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

by Ian Sutherland

  It slowly dawned on him what was going on and anger coursed through his veins.

  “Hilary,” he shouted, banging on the door, “Fucking let me in.”

  No answer. He shouted and thumped it again, this time with even more force.

  “What do you want, Derek?”

  Her calm voice came from behind him. He whirled around, but no one was there. His momentum continued and he staggered out of the porch and onto the granite paving stones of the drive, only just maintaining his balance.

  “You’re drunk.” Her voice was coming from above, oozing disgust. The upstairs hall window was open. She stood there regally, clutching a sleeping Izzy to her bosom.

  “You changed the locks.” It came out as an accusation rather than the question he had intended.

  “What did you expect?”

  “Let me in, Hilary.” It took every ounce of effort not to shout. He didn’t want to wake Izzy. In fact, he didn’t want Izzy to see him like this. “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About us? You, me, Izzy.”

  “Us?” her voice was high-pitched, incredulous. “You ruined us when you fucked the babysitter.”

  “But . . .” He didn’t have an answer.

  He had done that. But he hadn’t meant for it to turn out like this.

  It wasn’t really his fault. Not all of it anyway. He had tried to resist the temptress, who had constantly paraded around the house half-naked, leading him on, teasing him. And always when Hilary was out. But what hope did he have? He was a red-blooded man, not a stone cold statue.

  “It was your stupid idea to get a live-in au pair. Now I know why.”

  “No. It’s not like that, darling,” he pleaded. “I was thinking of you—”

  She hissed at him, “I’m not your darling.” Izzy stirred in her arms and Hilary rocked her gently. When she spoke again, she was calmer. “Not being able to keep your dick in your pants I can almost understand. You’ve never stopped pining for your damn rugby days; beer with the lads, women throwing themselves at your feet. I should know. I was one of them.”

  “Hilary—”

  She held out a hand to silence him. “But you know what I can’t get past, Derek?”

  He had no idea. If it wasn’t sleeping with Audri then what the hell was it?

  “I thought I knew you, Derek, I really did. But it turns out that you’re a disgusting, dirty old man. You repulse me.”

  The damned webcams.

  Her words cut him in two, but she wasn’t finished. “You’re not fit to be a father to Izzy. Now go away.”

  She reached out her free hand and began pulling the window shut.

  “I’m so sorry, darling. It was just a whim. A spur of the moment thing. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She stopped and railed at him, disgust dripping from every word. “You put one of those things in our bedroom, Derek. Our private space. And not content with that, you put one in our bathroom. But worst of all, you put one in the au pairs’ bedroom. They were young women, Derek. Just like Izzy will become one day. Young women.”

  “But—”

  “And to top it all off,” her voice rose as she hurled her accusations at him, “you turn our home into some kind of online Big Brother house, except on TV the contestants know the cameras are there. They know.” She took a sharp breath, stifling a sob. “We had no fucking idea. Me. Izzy. Audri. It’s a violation, Derek. You violated us all for your deviant perversions.”

  “But I didn’t know, how could I?” he shouted her down, angry now. “I’m a victim too, you know.”

  “There’s only one proper victim in all this, Derek. And it’s certainly not you. It’s not even Izzy or me. We’ve had a lucky escape. No Derek, the only victim here is Audri. First you fuck her and then you kill her.”

  “I didn’t kill her!”

  Hilary was about to retort but bit her tongue. Instead, she shook her head in despair and closed the window shut.

  “Please Hilary,” he wailed, falling helplessly to the ground. “Please.”

  And before he knew what was happening, he was curled up on his stone patio, crying like a baby.

  * * *

  “Do you think we should do something?” asked Brody.

  “Only if he gets violent,” advised Jenny.

  They had observed the whole sorry scene play out from inside Brody’s Smart car parked in the cul-de-sac opposite their house. Both of them had lowered their windows to eavesdrop on the exchange between husband and wife. Saxton was lying on the ground, convulsions racking his body. It was uncomfortable to watch. Jenny glanced at the upstairs hallway window, but Hilary Saxton had disappeared from view.

  After a few minutes, Saxton slowly pulled himself to his feet and took a long look at the home he was no longer welcome in. Eventually, he shrugged, zipped up his jacket, buried his hands into his pockets and left by the open gate, turning right towards Bushey village, meandering drunkenly down the street.

  “Who needs SecretlyWatchingYou when you’ve got front row seats?” joked Brody.

  Jenny offered a short grunt of agreement. She had little sympathy for Derek Saxton. She recalled his interview at the station a few days before and his complete lack of remorse over his extra-marital behaviour. It wasn’t her job to judge or take sides, but in this instance she’d very much enjoyed observing Saxton face the consequences of his actions. Although she felt sympathy for his wife and baby daughter.

  She kept an eye on Saxton as he staggered past Karim Malik’s parked-up Vauxhall Astra, oblivious of the two officers sat within its dark interior. She could just about make out Alan Coombs’ profile in the passenger seat, despite the yellow glare reflecting on the passenger window from a nearby lamppost. Further up the street in the other direction Fiona Jones and Harry O’Reilly sat in Jenny’s own Audi A3, although she couldn’t really see them as they were parked in a much darker spot.

  When deciding on the stakeout, she had first phoned Da Silva to sell him the idea and obtain approval for the overtime. At first, he hadn’t been pleased with her interruption. He was still at Holborn with other members of the investigation team, up to their necks coordinating the following morning’s multi-force exercise to have local police officers show up at every address on the list of IP webcam installations provided by McCarthy. He had brightened when she informed him about the hundreds of cars registered at the fake address in Stratford, each containing the shadow PCs that made SWY work. For each address they found broadcast on SWY, then additional evidence would be provided by seeking out and seizing the car parked nearby. Delighted, he had eagerly approved the overtime without even checking with DCS McLintock.

  Her team had been much less thrilled. They had still been in The Dolphin when she phoned, many more sheets to the wind than when she had left them. Well, except for Karim, who never drank. He had driven them up to Bushey for the stakeout, after collecting three walkie-talkies from the station. When they arrived an hour later, soft drinks and kebabs in hand, she introduced them all to Brody, only remembering that Harry had met him the day before when he deliberately snubbed Brody’s outstretched hand. She quickly organised the three vehicles so that they covered all entrances and exits to the area and each had an unobstructed view of the grey SEAT Toledo.

  It was going to be a long night. But probably much longer for Alan, Fiona and Harry, whose hangovers would no doubt kick-in halfway through. Thinking about her team made her recall the concerns they had voiced in the pub earlier.

  “Something’s bothering me, Brody.”

  “I thought something was up.” He turned to look at her. She kept her eyes on the SEAT. “What is it?”

  She folded her arms. “How did you figure out the booking in Windsor earlier?”

  “Does it matter?” When she didn’t reply, he answered his own question. “Obviously it does.”

  He gave the impression that he was disappointed that he had to explain himself. She turned to face him, needing to see if h
e would lie right to her face. Harry was convinced he was some kind of computer hacker and must have hacked his way into Flexbase to find out the information.

  There was an almost imperceptible pause before he spoke.

  “I had help, but I promised not to give up his name. He’d lose his job.”

  “Go on.”

  “When we met Magnus Peggler at Flexbase yesterday, he said that he needed to talk to the vendor of the meeting room booking system in order to find out if IP addresses were stored in the database.”

  That was true. She remembered that.

  “I got the feeling that he was going to take his time over that so I thought I’d see if I could help. I tracked down the vendor. There was a press release from them on the Internet from a few years back announcing Flexbase as a new customer. It turns out I know someone who works in their support department who owed me a favour. He logged into their system remotely. I know it’s a bit naughty, but he downloaded their booking database and emailed it to me so I could check myself.”

  It sounded a bit far-fetched to her, but Brody’s face was totally earnest.

  “Anyway, IP data is stored with each booking. It was the same IP address for both previous bookings. So I ran a search for any other bookings and up popped the one today at Windsor. That’s when I phoned you.”

  “What about this IP address, you never mentioned that before? We could be tracking that down as we speak.”

  He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “In all the chaos, I completely forgot about that. I’m so sorry. I’ll email it to you now.” He reached for his tablet computer. “The IP address links back to Vodafone, which means the booking system was accessed via a smart phone. But if you contact them with the information I send you now, they should be able to give you the actual mobile phone number. Hopefully, it’ll come with a real-world address. But somehow I doubt it.” His fingers flew across the screen.

  Jenny didn’t know what to think. His story was all completely plausible. And if he was lying, he was an absolute master. There was not a flicker. But there was just something in the back of her mind that didn’t feel right. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Could she trust him?

  She wanted to. She really wanted to.

  She needed to.

  “I was nearly killed today.” She surprised herself with the revelation. Even more surprisingly, she felt tears build up. Her body began to shake. She tried taking a gulp of air.

  “Huh?” Brody stopped swiping his fingers on the tablet’s glass surface, turned to scrutinise her and, seeing her distress, dropped the computer to the footwell and reached his arms around her. She allowed herself to be pulled towards him. To be comforted. She began to cry hot tears into his chest.

  Objectively, she understood it was delayed shock. She’d been so busy since the encounter that she hadn’t allowed herself to absorb it properly. As a police officer, she’d dealt with her fair share of violent situations, facing up to plenty of overly-aggressive drunks and junkies, a handful of knife-wielding criminals and had once donned protective gear to confront massive crowds of rioters, all overwhelmed with bloodlust. But nothing had ever come close to today’s near-death experience.

  She was overwhelmed with emotions, unsure how to handle them. She allowed the tears to flow. Brody held her tight, despite the awkwardness of his small car. He kissed the back of her head gently.

  Slowly she began to retell the events of earlier. And unlike in the version in the pub earlier, which had been full of bravado, she tried to relate the feelings she had experienced. Her adrenalin-fuelled charge into each meeting room; her unnerving flight out into the openness of the atrium, six floors up; her instinctive grab for the glass railing; the humiliation of begging for him not to prise her fingers away; her sheer relief when she’d felt arms grab her legs beneath as she held on one-handed; her utter bewilderment as the killer spoke her name; and the physical pain she had endured as she landed on the fifth floor.

  “He said your name?” Brody asked.

  “More than that, he almost apologised for having to push me off. It was as if he had already fixated on me as a future victim and he was gutted he was going to miss out.”

  You would have been good. That’s the shame of it. Far better than that whore in there.

  She shuddered into his chest at the recollection.

  “Maybe that’s how he sees all women. As objects for his weird fantasy.”

  “But he knew my name.”

  “Yeah, from SecretlyWatchingYou, surely. The same way I found out your name.”

  “You think? It felt like something more. But I hope you’re right.”

  “Me too.”

  * * *

  You are angry.

  You can hardly contain it. You want to lash out. You want to cry out loud how unfair it all is.

  But you contain yourself. You know that if you react spontaneously, if you go on a rampage through the streets slashing at women at random, you will be caught and imprisoned. Like her.

  You don’t want to be caught.

  You log back into SecretlyWatchingYou and look around. It calms you, spying on them all.

  You find the locations where your next three choices are. You’ll need to choose one of them.

  But then you remember all your planning was focused around Flexbase. You know that avenue is closed to you now. They nearly caught you today. Why couldn’t they have come just ten minutes later? At least you’d have been finished by then; finished with the telesales whore.

  It had been going so well. Everything had gone to plan, just like it always did. You were throbbing with anticipation. And just as you were about to slide it in, your knife at her throat, you’d heard the noise next door. Fortunately, you took control of yourself and got ready for an interruption. You barged her so hard, she tipped over the balcony.

  But when you looked over and saw it was the policewoman, you were shocked to the core. That was no coincidence.

  And it really was such a shame that you had to let her go, literally. You smile to yourself at your little joke. It calms you. And yet you are sad. She was the most like her so far. And you had been working on a plan for the policewoman, only for it all to go to waste. She was dead now. What a shame.

  You’re going to need to adapt. You know that. Adapting is what will make you succeed.

  You cannot use Flexbase anymore. Whatever trick the policewoman used to find you was repeatable. You’ll need to find somewhere new. Come up with new locations to lure them to.

  At least you’ve still got SecretlyWatchingYou, and an endless supply of women within its many locations. You’ll continue to learn all about them and use that knowledge to trick them into meeting you somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be a Flexbase building. There are plenty of other places. It was just so damn convenient. You knew your way around the systems so well. You were untraceable.

  And then you chide yourself. Of course you weren’t. The policewoman tracked your room down, didn’t she?

  FRIDAY

  CHAPTER 20

  Crooner42 dropped the car into second and turned off Bushey High Street.

  The drive up had taken much longer than he’d anticipated. He’d thought heading out of London against the morning rush-hour traffic would have been far quicker, but the North Circular had caught him out. It had been heavily congested, as city-bound traffic skirted round London’s inner ring road in both directions before turning inwards once again. On his return trip, he would take the A41 into the centre of town, and then follow it once more as it guided him alongside the Thames towards Docklands. He would save at least thirty minutes that way.

  He needed to save as much time as possible; he had a busy day ahead. Once he dumped his car back at his flat, he would take a taxi across the river to Charlton and pick up the car outside what used to be called Student Heaven on SWY. From there, he would drive it to its new destination in Brighton. Once the shadow PC was set up outside the gay massage parlour, he would take th
e train back to London. With any luck, he would be back home for the evening.

  He turned left into the road where the Saxton house was located. It had been over a month since he’d last been here to switch the batteries in the boot of the car. He wasn’t actually scheduled to come here again for at least another six weeks, so the signal dropping completely was concerning. He just hoped the car hadn’t been stolen.

  He drove slowly along the road. Further down where the road curved, he could make out the Saxton residence, the imposing house protected by massive security gates. Opposite was the cul-de-sac where he’d parked the SEAT Toledo.

  He indicated right. As he approached the junction, he glimpsed a flash of something bright orange. Metallic orange and black.

  It couldn’t be.

  It wasn’t possible.

  He quickly flipped off the indicator and continued straight on, deliberately maintaining his meandering speed. As he passed the junction, he stole a long look up the dead end road. Yes, just as he’d thought. A two-tone, garish orange and black Smart Fortwo coupe. And inside he could make out the outlines of two passengers.

  With his heart pounding, he drove on slowly, confident that he hadn’t caught their attention. His indicator had been turned off before they would have seen the car appear and so, to them, he would have looked just like any other car driving down the residential road.

  It was Fingal. It had to be. He recognised the distinctive car from the other night in Upper Street, when he’d watched him bound out of Bruno’s coffee shop.

  Crooner42’s mind began processing the implications.

  Somehow, Fingal had discovered the car containing the shadow PC. It was no coincidence that it had stopped broadcasting. Fingal had done that. And the reason was to draw him out. The fact that he was there waiting in person meant that he didn’t know who he was. That was something.