The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘We all lost him, Mum. You act like it only happened to you, but we all lost Dad. That’s what you forgot when you let yourself disappear into drink and drugs and self-pity. You lost him, Lilly lost him, and I lost him too.’

  ‘Yeah, then you should know that we can all do things that are selfish and irresponsible when we’re feeling messed up. It wasn’t what I did that meant we ended up banned from having an internet connection in our house.’

  ‘Jesus, Mum, I was fifteen. You can’t judge me like—’

  ‘I’m not judging you, Sam. I never did. I’m asking you not to judge me.’

  Her voice is soft now, her tone pleading.

  I swallow back tears, reach a hand across to hold hers.

  Yes, I was fifteen when I did what I did, but I’m not fifteen now. I think about all that I’ve hidden from her in the years since, and I don’t just mean my hacking. I mean even owning a laptop. That’s the main reason I keep it hidden. And for all I get on my high horse about the times she was out of it on drink or other things, the guilty part of me knows that I was often happy to see her like that, because I knew it meant I had time to get busy with no chance of her coming in and finding me at it. No need for me to be listening out, ready to slam my secret laptop closed and hide it under the covers.

  I’ve always told myself I retreated into my online world because my mum was retreating into her own world of self-indulgence, but these things are never that simple, are they? It was like how she blamed Dad for getting me interested in computers. That was true, but it took both of them to make me a hacker. Dad only taught me about programming machines. She was the one who taught me you can program people.

  All girls, all kids, see their dads as the fun parent if it’s their mum who’s waiting at home for them when they come in from school, dealing with the everyday needs. Dad comes home from work later and scores all these unearned points just for showing up. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth.

  Mum wanted to be fun too, and I think she wanted me to see her in other ways. She also wanted there to be something only between us that wasn’t about Dad, or about Lilly. So she liked to show off to me. She knew clever ways of manipulating people: tricks to get them to tell her things they shouldn’t. She knew dodges that let us skip the queue; strategies to get discounts she wasn’t entitled to.

  God, how close we felt when she did these things. Each one was a precious secret we shared: us and only us. I was less amazed by what she blagged than by the artfulness, the invention. It wasn’t what she got, but how she got it. Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes a matter of bamboozling the target, and all of it relied on being tuned into emotions, reading the tiny signs that told you what people were thinking, how they were feeling.

  The other side of this was that Mum was an expert in hiding those things when it came to herself.

  Dad would talk all the time about his childhood, his college years, places he’d lived, crazy friends he had known. I always felt so close to him because of how much he shared. I felt like I was a product of that, of everything that had happened to him. Even after I found out he wasn’t my biological father, I never felt like there was this asterisk over his status. I still felt shaped by him and by the life he led, unquestionably his daughter.

  As for Mum, it was as though she didn’t exist before she met Neville, as there was so much she wouldn’t talk about. I was in my early teens before I realised I had never heard her say a word about her own childhood. I learned that she had been brought up in various care homes, but she wouldn’t volunteer anything about her experiences. I know that’s why she is so adamant that Lilly should never end up in state care, and why she went so mental when I had my own little problem back when I was fifteen.

  She was in her late twenties when she had me, which leaves a glaringly large chunk of adult life missing from the picture: all the more so when a part of that is becoming a single mother.

  I didn’t even know Neville Morpeth wasn’t my biological father until I was ten, when I saw a family passport application and asked why the date of their marriage was two years after I was born. They sat me down and told me, but it seemed like no more than an obscure technicality to me at that age. It was like how Auntie Janice wasn’t a real aunt because she wasn’t my mum’s sister: it didn’t change anything about how close we were. It didn’t seem to matter.

  It was only after Dad died that I really became curious. Obviously I was looking to fill a void; more than one void in fact, because not only did I not have Dad any more, but my mum was withdrawing too, and leaning on me more and more to look after Lilly. I couldn’t honestly say whether it was my curiosity to find my biological father that drove my interest in my mum’s past or the other way around, but either way, she wasn’t encouraging it. She told me very little.

  She said it wasn’t about him – nothing to do with who he was and what he was like – but rather about who she was at that time, though she didn’t offer any details.

  ‘If it wasn’t about him, did he even know?’ I asked her.

  She said no, he didn’t, because she had already decided to cut off ties before she found out she was pregnant. She said he wasn’t a bad person or anything, but neither were they in love. She needed to get away, to change a lot of things in her life right then, and he was far from reason enough to stay where she was.

  I’m not sure whether all of this is true: whether she was lying for whatever reason or had just come up with a version of it that suits where she is now.

  It made me curious about her connections, the ease with which she was able to slip into the places she did after Dad died. She was an agency nurse because we had moved around a lot with Dad’s job. After he was gone, she began to fill the free days with chemical oblivion – she said she couldn’t take the loneliness. Then she started to miss the shifts she did have, and became increasingly unreliable, until she ended up getting dropped.

  I previously couldn’t have imagined her going near some of the people she had dealings with. They terrified me, and yet she seemed so confident moving in their circles; moving in any circles. It made me rethink her ability to pull off those clever little tricks. I came to realise they were actually confidence scams.

  She was never going to volunteer the truth about how she knew these things, but I knew that the one place she couldn’t hide herself from me was online. I sussed the PIN for her mobile and the password for her iPad, and in a reversal of the typical mother-daughter dynamic, it was me who started snooping on her browsing history.

  There was nothing jaw-dropping or massively surprising, but one person did feature enough to grab my attention. Out of all the people she associated with on social media, his was the only name I wasn’t familiar with. I guess that was my first hint, but the second, far bigger clue, was that she used anonymous accounts to follow him: accounts with fake names and profiles.

  She didn’t only monitor his activities on Facebook and Twitter: her search history was full of articles he had written, or that had been written about him, going back as far as records would allow. I wouldn’t say she had an obsession with the guy, but she definitely had a fascination, and she didn’t want him aware of it. Clearly, the guy knew her, or at least had once upon a time.

  Of all the people she had associated with, why the interest in him above all? Why did she want to know what had been happening to him down the years, but was careful to prevent him returning the favour?

  I won’t pretend that thought didn’t pop into my head, though I knew it was a reach on the basis of this evidence. But I knew he was a potential route into my mum’s past. That’s the real reason I sought him out. It wasn’t so much about getting to know who my father really was, as about getting to know who my mother really was.

  I tracked him down and drew him close in the only way I know how. I hacked my way into his life.

  The more I got to know, the more I liked his style. We had a lot in common. He was a hacker too, in his own way. I felt we had a connection, even tho
ugh I was always careful to keep my distance and protect my anonymity.

  I’ll admit it: I liked the idea of him being … you know. It became a comforting thought during difficult times, even though I knew that was all it was. One day I would find out more: that was the plan. I was playing a long game, but it was always my intention that when the opportunity presented itself, I would ask him about Mum.

  Unfortunately, when I finally got to meet him, it was because of this shitstorm. I couldn’t talk about the things I always wanted to, not least because he hates me now.

  So here I am, having to ask Mum because time is running out, and knowing she’ll tell me nothing. That said, I am my mother’s daughter in that I can sometimes interpret a great deal from other people’s nothing.

  I wait until the conversation has become less charged, more mundane, then I throw it in there.

  ‘Mum, have you ever heard of a reporter called Jack Parlabane?’

  ‘Who?’

  She’s buying time. Why is she lying?

  ‘Jack Parlabane.’

  ‘No. I’ve never heard of him. Why? Has the press been sniffing around asking questions?’

  I meet her lie with one of my own.

  ‘Nothing like that. It’s just I read an article by him and the name seemed familiar. I thought maybe I remembered you mentioning it once.’

  ‘You remembered wrong, then.’

  I don’t know what I was expecting to see in her reaction: surprise, longing, curiosity? Something that spoke of warmth, nostalgia or regret, anyway. Instead she had looked instantly defensive. I’d even say she looked scared.

  HIDDEN POWERS

  ‘Mr Parlabane. I’ll take you upstairs.’

  He is back at Tricorn House for an unexpected second visit to Synergis, after getting a call from Tanya Collier saying Cruz wanted to speak to him again.

  Tanya is not exuding the same PR-mode friendliness this time. She’s not outright frosty, but there’s no small talk as she escorts him through the building, and he can’t tell whether it’s directed towards him specifically or evidence of a more general tension about something else. His paranoia neurones are starting to fire, wondering what Cruz might know, and what he’s walking into when he reaches the man’s office.

  He gets a long, scrutinising stare from someone they pass in a corridor, and his discomfort is heightened further when the man does a u-turn and begins hurrying to catch up with them.

  Fortunately, it turns out to be Tanya he’s interested in.

  ‘Do you think I could grab a quick word with Leo?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m afraid Leo is just about to have a meeting with this gentleman,’ she replies.

  Her tone is no warmer towards this guy than towards Parlabane, so maybe it isn’t about him, he thinks. But it also occurs to him that her tone might be to warn the other guy that this is not a good time.

  He doesn’t seem dissuaded, however.

  ‘I need literally two minutes.’

  ‘I’m in no rush,’ Parlabane says helpfully, looking to gauge Tanya’s reaction.

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind waiting,’ she replies neutrally.

  ‘I’d rather not get in the way of the real work here.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate it,’ the new guy says. ‘Hey, you’re Jack Parlabane, aren’t you?’

  Parlabane is seldom comfortable with being recognised, but is trying not to read anything into this encounter, given that everybody at Synergis is likely to have read his article on them.

  ‘Sorry, where are my manners,’ says Tanya. ‘Jack, this is Matthew Coleridge. He’s our head of network security.’

  Coleridge offers a hand and Parlabane grips it. He smiles, but that job title has got him wondering whether Coleridge recognised his name when Tanya mentioned it, or whether recognising his face was what prompted that u-turn in the corridor. Was the urgency of Coleridge’s need to talk to Cruz genuine, or in fact a pretext for the computer security chief to shadow someone he knew to be wary of?

  ‘You wrote the Broadwave piece,’ Coleridge says.

  ‘He did,’ answers Tanya. ‘And that, in fact, is what Leo wants to talk to him about.’

  Her register doesn’t suggest the meeting will be kicking off with grins and fist-bumps.

  ‘Personally, I’d be more interested to talk about the one you wrote regarding Uninvited and the RSGN hack,’ Coleridge says.

  Parlabane is very rapidly trying to get a handle on this guy, unsure if he’s merely curious or marking territory. He looks late thirties, still kind of boyish about the face, but widening at the middle. Parlabane reckons he’s looking at a geek grown up, as opposed to a grown-up geek: someone who was making Doom mods twenty years ago but now plays Minecraft with his kids before rocking some GTA late at night to take his mind off the mortgage and responsibilities.

  ‘That hacker you were in contact with, Buzzkill: I’m betting you know more than you could print. I mean, like, do you know his real name?’

  Coleridge is looking at him intently, Parlabane’s paranoia neurones firing with renewed vigour. He’s telling himself there’s no way this guy could know anything, but of late he’s been moving in a world where he can never be sure of who knows what, or who anyone secretly might be.

  ‘A journalist doesn’t name his sources,’ he replies. ‘But as I’m sure you can imagine, these people go to elaborate and frustrating lengths to avoid being identified.’

  ‘Everybody makes them out to be the bogeyman, which is precisely what they want. My guess is they’re just kids showing off, same as LulzSec. For the most part they don’t mean any real harm, but nor do they think much about the damage they can do. That’s what keeps me awake at night and busy by day. It’s why I need to talk to Leo, in fact.’

  ‘You’re beefing up security?’ Parlabane suggests.

  ‘Yeah. After RSGN it would be negligent not to heed the warning, so we’re upgrading all our login systems. The whole of Tricorn House is implementing 2FA.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asks Tanya.

  ‘Two-factor authentication. Your username and password won’t be enough anymore. Before you can even enter those, you’ll need to key in a time-limited PIN that will be sent automatically to an app on your phone.’

  It’s all Parlabane can do not to physically wince as Coleridge says this, his heart plunging as he understands that his task has moved one notch closer to impossible.

  Coleridge is as good as his word. He is in Cruz’s office less than the promised two minutes, the brevity enough to further fuel Parlabane’s concern that talking to the boss was not his primary motive.

  ‘He says to go in,’ Coleridge says, indicating the open door.

  Parlabane glances to Cruz’s secretary for confirmation and gets the nod.

  Cruz appears at the door, appearing to hold it open by way of beckoning Parlabane inside, but the force with which he subsequently slams it shut indicates that this was the real reason.

  ‘You’ve got some balls, I’ll say that much. I wasn’t sure you’d have the front to actually show up here after what you wrote.’

  The Broadwave piece has been live for a few days now, and prior to encountering Tanya’s coolness earlier, having heard nothing from Cruz, he assumed all was well. Maybe the CEO’s been too busy to react, or maybe he’s been nursing his wrath.

  ‘What did I write?’ Parlabane asks, keeping his tone neutral: neither defensive nor apologetic.

  ‘You led with an angle that strongly hinted Aldous Syne has a new invention.’

  ‘As I remember it, you’re the one who strongly hinted Aldous Syne was back. I merely reported what I believed I was being invited to infer.’

  ‘I didn’t authorise you to reveal something so sensitive.’

  Parlabane wonders, if this is the problem, why it has taken him so long to respond. He suspects something else has changed and Cruz is looking for a scapegoat.

  ‘You don’t get to authorise these things, Mr Cruz. Journalism doesn’t work like that.
I merely speculated on the basis of what I was told. And given the subsequent effect on your share price, I can’t see what the problem might be.’

  Cruz pauses, then lets out a chuckle.

  ‘There is no problem. I’m just trolling you, Jack.’

  Parlabane shakes his head, lets out a laugh despite himself.

  ‘You really had me there,’ he admits. ‘Did you even get your PA to be frosty?’

  ‘Tanya’s very indulgent. It was a good piece. And I’m not just saying that because, as you say, it didn’t hurt our stock. You gave me the benefit of the doubt. Nobody’s done that for a long time. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Parlabane replies, uncomfortable as always when a subject sounds anything approaching gushy. Adversarial he can deal with. This kind of response makes him concerned that he hasn’t been as analytical as he should, though he isn’t lacking for mitigation. When you’re plotting to rob somebody, it’s understandable that you might disguise your intentions by being less critical than usual.

  Cruz isn’t merely responding to compliments, however. His sincerity indicates more that he is looking to be understood than looking to be praised.

  ‘I know I probably don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt, so I get why people have made assumptions, but when you’re trying to turn things around, turn yourself around and do the right thing, you need a bit of encouragement, you know? We all need to know someone believes in us, even just a little. And when that someone is a cynical bastard like you, clearly it means all the more.’

  Cruz’s last remark is what they call in the theatre a treacle-cutter: a reaction to a preceding moment of unguarded and revealing sentimentality. Parlabane knows what it is to have everyone believe you’re the worst of the worst, a bottom-feeding sleazebag low enough to rim a rattlesnake. You can be absurdly grateful to anyone who gives the impression they still see something better in you.

  He gets it now: this is a man in search of redemption.

  ‘It doesn’t guarantee I’ll be doing you any favours the next time,’ Parlabane says. ‘Just to be clear.’