by Sam Blake
Cathy said over her shoulder to Fanning, ‘I’ll check the laptop and desk. You do the bathroom and the wardrobe. Check her pockets.’
Fanning pulled on his own gloves, grinning. ‘On it like a car bonnet.’
Cathy rolled her eyes. She caught Anna’s puzzled expression behind him. He didn’t notice; he was already checking the bottles and pots around the built-in washbasin. He could be a twat but he was thorough, Cathy had to give him that.
At the desk she touched the scratchpad and Lauren’s laptop woke up. She turned to Anna, who hovered beside the doorway, her arms folded.
‘Would Paula know Lauren’s password by any chance?’
‘I’ll find out.’ Paula had moved further down the corridor, out of sight of the door. Anna was back in a moment. ‘It’s the name of her cat, Sparkles. Are you OK here for a minute? I’m just going to make sure Paula’s all right, she’s very upset.’
Cathy gave Anna a reassuring smile. ‘Of course.’
Turning back to the computer, she tapped in the password and the computer came to life. Lauren had left several Internet windows open. One of them was her Gmail.
‘Handy.’ Cathy spoke half to herself, and leaning forwards, ran her eye down the emails in Lauren’s inbox. YouTube clips, what looked like a few photo attachments, some college assignments. Not as much as she had expected.
From the other end of the room, Fanning looked over her shoulder at the screen, and as if reading her mind said, ‘Everyone uses Snapchat and WhatsApp these days as well. Once we’ve got her WhatsApp username we can recover her password, assuming she’s used her email as the backup, see who she was talking to.’
‘I’m not sure that’s entirely legal, Fanning, although I appreciate your motives.’ Cathy glanced behind her; Anna was still out in the corridor.
Cathy checked the other tabs that were open: Tumblr, Facebook. The last one was an image. Cathy clicked on it.
‘Holy feck.’
A photograph of Lauren filled the screen: Lauren in her underwear, getting dressed, apparently unaware that the shot was being taken. Cathy looked at it carefully. It was at a strange angle – part of the top of Lauren’s head was out of shot. Cathy swung around to look at the room. In the photo Lauren was standing next to the bed, a towel tossed on it like she’d just come back from the shower.
‘I think this has been taken from here. From her laptop.’
Chapter 21
Sunday, 12.30 p.m.
Sticking her head out of Lauren’s door, Cathy looked for Anna. She had her arm around Paula’s shoulder, comforting her. Cathy stepped into the corridor, keeping her voice low.
‘Have you got a second?’
Anna looked up and, nodding, gave Paula a hug. She followed Cathy back into Lauren’s room. But before either of them had got a foot inside the door, Jamie Fanning straightened up from where he was bending over in Lauren’s wardrobe. His hand was full of white prescription drugs boxes.
‘What have we got here, then?’
Cathy’s tone belied her surprise. ‘What have we got here?’
‘Good God.’ Anna spoke slowly, looked at the boxes, shaking her head.
Cathy glanced back at her, nodding towards the corridor and raising her finger to her lips. She hardly needed to say it but they didn’t need gossip circulating around the college; Cathy was sure there was plenty already. Slipping behind Anna, she stuck her head outside the door.
‘Are you OK there for a minute? We just need to close the door to check something behind it.’
From further down the corridor a forlorn Paula looked up from her phone and nodded. For a moment Cathy wondered if she was surgically attached to social media, that somehow disconnecting from the Internet would damage her. Cathy was sure she was filling all her friends in on their search of Lauren’s room.
Cathy smiled and retreated back inside gently closing the door.
‘Don’t move for a minute, stay exactly as you are.’ Fanning looked at her, puzzled. ‘Won’t be a sec.’
In three strides she was at the other side of the room and had closed Lauren’s laptop lid. They could get to that problem in a moment.
‘Let me guess – is that Modafinil?’ Anna crossed her arms tightly.
Fanning inspected the boxes carefully. ‘It certainly is. How did you know?’
‘A lot of students are taking it to get through their exams. We’re always warning against it.’ Anna shook her head. ‘But how many boxes are there?’ She looked at the four he had in his hand. ‘That’s several months’ supply at least. It’s not something you take every day.’
‘Perhaps she was selling it to her friends. Did she seem the type that needed money?’
An investigation Cathy had been involved in at Trinity previously had involved the sale of prescription drugs, but it had been a long time ago, before Lauren had even started at the university. Anna shrugged, her face creased in a frown.
‘She was a student, they never have enough money, but she was so shy, she wasn’t the type to deal in drugs. I mean really, she wasn’t.’
‘Unless someone else had put her up to it.’
Anna wrinkled her nose as she thought about it, her face serious. ‘Maybe.’
Whatever Lauren’s motivations were and however she had got hold of the drugs, one thing Cathy knew for sure was that this find put a whole new angle on the investigation. Thoughts flew around her head. Had Lauren upset whoever was supplying her enough for them to kill her? Did she owe the dealers money? And why Dalkey? Why had she gone there? Was Tom involved too?
Cathy pulled out her phone. ‘We need to get Thirsty to process the room. He can see if anyone else has handled those boxes.’
Fanning pulled out a clear evidence bag from the back pocket of his jeans and slipped the boxes inside.
‘I really can’t believe it.’ Anna was still shaking her head, her face serious.
‘I’ve got something else to show you.’ Cathy moved to the end of the room. ‘When you said Lauren was shy, how shy did you mean?’
‘Extremely. She was very nervous. I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d come from a country town and found the city and university daunting, or if it was just the way she was.’
Cathy lifted the lid on Lauren’s laptop, but before she re-entered the password, she looked around the desk. Spotting a pad of fluorescent pink Post-its she tore one off, tearing the corner of it and sticking it over the camera on the computer. ‘That’s better.’
She could feel Anna watching her.
Cathy clicked on the image tab. ‘I found this image open – it must have arrived just before she left and she forgot to close it.’
She stepped back to show Anna the still of Lauren getting dressed. Jamie Fanning leaned forward to look at it.
‘That looks like a still grabbed from a video – see, it’s a bit blurred around the edges.’
Anna was shaking her head, her face even more puzzled. ‘Why would she have filmed that? You can see her face. It doesn’t make sense – she was so shy she could hardly speak in tutorials. She certainly didn’t like drawing attention to herself.’
‘Perhaps she had a hidden life online?’
Cathy bent down over the laptop and opened Lauren’s email. She was about to look through the emails with attachments when the system updated and a new email arrived:
Thank you for your registration with Discovery Quay . . .
Cathy stopped and looked at it. This was an autoreply message, the type you received seconds after you registered with a site. How exactly could Lauren have registered with a website if she was in the morgue?
She clicked on the incoming mail.
Thank you for registering with Discovery Quay, click on the link below to visit your account. Videos will be uploaded within 48 hours. Click on the screenshot to see your profile page if the site does not load in 5 seconds.
Cathy tucked a corkscrew of hair that had sprung loose from her ponytail behind her ear and leaned forward.
‘Let’s just see what this is all about, shall we?’
She clicked the link in the email and a blank screen appeared with text in the centre:
This site can’t be reached.
extt7tdjoddiud.onion’s server IP could not be found
Search Google for onion.
Fanning looked over Cathy’s shoulder. ‘That’s a site on the Dark Web, all dot onion sites are unindexed. She doesn’t have the right browser installed for you to access it. You need Tor.’ He paused. ‘Which means she couldn’t have registered from this computer. Just click back to that email.’ Cathy took the screen back to Lauren’s Gmail. ‘Click on the screenshot that’s attached.’
Cathy clicked and the screenshot opened. She raised her eyebrows.
It was a dark red web page with white text, Discovery Quay written across the top. Some sort of profile page; Sexy Sparkles was entered as the username. Cathy frowned. Why would she use part of her password as a username? A photo of Lauren topless looked out of the screen at them. She was brushing her hair in the picture, standing apparently naked in her room. Had she taken it herself? It didn’t look like she was aware it was being taken. It was a raw photo, obviously without any filters – would she have uploaded that herself? Unlikely. Below the photo Cathy could see a video box. The frozen image of Lauren was different from the still above it – she was lying on her bed wearing some sexy black lingerie. Cathy glanced back at Anna and 007.
‘Look, there’s the dot onion address at the top.’ Fanning leaned forwards. ‘And see those images down the side? Those look like they are on the same site, they look like webcams.’
Cathy scrolled down a bit further and another ad appeared in the sidebar. Another site – Merchant’s Quay – this time with images of drugs and heavy duty weaponry.
‘Do you think she got the drugs from there? From that site?’ Fanning was still frowning.
‘When I was working on that undercover op here before, it turned out that students were ordering drugs online. So it’s a distinct possibility. Perhaps she was saving on postage by ordering for her friends?’ Cathy hesitated, thinking out loud. ‘Something or someone obviously connects her to Discovery Quay and that seems to be linked to Merchant’s Quay, who have special offers on . . .’ She scrolled down a bit further, ‘AK47s and Viagra . . .’
Fanning scowled again. ‘They’ve probably got weapons grade plutonium if you look hard enough.’
Anna had been quiet, her face troubled as Cathy had revealed the image. Cathy glanced at her now.
‘The image grab from the video was emailed to her. Have you heard anything about students getting their webcams hacked?’
Standing in the middle of the room, Anna paled about three shades. She shook her head.
‘No, not students. But I got a strange email the other day about speaking at a conference. I sent it over to a friend of mine in the States, he works for the security services.’ Anna pulled out her phone and flipped it open. ‘Let me find his email.’ She scanned the screen. ‘I only got his reply this morning. I scanned it, but I haven’t read it properly yet.’ She paused. ‘Here it is. He says the email contained a spyware virus that was designed to enable someone to access the webcam on my computer remotely. Apparently this virus contains a rootkit designed to hide all the malicious files, preventing it from being detected. It came in at the same time as some other emails. I got a virus warning on one of them – it happens all the time – but this email stood out because of the way it was phrased, it didn’t read right. My laptop’s at home so I haven’t done anything about it yet. When I get back tonight my friend wants me to give one of his tech guys remote access so they can clean the system and see if they can track where the worm originated from.’
‘But you know who sent the email.’
Anna grimaced. ‘Not exactly. It was a general info address for a conference. Which was what made it look a bit odd, to be honest. I get asked to speak at things all the time but it’s usually more direct, more personal – an email from the conference organiser. I was going to let Rob, my friend, see what he could find out. His people specialise in cybersecurity.’
‘You need to cover the camera on your laptop first off. You know there is a roaring trade on the Internet with websites featuring hacked footage.’ Fanning sounded like he knew what he was talking about for once.
Anna nodded. ‘I know – my niece Hope told me. She’s very techy, she suggested sending the email to Rob in the first place.’ She shook her head. ‘I have to say it’s not something I’ve ever needed to search for.’
‘I wish you were alone in that.’ Cathy looked back at the screen. ‘It seems someone felt the need to inform Lauren that her images had been or were about to be shared. Which might suggest she was being pressured into doing something or was being blackmailed. From everything you’ve told us about her she certainly wasn’t the exhibitionist type.’
Anna shook her head again. ‘The poor girl. She must have been terrified. Do you think she jumped off the cliff because she couldn’t cope with the images being made public?’
Cathy shrugged. They were pretty sure that Lauren hadn’t jumped off the cliff, but no matter how much she liked Anna Lockharte, there was only so much information that was safe to share.
‘We’ll get our tech people to look at this – would your friend be able to share his findings?’
Anna hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. But I’m sure if he can track the email to the source he can share that. He works in a highly classified area and he’s doing me a favour, so I don’t know how much he can tell you.’
‘Anything he can do would be much appreciated.’
‘He works for the US Government. It’s a powerful thing.’
Anna’s tone was very definite, and made Cathy stop for a moment. Had she had something to do with the US Government? Was that why O’Rourke was familiar with her name, why he’d clammed up when Cathy had asked him about her? Intrigued, Cathy knew better than to ask outright. She’d tackle O’Rourke first and see what he had to say for himself. If that failed she’d have a word with Sarah Jane and see if she could find out anything from her dad.
*
Downstairs in the common room-cum-cafe, they found space to sit in a corner at the back. Cathy nursed a coffee. Paula, obviously still very upset by their visit, was looking paler by the minute. Cathy knew it was tough enough for her to deal with the death of her friend without then having to cope with the Guards asking questions, a full investigation, and a post-mortem. At her age it was quite likely that this was the first time she had lost someone close, and possibly someone her own age as well. Anna had bought her some hot chocolate and as she sat on the sofa nursing the cup, Cathy prayed she wasn’t going to pass out or get hysterical. She leaned forward and started with the easy questions. Beside her, Fanning had his notebook out.
‘Were you and Lauren good friends?’
Paula shrugged, her eyes filling with tears. ‘We were really close last year. But this year, when we came back after the summer holiday, she wasn’t around so much, to come out with us I mean. She said she was studying but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t all the time. I don’t know if she just didn’t want to come out or if it was something else.’
‘Did she ever talk about taking drugs to help her concentrate?’
A flash of fear ran across Paula’s face; her voice became defensive. ‘Why are you asking that? Lots of people use them, they’re not illegal.’
Cathy kept her face open and friendly. ‘I know – we just need to get some background on what Lauren was like. Did she talk to you about drugs?’
‘Once. She asked where she could get some Adderall. She was looking really tired. I think she was worried about something, she seemed really preoccupied. She said she wasn’t sleeping but she needed to concentrate on her college stuff. I told her most people order them online.’
Cathy took this in. Perhaps Lauren had tried a few different brands to see which one suited her, but t
hat still didn’t feel right. Students usually didn’t have the money to experiment.
‘Tell me what she was like.’
Paula shrugged. ‘Pretty, really shy.’
‘Was she seeing anyone?’
Paula shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Lots of guys liked her, like I said, she was really pretty, but she didn’t seem interested in any of them.’
‘How about Tom Quinn. How well did she know him?’
Paula shrugged again. ‘They knew each other quite well, I suppose – they’d both worked at his dad’s radio station last summer. I think they might have had a bit of a thing, they were a bit awkward at the start of term, didn’t hang out much. There are different groups here. Tom got on really well with the tech nerds, hung out with them a good bit.’
‘Was he popular?’
‘Well, he was gorgeous and loaded so, yes.’
Paula said it like Cathy was a total idiot. Nice. Cathy ignored the attitude, she’d heard worse. What was much more interesting was the tension Paula had picked up between Tom and Lauren – what had that been about?
Chapter 22
Sunday 2.30 p.m.
Heading back to the station, Cathy drove again. Fanning already had a browser called Orfox downloaded on his phone that gave him access to the Dark Web – Cathy wasn’t even going to ask him why. He’d made a note of the web address of the Discovery Quay site from the address bar in the screenshot, and was having a look around.
As they’d guessed, Discovery Quay was a video site, the discovery apparently being the video cams of a very large number of young women. The lights ahead of them changed to red and Cathy glanced over at his screen. She could tell immediately that the cameras had been hacked. When girls made porn videos they wore make-up, fancy underwear. The majority of the girls in the videos on this site were getting undressed, or were in the bath, very obviously unaware that they were being filmed. Ads to other webcams and porn sites updated in the sidebar as Fanning clicked through the site, then a pop-up advert appeared: ‘Prescription drugs fast, total discretion guaranteed.’