by Chris Thomas
He followed the trail of blood out through the kitchen and into the utility room. The door to the downstairs toilet was shut. Holding out a hand to grab the handle, he approached tentatively. When he reached the door, he took a deep breath in expectation at what might be lying behind it. He opened the door.
There was Ellie. She was slumped on the toilet, holding her hand under the running water of the sink next to it. A river of red liquid circled the plughole before disappearing. She looked up at him.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ she said, quite normally. ‘Look what I did, clumsy idiot.’
As she showed him the gash across the knuckle of her thumb, the relief overwhelmed him and he reached forward, embracing her in a huge hug.
‘Oh, thank god,’ he said.
‘Thank god? I’ve sliced open my fucking thumb, you dickhead.’
After sticking the two large flaps on her thumb back together with steristrips and covering it with copious amounts of dressing and porous tape, Joe set about wiping up the blood from the kitchen. As he knelt on the kitchen floor, he heard the phone ring.
‘Any chance you could answer that, with your one good hand?’ he shouted into the lounge.
A few moments later, Ellie walked into the kitchen, an ashen look across her face. Joe looked up at her.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘It’s Billy,’ she replied. ‘He’s in hospital. In a coma.’
24
‘Peter, I think we might have found something,’ said Grace, excitedly, rushing into the office in a mixture of panic and relief.
She was stopped in her tracks by the raised finger of Harris, gesturing to the phone tucked under his chin. Grace waited patiently next to his desk as he finished his conversation.
‘Sorry, sweetheart, I’m going to be late again … Yes I know I was late last night, but I’ve got really important work to do at the moment … Hey, Grandma’s not boring … Look, I need you to be a really good girl for her, alright? And I’ll be home as soon as I can … Yes, fine, I’ll take you to Legoland at the weekend, I promise … OK, night night. Love you ... Bye.’
Finally, Harris hung up the phone. ‘Sorry about that. What have you got?’
‘I’ve just been down to the lab,’ she replied, placing some graph papers down on his desk that looked like ECG traces. ‘They pulled all the data from Karen Parker’s tag from a week up to the date she was reported missing. Some poor sod has sat there and gone through every minute of data bit by bit.’
‘Lucky him.’
‘Yep, but it appears to have been worth it, because he found this,’ she said, pointing to a ring drawn on the paper in red ink. In amongst the pages of identical traces was a tiny, almost indiscernible drop in the level of the line. ‘This line here shows the co-ordinates for her location. That’s how they know where she is, or if she breaks curfew and so on. And this line—’
‘Is the transmission strength,’ interrupted Harris, staring at the graphs. Grace had forgotten that he was well-versed in the workings of electronic tags. ‘Bugger, do you know what this means?’
‘Well I assume that at that point there, the tag developed a small glitch that messed up its transmissions.’
‘Precisely. But what caused it?’
‘I don’t know. The weather?’ she replied, sarcastically.
‘It could be,’ he replied, ignoring the sarcasm altogether. ‘We see breaks in transmission like this when the wearer has attempted to break the tag off of their leg, or smashed it against something, either to break it or even just accidentally.’
‘But her tag was found intact,’ said Grace. ‘So I get that when the tag was removed from her leg, it might have caused the transmitter to jump or glitch, but—’
‘No, they’re alarmed. If the wearer tries to forcibly remove the tag, or if any of what we just said happens, the tag transmits an alarm to the monitoring station. Even if she somehow managed to unlock it normally, slip it off, and reattached the clasp as if it were still on her leg, the tag would know and it would show up. How long would it take to unlock, remove, and relock one of these? Even with the right knowledge and equipment, you’re looking at a few seconds. More than enough of a time lapse for it to trigger an alert,’ said Harris, talking and scanning the graphs at the same time.
‘So, how would she have managed it, especially given what a useless waste of space she is?’ pondered Grace.
‘Maybe she didn’t,’ replied Harris. He scanned the documents for the officer leading the missing person case and then began composing an email. ‘I’ll ask the local force to have their forensics team re-examine the tag. They’ll need to check absolutely everything: prints, serial numbers, the lot.’
‘But they already did that. It had all her tracking history and was covered in her DNA.’
‘Doesn’t conclusively confirm that it is the exact same tag that she was issued with originally though,’ replied Harris, hitting the send button.
Grace collected her papers and returned to her desk. She was always secretly impressed by Pete’s ability to look at situations from angles that others would never have thought of; not that she would ever tell him as much. His head was far too big as it was.
Harris returned to his screen. The video of Gary Sweetman was an almost permanent fixture on his desktop now. He had watched it over and over again, searching for the slightest hint of its origins. But, depending on your point of view, that was either the beauty of, or the trouble with, the deep web. Apart from the trillions of megabytes of mundane data that existed there, the vast majority of the content was based on the anonymous side of the global internet, mainly because it did not want to be found. It opened up a world of possibilities and was increasing exponentially. Policing it became an almost thankless task. If looking for something on the regular web was like searching for a needle in a haystack, searching for something on the deep web was like trying to find an ant in the Sahara.
Unless you knew where to look. Which Harris did, up to a point. He was experienced in traversing the sea of content on the deep web. Since joining the Cyber Crime Unit, he had become very familiar with it, given its status as the new playground of choice for anyone wanting to commit crime online. But sometimes he needed help, and who better to provide help than someone operating in this very playground.
Harris knew him only by his tag, Mr$pangle, and knew very little about him other than that he ran a site on the deep web offering ‘alternative lifestyle events’. Mr$pangle knew Harris was a police officer and was happy to keep feeding him information in return for a lack of hassle over his own activities, provided he kept them legally, if not morally, clean.
Pulling out his smartphone, Harris opened a chat with him under his online pseudonym used for investigations such as this: LostBoy.
LostBoy: Spang?
After a few minutes, his name went green and a response came back
Mr$pangle: What?
Lostboy: Don’t be like that! How u doing?
Mr$pangle: What do you want?
Lostboy: I want you to look at something for me.
Mr$pangle: No thanks, see a doctor.
Lostboy: Funny. I’m sending you a file.
Mr$pangle: ……
Lostboy: Got it?
Mr$pangle: Interesting.
After the file had finished downloading, Mr$pangle’s icon changed to red. He had gone offline.
‘Wanker,’ whispered Harris. He hated having to rely on these gutter-crawling weirdos, but sometimes it was necessary to come down to their level.
He went and made himself coffee in the hope that when he returned, there would be a reply. Sure enough, it hadn’t taken long.
Mr$pangle: It’s a show
LostBoy: A show?
Mr$pangle: Check out the Brotherhood of the Righteous
LostBoy: A one off?
Mr$pangle: No, they do it most weeks.
LostBoy: ??
Mr$pangle: Different people
LostBoy: How
do I find it?
Mr$pangle: That would be telling
LostBoy: Perhaps you can tell me at your little gathering in the woods this weekend. I’ll bring my dildo collection.
Mr$pangle: Fuck you. enterthedark message board
Harris cursed. He knew the site well; it was a one stop shop for anybody’s dark web needs and links. In fact, it was the first place he had gone looking for any information that might shed light on the video, but he had drawn a blank.
LostBoy: Checked there. Nothing.
Mr$pangle: Gotta be quick
LostBoy: Know anything about Karen Parker?
LostBoy: ??
Mr$pangle avoided the question by logging off again, which suggested to Harris that perhaps he had already said too much and was in no mood to divulge further details. But at least he now had something to go on. And the mention of Karen Parker seemed to have struck a nerve as well.
AFTER STOPPING to eat some dinner in the canteen, Harris returned to his desk. An email had just arrived and it caught his eye instantly. It was from the forensics team looking into the Karen Parker missing person case.
‘Yes. I bloody well knew it,’ Harris whispered to himself, before shouting over to Grace. ‘Grace, look at the email I just forwarded to you. The tag that the officers found at Karen Parker’s house wasn’t the exact one she was originally fitted with.’
‘Great, that’s all we need, you on ultra-smug mode,’ said Grace, rolling her eyes.
‘We can all sit around and talk about how great I am later, but clearly this case is more than just her wandering off on the way to the shops to buy pies. I think we need to look further for anything we can find on the Brotherhood of the Righteous, a group my source mentioned. The fact he cut me off the minute I mentioned Karen Parker’s name is also significant.’
Grace had walked over to his desk to see the email for herself. She knew he was probably right but still needed to see with her own eyes that his big head was justified.
‘OK, what have we got?’ started Grace, as she began writing in her notepad. ‘We’ve got a video of a man being murdered, sent in by someone whose identity we are yet to establish. We have two of the most despised people of recent years going missing, one of whom has had their tag altered. And we have the mysterious anonymous organiser of swingers parties telling us to look into something called the Brotherhood of the Righteous.’
‘Exactly, so at least we’re further along,’ replied Harris, cheerfully. ‘Have Fowler scour around on the deep web, see if he can find anything on this Brotherhood. There must be something on there. You liaise with the team from Parker’s case, give them all the recent information about the tag and have them check further into her movements and especially anyone seen going in to or coming out of her house. I’m going to monitor the chat rooms, see if anything pops up on enterthedark. Mr$pangle said I needed to be quick, so I’m guessing that these people advertise on there but limit the amount of time so as not to attract too much attention.’
‘I’ll get on it.’
‘BLIMEY, that was quick,’ said Harris, impressed at the ease with which Fowler had managed to dig up some information on the Brotherhood. Impressed, but not surprised.
Fowler had joined the unit direct from university, the next generation of computer experts for whom the internet was like a second home. He had grown up with computers and was able to write code before he could ride a bike. Harris was just glad that he had decided to join the good guys and spend his talents catching similarly-minded criminals who had chosen the opposite path for their skills. A close call, given that Fowler was nearly expelled from his university for hacking into the campus computer system and changing all of his grades to firsts. That and trying, and very nearly succeeding, to access the GCHQ databases. When it came to hackers, usually the best way to catch one was to employ one. So, Fowler was offered a position at CCU and had very quickly become Harris’ main point of contact for the more technical side of their work.
Fowler smiled knowingly at Harris, who had pulled a chair up to the desk. He had a huge admiration for Harris and his approach to the work, but he was better at getting down and dirty in the less civilised areas of internet operations. In one hand, he whizzed his wireless mouse across the desk in a blur of red and black. In the other, he squeezed a padded metal grip strengthener.
‘Here,’ he said, pointing to a page on one of his four monitor screens as Harris leaned in to look closer. ‘This group has very little presence, even down on the dark web. Whatever, or whoever, they are, they don’t like to shout about themselves. But that doesn’t stop others from discussing them.’
Harris scanned down the seemingly mindless chatter on the message board that Fowler had found, a multitude of nicknames, text speak, and general nonsense, but in amongst it all some surprisingly useful detail.
EvilWeevil: Anyone see the red room with the pedo?
Jizzler: Yeah, sick. Asshole Sweetman got what coming to him.
Crazy8: BR are fucking legends. Can’t wait for the next one.
EvilWeevil: Get saving. Next one is the big one.
Crazy8: Who they doing this time?
EvilWeevil: Dunno, check enterthedark and find out.
‘See, so this is presumably a discussion of the Sweetman video that we have,’ points out Fowler, tapping on Sweetman’s name with his biro. ‘There is then a gap of a couple of days …’
Jizzler: New TRATD listed. 1BX to enter.
Crazy8: I’m there.
‘What’s TRATD?’ asked Harris. ‘One bitcoin to enter? That’s not an insignificant sum of money.’
‘That’s just the start of it,’ replied Fowler. ‘Jumping ahead slightly, TRATD appears to stand for ‘The Righteous and the Damned’. From what I can tell, it’s the online calling card of the webcast run by the Brotherhood of the Righteous. Read a few more.’
Harris scrolled down to the messages that started at 20:45pm the previous Friday.
Jizzler: Get to the red room. They’ve got 2.
EvilWeevil: How much?
Jizzler: 2 to enter.
EvilWeevil: Who is it?
Jizzler: Go see.
EvilWeevil: Yes, yes, yes. MR and KP. This’ll be brutal.
Harris patted Fowler on the shoulder.
‘My god. MR and KP. Mark Rankin and Karen Parker. This is it, isn’t it?’
It became even clearer as posts from later on in the evening appeared on the thread.
EvilWeevil: Wow. That was epic.
Jizzler: Those two fuckers dead. RIP Charlie, your avenging angel sorted it.
EvilWeevil: Can’t wait for next week.
‘Shit,’ exclaimed Harris. ‘That explains why no-one has heard hide nor hair of either of these two. They’re not missing, they’re dead. And it would appear that we have something more sinister on our hands than we thought.’
‘Uh-huh,’ replied Fowler, in agreement. ‘If what these people are saying is right, we’re dealing with a serious operation. The Sweetman video looked very professional and it would go some way to explaining why we’ve hit brick wall after brick wall. These people are clearly advanced in their methods and the security around what they do is immense.’
‘I always thought that ‘red rooms’ were a legend?’ pondered Harris.
‘They have been, up until now,’ replied Fowler. ‘The dark web is full of videos claiming to be human experimentation or snuff films. Really dark, totally sinister stuff. Live amputations, live eviscerations; underground, sub-culture concepts. ‘Red room’ became something of an urban legend, a mystical location where all these websites exist. Nothing has ever been verified, and there has never been any concerted series of videos, just one offs.’
‘We need to keep an eye on enterthedark. I want us to be at their next one.’
‘Got it. Shall I notify the team looking for Karen Parker?’
Harris sat back, stroking his chin. He had always played the game in strict accordance with the rules, but sometimes the rules
changed and he had to adapt to the situation. And this was a situation unlike any the unit had ever encountered before.
‘No, not yet. Let’s see if anything gets posted for this ‘next week’ that mister EvilWeevil mentions. If it follows the dates on these messages, there should be something coming up soon.’
25
As Joe and Ellie walked through the front entrance, a pile of letters on the mat stuck to the underside of the door. Ellie bent down to pick them up, whilst Joe snuck past to place his keys on the small box attached to the wall. Neither had said much to the other on the drive back from the hospital. They were relieved that Billy had been brought around from his coma, a miracle by any standard, and hopefully an indicator that he had somehow managed to avoid any serious brain injuries. But he still looked an absolute mess. Ellie had done her best to comfort his mother, who had been sat by his bedside for the last 36 hours whilst Joe sat holding his hand.
Joe pulled his mobile phone out from his jeans and dialled Rosco’s number.
‘Hello, mate,’ said Joe, sombrely.
‘Hi,’ replied Rosco. ‘Did you go and see him? He looks bad.’
‘Yes, not good. Not good at all. We didn’t get an awful lot of sense out of his mum as to what happened. Have you heard anything?’
‘Only what the police know,’ continued Rosco. ‘He was driving home yesterday afternoon by the looks of it, lost control on that windy country lane he quite often takes to work. You know, the one that goes near the brewery he visits. Shot through the hedge row and slammed into a tree. He had his belt on and the airbag kicked in, but he hit hard enough that it knocked him out completely. The guys at the brewery heard the smash and phoned the ambulance.’
As Rosco talked, Joe heard a message notification on his phone. He held the handset in front of him briefly whilst continuing to listen and saw the preview.
How’s Billy-boy doing?
Joe went silent; the sickness in his stomach became palpable.