Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series)

by Ian Sutherland

  “Well, well. I guess she does know. That’s very interesting,” said Brody.

  “Can she hear us?” asked Leroy excitedly. He leant towards the laptop and barked to the naked girl. “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears, young lady!”

  “Leroy, you fool, the audio is one-way only.”

  “Oh.” He leaned back, disappointed. “What is this job you’re doing, then?”

  “Just a favour for a mate.”

  “One of your hacker mates?”

  “Yeah, kind off.”

  “Have you ever met this mate?”

  “Sure, loads of times.”

  Leroy stood up and drained his mug of tea. “In the real world? You know, in the flesh. As in, offline?”

  “Makes no difference to me.”

  Leroy sprawled on the sofa. “You talk such shit sometimes, darling. You can’t truly get to know someone just from talking to them in a chat room.”

  Brody didn’t answer. They’d had this argument before. What did Leroy know anyway? Brody had built up plenty of friendships with people he’d never met in person. And not just other hackers. Online, people were a lot more open about themselves, cutting to the chase, brutally honest. In the real world, there was so much dancing around, never quite saying what they meant, always holding back. The anonymity of the Internet made everything possible. It was one of the reasons he loved it so much.

  “Just ignore me, Brody. It’s my hangover talking. Making me tetchy. I think I’ll go back to bed.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Leroy raised himself up and delicately shuffled back to his room. He opened his bedroom door, paused and said, “What makes you think they’re from all over the world?”

  “What?”

  “The private webcams in your pervy website. You said they were from all over the world.”

  “It’s the Internet.” Brody couldn’t keep the condescending tone out of his voice. “It’s a global phenomenon.”

  Leroy turned around and lumbered back to lean on Brody’s desk. He pointed at the girl in the bathroom, who was now drying herself off with a towel.

  “Bet you a foot massage she’s in the UK somewhere.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “You taking the bet, darling?”

  “Fuck off, Leroy.”

  Leroy chuckled to himself, “Back in a mo.” He ambled off down the hallway. Brody heard the bathroom door open.

  Brody stared at the screen, confused. The girl wrapped one towel around her hair and the other around her body. She grabbed a mobile phone from the window mantle and pressed some keys rapidly with two thumbs. She looked up at the camera again, pointed her phone upwards and pressed a button. Smiling, she left the bathroom. This girl definitely knew she was being watched.

  Brody recalled her voice from earlier in the day when he’d observed her talking nonsense to the baby. He’d formed the impression that her accent sounded Scandinavian. So how did Leroy come up with the UK?

  Leroy returned and slammed a plastic bottle of toilet cleaner on his desk and said triumphantly, “Asda, you knob.”

  Brody instinctively recoiled from the yellow bottle in disgust. It lived behind their toilet and probably had dried urine all over it. Perhaps that’s why the packaging designers had chosen yellow.

  Yellow bottle.

  Yellow bottle, red lid with a black and white label.

  He stared at the motionless bathroom video feed. Although very small on the screen, there, by the toilet, was exactly the same shape yellow bottle with a red lid and a black and white label.

  Leroy ambled off to his room. “Much to learn, you still have . . . my young Padawan. Good night.”

  Brody smiled at Leroy’s use of Yoda’s line from Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. But then he frowned. How did the presence of toilet cleaner connect the webcam location to the UK? And then he realised. Asda. Asda was a UK-only supermarket. It was owned by Wal-Mart, the American giant. In every other country, Wal-Mart traded under its own brand, but in the UK it was Asda. And the toilet cleaner was Asda’s own brand.

  The location of this video feed was somewhere in the UK.

  He clicked back to the office location webcams and selected the feed with the readerboard. The date and time scrolled by again. Sure enough, it was still one minute out. He’d noted earlier that it was in the same time zone as he was, but there were plenty of other countries on Greenwich Mean Time. He’d looked them up: Ghana, Iceland, Ireland, Morocco, Liberia, Portugal, Senegal, Sierra Leone and some others he’d only vaguely heard of.

  But, with Au Pair Affair located somewhere in the UK, he had a sneaking suspicion that the office location was in the UK as well.

  * * *

  Her window wipers at full speed, Jenny Price turned her silver Audi A3 into Troughton Road in Charlton, the address Trinity College had provided for Anna Parker. Pastel colours and fake cladding sporadically broke the redbrick monotony of the long Edwardian terrace. The original town planners could never have predicted that the inhabitants of the two-up two-down houses would one day own their own cars and park them proudly in front of their homes, shrinking the usable width of the road to a single slalom track. Jenny zigzagged her way past two oncoming cars, the passing places formed by houses that had exchanged their personal patch of lawn for a private concrete driveway. Fifteen or so houses beyond the house Anna Parker had shared, Jenny finally found a space and then groaned as she spotted the dropped kerb outside warding strangers from parking there.

  Sod it. She parked anyway, the continuous downpour overcoming her civic morals. Partially protected under her extendable umbrella, Jenny bolted back up the road, through the gate and up the path. With perfect timing, DS Karim Malik opened the front door and Jenny charged into the hallway. She shook the rain off herself and the umbrella.

  “Thank fuck you’re here, Jen.”

  “What’s going on, Karim?”

  “Got one of the victim’s flatmates in the kitchen in floods. What am I supposed to do? I’m a copper, not a fucking counsellor.”

  “Tea and sympathy, Karim. That’s all you can do.”

  Jenny had long ago stopped picking up Karim on his foul language, although she found it amusing that he managed to curb it whenever Da Silva was in earshot. Being a Muslim police officer was tough and Jenny supposed Karim’s foul language was some kind of defence mechanism, a way to make him appear less noticeable to his colleagues. And, even though it often seemed exaggerated, it worked. Karim was well liked within the squad. Jenny had no idea what the Qur’an’s position on swearing was. If it was a problem it was Karim’s problem, not hers.

  “What’s the flatmate’s name?” she asked.

  “Kim Chang. She’s a dance student.”

  “Where’re all the other flatmates?”

  “It’s some kind of study week, so the other three flew off on holiday together last week. Imagine it. One house, five students. All birds. Fucking fantastic.”

  “Have a bit of decency, Karim. One of them’s the victim.”

  “Sorry boss.”

  “What have you told her?”

  “Nothing really. I didn’t get much past telling her that Anna had been found dead before she started wailing.”

  Jenny followed Karim into the kitchen. A dark-haired girl sat at the table, puffy eyes almost masking her delicate Oriental features. She looked up, hope on her face. Karim introduced Jenny and her features collapsed once again. Jenny made the standard noises about how sorry she was, feeling utterly false. Karim leaned against the sink, out of the girl’s eye-line.

  “Poor Anna,” the girl said, her voice cracking as she reached for another tissue.

  Jenny sat down opposite her. “I know it’s devastating, Miss Chang, but I need you to answer a few questions.”

  “Kim,” she said, blowing her nose.

  “Okay, Kim. When did you last see Anna?”

  “Friday morning. When I left for college, she was practising for an audition
she was going to that afternoon.”

  Karim opened his mouth to jump in but Jenny raised a hand enough for him to notice. He held back. Jenny had also realised the significance of the audition.

  “What was she auditioning for?”

  “A summer work placement in the Royal Opera House Orchestra. That was her dream, you know, to play for a ballet company. She never thought she’d ever get a shot at the Royal Opera House.”

  “She was that good?”

  “I think so.” There was hesitation in her voice. “I’m no expert. I’m just a dancer. But we both go to Trinity Laban Conservatoire. It’s a specialist college for music and dance. You have to be pretty good to go there.”

  “And dedicated?”

  Another pause, and then she gathered herself. “Of course. We all are.”

  “Was the audition in Covent Garden?” Jenny didn’t know much about opera but she knew where the Royal Opera House was. And even though Jenny knew the answer before Kim spoke, she wanted to understand how open Kim was being.

  “No. That was strange actually. It was somewhere near Paddington. We looked it up on Google Maps. Some kind of office building, which was a bit odd.”

  “Did she phone the Royal Opera House to double-check?”

  “No way. She didn’t want to give them any chance of changing their mind. In case they’d chosen her by accident or something. Anyway, Anna said the invitation was from an agency working on behalf of the ROH.”

  Jenny was about to ask if she had a copy of the invitation when Kim abruptly asked, “Was it a car accident or something like that?”

  Jenny was thrown momentarily. She glanced over at Karim, who held up his hands behind Kim, as if to say, “I told you.”

  “I’m sorry, Kim, I thought DC Malik had told you already. Anna was murdered.”

  “What?” There was sudden outrage in her voice.

  Jenny didn’t answer, sensing more was to come.

  Kim continued, her voice now shaking. “Murdered? Who? How? Not some bloke she picked up? I told her she was asking for trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kim turned her head, catching sight of Karim to one side of her. “Nothing. It’s not important.”

  “Kim, do you mind if DC Malik takes a look in Anna’s room?”

  “Sure, go ahead. First floor, first on the left.”

  Karim took the hint and left them in the kitchen.

  Jenny asked Kim to explain her comment again, adding, “It could be important.”

  Kim folded her arms. “It’s just that ever since me and Patrick got together — he’s my boyfriend — Anna’s been out partying a lot. Too much. We always used to go out together, before Patrick, but nowhere near as much as this. And lately there’s been a string of one-night stands. It’s so embarrassing when you come down in the morning and there’s yet another bloke there with her. Once, she introduced me to one and she couldn’t even remember his bloody name.”

  “So you think she may have picked up someone who killed her?”

  “I guess? A year-and-a-half ago she only ever got it together with other music and dance students, and even then only occasionally. Nothing serious. Usually when I met someone as well. And she only ever went for the good-looking ones. She can, you know. She’s gorgeous. But recently? They’ve been all sorts. Short. Ugly. And mostly older, middle-aged men. Yuck.”

  “Can you remember any of their names?”

  “Maybe. Let me see . . .” She listed three or four names. Jenny wrote them down and then asked, “Do you recall a William Webber? Or any William?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Why, have you arrested someone already?” Hope filled her face.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure we will soon.” But Jenny was starting to think the opposite. She changed tack. “If she was partying so hard, how was it affecting her studies?”

  “She’s pretty much stopped going to Trinity. She’s stopped practising her cello. She used to play upstairs for hours at a time. It was so nice to hear. But nothing for the last few months. Well, except for this week, practising for her audition. She says she’ll make it up before the end of year recitals. I tried to talk to her but there was no getting through. She always turns it back to me and Patrick.”

  “What did she have against Patrick?”

  “I think she’s just jealous. He’s so attentive towards me. But she thinks he’s . . . what’s the word she used . . . fawny. She said it’s not normal for a bloke to be so slavish. And for us to have so much in common. She says that anyone who has that much in common with a girl must be gay. Well he’s not gay! I think it’s because she’s never really had that kind of relationship.”

  Jenny thought back to the crime scene and realised she’d probably gone too far off-track. There was no need to have Kim rake her friend through the muck, when the killing was obviously related to the audition. And Kim referenced Anna in the present tense, which meant she’d not fully absorbed her friend’s death yet.

  “When we were talking about the audition a few minutes ago, it felt that you were holding something back. Was it to do with Anna’s recent behaviour?”

  “I guess. In a way. She was invited to the audition based on a recommendation from one of her music lecturers. But she’s hardly been to the college lately. It seemed such an unlikely recommendation.”

  “Which lecturer?”

  “His name’s Jake Symmonds. But he’s just Jake to us. We call all our lecturers by their first names. Not like school you know.” Kim smiled weakly. The smile revealed the girl’s attractiveness. She had shapely cheekbones and full lips, and was short and petite; a ballerina’s body with a ballerina’s poise. Almost the opposite of Jenny, who had the height of a supermodel but all the grace of a grounded albatross. “I remember, Jake Symmonds.”

  “When did Jake tell Anna about the audition?”

  “He didn’t. Anna got an email a week ago from someone working on behalf of the ROH, inviting her to the audition. The email said that Jake had made the recommendation.”

  “Did she talk to Jake about it?”

  “No, the invitation implied he’d done it off-the-record and so she didn’t want to drop him in it. Or find out that he’d recommended anyone else.”

  “I see. The agency you mentioned earlier. Have you got a copy of his email?”

  “It’ll be on Anna’s Mac. It’s up in her room. Why are you asking so much about the audition?”

  “Because that’s where she was when . . . you know.”

  “Oh. Was it horrible?”

  ‘Horrible’ was such an understated word for what Anna had been put through. Inwardly Jenny shuddered at the memory of her discarded body.

  “Yes.”

  Kim sobbed and put her head in her hands. “Poor, poor Anna.”

  Jenny put a hand on her arm.

  Kim looked up suddenly, tears halted. “So this audition. Was it fake? Was she set up?”

  “It’s certainly starting to look that way.”

  “But that means she was targeted! Someone planned this in advance. The email proves it. You can trace it, surely? I’ll get her Mac.”

  Kim ran out the door before Jenny could stop her. Footsteps ascended the stairs two at a time, noisily for someone so nimble.

  Jenny sat back down, considering what she’d learned. A promising musician turned promiscuous student. A dubious recommendation leading to a fake audition. A gruesome rape and murder. A premeditated plan that exploited Anna’s dreams. Anna must have known her murderer. Or, at the very least, her murderer must have known her.

  Jenny heard a key rattle in the front door. She stood up and returned to the hallway. A young man with dark hair and round, wire-framed spectacles walked through the door, shaking out a golf umbrella. He stopped short when he saw Jenny.

  Jenny held up her warrant card and said, “Detective Inspector Price, Met Police. And you are?”

  The man withdrew his key from the lock and closed the door. “Patrick Harper. What’s g
oing on?”

  “Oh Patrick, you shouldn’t have come!” Kim rushed down the stairs, carrying a thin silver laptop. She shoved it into Jenny’s hands and threw her arms around Patrick. “But I’m glad you did.” She buried her head in his coat and wept forlornly.

  “What’s wrong, Kim?” He stroked her hair but stared steadily at Jenny.

  “It’s Anna. She’s been . . . she’s dead.”

  “What? Dead? Good God. I’m so sorry, Kim.” He hugged her close, kissing the top of her head.

  Karim came down the stairs. He indicated that he needed to talk to Jenny. They returned to the kitchen and spoke in low voices. Karim closed the door.

  “Look at this,” Karim said, holding up a plastic bag. Latex gloves now covered his hands. The contents of the bag were obvious.

  “Drugs.”

  “Yup, marijuana, and I reckon the white tablets are speed.”

  “Anna’s?”

  “They were under her pillow.”

  “I’m not surprised, given what I’ve just been told. Seems like she was on a downward spiral.”

  “Who’s the Harry Potter lookalike?”

  “Kim’s boyfriend.”

  “Him? You’ve got to be taking the piss. She’s Premiership. He’s Conference at best.”

  Jenny was no football fan, but she understood the reference. They were certainly mismatched.

  “Perhaps he cast a spell over her.”

  “Well his magic wand is parked right outside.” Karim pointed through the window.

  A Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, sparking white exterior, red leather interior, was parked directly in front. Right in front. Not two hundred yards away through rain and wind like her car.

  Lucky.

  And rich, although Kim hadn’t come across as a gold digger. But she had described Anna as being jealous of Kim’s relationship with Patrick. Jenny wondered if there was more to it.

  She put Anna’s laptop on the table. “Let’s get a crime scene team down here. And ask for Harry O’Reilly from Computer Crime as well. There’s an email on that computer we need to trace.”

  Karim pulled out his mobile phone.

  Through the rain-soaked window, Jenny looked up and down the street. No other spaces to park. He really was lucky.