Black Widow

by Chris Brookmyre

  There was also the practical consideration that I couldn’t simply tell Peter to move out. For one thing, he had nowhere immediately to go, but more importantly, he was in a fragile state of his own, and he seemed to be unravelling in front of me.

  I came in close to eleven one night, after a major case ended up taking nine hours. I was exhausted, stressed and hungry, and when I opened the fridge, there was nothing to eat: not even any fresh milk for me to make myself a cup of tea.

  Peter was sitting on the couch in front of the TV, playing some game on his Xbox.

  ‘There’s no milk,’ I said, and admittedly I made it sound like an accusation.

  ‘Yeah, I just had take-away and a beer.’

  ‘But I said to you this morning I would be working all day and into the evening.’

  ‘I was working too. I didn’t get back until nine.’

  ‘You couldn’t have popped into Tesco on your way home?’

  ‘I forgot, I was tired.’

  ‘And you couldn’t have nipped out again when you saw there was nothing in the fridge for me to eat? Instead you’re sitting here playing games?’

  This last seemed to trigger something. He put down the controller and stood up, the look of huffy resentment replaced by something more animated. More worrying.

  ‘The supermarket’s open twenty-four hours, Diana. You could have gone in on your way home. You could still go now.’

  ‘I’ve been on my feet in theatre since half eight this morning. I couldn’t leave. You can nip out of your office any time, like when you need something from PC World.’

  He didn’t miss the subtext here, but as soon as it came out, I wished I hadn’t said it. He seemed to grow in front of me, his back straightening and his posture tense.

  ‘Yeah, because my job is piss-easy, and I can pick it up and put it down any time. Is that what you think?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘I’m working all the hours God sends, and yet you’re resentful of me doing something to unwind during the few hours I have to myself. Maybe you could do with unwinding, Diana. All you do is work. You’re doing more on-call and more of these waiting-list initiative sessions all the time. All those blogs you once wrote about work-life balance, yet I hardly see you because you’re working more than ever. And what’s worse is that you turned me into a mirror image of yourself. You got what you wanted, Diana: someone just like you, consumed by their job, someone as unhappy as you.’

  His voice was getting louder, his eyes wide. I was reminded of how he appeared when we had the near thing in the car: possessed by anger, detached from his surroundings.

  He strode across to the TV and pressed a button on the Xbox. A disc ejected from the console and he took it in his hand, holding it up in front of me.

  ‘Is this the problem? These games I’m spending time with, these games that give me pleasure, give me escape?’

  He gripped the disc in both hands and snapped it.

  ‘Will this make it better, Diana? If we’ve both got nothing but work?’

  He reached down and grabbed another game, popping open the case and snapping the disc. I saw a tiny spray of blood, a jagged edge having scored the fleshy part of his palm.

  He ignored it, opening another and snapping that disc too, then tossed the case and the debris to the carpet.

  I was utterly paralysed. I had seen fits of temper in my life, but I had never been so close to this much anger, already spilling out into acts of violence and destruction. An instinct said run, but I felt powerless to move, as though hypnotised by my own fear, utterly at his mercy.

  He ripped a fistful of cables from the back of the console, dropped them to the floor and then stormed out, slamming the front door behind him. I heard his car start a few moments later, by which point I realised I was physically shaking.

  I knew he had been drinking, though I didn’t know how much. Alcohol wasn’t the biggest danger, however, having seen what almost happened a few weeks ago.

  I remember thinking that if he killed himself, I would be relieved.

  I confided in Calum about this and he assured me that if I was ever scared, I only had to pick up the phone and he would come running. It was the zero option, because I knew it would trigger all the other things I didn’t want to deal with. Yet there were also times when Peter was pathetically needy, as if he was in a state of denial about the condition of our marriage. It was like he thought we could still save this; that we would both want to save this.

  And then, of course, there was the project itself: this occult malevolent entity that had consumed more and more of Peter since we got married and which was now threatening to devour him. Now that he no longer had me nagging him about eating together and spending time with one another, he could dedicate himself entirely to his work, and yet he seemed more stressed about it than ever. I would hear him on the phone to investors, contractors and God knows who else, talking about how the developers making the user interface were behind schedule, or there was a bottleneck with the server traffic or some other jargon-heavy problem I didn’t understand. The one thing I did grasp was that all of these things were costing more time and more money, and he was evidently running out of both.

  On one occasion I saw the bathroom door close down the hall as I was passing Peter’s den. I snuck in and observed that his laptop wasn’t locked out, his email client open on the screen. I clicked on several messages, skim-reading the first few lines in the preview window then moving on to the next. It was all techy or videogame-related. But just as I heard the sound of the flush, I previewed an email from someone called Sam Finnegan, three words of which leapt out at me before I returned the cursor to the first message. Finnegan appeared to be one of Peter’s investors, and he wasn’t happy.

  The longer this thing takes to deliver a return, the more it is costing me. If I am laying out more up front, then I want that reflected in my share of the back end. Don’t forget that what I know about Courtney Jean Lang could make things very awkward in the near future.

  If I had any lingering doubts about my feelings for Peter, then that was the moment of truth. Before I began my affair with Calum, catching a stolen glimpse of that name on an email would have sent my mind and my pulse racing, condemning me to hours of obsessive speculation and yet another fitful night’s sleep.

  Now, I realised, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter who Courtney Jean Lang was or what she meant to Peter, past or present. I was moving on. All the questions that had previously consumed me would only be of relevance if I was trying to salvage this. Instead my priority was finding an exit strategy.

  That was why it was difficult – though I knew it was right – to remain circumspect about our affair. I knew that if some indiscretion or mere happenstance caused it to be discovered, then it would force the issue. I think deep down I wanted something to come along and take the decision out of my hands.

  Careful what you wish for.

  WOUNDED

  Before he left the café, Parlabane had sent Ball_or_Aerosol a direct message, figuring the guy would get it whenever he logged on to the forum.

  My name is Jack Parlabane. I am a journalist. I urgently need to talk to you about your dealings with Diana Jager. This will be off the record and in the strictest confidence. You don’t need to identify yourself. We can do it by phone, Skype or whatever you find most secure/convenient.

  His phone steadfastly refused to ring on the journey up from Morpeth.

  He was already booting up his laptop as he got out of his car at Maybury Square, watching it connect to his Wi-Fi network as he climbed the stairs to his flat. There had been no attempt at contact via Skype or email. He logged on to the Holobase forum. There was no reply to his direct message, but he could see that BoA was online. He messaged him again, including a link to the Elphinstone car crash story.

  I have seen the video posted by KwikSkopa. It was filmed by Diana Jager’s husband without her knowing. Two days after it appeared on the Holobase forum, this h
appened: http://tinyurl.com/d9r87vb

  I am not convinced it is quite what it appears and I think you may have an informed perspective. Please get in touch.

  Parlabane got a Skype notification ten minutes later, followed by a message stating BoA would call in two hours. ‘Can’t talk about this at work,’ he explained.

  No shit.

  The connection was stable and clear, which was a surprise and a relief. Parlabane’s dealings with a notorious hacker known as Buzzkill had him anticipating complex shenanigans involving voice disguisers and speech synth, but instead he found himself in normal, civil conversation with a nervous and diffident-sounding young male.

  ‘I won’t be identified?’ he asked.

  ‘I only know you by your online name,’ Parlabane reassured him. ‘Anything else you choose to volunteer is up to you, and if you subsequently decide you want to withdraw anything, I’ll respect that.’

  ‘Okay. It’s just that, I know it was all a long time ago, and I don’t think anything can be proved, but I’m not proud of what happened. I’ve got a wife and a baby now.’

  Parlabane could hear a conscience at work. This was good news.

  ‘As I said, I don’t need specifics at this stage. Tell me what happened at Alderbrook.’

  ‘Okay. First of all, this is not who I am now, yeah? I was twenty-five. I was single and I’d been through a few girls but I wasn’t any kind of ladykiller.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Parlabane tried to sound like he understood but in truth this was far from where he expected it to go.

  ‘We went out a few times, a matter of weeks start to finish.’

  ‘You went out with Diana Jager?’

  ‘Yeah. She was older but she was fit. I was flattered that she’d be interested in me, so I brought my A game, man. Turned up the charm and probably made myself out to be someone I wasn’t. That’s why I realised it was never going to last. I ended it, and it looked really bad because it was only a couple of days after we had slept together.

  ‘She was pretty pissed off, saying I was only after her for one thing, but that wasn’t how it went. Sometimes you have libido-vision. You can’t see what a person is really like or how a relationship isn’t feasible until you’ve cleared that mist, but up until that point you’ve convinced yourself it’s gonna be great between you, you know?’

  ‘It’s been a while since I was out there. But I get what you’re saying.’

  ‘It was obvious we weren’t a good match. We both knew the sex had been awkward, for one thing. The spark wasn’t there. But she made out that was my fault. She said like I should work harder on our relationship and everything would get better. My psycho alarms were going off, telling me to get clear pronto. The blog piece about IT guys ran shortly after I broke up with her.’

  ‘So you’re saying it was personal?’

  ‘It’s never not personal with Diana. Just like the other stuff in the blog that turned out to be more about payback than principles.’

  ‘Were you aware of the blog, then? Did you already know she was Scalpelgirl?’

  ‘No: to both, man. Why would I be reading a medical blog? Someone on the forum posted about it, getting in a right lather, and when I read it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She never revealed where she worked and everyone was given nicknames, but I knew exactly who Scalpelgirl was talking about right away and it took me two minutes to suss her identity: a hundred and nineteen seconds of which was me being in denial.’

  ‘Denial about what?’

  ‘That this was really her: being so vicious, so disrespectful. I know she was writing about IT guys generally, but I felt she was getting at me personally: making out I was stupid, immature, not good enough to get a better job. I don’t mind telling you, man, I was wounded. I was pissed off. And I did something rash as a result.’

  ‘You hacked the blog and revealed her identity. How?’

  ‘I put a keylogger on her office PC. Sussed her password. This stuff is off the record, right?’

  ‘I don’t need the technical details.’

  ‘Okay. Cut a long story short, she used the same password for WordPress as she used for her hospital log-in, and that opened the door for me to have some juvenile fun.’

  ‘And what happened next?’

  He sounded chastened, like he was appealing for Parlabane not to make him relive it.

  ‘You know what happened next, man. But you have to believe me, it was never my intention for her to get dogpiled like that, or to end up losing her job.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the part everybody knows. I mean what happened to you?’

  THE NEW YOU

  I received the email minutes after I got home from work. I had just switched on the coffee machine when I heard the chime from my phone, and I glanced at it to see who it was from. Unless it was highly intriguing, I wasn’t going to open it until I’d sat down to a latte and put my feet up for a few blessed minutes. It had been a long day and I could feel the strain in my calves that came from too many hours bent over the operating table.

  The ‘From’ field listed the sender as ‘The Worst of the Worst’, the subject line stating simply: ‘Hello again.’

  I tensed up immediately, recognising my own words from the blog that had disparaged and enraged hospital IT staff: you’ve got to be the worst of the worst if this is the only gig you can get.

  I thought about deleting it unread, thinking ‘don’t engage, don’t feed the troll’, but some instinct told me this was worse than that. It would be unwise to ignore a potential threat. I needed to know what I was dealing with.

  I tapped the message to reveal a single short paragraph and a hyperlink.

  All your old friends in hospital IT are loving this image of the new you. Whoever would have guessed an uptight frigid bitch could suck cock like a pro.

  I sighed, feeling more irritated than threatened. It was annoying that they had found out my email address and were having another pop at me after all these years, but as I clicked on the link I wasn’t bracing myself for anything worse than yet another Photoshop sticking my head on a porn actress. There had been a time when I saw so many of these things that I was almost surprised to look down and see my own breasts whenever I took a shower.

  This was no Photoshop, however, and nor was it a mere still.

  I dropped the phone as my fingers turned to rubber. It clattered off the edge of the table and landed on the tiled floor. The screen was cracked but it had landed face up, still showing the most intimate of footage, shot in my own home. My own bedroom.

  My first terrified thought was for the implications. Whoever was behind this knew where I lived. They knew where I fucking lived. Someone had broken into my house and placed a hidden camera in my bedroom.

  I forced myself to look again, and saw from the angle that the video had been shot from the table in the corner where I often sat my laptop. Another possibility took shape, no less horrifying. An intruder hadn’t physically invaded my house, but he hadn’t needed to. Some anonymous stranger had remote control of the camera on my computer, and by extension access to God knows what else.

  Then I realised that I was wrong, and the truth was actually something worse.

  It hadn’t been a stranger. It had been Peter.

  He asked to film me and I refused. He had done it anyway, secretly, using my own laptop, and now some hacker had accessed the footage.

  There are simply not the words to describe how I felt.

  Instantly I was reliving all that I endured when my blog was hacked, but amplified a hundredfold. The shock. The helplessness. The humiliation. The fallout radiation of other people’s hatred. The isolation. The vulnerability. The shame.

  The nakedness.

  The whole world might see this; for all I knew, the whole world already had. And back then, as now, all of those emotions were soon consumed by fire: overwhelmed by the flames of a searing, blazing rage.

  Even as the storm was whipping around me at Alderbrook, I w
as taking refuge in my vengeance. I knew who had hacked me and I knew why. It was Evan Okonjo, an attractive but cocky young IT consultant with whom I’d recently had an ill-judged and predictably short-lived fling. I was foolishly flattered by his interest, enough not to realise that this interest wouldn’t extend beyond a notch on his bedpost. I’ll admit that the sour taste this left may have played a part in me subsequently committing my unflattering impressions of his peer group to print.

  He was trying to make a point: proving that IT guys in general – and himself in particular – were smarter than me, as payback for what I had implied in the blog. All Evan had proven was that he knew more about computers than I did. I would demonstrate that it didn’t take long for me to catch up.

  In the days immediately after Scalpelgirl’s identity was leaked, I scoured a few sites and gave myself a crash course in hacking, quickly deducing how Evan had got my password. Stupidly I had used the same one for multiple accounts, including my hospital log-in. It was one of those things I had always meant to rectify, but it never seems imperative until it’s too late.

  I scanned the computer in my office at Alderbrook with some specialised software I had downloaded. Within seconds it had located a keylogger program lurking on the hard drive, installed shortly after my IT article had gone viral, according to the file properties. It was recording every keystroke I made, which on any given day would begin with my password, and its logs were presumably retrievable from elsewhere on the local network, particularly for IT techs who had all kinds of access.