Black Widow

by Chris Brookmyre

  This constituted proof of how, but not of who.

  I waited until lunchtime the next day, when I knew the IT guys would all be down at the canteen or even across the road at the pub. I had been in there a few times, getting shown around when Evan was turning on the charm. I had observed that despite the near-hysterical security and confidentiality measures that were imposed upon clinical staff in using our computers, the IT guys just left theirs up and running all the time. Presumably their log-ins didn’t have access to medical records, or it was simply another typical NHS instance of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

  I sat down at Evan’s computer and checked his browser history. I found my own blog page, the log-in screen automatically filling in the username and password fields from local memory.

  I screenshotted it, saving to a memory card, then took a photo on my phone, showing unmistakably that it was his desk and monitor.

  None of this would be sufficient proof to raise proceedings with hospital management. He could say I logged on to the site from his computer myself, and there was no way of proving he had installed the keylogger (nor even that I hadn’t put it there myself to frame him). However, this was never about proof that would satisfy a third party. This was between two parties only.

  I couldn’t prove to anyone else what he had done to me. Same as he wouldn’t be able to prove to anyone else what I was about to do to him.

  PAYBACK

  ‘She called me up,’ he told Parlabane. ‘It was soon after it had all kicked off about the blog and those people at the hospital had been identified. She sounded calm, professional; very “let’s not mention the elephant in the room” of us having slept together, while at the same time actually playing on it. She said she wanted to be sure she couldn’t get hacked again, so she needed someone she could trust to come around to her office and check out her computer security.

  ‘Seriously, man, I had no idea. I was actually feeling a bit guilty that she seemed so clueless, that she should be coming to me of all people to sort it out. My main concern was how I’d keep a poker face if she started unloading about what had happened to her.’

  He was earnest to the point of insistent. The guy sounded to Parlabane like someone who was still spooked by this experience, nearly five years down the line.

  ‘I go in there and she shuts the door, saying something about making sure nobody could see in, as she was paranoid about her new password. The screen was blank, in sleep mode. I gave the mouse a nudge to wake it up and suddenly I’m looking at the log-in screen for her blog, with the password field all asterisks. I couldn’t believe how clueless she was: I honestly thought she was gonna ask me to show her how to set up a new password.

  ‘She said it wasn’t responding when she clicked the log-in button, so I had a go and nothing happened. Then I noticed the desktop background was exactly the same as my own. That’s why it wasn’t responding: I was clicking on a photo. She had filled her entire display with a screengrab from my computer.’

  ‘Awkward,’ Parlabane suggested.

  ‘She had a photo on her phone too. She said, “I know you did this.” I was shitting myself, but thinking fast. I knew she couldn’t prove nothing with this, and I told her that.’

  ‘How did she respond?’

  ‘She said I was right. She said she couldn’t prove I had hacked her blog, but that we both knew it was true. I’m thinking, she must be recording this or something, trying to get me admitting it on tape, so I said nothing. Next thing I know, she fucking stabs me.’

  ‘With a hypodermic?’

  ‘Yeah. That was the first time I noticed she had surgical gloves on. She moved like lightning: fucking found a vein too. Half a second later the syringe is gone again, palmed out of sight.

  ‘I said: “What the fuck you doing? You fucking stabbed me.” That’s when she tells me: “We both know that’s true, but you can’t prove anything.”’

  ‘Touché.’

  ‘No, mate, that wasn’t the half of it. She tells me she got the hypo from a sharps bucket down at A&E: that’s why she wasn’t handling it without gloves. You should see A&E at Alderbrook: it’s wall-to-wall junkies half the time. She advised I get tested for hepatitis and HIV as soon as possible, then showed me the door, like I was her patient. I swear she never even raised her voice the whole time.’

  ‘I take it the tests were okay.’

  ‘Yeah, man, but it was a long couple of weeks before I got the results back, truth. Worst two weeks of my life. I know it’s likely she only said all that about A&E to mess with me, and the needle was actually fresh, but the scary thing is I’ll never know.

  ‘I accept I pulled a shitty move, but her response was off the scale, seriously. And when I found out she was getting bagged from her job over the blog, I was kacking it in case she decided I was due some afters for that too. This is someone you do not want to fuck with. This is a woman who will make it her purpose in life to settle the score. They say payback’s a bitch? Then believe me: you don’t want payback from the Bladebitch.’

  THE FINAL BETRAYAL

  I couldn’t face the prospect of sitting there alone, watching the minutes crawl agonisingly into hours without knowing how late Peter would stay at the office that night, so I sent him a text and an email. They both stated simply: ‘Get home now.’

  When he came in, he found me sitting in the kitchen, my laptop open on the table in front of me. The screen was blank from having gone into sleep mode, and I was reluctant to wake it until I absolutely had to. I had the video saved to the desktop, and even the automatically created thumbnail icon showed an image that made me ill. There wasn’t a single frame of it that I would want another human being to see, but I intended to show it to Peter simply because I was so shaken that I didn’t think I could bring myself to speak.

  As he walked through the door, I doubted whether I could even go through with that, but I didn’t need to. He could see it in my face. He glanced at me, then at the laptop, and his expression of confused concern, stemming from my insistent text message, turned immediately into one of alarm.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  He was breathing heavily all of a sudden. He put a hand on the doorframe, like he needed to steady himself or perhaps was even thinking about closing it and running away.

  ‘Diana, it’s complicated. You have to let me explain.’

  I’m all ears, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get the words out. I still couldn’t bring myself to speak to him yet. I simply stared at him, feeling the anger kindle inside me. Anger would animate me again, beyond this mute paralysis of shock and injury.

  ‘I’ve been under so much pressure and my judgement has … I’ve been desperate. I know what I did was unforgivable, but I thought I could get it dealt with and retrieve the situation before you found out.’

  As soon as I heard his floundering babble, my voice was restored in response not merely to what he was saying now, but all of the lies and excuses I had fielded since we got married.

  ‘What do you mean you’re under pressure? What has judgement got to do with anything? How could you possibly deal with this before I found out? You can’t put this kind of genie back in the bottle. I got sent a fucking email by a complete stranger. It’s out there, Peter. It’s out there for ever.’

  ‘What’s out there?’

  He looked dazed.

  ‘What the hell do you think? The sex tape. The sex tape you made, of us, in our bedroom, without me knowing a damn thing about it. You filmed me going down on you, fucking you. You filmed it secretly using my own laptop, and now somebody has hacked in and copied the file.’

  ‘No. No. Somebody must have planted a Trojan and got remote access to your computer. They can do that. It’s how Russian gangsters steal people’s credit card details.’

  ‘Oh, fuck you, Peter. How stupid do you think I am? You asked me if you could film me, and I said no. Then you did it anyway. And I’m not the first, either. I’ve seen the files on your own laptop: you and this wo
man you’re still obsessed with. Who is she, Peter?’

  ‘Files? I’ll admit there might be some old porn on there, but…’

  ‘It’s you in the videos, you lying shit. You cropped your head out, like you did when you filmed us, but I know what you look like naked. The only difference was that you cropped her head out too. You granted her an anonymity you didn’t extend to your wife. Why was that, Peter? Was it my punishment for saying no? What’s so special about Courtney Jean Lang?’

  I saw his eyes widen the way I had come to recognise. It was as good as a sign that lit up saying ‘Busted’.

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. Tell me what to think, Peter. Give me a fucking clue as to why you were in your office watching videos of yourself screwing another woman while you thought your wife was out at work.’

  He held up a palm, which I observed was trembling. By contrast I was feeling steadier by the second, but only because my growing fury was emboldening me.

  ‘Okay. She’s an ex. And definitely an ex. We had a thing for a while, but it was before I met you. Way before I met you.’

  ‘Was it before you proposed to Liz Miller? Because according to the dates, that sex tape was made while you were supposedly head over heels in love with her.’

  I watched him swallow. It was all unravelling: lies within lies, yet still I had no answers. And still he tried to shore up the old lies with new ones.

  ‘The dates? No, the calendar was never properly set on the camera I used. Courtney and I were over well before I knew Liz, I swear. How did you find out about her?’

  ‘I’ve been finding out a lot of things, darling. It’s what happens when you can’t trust a word your husband says.’

  He looked like he wanted to run. He seemed exasperated and panicky, like he didn’t know where the next shock was coming from. Welcome to my world, I thought.

  ‘Diana, you have to understand. I know it looks bad with the video and everything, but it’s not what you think. Courtney is an investor in the company. She was putting the squeeze on me over something, and I admit that despite our affair – maybe because of it – I still find her intimidating. I was watching the videos of us having sex to make myself feel better, gee myself up for dealing with her.’

  ‘You need to stop lying Peter, because you’ve no idea how much I know. You were going to see her that weekend, weren’t you? I saw your tickets. You weren’t flying to London, you were taking the train to Glasgow. I even got the cab driver to confirm he dropped you at the station, not the airport.’

  His breathing was quickening. His hand gripped the doorframe all the tighter, knuckles white. His back was pressed against the other side of the arch like he feared he would fall over. He looked cornered, but I noticed his back straighten and his eyes briefly blaze.

  I recognised that look, and climbed to my feet, moving slightly backwards from the table. He was barring the way out.

  ‘No. I swear. I know I kept things from you, and I’ve tied myself in knots, but I was trying to…’

  He breathed in, closed his eyes for a second, composing himself. When he breathed out he looked calmer, but the strain of staying that way was unmistakable.

  ‘That weekend, it’s true I went to Glasgow. But I made out I had a meeting in London because the real reason for my trip to Glasgow was to see a urologist about getting the vasectomy reversed. I was doing it secretly so that you wouldn’t find out I’d had it done in the first place.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. That’s utter bullshit. If that were true, why wouldn’t you tell me that’s where you had been when we were having that argument about it? Instead you said you’d been meaning to reverse it but hadn’t gotten around to it. Or is the problem that you can’t remember which lie you told when?’

  His head drooped, gaze flitting back and forth, unable to look me in the eye. Finally it appeared he was out of lies.

  ‘Shall we try again, from the top? Don’t I deserve an explanation as to why, as well as an Oxford medical graduate, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, the author of a dozen papers and a consultant of ten years’ standing, I am now also an amateur porn star? Do tell me how you were planning to, as you put it, “retrieve the situation”? What, were you going to track down everybody who has downloaded the video and ask them politely if they wouldn’t mind deleting it?’

  Even as I said this I realised that its sheer impossibility was too absurd for even Peter to offer up as an excuse. That was when it struck me that this was not what he meant.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  My words were a mere breath. This was, incredibly, about to get worse.

  When I had first confronted him, he thought I was talking about something else. He had looked shocked, really shocked, when he walked in and found me sitting there. He knew I had discovered something quite disastrous, but this was before he learned it was the sex tape.

  ‘This isn’t what you thought you could retrieve.’

  I caught him glancing anxiously at the laptop, unable to prevent himself.

  ‘What did you think I was talking about? What were you trying to sort?’

  He strode forward and made to grab for the computer. I was closer, though. I snatched it up from the table and clutched it to my chest, backing away.

  ‘It was only temporary,’ he said, pleading. ‘I was going to pay it back.’

  ‘Pay what back? What have you done, Peter?’

  I was barely able to speak above a whisper as my mouth was suddenly so dry.

  ‘Give me the laptop, Diana,’ he commanded.

  He was chillingly calm now, like the ocean is calm before a tsunami.

  Peter was standing between me and the kitchen door. I had to get away from him and I had to be alone with the laptop so that I could confirm whether this was as bad as I feared.

  ‘Stay away from me.’

  I opened the door that led down three concrete steps into the garage, grabbing the keys that were dangling beneath the handle. Glancing back to see Peter was already following, I slammed the door behind me, locking it with my right hand as I clutched the laptop with my left.

  The Wi-Fi signal wasn’t great out there, but it was enough. I didn’t have the remote for my car with me, so I couldn’t sit inside it. Instead I placed the laptop on the bonnet and launched my banking app.

  It rejected my password and PIN combination. For a moment I worried I really had been hacked by Russian gangsters, but I realised it was more likely down to my fumbling fingers mistyping in my tremulous anxiety. I logged in at the second attempt, impatiently navigating past an annoying service announcement to reach the accounts summary.

  When I saw the numbers, it was as though I began to drift out of myself. Even remembering it now, my recall is of watching the scene from above, like the emotions were so overwhelming that some defensive system had kicked in and detached me from feeling their full impact.

  Forty thousand pounds had been transferred from my accounts into MTE. He had moved the money into his company in four instalments over the past week. To do that he didn’t merely need my password and my PIN: in order to set up and approve a new payee he would have needed access to my bank cards and my card reader too. He must have done it while I slept.

  This man I had loved and trusted above anyone else on this earth, this man with whom I shared a bed: this man had filmed me having sex on that bed, and had then robbed me while I slept in it.

  THE FATAL BLOW

  It seems bizarre, but one of the first rational thoughts that came into my head was that I had been remiss in letting so much money accumulate in those accounts. That was where my salary went, and I had been meaning to deal with the surplus, but had never gotten around to it. It’s what happens when you’re well paid for an all-consuming job. You end up with no life outside of work and no time to spend the money you’re making. I only had to look at my surroundings for an illustration of how dominant my work had been. When I bought this place, I had all
kinds of plans for renovating the garage, turning it into an extension maybe. Four years on I hadn’t even gotten around to throwing out the ancient tools rusting on the wall-rack alongside the car.

  After the financial crash, I had been wary of letting too much build up in one place, having heard that it was only guaranteed up to a maximum of fifty K. So in those first few moments of shock, part of me was giving myself a hard time for my negligence in letting the pot fill up. But then the garage door opened and this weird reflex of self-recrimination was blown away in the icy blast of air that whipped in from outside.

  Though it could only have been a couple of minutes, it was as if I had been cocooned in there, alone with my laptop and its revelations, deluded as to its sanctity. I forgot Peter could come around the front, or maybe I simply hoped he would be too ashamed to disturb me.

  I heard the scrape of wood catching on the uneven concrete, an undulation caused by a creeping tree root, and saw Peter step through the gap. The night was black behind him, freezing and blustery.

  He had followed me in here, but he was the one who looked cornered. He seemed wracked, in a state of torment like he was suffering a slow electrocution.

  ‘You have to let me explain. I know I was stupid and I should never have gone behind your back like this.’

  ‘You didn’t go behind my back, Peter. You fucking stole my money.’

  His eyes were bulging, his expression simultaneously haunted and insistent.

  ‘I’ll put it back. I mean, I can’t put it back now, but I’ll pay you back, everything and so much more. I’m getting squeezed by my investors. The project is behind schedule and over-budget, and they’ll only front more money if they can get a bigger slice of the back end. I’m so close to delivering something amazing, and the more of the company I can keep in my own hands at this stage, the more money we’ll have when the product starts to roll out.’