by Chan Ho-Kei
“You know all that from the detective agency?”
“No. I spoke to their previous domestic helper.” N pulled up another photo, this one of a fiftyish Southeast Asian woman. “Her name’s Rosalie, and she’d been employed by the To household for more than ten years. She was fired last year and now works for a family in Ho Man Tin. It was easy to track her down through her employment agency. I pretended to be a school social worker and said that Violet was experiencing some emotional problems, so I needed her help to answer some questions.”
“Violet has been seeing her brother secretly?”
“Violet feels that her brother is the only person she can open up to, and Mr. To is just a stranger. But the brother seems to have been a bad influence on Violet. He came up with the plan of attack against your sister. A regular schoolgirl like Violet would never have thought of stealing personal data to turn the internet against Siu-Man.”
Rage bubbled up in Nga-Yee—she’d never considered this. Little Seven was Siu-Man’s classmate, and even if she’d decided out of a misplaced sense of justice or prejudice that Siu-Man was a bad seed who needed to be eliminated, she’d never have pushed her so far without the Rat’s help. The Rat was an adult. Instead of correcting his sister, he became her coconspirator, using his tech know-how to help her. That was unforgivable.
Violet’s family background was a surprise too. Nga-Yee thought back to the first Popcorn post, and how it sneered at Siu-Man for being brought up by a single parent—yet Violet was in the same boat. Nga-Yee could guess why the stepdad had hired a detective to tail the brother. In his place she’d have done the same: he knew the young man was a bad influence. Best to find out more about him. Perhaps there’d be a weak spot or a guilty secret to grab hold of, leverage to stop him from seeing Violet.
“The way Rosalie was talking,” said N, leaning back, “she cared about Violet a lot. She watched her grow up, after all, and was sort of a mother to her. Maybe if she hadn’t left and Violet had had another person to talk to, she wouldn’t have gotten into this farcical situation.”
“You’ve said a lot. Are you trying to tell me this wasn’t Violet’s fault?” Nga-Yee almost yelled.
“It’s not my job to decide who’s right or wrong. I’m just here to help you get revenge,” said N simply. “I thought you’d like to know more about Violet’s background. She’s the enemy, isn’t she, in this blood feud?”
Nga-Yee didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t have said when it began, but she’d stopped thinking of Violet as a human being, seeing her only as a target, a personification of guilt itself. She wanted Violet to be tortured, and she’d forgotten that there was any kind of reason behind this need for revenge.
So Violet didn’t have a mother to love her—that’s not an excuse for turning evil, thought Nga-Yee. She tamped down the pity rising up in her and hardened her heart till she was nothing but pure vengeance. Violet would have to pay in blood for what she’d done.
For the next hour Nga-Yee and N watched Violet in silence. When Nga-Yee finally asked what their next step would be, all N said was, “If you’re bored, you can go home. Revenge isn’t a Pot Noodle, it won’t be done in three minutes.”
Nga-Yee said nothing. What she didn’t know was that behind his poker face, N was considering all kinds of strategies for turning their present knowledge into future action. He’d spent the last few days trying to come up with plots that Violet To and her brother wouldn’t see through. It was much easier to uncover the truth than to predict what human beings would do, yet N preferred the latter. Setting a trap was far more thrilling and challenging than solving puzzles.
Beep!
Just as Nga-Yee was wondering what the point of this surveillance was, the laptop in front of N let out a sharp noise.
“Ah, he’s here,” N called out, opening the van door.
Nga-Yee steadied herself—this must be the next step. Who was here? She looked out and saw Ducky, the guy she’d seen at the hotel, a Starbucks cup in his hand. His expression didn’t change when his eyes met hers.
“I’m counting on you tonight,” said N to Ducky, and headed out of the van.
“What’s going on?” asked Nga-Yee as N stood just outside the van door.
“Changing shift,” said N. Ducky took his seat at the desk and started typing incomprehensible strings of text into the laptop. “I can’t watch her twenty-four hours a day on my own, can I?”
“Should I—” Nga-Yee wasn’t sure if she ought to stay or go, given that she didn’t even know why she was watching Violet.
“I don’t care if you want to stay all night, but I don’t know what you’re going to do about going to the toilet. We’re just pissing into a bottle.”
“Wait—” she called out, but N had shut the door. She tried to go after him, but it took her a while to figure out the door mechanism; by the time she opened it, there was no sign of him.
“Please shut the door, Miss Au,” came Ducky’s deep voice behind her. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
Nga-Yee could only do as he said. She retreated into the van’s interior.
Although Nga-Yee didn’t like N, they had at least spent enough time together that she knew how to deal with him. Ducky was practically a stranger, and it felt immensely awkward being stuck in such a small space with him.
“Miss Au,” he said abruptly.
“Yes?”
“There’s a public restroom where Broadcast Drive meets Junction Road.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
His eyes didn’t leave the screens the whole time he spoke to her, but this brief exchange was enough to make her think better of him, even though his face remained as expressionless as a robot’s.
Glancing at her watch, Nga-Yee was startled to realize that it was only half past six. Cooped up in the back of the van, it was easy to lose all sense of time. She sat down again and went back to staring at Violet on the screen. She thought of starting a conversation, but Ducky gave off a strong aura of not wanting to be disturbed.
“Who’s that?” A woman had just walked into the To apartment.
“Cleaning lady. Cooks for Violet.” Ducky clearly didn’t believe in wasting words.
The woman went about her business in the kitchen. After a while she came back in to set two plates on the dining table, then went to call Violet. When she scooped out only one bowl of rice, Nga-Yee realized that all this food was just for Violet. Back when her mother and sister were still around, this amount—fried fish, mixed vegetables, soup—would have fed all three Aus. Her anger roared again. Violet lived without worries, her every need taken care of. Why had she felt the need to persecute Siu-Man? Nga-Yee had never cared much about inequality, but right now she hated all rich people.
Violet went to her room after dinner. She was at the computer for a while, then went back to her easy chair and her book. Nga-Yee kept watching her every move, but still had no idea what this surveillance was meant to achieve.
“Nothing’s going to happen tonight,” said Ducky abruptly, as if he’d read her mind.
“No?”
“You won’t miss anything if you go home now. Come again tomorrow.”
He might hardly say anything, but Ducky still seemed more like a normal person than N. At least he was more approachable. Nga-Yee didn’t think he would lie to her, so she nodded and prepared to leave. She was getting hungry and, having just received her wages, would finally be able to eat her fill. Thinking of how she’d been surviving on instant noodles for the last few weeks even as guilty Violet To enjoyed her sumptuous meals, Nga-Yee felt a sense of injustice.
“Bye, then.” Nga-Yee stood up to go. As she passed behind Ducky, she couldn’t help noticing that his laptop screen was showing the Popcorn chatboard, and the thread header was rather unusual:
Mastermind behind girl’s (14) suicide?
“Huh?” she couldn’t help uttering out loud.
Ducky turned to look questioningly at her.
“Is
this—You know what, never mind. I’m going.”
She forced a smile and stepped out, then practically sprinted to Lok Fu station. After all this time, she had a pretty good sense of N’s methods, and she knew he wasn’t going to reveal his plans until they’d come to fruition. It seemed that the next step of this revenge plan, whatever it was, would involve Popcorn. Ducky was N’s partner, so there was no point in asking him for more information. If she wanted to know what was going on, she’d have to find out herself. She forgot about her plan to eat a big meal and headed straight home, where she shoveled instant noodles into her mouth as she eagerly scanned Popcorn for the post she’d seen.
After a whole hour of searching, there was no sign of it.
She tried all the different chat rooms and scrolled back more than ten pages. It had been on the home page just a while ago, but she’d looked through more than a week’s worth of posts with no success. Could she have been mistaken? Maybe it was a different website that looked like Popcorn. But she was new to the internet, and had no idea how to search for this.
Finally she gave up. She’d ask N after work the next day, and if he refused to answer, she’d badger him till he did.
Her boss had kindly let her leave the library early the day before, on the condition that she made up the time, which meant the next day she had to stay from the early shift right up to closing at nine p.m. As she walked out, she called N to let him know she was on her way to Broadcast Drive—only to learn there’d been a change of location.
“I’m at the Festival Walk parking lot, P2, Zone M.”
“Festival Walk?”
“P2, Zone M.”
He hung up. Nga-Yee stood there uncertainly, then decided that this must be an invitation to join him. If he didn’t want her there, he wouldn’t have mentioned his location.
It was about ten by the time she got to the mall. There were eight hundred parking spaces spread over three floors, almost all of them full, but she followed N’s directions and managed to find the white Ford Transit. The side door slid open as she drew near, and peering at her from the gloomy interior was N.
“Why did you move the van?” she asked, climbing in.
He didn’t answer, just nodded at Screen 2. The others were focused on the To apartment, as they had been the day before, but this one now showed a coffee shop. And there, reading a book in an armchair, was Violet To.
“She got to the mall this afternoon, visited the bookstore, had bibimbap at the food court, then came here to read.”
“How are you filming this? You can’t be using a drone in a crowded mall.”
“Ducky’s tailing her.”
Nga-Yee looked closely. The camera must be on a table: there was an out-of-focus coffee cup to one side of the frame.
“Aren’t you taking turns to keep watch?”
“Special circumstances.” N sat back down, looking a bit annoyed. “When she went out this afternoon, she didn’t take her usual walk to Lok Fu Place, but got the bus instead. There was no way of knowing whether she planned to take the MTR somewhere else, so I had to ditch the van, follow her onto the bus, and call Ducky to come grab the van. He met me here, and we swapped places.”
“You were on the same bus as Violet? Didn’t she recognize you?”
“I was in disguise. I have to hand it to her, though—I must admit I underestimated her. I’d thought a fifteen-year-old would want to hide at home after coming under so much pressure, but instead she’s going out and trying to de-stress, and she’s stayed out quite a long time. Not that I can’t cope with this, but it’s unexpected.”
“Pressure? What kind of—” Nga-Yee faltered, recalling the laptop screen the day before. “Are you talking about the new Popcorn post?”
N raised an eyebrow and looked at her with a slight smile. “Ducky knows how to keep his mouth shut, so you must have seen this by accident?”
“Yes.” No point denying it. “Something about a mastermind. And you talked about tormenting her on the internet. I put two and two together.”
N picked up another laptop and set it down in front of her. “All right, sharp eyes, you might as well know the rest.”
On the screen was a Popcorn page, with the header she remembered. She read what SuperConan had to say, and saw ZeroCool’s revelation among the replies. Violet must have been thrown into a panic after reading these posts.
“Now Popcorn knows everything?” gasped Nga-Yee. “Are you the Conan person who started this whole thing by saying that Shiu Tak-Ping has no nephew? And I guess the one with that hard drive must be an associate of yours. It would be too much of a coincidence—that someone decides to reopen the case and someone else just happens to have some evidence handy.”
“Wrong, Miss Au,” said N. “I haven’t revealed anything, and there isn’t any associate. Every one of the people in this thread is me.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. SuperConan is me, and ZeroCool is me. So are all the people kibitzing in the background, and the posts like ‘save me a seat, just getting some popcorn.’ All me.”
“You hacked into Popcorn? But if you created so many fake posts under other people’s names, won’t the regulars think it’s odd?”
N tapped a few keys, and another image flashed up on the screen. “Compare the two.”
This new window also showed the Popcorn home page, but at a closer look, there was a small difference: in the second window, “[video] real footage of Hong Kong U student drunk out of her skull” came immediately after “I earn ten grand a month. How to buy a flat?” In the first window, “Mastermind behind girl’s (14) suicide” came between them.
“It’s … gone?”
“This thread never existed. It’s fake.”
“Wait, so that’s all lies? No one knows about Shiu Tak-Ping not having a nephew, or all that security consultant stuff?”
“Correct.” N nodded. “But Violet To thinks it’s real.”
Nga-Yee stared at him in bafflement.
“Do you remember what an MITM attack is?”
Nga-Yee recalled the killer rabbit on the woman’s tablet in the coffee shop.
“So you hacked into Violet’s home Wi-Fi and put the fake website on her computer.”
“Yes.”
So that’s why I couldn’t find it at home, Nga-Yee thought.
“But how did you do that? If you were pretending to be the service provider, your signal would need to be stronger than the original.”
“I just took over her router.” N pointed at one of the drones on the desk. “These things don’t just take pictures, they can also intercept a Wi-Fi signal. While it was dark outside, I planted one of these on the aircon outside her window and carried out the remote attack from there. Wi-Fi routers have all sorts of vulnerabilities. Even with WPA2 authentication, if you use WPS for convenience, hackers have easy access anyway. A couple of hours tops, and I cracked it. Then it was just a matter of breaking into the router’s protocol by brute force and pointing the DNS to my fake. Now I control everything on her home computer.”
Nga-Yee could only stare at him blankly. N grimaced, giving up on his explanation. “Anyway, I’m now the middleman between Violet To and the actual internet. I control everything she sees and hears. And if she decides to post anything or send an email, I can change those too.”
“But what for?” asked Nga-Yee. “If you’re trying to stir up a hornet’s nest against her, you don’t need to bother faking posts.”
“Several reasons. The main one is to keep other voices from interfering, so I can carry out your mission in the shortest possible time. You think it’s so easy to create an online mob? Don’t believe what politicians tell you. All sorts of things can go wrong when you try to manipulate public opinion—you need a long-term strategy. But one person’s emotions? That’s easy. You just need to control what information she receives, and you’re in charge of her feelings.”
Nga-Yee remembered him saying something similar about the woman in the
coffee shop.
“But have you really cut her off completely? Won’t she call her brother to ask for help when she sees those posts?”
“Won’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“MITM attacks don’t just work on Wi-Fi.” N turned and reached out to tap a lunchbox-size device on the metal rack. “This is an IMSI-catcher, more commonly known as a Stingray. It mimics a cell-phone tower and intercepts all signals within a certain area.”
“You mean you’re controlling her phone, just like you took over her Wi-Fi? Including what calls she can make or receive?”
“Not bad—this time you got it right away.”
“This thing is available for sale? Isn’t that dangerous? Doesn’t that mean everyone in the world with a cell phone might get eavesdropped on?”
“It is available for sale, but ordinary people wouldn’t be able to get hold of one easily. It’s mostly used by governments, armies, the police …” N paused for a moment. “Oh, and of course hackers and criminals. This one isn’t a commercial product, though. I made it myself.”
“You mean Ducky made it?” Nga-Yee remembered him saying that Ducky owned a computer store.
“You’re right, he supplied the parts. But the firmware actually came from my professor.”
“Your professor?” Nga-Yee didn’t know what firmware was, but this intrigued her more.
“The man who taught me how to be a hacker. His specialty is loopholes in signal security.”
“Can this thing really pick up phone signals?” Nga-Yee eyed the box suspiciously. Surely modern technology shouldn’t be so simple.
“How else would I have your phone number?”
“Huh?”
“That’s how I knew whenever you came near my apartment.”
Nga-Yee thought back to when she’d first tried to get N to take her case. He’d seemed to know all her movements, and even these last couple of days he’d opened the van door for her before she could knock.
“You hacked my phone?”
“I hack all the phones in my neighborhood,” said N nonchalantly. “I’ve fitted an aerial to my roof and three others on nearby buildings, all connected to another Stingray. I know the phone numbers of every local resident, and if an unfamiliar number enters the zone for more than a minute, my computer automatically records it. I got your phone data the first time you came to see me, and after that I got an alert whenever you came within a hundred yards of my apartment. From the strength of the signal I even knew exactly where on the street you were standing.”
