Before them, an arc of turnstiles sectioned off the entrance from the rest of the foyer. Simon directed her to a security desk in the middle where a discreet sign indicated visitors should apply there for a visitor pass. Louisa didn’t fail to notice the way the two uniformed security guards straightened in their seats when they saw Simon at her side. She flicked across her profile ID and in return received a visiting terms form hundreds of pages in length. She swiped through a few pages before scrolling to the bottom and thumbing her acceptance. Her profile was then assigned a temporary clearance token and she was able to pass through a nearby turnstile. All in all, getting inside had been a quick and hassle-free experience. She had been expecting something a lot more rigorous like a full body scan or DNA test.
Simon was amused when she queried him on the seemingly relaxed security procedures. ‘Don’t believe the rumours. Portal is a family company and aims to treat its staff and guests as such. Not that we don’t take security seriously. The building is lined with sense strips so we can keep an eye on what everyone is up to. Plus any visitor must agree to their Portal interactions being monitored during their stay, so no corporate secrets should be at risk.’
‘That was in the visitor’s agreement I just signed?’
Simon nodded.
Great, what else did I just agree to? I’m really going to have to start reading those damn things.
‘Besides,’ Simon continued, ‘you only have lobby access. We’re heading over to one of the meeting cubes.’ He pointed towards an array of transparent boxes in the corner of the foyer Louisa had thought were an art installation. ‘For anywhere else in the building you’d need extra clearance.’
Louisa was somewhat disappointed she wasn’t going to see more of the building. Little was known of what it was like to work for Portal and as a result the gossip feeds were rife with rumour and conjecture. Some personal feeds purported to convey firsthand knowledge of the rigorous interview processes and they ranged from the bizarre to the obscene. One of the more prolific stories portrayed how they hooked you up a brain scanner during the interview which produced a much clearer interpretation of your emotional state than that determined by the terminals when generating a perception feed. More disturbing reports recounted the applicants being shown videos of people involved in car accidents or suffering violent deaths. Others told how the footage was altered to make it look as if the interviewees were actually the ones dying or their relatives or people they cared about had been inserted into the gruesome videos. It all sounded so unnecessarily cruel, but Louisa wasn’t sure she believed any of the more extreme trials Portal allegedly put their job applicants through. It was generally accepted however that the process lasted several days and involved a large number of questions designed to test lateral thinking, like how the applicants might escape from a bath if they were shrunk down to two inches in height. HR departments in other professions and industries had started to incorporate the tests into their own recruitment process. Louisa had heard the MET interviews for senior officers now took a similar approach. Louisa had her doubts as to the efficacy of the questions when it came to measuring applicant suitability, especially for the MET. She didn’t think inspectors or superintendents needed to be able to name five alternative uses for a drinking straw in order to do their jobs properly. Still, she guessed it made the successful candidates feel special, like they were chosen to be part of something unique and exclusive. The Portal employees certainly looked happy to be there.
They passed by an enormous thirty-foot wide mosaic of the Portal logo in the centre of the foyer. Ringing the mosaic was a transparent cylinder that cut through the domed ceiling and continued upwards to the apex of the pyramid. Louisa could see sky through the ceiling far above. The cylinder housed eight large lifts arranged in a circle busily ferrying staff to the upper floors. Louisa craned her neck, following one of the lifts as it shot upwards. She shuddered. The lifts were transparent and the occupants appeared to float upwards of their own volition and hang precariously in mid-air when the lift stopped at a floor. The sight was dizzying and Louisa quickly looked away. She never did like heights, and the thought of being in one of the lifts shooting skywards with the foyer growing increasingly smaller beneath her gave her the chills. On a trip to Alton Towers with John one of the newer rides used a similar effect to simulate free-falling hundreds of feet down an illuminated shaft cut into the ground. She’d suffered attacks of nausea and dizzy spells for days afterwards, much to John’s amusement.
Inside the cube was a small square table and two chairs. She felt rather exposed to the staff walking past, like a museum exhibit in a display case. Then Simon touched the glass wall beside the door, a neon blue icon of an eye with a line crossed through it flashed, and the walls misted into translucence. Simon moved the chair on the opposite side of the table around so it wasn’t directly facing her. How nice, now it doesn’t feel like an interrogation at all.
‘So, how’s the husband?’ Simon sat down. ‘John, isn’t it?’
Louisa was surprised Simon remembered his name. ‘He’s fine, thank you. We got divorced a few years ago.’
‘Ah, sorry.’
Louisa shrugged. ‘How about you? Do you have a family?’
‘No. I never managed to find the time. You know how it is.’
Louisa knew all too well. Back when Simon was a DI he’d been a workaholic and Louisa didn’t imagine he’d changed much. In the early hours of the morning he could probably be found haunting the Portal HQ’s corridors.
‘I have to warn you at the outset, what we say is being recorded,’ Simon said. ‘It’s company policy I’m afraid.’
‘That’s quite all right. It’s standard MET procedure too when we interview suspects, as you well know.’
Simon winced. ‘I don’t think of you as a suspect, Detective. I have a problem I’m investigating and I thought you might be able to help me with my enquiries, that’s all.’
‘You don’t think I’m involved in any illegal activity, then?’
Simon smiled. ‘I’d be surprised. You know how this works. If I wanted to speak with you officially I’d have to go through our MET liaison and spend the next several days or weeks mired in red tape while the request gets approved by ever MET officer from the Commissioner right down to your DI.’ Simon hesitated. ‘The truth is I’m under pressure to get a result here and I thought since we know each other we could cut through all the bullshit and speak directly. You’d really be helping me out.’
‘Sure, fire away. And afterwards maybe you could help me out with a few enquiries of my own.’
‘Oh? Like what?’
‘Please, you go first.’
Simon relaxed back in his chair. ‘Last night around eleven p.m. there was an external firewall breach on Portal’s network. Several Portal servers were targeted but one strand of the infiltration focused on your profile. Subsequently our engineers reported that a large quantity of Portal’s intellectual property was streamed to your profile from a secure server. Were you aware of this?’
Louisa almost smiled at the change in Simon’s tone. He’d slipped into his old DI interrogation mode, despite what he’d implied about it being a friendly chat. But, intellectual property? He was talking about Claire’s feed, wasn’t he? A personal feed was the property of the citizen who produced it, not Portal. Suddenly she wondered if agreeing to the meeting without legal representation might turn out to be a particularly naive move on her part.
‘I noticed something was wrong with my profile yesterday evening,’ Louisa said, choosing her words carefully. ‘I had someone from SIU look at it this morning. I wasn’t aware of any Portal breach although the officer did notice my profile had been accessed from the global web.’
‘How did you come to the conclusion something was wrong with your profile?’
The question surprised Louisa. Surely he knew already what she had seen on her screen? ‘I noticed a…disturbance while I was watching a newscast. Of your CEO, coincide
ntally.’
Simon nodded thoughtfully. ‘What form did the disturbance in the feed take? Was it visual?’
Louisa raised an eyebrow. ‘It was Portal data streamed from a Portal server causing the interference. You work for Portal—are you saying you don’t you know what data was transferred?’
‘It could help with my line of enquiry if I knew more about what you personally experienced.’
‘Perhaps you should ask one of your colleagues. I imagine they could tell you more than I ever could.’
The smile left Simon’s face. ‘My remit is with the breach in our network. The stolen data relates to a classified Portal project which is being investigated separately.’
Ouch, I touched a nerve there. Portal may be a family company but they’re not behaving like one big happy family. ‘Out of curiosity, if I wanted to speak with someone in Portal who had access to that classified project, how would I go about it?’
‘I’m afraid your query would have to go through the normal communication channels for requests originating outside of the company.’
In other words the lawyers would get involved and my request would never see the light of day. ‘By the way, I learned my profile was reset today. Was it part of your investigation?’
‘I wasn’t personally involved if that is indeed what took place. But it’s possible your profile may have been reverted to its original configuration to remove any traces of the stolen property. We’re perfectly within our rights to do so. Any data residing on our servers identified as stolen property no longer warrants the protections afforded by the CSCA.’
‘Yes I’m quite aware of that,’ Louisa said, a little put out at being lectured to on legal technicalities.
‘Of course,’ he said, flashing a smile again. ‘I do apologise.’
My my, that smile really is dangerous. I bet it puts his female co-workers all-a-flutter. She had to admit she wasn’t totally immune to its effects herself, but she wasn’t about to weaken at the knees and start telling him everything she knew. Simon’s questions had been indirect and probing. Is it possible he’s out of the loop here? Doesn’t he know it was Claire’s feed that was sent to my profile?
‘Maybe you could help me with something now?’ Louisa asked.
Simon nodded. ‘Sure.’
She took out her terminal, connected to the MET Subnet and located Claire’s case file. She moved to the forensics uploads and brought up a headshot of Claire taken at the crime scene. She turned the screen around to face Simon. ‘Do you recognise this young woman?’
Simon studied the scan. Initially he looked bemused, then taken aback as he realised he was looking at a scan of a girl’s corpse. He frowned and shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never seen her before. Who is she?’
‘Claire Harris. Her body was found on Sunday morning. I’m investigating her death.’ Simon’s response seemed truthful enough. It was as natural a reaction as she had ever witnessed. Too much emotion leaked through for it to be faked. She brought up another scan. ‘How about this one? Ever see anything like this before?’
Simon gave the image a perfunctory glance then looked up at Louisa, meeting her eyes with a steady gaze. ‘No, never.’
‘All right, thanks for looking.’ Why don’t I believe you this time, Simon? The displayed image was of the wound at the base of Claire’s skull. The contusion filled the whole of the terminal’s screen and you could make out every gruesome detail: the dried blood around the puncture wound and the shredded tissue. Enough to make anyone feel a bit queasy the first time they saw it. Granted, Simon would have seen worse on the job, but still, he didn’t bat an eyelid. Louisa resized and pocketed the device. ‘Well, thank you for your time, Simon. You’ve been very helpful.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up.
Simon opened his mouth to reply and then closed it again with a frown. He appeared to be running through what had just happened. Probably wondering how he managed to become the interviewee all of a sudden.
‘Yes, of course,’ Simon said. ‘If you need to contact me I can be reached at my profile.’
Simon stood up and she shook his proffered hand. The grip was firm, confident. If he was affected by the scan at all he was masking it well. Simon walked over to the door and turned the walls transparent. ‘Thank you for coming down, Louisa. It was good to see you again.’
‘Likewise, Simon.’ Louisa realised she actually meant it. He held the door open for her. ‘Thank you. Don’t worry, I can make my own way out.’
Louisa felt Simon’s eyes on her as she walked back to the security desk. What would she do if she found out he was involved in Claire’s death? He wouldn’t be receiving any special treatment just because they used to work together, but deep down she knew arresting her former colleague would be a less than pleasant experience.
Louisa flicked across her temporary pass towards the security officer at his request and she received a message on her terminal indicating it had been invalidated. Before she turned to leave she glanced towards Simon once more and saw he was talking to someone. The man was older than Simon, in his late forties or early fifties. His head was shaved close. It wasn’t an attempt to hide encroaching hair loss, judging by the stubble pattern. His face was composed of hard, deep lines, with the grizzled appearance of someone who’d spent most of his life working outdoors in unforgiving environments. Along with a stiff bearing it made him look like he’d be more at home standing at attention on a parade ground in a uniform rather than dressed in a black suit with a crisp white shirt.
Louisa couldn’t hear what they were saying but the conversation grew animated. Simon was scowling and gesticulating agitatedly. The older man wasn’t behaving like a subordinate receiving a dressing down. He weathered Simon’s admonishment calmly and responded with placating gestures. An argument between peers, then? The other man glanced around and seemingly came to the conclusion their conversation was too public. He took Simon’s arm and ushered him into the meeting room. Louisa had to admit her interest was piqued. When Simon was her superior she hadn’t seen him lose it once. Something must have really pissed him off.
The argument continued inside the room, but Simon had his back to her so she could only see the expressionless, set face of the other man. Abruptly he looked past Simon to stare directly at her. She was caught out, too late now to pretend she hadn’t been looking at him. Even at a distance she felt his eyes drill into her. They stripped away her defences and left her squirming like a child under the scrutiny of a disapproving parent. Then, before she had a chance to look away, Simon reached across to the panel and the meeting cube turned white.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Detective Inspector Michael Fuller was in his mid fifties, overweight, and with a florid complexion that pointed to high blood pressure, stress, or a mixture of both. Normally he kept to his office, the door shut and blinds pulled, but when Louisa returned to Scotland Yard she found him surveying the floor. This afternoon he looked particularly flustered with a sheen of perspiration glistening on his furrowed forehead. For a fleeting second Louisa clutched at the hope he was planning on flushing someone else’s day down the drain, but then he fixed her with a beady-eyed stare. ‘Detective, a moment of your time.’ He retreated to his office without waiting for a response, leaving Louisa to trail after him.
‘Are you still working on the Claire Harris case?’ the DI asked when Louisa sat down.
‘Yes, sir,’ Louisa said. ‘I know the case file is still a little sparse at this stage but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of foul play. It you could give me another day I’m sure—’
‘Yes, yes.’ He waved a hand at her. ‘I’m sure you have everything in hand.’
Louisa was pleasantly surprised. The DI normally regarded an open case as akin to a ticking time bomb, threatening to go off at any moment and mess up his precious stats. The DI spoke to her only a handful of times each week. Usually to review her case file turnover. If the closure stats were below target then he was on the receiving en
d of a bollocking from the DCI and duly passed the rebuke down the chain of command.
The DI picked his terminal off the desk and squinted at it. ‘Now, ah, I received a communication this morning from Superintendent Morris concerning a Request For Access from Portal. They wished to remove some data from your profile they believed had been illegally obtained from a secure facility.’ The DI continued to keep his eyes on the screen. It was almost as if he was reading out something he had composed earlier. ‘I am now formally notifying you that this request was granted.’ The DI looked up expectantly.
Of course. Portal couldn’t reset my profile history unilaterally. Since she was a MET officer she was afforded greater protections than civilians under the CSCA. They needed permission from someone of inspector level or higher to touch her profile at all. This asshole has known about it all morning and he’s only telling me now. ‘Yes, Sir. I’m aware someone targeted my profile in connection with a Portal network breach.’
‘Yes?’ The DI looked relieved. ‘Well, as you know, private data theft is very serious. Luckily Portal appears to view this as an internal matter and have assured me they do not wish to pursue it any further. But unfortunately any report of impropriety concerning an officer under my command, valid or not, requires me to disclose the incident to the Directorate of Professional Standards. I expect they may wish to speak with you once they have reviewed the details.’
Louisa was too shocked to reply. He had reported her to the DPS for an alleged incident where no official complaint had been made against her? Guilty or not, the act of being reported to them alone put you on their radar.
The London Project (Portal Book 1) Page 12