Now that he was physically here, he would be able to pick up the home’s Wi-Fi network signal. But to obtain access to it, he would need to crack its secure password, which, although relatively easy to do — even with WPA2 encryption enabled — would take him a good few hours. Hours he didn’t have. But there was an alternative: he could social engineer his way in.
He had come prepared. In the small boot of his Smart car, he had his fake BT engineer uniform along with a tool box, clipboard and mocked up BT security pass with his photo on it. Even if BT were not the Internet Service Provider that delivered broadband to the house, he could still pretend there was a telephone line fault and that he needed access to all the telephone sockets in the house. He knew the names of the inhabitants, so was sure he could confidently bluff his way in. Once inside, he would physically plug his PC into one of unprotected network ports on the broadband router and hack into the network video record PC via the home’s Local Area Network.
It occurred to Brody that, in all of his many social engineering exploits, he had never physically cheated his way into someone’s private home before. He’d occasionally hacked into someone’s home remotely via an Internet connection, but that was virtual rather than physical. His in-person hacks had always been about finding a way through the secure facilities of large organisations — offices, factories, data centres, shops, warehouses, distribution centres, and so on. To Brody, these targets were faceless, corporate institutions and were fair game. Conning his way into a private home felt like he was stepping over a line. This was more personal, a full-on invasion of privacy.
He thought of SWY, and realised that the inhabitants of Number 85 had long ago given up their right to privacy when they had agreed to broadcast their lives to the world via the Internet-connected cameras all over their house. He recalled naked Audri stepping out of the bath and staring straight into the camera, as if communicating with her audience. If the au pair knew about the cameras, then surely they all knew.
Well, maybe not the baby.
Brody realised he could use SWY to help him see what was going on inside the house, just to make sure there would be no surprises. He took a moment to reflect on the irony that the site he was trying to crack was going to aid him in doing so. That was a first.
He connected to the Internet on his tablet PC via its in-built 4G SIM card. He brought up the SWY site, logged in and selected the Au Pair Affair location. He scanned all seven webcam feeds. He only spotted movement in the kitchen and clicked on its thumbnail to display the full video feed. Hilary Saxton was loading the dishwasher while talking on the phone. The baby sat in its high chair, playing with some plastic blocks. Brody clicked for audio.
“You’ve done all ten wreaths already! Oh well done Amanda . . . Yes, tell Joan I said thanks as well . . . No, no sign of her yet. I’m actually starting to get worried now. She’s never done anything like this before . . . It just goes to her voicemail . . . No, I don’t have Ornetta’s number . . .”
Brody considered that if she was still on the phone when she answered the door to him, perhaps she’d be distracted, making it easier for Brody to convince her he really was a telecoms engineer from BT. Brody stepped out of his car and opened the boot. He looked around to check for anyone watching, but the road was deathly quiet. He swapped his coat for a navy blue fleece with an embroidered BT logo. Over the top, he pulled on a yellow hi-visibility vest. The vest didn’t have the BT Openreach logo on the back like the real thing, but the logos on the fleece and the fake security pass should do the trick.
He grabbed the toolbox, shut the boot and, crossing the road, walked purposefully towards the house. As he neared, he saw that both gates were shut. He noticed a video intercom next to right hand one. Damn, an extra line of defence to navigate past. He thought it through quickly and concluded a winning smile followed by holding up his fake pass to the camera should do the trick. After all, intercom resolutions were typically fairly low, which should play to his advantage. Hilary would be able to make out the familiar and trusted BT logo. He should be fine.
He pressed the button and waited.
He thought he heard something, but not from the intercom. It was the sound of a distant car downshifting then accelerating. He turned his head in the direction of the noise. The road gently curved to the right. Nothing.
“Hello?” It was Mrs Saxton’s voice, tinny through the intercom.
A small Audi flew round the bend. The silver car screeched to a halt right behind him. Car doors flew open and its occupants began to exit. He heard more noise and looked to the left to spot two other cars approaching at speed. One of them was a police patrol car. They pulled up right behind the first car.
The driver of the marked police car looked straight at him.
Brody froze.
* * *
You lock yourself away in an air-conditioned room. It’s cold, but you know that no one will disturb you in here. They all think you’ve gone out for lunch, but really you’ve come for one more look before you make your choice.
You examine the images you’ve captured. You study their pretty faces. They’re all bewitching. You recall the last two encounters. After the overly hurried experience with the cellist, you had vowed to take it much more slowly with the babysitter. After all, you’d set the whole thing up perfectly. So that you could take your time. Allow perfection to be rediscovered once more.
But you failed. Totally.
In the heat of the moment, you allowed yourself to get carried away. The bitch was just too damn provocative in that raincoat, naked underneath, wanting you so badly. You were aroused long before you even walked into the room, even when you stood next to her in the lift. Just the thought of her following your instructions had been overwhelming.
She must have known that too. That’s why she had followed them to the letter, the slut. She had wanted you to be quick. To get it over with. Just like all the times before.
You’d spent your teenage years being rushed. “Hurry up,” she had always said to you. “Hurry up, you stupid boy. I haven’t got all day, you know. Hurry up.” But it was never something you could control, was it? If you didn’t feel aroused, how could you finish quickly? But you always tried to oblige. You closed your eyes and conjured up the pornographic images of naked women you’d stumbled onto on the Internet. Just women, though. Never men. No, that wasn’t allowed.
So why did you allow yourself to fall into the babysitter’s trap and be rushed all over again? You know you should have walked away. Calmed down. Breathed. Let it subside. And then returned in complete control. Then you could have enjoyed hours of delirium, pleasure and pain, followed by the ultimate climax.
Next time you’d get it right. And the time after that.
You study the photographs in front of you.
Who would be next?
They’re all different to look at. But underneath, you know they are all the same. They are all just different manifestations of her. Like all sluts are.
It really doesn’t matter whom you choose next. The same ending is coming to all of them. In time. What’s the difference?
Choices, choices.
You need to choose.
Thumbs-up or thumbs-down?
And you realise it doesn’t matter. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
When the rhyme finishes, you smile. Your index finger was pointing to one a lot like her.
This time you’d get it right. But first you have to organise things. And for this one you’ve concocted a truly irresistible lure. You know her motivations. You know she’ll come to you willingly. Desperately.
Like a moth to a flame.
* * *
The last ball shot past both flippers before he had time to nudge the machine with his hips. Damn, he had been caught out again by ‘The Power’, a mode in the Addams Family pinball game that employed rotating electromagnets under the board to send the metal ball in unpredictable directions. He watched the end-of-ball bonuses tot up, taking his score just ove
r two hundred million, woefully short of his own high score of three hundred and ninety-six million. One day he’d crack a five hundred. Then he’d be happy.
Crooner42 looked at his watch. The game had taken him nearly an hour. An hour to fail, yet again.
He fished his iPhone out of his pocket and brought up the Remote Home app. A few taps later and the bookcase on the other side of the penthouse apartment silently swung open. He entered his secret room.
At his desk, he logged into CrackerHack. The SWY creator checked for any recent posts about the get root battle he had spawned between Fingal and Matt_The_Hatter. He scanned the chat logs.
Nothing.
Crooner42 couldn’t decide whether to become concerned or start to congratulate himself. They were now over twenty-four hours into the contest and, so far, SWY had held up to everything Fingal had thrown against it. And, he chuckled to himself, Matt_The_Hatter. But, right now, there was no system activity from the usernames Fingal had registered under yesterday. He was also completely silent on the forums. How was Crooner42 supposed to interpret this? Was Fingal taking a break? Had he quietly given up? Or was he trying something else that Crooner42 hadn’t anticipated?
If Fingal failed to break in then no one could. Which was important, because Crooner42 had no idea how many laws he had broken by launching SWY. And one of the main objectives of this whole exercise was to prove conclusively the site was totally impregnable. The side benefit was to completely ruin Fingal’s credibility. In the unlikely scenario that Fingal somehow found a way to obtain root level control, Crooner42 would be made aware of an unknown weakness and could then block it, making SWY even more secure. And if that happened, he still had a backup plan to deal with Fingal. It was a win-win situation.
Crooner42 smiled to himself; a private little pat on the back for his genius. His sheer ingenuity in creating SWY in the first place; his commercial savvy in developing a money-spinning machine; his mastery in hardening the site so well that it had survived a twenty-four hour-long attack from one of the best; and his cleverness about manipulating Fingal into this no-win position.
Crooner42 was desperate to know if Fingal had given up. The silence was killing him. He decided to provoke a response to at least determine if Fingal was still in the game. He composed a post on the forum.
Crooner42: It’s awfully quiet out there. Has SWY got you beat Fingal? Matt_The_Hatter? You’ve had 24 hours already – way more than enough.
Crooner42: COME ON YOU LOSERS – ADMIT DEFEAT!!!
He waited a while. As he’d hoped, some of the usual suspects weighed in.
Mawrpheus: Losers, losers, losers! I agree with Crooner – admit defeat you losers.
Random_Ness: Rubbish. 48 hours is about right for this. Crooner, you can’t declare you’ve beaten them until at least this time tomorrow.
Doc_Doom: Crooner you’re an overconfident fool. One of those two will take your site down soon enough. Just you watch. And learn.
Crooner42 was pretty sure Doc_Doom was friends with Fingal. Did that mean that he knew for sure that Fingal was still in the game?
Crooner42: Brave words Doc. But I think not. They are going down…
Doc_Doom: You’ve changed your tune. Up until yesterday you were a timid mouse on these forums. Now you’re an arrogant prick.
Crooner42: Fuck you Doc. I’ve taken out Fingal and Matt_The_Hatter in one swoop. Name anyone else who’s done that.
Doc_Doom: You’ve done nothing yet.
Crooner42: Yeah, well where are they then?
Mawrpheus: Good question!! Where are they? Come out, come out, wherever you are!
Random_Ness: LOL
He needed to be more patient. The longer Crooner42 let the competition run, the greater Fingal’s failure would be and, more importantly, the more sensational Crooner42’s victory would be.
He would grant Fingal another day.
While all the unusual network activity was to be expected from a coordinated hacking attempt, Crooner42 did find Fingal’s behaviour, when logged into SWY itself, quite unusual. From observing the logs, he’d noticed that Fingal had maintained a focus on a single webcam location – the one that Crooner42 had christened Au Pair Affair. Why would he do that? Why pick just one? It didn’t really make any sense. And why that one? There was nothing special about it as far as Crooner42 could tell. There were far more intriguing locations on the site.
Crooner42 decided to check for himself. He swiped his tablet computer to select the large screen in the centre of his wall of screens. On it, he brought up the Au Pair Affair location. There were seven feeds. All showing various rooms in a huge residential house. Ah yes, he remembered this one. It was a huge mansion just outside Watford. A classic nanny-cam fit out. And he’d named it Au Pair Affair because, just after he’d added it to the SWY site about eight months ago, he’d once clocked the husband getting it on with the nanny.
He saw movement in the kitchen. He maximised the feed and turned on the audio.
A woman holding a baby tightly to her chest was confronting six people. He could see the mother full on, and two of the six were men, but from the angle of the camera he could only see the shoulders and backs of the heads of the other four. Even so, he was sure that two of them were uniformed police officers. Interesting.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” demanded the woman.
“No,” said a female voice, softly. Crooner42 couldn’t tell which of the four with their backs to the camera had spoken.
“Where is your husband?” asked another. A male voice.
“Derek? What’s this got to do with Derek?”
“Where is he, Mrs Saxton? We need to talk to him. Urgently.”
“He’s at work.”
“And where is that?” asked the woman.
“In his office in Watford.”
Crooner42 saw two of the figures turn and look at each other, knowingly. From this new side-on view, he could see that the one on the left was the woman. She had shoulder-length brown hair and wore a tight fitting maroon suit, with three-quarter length sleeves revealing slender wrists.
“The Flexbase building on Clarendon Road?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
The same two figures looked at each other again, this time with genuine confusion.
“My mistake. What’s the address of his office?” asked the woman. Clearly she was in charge.
“On the trading estate on Tolpits Lane. Halfway to Rickmansworth.”
“I know where that is,” said one of the men in full view.
What the woman with the baby said next sent a chill down Crooner42’s back.
“But it can’t be Audri you’ve found! Surely you’ve got it wrong? She’s just a kid, really. She can’t be dead!”
* * *
Brody couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
What the hell had he stumbled into? The nanny, dead?
In his mind, he replayed what he’d observed yesterday. Audri receiving the hand-delivered letter. Getting ready to go out, leaving the house naked under her red coat. Lying to Hilary that she was off to see her friend, when she was clearly meeting the husband illicitly.
And now she was dead. Murdered even.
Did his knowledge of what he’d seen via SWY make him some kind of witness? Did that mean he had to get involved? Come forward? The last thing he needed was to be forced to explain the webcam site and his involvement with it to the police. If it came up, he’d say he was a normal customer of the website. They’d probably think he was some kind of pervert.
Or should he instead say nothing to the police? It was obvious the perpetrator was Derek Saxton. They’d pull him in, interrogate him and put him away for Audri’s murder.
Yes, there was absolutely no need for Brody to involve himself at all.
The last thing he needed was the police poking around in his life.
Ten minutes earlier, when the three police cars had screeched to a halt outside the gates to the Saxton hous
ehold, Brody had been right in the middle of impersonating a BT engineer, which, like most things he did, was probably illegal in some way.
As the bodies piled out of the cars, Brody thought quickly, checked his clipboard and spoke to the first of them, “You lot here for Number 87 as well?”
The copper said, “No, this is 85.”
“Is it?” Brody made a show of looking for confirmation, pointed at the number sign on the wall and then hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, tutting. “You’re right, I’ll leave you to it.” Brody picked up his silver briefcase and started off in the direction of Number 87. After a few steps, he turned back to the policeman. “What’s going on?”
“None of your business. On your way, mate.”
Brody walked away, attempting to maintain a measured pace, completely against the wishes of his legs, which desperately wanted to break into a sprint.
He stopped at Number 87. It had a solid wooden double-gate for vehicles and separate arched doorway for people on foot. An old-school bell push was mounted on the door. He pretended to press it, waited, and looked back at the police.
Number 85’s electric gate started to slide open. Brody’s eyes were drawn to one of the two women in the group. She wore a sharp maroon suit with three-quarter-length sleeves, slender arms, skirt just above the knee, bare legs and shiny black heels. Exuding a business-like air, she swiftly entered the premises. The others followed close behind.
With no one left watching him, Brody turned and walked off. Once out of sight, he removed the yellow vest and the fleece with the BT logo, rolled them up in a bundle and placed them under a bush at the border of someone’s garden. He turned around and casually walked back to his car parked in the cul-de-sac opposite. From the driver’s seat, he was able to observe Number 85. The right-hand gate was now open and a uniformed officer stood guard at the front door.
Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) Page 19