by Sibel Hodge
Corinne glanced at me. ‘I don’t trust them to find her. Mitchell’s helping me.’
Laura followed Corinne’s gaze to me, realisation kicking in. ‘Oh, you’re like one of those special forces guys Toni told me about when she was talking about her dad?’
I nodded.
Laura gulped, as if I might suddenly shoot across the room and deliver a fatal blow to her. ‘Seriously, I don’t know anything. I would’ve said, honestly.’
‘Did Toni ever mention something she’d discovered on the Internet?’ I asked Laura.
‘No. Not to me.’
‘What about someone threatening her?’ I asked.
‘No. Definitely not.’
‘Toni wrote something in her notebook before she disappeared. It said the words “into the darkness”. Do you know what she might’ve meant by that?’
Laura’s wary gaze flicked to Corinne before settling back on me. She swallowed hard. Blinked several times before she said, ‘No.’
But I didn’t believe her. She knew something. ‘Look, I know teenagers keep secrets from their parents. Even secrets that they think might be protecting their parents,’ I said. ‘But if you know something about what Toni had been looking at, you need to tell us now. No one will be angry with you, but it might help us find her. We need you to be completely honest with us.’
‘I am!’ She blinked rapidly again behind her lenses. ‘I honestly don’t know anything.’
‘Did she ever tell you anything about a missing girl with a tattoo?’
Laura frowned. ‘No.’
‘Did she ever talk to you about a red room?’
‘Oh, my God.’ She bit her lip, eyebrows shooting upwards.
‘What is it?’ Corinne touched Laura’s knee.
Laura’s eyes widened. ‘A few months back I was telling her about the dark web. Do you know what that is?’
I knew of its existence. A place where any warped person could find anything they wanted at the tip of their fingers – weapons, drugs, child pornography, assassins, cults. The levels of depravity in the world never ceased to amaze me, and all this sick shit and more was readily available on the dark web at the touch of a button.
Corinne shook her head. ‘No. What does “dark web” mean?’
Laura licked her lips. ‘You’ve got the surface web, right? Which is anything that can be indexed with a traditional search engine, like Google, that relies on pages containing links so you can find content. Then you’ve got the deep web, which is stuff that a search engine can’t find, like a password-protected page or data searches. They say about eighty per cent of what’s on the Internet is in the deep web, locked behind passwords and protocols, and is most likely perfectly harmless.’ She paused and glanced at us all in turn. ‘But then if you go deeper in the net, there’s the dark web. It’s the bad stuff that’s been intentionally hidden, and you can’t access it through normal means. You need special software.’ She slid her hands out from her cuffs and rubbed them on her jeans. ‘Toni was intrigued by the dark web. She wanted to see if the rumours were true. I mean, they say you can get anything on there.’ She blushed and pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I’ve heard all sorts of chatter about what’s on it and I didn’t want to mess around with it but, you know, Toni was into psychology and crime and stuff. And she’d already decided her dissertation at uni was going to be on cybercrime so she wanted to use the dark web as an example for study material.’ She paused, swallowed again, her face pale. ‘She was particularly interested in child abuse – paedophiles using the Internet to their advantage through chat rooms and social networks to groom kids. And she knew many popular surface-web chat rooms had been closed down to protect children. But that hadn’t stopped them. It had just pushed them further underground. Into the dark web, where what they were doing was much harder to find.’ She chewed on her lip.
‘Go on,’ Corinne said, her face drained of colour.
‘Toni . . . um . . . She asked for my help to show her how to get on the dark web because I know about computers. I’m studying computer science,’ Laura added for my benefit. ‘She thought we should do it together. But I didn’t want to go into the darkness. That’s what I called it. Those same words. That’s what Toni must’ve meant when she wrote that in her notebook. She must’ve done it without me and started looking around down there.’
Corinne clenched her hands together in her lap. ‘I’ve never even heard about this dark web. If it exists with all this heinous stuff on it, why haven’t the police shut it down?’ She asked incredulously. ‘How is it possible it even exists?’
‘Because the sites are really hard to find,’ Laura said. ‘The dark web is made up of encrypted networks that have been hidden. It’s super secure and anonymous. If you use proper OPSEC, it’s really hard, if not impossible, for the police to find what’s out there or who’s using it because IP addresses or the location of devices on a network and servers are obscured.’
‘OPSEC?’ Maya asked.
‘Operational security,’ I clarified.
Laura nodded her agreement. ‘You have to download special software to go into the darkness, like Tor or Phantom. Phantom is newer than Tor and is supposed to be better and faster. They use what’s called “onion routing”. What happens when you’re using the surface web with a normal browser is that information travels via the net in packets that contain data, which shows the sender and destination. But the Tor network has volunteers who use their computers as nodes, so your packet of info doesn’t travel direct to a server. It creates a route through randomly assigned nodes first. Basically, the packets are wrapped in layers of other packets so no node knows the whole pathway.’
I’d had experience with encrypted messages from my time in the military so I was familiar with Tor onion routing. It had become popular with journalists, activists, freedom fighters and whistle-blowers, because it was secure and anonymous, but the same principles that made it a safety net for the innocent to maintain their privacy from the spying eyes of Big Brother had been exploited by criminals and it was a refuge for their ever-growing activity and illicit use.
Laura twisted her lips together, eyes huge behind her glasses. If she’d looked nervous before, she looked terrified now. ‘I saw some chatter on an Internet forum on the surface web, rumours about red rooms a while back. A big debate about whether they were real or not. I thought they were trying to wind people up, though. I thought they were just creepy pasta.’ She swallowed again.
‘Creepy what?’ Maya asked.
‘Creepy pasta. A horror story spread round the Internet. An urban legend,’ Laura added.
‘Like you said, you can find all kinds of stuff on the dark web, so why not a red room?’ I said. And I knew from John Crimper’s pay-per-view site that they existed. I didn’t want to mention the details in front of Corinne and Laura, though. Didn’t want to put those kinds of images in their heads. I thought Corinne would crumple, knowing Toni was out there somewhere, possibly in the clutches of the same kind of evilness.
Laura threw her head in her hands. ‘Is this all my fault? Has something bad happened to her because of me?’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Maya said.
‘No, it’s mine!’ Corinne shouted. ‘Why didn’t Toni come to me if she was in trouble? Why didn’t she say anything if she’d discovered something so . . . so horrific? Why couldn’t she talk to me?’ Corinne leaped up, a guttural sob exploding from her before she rushed out of the room.
Maya was on her feet instantly, disappearing after her.
‘I’m sorry. If I hadn’t told Toni about the dark web none of this would’ve happened, would it?’ Tears slid down Laura’s cheeks. ‘But I don’t understand how she could’ve found a red room. From what I read, if they did exist, they’d be well hidden, or you’d have to pay to join the site. They wouldn’t let anyone just look at it. Unless . . . Oh, no!’ Laura sucked in a breath, wiping her eyes. ‘I heard some stuff from a guy in my class. He said he was nosing around t
o see what kind of content was on the dark web. There’s no Google down there so you can’t just type in “red rooms” and get a list of hits, but there’s something called a Hidden Wiki. It’s got a list of dark-web sites on it. They’re just addresses made of letters and numbers with the word .onion at the end, so there’s no way to find out what’s behind them unless you look at them. He said he went on one page and accidentally found a website hidden behind it selling weapons.’ She gushed the words out in a long stream, but now she paused to suck in a breath. ‘I thought he was just bullshitting, trying to wind everyone up, but maybe there was some truth in it. Maybe Toni stumbled across a red-room site down there somehow, and they found out who she was.’ She pushed her glasses up again.
I felt panic rising then, my mind churning through everything. There were two scenarios running through my head, both equally disturbing. One: they’d abducted Toni because of what she’d seen and killed her outright to keep her quiet. Two: they’d use her as the next victim in their red room. ‘We need to find out exactly what sites she went on right now.’
‘But if Toni was using Tor or Phantom, you won’t be able to see what she was looking at. The program doesn’t store any browsing data like Google does on the surface web. It deletes everything when you close it down.’
‘So how can we find out which website she found?’ I asked.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You can’t!’ she wailed.
THE MISSING
Chapter 19
My cell is all made of rough concrete. No windows anywhere. There’s a wooden door that’s solid. I know, I’ve tried to push it. Tried to shoulder all my weight against it. It won’t move. The air smells of stale sweat and dampness and copper and something . . . something else. In the books I’ve read – the true crimes – many victims said they could smell their own fear. I didn’t believe that was possible. Just thought it was something they said. But it’s true. I can smell my fear. Taste it. Feel it burning inside me, rippling under my skin.
The man who hit me, he was wearing . . . What was he wearing? I don’t know. It was too quick and . . . Well, it doesn’t matter what he was wearing. Will I be able to identify him again? I don’t know! I keep getting flashes of his face but it’s all swirly in my head. And if I can’t identify them, they’ll never be arrested and locked up when I get out of here.
Except I know deep down that I’ll never get out of here because no one will find me. How could they?
I don’t know how they found me. How could they discover I saw it? I don’t understand. Laura told me it was all anonymous. That was the whole point of it. How could they have known who I was? How did it even let me get that far?
But I saw it. And now I’m going to be it.
I rub my hands up and down my arms, my teeth chattering, setting off more pain in my nose and behind my eye sockets. My T-shirt and jeans are damp with sweat and stick to my skin and . . . I’ve wet myself, too.
I get to my feet, sliding up the wall for support as the room spins around me. I’m not calling it a cell. I won’t.
I look at the door again. One way out.
Suddenly, a fluorescent tube light on the ceiling turns on. I blink rapidly, the brightness burning my eyes. It’s about four metres above my head. If I could jump up and grab it then I could smash it and use the shards of glass as a weapon when they come for me. But there’s no way I can get to it. It’s too high.
Above the door, way up near the ceiling, there’s some kind of small plastic box. There’s nothing else in the room. Nothing else I could use as a weapon. Nothing at all.
Except me.
But I refuse to be scared now. I refuse, I refuse, I refuse!
I think back to my psychology course. Cognitive behavioural therapy. We did an exercise on thought replacement. Changing negative or fearful thoughts into positive ones. Thought-stopping. Catching thoughts of fear. Challenge the fearful thought! People can endure all kinds of things if they do that. So I’m going to do what they don’t expect. I’m not going to give them what they want. And I know they want terror and fear and evidence of pain. But fuck them!
FUCK THEM!
Mum always said I was stubborn. That I’d inherited Dad’s strength and determination. And even though I never met him, I like to think that’s true. It means part of him is inside me. He’s always with me, looking over my shoulder, keeping me safe.
Except I’m not safe now and there’s no way out. But I refuse to think that!
I think instead about the memory box Mum made for me after Dad died. The stories she told me about where he went, what he did. As a child I’d pull out an old jumper of Dad’s from the box and smell it, press it to my nose and inhale deeply. It didn’t smell of him any more, of course, but when I was little I’d imagine it did. I’d run my fingers over his medals and pull out the photos of him. Stare at them for hours.
I haven’t picked up that memory box for years. It’s stuffed in the back of my wardrobe now. But I remember one picture vividly – the photo of Dad with Mitchell. I remember Mum telling me that Dad was dead because of Mitchell. She left Hereford after Dad’s funeral. Couldn’t bear to be reminded of the happy times there with him and their friends, all the guys in the Regiment and their wives. She said she’d never go back.
But Mum will call one of them now, won’t she? The old friends Dad knew. She will. Because they know what they’re doing. They’re used to finding people and getting them back. People in secret locations. Being held by kidnappers who don’t want them found.
They’ll come. They’ll get me out of here.
That’s my safety thought. That’s my fearless thought.
I take a trembling breath and clutch on to it tight.
THE DETECTIVE
Chapter 20
I sat in the interview room at the police station in front of a red-eyed Paula Eagan. Ronnie was in an identical room next door with Grant.
I stated the date and time and who was present for the benefit of the recording equipment, then got straight down to it.
‘You told me you were at work the day before yesterday, didn’t you?’
Paula glanced down at her lap and bit her lip.
‘But that’s not true, is it?’
She shook her head.
‘So I want to know why you lied to me, Paula.’
She closed her eyes and threw her head in her hands. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was muffled through her fingers.
‘Sorry’s not good enough. Where were you? Did you go to your parents’ house and ask them for money again to bail Grant out of trouble? Did it escalate into an argument? Did you kill them, Paula?’
‘No!’ She sat back up.
‘Or maybe it was Grant who shot them? We know there were two people there. Did you try to stop him but it all got out of control?’
‘God, no! Of course not. But I knew if I told you what was really going on I’d look guilty. My relationship with Mum and Dad had been strained for a long time. I was asking them for money. And then suddenly they’re murdered. But I didn’t have anything to do with it. I swear!’
I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms. ‘Go on, then. Tell me where you were. I’m listening.’
She sucked in a breath and stared at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Look, me and Grant are having some financial problems.’
‘Because of his gambling debts?’
‘Yes. He was using some online casinos. Slots, live games, video poker, anything like that. By the time I realised what was going on, he’d racked up a thirty-grand debt on our credit cards.’ She rubbed at her forehead with one hand, grimacing. ‘I was paying it off in dribs and drabs, but we never really got far with it because the interest kept making it go up and up. We got behind with the mortgage then, trying to juggle things around, and the bank threatened us with repossession. We made them an offer that we could barely afford to pay – monthly instalments – but they refused. Then they sent us a letter telling us they were going to start court
action to recover the debt and would be asking for a repossession order. I was really scared. I thought we’d lose the house. I thought we’d end up on the streets. And the business wasn’t doing well, either, so we couldn’t get a loan from it to tide us over.’ She blinked back some tears. ‘I asked Mum and Dad if they could lend us some money.’
‘And they refused?’
She bit her lip and nodded. ‘I think Mum would’ve helped us but Dad was adamant that they wouldn’t loan us the money. He thought it would just happen again and they’d lose their savings because we wouldn’t be able to pay them back.’
‘And you were desperate.’
‘Yes. But not desperate enough to kill them! I mean, we hadn’t got along for a while but there’s no way I’d do anything as callous as that.’
‘So where were you really on Wednesday, between the hours of eight a.m. and eleven a.m.?’
She lowered her head, a flush creeping up her cheeks. ‘We were both at the County Court. Our hearing was due to start at nine and we got there at eight fifteen, just to be on the safe side. But they had a big backlog of repossession orders to get through and were running late. We still hadn’t been seen at one and then they broke for lunch for an hour so we went to a sandwich bar just up the road and waited there until we went back at two. We didn’t get in to see the judge until just gone three. We got out of there at quarter past four and then went home.’
That would be easy enough to verify. It was a least an hour’s drive from Turpinfield to the court. And if what she’d said was true, it was a solid alibi. It didn’t mean they hadn’t got someone else to carry out the murder for them, though. But who? Neither of them had any known associates who were involved in violent crime or firearms. And if they couldn’t afford to pay off their debts, it was highly unlikely they could afford to pay anyone to do it for them.
‘What was the outcome of the hearing?’ I asked.
She fidgeted with her hands in her lap. ‘Well, the night before we were due in court, Grant’s uncle agreed to loan us the money so we’re able to repay it all in one go. The judge said that if we paid it all off within two weeks, the case would be dismissed and we’d be OK. Grant’s going to go to a gambling addiction therapy group as well. I was going round to Mum and Dad’s to give them the good news when I . . . when I found them like that.’ A tear slipped from her eye and slid down her cheek. ‘I was hoping our relationship would get back to normal, but . . . that’s not going to happen now.’
