The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  It was as they searched through the flat for any possible means of disguise that she happened upon Mairi’s bikini line trimmer, whereupon inspiration struck. Parlabane would have to confess it wasn’t the most enticing idea he had ever heard, but nor did he have a strong argument against it. Sam started with scissors then moved on to the trimmer, before finishing things off with his own disposable razor.

  He catches a glimpse as he adjusts the rear-view mirror. The effect isn’t as anonymising as the niqab, but he has never looked so unlike himself, which is both reassuring and unsettling at the same time.

  Parlabane pulls on his seatbelt and starts the engine. Sam is already busy on her phone in the passenger seat.

  ‘So, I guess the tricky question is where now?’ he asks. ‘I mean, there’s an urge that says I should keep driving until we’re in Ullapool or somewhere, but this isn’t about running: this is about fighting back. We need an operations base, a staging post.’

  Sam voices a suggestion with surprising conviction.

  ‘I think we should head for Milton Keynes.’

  ‘Why there?’

  She holds up her mobile.

  ‘Because my Stoolpigeon just started singing.’

  THE PENITENT

  For a wanted fugitive with a criminal past, I realise this is the first time I have ever actually stolen anything. I tell myself we’re only borrowing the car, and have every intention of bringing it back (with a full tank), but I don’t know why I’m trying to sugar-coat this. I’m tangled up in cybercrime, industrial espionage and now murder, so it’s not like twocking is going to tip some moral balance against me, but for some reason it’s important that I don’t see what we’re doing as theft.

  Maybe it’s because I don’t want to add another crime to the list of things I’ve forced Jack into. Everything that is happening to him is my fault. I’ve even cost him his hair. He looks like an angry egg, and I know that at some point he’s going to direct that anger at me.

  Right now all of his attention is divided between the sat-nav and the road, with maybe a little left over for the radio. He turned it on ‘to hear if there’s any news’, but we both know that what we’re listening out for is our own names, which would take us to the next Defcon level.

  ‘I know it doesn’t mean much, Jack, but I want to say I’m sorry about all this. I know you never did anything to deserve getting dragged into my mess.’

  He doesn’t say anything. I don’t know what I was expecting, and I can’t even say what I was hoping for either. My apology is meaningless, though: words are easy. I owe him an explanation, at least. It’s not going to excuse anything, but it’s all I’ve got to offer. I’ve come to realise there’s never going to be a right time to do this, so I might as well choose a wrong time and get it out there.

  ‘The reason I contacted you, in the beginning, when I hijacked your laptop …’

  He glances across for a microsecond, like a dog that’s spied a rabbit from the corner of his eye. It’s pure reflex.

  ‘I did it because I thought you might have known my mum, way back when. She never talks about her life before I was born, but I found out she had this interest in you. She was all over you on social media, but she kept it anonymous. I thought maybe you knew her in those days, and you’d be able to tell me what she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Her name is Ruth Morpeth, right?’ he asks. I keep forgetting he knows everything, probably always did.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It doesn’t ring a bell. Has she been married? Remarried? What was her maiden name?’

  ‘Roberts.’

  He squints, like he’s trying to see into the past, but he isn’t finding anything.

  ‘I still don’t recall … Though we’re talking more than twenty years ago, so it’s hazy.’

  ‘Last time I spoke to her I asked if she had heard of you, to see what she’d say. She denied it.’

  ‘You didn’t challenge her?’

  ‘I didn’t want to get into why I had heard of you.’

  He searches the memory banks again. Now that I’ve given him her maiden name, surely this should make the difference.

  ‘Nope. Still nothing. I’m usually good with names, but as a reporter, I’ve met so many people down the years, so I need more than that. Do you know what her job was at the time? Where she was living?’

  ‘No. That’s the problem: she’s wrapped up tight when it comes to this whole subject.’

  I feel hollow. All the time I’ve waited for this moment. I’ve been too anxious to ask before now, and when I finally open the box, it’s empty.

  From the passenger seat I am able to watch his reactions very carefully, no need to avert my own gaze while his is locked on the road in front. It is my blessing and my curse to be able to pick up on the slightest glimmer of people’s reactions. Even when they’re covering up, the fact that I can detect that they’re covering up gives me a glimpse. With Jack right now, there is nothing.

  I contrast this with my mum: lying to my face while her own betrayed her fear at the mention of Jack’s name.

  I just don’t get it.

  On the outskirts of Milton Keynes I spot a Goodnight Inn and tell Jack to pull into the car park, close to the building.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘So I can leech off the hotel Wi-Fi. I need to work with my laptop and using my phone as a hotspot isn’t stable enough for what I want to do.’

  ‘Don’t you need a pass— Forget that, look who I’m talking to.’

  I am already connected by the time Jack has parked. There’s a delivery van taking up three spaces closest to the building, but the signal is passable.

  Stoolpigeon has been busy mining data, and I am able to set my laptop to the task of triangulating it. With the exception of one outlier so distant as to be clearly the result of a VPN (San Francisco, FFS), I’ve got the target pinned down to a specific point on the map.

  ‘The download was made at 27 Bletchley Rise,’ I tell Jack. ‘And if that turns out to be Danny Winter’s home address, then we’ve got the bastard.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Somebody beats the shite out of me and threatens worse, I find out where they stay. Winter lives in Hornchurch in Essex.’

  ‘Shit. There must be a connection, though. Are any of the companies he’s invested in based in MK?’

  Jack opens his laptop to check his files, and while he’s busy with that I run searches and tests based on what Stoolpigeon is telling me.

  ‘Result. Winter does have a company in … Ah, bollocks. It’s no longer a going concern: one of the firms he bought over cheap then broke up and sold off.’

  ‘Look at this,’ I tell him, angling my laptop so he can see. ‘Google Street View of our target address.’

  ‘It’s all blurred out.’

  ‘I’ve been using everything I can think of to probe the IP addresses Stoolpigeon is giving me for that property. Nothing doing. The place has digital Keep Out signs posted everywhere. Whoever he is, this is definitely our guy.’

  TARGET IN SIGHT

  Props to the angry egg: for all my apps and expertise, it’s Jack who gets us a name. While I was acting on instinct and testing whether I could hack my way in, he went straight to the electoral roll and searched for 27 Bletchley Rise. Hacker pitfall: sometimes you’re looking so hard to sneak in around the back that you don’t notice the front door is open.

  ‘The residents registered to this address are Gareth David Lansing and Elizabeth Mary Lansing. I trust that you can—’

  ‘I’m all over it.’

  I’m wary as this sounds like a married couple. I think about my downstairs neighbours, marched off by the feds earlier today in a state of fear and confusion. A hacker could have done to the Lansings what I did to the Cohens. There’s the fact that their house is blurred out on Street View, but that’s a privacy option open to anyone who knows they have the right to request it.

  A few seconds late
r though, my doubts are wiped. I don’t even need to pull off any hack-fu to find a visible web presence for a Gary Lansing of Milton Keynes: he runs his own computer security consultancy. The firm is called Lance Guard, and according to its website, specialises in penetration testing for corporate networks.

  ‘He’s a hacker,’ I explain. ‘All pen testers are hackers at heart or they’re no good to anybody. Their job is to think up how a hacker might get through your defences, then show you the holes. It’s like hiring a burglar to find out if your home security cuts it.’

  As I expected, his online discipline is pretty tight, so I’m awarding major points to whoever coded Stoolpigeon. That said, it just proves that no matter what anti-malware protection you’re rocking, your best defence is never to run anything unless you’re sure of what it is and where it came from. Lansing has made damaging assumptions about both.

  There’s an official email address for him on his company website but beyond that he hasn’t given me much to work with. He has been careful about keeping his business email address separate from his private interests, and his social media presence is very limited. However, his missus is a different story. She is the assistant head teacher at a local secondary school, and with an active and visible role in the community, she leaves a big, messy online footprint, which unavoidably overlaps with her husband’s private sphere. I get the organisations she’s involved with, the health club they’re both members of, every kind of details about their kids; even a home phone number.

  What I don’t get is a connection to Winter, but I haven’t even started on this guy yet.

  Jack drives us to Bletchley Rise, which is outside Milton Keynes, in a village named Little Aspley. Even before we have reached the street itself, it’s obvious that computer security has been good to Gary Lansing. Little Aspley is a posh neighbourhood, the houses large and far apart from one another, in gardens the size of my local park. I’m glad we’ve stolen (or rather, borrowed) a Qashqai, because anything smaller and more downmarket is going to make us conspicuous.

  We drive slowly past the address and park further along the street, getting the lay of the land, as Jack puts it. It’s a corner plot. There’s a Range Rover Overfinch parked in the double driveway, swings and a trampoline in the garden.

  I’m finding it hard to picture a suburban family man with a successful business, a schoolteacher wife and two primary-age kids turning out to be the scheming crook behind Zodiac’s mask, but I realise I’m falling for my own trick. I of all people should know that the face someone presents to the world and the hacker underneath can be two completely different personalities.

  From the side, the property is hemmed in by metal railings, a row of planting alongside for added privacy. The garden slopes gently upward at the rear, towards a large outbuilding visible above the top of the shrubs. It looks like converted stables. Probably more square footage than our flat back in Barking.

  ‘I think we’re looking at someone with a lot of clout,’ I suggest.

  ‘And I think we’re looking at someone with a lot to lose,’ Jack replies.

  We make sure that nobody is watching from Lansing’s neighbour’s house then get out of the Qashqai. We take a walk around the side, getting a closer look. Beyond a gap in the greenery we can see the glow of monitor screens through the stable building’s double-glazed windows. This is where he works.

  I don’t see anyone in there, but suddenly the light through the glass changes as one of the patio doors opens. I catch a glimpse of him emerging before instinct forces me to step back out of his line of sight.

  He is shorter than I imagined from his company profile headshot: maybe five foot six and slightly built. I can easily imagine him needing a hand-held electroshock device to overpower somebody. I know he’s thirty-seven but he looks much younger: mostly it’s the boyish face but the jogging pants and the Green Arrow T-shirt are shaving some years off too.

  The crunch of his footsteps carries clearly as he walks across the gravel path bisecting his back lawn. He’s left the patio doors slightly ajar, suggesting he’s nipping over to the house briefly: a trip to the loo or a mug of tea, maybe.

  ‘I suspect everything we need to know is right through those doors,’ Jack says quietly. ‘We need to get him out of the way.’

  I’m reckoning he must have heavy-duty locks and an alarm system protecting that lot, so we don’t only need him gone, but gone in a desperate hurry.

  I’ve been there myself, so I know just the thing.

  I get back into the car and open my laptop, pulling up some of the details I have cached. I call the Lansings’ landline from my mobile, spoofing the number of his kids’ primary school. He picks up after two rings. I figure he’s in the kitchen, from the echo on the call.

  I put on a posh voice, trying to make myself sound more mature.

  ‘Mr Lansing? Hello, it’s Justine here from the school office at Saint Anne’s. It’s nothing to worry about, but I have to let you know that Alice has been a bit sick. We’ve got this winter vomiting bug going around, and I think she’s the latest to catch it.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘As I said, it’s nothing to worry about, but she’s kind of upset and she’s been asking for you. We’re quite keen that it doesn’t spread to the other children, so if you could possibly …’

  ‘I understand. You need me to come and pick her up?’

  ‘If you could. I realise that when you work at home you always get these things thrown at you, but …’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s why I work from home. I’ll be right there. Justine, did you say?’

  ‘That’s right. Or Alice may have called me Miss Collins.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met. Are you filling in for Mrs Orton? Is she still on maternity leave?’

  ‘That’s right, she is, yes. So if you could just …’

  ‘Absolutely. I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  We hear an engine start a few moments later, then see the Range Rover pulling out of the drive through its hydraulic gates. We didn’t see him return to lock up the stables before he left.

  I recognise the haste. Any time Mum or I got a call to say Lilly was ill, we dropped everything.

  As soon as the Range Rover is out of sight, we slip through the gates, which are already beginning to reclose automatically.

  ‘How far is the school?’ Jack asks.

  ‘According to Google Maps, it should take him seven minutes in current traffic, but he’ll be hammering it because he thinks his kid’s sick. Add to that about ninety seconds at the school office to establish that the call’s bullshit, after which I reckon he’ll be heading back here even faster than he drove out.’

  Jack checks his watch.

  ‘Call it twelve minutes, tops. Let’s make it count.’

  We run around the house and out to the stables, where I am alarmed to see that the patio door is no longer ajar. There is a strong breeze gusting through the garden, and it looks to have nudged the door closed. When we reach the decking, I see that it has only blown to, without the latch clicking home.

  I step inside and my eyes jealously gobble up all the beautiful kit. He’s got two curved-screen 4K monitors side by side, linked to two server array columns and a Vibox Proteus water-cooled PC.

  However, my eyes are soon drawn to something considerably less state-of-the-art, but strangely all the more compelling. Against the wall to the left of his immaculate workstation is what appears to be a miniature museum, or maybe more like a shrine.

  Inside a locked glass cabinet are several vintage computers: a Vic 20, a Commodore 64 and an Amiga taking pride of place on the top shelf, above an Apple II, a BBC Micro and examples of the full Sinclair ZX range, from 80 to Spectrum Plus. There are also ancient comms devices: an acoustic coupler, a Hayes Smartmodem and a Commodore modem cartridge.

  Above these on the wall hang two framed newspaper articles. One is from the late 1980s, a shock-horror tabloid splash about a hacker causing an eme
rgency shutdown of the Wintergreen nuclear power plant. Next to it is a cutting from the Financial Times dated May 2008, a full-page illustrated feature about how ‘one-time teenage hacker Gary Lansing is the ultimate poacher-turned-gamekeeper, with a roster of corporate clients engaging his expertise to protect their networks’.

  I look again at the ancient machines on the top shelf, staring more closely this time. The plastic is worn and stained, the logos scratched and sun-bleached in places. These are not acquired collectors’ pieces: this is his own kit.

  I step around the cabinet so that I can view the Vic 20 from the side, which is when I notice the thin ribbon of a punch-tape label: black text out of a red plastic adhesive strip spelling a single word. Compared to today’s printing possibilities it is unbelievably low-fi, but the sense of pride with which it must have been stuck on there is unmistakable to me.

  ‘OMG,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s got his old hacker name printed on his machines.’

  ‘And is it Zodiac?’

  ‘No. It’s Ferox.’

  I pull myself away from the cabinet, knowing I am wasting precious seconds. On the monitors, the screen savers have kicked in but the hum of the water pump and the glow of blue light from the cooling tubes tells me the system has not gone into sleep mode. I shake a Razer mouse that’s probably worth more than my computer and am relieved to see a split-screen desktop rather than a login prompt.

  My eye is briefly drawn to a framed photo on the wall behind the monitor. It shows Lansing when he was about my age, pale and skinny, looking like his mother still bought his clothes.

  There’s a reason the geek stereotype gained traction.

  He’s standing with his arm around the shoulder of another teenager who looks smarter in comparison, or maybe just a bit more posh. There’s something vaguely familiar about him but I can’t place it. Maybe he ended up making Warcraft or something. I notice the handwritten scrawl: ‘Ferox and Thanatos – hackers in arms.’