by Adam Croft
I’m suddenly aware of my consciousness, but not of time. I don’t know whether I’ve been continually here, my mind whirring, or whether there’s been a big gap. It’s impossible to tell. I only know that I’ve thought stuff before, and that I’ve thought it here, but not when. There’s no sense of time passing. I’m not even sure if it is. What if I’m dead? What if this is the afterlife?
No. There’s no reason why I should be dead. Is there? I try to think. Think back. But memory doesn’t seem to be a thing. It’s all images, flashing lights and signs. Nothing concrete. Nothing that I can...
Again, I become aware. Aware that I am. That’s the only way I can put it into words. I know it’s not the first time I’ve been aware, but I don’t know how many times came before, either.
A flash of orange.
A face. It’s black.
A screeching sound.
I’m aware. I’m almost... I feel like I’m me. I know that sounds strange. It feels strange. The fact is that I don’t know when the last time I felt like me was. It might have been years. It might have been seconds. This might happen all the time, over and over again, on repeat, like—
Like that film. Films. I remember films. The images. The noises. The one where the same day happened time and time again. Is that what this is? It’s the outside world. Films are from the outside world. I need to hang on to that, need to...
Yes. There’s something. I can only describe it as an abstract sense of knowing. The only problem is I don’t know what I know. I’m trying to link it all up, trying to connect the...
Back to films. Yes. I know what films are. It’s a concept. A strong concept. If I focus on that I can use it to anchor myself in reality. Try to go from there, remember, work out what’s...
I remember some badness. I remember evil. I remember writing. Asking. Knowing.
I was working. There was a sound. I started to move. I saw something. I heard something. I felt something.
It all feels just out of reach... I’m trying to grasp it but I can’t...
Dark.
20
Wendy got home from the offices of The Inquirer with a little over an hour to spare. That would barely be enough time to get ready, let alone start to get anything cooking. She hoped this didn’t mean the entire evening would be a complete disaster. She showered, chose an outfit, and was just pulling a bottle of wine from the wine rack when the doorbell rang.
When she opened the door, she was pleasantly surprised to see that Xavier looked even better in his casual clothes than he did in his work suit. And in her opinion he usually looked pretty good in his work suit.
She ushered him through to her sitting room, which she’d had some trouble with earlier. She hadn’t wanted to go the whole hog with candles, incense, and soft jazz music, but she had wanted to at least put the thought in Xav’s mind that she might be interested. In the end, she’d opted for a bit of mood lighting and left it at that.
They were barely halfway through the first glass of wine and the usual pleasantries when Xav brought up the matter of Tanya Henderson’s laptop.
‘It’s another one of those reports that has a lot of words but doesn’t actually say much,’ he said, smiling. ‘I think these guys like to make themselves sound important by bamboozling people and making you go to them with any questions. Sad, really. That’s why I want to get into that line of work. Shake things up a bit.’
Wendy smiled. She liked his ambition.
‘Basically,’ he continued, ‘it’s an access problem. Seems Tanya Henderson was pretty smart when it came to computer security. Either that or she had some help. When the laptop starts up it needs a username and password to get in. Nothing too strange there, but we can usually get round that. There’s a setting that’s enabled by default which allows you to boot the machine up from an external disk, or to boot it into a certain restricted mode. That’s been disabled, though.’
‘What, so you can’t get in?’
‘Nope. Not easily. Perhaps not at all. But there are two things they found out. Firstly, when they tried to examine the hard drive separately, they found that it was heavily encrypted. Not just by the operating system, but by another piece of software. They can’t say for sure without looking into it further, but it looks like it might be something like TrueCrypt.’
‘Is that good?’ Wendy asked.
‘It is for security. Not so much for us. This is just an educated guess based on what we know so far, but I’d be willing to bet that she’s not using the simplest form of encryption on this bad boy. She’ll have gone the whole hog.’
‘Great,’ Wendy sighed.
‘That’s not necessarily the end of the line, though,’ he added. ‘I must admit I went a little further and took it upon myself to call Tanya’s Internet Service Provider.’
‘Xav!’ she exclaimed. ‘You could get yourself into some serious trouble doing that. I shouldn’t have even shown you the report, let alone got you involved in the investigation.’ Even as Wendy spoke, she knew she didn’t mean it. She was actually pretty impressed by the lengths he’d gone to and the potential risks he’d taken to help her.
‘I know, but it needed doing. Anyway, I’ve got a friend there. Officially, no-one from the police has spoken to anyone at the company. It’ll be fine. Point is, I got him to check the traffic routes from her network. They have logs of where data has gone in and out from. With that, we can potentially trace it.’
‘And?’ Wendy asked, hopefully.
‘And every single packet of data that left or entered Tanya Henderson’s machine went through a VPN: a Virtual Private Network. Basically, let’s say I have a website and you want to go on it. You type in the address and your computer makes a connection to the website, which is just another computer, via your internet service provider. If you use a VPN, the connection goes from your computer and through a number of re-routing networks before it reaches the website. There might be a hundred different connections on the way, but it all happens in under a second. What that does is put a whole load of encryption and confusion in between the starting point and the destination.’ He paused for a moment, thinking how best to describe it. ‘Imagine a huge game of Chinese Whispers. Your computer never speaks directly to my website. The message is just passed on down the line, encrypted, decrypted and re-encrypted the whole way.’
‘What, so the traffic to and from Tanya’s machine is essentially untraceable?’
‘That’s about the long and short of it, yes.’
‘Is there anything we can do at all?’ she asked, though she wasn’t feeling very hopeful now.
‘It’s tricky. There’s nothing straightforward. The nature of computer security means it goes beyond what humans can do. We’re talking billions of mathematical calculations every second, all based on random numbers. And to be honest, I’m not sure they’d even bother trying; if Tanya Henderson dies, it might be different, but they’re unlikely to do much for an attack.’
‘It’s being treated as attempted murder,’ Wendy replied. ‘That should put it on a par with actual murder in terms of investigation power.’
‘True, but they’ll need to prioritise.’
Wendy sighed and drank more of her wine. ‘There must be more we can do.’
‘Unfortunately not,’ Xav replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘You see it in the news all the time. Even the FBI aren’t able to unlock people’s iPhones if they don’t have the four-digit passcode. There’s no way in hell Mildenheath CID are going to be able to crack some of the strongest encryption known to man.’ He shrugged, smiling, before adding, ‘Listen, I might have one idea.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re pretty highly regarded at Milton House. And you know how much I want to get involved with the major crimes unit in IT forensics. I was just wondering... Well, perhaps you might be able to request my involvement and suggest that my skills might be able to... You know. Then I could have a proper look at the machine, might be able to find something th
ey haven’t.’
‘Do you think that’d work?’
Xav shrugged. ‘You never know. But I can’t promise anything, of course. Certainly not at the moment.’
‘Well, in that case, we’d better move on to something else, hadn’t we?’ Wendy said, holding the wine bottle aloft.
Within an hour they were on their second bottle, and the conversation had moved on through a number of topics. They’d started talking — inevitably — about work, had spent a few minutes discussing Jack Culverhouse’s recent eyebrow-raising comments and actions, going on through politics and society, and had just finished a two-person diatribe on the abysmal state of British TV. Wendy was happy, though. The conversation was flowing because the wine was flowing, and she felt more relaxed than she had done in a long time.
‘Looks like you’re going to have to leave your car here,’ she said to him, gesturing at the empty wine glass sitting next to him on the coffee table.
‘Ah. See, I thought ahead. I got a cab.’
Wendy didn’t know whether to be impressed or worried by his presumptuousness. ‘Blimey. That must’ve cost a bit. I always said we were paying civilian staff far too much,’ she said, winking at him.
‘Yeah, well, arrest me,’ Xav joked back.
‘Cab back’ll cost even more. Especially this time of night. It’s a fair journey, Xav.’
‘It’ll give me a chance to sober up, then, won’t it?’ he replied.
‘Well, if you want to save the money and hassle you’re more than welcome to stay here.’ She smiled, before quickly adding, ‘I mean, I’ve got a spare room.’
Xavier smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I presumed that was what you meant anyway.’
Wendy paused for a moment. ‘As long as your wife or girlfriend doesn’t mind, that is.’
Xavier laughed. ‘I don’t have a wife or girlfriend. I’ve told you this before.’
Wendy brought the wine glass to her lips, murmuring into the glass before taking a sip. ‘Just checking.’
Two hours later, Wendy pulled her numb arm from under the dead weight of Xavier, who rolled over onto his side, taking the soft cotton sheets with him. She sat up and took a sip of water, looking over at him as he began to snore.
She smiled.
21
The morning briefing was far more subdued and far less eventful than it should have been.
There came a stage in every investigation where it felt like things were hitting a brick wall. That usually came after a few days or weeks, once the witnesses had been interviewed, the family spoken to and the evidence examined. In this case, however, things were a little different. There were no witnesses, no-one knew anything about what or who Tanya Henderson had been investigating, and there was seemingly no evidence to examine.
As things stood, their best hope was that Tanya Henderson would make a full recovery as quickly as possible and be able to provide them with all of the missing links. At the moment, however, that seemed like a bit of a long shot.
By lunchtime, the mood in the room had dipped enormously. A search through Tanya’s bank statements and credit card bills had uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. Calls to her past work colleagues and associates had proved unfruitful. They were quickly running out of options.
Culverhouse knew that before long there’d be pressure from above to get results, though, mercifully, Tanya Henderson’s family were being very understanding at the lack of progress the investigation had made thus far. Of course, if Tanya’s situation were to take a turn for the worse, however, things would change. It would then become a murder case, which raised the stakes to a whole other level. The lack of evidence would prove to be a huge problem, particularly as they wouldn’t then have the potential hope of Tanya being able to provide them with some of the information herself. Not only would the seriousness of the situation ramp up dramatically, but the one hope that would give them a chance of succeeding would disappear. That wasn’t a possibility any of them wanted to entertain.
Sensing the mood in the room, Ryan spoke up. ‘Why don’t we all take a step back for a bit?’ she said. ‘Besides which, we could all do with some food. There’s a new place in town I quite like which opens at lunchtime. How about I treat us all to lunch?’
Steve Wing was, unsurprisingly, the first person to latch on to the mention of food. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘I’m wasting away here.’
Culverhouse raised his eyebrows. ‘The only thing that’s going to make you waste away is a massive dose of leprosy, you fat fuck.’
‘So, who’s coming?’ Ryan said, ignoring Culverhouse’s remark, and keen to keep the mood from dropping even further.
‘And who’s going to man the phones?’ Frank Vine said.
‘Front desk, same as always,’ Ryan replied. ‘If anything interesting comes in, they can patch through to our mobiles. Anyway, we won’t be long.’
‘How far is it?’ Frank asked.
‘Not far. Fifteen minute walk, maybe?’
‘Bugger that. I’ll stay here and have my sandwich.’
‘Suit yourself. You’ll come, won’t you guv?’ she asked Culverhouse.
He seemed to squirm inwardly, before looking over at Frank, who was unwrapping a very unappetising sandwich.
‘I was just going to stay here with Frank, but on second thoughts...’
In the end, the walk took them closer to twenty minutes, with Steve seemingly not used to walking more than about a hundred yards in one go, but they eventually got there.
The outside of the V Café was painted green, the sign proudly proclaiming it to be Mildenheath’s first vegan restaurant.
‘What the hell’s this?’ Steve said, trying to catch his breath.
‘It’s the restaurant,’ Ryan replied, deadpan. ‘You coming in?’
‘What, to eat a plate of lentils and tofu? No thanks.’
‘Alright. You’d better start walking back, then,’ Ryan said. ‘You might still have a few minutes left for a sandwich and a glass of water by the time you get back to the office. On the other hand, they do the best pineapple juice this side of Jamaica.’
Steve looked up at the restaurant again, then back down the hill towards the centre of Mildenheath.
‘Might as well give it a go seeing as I’m here. But if they try any of that “meat is murder” shit, I’m off.’
Ryan smiled as she ushered Steve into the restaurant. Culverhouse walked in behind him, not saying a word, but at the same time not taking his eyes off Ryan.
Steve Wing and Jack Culverhouse sat at the table gingerly, as if it were made of plywood and liable to crack under their weight. They eyed the menu suspiciously, Culverhouse holding it pinched between his thumb and forefinger in one corner as though it were covered in something contagious.
‘What the fuck’s quin-ower?’ he said after a few moments.
‘It’s pronounced keen-wah. It’s quite nice, actually,’ Wendy said.
Culverhouse glared at her.
‘I can recommend the five bean burger,’ Ryan chipped in. ‘Really good with their guacamole.’
‘Five. Bean. Burger,’ Culverhouse said slowly, enunciating each word. ‘A burger. Made of beans.’
‘Well, it’d be a bit silly making it out of dead cow for a vegan restaurant, wouldn’t it?’ Wendy said, not sure about the five bean burger herself, but keen to try and make Ryan feel as if she had an ally.
‘See, that’s what I don’t understand,’ Steve said, his eyebrows narrowed. ‘If vegans hate meat, why do they insist on making vegetables look like meat? I mean, I’m not going to go around asking for a rasher of bacon in the shape of a lettuce leaf.’
‘Have you ever tried putting a spoonful of beans inside a burger bun?’ Ryan replied, silencing him.
Culverhouse let out a deep sigh. ‘I suppose you’re going to have a load of time off sick every few weeks, then, if you’re one of these vegelesbians. You never see a healthy-looking one.’
Ryan smiled. ‘I’m a vegan, not a v
egetarian. And before you ask, yes I’m a lesbian.’
‘Fuck me,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Getting a full fucking house here, aren’t we? Shame you’re not black, or you’d’ve filled our quota for this year’s intake on your own.’
‘I know. But I can use a wheelchair if that’d help,’ Ryan replied.
Culverhouse just raised his eyebrows.
‘I presume you’re the butch one,’ Steve added, with all the tact and delicacy of a sledgehammer to the face. ‘I mean, having a bloke’s name and all.’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask my girlfriend, Thor?’
‘Thor?’
‘It’s a joke, Steve. She’s called Mandy.’
‘That’s a yes, then,’ Culverhouse muttered under his breath.
‘Right, well I think I know what I’m having,’ Wendy said, keen to move the conversation on to less controversial topics. Since last night with Xav, she’d felt different, almost as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She dared not say as much, but it was almost as if she’d begun to move on, started to see that it was possible to enjoy life and the company of men once again.
Well, some men at least.
22
From the restaurant, Wendy headed straight towards Mildenheath General Hospital. She wanted to get some more insight into the medical situation of Tanya Henderson — anything which could potentially help them with their inquiries.
Up on the ward, she found a very tired John Henderson sitting at his wife’s bedside. The bags under his eyes were growing ever more pronounced.
‘How are you holding up?’ she asked him.
He forced a smile, one which didn’t last very long before the muscles in his face succumbed once again to tiredness.
‘Any news from the doctors?’
John shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just seems to be a waiting game. How are the kids?’
‘They’re fine,’ Wendy replied. ‘The Aldridges are happy to keep an eye on them for as long as you’d like.’