‘If we don’t keep it alive, the case is going to die,’ Lia said. ‘Even the police aren’t getting anywhere.’
Mari lifted her mobile.
‘I’ll be right there with you.’
‘I know,’ Lia replied.
22
Lia had never previously encountered the smell that she noticed in the Ealing Slav Market. The smell was not bad, but it was pungent.
Sour and sweet. As though someone had mixed minced meat, fish and spices and pickled them in vinegar.
Lia browsed the selection on the shelves as she glanced at the other customers, who were few in number since it was the middle of the afternoon. Most were women, some clearly Eastern European. The shopkeeper was a small man with dark hair, also apparently with family roots in that corner of the world.
Picking a few tins from the shelves – Estonian sprats and Latvian fish paste – Lia attempted to strike up a conversation about them with another female customer.
‘Excuse me, but do you know what the difference is between these?’
The customer was an older woman, with dyed blonde hair.
‘That Estonian one is whole fish and very strong. The other one is a paste. Quite mild.’
‘Thanks. Do you happen to be from there, since you know so much about it?’
‘I am from Belarus. But I have lived here in England for many years now.’
Feeling emboldened, Lia jumped to her actual question. Did any Latvians come here? Did the woman know any Latvians in London?
Taken aback, the woman expressed her regrets that she was unable to help and hurried to the cash desk. When Lia followed, the shopkeeper eyed her suspiciously. Lia met his gaze unwaveringly.
‘I’m looking for an acquaintance from Latvia, a woman. Do any Latvian customers visit your shop?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know,’ the man said.
‘It’s important that I get in contact with her. Is there any way you could help? You must know a Latvian I could ask.’
‘No, I don’t,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘This is a grocery shop, not a post office.’
With that, he motioned for her to make way for the other customers.
This is clumsy, Lia thought as she left. I’ll have to come up with a more workable approach.
Just one street down was a shop with a grandiose name, the Mirage Gourmet, but it was even smaller than the previous place. Behind the counter sat a Chinese-looking woman reading a newspaper.
‘Good day. My name is Lia Pajala. I’m doing research for my master’s thesis in marketing about customers of ethnic shops and how they make purchasing decisions. Do you mind if I interview a few of your customers?’
The cashier shrugged.
Digging out of her handbag the questionnaire she had made up at the Studio, she surveyed her prospects. An Asian man, an English looking woman and another, more nondescript woman.
Lia chose the last. Introducing herself, she repeated her explanation.
‘Are you here looking for foods from a certain area or culture?’
The woman’s gaze only flitted over Lia.
‘Russian.’
The woman pushed the survey form back.
‘I don’t want to do it.’
Lia attempted to approach another female customer, but she just said ‘No’ and turned her back.
What’s with these people?
Lia had to force herself to calm down.
They’re here shopping. They might have good reasons for not answering questions from total strangers. I’m coming across too pushy.
Lia returned to the counter and tried to engage the cashier in conversation. She asked questions about the tins of mango on the counter and the game show flickering on the television on the wall. She mentioned looking for good ingredients for a meal she was preparing for friends that evening.
The woman answered with a few grunts Lia had difficulty understanding.
She began losing hope. Unless she got herself a job at a shop like this, starting conversations was going to be like pulling teeth.
She had just reached the pavement from the shop when her mobile rang.
‘We have an idea,’ Mari said. ‘About Fair Rule. Can you come in?’
Two hours later, Lia was sitting on Sprowston Road in Forest Gate in the front seat of a large, grey delivery van staring at a red-brick house a hundred metres away. Next to her in the driver’s seat sat Berg, whose calm attitude gave her to understand that this was just another night.
But for Lia, it wasn’t.
They were staking out Gareth Nunn’s house. Mari’s plan was simple: they were to follow Nunn’s movements and break into his computer while he was away.
Lia liked the simplicity and directness of the plan. Not so much the illegality.
‘Of course it’s illegal,’ Mari had said. ‘It’s absolutely positively illegal in every way.’
But it was also practical, and the best way to move forward.
In the rear of the van sat Maggie and Rico. Not Mari. Of course not.
Everyone sitting in the vehicle had an assignment. Lia’s was the easiest: she was there to identify Gareth Nunn. Actually, they only needed her to confirm the identification. Rico had looked up pictures of Nunn online, including Facebook.
Mari had suggested that Lia could just point out Nunn and then leave while they handled the rest.
Lia didn’t want that. The thought of breaking into Nunn’s home and computer and really the whole idea of such a blatant invasion of someone’s privacy terrified her. Still, she wanted to be with them.
Lia knew she wouldn’t be able to control the situation, but it felt important to her not to leave this for others to do.
They had been waiting nearly an hour when Gareth Nunn stepped out of the house and set off up Sprowston Road.
Lia did not have to say anything. Berg had noticed Nunn and saw from her expression that the man in the grey jacket walking away from them was definitely the right one.
‘Maggie, dear,’ Berg sang out into the back of the van. ‘We have work to do.’
They sounded like an old married couple going out to do their shopping, Lia thought.
Maggie jumped out the side door, closing it and hurrying after Nunn.
Lia, Berg and Rico stayed put. They had agreed to wait until Maggie called with permission to move out.
‘Simple, old-school tradecraft,’ Mari had said about this part of the plan. All Maggie had to do was shadow Nunn as Paddy had taught her.
Paddy was not with them. They didn’t need him, Mari had explained.
The time they waited for the call felt unnervingly long to Lia, even though fewer than ten minutes actually passed. When Berg’s phone finally rang, Lia breathed a deep sigh of relief.
‘He’s ordering pizza,’ Mari reported. ‘Eating in.’
Maggie had followed Nunn into the restaurant and taken a table from which she could easily keep tabs on him.
‘You have at least twenty minutes. But I would say more like half an hour, maybe forty minutes.’
‘Thanks, dear,’ Berg said and rang off.
Gareth Nunn’s name did not appear on the door, but they were sure of the address since they had crosschecked it from several sources.
No one else was about on the stairs. Still Lia was constantly preparing to make a getaway. She watched nervously while Berg and Rico inspected the door to the flat, located on the ground floor.
Berg ran a small, black device along the edges of the door, keeping his eyes on the display.
They had researched Gareth Nunn’s background with care. He was unmarried and no other residents were registered at the address. Nothing indicated that he had so much as a domestic pet.
‘But we have no way of knowing with certainty,’ Lia had argued. ‘What if his mother or sister happens to be visiting?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough when we go into his flat,’ Mari had said dryly.
Berg nodded: the door was clear. The device display stayed
dim, not registering any signals. If a burglar alarm were located in the hall of Nunn’s flat, the device would have detected its power source.
Berg pressed the doorbell.
Lia held her breath as they waited. The others were more accustomed to situations like this, but for her it was all was new and frightening.
If someone were to open the door, they had an explanation ready. In his dungarees, Berg was a maintenance worker doing the rounds checking on the gas cookers. Someone had complained of a small gas leak, and all the flats had to be checked. Rico was Berg’s assistant.
‘And me?’ Lia had asked.
‘You’re a passer-by, a resident of the building making her way up to her flat. All you have to do is walk up the stairs. If a conversation starts, ask what’s happened. Berg and Rico will handle the rest,’ Mari had answered.
No one came to the door, despite Berg pressing the bell several times.
They waited for another moment, listening. Not a sound. From the floor above, they could hear music, a radio, filtering through the walls, but Nunn’s flat stayed quiet.
Opening his toolbox, Berg removed a bunch of key-like metal tools and began working with the lock.
Within a minute, he had it open. Lia stared at the flat through the doorway, still expecting something to pop out at them. Berg and Rico entered the hall confidently, and Lia hurried after them.
They were inside. Five minutes had passed since Maggie rang.
In the hall, Berg took a small bag out of his toolbox. Out of it he dug thin, transparent rubber gloves and white, plastic shoe covers. They slipped the covers over their shoes and pulled the gloves onto their hands.
Like in a hospital. Ready for sterile work.
The brief shot of relief this amusing mental picture brought made Lia realise how tense she was.
They surveyed the flat’s two rooms and kitchen. Nunn was not the most organised man in the world. The sink and table in the kitchen were full of dirty dishes. The whole flat stank of rotten food.
The bedroom was small and dark, but they were not interested in it anyway. In the living room was a wall full of books, a large sofa, two armchairs and a desk with a laptop.
Rico smiled as he sat down in the desk chair and inspected the computer.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know people still used things like this.’
Rico turned the machine on and, while he waited as it whinged into life and booted up, opened his own toolbox on the desk. In it were wires, small tools and electronic equipment Lia did not recognise. And a collection of memory sticks.
‘Nine minutes since Maggie rang,’ Berg announced.
‘I don’t think this will take long,’ Rico replied.
The next twenty minutes were a lesson for Lia in how astonishingly easily difficult-seeming things could be if someone knew what they were doing.
Of course Nunn’s computer requested a username and password. That took Rico two minutes.
Not even attempting any usernames, he simply plugged one of his memory sticks into a USB port, bringing up a window filled with lines of letters and numbers. Rico watched in satisfaction.
‘This is a hacker kit,’ he said in hushed tones as he began typing commands.
Lia stared at the words on the screen. Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner. MD5 Cracker. MSN Freezer. MySQLi Dumper. Passstealer - Istealer. Zero Server Attacker. Program names, she decided.
These were hacker tools: programs for breaching passwords, monitoring network traffic, scanning databases and servers, Rico explained. All hackers used them and updated versions were distributed online regularly.
‘The most important thing is getting to the machine,’ Rico said. ‘Once you’re there, you can get past the user security in an instant.’
And, a moment later, a familiar tune announced that Gareth Nunn’s operating system was open for business.
‘In,’ Rico said.
He looked at the folders and icons on the screen.
Lia didn’t dare speak. She feared that despite their precautions, someone would surprise them, the computer would start sounding alarms or something else unexpected would happen.
Rico selected a second memory stick, putting it in the computer and waiting for the machine to recognise it. Once it did, he started the program that would copy the contents of the hard drive onto the stick.
Three hours, twenty-eight minutes and sixteen seconds, the program estimated the copying operation would take.
‘It won’t be that long,’ Rico said. ‘I’d say fifteen minutes.’
The program had calculated the size of all the programs and files on the computer, but Rico had set only the emails, pictures and other web browsing information to copy – just the content that was relevant to them. The archiving program would skip everything else.
‘Will Nunn be able to see that someone has been on his machine?’ Lia asked.
‘No,’ Rico replied.
Covering up the break-in was actually more demanding than getting in in the first place. That was what separated real operators from ‘script kiddies’, ‘newbies’ who blindly used hacking tools written by others. A computer’s operating system was supposed to log everything that took place, but a professional could change the log to remove all traces of his visit. Copying the files would change their timestamp, a record of when they had last been read, but Rico could restore the timestamps as well.
While they waited, they browsed the thousands of works on the wall-covering bookcase. Nunn had amassed an impressive collection of books on political history, communications and psychology.
‘That’s where he puts his money,’ Lia said ‘not into computers.’
Rico made his opinion of that clear with a roll of his eyes.
Once they had tidied up after themselves and left the apartment, Berg rang Maggie.
‘No rush. He hasn’t even finished his pizza,’ she said.
They picked Maggie up from the restaurant, with Lia sitting in the rear of the van in case Nunn happened to notice the vehicle.
On their way to the Studio Lia thought about how quickly everything had happened. When they had made it from the flat to the street, she had almost been reeling.
But she also felt satisfaction.
As Mari had said, it had all been practical and simple. And completely illegal. But they had not touched anything else in Nunn’s flat, as if they had just popped round for a quick visit to his private life, politely and without leaving a mess.
In the lift up to the Studio, Lia’s satisfaction began giving way to triumph. She could have gone right back out and done it again.
The amount of information to analyse on the memory stick was considerable. Maggie and Berg left, but the remaining trio wanted to continue. Rico took the text files and Mari the emails.
‘The intimate things are probably in the pictures and browsing history,’ Rico said. Lia should take those.
Lia found porn, but just the soft variety. She did not inspect the pictures very closely, since that would have been voyeurism. The other pictures were the normal stuff: trips, parties, Nunn with his friends. He had had a couple of girlfriends in recent years. The browser traffic was largely political. Nunn had been a diligent student of what was being said about Fair Rule.
Rico found material Nunn had written for the party. Especially interesting were numerous versions of the Better Britain programme.
The first presentation had not had anything to do with defending the rights of indigenous Britons. It had been Nunn’s vision for improving the immigration system and the position of the immigrant community. Nunn had proposed moderate, humane changes. The latest version of Better Britain was closer to what Fried had said at the Streatham Ice Arena.
Version by version they had forced Nunn to change his text until it became something else entirely.
Mari said she could see why he wanted out.
‘It probably happens in most parties. The person who originally came up with the ideas can’t stand what
they’re being twisted into.’
Reviewing the email traffic took hours.
Why was Nunn involved in the party’s finances? Mari asked Lia in an instant message.
The email chains showed that a few months earlier Party Secretary Gallagher had asked Nunn to help divvy up funds for the party’s various branches and member organisations. The job was largely number crunching but also involved some serious politicking.
Soon Nunn had begun complaining to Gallagher how tired he was of arguing with the party’s pig-headed leaders. Gallagher didn’t care.
Perhaps he had intended to tire Nunn out, Mari suggested.
In order to make decisions on applications for funding, Nunn had access to copies of the party’s financial records. He had started raising questions.
There are recipients here not listed in the registers. Money transfers every month. To whom? he had asked the party secretary.
Gallagher had not answered, but the next day Nunn was informed that he would no longer be responsible for fund distribution. He had protested angrily. WHAT do you want me to do if I can’t even do THIS?
‘This is it,’ Mari said. ‘This is what was bothering him about Fair Rule but he didn’t want to tell you about.’
Perhaps Gallagher and Fried were slipping some of the money into their own pockets. Or maybe they were distributing money to entities they didn’t want anyone else knowing about.
‘Bloody hell,’ Lia said.
They went through everything related to financial transactions, but the results were meagre. Nothing indicated where the shadowy money transfers had gone.
‘Dead end,’ Rico said.
‘We have to get at Gallagher’s messages and the bank records,’ Mari said.
Lia stared at her, exhausted.
‘Do you want to break into Gallagher’s house?’
‘Not necessarily. You mentioned that he uses a desktop computer in the Fair Rule office. That’s probably where they distribute party funds from.’
‘Couldn’t we break in remotely?’ Lia asked Rico.
Cold Courage Page 17