SecretlyWatchingYou had given Patrick all the trappings of wealth. The clothes, the grooming, the sports car, the penthouse apartment, and, in a different way, the girlfriend. His reflected profile displayed some of those trappings but, now that he could see himself as others saw him, he could still make out the geeky kid hidden within. The child who had been mercilessly bullied at his inner-city school for always having his head in a book, or for always being in front of a computer. The teenager who had been sent to juvenile detention centre not once, but twice. At thirteen he had set fire to the school sports centre after having blocked both exits and trapped all his tormentors within, although they had been saved from burning to death by the heroics of their physics teacher. After eight months of unbelievably worse torture from vicious youth detention centre kids who made the school bullies look like pussycats, he had been relieved to be returned to society, only to find that his parents refused to take him back, fearful for the lives of his two younger siblings.
Four sets of foster parents later, Patrick’s second incarceration took place a year after he’d settled down and began to enjoy life for the first time, having finally been adopted by the Smith family. This time, a certain computer hacker called Fingal, who had been hired by the online gambling sites to crack down on cheaters, had ruined his life. Not only had Fingal exposed a hacker called Zyr0ss as being behind an impressively sophisticated poker bot scam, but he had somehow led the police to his home, where his unsuspecting adoptive parents had duly washed their hands of sixteen-year old Patrick Smith. After another eighteen months of unrelenting torment in a different youth detention centre, he was free again, never to make it out of state care homes, only restricted to accessing computers at the local library.
When Patrick turned eighteen, he dropped his adoptive surname and had it legally changed back to Harper, his birth name, vowing to one-day wreak revenge on Fingal. It had taken him much longer than planned. He’d needed to build up his credibility in the hacking circles from scratch once more, unable to use his old handle Zyr0ss, its reputation having been destroyed by Fingal’s scalp. That’s when Crooner42 had been born, and a couple of other backup handles just in case. And here he was, moments away from ruining Fingal’s online credibility, exactly what Fingal had done to him five years ago. He licked his lips in anticipation.
The lift doors slid open.
Patrick put the key in the lock and pushed open the door. Immediately, he could tell someone was in the flat. Perhaps Kim hadn’t yet left. Damn, he couldn’t access his control centre while she was here. He’d need to get rid of her.
He knew now that it had been a flaw in the design of his apartment. With the benefit of hindsight, he should have installed a second way into the secret room that contained all of the screens he used to monitor SWY. The toilet off the hall backed onto the same room. Maybe he’d get the designers back in a few weeks to install a concealed door in the toilet and hide it behind a long mirror. That might work. At least then, whenever he had guests, he could pretend to go to the loo and secretly access the room.
“You still here, darling?” he called down the hallway.
No answer. Odd.
He entered the living room and halted abruptly, shocked to see two women standing by the dining table. Kim, as he’d expected, and DI Jenny Price, who he’d last seen in person on Monday at Kim’s flat, and via webcams quite a few times since.
“W-what’s going on?” he stammered, his brain rapidly processing the implications. Was her presence somehow linked to Fingal’s presence in Bushey? He looked around, making sure that Fingal was nowhere to be seen. That would be too much.
The doorbell rang. What the hell was going on?
“I’ll get that,” said the detective, who walked past him. She opened the door and he heard her greet two more colleagues.
He looked at Kim and repeated, “What’s going on?”
“You tell me, Patrick,” she said, coldly, a tone he’d never heard in her voice before.
“Tell us what you know about SecretlyWatchingYou, Mr Harper,” said DI Price, returning to the living room, her colleagues in tow.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I see. In that case, tell me, where were you this morning?”
“None of your fucking business.”
Kim raised an eyebrow, surprised to hear him swear. She folded her arms and said to the detective, “He told me he was going to work.”
“Work?” Price turned to Patrick. “Yes, where do you work? How does a student pay for a pad like this and drive around in a 911 like the one you’ve just arrived in?”
Patrick repeated his last response, enunciating every word, layering in more aggression. “None of your fucking business.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Get the fuck out of my flat,” he shouted, starting to lose control. And, pissed off at Kim, added for her benefit, “All of you. Now!”
“I don’t know what you’ve done, Patrick,” said Kim menacingly. “But I am leaving. Permanently.”
Patrick could feel his walls crumbling down. Losing Kim one day was inevitable. His ears pounded. He needed to lash out.
“Fuck off then,” he said through clenched teeth. “You mean nothing to me anyway.” The words were out before he could take them back.
Kim’s eyes bulged in terror and disbelief. “What’s wrong with you, Patrick? I’ve never seen you like this.”
Patrick clenched his fists. Involuntarily, she took a step back from him.
The detective stepped forward. “Watch yourself, Mr Harper. If you want me to arrest you, I will.”
“What the fuck for?”
“About two hundred contraventions against the Human Rights Act of 1998 for a start, which, under Article 8, has provisions for the right to respect a person’s private and family life.”
The male detective chimed in, “And then there’s the Data Protection Act of the same year.”
The other female detective added, “And don’t forget the offence of voyeurism, which is covered by the Sexual Offences Act of 2003.”
Patrick could feel his stomach churning. They knew about SWY. But he held his ground.
“You’ve got nothing. Now get the fuck out.”
He felt the draught before he heard the familiar low hum of the mechanism. He saw the shocked glances on all four faces, each of which looked beyond him. He knew then that his world was going to fall out from under him, but he whirled around anyway, needing to see with his eyes, rather than rely on his other senses.
The bookcase slowly parted, revealing the secret room. Patrick’s jaw slackened completely. He wondered if he’d accidentally pressed the button on his key fob, but no, that was safe inside his jacket pocket. He waited as the door swung open to reach its zenith.
Out stepped Fingal.
“Crooner42,” he declared, a triumphant grin plastered on his face. “You’ve just been pwned.”
* * *
Brody couldn’t keep the smile from his face.
But then Crooner42’s horrified expression slowly morphed into an angry snarl and, with a guttural roar, he charged. Completely unprepared, Brody felt Crooner42 crash into him, his body lifting off the ground to fly backwards into the room. He landed on his back, his head banging heavily on the wooden floor, Crooner42’s weight landing on his body, winding him. Dazed, Brody could only watch as Crooner42 pulled a fist back to strike him. Just as he let fly, O’Reilly tackled his attacker from behind. Crooner42 was knocked to one side. O’Reilly used his whole body weight to pin down Crooner42’s thrashing body. Jenny and Fiona rushed in and, with a pair of handcuffs, the three officers quickly subdued him.
Brody got to his feet, rubbing the back of his head. He checked his hand for blood, but there was none. His skull throbbed and his ribs ached. The others stood up, leaving Crooner42 lying on the floor.
“What have you done?” wailed Crooner42, staring at the wall of screens.
All thirt
y-three of them displayed the same thing, the front page of SecretlyWatchingYou. Only, instead of the site’s usual panel of webcam images, it showed a diagonal banner in large red font that spelled out, “Pwned by Fingal”.
Kim, who was standing at the doorway to the secret room, demanded, “What the hell is all this, Patrick?”
Crooner42 — Brody found it hard to think of him as Patrick — looked up at his girlfriend but said nothing. He looked away, ashamed. Brody frowned. The hacker looked familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place it.
Brody answered for him. “This is where your boyfriend controls SecretlyWatchingYou.com from. He set it up three years ago. Like all small businesses, he started small with just one location where he hacked into someone’s private Wi-Fi webcams and broadcast whatever streams he found, for a small fee of course, over the Internet. As time went by, he opened more and more locations on the site to meet demand. And as he did, more and more paying voyeurs found the site. Classic supply and demand. Quite the entrepreneur, aren’t you, Crooner?”
“Crooner?” asked Jenny.
“Crooner42 to be precise. That’s his handle on the hacker sites.”
“And what’s your hacker handle, Brody?” Jenny asked.
And only then did Brody’s feeling of triumph crash down.
“Fingal,” spat Crooner42 from the floor.
O’Reilly stepped forward, measuring Brody up and down, a note of awe in his voice. “Fingal? For the life of me, I don’t believe it. You?”
Brody said nothing.
“Who’s Fingal?” Jenny asked the police techie.
“Fingal’s one of the world’s most elite hackers. In the hacking community, he’s world famous.”
“I’m just Brody Taylor,” countered Brody. “I’m not this Fingal you speak of.”
Crooner42 grunted in disbelief.
“Now, how can you say that?” demanded O’Reilly. “Look at the screens behind you. Your name’s plastered all over, so it is!”
“That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“On the contrary, it’s got everything to do with you,” argued O’Reilly. “You were after putting it there when you pwned the site.”
“What the hell is ‘pawning’?” demanded Fiona.
“It’s a hacker word for ‘own’. They’re after using it when they break into a site and take full control. When they own it.”
“I didn’t pwn the site. All I did was break into this room and let you lot in. Someone else must have pwned it.”
“Don’t be an eejit. Your fingerprints will be all over the keyboard.”
“No, they’re not.”
They weren’t. Brody had used the tablet PC that Crooner42 had left by the reclining chair to do his work. It was securely connected to the site; no hacking required. It hadn’t taken him long to disable the site and replace the front page with his message. He’d also announced it live on CrackerHack, making sure he got full credit for his crazy week’s work. Once he was done, he wiped down the tablet PC and pressed the button to open the secret door. After the days of failing to crack the site from a frontal assault and the wasted time driving down the HomeWebCam false alley, the final steps to pwn SecretlyWatchingYou had been surprisingly straightforward.
“Right, this whole room is a crime scene,” announced Jenny, asserting control. “Everyone except Harry out into the living room. Harry, this is all physical and digital evidence. Can you secure it properly, please.”
Crooner42 shrugged off Fiona’s offer to help and struggled to his feet. She led him out into the living room.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Brody,” whispered Jenny threateningly, as she walked out beside him. “If I find out you’re this Fingal character, I’ll have you for . . .” She faltered, realising the rest of the phrase.
Smiling, Brody finished the sentence for her. “Breakfast?”
She elbowed him in his sore ribs.
CHAPTER 21
Brody stood at the back of Crooner42’s living room, observing the police in their white coveralls follow their crime scene containment procedures. They had multiplied like rabbits in the hour since Patrick Harper, aka Crooner42, had been taken into custody. He had been asked to put on white overshoes and latex gloves so as not to further contaminate the scene.
He’d wanted to leave, but Jenny had demanded that he stay. She had even threatened to arrest him for burglary after his earlier stunt; breaking into Patrick Harper’s secret room.
When he’d arrived with Jenny, he’d nosed around, admiring the original Asteroids arcade machine and the Adams Family pinball machine. What had first struck him as odd was the complete absence of any computer devices. If this were the home of Crooner42 then surely he would have IT equipment somewhere? At the very least, there should be a Wi-Fi router, but he could find nothing. He remembered that he still had the cellular activity monitor in his satchel and so he fished it out. Sure enough, he tracked plenty of Wi-Fi signals emanating from the wall behind the bookcase. Using his tablet, he jumped on the Internet and found the estate agent’s original advertisement, which included a floor plan of the apartment, showing a second bedroom, accessible from a door where the bookcase now stood.
Brody made an excuse about grabbing a coffee from a nearby coffee shop, but instead he found the access hatch to the loft above the penthouse in the hallway. He let the front door slam shut and quietly climbed up, making his way by the light of his mobile phone to the approximate area above the hidden room. He had been prepared to force a foot through the plasterboard ceiling, but fortunately he found a second hatch, which he pulled upwards, gaining access to Crooner42’s private sanctuary, crammed full of computers and monitors.
Like most hackers, Crooner42 had invested all his focus in protecting his site from external threats from the Internet, never expecting anyone to track him down in the physical world, where he was completely defenceless. Secure in his secret lair, Crooner42’s personal tablet PC lay unguarded on a coffee table, permanently logged into the admin console of SWY. Armed with this, Brody took full advantage and, within minutes, had successfully pwned the site and brought it down. He logged into CrackerHack to announce his achievement to everyone. Fingal had won the contest against Matt_The_Hatter and retained his elite status; probably even enhancing it a little further.
As much as he was delighted to have saved his reputation, he was deeply concerned about Jenny. He could tell she was nowhere near convinced that he and Fingal weren’t the same person. She’d told him quietly, with a slight catch in her voice, that she wasn’t willing to trust him right now but wanted to keep him nearby, where he could do no damage.
He didn’t blame her.
His protestations that he wasn’t Fingal and the complete lack of evidence to prove he was didn’t conceal the fact that the timing of Brody’s revelation of Crooner42’s secret lair and the pwning of SWY by Fingal had occurred at exactly the same time. Right when Brody had unfettered access to SWY from within Crooner42’s secret room.
But admitting the truth had greater repercussions. Putting the laws he might have ridden roughshod over to one side, his greater concern was their personal relationship. He was absolutely smitten and didn’t want what they had to fade into history like any other one-night-stand. And telling the truth would surely end it. How could a police officer knowingly continue a relationship with someone like him, a professional computer hacker, white hat or not?
A huddle formed in the kitchen to discuss the case. He could see Jenny, O’Reilly, Fiona and their boss Da Silva, who’d arrived earlier, upset about something, despite the major break in their case. Jenny had introduced Brody to him as a witness who came forward to help, nothing more, and Da Silva had curtly shaken his hand and moved on.
“Where are we up to?” asked Da Silva.
“The site’s been taken down,” said O’Reilly.
“So as long as all the equipment in there stays off, SecretlyWatchingYou is dead in the water?”
“It i
sn’t, sir, there’s a bit more to it. The site is hosted in Russia. Yer man’s equipment in there was only used to administer and monitor the site.” O’Reilly struggled with making Da Silva understand.
Jenny jumped in. “Sir, the site has been stopped. And its creator has been arrested. The killer can’t use it to lure any new victims. That’s the main thing.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. We bag up everything here. We continue the cross-force collaboration I’ve already got going and impound all of the shadow PC vehicles located all over the country. We tell all the people who own the webcams that they’ve been hacked, in case they want to rethink their usage. And we put Harper in jail for whatever laws he’s broken putting up that site.”
The three officers nodded.
“That’s it?” he demanded. “I can’t go to the press with that! We’re no nearer to catching the perpetrator.”
“But we’ve cut off the killer’s food supply. That’s a major step forward,” retorted Jenny.
“And we’re still following up with Flexbase on the meeting room bookings,” continued Fiona. “We’ve got the IP address used at the time. It was from a mobile device over a 3G network. We’re working with Vodafone to get a mobile number and hopefully an address.”
“It’s not enough,” said Da Silva.
“Well now, maybe we can bring in specialists from the NCCU to help?” suggested O’Reilly.
“Who are they?”
“The National Cyber Crime Unit. Part of the National Crime Agency.”
“That’s interesting,” said Da Silva.
Brody couldn’t bear to listen to their committee-based approach on how to move forward. The NCCU had been a huge step forward for the UK in fighting cyber-crime, but like most things it always came down to the skills of the individual assigned to the case. They might get assigned someone not much more capable than O’Reilly. And, like any police investigator, they would be hamstrung by their own policies and procedures.
Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) Page 47