The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  A few moments later he is launching an app Sam gave him that replaces the number you are calling from with whatever you key in. (‘Honestly, if you want to make out you’re calling from 10 Downing Street, long as you know the number, this will spoof it.’)

  He programs it to appear that he is calling from inside Synergis, then rings the Tricorn House front desk. He is standing a few yards away, next to the couches in the waiting area, watching the reception counter out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Good morning, Tricorn House,’ says the same sing-song Cockney voice.

  And thrice fuck.

  He hangs up, waits a few seconds then tries again.

  Finally somebody else answers.

  ‘Good afternoon, Tricorn House. How may I direct your call?’

  He steals a glance. It is the middle-aged black woman on the far left of the desk.

  Parlabane puts on an English accent.

  ‘Hello, this is Oliver Greenberg from IT up in Synergis. We’ve got a contractor coming back in this afternoon, name of John Finch. He was issued a dud swipe card yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, sorry about that.’

  ‘No worries, these things happen. But can you run off a new one for him please? He’ll be in shortly.’

  ‘A new guest card? Certainly, sir.’

  ‘No, he’s on the system. It’s so we don’t have to keep opening doors for him, you know?’

  ‘What was the name again?’

  ‘John Finch.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Here it is. Printing that off now.’

  ‘Thank you. As I said, he’s due in any minute. Actually, I think that’s him calling on my mobile. Pardon me just a sec.’

  Parlabane mutes his phone for a moment, then comes back on.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Okay. Mr Finch says he’s down there in the lobby. Can you wave so he knows who to …’

  Parlabane turns and pretends to have his notice suddenly taken by the sight of the woman waving at the desk, her sights on nobody in particular. He waves back.

  ‘I see him,’ she responds.

  ‘Brilliant.’

  He hangs up and walks towards reception once again, where she takes his name and hands him a swipe card.

  ‘The barrier is on your left and the lifts are just behind us here.’

  He has somewhere else to be however, and he knows that won’t look right.

  ‘Can you tell me where the nearest gents is? I need to go before …’

  ‘Certainly. Over to your right through the cafeteria.’

  This excuses a rapid exit. Ten seconds later he is back on the street, and a minute after that he is inside a cab heading for Broadwave.

  TWIXT CUP AND LIP

  It’s Thursday. Almost show time. I barely slept for worrying about it, and I have been feeling like there’s a rock in my guts from the moment I woke up. We go tonight. I’m dreading it, but the waiting is worse. I want the evening to arrive, the darkness to come down, but I’ve got to get through the day first, and it’s not going to be an easy one. I’m guessing they cut the scene in Ocean’s Eleven showing one of the guys putting in a half shift at a sandwich shop then cooking his little sister’s tea before going on to rob the casino.

  I make it through my demi-slog at Urban Picnic despite Snotworm dogging me throughout, looking for any reason to criticise my work. He left his phone in the back room during the break. I thought about the details I could harvest in only a few seconds, the fun I might have at a later date, but as soon as I did, I could only picture Keisha.

  I saw Snotworm differently from then on. He’s only a stupid kid like me, a bundle of fears and insecurities. I’ve learned my lesson about the law of unintended consequences. When it comes to vengeance, my efforts now are focused on Zodiac.

  My half shift doesn’t finish until six, so I pick up Lilly from the after-school club, getting there about quarter past. I’m trying not to think of the numbers, but I can’t help it. It is costing me most of what I just earned to pay for Lilly to be collected on the minibus and looked after for two hours, purely so that I could make this half shift. The alternative, however, was to say no again and move one step closer to losing the job altogether.

  Lilly is a little confused by the change of routine.

  ‘Why do I have to go to the club instead of coming home after school?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s so that I can work longer at the sandwich shop.’

  ‘But why can’t you work there during the day?’

  ‘That’s when my boss needed me, Lilly.’

  ‘But your boss didn’t need you there yesterday after school. What about tomorrow? Will you pick me up from school then?’

  What about tomorrow? There’s a question I don’t want to dwell on.

  The woman running the club says it would be better if Lilly came here regularly, so that the new arrangement becomes consistent.

  I look at all the other kids who go there every day, amazed at how their parents afford it. I guess they aren’t all working at places like Urban Picnic, but I’m pretty sure they’re not all working in the City either. My suspicion is that they’re getting assistance I’m probably due too, except they didn’t throw in the towel when they were on the phone to the Social.

  I’m rubbish at this kind of thing. I know it’s pathetic. I’m nineteen, not a child. But the truth is I feel like I need looking after. I need my mum.

  I know that if I let myself cry even once about this, I’ll fall apart. I can’t let Lilly see me that way. I dig deep to pull myself together, putting on a smile and leading her homeward.

  One more push, I tell myself, as the flats come into view.

  I’ve been feeling like my life is on hold, trapped and unable to see beyond this looming task, so much that it has blocked the view of all possible futures. Jack says that if we give him what he wants this time, Zodiac will soon be back asking for more. I know he’s right, but after this I will at least be able to breathe out and plan my next move.

  Plus, I have an idea to give myself some leverage.

  ‘Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin flew away,’ Lilly is singing as we climb the stairs to our landing. She’s been repeating it for the past fifty yards, getting so giggly that it is proving infectious.

  ‘Mr Silly lost his willy on the motorway.’

  I am laughing now too, more at her giggles than the song itself, my eyes watering as I open the front door.

  It is almost enough for me not to notice that it wasn’t locked.

  The realisation has an instantly sobering effect. I never forget to lock this door. Never. I think back to this morning, try to picture leaving the flat. Was I distracted, maybe trying to get Lilly out on time and she was being difficult?

  No. I dropped her at school then came back for a bit before heading out to work.

  With a cold feeling in my gut, I nudge open the living room door. The first thing I notice is that the blinds are closed. I usually leave them open, and I didn’t forget to do that either.

  Somebody has been in here. There is stuff all over the carpet: books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, toys and ornaments tossed to the floor. I go to the kitchen and it’s the same. Drawers and cupboards have been rooted through, items spilled when they got in the way.

  I’m guessing they were looking for money, or drugs. Of course. Since her conviction, word must have got around that Mum was a dealer. Some desperate chancers have latched on to that part but missed the crucial detail that she was done for possession, which generally involves the police coming round and confiscating your stash.

  ‘Sam. Sam. Sam. Samantha,’ Lilly wails from down the hall, her voice high and panicky, like that time she burned her hand on the kettle.

  I see her come out of her bedroom, eyes streaming.

  ‘My DVD player is gone. My room is all a mess and my DVD player is gone.’

  She means the laptop I fixed up for her. I never called it a computer in case it got back to Mum.r />
  I run to join her. They’ve torn through her wardrobe and her chest of drawers, looking for anything they can sell. There are clothes, toys and books everywhere, and the bed has been hauled away from the wall.

  The sight of it jolts through me. My bed. My laptop. If it’s gone, I’m screwed.

  I run to my room, which is trashed too. Worse, in fact. They have taken the drawers right out, and they’ve smashed the wood at the foot of my wardrobe so they can check underneath.

  My bed has been pulled away from the wall. I step between piles of clothes and climb on to the mattress, a cold dread gripping me as I lean over and look down.

  The carpet is still in place. It doesn’t look like it’s been moved, but I pull it back to check. I lift up the hatch and reach inside, my pulse soaring as my fingers feel the touch of neoprene.

  Okay. So this is a mess, not a disaster.

  Lilly appears in my bedroom doorway. She’s trying to stop crying, I can tell. Trying to be a big brave girl like Mum tells her to be when we visit her in jail. Merely the sight of her efforts is threatening to set me off.

  ‘Are you going to phone the police?’ Lilly asks.

  Probably not the best night to be doing that, I think.

  ‘It wouldn’t help,’ I tell her.

  ‘But if they catch the robbers, they’ll get me back my DVD player.’

  ‘That’s not how it works. Even if the police catch them, they’ll have sold it by now.’

  As I’m saying this, I think of how little they’ll get for it, compared to how much it was worth to Lilly.

  ‘I’ll get you another one, though.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Everything will be simpler tomorrow.

  She looks crestfallen, as though for a moment she believed I could make everything all right, only for me to let her down.

  ‘Tell you what, why don’t we have pizza tonight?’

  That makes her smile through the snotty tears. I know that takeaway is going to nuke the budget but I need to do something to take her mind off what has happened here. Besides, eating pizza on our laps from cardboard boxes will save me having to throw something together from the chaos of the kitchen, where I’m not even sure there’s two whole plates intact.

  We tackle Lilly’s bedroom while we wait for the pizzas to arrive, returning to the task as soon as they’re done. She wasn’t that hungry, probably because of the shock, but it did lighten her mood. I put the leftovers in the fridge, grateful the burglars never took the microwave.

  Her room looks relatively normal by the time she would usually be getting ready for bed. I had been hoping to get her off to sleep early tonight but I know there’s no chance of that now. I need her tucked up and out of the way though, so I suggest she gets her jammies on and rereads some of her favourite comics.

  I know she takes comfort in the familiar when she’s upset. When Mum got arrested she lost herself in an ancient run of Batgirl comics that she’s had since the age when she could only look at the pictures.

  I tuck her in and warn her not to come into the kitchen because she might cut her feet on the broken plates and glasses.

  ‘Will you read to me, Sam?’

  It hurts to say no, but I don’t have the choice.

  ‘I need to do more clearing up.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lilly. I’ll read to you tomorrow night, I promise.’

  Feeling about an inch tall, I go to the kitchen where I place my laptop down on the table, next to my phones. I close the door and take the tiny memory card from its hidey-hole in my bra, insert it into the empty slot and boot up.

  I see that Mr and Mrs Cohen’s Wi-Fi signal is at full strength here in the kitchen. I must be almost directly above the source. In the end, I didn’t even need to come up with a pretext for getting into their flat. They had a problem with their new router, so they came upstairs and asked me if I’d have a look at it in the hope that they wouldn’t have to phone the legendarily useless BT technical support. I reset it for them, taking a note of the WEP key and the admin password.

  I log on and launch my virtual private network program. It hangs on loading, giving me another minor heart attack, but then the glitch clears and suddenly my IP address is reading as Glendale, California. I run some diagnostics, making sure the rest of my tools are ticking over without any problems.

  I hear a sound from outside. It’s just some kid kicking a can down the street but it makes me jump, partly because I am so consumed by what I am doing on the laptop, but mainly because I am wired from the shock of the break-in.

  I don’t feel as safe in here as I usually do.

  I go to the window and look along the landing. There’s nobody outside, but I don’t feel reassured. I walk to the front door to double-check it’s locked and the chain is secure, then I go around to make sure the windows are closed and the curtains drawn.

  I return to my laptop, put a headset on my ear, and finally, once again Samantha Morpeth is banished.

  Buzzkill is online and ready to crime. We are good to go, all systems in place, and I’m getting the tingle before the rush to come.

  I call Jack. It rings eight or nine times with no answer. He’s on the Tube, maybe.

  I give it a few minutes then call again. Still no answer.

  I try a third time. A fourth.

  WTF?

  Ten minutes pass. Fifteen.

  I try a seventh time. An eighth. A ninth.

  I start to get a nasty intuition about this. A Stonefish kind of intuition.

  Something’s wrong. He’s screwing me over.

  PRESSING ENGAGEMENT

  Parlabane is barely listening, unable to concentrate on what is being said. This kind of meeting is always an ordeal, but it feels particularly interminable under these circumstances. Even when the subject comes around to him and the positive reaction to what he has delivered since joining, he feels disconnected, feigning his responses.

  He is impatient, that’s the real source of his anxiety. There’s nothing he can change now, so he just wants to get on with it. He wants it to be over; except that it won’t be. The Synergis job is merely the first hurdle. Their real task remains that of catching Zodiac.

  In the aftermath of tonight, it is bound to become more obvious what this is really about: what Winter and the Chinese are trying to achieve. However, he is aware that they must be thinking beyond this stage of their plan too, and that is when things are likely to get far more dangerous.

  Bag men, like assassins, seldom fare well in the second phase of a conspiracy.

  The meeting finally concludes, but he doesn’t escape unharmed. He has a piece to file on Britain’s enduring love of the eccentric inventor, a suggestion from Candace that emerged towards the end of the discussion due to the mention of Syne. Even without his more pressing agenda, Parlabane would have thought it was a shit suggestion, and he is sure Lee thinks it’s a shit suggestion too. Nonetheless, they both understand that it’s one of those occasions when you have to suck it up and keep a dilettante proprietor happy in the short term so that you can be free to do your job properly the rest of the time.

  He finds a free desk and opens his laptop. He reckons if he gets his head down, he can get it written by half-seven, definitely eight at the latest. That would still leave him an hour or so to get home, pick up what he needs and head to Tricorn House for the time he has agreed with Sam.

  Two hours later he is giving the piece a read-through and a tidy up when Lee appears at his side. He has been so immersed in his task that he seems to have missed everybody else leaving. What he can’t miss is that she has brought a change of clothes with her to the office. She has transformed from her usual working garb into, of all things, a dress. It is a red number with white spots, and she looks magnificent, with extra wow points for the matching red Doc boots she’s wearing to complement it.

  ‘Are you almost done?’ she asks. ‘Got a taxi waiting.’

 
; ‘Yeah, ready to file. And can I just say, you really scrub up well. What’s the occasion?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? The party. Where’s your head, Jack? Candace has invited half of London.’

  Where is his head, indeed. This soiree is the principal reason Candace is in town, but it would be fair to say his mind has been on other things.

  ‘Come on. You can share my cab, and you’ve no idea what it took to get one tonight with this Tube strike going on.’

  ‘Lee, I think I’ll have to give it a miss. You remember that jumpy source I had to bail on earlier? I really need to go and meet this person, and it’s been a delicate business setting it up.’

  Lee is wearing the same implacable expression as she had during the meeting when she was agreeing with Candace’s shit idea for this article.

  ‘You’ll have to postpone.’

  He notes that she isn’t asking.

  ‘If I don’t show, this might not be so much a postponement as the one that got away.’

  ‘The same might be said of your job, Jack. Candace has spent a small fortune on this affair tonight. It’s all about face, and about faces. Questions were asked when she took the decision to hire you, and among her other agendas tonight, she wants to bask in the vindication. Yours would therefore be a most conspicuous absence.’

  ‘Can I get there a little later? A couple of hours, maybe?’

  ‘I already texted her we’re on our way the minute the cab showed up.’

  ‘I’d need to go home and change.’

  ‘No, you don’t, you look far smarter than usual. You scrub up pretty well yourself. Never seen you in a suit, I don’t think. What’s that about, by the way?’

  ‘Camouflage.’

  The party is in a place named Shallot. It’s near the Angel, on the first floor above an art gallery, and the entrance vestibule alone probably cost more to fit out than the start-up budget of every restaurant beyond the M25. It accommodates a reception desk and a cloakroom, where diners are greeted by a hostess before being escorted along polished granite tiles to a staircase and a lift leading to the restaurant proper.

  Upstairs is a sprawling and labyrinthine affair combining several bar areas and dining rooms, though no matter where you are, you can’t escape the same music throbbing from a DJ deck at the very back of the darkened warren. It’s that ambient dance pish that Parlabane always hears at trendy gatherings but which no bastard would ever choose to listen to for their own entertainment.