muted. I didn’t like it. I also didn’t like the micro-expressions I was registering on her face. I leaned forward, keeping my tone and expression gentle. “Tell me.”

  She nodded and handed her half-eaten plate to Manny. He scowled at it, then at her. “You need to eat.”

  “That’s all I can stomach for now.”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, his expression changing to concern. Then he gave a single nod and picked up her fork. I barely managed to suppress a shudder when he used her utensil to finish what was left on her plate. How unhygienic.

  I forced my eyes away from him only to see the amusement on Francine’s face. Her smile was small, but genuine. She took a breath and shifted on the sofa. “Okay. You know I’ve been thinking that maybe I know who the Collector is, right?”

  I nodded, ignoring Bianca’s sharp inhale.

  “I’m going to tell you everything I have and you need to tell me what you think.” She waited for me to nod. “So, twenty-something years ago, I was at a hackers’ conference in Las Vegas. You know those conferences where a government wants insight into the latest hacking secrets and promises no prosecution for info? Yeah, one of those.

  “Well, I met a brilliant, but very lazy hacker there. She could be in and out of a network so fast that it almost never mattered that she left her fingerprints all over the place.”

  “What do you mean, fingerprints?” Thierry asked.

  Francine looked at Thierry. “Every hacker has a signature—a way they code or even a word or pseudonym they leave in the coding that can be traced to them. There are very few hackers who are good enough to leave no trace. Some of the best hackers like to leave their hacker name to claim victory over that system, but it’s usually extremely well-disguised. Only another brilliant hacker would be able to notice it.” She turned back to me. “The difference between those hackers and this one was that she never left her fingerprint for the victory. She was just too lazy to clean up her coding.

  “She totally caught my attention when I met her at the conference. She was so nonchalant about her hacks. She didn’t care that people knew she’d been there. She had this arrogant confidence that she would never be caught. Even if they knew it was her, they wouldn’t have evidence to win a case against her in court.”

  “Was she right?” Daniel asked.

  “Well, yeah.” Francine shrugged. “She was really good. No. Better than good. She was one of those brilliant hackers. And twenty-odd years later, she’s still at it.” She paused for a moment. “I first noticed her signature a week ago. It took me a minute to place it. Mostly because it didn’t look exactly the same as it did two decades ago. Which is totally normal.

  “Anyhoo, I started looking for her signature in all the places that had been hacked by the Collector. And I found her grubby fingerprints in six more places. That’s when I went to Ty for more help.”

  “And got your butt kicked.” Vinnie lowered his brow and shook his finger at her. “Still pissed at you about going alone.”

  She blew him a kiss. “It was totally worth it though.”

  “Ty got back to you,” Colin said.

  “Yup.” She pointed at her injured eyebrow. “Getting my butt kicked helped us. I told Ty the guys had mentioned the White Elephant forum.” She glanced at Thierry and Bianca. “It’s a dark web forum that is used for all kinds of illegal communities to stay in touch. And Ty traced five different profiles on White Elephant to her.”

  “Stop.” I raised my hand. “Why don’t you use her name? Because you don’t have it?”

  “Yup.” Francine sighed. “When I met her, she introduced herself as Anna Smith. We all laughed, because it was so clearly a pseudonym. Just to be on the safe side, I did a very thorough check to make sure there were no Anna Smiths I could connect to any of the intel we have. That’s one of the reasons it’s taken me so long to tell you this. I wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row.”

  I raised both eyebrows and blinked slowly so she could see my annoyance at her usage of that inane expression. That brought another smile to her face.

  “Ty is busy figuring out how she is using her five identities on White Elephant. Already he noticed that one identity often pushes up the prices for the artwork the Collector puts up for auction. This auction site is connected to White Elephant, but whereas White Elephant is a forum, the auction site is a full-on marketplace.” She looked at Daniel. “Something we can give to the cybercrime division to close down.”

  I’d known Francine for almost nine years. She’d been my best friend for most of that time. I knew her mannerisms. Her storytelling process. I knew she was building up to a big reveal and I was becoming impatient. I made a motion with my hand to hurry her along.

  “Yes. Of course.” She straightened, some of her flamboyance returning. “I might not know her real-life identity, but I know her hacker name.” She gave a dramatic pause. “‘Wraith’, but it’s written in typical hacker style as WR417H.”

  As she was spelling out the hacker’s name, my mind was racing.

  “Wraith.” The word came out as a soft whisper. I cleared my throat. “E.I. Dolon.”

  “What are you talking about, Doc?” Manny looked from me to Francine and back.

  Francine’s smile lifted her cheeks and she winced, touching her bruised cheek gently. “You see it, right?’

  “For love of all the saints.” Manny glared at me. “Talk.”

  “A wraith is a ghost or a ghostlike image. ‘Wraith’ is often used to describe the exact representation of a living person seen as an apparition just before their death.” I could not deny this connection. “An ‘eidolon’ is a spectre, a phantom, an unsubstantial image.”

  “Eidolon as in E.I. Dolon,” Francine added.

  “The so-called owner of Almada,” Daniel said.

  “Holy hell.”

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  FOR A MOMENT, THERE was complete silence in the living area. This was a lot to process. This was too closely related to be a coincidence.

  “So, um, are we now thinking that Wraith is the Collector?” Thierry asked.

  “Maybe.” Francine looked at me. “I don’t know?”

  I took a moment to consider this. “It would be too presumptive. We don’t have enough yet to be sure the woman you met is the Collector.”

  Francine nodded. “She could just be a hacker working for the Collector. Maybe in the same way as everyone else is doing the Collector’s dirty work—by being forced into it.”

  “Too much speculation.” And I hated it. I needed more data. “What did Wraith look like?”

  “Oh, my.” Francine looked up and left, recalling a visual memory. “Shorter than me. I would guesstimate around a metre sixty or sixty-two. She had dreadlocks that could’ve been her own or could’ve been a wig.” She closed her eyes and frowned. When she opened her eyes, she shook her head. “Nah. It was her own hair. Dark skin, but I can’t say for certain she’s African. Her facial features were sharper. Mixed-race, maybe.”

  “Or Northern African,” Bianca said. “I have a friend from Algeria. She could be Italian, Iraqi, Portuguese or Irish. She would disappear in an American or British crowd.”

  “True.” Francine blinked a few times. “But no. Wraith’s skin was too dark to be Libyan or Algerian. She could be from Oxford, England, born to parents who came from a melting pot, so this kind of guessing is not helping. Oxford. Huh. You know, she did speak with a slight accent. Her English was British English, but with another accent thrown in.”
/>   “You have an incredible memory,” Bianca said.

  “But it might not be useful.” I shook my head slowly, thinking of Colin’s aliases. “If Wraith is the hacker working for the Collector, or if she is the Collector, we still have to keep in mind that we’re dealing with someone exceptional. It’s not far-fetched to consider that the Collector or Wraith would make generous use of disguises.”

  “True.” Francine sighed. “But the dreadlocks were real. Of that I’m sure. She was a total goth chick at the conference and that could’ve been a disguise. Her clothes were very baggy and... huh... people even joked about her dying from heat stroke in Las Vegas. She was always dressed in black from head to toe.”

  “Do you mean this literally?” I often had to confirm with neurotypicals.

  “Yup.” Francine waved her hand from her head to her feet. “She even wore black gloves. Back then, I thought she was being careful not to leave her fingerprints anywhere. But maybe she was hiding something else. The only skin we saw was above her jawline. She always had a black scarf around her neck too. No one thought too much about that. Most people there were really weird.”

  “It could be that she had some distinguishing marks on her hands or neck.” Daniel lifted his hand, palm out. “And that’s where I’m going to stop speculating. But it is something to keep in mind.”

  “She was really brilliant. And dynamic. Without her even trying, the others would hang around her.” Francine gasped. “Huh. She was obsessed with Greek mythology. When she wasn’t talking about coding and hacking, she was going on and on and on about Greek gods and goddesses. Oh, my God!” She stared at me, her eyes wide. “Her favourite was the goddess of misery.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Oizys.”

  “The insurance company.” Manny rubbed his hands over his head. “Bloody hell.”

  “I’m just going to come out and say what we’re all thinking. Wraith is the Collector.” Bianca leaned a bit back when we all looked at her. “Right?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” Vinnie slammed his right fist on his thigh. “Now we just need her real name and location.” He frowned. “Hey, Jen-girl? Are you surprised that the Collector is a chick? I mean, she’s been a pretty brutal psychopath.”

  “We haven’t yet established that Wraith is the Collector. Or that either is a psychopath.” Yet I took a moment to think about this. “Male and female psychopaths share core characteristics like a complete lack of remorse and empathy. Female psychopaths, more than men, use their sexuality to manipulate and get what they want. They also have a grandiose sense of self-worth, a narcissistic sense of entitlement. Not all psychopaths are violent, females less often than males, but when they are, they are incredibly cruel.”

  “Like the Collector,” Daniel said. “Wraith.”

  I thought about it some more. “Empirical data has shown that female serial killers are probably genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes, but often stress and trauma from their past contribute to their aggression and instability.”

  “This is some serious instability, y’all.” Vinnie’s Texan accent didn’t succeed in bringing levity.

  “You won’t see this in their everyday interaction with people,” I said. “Not if they don’t want you to. They can be charming, very personable. They can even make people believe that they are the victim of a witch hunt. There are far too many variables in diagnosing psychopathy to make it safe to come to any conclusions about the Collector or Wraith.”

  “But it is not far-fetched to believe that the Collector is a woman and very possibly a psychopath, right?” Pink asked.

  “It’s possible.” Yet I wasn’t confident declaring that Wraith was the Collector. Not yet.

  “Moving on for the moment.” Francine glanced at me, then grinned at Vinnie. “You’re going to love this, Vin. There’s another company to add to your confusion.”

  Vinnie groaned and crossed his arms, but there was no real annoyance in his nonverbal cues.

  “So... Ty hasn’t found much yet on the five profiles Wraith is using, but he did find the mention of an oil company in one of her private conversations on White Elephant. And yes, Pink, before you ask, Ty is that good. He can worm his way into a private chat room without anyone knowing.”

  Manny tapped his index finger on her knee. “What company?”

  “NzingaOil.” Francine nodded when Pink leaned over to pick his tablet up from the coffee table. “Their website is not very detailed. They are an Angolan oil company with offshore rigs and investments all over Europe. But that’s all I have on them for now.”

  “Conhecedor for shipping, Almada for venture capital, Oizys for insurance and now NzingaOil?” Bianca shook her head. “I don’t know how you guys keep all this straight in your heads.”

  “By figuring out what connects them.” I was excited about these new discoveries. “Apart from Wraith being the obvious nexus, I need more data. It will give me a clearer picture of what is driving the Collector to commit these heinous crimes. And if we have a motive, it will be easier to find his or her true identity.”

  “What about Jake’s source?” Thierry asked. “What do we know about this person?”

  “Not much,” Colin said. “Except that Jake has been steadily feeding Armando and the others intel that we can’t trust.”

  Daniel nodded. “Because it might be Wraith or the Collector giving the source this intel. This is the risk we take when trusting a confidential informant. There’s always the chance they have a hidden agenda.”

  “And we’ve learned that the Collector’s hidden agendas have hidden agendas.” Pink grunted and leaned back in his chair. “We need to find out who Jake’s source is.”

  “That we do.” Manny glanced at Colin. “And we need to figure out what Paulo’s story is. How big a risk is he to us, Frey?”

  “A big risk.” Colin’s lips tightened to a thin line as he took his time to look at everyone. “Watch your back. That man cannot be trusted.”

  “What’s the story between you two?” Daniel’s question was gentle.

  It still caused a strong emotional reaction in Colin. He clenched his jaw for a moment and took a few slow breaths. I could see his internal struggle to decide how much to divulge. “When my path crossed his the first time...” He swallowed, then shook his head. “Five people’s lives were irrevocably changed.”

  “Sounds like a story you don’t like to share,” Daniel said.

  He nodded and took my hand. “Jenny knows.”

  “You’re going to have to tell us, Frey.” Manny must have seen Colin’s distress. He was uncharacteristically patient. “Sort it out in your head and get ready. You’re telling me everything.”

  Colin’s nod was tight, his hand gripping mine.

  “Okey-dokey. Another change of topic.” Francine winked at Colin and moved to the edge of her seat. “I’ve downloaded all the data Inge shared in her cloud account.”

  “But it doesn’t look helpful,” Pink added. “I’m still looking, but don’t get your hopes up.”

  “And because I don’t trust any intel we get from the church basement, I’ve accessed the shipping manifests Inge showed you,” Francine said. “Not her copies though. The real deal. I’m busy running searches to see if any of the museums and galleries we found that the Collector targeted have any connection to those manifests. I’ll let you know if we can add to the three Inge found.”

  “Not now.” Manny put his hand on her back as he glanced at his watch. “It’s not late, but I think we can all do with an early night.” He narrowed his eyes when she inhaled. “One argument out of your mouth and I will throw out your shoes and your make-up.”

  Francine’s hand flew to her throat, her shock genuine. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Watch me, supermodel. You are tired, you didn’t sleep much last night and you’ve been at it the whole day.” His expression softened. “Pink can continue running searches. You need to rest.”

  Her easy capitulation was conf
irmation of what I’d seen in her nonverbal cues. She was exhausted. I had no doubt that she would be up early to take over from Pink, searching for more intel on Wraith. I also trusted her to know when to give her body and mind the rest they needed to be in top form.

  I was tired, but not yet ready to go to sleep. Going to bed this early would disrupt my routine more than it had been already been disrupted. For the next few hours, I planned to go over this new intel and see if and how it fitted in with what we already knew. And when I was ready, I would go to bed. I had inspected our room and bathroom. This was one of the cleanest accommodations I’d yet encountered and I felt confident that anxiety about hygiene would not be the issue that would interfere with my sleep.

  It would be the concern that finding the Collector’s and Wraith’s true identities and stopping her—or them—might come too late.

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  I STARED AT THE SHIPPING manifests taped to the crate in front of me. We’d arrived at the church just after nine this morning. For the last two hours I’d been studying every bit of intel on display.

  Whenever we were working on a particularly complex case and I still hadn’t drawn connections between the many entities, concepts and data we’d uncovered, there was still a sense of cohesion. Not here.

  I stepped away from the crates and sighed. I should make time to mentally write a Mozart concerto. Or maybe one of his longer works. It had been a long time since I’d mentally written out Don Giovanni. When performed, this opera was around a hundred and sixty-six minutes long. It gave me more than enough material to write and, in the process, clear my mind.

  I particularly loved writing the music of the scene in the garden outside Don Giovanni’s palace towards the end of the first act. Numerous times I’d wondered how this opera had sounded when first performed by the Prague Italian opera, when Mozart had been a mere thirty-one years old.