Sample

Prologue

Today’s was a zinger. The nasty tempered dwarfs laced up their spiked boots and set out gleefully to trample through his central nervous system, searching for juicy brain tissue to prod with their curious fingers. He shook his head sharply, as if he thought he could dislodge them but they just tightened their grip. He stopped abruptly, remembering too late that sudden movements didn’t halt them invading the soft material of his thalamus as they searched for handholds, like rock climbers halfway up a mountain. Sometimes one of them banged in a spiked piton and this drove him to the medicine cabinet for his strongest pills. Today there was no point. He had used the last of his medication to fight off yesterday’s attack, the result of his struggle with the code for the format and colours of the site.
He remembered his mother’s words and with a wan smile he went to draw himself a glass of tap water. He had little belief in her nostrum but he was thirsty anyway and had no better idea. He wanted to finish tonight and if that meant a brain tumour size headache, he couldn’t see an alternative. The cool water soothed his throat and for a moment he thought the headache was backing off and mentally toasted his mother. Then, as he returned to the screen, the trolls resumed their march through his brain making him groan with the pain. He clamped his eyes shut, feeling nauseated and hoped they would find what they were looking for soon because he had work to do and until they shut up their racket he knew he wasn’t going to get it done. Thank god he had finished most of what he had to do already. Still, no one was going to pay him until the site went live and that couldn’t happen until he had cracked the last few lines of code and uploaded the finished pages. Even then it all had to be done by today or the penalties he had reluctantly accepted would make the job a waste of time. Unless of course the other plan worked out. He still wasn’t too sure about that.

His client had hinted he would call that evening to check on progress but he hadn’t made it clear if he planned a telephone call or a visit in person. The advantage of seeing him was that he could get his money. The disadvantage was that his client made him feel a bit unsettled. God, he thought, that was putting it mildly. After a meeting with his client, he felt like throwing up. Yeah, maybe a phone call would be better. Not that he knew where to contact his man. It was strictly like, I’ll phone you. Be in.

To hell with the money, he said to himself, he didn’t need it that badly. Stupid. He needed money so badly, his guts churned just at the thought of handling a wad of crisp notes. Better than a cheque. A cheque might bounce and even if it was perfectly good, the banks liked to take their time. No, cash was definitely better, although he was willing to bet that his man wouldn’t want to pay that way. But once he had his money, everything would be okay again. His friend Larry would help him with what he needed. Not yet though. Not until the job was done and even then, not until he had some money. Larry was very strict about cash on delivery.

He pressed his fingers hard against his temple and the pain receded a little. Thank the fuck for that. He turned back to his desk with a sigh. The computer screen before him was enough to give anyone a headache. It was a jungle of open windows, frames, indicators, pretty little coloured icons intended to signify some unique function, boxes, control keys, pictures, even some real words. Most of them were hidden behind competing windows and frames and were impossible for the uninitiated to decipher. At the top of the screen the usual Windows toolbars and edit boxes added to the confusion. Only a photograph of a man in his late fifties wearing a green oiled coat and sporting a ragged haircut and a crooked smile, displayed in one small box at the bottom of the montage, offered any meaningful information to a casual observer.

Fortunately, the man at the keyboard wasn’t a casual observer. He was a hacker, a computer nerd, a web designer, a man who knew his way around hyper text mark up language, a speaker of the chosen tongues of the Internet, and so for him the boxes and icons and other gibberish on the screen meant something. Better than that, when he had finished, his work would mean something to others, even if they did not have his special skills. He started to type, grinning to himself, as the meaning of the words on the screen sunk in. This job was definitely worth more than he was being paid.

Some time later, his migraine a dull throb in the background, he closed the open windows, saved the files and sat back in his chair to inspect his completed efforts. As soon as the files were uploaded, he would be able to view the site. He watched the progress of the blue bar, as his lovingly constructed bytes of computer code flowed down the telephone lines as analogue noise, ready to be reassembled at the receiving end as digital information. He was nearly done. Just one more job.

The phone rang seconds later and he answered it before his antiquated answer phone could cut in. He listened for a moment and then said ‘Sure. Soon as you like. Bring your cheque book.’ He put down the phone and grinned to himself. Sorted.

Not many minutes later, a smartly dressed figure wearing a charcoal three piece suit, an expensive looking Chesterfield overcoat draped over his left arm, walked briskly out of his room, which he locked behind him. He carried a black sports bag in his spare hand, and as he left the building he smiled a perfunctory and unconvincing farewell to the receptionist who returned his greeting briefly and with a superficial smile. He didn’t notice her lack of warmth. He wasn’t planning to risk his car and it was far too dangerous for a taxi, so he was walking. It was not that far. But first, he needed to look less conspicuously prosperous. He would stick out like a winning English tennis player at Wimbledon if he went to his destination dressed as he was.

The sports bag contained all he needed and a few minutes later, when he left the Grand Hotel, having made unapologetic use of their toilet facilities, he sported a grubby pair of green cords, a nondescript shirt and olive green pullover, topped off with an ageing car coat and a pair of scuffed brown lace up shoes. The suit and the rest of his clothes were packed carefully in the sports bag and his crumpled hair now looked as if the cut had grown out some weeks ago. He inspected himself in the mirror in the hotel cloakroom and had decided that no one would give him a second glance. So much better to look nondescript than to bother with complicated disguises. Time to go.

He quickly walked to the flat. It was on the first floor in a grimy back street in the west of the city, over a bookmaker. It was early evening and there were not many people about, as he had anticipated, but he still went through the planned routine. He walked purposefully past the betting shop without giving it a glance. At the far end of the street, he could see a teenage girl in a red micro skirt and a flimsy top, leaning back against the wall, her hips flared provocatively, as she flirted with an admirer. He doubted either of them was aware of his existence and wondered why she didn’t die of cold. The only other figures in sight were all walking in the opposite direction and although there was a risk of a flat owner above looking down on him from a window, he felt safe enough. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and quickly walked back to the peeling blue door that adjoined the bookmakers’ entrance.

He glanced in the bookie’s window as he passed, grimacing at the gaudy display of horses and footballers etched into the glass. A notice on the door told him that the shop was closed. Good. He took the steps up to the flat two at a time and rang the bell when he reached the small landing. A hand-written sign proclaimed that this was flat 12a and identified a name that must belong to a long gone previous occupant. It was certainly not the name of the man he had arranged to meet. He sniffed the air impatiently whilst he waited for the door to be opened and grimaced at the smell of vomit in the stairwell. Ancient graffiti on the wall had been over painted in a non-matching cream paint but the memory of the words written could still be distinguished. What sort of person thought such perversions, let alone wrote them on walls?

The door opened and he stepped in to the hallway of the flat, pretending not to notice the tentative, outstretched hand, and nodded a curt greeting to the hacker.

‘’Show me. I don’t have much time’ he said. Neither do you, you greedy little swine.

He followed the man through the tiny hallway and into the living room with its own musty smell, part fried food, part unwashed hacker. In one corner sat a small television set, silent. In the other there was a small desk that really had space only for the 19inch monitor. A cordless mouse sat on a small mat next to the keyboard. On the floor a cream box housed the working parts and the blinking red lights confirmed that it was live. A scanner and printer next to it collected dust. The hacker gestured him to the typist’s chair he had just vacated and leant over his shoulder as he sat. A carelessly straying hand near his client’s arm was rewarded with a cold glare and he swiftly removed it.

They both watched as he selected the new site from the Favourites list. Wordlessly, the hacker guided the other man through its pages, anxiously looking for signs of approval as each screen slowly scrolled up before them. The man’s concentration on the web site was intense, each picture and caption carefully scrutinised before he gave a nod to the hacker to continue. The examination was exhaustive. If a screen contained an error, he made a careful note on a single sheet of paper, resting on an A4 pad, before he nodded. At the end of the demonstration, he told the hacker to fix the mistakes. As usual his manner left no doubt about what he expected.

‘Now?’ stammered the hacker, his headache returning at full strength.

‘Please. Then I can pay you and our business is at an end,’ came the cool reply. ‘I shall wait over here. Please be as quick as you can.’

The client sat himself carefully in a dirty looking green armchair near to the television, and idly picked up from the floor a red top newspaper, now several days old. Within seconds, he was engrossed in it, leaving the hacker with no alternative but to work his way through the list. Fortunately, the hacker told himself, the errors were minor and easy to fix, just one or two typing and spelling mistakes and a link that didn’t work properly. Fifteen minutes later, he looked up from his keyboard to see his client’s cold eyes on him, eyebrows raised.

‘All done?’ he asked.

The hacker nodded.

‘Good. First of all, I shall need back the papers I gave you.’

The hacker opened a drawer of the desk and pulled out a blue file which he handed to the other man who glanced at it, nodded and said, ‘Now please show me the backups you have made of your work.’

The hacker turned back to his screen and opened up the directories containing his saved working files. ‘Here’ he gestured.

‘You have uploaded the amendments to the server?’

‘Just now’ confirmed the hacker.

‘Good’ he repeated. ‘Delete the files on this drive now please.’

‘It would be better to keep them there, just in case’, suggested the hacker.

‘I know. Just do it please.’ He watched as the hacker deleted the subdirectory.

‘Now the spare backup. Where might that be?’

The hacker hesitated for a second. Then, as the other man cleared his throat in impatience, he drilled down to the main backup directory on the second hard drive partition, and showed him the backup subdirectory containing the web data.

‘Delete that too, please. I’m late now, so please be as quick as you can. I assume there are no other copies?’

The hacker nodded quickly in confirmation, although it was a lie, and deleted the backup files, thinking to himself smugly that his client didn’t seem to realise that on a system like this one, the deleted files were not deleted at all, they were simply transferred into the Recycle Bin. Even if he hadn’t taken additional precautions, he could get them all the files back with a click of his mouse, once this awful man had paid him and departed.

‘Now empty the Recycle Bin, please,’ said his client, something in his voice betraying his amusement, although his face revealed nothing. ‘And delete the reference from your Favourites list. Also clear your History. And delete your temporary Internet files.’

The hacker swore under his breath and did as he was told, his head beginning to thump again as he promised himself that his client was not leaving until he had given him his money. Then he was going out to get drunk and stoned. When he had finished, he swung around in his chair and looked expectantly at the client, who had watched him carefully over his shoulder as he worked. He blinked. There was something in his client’s hand but he did not immediately register what it was.

Then he thought that the automatic pistol, elongated by its silencer, was a joke. Not a very good joke but people were strange. He knew nothing about handguns and did not recognise that the noise he heard next was the release of the safety catch. It did not matter. He had no time to think, let alone react. The bullet from the pistol smashed into his head before he had a chance to open his mouth and he was effectively dead by the time the sound waves from the thud of the firing gun reached his brain. Exploding matter left the back of his head and splattered the computer screen in a gushing red fountain like a ripe tomato hitting a politician. His headache had gone forever.

The man with the gun looked disdainfully at his victim to check that he was dead and when he was satisfied, he carefully unscrewed the silencer and wiped both it and the gun with his handkerchief. He painstakingly, almost lovingly, replaced the weapon in its purpose built box and put it back in his sports bag. He was sure that the execution had been silent and that no one was about to come calling but he discreetly checked the front door, before returning to the computer desk, satisfied.

He collected the sheet of paper with the bug list on and folded it twice, before secreting it in his bag. He picked up the blue file from the floor and placed it unopened in the bag. He scrupulously wiped with the handkerchief everything he might have touched and after a second’s consideration he folded the newspaper he had been reading and put that too in his bag. That only left the computer, which he powered down. Then he reached into his bag and extracted a floppy disk with no label, inserted it into the disk drive and pressed the computer’s on/off switch. The machine hummed for a second and then, detecting the floppy disk, concluded that it should use the program it found there to power itself up. The drives churned as the program ran and then, largely obscured by the hacker’s drying brain parts, the screen triumphantly displayed the words: “contents of hard drive eradicated! Shellhead rules! Have a nice day.” The man had taken a gamble that the hacker would not have protection against the virus but it had not been a huge one, since Shellhead was not yet in the wild. In any case he had always intended to put a bullet in the computer, but now, as he looked at the machine’s steel casing, he realised that a bullet would need to be precisely aimed, if it was to hit the hard drive and that since he didn’t know exactly where the drive was fitted in this particular machine, precision would be impossible. Even then, the missile might not do the damage he intended. No matter, he shrugged, the Shellhead virus had done its work and he had no time to start dismantling the computer. He dropped the cream case containing the electronics on the floor and settled for stamping on it hard enough to dent the case.

He completed cleaning up any remaining areas that might bear his prints and gave the room one long, last look to make sure he had missed nothing. God, what a dump, he thought as he pulled the door closed behind him and set off down the rank smelling stairs. How could people live like that?


Chapter 1: Up in the Air


‘Surely there’s something we can do, Mr. Pearson?’ he demanded, his lips compressing in a mean line as it began to dawn on him. ‘I mean we can go to the meeting and kick up a stink, can’t we? There can’t be nothing we can do.’

Michael Pearson nodded sympathetically. ‘Let me make sure I have understood the position, Mr. Cooper. Your company, HJ Products Ltd, is owed

View Synopsis View Information Purchase Options