by Hocking, Ian
“I’ve got nothing so far,” said Besson. “The computer could run for ten years and not crack the code.”
“Fine.” Saskia turned to Charlotte. “What about Proctor’s family?”
“His parents are dead. He has an uncle living in Australia that turned up after a fairly invasive search. I’d bet that they don’t know of each other’s existence. His daughter, Jennifer, left for America four years ago, aged sixteen. She attended a school for gifted children in New York and graduated aged eighteen with two undergraduate degrees: theology and physics. Her current whereabouts are unknown.”
Hannah stirred. “What do you mean, unknown?”
Charlotte folded her arms and said, testily, “Exactly that, sir. She has no bank account, passport, no American social security number, insurance of any kind, no bonds or shares, nothing. Her records would lead anyone to the conclusion that she died aged eighteen. Except that there is no death registration.”
“That’s unbelievable. I couldn’t wipe my arse without a computer somewhere going ‘beep’.”
“Indeed,” said Charlotte to Saskia.
Saskia nodded. It made perfect sense. “What about Proctor, Charlotte? From 2001 to 2003. Are there any similarities with his daughter’s situation?”
Charlotte did not need to examine her notes. “Yes. During that period every record of Proctor’s comings-and-goings are blank. Just like his daughter.”
“In that time,” said Saskia. “Proctor was the member of a high security establishment. The West Lothian Centre.”
Charlotte said, “Hmm,” and Hannah made a quiet wounded sound.
“So, you think we have a daughter who entered her father’s profession,” he said. “You think she came back to England?”
“Well, she could still be in America,” said Besson. “You know, they’ve got these secret research places everywhere. Area 51 is most likely. That’s in Nevada.”
“Thanks,” said Hannah, heavy on the sarcasm.
Saskia ignored him. “Good. I think we should concentrate on the daughter.”
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked. “We should cover all the evidence. Poor Henry here hasn’t even spoken yet.”
Henry opened his mouth, but did not utter a word. Instead he pointed to Hannah and nodded. Everyone but Saskia laughed.
“Yes,” she said loudly. “This is what I want to do. If we run down a ‘blind alley’, then we can retrace our footsteps. But I want to emphasise, that speed is primary. Proctor is moving. He is going somewhere, perhaps to a rendezvous. We need to go where he is going and I am certain that this transmission is critical.”
Hannah shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“Right. Who is the best media analyst?”
Nobody moved. Slowly, heads turned towards Besson. He raised his arm. “Me,” he said.
“Good. Everything is clear. Charlotte and Henry, I want you to locate Jennifer Proctor. You have one hour. Paul, Scottie – I have an idea.”
It was lunchtime. Paul and Saskia sat in front of large computer with two displays. The left-hand screen showed a complicated array of image processing tools. The other, nearest Saskia, displayed the image of Proctor’s car. After three phone calls to Colonel Garrel, who was now in London, Saskia had finally obtained permission to review the Park Hotel surveillance tapes. Hannah was impressed. He had already tried and failed.
“Army types. They must trust you more than me.”
She shook her head and thought of Jobanique. “I have powerful friends.” She sipped her coffee. It was her third. On the desk lay an uneaten sandwich. She had not known what the word ‘sandwich’ really meant until Hannah had dropped this specimen, triumphantly, in her lap. She had peered through the cellophane at the soggy white toast-bread and decided that she would remain ignorant.
“Not hungry?” asked Besson.
“No. Are we ready? Come sit, Scottie.”
Hannah sat down behind their and ate his sandwich. He sounded like a man struggling through mud. “What are we looking at?”
Besson said, “This is the tape of Proctor arriving at the West Lothian Centre, last Sunday, the 10th. I’ll start it from the beginning.”
Using the complicated software on the left-hand screen, he started the video. Saskia and Hannah watched intently. Hannah kept eating. She turned her ear towards the picture but could not hear the ambient noise. “Scottie, your food is already dead.”
Hannah stopped mid-chew. “Sorry.” He gulped the mouthful away.
“I’ll turn up the volume,” said Besson.
They viewed the video from beginning to end. It was unremarkable: a wide-angle shot that encompassed most of the car-park and a corner of the hotel’s west wing. It was a low-definition video, barely VHS. The audio was almost exclusively bird song and wind. The story was simple: a car drove in from left of frame and stopped; its driver, Proctor, opened the door and closed it again without getting out. He opened it a second time about five minutes later, then walked out of frame to the right. During those five minutes he had made the transmission. For that period, the windows remained opaque with reflected sky.
Saskia sighed. “Any ideas?”
Hannah gestured with his sandwich. “I don’t know about ideas, but there is an odd thing: the door. Why did he open it twice?”
“Yes. The door. He is the only person in the car. What model of car is that? Does it have an advanced computer onboard?”
Besson shook his head. “That’s a Merc. An expensive model with hands-off driving module, but the computer is thick. Course, Proctor may have installed a computer himself. It could interface with the car, control it. Anything’s possible.”
Saskia checked against the notes on her recorder. “Garrel mentioned that Proctor had a personal computer. A very miniature one. Perhaps the computer handled the communication. Picture it: Proctor arrives, he opens the door, then the computer calls him back in. He closes it again and receives the transmission.”
Hannah grunted. “Maybe the computer said who’s calling.”
Saskia snapped her finger and thumb. “Maybe. You will make a fine FIB Detective one day, Deputy.”
“Gee thanks. Am I allowed to eat my sandwich now?”
“No. Paul, can we see a visual of the sound at that point?”
“Yeah. Hang on.” Besson spun the dial on his mouse anticlockwise and the video began to reverse. Proctor walked backwards to the car and opened the door. “That’s the end of it the transmission.” He wound it back still further. The door closed. He kept cuing. Thirty seconds later – for Proctor, five minutes earlier – the door opened again. “Right,” Besson said. “Here’s the visual of the sound. There are two waveforms because it’s stereo.”
The image was replaced by two graphs. They were flat but for a little peak in the middle of each waveform. Despite the cold, they reminded Saskia of lonely, Pacific islands. “Play it,” she said.
“Way ahead of you,” muttered Besson.
He played it. It sounded like the wind. Somewhere far away she heard an irregular sound. It might have been a footfall, a snapping branch or a voice. “There is definitely something,” Saskia said.
“I agree. Let me get this cleaned up. I’ll filter out the noise and have the computer make a guess. It’ll take about an hour.”
It took forty-eight minutes. Hannah’s phone rang as he and Saskia were finishing their fourth cigarette under the awning. They had been discussing the facts of the case. Hannah had said, “What do you reckon to Proctor then?”
Saskia thought for a moment – primarily to infer Hannah’s intended meaning – and then said, “I think he may be innocent of some crimes. At least, not guilty in the way we think. I don’t trust Garrel.”
“A stitch-up?”
“A conspiracy perhaps. Trust me, it happens.”
And then Hannah’s phone rang: ‘Scotland the Brave’. It was Besson.
“I have it,” he said, and hung up.
Saskia and Hannah jogged back up and found
Besson sitting triumphantly before the computer. Leaning over his shoulder were Charlotte and Henry. Hannah wheezed to a halt and Saskia looked at Besson’s finger, poised over the mouse button.
“Do it,” she said.
Besson did it. Over the speaker, with some digital distortion, a woman’s voice said, “Professor Proctor, it is your daughter.”
Everybody laughed. Saskia clapped Besson on the back and Hannah elbowed Henry in the ribs. “Not too shabby, eh, Henry?” Charlotte nodded with pursed lips.
“Good work, Paul,” said Saskia. She stood back and let her smile fade. “Now, I want a complete analysis of every electronic communication between Proctor and his daughter. Everybody work on it. Divide the labour according to three equal periods of time since her tenth birthday.”
Charlotte said, “You know, it would save us some time if we had some access to the GCHQ files.”
“Explain.”
“The General Communications Headquarters. It is part of the UK government intelligence apparatus. It monitors electronic transmissions. Sifts through emails, too, if the person is flagged for surveillance. Do you think Proctor is flagged?”
Saskia turned to Hannah. He nodded. She remembered her conversation with Garrel. The West Lothian Centre had been bombed twice. Proctor had been strongly suspected of the first. Unofficially, he was guilty. In 2003 all governments had been more sensitive to terrorism following the World Trade Center bombing. He was certain to be flagged.
“Call ’em up,” said Hannah. He began to walk towards to door. “I’m going to talk to the Super about the new lead. We can check her emails, but I’d rather interview her.”
Charlotte, Henry and Besson set about their computers. Saskia grabbed a phone and called Jobanique. She said, in clumsy German, “I need to access GCHQ electronic surveillance on Proctor.” The line went dead. Five minutes later, Jobanique called and said, “You have it. There’s a website. I’ve sent the address via email. Log on with your badge number.” He hung up.
The day had begun so slowly, and now the speed of events began to accelerate. Saskia logged onto the GCHQ computer and deferred to Charlotte. Charlotte trawled the emails for over two hours: text communications first because they were quicker to process. She made better progress than her colleagues, who were confined to more conventional snooping techniques. They could not help because the GCHQ computer would not allow Saskia to log on from more than one computer. It was frustrating, but they were rewarded with good indications early on: an email from Jennifer Proctor, aged sixteen, enthusing about her mathematics class, writing that it would ‘b2kool’ to use an encrypted transmission.
Hannah became excited. He smelled the scent.
Saskia, for her part, was saddened by their story. The emails were long from the daughter and short from the father. In the most recent transmissions, Proctor wrote only one or two lines. They were invariably apologetic: “Sorry I can’t write any more right now,” “CU Gotta go,” “Write more soon, I prooomise!”, and so on, but the promised emails were not sent. Jennifer’s became short, mostly comprising jokes about her father’s paucity, jokes that became sardonic and accusatory, while Proctor’s emails became defensive, hurt and confused. Saskia could hardly bear to read them. They were a perfect record of the downward slope of a dying relationship. For the others in the room, it was routine. They were case-hardened and she was not. She thought of that poor girl in America, sent to a boarding school by her father and, seemingly, abandoned by him; and a father who had not realised that his daughter was slipping away until it was too late, and who lacked the emotional eloquence to repair the damage, preferring hurt silence.
The emails dried up. There was no code.
“OK,” Saskia said. She pulled at her bottom lip and watched the expectant faces. “The email about the cipher. When was that?”
“Back in ’21,” Charlotte replied.
“The cipher would have been complicated,” said Besson. He was staring at Saskia but his eyes were blank. “Maybe she completed it as part of a school project.”
Saskia asked, “What was the name of her school? The one in New York?”
“Wayne’s College,” said Charlotte.
“Go to the website. Find their electronic documents archive. Search for projects by Jennifer Proctor. If there is nothing on the web, phone them.”
They waited anxiously as Charlotte navigated to the webpage and typed in the search terms. Each of them craned towards the monitor screen. None of them dared speak. Charlotte mistyped a word and the irritation was palpable. A list of projects appeared. At the bottom of the screen, an entry read: “An algorithm for one-time PAD encryption and decryption, by Jennifer
B. Proctor”.
Somebody squeezed Saskia’s shoulder. It was Hannah. He was nodding.
At 3:45 p.m., Saskia watched as a plain-clothes detective walked into the room. Everybody stopped working. This was the Detective Superintendent, or DSI – a high rank in the British police force. He entered the room as though he owned it, winked at Hannah and said, “Might have known you’d be in the middle of it all, George.” He walked and talked like Garrel, which made Saskia suspicious, but he shook her hand warmly enough. “I’m glad you’re here, Detective Brandt.”
She shrugged. “Team effort,” she said, and gestured to the Charlotte, Besson, Henry and Hannah. They smiled.
“Do you have a transcript?”
“Here.”
Evidence: Audio-Visual Transmission, Date: 10.09.23, Time:
11:16 a.m.
Participants: David Proctor (DP) and Jennifer Proctor (JP)
DP: Hello, Jennifer.
JP: Hello.
DP: I’m glad you called.
JP: Are you?
DP: Yes. I wanted to talk to you.
JP: Talk, then.
DP: I’m sorry. After you went to New York [unintelligible 1.5 seconds]
JP: You sent me away. You sent the freak [unintelligible 0.5 seconds] then skipped the country.
DP: Look, you couldn’t stay in Oxford any more. You would have been shunned because of your, because of the way you were. You wouldn’t have realised your full potential. We’ve been through this.
JP: I was the one who had to go through it, not you. Do you know what it was like in that school?
DP: I got your emails.
JP: I didn’t get yours.
DP: Jennifer, why did you call?
JP: Not to sing happy birthday. I have a message for you.
DP: What is it?
JP: Where are you?
DP: Actually I’m at the old research centre in West Lothian.
JP: What are you doing there?
DP: I can’t tell you that on the phone.
JP: This isn’t a phone, Dad.
DP: I know. It’s a secure server. You’ve encrypted the transmission.
JP: You remembered it.
DP: What’s wrong, Jenny?
JP: Just…can you go back? I need you to go back.
DP: I haven’t passed the point of no-return, I suppose. But why should I go back? Has someone been talking to you?
JP: I don’t know. But be careful. Watch your back. Something may happen.
DP: Something already has happened. And I’m late. Can I call you later?
JP: Sure.
Transcribed by Constable Paul Besson 38501-42654, B Division St Leo SIU 16.09.23
The DSI folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “Well done, everybody.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Charlotte.
He turned to Saskia and Hannah. “What do you make of it?”
Saskia smiled. “I have a...gut feeling...you call it a ‘hunch’?”
“Go on, Detective.”
“I think that Proctor has left the country, perhaps via a major airport.”
“Why?”
“He has received a threat to his life. His daughter says, ‘Watch your back. Something may happen.’ This warning comes true, does it not?”
The DSI
raised an eyebrow. “I thought that the ‘something’ was a result of Proctor himself.”
Hannah cleared his throat. “Put yourself in his shoes, sir. You get a warning from your daughter. Let’s say, for the moment, that what happened down in the research centre did not go according to Proctor’s plan. The cave-in where McWhirter was killed, for example. Or the death of Caroline Benson. Christ, Proctor might have been the intended victim in both cases. You never know.”
“The cave-in?” asked the DSI. “Hardly, George.” He was sceptical, but he checked the transcript again.
Saskia said, “I realise, sir, that we are not in a position to verify or falsify Proctor’s charges. But we are also not required to accept them. I mean, we must not accept conclusions unless we generate them ourselves from available evidence. Nobody, so far, has been able to produce evidence to show that Proctor is responsible for anything. It is all...conjecture and circumstantial evidence. A jury would not convict him.”
The DSI was grim. “You should attend more trials.” Saskia looked uncertain. He pulled a face, as if to dismiss his own comment, and motioned that she should continue.
“If Proctor is an innocent party, then I believe he will attempt to gather more information about the attempt on his life. At the least, more information would provide him with a defence against the charges.”
The DSI chuckled. “You are aware, Detective Brandt, that you are talking about a mass-murderer who is on the run?”
Saskia blinked. “I believe that he is a suspected mass murderer, Detective Superintendent. His flight is no proof of guilt. Under the EU constitution, it is not illegal for an innocent person to attempt an escape.”
Hannah gave her warning look but the DSI folded his arms and nodded. “Well, I can’t argue with your principles, Detective Brandt.”
“Proctor is a university professor,” she continued. Her voice was clearer. “It is a comfortable existence. We know from the emails that his relationship with his daughter is poor. The last few days will have proved to be very stressful, even life-altering. Proctor will undoubtedly feel the need to leave the country. Here he is hunted. In America he is not. His daughter is in America. In addition, she gave him the warning. If he is indeed innocent, the his search for answers must begin with her. Flying out would ‘kill two birds with one stone’. Judging by the escape from the church, it is within his capability.”