48 Hours - A City of London Thriller (4 page)

“
My thoughts exactly,” Dee replied. “Come on, let’s get you
home.”

Chapter 6

Ashburnham Mews, Greenwich, London: Wednesday, 9pm.

Dee stood up and stretched, walking across the room to draw
the heavy damask curtains against the darkening summer sky. The two
of us had shared a pasta meal and Dee had asked a colleague to
bring around an overnight bag for her. She informed me that as a
result of the paintballing incident she had no intention of leaving
my side before noon on Friday. I found myself thinking for a brief
moment that maybe it had been worth it, after all.

The last three hours had been amongst the most enjoyable of my
tenure in Greenwich. The two of us had eaten in companionable
silence. Afterwards, Dee had rubbed salve into my bruised back and
then we had written a long and laborious statement for the police,
covering the day’s events. Dee guessed that, after this evening’s
attack, a continuous police presence would be pretty much
guaranteed.

The question of where the gunman had sprung from seemed to
have been solved when the Doland family returned home at six to
find that their gate was locked with a padlock for which they
didn’t have a key. Fortunately the police were still in the area,
having been called by a concerned neighbour who had assumed the
worst when she saw me lying on the ground, and they removed the
padlock with bolt cutters before placing it in an evidence bag. The
police would have stayed longer, and would have been more insistent
about a statement, had it not been for the telephoned intervention
of Inspector Boniface of the City of London Police, explaining that
he had the situation under control.

My guess was that, before the end of the week, the Police
would raid the council flats nearby and, whilst they would not find
the paint gun, they would find plenty of drugs and illegal weapons
to make their trip worthwhile. The elderly residents of The
Ashburnhams would then feel safe again.

“
Dee.” The gorgeous young woman turned to face me, trying to
anticipate my question. “Why do you think this Bob character risked
exposure or even arrest by shooting me with a paintball gun? I
mean, it’s not as if the time limit is up yet. I still have forty
hours left.”

Ms Conrad pulled up an upholstered footrest that matched the
sofa and sat down, facing me. We were less than a yard apart and my
heart was beginning to race. She spoke quietly but with an assured
tone that inspired confidence.

“
We can’t know for sure, Josh, but I suspect that our
blackmailer enjoys the game rather more than he actually needs the
money.” She paused. “Despite all of the controls we have over
electronic banking these days, the fact is that if you pay up we
will probably never see the money again. So, as long as Bob is
clever and doesn’t leave an obvious electronic trail for the police
to follow, he might never be identified. To take a risk like he did
tonight suggests to me that he enjoys the thrill that comes from
terrifying his victims.”

“
Well, he certainly scared me,” I conceded. That was something
of an understatement. I could still remember vividly how I had felt
when those paint pellets had hit me. I had believed I was dying,
and it had shaken me very badly, although I was trying my best not
to show it. I could not shake off the worrying realisation that,
had the sniper chosen a different weapon, I would now almost
certainly be dead. First had been the camera; then came the
paintball gun. What might it be next time? I tried to put it to the
back of my mind, but it wasn’t easy.

The next two hours were spent in intimate proximity, in my
mind anyway, as we, the guard and the guarded, watched TV. At
eleven, Dee stood up and stretched her limbs.

“
We need to sleep. We might have a long day tomorrow.” With
that she took a pillow and blanket and laid, fully dressed, on the
recliner. “Put the light off on your way to bed.” She smiled at the
look of disappointment that undoubtedly crossed my face. I would
never make a good poker player, I thought, especially if one of my
opponents was a stunningly attractive woman.

I sat on my bed and shook physically. Perhaps it was delayed
shock. Perhaps it was the thought that at best I was about to lose
all of my life savings, and at worst I could lose my life. I felt
panic rising in my chest. My heart was beating uncontrollably and I
began to hyperventilate. Slowly I regained control as I breathed
through my nose and sipped chilled water from a bottle by the
bed.

“
Why me?” I thought, but no matter how hard I tried I could
think of no reason why anyone would choose me for such a scam. I
eventually fell asleep with the question rolling around in my
befuddled brain.

Chapter 7

City of London Police HQ, Wood St, London: Thursday,
9am.

I was sitting in Inspector Boniface’s office watching a young
man setting up his laptop and some associated cables and gizmos.
Dee Conrad sat beside me. I stole a quick glance at my BlackBerry.
There were no new messages but the newly installed countdown
application clicked onto twenty seven hours as I
watched.

After a restless night, punctuated by nightmares, I had awoken
early before Dee had a chance to rouse me from my fitful sleep. We
were in my office by seven fifteen. Dee watched as I cleared my
messages and post before we set off for the police station to meet
the technician, who was now settling down into the chair on the
opposite side of Boniface’s desk.

“
Right, Mr. Hammond,” the young man said. “My name’s Simon,
and I’m a forensic computer analyst. I’ve been shown the messages
you have received to date, the texts and the email. I am also aware
of the paintballing incident last night, which must have been
terrifying for you.”

“
Not as terrifying as the real thing,” I countered.

“
No, I guess not.”

I watched Simon as he set up his equipment. He was in his
mid-twenties, I guessed, perhaps six feet tall and dressed in jeans
and a polo shirt. He wore metal rimmed glasses and a friendly
smile, and the word “geek” could have been invented to describe
him. The forensic analyst turned to his laptop which had now booted
up. A thin, square black box, connected to the laptop by a USB
cable, showed a glowing green diode which had been flashing but was
now steady. Simon tapped the keyboard and turned the laptop around
so that the screen would face us.

“
If I have an enemy in this game it isn’t the criminals, it’s
Hollywood and the TV producers. They give the impression that a
computer genius can access anything anywhere and find addresses for
the police to raid. Unfortunately, that isn’t generally true. Let
me start with the email.” Simon touched a key and the email came
into view, exactly as I had remembered it. “Now, keep your eye on
the header.” We looked intently at the lines which denoted my email
address as being the recipient of Bob’s email. Simon clicked a few
more keys and the header lengthened to cover half the
page.

“
This is the email address that sent your email.....
‘[email protected]’, which is a South African domain. As you
can see, there is a large amount of routing information in the
header. This lists the IP address where mail was sent from and the
addresses of all intermediaries until it arrived with you at your
IP address at Dyson Brecht. The unfortunate thing is that the email
was sent from the IP address of Quadrille Hotel Services, who
supply public area internet access and room internet access to
hotel customers in the City of London. With further investigation
it’s possible that we could get Quadrille to narrow the address to
the actual hotel, but as anyone in that hotel could access the
internet from the lobby, restaurants, gyms and so on, it’s unlikely
we can do much about identifying the blackmailer with that
information alone.”

Dee asked for clarification. “So, Simon, what you are saying
is that, even if it’s possible that we could get Quadrille to
identify the hotel the message was sent from, that doesn’t
necessarily mean our man ever stayed there. He could simply have
used their internet access to mislead us.”

“
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Simon agreed. “Put
yourself in his shoes. He would try very hard not to leave a trail
to follow. Also, it’s rather unlikely that Quadrille would get back
to me with that information today, or even tomorrow. The chances
are the internet access is subcontracted out to another company
somewhere in the UK, and the IT guys who could track this data back
might be freelancers, working for the subcontractor from home. I
guess what I’m saying is that it’s a long shot, and it would not
necessarily guarantee us any worthwhile data in any
case.”

I shook my head. “On the BBC last night, the Silent Witness
team did what you just described in 20 seconds and traced the
message to an individual office in a block of offices.”

“
Artistic license,” Simon replied. “It simply doesn’t work
like that in real life. Let’s turn to the texts and the phone
records and see if we can find anything useful there.” With a few
more keystrokes the screen changed again. “We know the number that
sent the texts, they all came from the same phone, but guess
what....”

“
It was an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone,” Dee guessed out
loud.

“
Spot on,” Simon acknowledged with more than a little
admiration in his voice. “It gets worse, though.” The analyst
paused as he flicked more buttons. “From the phone number we can
tell that the phone is a Nokia 2690 and that it was acquired
recently. The records show that it was first activated yesterday
and it may only have been on the shelf of the shop where it was
bought for a matter of hours, rather than days or weeks. I draw
that conclusion because that particular telephone number was only
allocated earlier this month. We are waiting for confirmation, but
my guess is that it was bought at a supermarket in the London area.
Some place where they sell phones by the dozen and the sales
assistants will have no idea who bought it. Unless Bob is a bit
dim, he’ll have paid cash for it. No credit card which could be
traced. But you never know. Sometimes people are
careless.”

My mind had been racing while Simon had been
speaking.

“
Simon, you’re probably right to think that the email and
texts were sent from the City. That makes sense when you consider
that I was photographed in the City yesterday and shot with
paintballs in Greenwich last night. I was wondering, can’t we trace
where the phone is now? I understand we can track mobile phones by
triangulation or cell location or something.”

Simon looked directly at the two of us facing him. He looked
into my eyes as he spoke. “Josh, we’ve pinged that number, by
computer, every thirty seconds since five o’clock yesterday, and we
haven’t had a hit. That suggests to me that Bob knows exactly what
he’s doing. If he’s seen any Hollywood movies he will know that we
can track a phone, even when it’s switched off, or on standby to be
more accurate. However, if you remove the battery......” he let the
thought hang in the air.

I looked at Dee, my mood plummeting. “This is hopeless,” I
said.

Dee tried to find some positives from the meeting. “If you
ping the phone when it’s switched on, can you trace it?”

“
Yes, given enough time,” Simon answered, “but Bob has, so far
at least, kept his messages short and not so sweet. Nothing he’s
sent so far would have given us enough time to track him.” Simon
hesitated before offering more negative news. “To be honest, people
think that we can get an address from a phone’s location, and
sometimes that’s possible in a rural area, but in a place the size
of London the best we can do is narrow it down to a diameter of two
or three hundred yards. A radius like that will include thousands
of people on the street, in shops, offices and hotels, and hundreds
of those will be using phones at any given moment.”

“
So, what are you saying?” I asked, my frustration bringing
hoarseness to my usually controlled voice.

“
I’m afraid, Josh, that as an analyst I can’t give you any
more information than you could guess for yourself. My guess is
that the blackmailer lives or lodges in the City, and is probably
within a mile of us right at this minute, but we simply can’t trace
him electronically.”

“
Wait a minute,” Dee interrupted. “What about his email
address, ‘[email protected]’, or whatever it is? It sounds like
he might have set up his own domain. Can’t we track him that way?”
Simon leaned over and his hands quickly rattled the keys on the
laptop until a new screen appeared.

“
The web domain was set up from an IP address in South Africa,
Johannesburg actually, in 2010, during the World Cup. The IP
address leads back to the Intercontinental Hotel which, according
to the information on lastminuterooms.co.za, has seven hundred and
eleven rooms, all of which would have been full at the time.” Simon
clicked again on the keyboard and a page entitled ‘whois’ appeared
on the screen. “The site was registered and is maintained by
“CoolestDomains” in Thailand. They don’t speak much English but
they told us that the owner paid for two years’ worth of domain
hosting and for ten email addresses up front by credit card. They
gave us his address and card number.”