All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

  That done, in the absence of any specific request from the boss, Lex went about some basics. ‘First thing to remark is that the machine is intact,’ she told Bett, hoping he’d respond with some form of cue. ‘They didn’t smash it and they didn’t steal it.’

  Bett said nothing, simply went about his recce; stepping slowly and precisely around the room, stopping to examine certain items, sometimes just staring. It looked like detection by osmosis.

  Lex scoped the system. She checked the boot log first to see when the machine had last been up and for how long, then began looking deeper. The first thing to stick out was the directory access records, denoting which folders had been opened during the last session. The answer was most of them, right down almost every branch of the hierarchy, even into the murkiest depths of application sub-directory temp folders. This was not indicative of normal usage. If it was your own machine and you couldn’t remember where a file was, you’d use a search facility to locate it; someone would only go through the folders manually if they weren’t sure what it was they were specifically looking for. This was the electronic equivalent of all the open drawers and cleared shelves elsewhere in the apartment.

  ‘It’s been sifted,’ she announced. ‘Systematically, from top to bottom.’

  ‘Care to hazard a guess at what they were looking for?’ Bett asked Willis.

  ‘If you mean do I think it’s to do with Marledoq, then no. He wouldn’t have material relating to his work here.’

  ‘Wouldn’t or shouldn’t?’

  ‘Both. I mean, yes, theoretically there’s no reason why he might not have some files relating to work, but, well, the thing with Ross is that he’s seldom out of the place. If he wants to work on something, night times or weekends, he stays on-site. He was there the night you hit the place, remember?’

  ‘I understand. But that doesn’t mean that what they were looking for wasn’t related to Marledoq. Someone interested in Ross’s work wouldn’t necessarily know whether he had material at home.’

  ‘My take is that he didn’t,’ Lex offered, warding off thoughts of a more successful theft from Marledoq of work-related data. ‘And I’d say that whatever they were looking for, they struck out. This thing’s just a media toaster.’

  ‘Would you translate, please,’ Bett insisted, ‘for those of us with a less neological vocabulary.’

  ‘Fleming uses this thing for comms and entertainment, nothing else. And he doesn’t do a lot of that either. This machine must be two years old if it’s a day and yet the hard drive’s only about a quarter full. Mostly vanilla apps—’

  ‘Alexis,’ Bett warned.

  ‘Standard retail applications. The bulk of the used disk space is JPEGs, MP3s and AV … sorry, that’s picture, music and video file formats, sir. Going by what’s on the floor, the music’s mostly ripped from these CDs, so the PC’s just a conduit for a portable player. The majority of the video files are archived webcam captures; after that it’s downloaded clips, mainly soccer, going by the tags, and they’re all in the temporary cache, nothing older than thirty days.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Files in the temp cache are automatically wiped after a while so you don’t end up with twenty gigs of last year’s web content clogging up your HD. Default setting is thirty days. It tells me this guy doesn’t tinker much with this thing, just uses it to keep in touch. He’s got a mike here and a webcam above the monitor, see? Archived webcam captures are all labelled the same: “mich” then a date.’

  ‘His sister’s name is Michelle,’ Willis informed them.

  ‘Let’s see one,’ said Bett, eyeing the photo collage he’d lifted.

  Lex opened the most recent file. It was small spec but decent frame-rate, though no sound. It showed a young woman sitting with a toddler in her lap, a slightly older child standing beside her. She urged the older kid to wave, which she did. Junior waved too, though he was looking at his sister instead of the camera.

  ‘Moving postcards from home: sis, niece and nephew. It’s the same kids in most of his picture files, too.’

  ‘And you’ve transferred all these files to that laptop?’ Bett asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. They took up less than a quarter of his HD space. I’ll remove the hard drive itself too. That way I can check for residual data from files that might have been erased.’

  ‘You can do that?’ Willis asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she told him. ‘But I wouldn’t hold out for any big secrets. Like I said, it’s a media toaster. This thing’s on light duties. He doesn’t even have any games apart from vendor pre-installs.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive Alexis,’ Bett said. ‘English isn’t her first language. Go ahead, remove the hard drive. I’ll have a look on the laptop during the flight back. Mr Willis, anything else you have by way of background would be useful. The more we know about him, the better chance we have of working out where he might have gone.’

  ‘That’s assuming where he’s gone is his own choice,’ Willis suggested.

  ‘Everything I’ve seen so far points to flight rather than capture,’ Bett replied. ‘Despite the mess, there’s little to suggest any of it was the result of a struggle. No blood, no breakages. If there’d been a fight in here, one of the neighbours would have heard something, to say nothing of taking an unwilling subject down three flights of stairs.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be a fight if they took him at gunpoint.’

  ‘And yet if they took him at gunpoint, they wouldn’t have needed to rifle through the place looking for whatever they were after. They could simply have threatened to shoot him unless he told them where it was.’

  ‘How do we know it’s “they”?’ Lex asked. ‘Or is that just a figure of speech?’

  ‘It’s they,’ Bett answered. ‘Two different sets of footprints spreading that mess from the kitchen floor. Well, four sets, actually, but I’m eliminating the ones Mr Willis’s shoes left on a previous visit and the ones you made when you were taking pictures. There were two of them, and Fleming wasn’t here when they searched this place. Abduction, whether at gunpoint or not, is about getting in and getting out as quickly and quietly as possible. Whoever was in here took their time. They were careful, they were quiet and they were thorough. They looked behind paintings, inside CD cases, they even searched rice and flour hoppers. Someone spent how long looking through his computer?’

  ‘Last session was forty-eight minutes.’

  ‘Time they knew they had, because they weren’t expecting Mr Fleming to walk in and disturb them. They knew he was gone. They may well have been coming to abduct him, and most plausibly at gunpoint, but when they arrived, they discovered he’d been one step ahead. He knew they were coming for him. It could have been mere moments’ notice – maybe something fortuitous he saw or heard – or it could have been hours; but the main thing is, he knew they weren’t there to sell the Watchtower. Ross Fleming ran, and not to the police. We need to work out where, but equally important, we need to work out from whom.’

  Bett looked down at the photo collage, then around the diligently strewn chaos of the room, before zeroing in on Willis again.

  ‘If I were to ask you,’ he said, ‘just off the top of your head, worst-case scenario or merely the first thing that leaps to mind: what would you guess this is about?’

  Willis paused, sighing with discomfiture. ‘I … I’m sorry, I hate this kind of speculation. It seems so disrespectful, like we’re working for the tabloids, digging up dirt.’

  Lex caught a concealed glance from Bett, a brief roll of the eyes conveying a weary but arch frustration at this squeamishness. Here was a man whose company made instruments of violence and destruction, recoiling from a task because it seemed impolite. Yes, Willis and her grandmother would definitely have got along.

  ‘Worst-case scenario?’ Willis resumed. ‘I suppose that would have to be that he’s been murdered. If they knew he was already dead, they’d be guaranteed all the time they needed to search his apartment.’

/>   ‘But why?’ Bett pressed, forcing him back to the point.

  ‘I really don’t know. The first thing that comes to mind is, well, drugs, I suppose. I hate to say it, and it’s probably just one generation’s prejudice.’

  ‘And is there anything more than prejudice to support that notion?’

  ‘Not specifically in Ross’s case. But I’m not entirely naive in these matters. I’ve seen a lot of very dynamic, very driven young people working with us, working extremely long hours, sometimes in isolation. Stimulants are not unprecedented.’

  ‘Is Fleming well paid? I mean, he doesn’t appear to have much of a social life, so would a speed habit have him in that much hock?’

  ‘I can’t say I know the going rate for any given controlled substance, but you make a fair point. I can’t imagine him racking up debts to dangerous people without giving off signals that something was amiss.’

  ‘Drug addicts can be most resourceful at concealing their problems,’ Bett observed, ‘but I can’t envisage the local whizz dealer quietly and meticulously doing this to the place over an unpaid debt. “Pay up or we de-alphabetise your CDs.” Nor would he be likely to turn up any unused drugs or unpaid cash inside Fleming’s My Documents folder. So rack your brains a little harder, Mr Willis, dig deep and dig dirty. What do you think this is about? What do you fear this is about?’

  Willis sighed again.

  ‘I fear it’s about work. That‘s my worst-case scenario and I’d prefer it to transpire otherwise. I’m aware of how selfish that sounds; but if we’re digging dirt, then I suppose I shouldn’t flinch from appearing grubby myself. I’ll admit it, I’d be relieved if this was to do with some matter personal only to Mr Fleming, though that wouldn’t make him any easier to replace.’

  ‘What was he working on?’

  Willis paused, wincing a little. ‘I know this is frustrating, but that’s not something I can freely comment upon.’

  ‘Can you comment on whether it would make him any kind of target? Can you comment on whether someone might believe he had materials or information that he could pass on via bribery or coercion?’

  ‘I can say this much: I brought you people in last December to tighten up security at Marledoq precisely to prevent those possibilities. Deimos is not a gun manufacturer launching a new line of automatic pistols. When you’re in the business of innovation, there is nothing more potentially damaging than industrial espionage. It’s not just that we can’t afford to suffer the theft of blueprints or prototypes: it’s that we can’t afford to let anyone know what we’re developing full stop. If this was the pharmaceutical industry, what do you think the other drug companies would do if they found out we were working on a cure for an ailment they sold remedies for?’

  ‘You’re saying what Mr Fleming was working on poses a threat to the arms industry?’ Bett asked, with a quiet calm that Lex had learned to recognise as masking grave concern.

  ‘Of course not. But we’re developing a number of projects, any one of which might pose a threat to someone’s profit margin, and this is not an industry renowned for its scrupulous practices in defending the bottom line. I don’t wish to impugn your own integrity, Mr Bett, but the fact is, this kind of information is so sensitive that I can’t tell you what Fleming was working on just in case his disappearance turns out not to be related to it. However, if some of that information is already out of the box, then yes, bribery and coercion might potentially have been applied to procure materials and information, and yes, he is potentially a target. As would be anyone who got between him and his pursuers.’

  ‘Which is really why you came to us,’ Bett stated. ‘You need people who can look for Fleming but who are capable of watching their own backs while they’re about it.’

  ‘Yes. That and the fact that if this is what it looks like, then it’s down to a breach of your security system. I’d need to check the fine print of the guarantee, but—’

  ‘User error isn’t covered, Mr Willis. No security set-up can offer contingency against individual indiscretions on the inside. If sensitive information got out of Marledoq, it wasn’t because an intruder walked in and took it. For one thing, the intruder would need to know there was something specific worth looking for in the first place.’

  At this point, Lex was grateful to be under the desk disconnecting the hard drive, her colour-drained face and reflexively gawping eyes hidden from view. Up until then, she hadn’t been absolutely sure. Marledoq was a huge place. Fleming had already noticed something was amiss and had set off the alarms, so he could have tailed her, or been hiding out near where she happened to appear: just because he’d snuck up on her there didn’t mean that was specifically his lab or his machine, she’d told herself. But now she could have no reasonable doubt that it had been his machine, and that this was therefore the second time she was swiping data belonging to the same man.

  ‘We’ll track down Fleming for you,’ Bett assured Willis. ‘But in the meantime you’d better ask yourself who knew enough to set this in motion. If you’ve got a leak, then you’d better find it fast, and don’t trust anyone until then.’

  ‘I won’t, Mr Bett. I never do. Occupational hazard, I suppose.’

  ‘Personally, I’d classify it under Health and Safety.’

  Lex couldn’t decide whether it was scarier flying with her eyes open or closed. Open, she had the full benefit of watching the sea pass so close beneath that they had to be leaving a wake; closed, there were the combined anxieties of vividly imagining the same sight anyway and of not being able to see disaster coming. Like it would make any difference.

  They were heading for a trawler, collision course, she was certain. She assumed Rebekah could see it with her bare eyes as well as with the radar, but she didn’t appear to have imminent plans for evasive action. Lex wanted to say something; actually, she wanted to scream something, but could tell from Rebekah’s minutely detectable smirk that this might be a counter-productive action.

  They passed directly over the trawler, which turned out to be further below than Lex had gauged, but not by much.

  ‘Rebekah,’ she said with Bett-like overstated calm, ‘I just saw what that fisherman was having for lunch. He had a mug of coffee and a triangular sandwich. I could see what shape his sandwich was. We are too fucking low.’

  ‘Alexis, you have got to chill,’ Rebekah responded, grinning with despicable pleasure at her passenger’s dismay. ‘Did I hit anything yet? Did we ditch and I missed it?’

  ‘No, but you’d only need to do it once.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve flown lower than this at, like, five times the speed.’

  Lex turned her head to stare at Rebekah, fully taking her eyes off the water for the first time since they left dry land.

  ‘What the hell kind of helicopter flies five times as fast as this?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t a helicopter. I guess it might not be the best time to admit this, but I’m not actually a helicopter pilot. Not licensed, anyway. I mean, I can fly this thing; hell, you could fly this thing.’

  ‘So what are you licensed to fly? Oh shit,’ she said, making a connection. ‘Fighter planes. You’re USAF, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, that’s my personal business, isn’t it,’ Rebekah stated, reminding Lex of the unwritten protocol.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. But for what it’s worth, I’m not USAF.’

  Rebekah had grown considerably less withdrawn as the months passed, though she remained the most private when it came to what had brought her under Bett’s wing. Everyone else was periodically given to less guarded allusions or even, occasionally, outright admissions, but, to be fair, these had all come after having been around a lot longer. Lex, for one, had taken her own time to accept that it would make no odds to her fortunes or reputation if the others knew of her place in the annals of either hackerdom or international diplomacy. However, even after reaching that understanding, she’d still felt protective of her past for reasons she couldn�
��t quite nail down. Perhaps it was simply due to it being the episode that had made her most scared in her entire life, and exposing it at all tapped into a little of that fear.

  Rebekah was markedly more relaxed after Marledoq, her first real mission, though it had hardly been the most taxing exercise. Perhaps it had helped for her to have a defined, indeed indispensable, role, in order to feel she was somewhere she could belong. She’d grown conspicuously less jumpy about overhead aircraft too, a trait Lex had considered all the more curious once she learned what the role of Transport Manager truly entailed. Lex had come to realise that this nervy reaction was not in fact startlement at the sound of the engines, but simply that the sound acted as a prompt to be looking over her shoulder. Like Lex, and now like Ross Fleming, Rebekah had run from something, and in the place she’d run from there must have been airplanes.

  It wasn’t, she now insisted, the US Air Force. So where the hell else would she be flying jets at five times the speed of this chopper?

  Then Lex remembered some of the illicit data Bett had taught her to sift for. A Harrier jump jet had gone missing, the US considering the embarrassment more costly than the hardware, and thus concealing the incident. It had been a few months back, just about the time, now she came to think of it, that Bett introduced his latest recruit.

  Jump jets flew off aircraft carriers.

  I’m not USAF.

  No, girl. You’re a swabby. And you’re damned well used to flying above water.