Murdoch picked up something from the floor and held it up in front of Tory. Skelton could see it in the firelight. It was a jerry can. He unscrewed the top and sniffed the contents. ”You’d be amazed at how much damage this small amount of fluid can cause. My officers have investigated many cases over the years and on very few occasions have we been able to prove that a fire was caused intentionally. So you might say that I have some expertise in that area and can be reasonably sure that my insurance claim will be rewarded.”
‘He’s as mad as a hatter, finally gone completely round the bend’. Skelton waited to hear no more of the Commissioner’s speech. He pushed the door open and deliberately dropped his cane to the floor then scrambled clumsily to pick it up as he looked around. He was in the largest room he’d ever seen in a private home. It was almost devoid of furnishings and the massive fireplace stood imposingly against the south-most wall. A long way away on the opposite wall, at a height of two and a half metres, a minstrel’s gallery juxtaposed the almost five metre high ceiling. He realised it was the old baronial hall, where lavish feasts and musical entertainment predated television in the life of the wealthy classes in medieval times. But now it looked dark and foreboding, the only light provided by the leaping flames in the fireplace.
Murdoch looked across at him without any sign of apprehension, as, leaning heavily on the cane, he limped painfully across the enormous room towards them.
“Welcome, Mr Skelton. Exactly on time as all self-respecting gentlemen should be. As you can observe, Ms West is already my guest and now the invitation is complete. I’m afraid I can offer you nothing more than a warm evening by the fire, away from the freezing cold outside. Please come closer and I’ll make sure that the room is quite warm enough.”
He waved the pistol vaguely towards Tory. “Sit over beside Ms West. With any luck your remains will be strewn together to make identification even more difficult, not that it matters any more. Once you are gone, this unfortunate accident will be only that, nothing more or less.”
Skelton could now see that Tory’s hands were tied, but not her feet. He limped closer and made as if to skirt the table to sit beside her. As he turned, he lashed out to his right and was rewarded with the painful sound of a ‘crack’ as the steel-cored cane caught Murdoch full on the left kneecap.
“Ouch!” Involuntarily the policeman reached for his knee and the can slipped in his grasp, spilling petrol onto his clothes and onto the floor. He grabbed the can with his other hand and the pistol went spinning onto the hearth.
“I’m awfully sorry, Commissioner,” he said. “I’m old and lame and unable to control my movements properly.”
“You interfering old idiot!” Murdoch put down the petrol can and went to pick up the pistol. A spasm of pain from his knee made him slip in the pool of petrol and he fell towards the fire, reaching out to the fender to hold himself.
Skelton helped Tory to her feet. “Come on, my dear. Commissioner Murdoch is right. We’ve kept this business to ourselves for too long. It’s time to file our report.” They started walking back towards the door.
“Stay where you are. There’ll be no report filed.” Murdoch pulled himself to his knees and leaned forward to recuperate the gun again. As he reached out towards the hearth the heat of the fire caused his petrol soaked sleeve to burst into flame. He stood up and desperately took off his jacket and threw it down. With a ‘whoosh’ the fire ran across the floor and licked towards the jerry can. Murdoch was now standing in a pool of fire, the flames leaping up around his feet and legs.
“Help me. For Christ’s sake help me!” He screamed, as the petrol on his trousers caught fire.
“My God. We have to save him.” Tory tried to wrest herself from the Scotsman’s hand.
He pulled her away. “It’s too late. There’s nothing we can do except get downstairs and out of here before the petrol can goes up.”
They had just exited the main door when a massive explosion seemed to shake the huge building. A blast of hot air came rushing down the staircase like a tsunami, almost blowing them off their feet. Angus untied the rope from around her wrists and gently massaged the chafing away then took off his overcoat and placed it around her shoulders and they walked across to his car.
As they walked, he called the emergency services. “Murdoch Manor Hall is on fire. The whole place is going up in flames. Yes, that’s right, Murdoch Manor Hall, in Branceworth. There is a fatality.” They reached his car and got in out of the cold. He switched on the engine and put the heating up to maximum.
They sat in the car, watching, transfixed by the scene, as room by room the fire consumed the whole of the second floor of the manor house from end to end. Tory was weeping and he held her hand gently. Then the flames leapt simultaneously upwards and downwards until all three floors were a burning furnace. The sky was illuminated by the fire as the magnificent building burned ever brighter until it was almost as light as daytime.
Skelton put his arm around Tory’s shoulder. In his soft Edinburgh brogue, he said, “Now that’s what I would call an extravagant death.”
They could hear the sound of the sirens now, increasingly loud as the blue and white flashing lights of the emergency vehicles came towards them up the long driveway. In the lightened sky they saw it was starting to snow.
THE END
Coetzee was sorry to reach the end of the story, he’d gotten to like the principle characters and decided to download the previous volumes. He turned to the last page of the Kindle book. A very pretty Emma Stewart was smiling at him from the screen. He looked fondly at the photograph, remembering their verbal tussles and regretting that he hadn’t got to know her better. Another thought occurred to him, If Emma is as tough as that, what’s her sister like? Maybe one day I’ll find out.
He switched off the device and put it away. It was almost midnight and Karen and Abby were asleep upstairs. He had stayed up to enjoy the remaining few chapters of Emma’s story in the quiet with his one whisky of the day.
The dogs were waiting at the door and he put his jerkin on and took them out for their last evening walk. A million stars sparkled like diamonds across the clear sky and the full moon was so bright it looked as if you could grab it with your hand. The night air was cold and he shivered and pulled the leather jacket tighter around himself.
Coetzee walked along Groot Street to the path that led across the open farming land then let the dogs off their leads to run off any remaining energy. As he followed them over the field he felt a sudden desire to smoke a cheroot, the first time since he had got back together with his family. He didn’t have any, so the temptation wasn’t hard to resist. After a ten minute stroll he whistled for the dogs and they came running back to him. He put them on their leads again and headed along the road towards the house.
“COETZEE!” The shout came from behind him and he swung round, reaching for the pistol in his pocket. Three shots rang out and he felt the bullets smash into him, throwing him against the hedge at the side of the road. The gunman ran along to the end of the street and climbed into a car hidden behind the trees, leaving Coetzee unconscious and bleeding under the hedge, the dogs whimpering and scratching around his body. The engine revved up and the vehicle sped off, it was a black Mercedes 220 with the number plate 294-TCE 87.
THE END
Christopher Lowery is a ‘Geordie’, born in the northeast of England, who graduated in finance and economics after reluctantly giving up career choices in professional golf and rock & roll. He is a real estate and telecoms entrepreneur and inventor and has created several successful companies around the world. The genesis of The Rwandan Hostage was his daughter’s work as a delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rwanda, after the genocide of 1994. Chris also writes technical patents, poetry and children’s books and has recently produced an album of his songs. He and his wife Marjorie live between London and Marbella. Their daughter, Kerry-Jane, now a writer and photographer, lives in Geneva and London.
Urbane Publications is dedicated to developing new author voices, and publishing fiction and non-fiction that challenges, thrills and fascinates. From page-turning novels to innovative reference books, our goal is to publish what YOU want to read. Find out more at
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THE
DARK
WEB
CHRISTOPHER LOWERY
urbanepublications.com
THE
DARK
WEB
Book 3 in the
African Diamonds Trilogy
A NOVEL BY
CHRISTOPHER LOWERY
First published in Great Britain in 2018
by Urbane Publications Ltd
Suite 3, Brown Europe House,
33/34 Gleaming Wood Drive,
Chatham,
Kent ME5 8RZ
Copyright © Christopher Lowery, 2018
The moral right of Christopher Lowery to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the BritishLibrary.
ISBN 978-1-911583-22-6
EPUB 978-1-911583-23-3
MOBI 978-1-911583-24-0
Design and Typeset by
Chandler Book Design
Cover by Julie Martin
Printed and bound by 4edge UK
urbanepublications.com
Dedicated to my amazing wife, Marjorie
and our beautiful daughter,
Kerry-Jane.
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes -
I fear the Greeks, even when they bear gifts.
Virgil; The Aeneid, 29 – 19 BC
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Dark Web Glossary of Terms
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Acknowledgements
THE DARK WEB
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
BIP
Banque International de Paris,
BPE
Bishop Private Equity
Lee-Win
Lee-Win Micro-Technology, Shanghai
XPC
XPlus Circuits, its Dubai subsidiary
UNSC
United Nations Security Council
IGIS
Institute for Global Internet Security
PE
Private Equity Investment
Botulism
A neurotoxin, poison formed by the Clostridium Botulinum organism
CPU
Central Processing Unit, a mini-computer managing a piece of equipment
Processor/Micro-Processor
A tiny silicon card containing hundreds of millions of CPU instruction cells
Firmware
Software programmes/instructions built into a processor
Flash Drive
Memory stick for copying data from a computer
ACRE
Automatic Constant Recurring Encryption
MARK VII
Lee-Win’s latest micro-processor
A2
A malicious cell inserted onto a silicone card to provide a hacking entry point
Upgrade
New version of previous software technology
Upload
Distribution of software technology over the Internet
Download
Reception of software over the Internet and implementation by users
Web Network
Pieces of equipment linked by any kind of wireless connectivity
M2M - IoT
Internet of Things – Remote and Machine to Machine communication
The Cloud
Remote computing equipment made available to users over the Internet
Connectivity Module
Unit in a micro-processor which permits wireless connectivity
Hub
A powerful wireless transmitter capable of distributing information over the Internet
CAD, CAM
Computer aided design, Computer aided machines
Time Differences
London GMT: Dubai +3, USEC – 5, USWC -8, Hong Kong/Shanghai +7, Europe, SA +1, Moscow +2
INTRODUCTION
The list of names in the Internet Hall of Fame is long: Licklider, Kleinrock, MIT, Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, Kahn, Cerf, UCLA, Santa Barbara and Utah Universities, Roberts, Stanford Research Institute, Tomlinson, Kirstein, Crocker, Mockapetris, Metcalfe, Dalal, Sunshine, Berners Lee, Wales, Zenndström, Frijs, Zuckerberg. Just a few of the thousands who contributed to its creation, development and global commercialisation.
These brilliant visionaries, scientists, engineers and governments worked with one common and praiseworthy objective: to give the world a valuable and useful tool to facilitate global communication and learning and to create unity. That is the reason for the name, Internet Protocol, the etiquette of connecting to a global communications network.
Then, as in the case of every discovery or invention introduced for the benefit of mankind, evil minds exploited their creation, with totally different and less altruistic motives. Thus was born the Internet of today, with its litany of examples of the worst of mankind’s inventions, corruption, perversion, fraud, terrorism, hatred, pornography and worse, unfettered and uncontrolled. A Dark Web of depravity hidden in a Cloud behind an anonymous, invisible façade, ready to be unleashed on the naive and unsuspecting world at the press of a button.
But Virgil was writing about a wooden horse, not the Internet.
PROLOGUE
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
Monday, 9 July 2012
‘That man from the syndicate called again, that’s the fifth time since we turned them away.’ Madame Xiu Lee-Win poured a glass of green tea for her husband.
‘What did you say?’
‘The same as every time they came and every time they’ve called, “The company is not for sale, please stop pestering us”.’
‘I don’t understand their obsession with our business,’ Chongkun Lee-Win sipped his tea. ‘There’s dozens of microprocessor companies around just as good as ours. If they’ve got the kind of money they say, they can take their pick. Just keep refusing, dearest, and they’ll finally realise we won’t change our minds.’
‘I suppose so, but I’m tired of answering the phone and hearing that man’s voice. And he said a peculiar thing before he rang off this time.’
‘And that was?’
‘He said, “I think it’s time to convince you to sell”.’
‘I don’t know how they’d do that. They’ve already offered a fair price. Don’t worry about it, just ignore them and they’ll go away.’
‘You’re right, I’ll stop answering the phone. I’ll get the Filipino girl to answer in Spanish, that’ll put them off. Anyway, how was your day?’
‘Excellent. We just got the second quarter results and they’re very good, we’re ten per cent ahead of revenue forecasts with two per cent gross margin improvement. We can afford to continue to invest in our development programmes without worrying about cash flow.’
The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set Page 110
