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

by Ian Sutherland

  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.

  At the top of the stairs, Jenny saw Disney princess cut-outs mounted on the bedroom doors with the forenames of the housemates pre-printed on them. Undeniably practical, but presumably done as some kind of in-joke between the housemates. Kim’s was Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Anna’s was Jasmine from Aladdin. Jenny wondered if there had been any rationale behind who was which princess. And if it had been malicious in any way, assuming that being likened to a Disney princess could even be done unkindly.

  Jenny reached in her coat pocket, found some latex gloves and pulled them over her hands. She pushed open the door to Anna’s room.

  It was smaller than she expected, though maybe that was the dark purple walls lending a claustrophobic feel to the room. A double bed in one corner took up much of the floor space. The cream covers were thrown back, as if the occupant had just got up. She noticed squares had been cut out of the sheets: the work of the crime scene team. Brightly coloured clothes were strewn across the back of a chair by a desk in another corner. Shoes, some with impossibly high heels, were piled up randomly underneath the desk.

  Evidence of Anna’s musicianship was everywhere. A cello leaned against one wall. She owned more than one, then. Next to it, hanging from their necks on wall mounts, was a violin and an acoustic guitar. A mouth organ lay discarded on the desk. On the printer, Jenny picked up some papers. A half-completed essay about someone called Dvořák. Jenny scanned the text and deduced he had been a 19th century composer. Lots of posters, mostly of music bands or album covers, brightened up the dark wall beside the bed. She recognised The Beatles, but the rest she’d never heard of. On the side table next to the bed, an empty iPod dock sat next to, of all things, a record player. It was a sixties style red box, open with a record in place. The round lever in the bottom corner was set to 33 rpm and, although Jenny had only ever owned CDs herself, she innately knew that meant it was set to play an album rather than a single. She lifted the arm. Automatically, the turntable rotated. She placed the needle on the record. The volume was set quite high. There was some audible crackling in the background, but the sound quality wasn’t too bad. Despite the haunting classical music not being to her taste, she left it playing anyway.

  Jenny continued to nose around.

  She sifted through the clothes hanging in the wardrobe behind the door. She saw well-worn denim jeans and baggy jumpers next to short dresses and see-through tops. Her student life and her nightlife. Were they two separate lives or one life completely intertwined? Was her killer from Trinity College or from the nights out that Kim had mentioned? Or both? Or from some other aspect of her life that she kept secret?

  The room had a fireplace, but with only an empty glass vase within its recess. On the mantel were three photos in matching frames. On the left was a studio style portrait of a middle-aged couple. From the likeness, especially the woman, Jenny guessed they were her parents. In the centre was a nice one of Anna and Kim in Trafalgar Square, their arms around each other’s waists, huge toothy grins plastered on their faces and pigeons perched on their heads and shoulders. The last picture was of Anna herself, picked out within an orchestra, serious concentration on her face, playing her cello and wearing a stunning lime-green ballgown.

  Jenny sat down on the bed, disturbing a giant teddy bear, and studied the three photos of Anna’s life from a distance. The parents from her past, her closest friend from the present and her love for performing music, her stolen future. Anna Parker’s whole life summed up in three images.

  Jenny wondered if three images could sum up her own life. She herself had not gone to university, unlike both her older brothers who had studied academic subjects like Engineering and Politics. Instead, she had been naturally artistic and, following A-Levels, had become a trainee hairdresser in a top salon in London, believing it was the most practical way to earn a living from her impractical skills. After two years, she had decided that she enjoyed working with the public but found washing, brushing and styling hair meaningless. At the same time she had just been ungracefully dumped by her first love, a trainee officer in the City of London police whom she’d dated since the age of seventeen. In a fit of rage or a bout of inspiration – she’d never really worked out which – she applied to join the Met. She’d never looked back.

  Jenny wondered how different her life would have been if she’d gone to universi
ty like her brothers and most of her school friends. She’d probably have chosen one far away from her childhood home in Kent. Perhaps as far as —

  She caught sight of movement out of the corner of her eye.

  The door was slowly being pushed ajar.

  She felt the hair lift on her arms and nape. A knife blade glinted in the gap between door and frame. She felt the colour drain from her face.

  She rapidly looked around.

  There was nowhere to run to.

  CHAPTER 6

  Half-empty aluminium foil trays lay strewn about Brody’s desk. Thai spices, initially bright and fragrant, had dissipated, transmuting into a sticky fug that attached itself to Brody’s cotton shirt and denim jeans. Slowly, a queasy feeling forged in Brody’s stomach. He wasn’t sure whether to blame the takeaway meal or the growing dread from hours of continuous failure.

  SWY’s defences were amongst the best he’d ever seen. It was as if every security precaution he’d ever recommended had been collated and applied to this one site.

  He was running out of ideas.

  For the umpteenth time that evening, Brody logged back into the CrackerHack forum. He scrolled through that day’s chat logs, tentatively scanning for Matt_The_Hatter’s announcement that he’d got root already.

  He reached the bottom. Nothing there.

  Thank God.

  Earlier, he’d spotted a new post from Matt_The_Hatter and had thought the game was up already. But it had turned out to be nothing more than Matt_The_Hatter arrogantly picking on a newbie for asking dumb questions on the forum. Matt_The_Hatter must still be overly confident of pwning SWY if he felt able to take time out to torment new victims.

  A few of the members had been chatting to each other about the challenge, quickly polarising into Fingal or Matt_The_Hatter supporters. Some pointed out that Fingal must have a massive ego if he thought he could outwit Matt_The_Hatter in a get root challenge. Gratefully, he saw that some more experienced forum members had fought his defence, denouncing Matt_The_Hatter as little more than a script kiddie. His friend, Doc_Doom, had gone one step further and pointed out that Matt_The_Hatter exhibited borderline personality disorder tendencies. Which was effortlessly summarised by another member, who commented that Matt_The_Hatter was just a forum bully and that anyone supporting him was only scared shitless of his infamous vengeance.