The Pink and the Grey

by Anthony Camber

  “On behalf of all kippers, none taken.”

  “Right,” he said, slapping his hand on the table. “Who wants another beer?”

  Just because I made fun of the old man’s crazy words like chat room and free education Simon made me stand over him back in the office while he cracked his fingers and attempted some kind of advanced hacking jiu jitsu. He’d been on a course, apparently, but I suspected that actually meant someone with kind eyes had taught him which way round to hold a mouse and that the little x in the corner made the program go bye-byes.

  “I didn’t realise you were a hacker,” I said to him. “What have you broken into? The Pentagon? Number 10 Downing Street? Weight Watchers?”

  “You scoff, kid. It’s easier than you think.” He opened up a new browser window using approximately the slowest means possible. It would almost have been quicker to build my own computer from rock and sand. I already wanted to tear the mouse from his yellow stick fingers and wheel his chair into the lift shaft.

  “What are we hacking today?” I said. “I’ll make notes.”

  “No notes, you pillock. That’s evidence.”

  Of course every page he loaded hopped across the network potentially leaving an audit trail at about forty-nine points along the way as well as at the website he was visiting and also by any spooks who might’ve been watching, but no, I had to put my pen down.

  He typed in the web address for St Paul’s College, including the http prefix which he got wrong twice, and I tried to imagine what life must have been like for him back in the early part of the twentieth century.

  When he finally hit the Go button the front page popped up quickly enough. It wasn’t too bad, as these things go: decent looking, full of links to the usual galleries and fluff and maps. We skimmed through the information for prospective students, including arty photos of the prettiest undergraduates smiling in a library, which I was almost certain had never happened in the history of mankind. We both recoiled at what looked like an artist’s impression of some enormous purple gargoyle with deflated Marge Simpson hair and fifties glasses being surprised in a brothel. Inexplicably it was captioned “Amanda Chatteris, Master” and I was convinced it must have been a student prank for rag week, but Simon said he’d met her and the picture showed her on a good day.

  Finally after much slow-motion clicking Simon located the link he was after: the St Paul’s staff intranet. Internal college web pages, not supposed to be accessible by Johnny Public, and especially not by Psycho Journalist.

  He clicked the link, and a new page appeared. It had the usual logo and shite, and a big box asking for username and password.

  “Oh dear,” I said like I was talking to a two-year-old. “Never mind, you had a decent go. One house point for trying.”

  “You think you know everything, don’t you, ginge,” he said.

  He typed in the username admin and a password that showed up as blobs — I couldn’t tell what he was typing. He clicked the big OK button, and it rejected him with a large red error message.

  “It’s calling you an invalid,” I said. “I’d get onto the authorities about that, it’s discrimination. I mean, you’re old, but you’re not infirm. I guess you might be incontinent. Does that count as invalidity?”

  He ignored me and tried again, typing whatever he was typing more carefully this time. And on clicking OK, it let him in.

  I was genuinely gobsmacked. Not speechless, obviously, but definitely gobsmacked.

  “Would you look at that,” I said. “What the hell password was that?”

  His aged mouse trundled over the screen like Stephenson’s Rocket off the boil and he picked out a different browser window lurking behind the first. It showed a thread on some Cambridge gossip forum somewhere, apparently more open to the public than its users thought it was. Here someone had blithely pasted the username and password for the St Paul’s intranet and gone on their happy way.

  I was about to say how much of a fantastic stroke of luck that was. But I knew it wasn’t. I reckoned I knew what was going on here: Seb had told me the Archivist had taken unspecified “countermeasures”. This was information planted specifically for us to find. It was some kind of honeytrap. Were we supposed to be bees? Bears? I wasn’t a bear. More like a kind of ginger otter. But we were definitely being led somewhere.

  “Clever,” I said finally. “Looks like I underestimated you.”

  It was just about the least likely phrase I had ever uttered and it made Manish’s ears prick right up. He wheeled his chair over to see what we were doing.

  What the St Paul’s staff intranet lacked in design, it made up for in… no. It lacked in design and it lacked in everything else. There wasn’t a lot to see there. Just a few links to internal policy documents and student and staff mugshots and the like. We had a browse around. Curiously, in amongst the photos of students there was the drag star Cody as well as her undressed alter ego Jonathan. Maybe she was more of a permanent fixture in his life than I’d thought. We also discovered a photo of Spencer with more hair and less beard, and that gargoyle again, and other miserable but less frightening specimens.

  Manish peered closely as they scrolled slowly by. “Oh, right, I see,” he said, and looked at me. “Interesting.”

  A few links down some kind of rat hole we found a page with big bold blue letters: Foreign Guests. “Aha,” said Simon, and clicked it.

  The browser popped up another login page, taunting us. Inviting us.

  “Try that password from before,” I said.

  He did. It rejected him. He tried again, just in case. Another rejection.

  “Another level of security,” said Simon. “Annoying. And suspicious. Why would they hide a page on foreign guests from their staff? Don’t staff need to know that kind of thing?”

  “Personal details, something like that?” said Manish. “Cleaners don’t need to know your bank account number.”

  That was entirely plausible, so I ridiculed it. “They’re not going to put that stuff online. This is Cambridge, they’re not that sophisticated. It’ll be on six-by-four index cards in a big dusty filing cabinet guarded by a griffin. And in any case—”

  “Why doesn’t it say students?” asked Simon. “Why foreign guests and not foreign students?”

  “Good question.” I resolved not to praise him too much, it was getting out of hand.

  “Visiting speakers?” said Manish. “Or business people staying in the college during holidays when no students are about — you know, conferences. Or parents popping over to check little Raoul’s allowance hasn’t been pissed up the wall.”

  “Maybe,” said Simon.

  “Try some other password,” I said. “You can’t give up now.”

  “Ginge, think about it. I can’t sit here typing any old rubbish into it, it’ll set off an alarm.”

  I thought he’d been watching too many crappy films. “So you’re gonna walk away? The master hacker, defeated by a bunch of stuck-up pansies?”

  “No. I’ll keep digging. But I’m not doing it with you two breathing on me. Playtime’s over, kids.”

  Twiglet and I were banished back to our desks. I began to worry that I’d been too obvious, too eager to make him push on and find whatever it was we were supposed to find. Or too much of a suck-up.

  Manish leaned over: I expected him to confirm one or the other. “Ginge,” he whispered. “This college lot. Are you sure they’re on the right side?”

  I glared at him to keep it down. “What do you mean?”

  “Only… those photos, the staff ones. Old guy, bad toupee. Did you see that one?”

  “Yeah? He’s a porter, I saw him at the college the other day. Smells of talc and peaches.”

  Manish nodded. “Funny. I saw him in here on Saturday morning. And before you say it, no, I don’t think all white guys look alike. You couldn’t forget that wig if you tried.”

  “He was in here?” I was genuinely surprised. “Doing what? Measuring up for curtains?”<
br />
  I had a quick look around. Simon was still learning how to double-click. Geoff was staring at his laptop screen and rubbing his chin, sending ripples around his face.

  “I don’t know,” said Manish. “He was dressed as maintenance. With some woman. I thought at the time she was the too-posh-to-push type, know what I mean? She was probably one of them too.”

  “A lesbian?”

  “At the college, in those mugshots. But yeah, probably. They were messing around by the window. She was up on the table at one point, and he was on his knees. And— yes! And the network blinked off for a couple of seconds. The internet disappeared.”

  “Cross my heart, Twiglet, I had no idea,” I said. “Maybe they just… moonlight?”

  “Moonlight my chuddies. You know what’s going on, don’t you? We’re being tapped by them because we’re investigating them. Doesn’t that make you feel uneasy?”

  It did, and I nodded slowly. It made me very uneasy. But I knew why they were doing it, assuming they were actually doing it. It made perfect sense from their point of view at the top of their pink ivory tower.

  “Forget your race and your sex scandal,” said Manish. “College hacks newspaper? There’s your story right there. I could go to Geoff right now—”

  “Don’t!” I hissed and pleaded. “Don’t even think it. Please. BFFs for ever, I promise. Remember, this is about justice for Seb and his family.”

  “Yeah, and the rest.”

  “It is! Fundamentally. Just— please don’t say anything. Why the hell were you in here on a Saturday morning anyway?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Why do you think? Checking out Seb’s story. Like you did.”

  “Oh, jeez,” I said. “We’re fucked. Royally and doubly.”

  “What? How?”

  “Simon knew, he found out I’d been sniffing around the story, and he warned me off. If he spots that you’ve been looking too…”

  seventeen

  The Surveillance

  In her chair in the Bandolinum conference room in Top Court Amanda glowered and sulked, a wrinkled child-beast about to receive a spanking for smearing herself top to toe in purple make-up. Beside her sat Helen, bolt upright in a pale green trouser-suit. And beside me around the corner of the table was Dennis, bolt asleep in his usual suit and gown. It was the second SPAIN committee meeting. This time I, as chair, had been graciously allowed to chair it. The Master still awaited my fake decision over my fake resignation and, I suspected, was reluctant to overly irritate.

  I was delivering a status report. “I am exceedingly pleased to announce that the saintly Beatles images projected upon front Bottom and St John’s were a great success in all the places that matter — and also outside Cambridge. The enabled communication pathways begin positively to glow and hum with activity.” I referred to my notes. “At my last check an hour or so ago prior to the mush designated as lunch, we were closing on five hundred registrations for the race. Registration closes on Friday: four weekdays of further publicity — agreeable publicity — should hike the total significantly.”

  “Splendid, splendid,” said Dennis, though I was unconvinced he was not nattering in his sleep.

  “Dr Flowers,” squeaked the Bursar, “I am a little concerned — and I can hardly believe I am saying this — at the sheer amount of money that might literally flow into college on Saturday afternoon. It must be secured and dealt with in an efficient manner. Do we have a process? Some form of handling procedure that I might examine?”

  It was a fair point. “We shall of course merely be counting the money rather than banking it,” I said. “I should imagine a group of feisty young undergraduates and some harassed auditors would suffice.”

  Amanda harrumphed, and slouched fractionally further. “I would suggest incapacity,” she grumbled.

  “I think perhaps I rather agree with the Master,” said Helen, failing to conceal her surprise. “How long does it take to count a bucket of coins? Do we know? Is there a website?”

  Dennis perked up. “Is there not some device we could hire, hire?”

  I had been rather preoccupied and I must confess I had not given much consideration to these critical matters. I begged forgiveness and wondered whether Helen might perhaps volunteer to investigate further. She agreed. I hoped this would not mean a late-night raid on a local bank or 24-7 video surveillance of a car park ticket machine.

  In this fresh week I was seeing St Paul’s in fresh eyes. Of course I had been aware of the Archivist and his netherworld, but in one’s general day-to-night activities they tended to fade away, obscured and obfuscated by the ever-present bureaucratic niceties and personal jollities or lack thereof of college life. As we sat uncomfortably around that conference table listening to the hooting and beeping of the buses and of Amanda it was easy to forget that the room held one, two or more cameras watching over us, cold dark silicon eyes and ears at the Archivist’s call and beck. Our utterances would be transmitted and interpreted and retained in some underground electronic guise for— how long? I pitied the elf responsible for backups.

  Other matters in the meeting were dealt with more competently. I had continued to mentally massage the local police, and promised them a decision in two days, on Wednesday, regarding the two substitute colleges. I would deliver them a firm, immutable race route, which would also go to our anonymous donor — still unnamed, of course — for sourcing and installation of barriers where deemed necessary for crowd kettling purposes. There would be a form of dais by the front gate to college, upon which speeches and coronations would take place. I had dispensed with one early notion of a large screen to display a running count of the total raised, in case Amanda claimed it hungrily as a mechanism for the dissemination of exotic Powerpoint presentations to the massed runners.

  There being no other AOB business, or at least none to discuss in Amanda’s particular company, the meeting closed and scheduled to reconvene two days later for a further update and for college selection. Dennis and Helen hurried off at their respective paces, perhaps to further whichever tasks the Archivist had given them.

  I felt the meeting had passed exceptionally reasonably. It was not a feeling I usually associated with meetings, especially those I chaired, and especially those attended by Amanda. I tried not to strut or preen, as I was well aware of the Master’s ability to leech away any feeling of satisfaction or pride: some called it the tumble in the jumble.

  But she had been quiet, by her usual decibellic standards. When we were alone, as I gathered my papers, she leaned forward and stared blankly down at the table, her arms stretched out before her, her nails dotting out two purple arcs across the wooden surface. The words came slowly. “Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed upon?”

  “I beg your pardon, Amanda?” Upon which we were all agreed? Was this a reference to the Archivist and his team? Had she more access to his data than I knew?

  “Regarding your proposed vacancy. Am I to recruit, or to not recruit? That is the question.” Her voice was low, soft, almost vulnerable.

  Perhaps a mere verbal tic, then: a running away of the mouth, a cascade of word association football. I hoped the Archivist’s systems were sufficiently hardened to prevent unauthorised ingress. Perhaps she was extrapolating: reaching mentally as well as physically. I wondered whether she knew, if not the detail, then that something was afoot over which she had no control.

  “Master,” I said plainly and quietly, papers in hand. “I have no desire to leave St Paul’s. Despite the hardships and troubles, I believe we work for a common good, for the students, as our founder wished it. I may from time to time inadvertently topple from the wagon into a flowerbed, not necessarily unaccompanied, but these are mere unfortunate lapses.”

  “Lapses, Dr Flowers? Lapses? I assure you they are geraniums.” Even this had no bite, no spat venom.

  She was in a curious mood, one I had never seen. It unsettled me, like the mechanical clanking as you are hauled to a loca
lised maximum of a roller coaster knowing but not knowing what is to follow. Had the fight entirely left her?

  Her reign as Master had always been turbulent and, as it were, event-filled. There were protests at her appointment, from a certain subset of the Old Paulines — all gentlemen, naturally — who declared her genetically unsuitable. I had supported her then. I was less in favour when two fellows whose friendship had grown beyond friendship broke up apocalyptically, and she proclaimed that we must thenceforth no longer mix pleasure with business. That struck me as too unnecessarily strict a rule, too black and white, and I said so vigorously. In retrospect it was perhaps not so odd that I soon found myself in the regular company of our then-and-now-69-year-old Praelector, Dennis. Perhaps he had been grooming me.

  I stood to leave, and Amanda did so too.

  “May we walk?” she asked.

  She was silent as we descended the staircase together, her clog-like shoes thumping on the worn stone like a mason’s blunt mallet. Through a tall glass door into the fresh air of Top Court she became invigorated somewhat, more animated. She took my arm, a most unnerving experience: cracked old purple-tipped fingers slithering past my inner elbow, locking me to her. I had, I noted disturbingly, left my pen-knife in my flat and would be unable to slice off my own arm should the situation make that necessary.

  “How are things?” she asked in attempted friendliness as we began to walk anticlockwise around the court. I could think of no worse — or, indeed, unlikely — question to emerge from her lips. Its openendedness and breadth rendered any answer either uninformatively brief or liable to continue via a mix of subordinate clauses, subparagraphs and weeping until we were both desiccated corpses lying, entwined forever, in the ditch we had carved around the lawn of Top Court with our endlessly circling feet.

  “Well, you know,” I said, opting for the former variant of answer.