by Sibel Hodge
‘So you don’t think she would have gone back home to Bristol?’
‘No way. She hated him. Sometimes you just can’t go back.’ She sighed.
‘Can you think of anywhere else she could be?’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Nah.’
‘Well, thanks for your help. If you think of anything else, can you give me a ring? Or if you hear from Tracy, please call.’ I took a business card from my pocket and held it out to her.
She stared at it but made no move to take it.
‘Or if you just want to talk. If you need some help,’ I continued. ‘There are women’s projects. I can put you in touch with someone. You don’t have to be doing this if you don’t want to. Support is out there for you. All you have to do is ask.’
She chewed on her lower lip again and looked at the chipped black nail varnish on her hands.
I put the card on the arm of the sofa. ‘It’s there if you want it.’ I nodded to Ronnie and he followed me outside.
‘What do you think, guv?’ he said as we strode back along the corridor to the stairs.
I let out a sad, deflated sigh. ‘I think nothing is ever black and white.’
THE VIGILANTE
Chapter 25
At just gone 1.30 a.m. the roads from Buckinghamshire to London, where Lee’s cyber security empire was housed, were quiet.
I pulled up to the closed metal gates of a nondescript industrial unit surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with barbed wire. There was no company name on the front. Lee still did contract work for the government and anonymity was the name of the game. The last time I’d been here was when I’d asked for his help on behalf of Maya. And I knew that at the rear of the building, completely hidden from view, were satellites and various signal equipment that were too complicated for me to even name.
A security camera positioned on the wall next to the gates faced in my direction. Beneath it was a button, which I pressed. I waved into the camera and the heavy-duty electric gates slid open.
I drove into a car park at the front of the building. There were spaces for fifty vehicles but only seven were in use. I eased into a spot near the reinforced-glass front doors and got out.
By the time I’d jogged up the steps, Lee was tapping an entry-code system on a panel next to the empty reception desk in a lobby that looked more modern than the outside of the building suggested.
The door beeped and I let myself in.
Lee walked towards me, a half-smile on his face. ‘Good to see you.’ He pulled me into a hug.
‘You’ve dyed your hair grey. Is that a new fashion statement?’ I said when I stepped back.
‘Cheeky fucker. You’d be grey if you didn’t shave it all.’ He grinned. ‘So, how are you? I mean, apart from this job with Corinne and Toni?’
I shrugged. ‘Better.’
‘How’s Maya?’
‘She’s recovering, slowly. And you? Keeping busy?’
‘Always. I’ve got more work than I can handle. And this beats sitting under a poncho in a tree at three in the morning trying to send a sitrep by Morse when it’s pissing it down with rain.’ He clapped me on the back, the grin replaced by a sombre frown. No more time for pleasantries and catching up. We had work to do.
‘Let’s go to my office.’
We stepped into the lift in the centre of the lobby. Lee typed in a code on a control panel and the doors closed. We emerged three flights up into an open-plan office filled with communications and computer equipment. At the end of one wall was a big bank of computer servers. The aircon was set to a cool temperature. An electronic hum filled the air. Five guys were seated at desks around the room, typing or talking on the phone or with their heads bent over screens. It was an impressive set-up.
He led me to his office at the far end and sat down in front of a huge desk with various monitors, towers and other equipment on it. ‘Grab that chair.’ He jerked his head in the direction of an office chair on wheels that was parked at a smaller desk flanking the left side of the room, equally as laden with monitors and stuff that I didn’t have a clue about.
I pushed the chair next to him and sat down.
He typed on one of his keyboards and then pointed to a screen in the centre of his desk, showing what looked like a regular chat forum layout with a header banner that said ‘Vice Box’. There was a main page with various topics and subtopics listed below it.
‘OK, so, I checked out the message threads Toni was watching. I went through the most recent pages of chat on the “Pain4Fun” thread and found plenty of hardcore, sick stuff relating to torture and abuse from a large paedophile community.’
I clenched my fists. Felt the rage detonate through me like napalm. Gritted my teeth. ‘Mark that for later. When I get Toni back I want to revisit this.’
Lee nodded. ‘There are about 500,000 users on the Vice Box site.’
‘No matter how many you expose, there’s always so many more.’
‘And the dark web has just given them even more places to go.’ Lee unscrewed the lid from a bottle of water and took a swig. He pointed the tip of the bottle at me. ‘Want something to drink, a brew?’
‘No, thanks.’
He screwed the top back on. ‘OK, I’ll spare you the rest of the posts. You know yourself what kind of sick things they do. And nothing relevant jumped out at me on that thread about a red room. The second post on Toni’s watch list is a different story.’ He clicked on a link entitled ‘Broken Britney’.
Dread burned its way up my throat as the original post came up with replies below it.
Luvchild: Hey, anyone seen Broken Britney? I heard about it in another chat room and wanted to find a link?
SfK: Never heard of it. Give me more . . .
Luvchild: It’s s’posed to be a red room. Some gurl gets some serious HC shit before they do her. I wanna watch some snuff!
DOLSGAME: Where you hear about it?
Luvchild: HardCandy URL.
TreBleBless: It’s a fake!
Luvchild: You seen it?
DOLSGAME: I’m looking for a red room. Been trawling for ages! Gimme the link.
I read through each post, the dread turning to abhorrence and something I couldn’t even name as they debated whether a hardcore snuff film was real and who wanted to see it. When I got to the bottom of the page, I said, ‘OK.’
Lee clicked on page two. And that’s when things got even worse.
Crusader: Broken Britney doesn’t exist. It’s creepy pasta. If you’re lookin for a real red room, follow this link: 3l2up4ts7fufc9b.onion. Best shit I’ve seen yet but not cheap!
‘I tried the link, which takes you to a blank page.’ Lee clicked on the URL Crusader had given, and as Lee said, a plain white page filled the screen. ‘But there’s a page hidden behind it. I would imagine it’s supposed to be secure, and you’d have to enter a username and password to see it. But there’s a script error on the page. Watch this.’ Lee simply hit the ‘enter’ button and the whiteness disappeared to reveal another webpage behind.
It was similar to a YouTube page in that there was a video box that took up half the left-hand side of the screen. The video box was black, except for a line of white text which said ‘Live Stream Coming Soon!’
‘I’ve clicked to play the video but nothing happens.’
Above the video box were two headings: ‘Watch Live’. And ‘Direct’.
There was a subcategory on the right-hand side of the page which said: ‘Previous Red Rooms’. Lee clicked on it and a list appeared:
Baseball bat
Acid
Saw
Disembowelment
Electrocution
Torture
Drowning
Rape
I looked at Lee after I’d got halfway down, my jaw so tight my muscles ached, teeth grinding together.
Lee shook his head sombrely. ‘There’s some seriously fucked-up shit on here.’ He pointed to the video links. ‘These are previous murders.
Filmed in graphic detail for the pleasure of some messed-up fuckers. The process of watching the videos works like this: you click on the link you want and the site asks for payment in D-coins. I set myself up with a D-coin wallet and paid to check out some of the videos. If they’re fakes, then they’d need a million-pound special-effect budget to produce them. You can’t fake what’s on here.’ He sat back and looked at me. ‘And people don’t just pay to watch them. When they’re streaming live, they can pay to direct, too.’
‘How does that work?’
‘I’m guessing a chat box pops up when the video feed on the front page goes live. You can tell them what you want them to do to whoever’s in the red room in return for paying more D-coins.’
I let out a growl. ‘I’m guessing D-coins are similar to Bitcoins? A digital currency?’
He nodded. ‘They’re Bitcoin’s biggest rival. They’ve become almost as popular now.’
‘Let me see one of the videos.’
He clicked on the ‘Electrocution’ link, which brought up a new video box. Underneath it was a price to view the video. Five D-coins.
‘How much is five D-coins worth?’
‘As of today’s price, three thousand dollars.’ He pressed ‘play’.
A large room appeared on screen with no windows I could see. The walls and floor were tiled in white with a concrete ceiling that had a single strip light attached to it. On the left-hand side of the screen there was a small wooden table, the surface tinged a dark reddy-brown. It held a long prod with a bronze tip and an insulated handle, which was connected to a small black box that would control the voltage. Supplying power to it via leads was a bulky battery unit.
It was a variation of a picana, and I knew that such prods were used for torture on political prisoners and prisoners of war. I’d spent six months working in South America training a branch of the ANP – Anti-narcotic Police – and come into regular contact with the government’s Administrative Department for Security. They were mean bastards who hated the freedom-fighting rebels in the country and had no qualms about using commercially made torture equipment to extract the information they wanted.
Adapted from the electric cattle prod, the precursor for what were the modern stun guns, it was designed to deliver a high-voltage electric shock but with a low current. The high voltage meant the shocks were painful, but the low current enabled the torturer to make the session last longer and was less likely to kill the victim until they were good and ready.
But that wasn’t the worst bit. In the centre of the room, chained to a long table by leather straps that held his arms above his head and his legs spread, was a young man. He looked to be in his early twenties, but the fear twisting his features made it hard to tell. He screamed, a hoarse, raspy sound, as if he’d been screaming for a long time. His eyes stared wide open, tears spilling on to his cheeks as he tugged repeatedly against the restraints. He was naked, apart from a pair of white boxer shorts ingrained with dirt that couldn’t disguise the wet patch at the front of them. He was painfully thin, his ribs showing, the sinews of tendons taut against his skin as he cried out pitifully, trying to move and failing again and again because the straps were too tight. His whole body glistened with sweat.
Then a man appeared from behind the camera. He was tall, thickset, dressed from head to foot in black – overalls, gloves, a balaclava, boots – so every part of him was covered and undistinguishable in any way. He ignored the noises of whimpering and hoarse cries from the boy, stepped in front of the camera and gave it two thumbs up. Although you could only see his eyes through the two slits in the balaclava, they creased at the edges, and I knew he was smiling.
The man stepped towards the table. The boy bucked his hips in the air, trying again, uselessly, to free himself. His eyes bulged as he screamed.
The man laughed. A deep, raucous sound.
A black swirling anger mushroomed inside me.
The man turned his back on the camera as he leaned over to the control box on the small table and fiddled with it. Then he stepped back to the boy and pressed the tip of the prod to his thigh.
The boy’s heartbreaking scream pierced through my skull. His muscles spasmed rigidly. His head arched back. His mouth opened, tongue lolling out, saliva dribbling down the corners of his lips as the searing firecracker of pain hit his body.
On and on it went, the electrical burns left on every part of his skin growing bigger and bigger. His screams growing hoarser as his whole body was attacked.
And after the boy’s final convulsion, his painful death most probably from cardiac arrest, the echo of the man’s laughter rang out.
‘Fucking hell.’ I blew out an enraged breath.
‘I told you it was seriously fucked-up. I would imagine the guy with the balaclava has some kind of earpiece in so that whoever is working the website can talk to him throughout and tell him of any special requests from people who have paid to direct.’
‘Fucked-up doesn’t even cover it.’
‘In the baseball-bat video there’s a girl in it. Probably about Toni’s age. The girl had a tattoo on her shoulder of a leopard. I still don’t know who she is, though. There are no reports about her. My guys are still working on searching keywords from all UK police reports and Interpol. They’re trying the US now, too, but I think it’ll be a waste of time. I’m guessing they’re choosing victims who would go unnoticed and unreported if they went missing – homeless people, runaways, drug addicts, prostitutes – people who are vulnerable.’
‘Show me the video.’
He clicked on the link. ‘Incidentally, there’s another error on this page. This video didn’t ask for any D-coin payment before viewing it, which must be how Toni managed to access it.’
We fast-forwarded through an hour of footage as the girl tied to the table in the same way as the young guy was beaten to death. From the looks of it, every bone in her body must’ve been broken.
‘Jesus Christ!’ I shot to my feet, paced the floor, trying to contain the fury raging through me. ‘I’ve got to catch these bastards.’ I stopped pacing. Took some deep breaths. Forced the anger down so I could focus. ‘Are all the videos in the same room?’
‘All the ones I’ve seen, yes. There are no identifying marks. I’ve analysed every inch of it. Nothing to say where it is. It’s just tiles and concrete.’
‘So we’re looking for one location.’
‘One location that could be anywhere in the world.’
I ran a hand over my head. ‘Shit!’
Lee navigated back to the first page with the black video box that said ‘Live Stream Coming Soon!’
‘Either they’re trolling for the next victim right now, or they’re waiting for enough people to pay before they release another live video feed,’ Lee said.
I shook my head. ‘They already have their next victim. Toni’s being held captive by them, I know it. Why kill her already when they can keep her and kill her on a live feed to a paying audience. She’s in the red room, I’m sure of it.’ I clenched a fist and felt useless. ‘If this site is using digital coins, can’t you trace them through that?’
‘It’s complicated. Basically, D-coins and Bitcoins are a cryptocurrency – a form of exchange which is stored electronically and uses encryption techniques to control the creation of monetary units and verify payments. It’s a virtual currency – simply a ledger system that maintains a list of addresses and how many units of coins are at those addresses. But you don’t really own a coin. What you actually have is a private key that unlocks a particular address. And the keys aren’t keys. They’re just a string of numbers and letters. I could go into a big, detailed explanation of how it all works, but I can see your eyes glazing over.’
‘Just get to the important bit.’
‘Unless you have the “key” to someone’s D-coin address, it’s bloody hard to find someone.’ He shook his head with frustration. ‘But you have to store your key somewhere, and for most people, there are no good opt
ions to securely store cryptocurrencies, so they use an online service that stores the private keys for users. A wallet system that holds the currency like a bank account. Many of the companies that store them have been hacked, but I’d need to try to find which company is storing the particular key for this site, which could take months. Also, unless the wallet service they use somehow connects their D-coin address to their real names, they could be untraceable. Often, people are using pseudonyms to create their wallet. There are other ways to try to analyse D-coin transactions but that would take too long. And they’re most likely using a laundry service to shuffle up payments with other non-related ones.’
I exhaled loudly. ‘There must be another way to trace them. I know the Tor network is supposed to be anonymous, but if they found out who Toni was, can’t you use the same methods to find them?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. The Tor network is extremely secure from any kind of traffic analysis I could do and there’s no magic way to trace people using it, but the Phantom browser Toni was using has some glitches and is vulnerable, and that’s what let her down. However, nothing is ever completely anonymous online. I’m just hoping they’re lazy with their OPSEC and I can exploit this script error on the webpage, or that it’s somehow leaking data. I can also throw data at it, try to analyse network traffic connecting with it, secretly install an application or malware that will send their user data back to me, and various other things.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘That’s the bad bit. Law enforcement have found and taken down some sites from the dark web but it was the result of very long investigations lasting several years. It could take months, years, even. Usually, when law enforcement are trying to track down criminal Tor sites, it’s a case of finding some kind of user carelessness – simple mistakes which can expose them another way without having to try to track every digital interaction. They might’ve slipped up when switching between their real ID and their Tor ID, by logging into their surface email or social media accounts that place cookies which can track them over anything, irrespective of whether they’re using Tor or not. Stuff like that. Humans usually err at some point, or become too arrogant to cover their arses.’