Someone You Know

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘That’s her,’ she said, pointing.

  ‘Where are images 96 and 97?’ Cooper asked. He pointed to the screen. Lucy noticed now that the image of a child before Karen was number 095 and yet Karen was 098.

  Hines peered closely at the screen. ‘Those shots were spoiled. She might have blinked, or looked at the floor, or something. What was the second date?’

  As Lucy told him, he closed one folder and opened another. Again he scrolled through the images. This time, when Lucy saw the picture of Sarah Finn, a copy of the one she had seen in Finn’s house the day she vanished, she noticed that there were three shots of the child. In the first two, she was glancing downwards.

  ‘You see,’ Hines said, pointing to the picture. ‘This folder hasn’t been cleared yet. She kept looking at the floor.’

  ‘Why? The flash?’

  Hines shook his head. ‘The flash doesn’t hit them directly. I angle it to the ceiling. I always tell the girls that they have pretty eyes. It makes most of them smile. A handful can’t take the compliment and they look away. When that happens, I usually just have to get them to say “Cheese”. They get embarrassed by it.’

  ‘Why?’ Cooper asked.

  ‘Low self-esteem,’ Lucy said, reflecting on how she had described Karen Hughes to Burns on the day she had been found.

  ‘You can spot them a mile off,’ Hines admitted. ‘But what can you do? They hear me telling the others how pretty they look. I can’t very well not say it to them.’

  ‘Maybe not say it at all,’ Lucy suggested.

  The man shrugged, unconvinced. ‘I’ve been doing it twenty-five years,’ he said.

  ‘How many people work here?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Just me and my daughter, Julie,’ Hines said. ‘You met her at the front desk.’

  ‘And you’ve both been vetted?’

  Hines nodded. ‘Of course. I’ve been in schools for twenty-five years doing this,’ he repeated. ‘Whatever happened to these girls, my being in the school is coincidence.’

  ‘No one else would have access to these images?’

  Hines shook his head, though a little slower now, less certain.

  ‘Who?’

  Hines scratched the side of his head. ‘I have someone who handles my online stuff. Orders and that. He designed the website and keeps it updated. He would see them. He helps me out at times if we’re busy. The start of the school year and that, it can get a bit hectic.’

  Lucy felt the hairs on her arms rise. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s a good fella.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Lucy repeated.

  ‘Peter Bell’s his name,’ Hines said.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  On the way back to the Strand Road, Lucy called through to the Press Office and asked them to send out details of the child from Donegal, Annie Marsden. She had called through to the incident room to be told that Burns was in a meeting, but would be free shortly. Lucy hoped that if she could convince him about the need to examine Bell’s PCs they might get a warrant quickly and Cooper could get started straight away.

  When she came into the incident room, Tara immediately ran across to her and hugged her, quickly. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  Cooper looked at Lucy quizzically.

  ‘Fine,’ Lucy said, a little flustered.

  ‘Why are you in work? You should have gone home.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Lucy said, quietly, hoping Tara might take the hint.

  ‘You were in a bomb,’ Tara said. ‘That’s not OK.’

  ‘You were in a bomb?’ Cooper repeated, turning to Lucy.

  Lucy shrugged. ‘I was near a bomb. This is Dave Cooper from ICS Branch, Tara.’

  ‘Hi.’ Cooper smiled. Then to Lucy: ‘How near?’

  ‘Her boyfriend was in the car,’ Tara said to Cooper, then she asked Lucy, ‘Any word?’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’ Cooper repeated. ‘Was he injured?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘Leg injuries,’ she said. ‘I’ve not had a chance to find out how he is since,’ she added to Tara. It wasn’t entirely true. She could easily have phoned from Cooper’s car, but had been reluctant to do so in front of him. ‘Is Burns here?’

  ‘In his office,’ Tara said. ‘Just.’

  ‘Can I borrow a computer?’ Cooper asked. ‘While I’m waiting?’

  Burns was fixing his tie when he called Lucy into the office. ‘I thought you were going home,’ he said, watching her in the mirror as he straightened his collar.

  ‘I went back to the Unit,’ she said. ‘I discovered the connection between Sarah Finn and Karen Hughes. Both had their photographs taken by Country Photographers in the weeks before they were first contacted online.’

  Burns nodded curtly, angling his head to examine that his tie was sitting right. ‘We did all the background checks on them,’ he said. ‘They’d been vetted.’

  ‘Peter Bell was their web designer. At times he helped out with processing the photographs when they were in a busy period; like the first weeks of school term for example.’

  Burns turned and stared at her a moment, before sitting behind his desk. ‘Was he vetted?’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘Possibly not. He never came into actual contact with any of the kids. But his name keeps cropping up in connection with these girls. I think I know how he picked them too. Sarah and Karen. When they were having their pictures taken, Hines the photographer told the students that they had pretty eyes or smiles or whatever. To get a reaction. Both Karen and Sarah reacted in the same way.’

  Burns shrugged. ‘How?’

  ‘By staring at the floor. Embarrassed.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I think that as Bell worked through the images from the schools, he realized that the kids who stared at the floor were shy, lacking in self-esteem. That they were vulnerable.’

  ‘How would he have got their contact details? To find them online?’

  ‘Bell processed orders for Hines through his website but, during busy periods, helped out with the ones coming in through schools, too. Maybe they thought because he wasn’t in direct contact with the kids, it didn’t matter. But he had access to their images and their names.’

  Burns considered what she had said. ‘I’ll need to speak with the ACC before we do anything,’ he said. ‘Though this might be enough to get a warrant to examine his house.’

  There was a brief knock at the door and, as it opened, Tara peered around. ‘Sir, there’s something you need to see.’

  They moved out into the incident room where Cooper was working at one of the PCs. ‘I’ve found something,’ he said.

  He clicked on the mouse and a website for Country Photographers appeared on the screen. A range of images decorated the main page, including wedding shots, children posing on the beanbags they had seen on their visit to Hines’s studio and staged portraits. One of the images was a close-up picture of a daisy. The individual stamens of its head could be seen, encircled by a white crown of petals.

  ‘I’ve found a tiny key here,’ he said. ‘On the fifteenth petal around.’

  He moved the mouse in a slow circular motion. They could see the arrow on screen moving across each petal. Sure enough, as it reached the fifteenth petal, the arrow changed to a pointing finger, suggesting that it was hovering over a web link. Cooper clicked on it and the screen changed to a plain black screen with a single white text box at the centre.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A password,’ Cooper said. ‘The rest of the site is word protected. This part of the site is hosted in a different place from the rest, too,’ he added. ‘We’ve been taken to a different website.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There’s no IP address as such,’ Cooper said. He typed a few keys and pointed to a piece of text at the bottom of the screen: a series of numbers ending with the word ‘onion’. ‘It’s a darknet site.’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘And that means?’

  Cooper sighed, then raised his hands, laid flat one above the
other. ‘This,’ he said, moving his upper hand, ‘is the ordinary internet that we all use. Google and Yahoo and that. OK?’

  ‘If you say so,’ Lucy said.

  Then, moving the lower hand, he said. ‘This is the darknet. Instead of a range of servers hosting sites, which can be traced, it’s created by file sharing between users. It means its completely untraceable.’

  ‘Why is that allowed?’

  ‘No one can prevent it,’ Cooper said. ‘Besides, it does have advantages in, say, a dictatorship where people can’t express political views openly. It just also is used for all kinds of online criminal activity. And paedophiliac websites, obviously.’

  ‘How would users know how to enter this site?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘They’d get the address through a forum or personal recommendation,’ Cooper said. ‘I’m guessing too that there’s a common password for getting through this level of the site to whatever’s behind this. You’d have to be given the password to go beyond here, in case anyone stumbled on it by accident. You’d probably find that there’s then a second level of password protection to go beyond the next page, probably personalized from then on in.’

  ‘Can you break the password?’ Burns asked.

  Cooper shook his head. ‘No. But, if it is a common password, there’s a chance that we might find it on some of Bell’s PCs in his house. My guess is that it will be something obvious, something significant to the type of people attracted to that type of site. Humbert, Lolita, Wonderland, something along those lines.’

  ‘Get across to Bell’s house,’ Burns said. ‘I’ll have a warrant sorted by the time you get there.’

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Cooper told Lucy that he wanted to return to the unit first to collect some of his equipment, which might make working through any encryption on the machines easier.

  While she had waited in the car, she reflected on what they had found. Peter Bell had been a childhood friend of Louisa Gant when she died. Now he appeared to be involved in, or running, a paedophile website and was grooming teenage girls to be used for sex at house parties he organized in Peter Carlin’s house, next to where Louisa Gant’s body had been buried. Somehow, Gavin had recognized Bell in the picture and had clearly gone after him. He must have told Bell that Lucy had his picture and that she was in the unit, allowing Bell an opportunity to plant the device in her car. She had to assume that Gavin had been coerced into giving this information. Unless he had been involved in Karen’s death himself. Lucy found that hard to believe, based on her experience with the boy. Still, she could not fully dismiss the thought, even after Cooper got back in the car and began speaking to her.

  On the way from the unit to the house, Cooper finally raised the subject of the car bombing. ‘So, you didn’t think it was worth mentioning then?’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘It left your boyfriend hospitalized.’

  ‘He’s not ...’ she began. ‘It’s complicated,’ she managed finally.

  ‘I assumed as much, considering you’re still at work and he’s lying in hospital,’ Cooper commented. ‘In fact, I’d say “complicated” is an understatement.’

  ‘I need to borrow your car,’ Lucy said. ‘The kid from the residential unit vanished after the attack. I need to see if I can find him.’

  ‘I’d also say that was a neat change of subject, but it wasn’t,’ Cooper commented. ‘Can you drive with a bandaged hand?’

  Lucy smiled. ‘Is that concern for me or for your car?’ she asked.

  ‘Are you mad? My car, obviously.’

  By the time they reached Bell’s, the house was cordoned off and teams were already beginning to conduct a search of the rooms.

  Cooper went straight upstairs and booted up the three PCs. Lucy, for her part, drove on up to Gobnascale. She phoned the school first, already guessing that Gavin would not have turned up. The person she spoke to explained that they had closed early for the Christmas holidays and that attendance had been very poor.

  She continued round to the youth club. Jackie Logue was standing in the middle of the hall, directing several of the kids where to pin up Christmas decorations.

  ‘DS Black. We’re having a party tonight. A Christmas disco. Do you want to come?’

  ‘I’m looking for Gavin,’ Lucy said, without preamble.

  Logue shrugged. ‘He’s not here. I’ve not seen him all day.’ He called to the kids. ‘Anyone seen Gavin?’

  There were murmurs from the kids as they worked, all in the negative.

  ‘Will you contact me if he appears?’ Lucy asked.

  Logue nodded. ‘I hope you weren’t badly hurt,’ he said.

  Lucy stared at him. ‘What?’

  He pointed towards her hand, thick in bandages. ‘Your hand,’ he said. ‘I hope it wasn’t anything serious.’

  ‘No,’ Lucy said. ‘Not serious.’

  As she was leaving, she met Elena coming up the path to the hall.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, though did not raise her head to look at Lucy.

  ‘You haven’t seen Gavin have you?’ Lucy asked.

  Elena shook her head. ‘He was meant to meet me after my exam this morning. He never showed up. Not even a text.’

  ‘How did it go?’ Lucy asked.

  The girl glanced up briefly. ‘Shit,’ she said.

  ‘I know how that feels,’ Lucy commented.

  She stopped at the hospital on her way back to Bell’s. Robbie was in a room of his own, dozing quietly. She came across and lifted the chart at the end of his bed, scanning it, while all the time aware of the futility in so doing for it meant nothing to her. When she glanced up, she saw he was awake and watching her.

  ‘Hey, you,’ she said.

  He smiled, his lips dry, and winced as if the slight movement had hurt the stitches in his cheek.

  ‘I wondered where you were,’ he said. ‘When I woke. I thought you’d be here.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Lucy said, putting the chart back. ‘I think Gavin went after whoever killed Karen. And I think he told them I was with you.’

  ‘Why?’ Robbie managed.

  ‘Maybe he was forced into telling. If that’s the case, he may be in trouble. I hoped if I could find Gavin, I could find the person who did this.’

  ‘That’s not what I was thinking about when I woke,’ he managed, pushing himself up in the bed. Lucy moved across and, lightly gripping beneath his armpits, helped him shift. In doing so, she was reminded of having done something similar to pull him out of the burning car hours earlier.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about catching the person who tried to blow you up. I was thinking about you.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I’ve just been in a bomb,’ Robbie commented, smiling wryly.

  Lucy smiled. ‘That sounds about right,’ she said. She moved closer to him, laid her hand against his face. ‘I’m sorry it was you in the car, Robbie. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Robbie said, placing his own hand over hers.

  Lucy leaned down and kissed his lips. They felt dry and cracked, his breath stale behind the kiss.

  She felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. Embarrassed, she straightened and took the call. It was Cooper calling from Bell’s house.

  ‘You need to come back here. Now.’

  ‘I was able to bypass the password,’ Cooper said, when Lucy arrived. He was standing at the front door of Bell’s, waiting for her return.

  ‘All in one piece,’ Lucy said, handing him the keys. The parking ticket she’d been given for not paying and displaying at the hospital car park, she kept in her pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ Cooper said, looking at the keys but seeming not to realize the import of her comment. ‘I was right.’

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t break the password,’ Lucy said, following him up the stairs.

  ‘I didn’t. I traced his history on one of the PCs. He had used it
to access the site. The computer had automatically remembered the password through to the next level. You need to see it.’

  They went into the small room. Lucy could see one of the PCs displaying a web page very similar to the main Country Photographers’ website. On it were a number of pictures, all of school children, all taken by Hines. In each, the girl, for they were all girls, was sitting in front of the faux library of books that Hines used as his backdrop.

  Lucy leaned in and examined the screen. She felt her throat tighten as she recognized one of the pictures as that of Karen Hughes. The next one was the image of Sarah Finn that she had seen before.

  ‘That’s not quite what I was expecting,’ she said.

  ‘It’s like a stud wall into the site,’ Cooper said. ‘Let’s just say someone does accidentally make it through the first level, they reach this, it’s innocuous looking. Click on one of the individual pictures, though, and you get this.’

  He clicked on the image of Karen Hughes and a pop-up box appeared requesting a username and password.

  ‘You register for membership here,’ Cooper said, pointing to a small text box at the bottom of the page he had shown her, where viewers could sign up for a newsletter. ‘Again, it looks innocuous. Presumably, though, once you request a newsletter, Bell has your details and sends you a password and username. Then you get to whatever he’s hiding back there.’

  ‘It’s definitely him,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Look at this,’ Cooper said, pointing to the bottom picture of a schoolgirl. Lucy stared at the girl’s face a moment before she realized where she had seen her before. Immediately she also realized why the name had seemed familiar. The recently reported missing Annie Marsden had commented on a Facebook posting by one of the suspected sock puppet accounts, ‘Liam Tyler’.

  ‘The girl from the Missing Persons fax,’ Cooper said. ‘Annie Marsden. I think he’s got her.’

  Chapter Sixty

  Lucy contacted An Garda to tell them about her concerns regarding Annie Marsden’s safety. The Inspector with whom she spoke, a softly spoken man, promised that he would visit the Marsden house and check whether Liam Tyler was a real friend of Annie’s, or whether the account was simply another sock puppet.