The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  They’ve been tracking Dunwoodie all the way here from her home, first by car to the railway station, then followed by officers on the train. The police have had eyes on her since around midnight; strictly speaking, they initially had thermal-imaging cameras on her. They picked up two heat signatures inside the house where she lived alone. Dunwoodie appeared to be downstairs on her laptop, while there was a second person asleep in an upstairs bedroom.

  The whole thing was your idea?

  I’m my father’s daughter.

  Minute by minute, Dunwoodie is confirming everything Parlabane told them, Sam teasing out an inadvertent confession from someone who believes she has bought off her confidante.

  She called him from inside the airport, her voice shaking with her impatience to let him know. She had worked it out, and her reasoning was incontrovertible.

  ‘We can’t go straight to the cops, though,’ she said. ‘Even if they find her with Lilly, she could make up God knows what story; probably got it planned out in her head as a contingency. I can get her to cough, though. It’s what I do.’

  Then she outlined her strategy, and he couldn’t fault that either, though the part requiring him to be arrested wasn’t particularly welcome.

  ‘I can’t simply rock up to the nearest nick and hand myself in,’ he reasoned. ‘I might end up sitting in a cell for who knows how long, waiting for them to get in touch with the right people. I need to be dealing with a detective on the Cruz investigation: someone sufficiently senior that they’ll see the full picture. It would work out better if the cops came for me.’

  It was after Sam’s call that he remembered an object that had caught his eye in Lansing’s office. It was a framed photograph that Parlabane hadn’t deemed significant at the time and thus hadn’t questioned Lansing about while there were far more immediate issues to discuss. However, it struck him as pretty bloody significant now that he was waiting for the police to respond to Sam’s call and huckle him away.

  That photo – and what was scribbled on it – was going to give him direct access to an individual far more influential than whoever was running the Cruz investigation.

  Someone sufficiently senior indeed.

  You gave it away with the name of your ghost company: Milton’s Lake. It’s an anagram of your father’s name.

  As Sam speaks these words on the monitors, Detective Superintendent Feeney sends a glance Parlabane’s way. It is a subtle gesture of gratitude, though it is Sam who deserves credit for sussing that one.

  They have all been working through the night, journeying through the corporate labyrinth Dunwoodie and Cruz constructed in order to pull this off. And they have discovered that it is a labyrinth with a deadly trap at its heart.

  When Cruz bought Synergis, he performed an initial stock dilution: a fake stock dilution, it turns out. The shares all went to companies he and Dunwoodie set up, all of which were ultimately owned by Milton’s Lake. Milton’s Lake was registered in Dunwoodie’s name so that it couldn’t be traced back to Cruz later, after the buyers realised they had been sold a pup. That was why Cruz was giving interviews stressing his determination to realise the project and his refusal to sell his own stake. It was part of his alibi, at least as far as he understood the plan.

  However, Cruz would surely never have agreed to Dunwoodie effectively owning the whole shebang unless he had guarantees. There had to be a document somewhere, secretly agreeing that she would sign over his share once the fix was in and the cheques had all cleared. Unfortunately for Cruz, the problem with secret agreements is that if one party murders the other, she gets to scoop the pot.

  I worked out a way I could use Cruz and then destroy him.

  Jeremy Aldergrave is standing nearby, nodding with quiet satisfaction, no doubt anticipating the headlines.

  This is part of what Parlabane promised him: that Aldergrave would be able to stand before the media and report how he was personally involved in the operation to catch Leo Cruz’s murderer, as well as revealing who had been behind the Synergis hack. As the recently appointed cybercrime czar, he is in need of an early win, and this isn’t a scrappy one-nil against unfancied opposition.

  ‘The timing should be perfect too,’ Parlabane had pointed out. ‘This thing will dominate the Sunday papers.’

  But just as important in Parlabane’s bargaining was the story that wouldn’t be dominating the Sunday papers.

  We needed a plausible scapegoat. A hacker.

  He called up Lansing from the car at Luton Airport, told him what was really going on – about Cruz, about Dunwoodie, and most pressingly about Lilly.

  ‘Cruz was Zardoz?’ Lansing said. Parlabane could almost hear face meet palm. ‘Of course. All those names with a zed.’

  ‘How come you didn’t call us when he told you where to send the files?’

  ‘I didn’t think it would help, given he sent me twenty addresses. Plus I figured if I was sending the same zip file package with Stoolpigeon embedded, Sam would know soon enough where it went.’

  ‘No, you were playing both ends until you saw which way the cards were going to fall. I don’t blame you, but seeing as we’re the ones digging you out of this, I figure you owe us a favour.’

  ‘We’ll see. What do you have in mind?’

  ‘There’s a framed photo in your office of you with Jeremy Aldergrave back when you were both teenagers: “Hackers in arms.” He was Thanatos. When they’re bigging up Aldergrave they talk about how he made a million by his twenty-first birthday. I saw you glance up when you mentioned a hacker who was effectively insider-dealing back then. I thought you were looking at the monitor, but you were looking at the photo. That was him, wasn’t it?’

  Lansing said nothing.

  ‘I need to rope in some senior influence on this thing fast. I want you to give me the name of just one company that he hacked for an insider trade.’

  Parlabane heard him swallow.

  ‘You can’t ask me to do that. He was a friend. He still is. And I’m certainly not making an enemy of him now he’s the bloody cybercrime czar. He’s got as much dirt on me as I have on him. He could destroy me.’

  Parlabane knew this was never going to be an easy ask, but he hadn’t played his full hand yet.

  ‘I get that, Gary. Sam noticed how you didn’t reveal the identities of those Uninvited hackers. You’re loyal, and if I could find another way, I wouldn’t be asking this.’

  ‘Then find another way. I’m sorry. I appreciate the situation you’re both in, but I have to think of my family.’

  ‘You know, it’s funny you should put it like that …’

  I asked Cruz if there was anybody else who knew about Syne.

  One of the cops has the famous solitary picture of Syne up on her screen. They’re trying to find a source for it. Parlabane reckons it will turn out to be from some Eastern European magazine predating the fall of the Iron Curtain. An image that Cruz reckoned nobody in the west would recognise. An image nobody in the east was likely to encounter and say: ‘Hey, that’s me!’ In the event that they did, Cruz could always have claimed he fed it to the press as a prank, or in defence of Syne’s privacy.

  I have this gift for being able to get some idiot to trust me – to tell me all kinds of precious secrets that she really ought to have kept to herself.

  He watches the undercover officers move in, swiftly and without fuss. Dunwoodie is in cuffs within seconds of Sam stepping clear. There is a palpable release of tension from all around the Operations Centre.

  ‘Your girl did well,’ Feeney tells him, putting a firm hand on his shoulder.

  Parlabane smiles.

  She isn’t his girl, not in the way she once hoped, but nonetheless he feels the warmest glow of pride.

  CELL BINDING (II)

  I am determined to keep it together but the sight of my mum already filling up as she walks towards me is threatening to set me off.

  I still had to leave my phone and my keys in a locker then go through the whol
e airport-style security rigmarole, but I have been shepherded through on my own, out of normal visiting hours. We’re meeting in a private room too, which means I don’t have to sit in that horrible waiting area with its permanent stink of cigarettes, anger and despair.

  We hug, and neither of us lets go or says anything for a long time.

  I do, somehow, keep it together.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,’ I tell her.

  She squeezes me a little harder, then finally breaks off and wipes her face.

  We both take a seat.

  ‘You’ve more than made up for it. I’m sorry I wasn’t so easy to believe. I’m going to make up for it too. Jesus, Sam. I’m just so glad you’re okay. What the hell happened?’

  I take a deep breath. It’s time.

  ‘I was always afraid that this story would end with me in prison. Turns out I was right …’

  DECODED

  I’ve told her everything.

  She’s crying again, but not in an upset way. I’ve never seen her like this, in fact. She looks moved. She looks proud.

  ‘Everything’s gonna be different now, Sam,’ she says, sniffing back more tears. ‘I’m all cleaned up. They told me they still have to sort out some red-tape stuff, but once they formalise the charges against Dunwoodie, I’ll be out of here. I’m gonna be a born-again mum, I promise.’

  ‘Does that include being more upfront with me?’

  She looks kind of edgy about this, like she hasn’t quite anticipated all the implications of the promise she just made, and is wondering whether she ought to clarify terms. It’s almost a relief. If she wasn’t still looking for the angles in every potential loophole, I’d think they had replaced her with a doppelganger.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why did you lie to me about knowing Jack?’

  She sighs.

  ‘Why do you think?. He was a link to things I didn’t want you finding out about. I’m assuming I don’t need to explain why. I’ve always been frightened of my past coming back to haunt you. I was paranoid bordering on superstitious about it, like it would be my punishment for the things I did and thought I’d got away with.’

  ‘And how bad were those things, Mum? How much did you know about what happened to Liam Skelton?’

  She looks down at her hands. I know her signs, and this usually means a difficult truth is coming.

  ‘People always assumed Cruz was this idealistic entrepreneur who ended up as a cynical wheeler-dealer. The reality is, Cruz was always a cynical wheeler-dealer, who spent a brief period posing as an idealistic entrepreneur. He was a slippery bastard when I knew him – that’s how I knew him – but I didn’t realise what he was truly capable of.

  ‘He was wily. He always gave the impression he was working for somebody else, like he was a middle man between the likes of me and whoever was really calling the shots. So when I learned Skelton had been murdered, not long after I was hired to steal his project designs, I didn’t think Cruz did it, but I knew we were both connected to whoever had.’

  ‘Did you know the Synapse was the invention you had stolen from Skelton?’

  ‘Yes. But when the company launched, I reckoned Syne must have been the real power all along. I thought he had killed Skelton and passed off his invention as his own, and I was scared of what he might do to anyone who knew otherwise.’

  ‘Is that why you reached out to Jack?’

  She looks glum; I’d even say ashamed.

  ‘Yes, but …’

  Mum sighs, needing a moment. I hope it’s not to compose a plausible lie.

  ‘I thought maybe he could be my way out. If I decided I could trust him, I could tell him what I thought I knew about Cruz and Syne. Unfortunately, Cruz found out.’

  ‘He knew you’d been in touch with Jack? How?’

  ‘I don’t know. He always had sources; except, as I said, I always believed they were Syne’s sources. Anyway, acting the middle-man, he said his employer wasn’t happy that I’d been liaising with an investigative reporter. I was ordered to plant drugs in Jack’s flat. I knew it was a loyalty test, and I didn’t fancy the consequences of failing it. I was a lot more confident that he could hurt me than I was that Jack could save me.’

  ‘Is that why you were always searching him online? Guilt?’

  She nods.

  ‘When the drugs and the gun got found in our flat, I knew it was a message to stay quiet. I was scared they’d come after you and Lilly if I didn’t keep it shut.’

  There’s a silence. Mum looks apprehensive, though I haven’t asked her anything else yet. I’m feeling the same. I think we both know what’s coming.

  ‘Mum, I need to know. Was Leo Cruz my father?’

  Mum looks down at her hands again.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘No,’ she says calmly but firmly.

  ‘Then who was? I deserve to know, and I’ve waited long enough to find out.’

  ‘It’s never been that simple, pet. You have to understand, when you were growing up, even if I’d wanted to tell you, I couldn’t have. I never knew his name.’

  My heart plummets and she misreads my expression as disgust.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Mum bridles. ‘I’m not talking about a one-night stand I met in a club. We worked together, in a manner of speaking. He was younger than me, a little naive, very sweet. I did care about him, you should know that.’

  ‘So how come you don’t know his name?’

  ‘I didn’t say I don’t know it. I said I didn’t know it then. But I do now, thanks to you.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  She offers me an apologetic smile.

  ‘I met him through Cruz. I was a go-between, a contact. We used codenames.’

  Something inside me ignites.

  CONDITIONAL OFFERS

  Parlabane takes a long pull from a bottle of Schiehallion, impatient for the alcohol to do its thing. He’s trying to relax, though the principal impediment to this is finding himself in the unaccustomed role of chaperone to a young lady as she meets a gentleman for drinks. The beer is good, but it’s not strong enough. One of Han’s caipirinhas: that’s what he could to with right now; rapidly followed by two more.

  Never mind relaxed, he ought to be in celebration mode. He’s published one hell of a story, though not exactly the whole truth. Large sections of his original account have been redacted due to horse-trading arrangements with Aldergrave and with Gatekeeper, but he can’t complain too much, given that they are keeping all the right people out of jail. In the case of the latter, the firm was only too happy to waive any charges pertaining to trespass and theft if it prevented its clients finding out a teenage girl simply strolled in its front door and made a mockery of its entire secure-entry system.

  Even in its censored form, the scoop has proven massive enough for everyone at Broadwave to overlook his disappearing act at their Islington party, as well as that always socially uncomfortable ‘wanted for murder’ business that followed. It has been only half-jokingly suggested Parlabane be given the title ‘Editor at Large’ so that in future they have an in-built excuse when nobody knows where he is or what he’s up to.

  Professionally speaking, everything is as okay as it’s been in quite some time. That’s not the problem. What’s really bringing the awkward is that the bloke Sam is chatting to is the one traditionally ascribed the minder role, being as he is the young woman’s father.

  When Sam broke the big news to Parlabane, he had to confess not only that he had already worked it out, but worse, that Lansing knew too. It was how he got him to give up the goods on Aldergrave. Parlabane told Lansing he believed his codenamed contact had been Sam’s mum, then gave him Sam’s date of birth. Simple arithmetic took care of the rest.

  He feels like a gooseberry, an effect exacerbated by the anxious and delicate nature of the conversation. It’s like being a fly on the wall at a first date, the two of them treading on eggshells, trying really hard to pl
ease each other, determined not to screw this up.

  ‘How did your wife take it?’ Sam asks.

  Lansing has a sip of his pint. Either the taste is more bitter than he was anticipating or he’s wincing at the memory.

  ‘It wasn’t the easiest conversation of our marriage, but she knows it’s not like I did it deliberately. I didn’t conceal anything from her – how could I? I guess she’s okay about it though, because she told the kids.’

  Sam’s eyes widen in nervous surprise. She seems pleased, though.

  ‘Thing is, my wife and I were both only children, so the kids don’t have any aunts or uncles or cousins. The idea they have a half-sister who’s old enough to take them places has got them very excited. My apologies if this is a bit premature.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’d like to meet them.’

  ‘You’re back at your studies, I gather,’ Lansing says.

  ‘Busy catching up after some lost time, but yeah.’

  ‘I know finances are always stretched when you’re a student.’

  Sam sits up straight, her face more serious and determined than Parlabane has seen since Lansing pitched up tonight.

  ‘I’m not looking for money,’ she says. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’

  She takes a drink of her cider.

  ‘Of course, Mum doesn’t quite see it that way. Some things haven’t changed in the twenty years since you both knew her. She’s always playing an angle, but I’ve told her to butt out.’

  Lansing listens, nodding sincerely. He looks like he’s biding his time.

  ‘I’d like to offer you a job, Sam,’ he says. ‘Part time, to help pay the bills when you go to uni.’

  ‘I meant what I said. You don’t need to feel obliged towards me.’

  ‘I’m not offering this out of obligation. We do penetration testing, and with your CV, I’m sure you can understand how valuable you would be to the company. Plus, it would give us a chance to get to know each other.’