The Exphoria Code

by Antony Johnston

  “Which one? They’re all bagged and in the van,” replied a woman. “Weirdo like this, they’re probably full of porn and guns. We’ll get our nerds on it.”

  Perhaps sensing Bridge was about to say something impolitic, Andrea cut in, “No, I don’t think so. We’ll handle the computers. What about his phone?”

  The forensic officer shrugged. “Nothing here, maybe it was on the body. Ask me, this is all a lot of trouble for a rando who got stabbed.”

  Bridge jerked up from the desk in surprise. “Stabbed? I thought he drowned?”

  “Maybe I heard wrong,” said the officer, shrugging again as she exited the room with a bag full of computer software boxes. “Best ask the Inspector.”

  “I’ll go,” said Andrea, “and I’ll get whatever laptop was on that desk while I’m about it. You stay, see if you can find anything here that might tell us who he was meeting.” Bridge was pretty sure his computer would hold that information, but something in Andrea’s tone suggested she didn’t trust her not to start punching people for their gallows humour. She was probably right.

  It wasn’t hard to see why Andrea would assume Ten, or rather ‘Declan’, was lonely. Despite his age, he lived like a student bachelor. The large flatscreen TV on the wall was hooked up to an expensive home theatre system, and one of every modern videogame console. His stereo could have come straight from a showroom, and was surrounded by racks of CDs piled three-deep or towering on top of the speakers. There was just enough space on the sofa for one person to sit, so long as that person didn’t mind being surrounded by books, magazines, DVDs and videogames taking up the other seats, piled over the arms and back.

  And the newspapers. God, the newspapers.

  Bridge had a similar mini-tower of her own, old copies of Private Eye she kept around ‘just in case’, but Ten seemed to have bought and held on to almost every newspaper printed in the past year. The broadsheets she could understand, especially for a freelance consultant, but the tabloids baffled her. Ten had his foibles and the occasional odd opinion, but he’d never struck her as a Sun reader, let alone the Mail. There were a few copies of the Daily Star lying around, for heaven’s sake, which didn’t even have a crossword —

  She stopped, stared at the piles of newspapers, realising why her mind had focused on that. They were all open to the crossword, but only a few were fully completed. Most had maybe half a dozen answers filled in. Here was the Times, June 18th. Four clues answered. Meanwhile, a copy of the Mirror from the same day had just two answers completed. Then there was the Sun, also June 18th…and the Guardian, June 18th…

  Bridge found a second pile of newspapers, all different publications, and flicked through the pages. All from the same day, last month. She turned to another loose pile, thumbing through them. All from a single day, six weeks ago. All with part-finished crosswords. There was something here. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “Hang on, isn’t this you?”

  Andrea re-entered the room. Under one arm she carried an evidence bag, inside which was a bulky Alienware laptop covered in stickers, and with her other arm pointed at a photograph printout on the cork board, pinned along with all the others.

  “It can’t be,” said Bridge, looking over Andrea’s shoulder. “We never met, and I don’t post photos of myself to — oh.”

  Andrea raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think this is a selfie.”

  The picture was taken from a distance, and Bridge could make out the tell-tale pixellation artefacts betraying excessive digital zoom. It was her, in everyday clothes, stepping out of a coffee shop in East Finchley. On her way to work.

  She swore under her breath.

  Andrea looked at her sideways. “You’ll understand that I’m going to have to take this laptop. I can’t let you have it, not after seeing this.”

  “Hang on, what mad conspiracy theory are you cooking up? Do you think I’d have gone to Giles, and got you involved, if there was something going on here?”

  “Maybe not. But you know ‘maybe’ isn’t good enough. Once we’ve taken a look around, we’ll determine how to proceed, and if everything’s kosher I’ll read you and Giles in.”

  “Ten — sorry, Mr O’Riordan — was a serious hacker, remember. Does Five have anyone good enough to crack into that thing?”

  Andrea stifled a laugh. “I’m going to assume that was sarcasm.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to help. Just…try ‘ponty’ for the login password.” She spelled it out, without explaining the joke. “It’s my online handle. You never know.”

  “First thing I’ll do when I get back to the office. Now, I think we’ve seen enough.”

  “Not yet,” said Bridge, looking again at the newspapers. “There’s something about these newspapers. This isn’t obsessive everyday purchasing, but it’s not random either. They’re piled in groups, all from the same day, all with crosswords partially completed.”

  “Is there a pattern to the dates? Same day every week, or month?”

  “No, the distribution seems random. But Ten was methodical, tenacious. There has to be some kind of purpose to it.” She took sample pictures of the dates and crosswords on her work phone. “And we need to check with the pathologist, see if they found his phone. I think it was an HTC.”

  “Asked the Inspector when I went to grab the lappy. No phone or wallet on the body, and yes, he was definitely stabbed before going into the river, although they’re not releasing that information yet. They’re still assuming a mugging, to be honest. This,” she gestured around at the forensic teams, “is all belt and braces.”

  “Mugging, my arse,” Bridge snorted. “Whoever he went to meet last night killed him, and probably because he solved those ASCII art puzzles.”

  Andrea smiled. “Now who’s wearing the tinfoil hat?”

  “But nothing else makes sense. It has to be connected.”

  “Why? What’s in those puzzles?”

  “I don’t know yet. Ten was going to tell me when he got back from the meeting. But whatever it is, somebody killed him over it.”

  Bridge shielded her eyes against the sudden bright sunlight as they exited the house. The SOCOs were finishing up, and the few reporters still hanging around stood on the other side of the street, recording to camera with the house as a backdrop. She and Andrea made their way to the back of the forensics van to remove their booties and gloves.

  “I’ll get our people looking over the laptop,” said Andrea. “Meanwhile, see if you can figure out those puzzles. You might want to call on GCHQ. Maybe they can help.”

  “Monica in our unit used to be a Doughnut. If I can’t crack it myself, I’ll see what she suggests.”

  “Just try not to get yourself stabbed, OK? Unless you do turn out to be a filthy traitor, anyway. Then you can burn in hell for all I care.” Andrea winked, and commandeered the nearest police car to take her back to Thames House.

  Bridge took one last look at the house, then walked back to Catford station.

  17

  Whenever Henri Mourad came to Toulouse, it was raining. Practically in Spain, for heaven’s sake, and yet here he was stepping off the train to the sound of a watery drumbeat on the station roof, and the smell of fresh rain on hot pavement. He’d neglected to bring an umbrella. Instead he turned up his collar, hunched his shoulders, and walked out of the station toward the old town.

  After ten minutes he was thoroughly soaked, but found his destination; a small café on a narrow street in the ‘pink city’, the maze of old terracotta buildings at the heart of Toulouse. He entered, shook out his coat, and found a table against a wall. There were two other patrons, but neither of them was the man Henri had come here to meet. He ordered a beer and waited.

  Two sips later the door opened, and Henri’s contact poked his head inside. “Viens, viens,” he hissed, beckoning to Henri and wafting smoke from his cigare
tte inside the café in the process. One of the other customers coughed and glared at him, but he scowled back as if daring them to complain. “Vite!”

  Henri sighed and gathered his coat. He left several Euros on the table, enough for the beer and a tip, and shrugged in apology to the waiter as he left. Outside, his contact hurried along ahead of him. “It’s pissing down, Marcel,” Henri said in French. “Can’t we sit somewhere dry?”

  Marcel scowled in reply, pulling on his cigarette. “Those men could have been listening. Out here, nobody can eavesdrop.”

  “No, because they’re all sensible enough not to walk around in this weather.” But Henri had to admit that, paranoid as he was, Marcel had a point. They were the only people on the street, and the noise of the rain would mask their voices from any long-range listening devices. Henri didn’t expect anyone was listening — he travelled under a fake ID, and nobody had reason to think his leaving Paris was suspicious — but it paid to be careful. “So what do you have for me? What couldn’t you tell me over the phone?”

  Marcel walked alongside Henri, close enough to lower his voice but still be heard above the rain. It couldn’t mask the smell of beer and sweat emanating from Marcel, though, and Henri wrinkled his nose as the man drew closer. “Three days ago, two men. Not local, they had Portuguese accents. Looking for someone to supply forged documents. French passports, ID.”

  “OK, passports means they’re probably looking to leave the Schengen area. But they could be going in any direction, and there must be hundreds of people asking for those all the time.”

  “That’s not all they were asking for. They also wanted a contact in Saint-Malo, someone who could get them an export officer.”

  That got Henri’s attention. Saint-Malo’s main shipping lanes led to the Channel Islands, and from there on to England’s south coast. “So they’re smugglers, and they intend to accompany the cargo. But it could be drugs, guns, whatever. I still don’t see how this leads to what I’m looking for.”

  “That’s because I haven’t finished.” Marcel lowered his voice further. “First, they killed the forger. Slit poor Benoît’s throat,” he said, dragging a finger across his neck for emphasis, “and they’re probably halfway to Saint-Malo by now.” Marcel took a final drag from his cigarette, blowing an angry jet of smoke as he tossed the butt into the gutter. “Bastards. There was no need to kill the old man.” He paused to light another.

  Henri pondered this. Why kill a forger, and judging from Marcel’s reaction a well-liked one, unless the documentation you had him prepare was extremely sensitive and unusual? Fake EU passports were as common as the raindrops falling around them, available from every forger in every city. “What makes you so sure they’re already on their way north?”

  “Because there are a lot of people here who’d kill them in retaliation for Benoît, if they were found. That’s the final thing; everyone in town went looking for them, and a couple of the lads found the shitty little guest house where they’d been staying. The landlady knew nothing. They paid in cash, kept quiet, and she assumed they were summer workers on their way to Provence or somewhere. The room had been emptied; there was nothing there. So the next day, the boys who’d been to the house passed everything on to the cops through back channels, to at least get something on the wires about these guys.”

  “Do you have descriptions of them?”

  “Not really,” Marcel shrugged. “They looked Portuguese.”

  “Oh, how helpful,” said Henri sarcastically. “Still not seeing the point, here.”

  “So listen. The same boys who went to the guest house, they fell ill the next day. And then a couple of the cops did, too.”

  Henri perked up. “Have they checked it out?”

  “Let’s put it this way. All the other guests, the landlady, and all her neighbours were evacuated this morning. Now you can’t get within a hundred metres of the place.”

  “Hazmats?”

  “The works. They’re not saying anything, but a little birdie tells me the Geiger counter was buzzing, if you know what I mean.”

  Henri did know what he meant. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of, ever since the chatter about matériel chaud began circulating. “Are you sure they were from Portugal?” he asked. “Only we were thinking it would probably be another Mafia supply out of Italy, not from Portugal via Spain.”

  “It’s possible, but if they came through Turin, why slog all the way over here? Plenty of forgers in Lyon for them to use up and spit out.”

  Henri paid Marcel his usual fee, then walked back to the station. As the train set off for Paris, the rain stopped and gave way to a beautiful Toulouse sunset, but he didn’t notice it.

  18

  Bridge had never been any good at crosswords. Luckily, Tenebrae_Z had done most of the hard work.

  After listening to her recount events at the house, and her confirmation that Declan O’Riordan and Tenebrae_Z were one and the same, Giles had given her the rest of the day off. She didn’t know what he thought she’d do with that time, but Bridge had gone straight home and spent the rest of the day staring at the lines of ASCII art on her screen, trying to decipher their meaning.

  She’d scoured the archives of france.misc.binaries-random as far back as she could, even peeking into private Usenet servers whose archives went back months further than regular public locations. Ten had said all the posts he’d found were no more than six months old, but he’d also found random pieces in other newsgroups. Who knew where else they might have been lurking, and for how long?

  But she couldn’t find anything older than six months either, and he hadn’t told her in which other groups he’d found other examples, so it was a needle in a haystack. She’d turned instead to the five posts from f.m.b-r, going over them again and again. If only she had access to his computer, she could find his archive and see everything. But Andrea Thomson had been right. Not only was this so far still a purely domestic matter, but seeing a picture of Bridge on Ten’s cork board had been a genuine shock to both of them. Now Andrea probably thought she was lying about not knowing Ten in person, and might even suspect Bridge was somehow connected to his murder. Under the same circumstances, Bridge wouldn’t have let herself within typing distance of the Alienware either.

  But knowing it wasn’t true — that they’d never met, and she didn’t know who Ten really was before today — made the photograph all the more unsettling. One consolation was that it had been just one among many pictures of uk.london.gothic-netizens members. It wasn’t pinned out separately, or framed, or, God forbid, built into some kind of creepy stalker shrine. Another consolation came when Andrea confirmed that Ten’s login password definitely wasn’t ‘ponty’. They didn’t know what it was yet, but they’d tried that without success, and Bridge had sighed with relief. It meant Andrea was taking her seriously, and was also further confirmation that Ten hadn’t been some kind of weird obsessive.

  Well, that wasn’t true. He had been completely obsessed…just not with her.

  She remembered the pictures she’d taken of the newspapers. Why collect newspapers, of all things? Ten was one of the most tech-savvy people she knew. But Declan O’Riordan was a middle-aged man, old enough to remember a time before home computers. The sheer weight of hardcopy stuff in his house was proof he was old-school enough to still enjoy owning physical things. Paper books, printed magazines, CDs, DVDs…and one of every newspaper he could find, but only from certain dates.

  With the crosswords all partially completed.

  Something stirred at the back of Bridge’s mind. She took out her iPhone and swiped through the photos. She hadn’t exactly been thorough, but from what she could see of the newspapers she’d photographed, there was enough here to support a theory. Several pictures showed not just the date, but the crosswords in question. She checked the June 18th papers, as those were the first where she’d made the date connection,
and saw there were three pictures where the crossword was visible. She pinched to zoom, magnifying each of them as much as she could, and noted which clues had been answered.

  They were all clustered around the same group. 14, 15, 16 across; 8, 9, 11 down.

  As Bridge had come across each piece of ASCII art in the newsgroup, she’d made a text file copy and saved it, along with the date it was posted. She scrolled through the folder now, looking for a file around June 18th. And there it was, right on the dot.

  She opened the file, and was confronted with a 78 x 78 grid of seemingly-random letters and numbers that, if you squinted, looked like a Volkswagen Beetle. Her eyes darted to the end, to the strange sequence of characters that made up the end of every image, in this case *0 6 188 D16A.

  The last five characters. 8D. 16A. 8 Down, 16 Across?

  That left four preceding, all numbers: 0 6 1 8.

  She could have kicked herself. A date, in American format: 06-18. June 18th.

  Bridge exhaled, only then realising she’d been holding her breath. She leaned back in her chair and clutched her head, trying to bring her racing mind under control. Ten had said the ASCII posts were a code, and here was the proof, or at least a part of it. He’d figured out the recurring characters were references to a date, and crossword puzzle clues. It was logical to assume they referred to a newspaper. But there was nothing to indicate which newspaper, so Ten had gone out and bought every single one. According to her copy of the newsgroup post, the June 18th ASCII art had gone live at 1500 GMT. Bridge smiled as she imagined Ten running around local newsagents, trying to find the last copies of every newspaper he could find. The locals must have thought he was mad.

  Why not go online? All the newspapers put their crosswords up on their websites these days. And what had he found, anyway? The references made sense. She opened more text file copies she’d made of the Usenet posts and realised that yes, they all followed the same format. Only the spacing changed.