Captured (13 page)

Neil stood up and took out his phone, trying to think clearly. “Right. Do you know where he lives?”

“No, I’ve kept as far away from him as possible until he turned up at the bank. And I didn’t want to pry in case he found out. What are we going to do?”

Neil walked to the door, but turned and paced back to him. “I don’t know. It might be too late to do anything,” he replied, through gritted teeth.

Simon’s face fell. “Don’t say that. There has to be something we can do!”

Neil tapped at his phone. “There is. We can find out for sure if he’s there, and then work out what to do. It’s ten to five. You still have time to call someone in HR and find out his home address. Do you have a laptop? And you were close friends once right? Can you remember his date of birth and mother’s maiden name? Pets' names. School names. Friends. I need to know everything you know.”

Simon nodded, leading Neil to his home office beside the kitchen.

Daniel’s emails didn’t reveal much more than the fact that he had flown one-way to Bangkok. The confirmation email was dated the night before the flight, which worried Neil a great deal. He’d obviously booked on the spur of the moment. He could find no clue as to what had compelled Daniel though, and that worried him more: he knew he was missing something.

Simon hung up the phone and shook his head. “No luck. They’re pretty strict about privacy.”

Neil shook his head.“I was able to get into his emails. It appears that he booked a flight to Bangkok last Tuesday night, and flew out the following morning.”

The colour drained from Simon’s face, as the corners of his mouth folded downwards. “No. We have to get over there. I told you what he did before.”

Neil grabbed his arm firmly. “We can’t go off half-cocked. If this guy is as mad as you say, we’re going to need every bit of useful information that we can get.”

“He’s a psycho, isn’t that enough information? I’m going to call BA now, and get us on the next flight over there. There’s no point in going to the police, I tried that before.”

Neil nodded, “I’d tend to agree with you on that one.” He took the phone from Simon’s hand.

Simon called out the number he’d found on the corporate directory. Neil was surprised to hear dial-tone, and astonished when he heard “Lane” on the other end of the line.

“Hi there, I’m looking for George Graham?”

“Wrong number. Sorry.”

“What happened?” Simon demanded.

“Nothing. What’s the number for reception?” Neil asked, fingers poised.

“Yes hello there, I called a moment ago looking for Daniel Lane but didn’t get through. Could you forward me to someone in his department? It’s urgent.”

He waited.

“Susan, Bank of North America.”

“Hello Susan. I was looking for Daniel Lane but I can’t seem to reach him.”

“Yes, he’s working from home so he may have popped out. Can I help you with something?”

“Maybe. We were actually supposed to meet. How long will he be out of the office?”

“I don’t know. He’s been out for around a week now. Broken ankle.”

“Ah, I broke mine last year. It’s not pleasant. Listen, do you have his home address? He was supposed to come meet me last night; I guess now I know why he didn’t show. I’d like to stop by and make sure he’s ok.”

“Well...”

“Oh I’m sorry, I’m George Graham. Old friend from Cambridge.”

“Sorry,” Susan laughed apologetically. “All these company information security policies. Never know who’s calling looking for information these days. Let me check our contact list.”

“Thanks a lot, Susan,” Neil said cheerily when she’d read him the address.  He hung up and shrugged.

Neil picked the lock in a matter of seconds. They had managed to get on a direct flight to Bangkok that evening, but had taken a detour via Chelsea at Neil’s insistence. Simon stood behind him nervously shuffling his balance from one foot to the other.

Opening the door and stepping inside quickly to avoid attracting attention, Neil was immediately struck by the air of money the place exuded. Daniel was obviously rich; that was clear now, even if it hadn’t already been apparent from his address. The entire hallway was panelled in dark wood. Neil wasn’t an expert in home decor, but he imagined it wasn’t wood veneer. Expensive-looking paintings decorated its length. Neil couldn’t even begin to imagine how much this place was worth. Nor did he particularly care.

Getting on with the task at hand, they went from room to room, looking for a study or work area. Neil found it in one of the spare bedrooms: a high tech PC installed in an antique oak desk, the flatscreen monitor incongruous in its old world setting. He pressed the switch, waiting impatiently for it to boot up.

Simon left the room and walked back to the master bedroom, surveying the neatly-made bed before opening the first set of wardrobe doors. There were no empty hangers inside. He moved to the next set of double doors and found the same thing: he didn’t appear to have taken much at all, judging from the neatly stacked shelves of cashmere knits and t-shirts. As he turned to leave the room, something on the other side caught his eye.

Neil checked the living room, where he couldn’t help but admire Daniel’s top-of-the-range sound system. The room was dominated by two huge windows, with a glorious view over the city. Apart from the enormous flatscreen TV and a sumptuous suite in burgundy leather, the room was strangely bare. There were no photographs or paintings.

In the dining room he found the same thing: no family photos, no evidence of interests or hints at Daniel’s personality. Frowning, he returned to the computer room, where Simon watched the screen impatiently. Neil shook his head as he entered the room. He had expected to find
something
. He looked at Simon more closely. The other man had turned deathly pale.

“Did you find something?” he asked.

Simon nodded silently. Neil could see the anger almost bursting from every feature on his face. “It’s Kirsty’s.” He held out his hand to reveal a single spherical silver earring. It had been tangled up in the thick carpet pile.

“Are you sure? They all look the same to me,” Neil smirked, and instantly regretted it.

“Yeah, I bought them,” Simon glowered. “I found this one under the bastard’s bed.”

Neil turned to the computer, which had finally finished loading.

Simon continued. “I thought there was something going on between them, but she denied it. When’s he going to stop doing this?”

Neil ignored him and started typing.

“Let’s just go. We don’t need to look at his tax returns, do we?” Simon hovered at the door.

Neil looked back from the monitor and held his hand up. “Just give me a minute. We’ll still make the flight. It doesn’t leave for another four hours.”

As Neil typed furiously, Simon paced behind him, watching anxiously. “Can you do that any faster?” he asked.

Neil took a deep breath and turned around. “Have you checked the kitchen?”

Simon clenched and unclenched his fists, and shuffled to the door. “What do you think we’re going to find in the kitchen?”

“I don’t know, Simon,” Neil answered. “Can you just go look?” He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “There’s nothing else we can do for the moment. If he’s as devious as you say, we don’t know who he’s got working for him.”

Simon shook his head. “But we don’t know what’s happening inside the apartment.”

Neil looked at him coldly. “I know. But we will soon, when we get over there.”

Neil wasn’t sure if he believed Simon’s story yet, and wasn’t sure what he thought of the nervous man who was currently clattering down the hall towards the kitchen. With Grace’s life potentially at stake, he was at ease withholding information from his new companion.

An associate of his was already working to penetrate Bank of North America’s systems to follow the trail of Daniel’s diverted work number. He had already spoken to Mike in Bangkok and asked him to oversee things while they were in the air. Mike was a desk-dweller, but was well connected to others who were not. He had agreed to find someone to watch the building until they arrived. Mike himself was busy figuring out whether the building had CCTV. If it did, his next task would be to hijack it. The next step depended on the outcome of the phone trace. It might all be over by the time Simon and Neil touched down in Bangkok.

Neil turned his attention back to Daniel’s computer. His browser was set up to delete its history each time it was closed, but it wasn’t difficult for Neil to circumvent this. It looked like he mostly browsed Facebook. He filled in the ‘forget password’ information on Facebook and opened Daniel’s email. The program had shown that Daniel’s last email activity took place before he left the UK. Neil carefully deleted the Facebook password update link: with any luck, Daniel would never discover the breach, but if he did, he might just assume it was due to phishers.  He reset Daniel’s password and logged into the social networking site.

The links in Daniel’s browsing history corresponded exclusively to either Kirsty’s profile, or to other users’ photos in which Kirsty appeared. There were hundreds: it appeared that most of Daniel’s time online had been spent following Kirsty’s progress in Asia. The later links brought up pictures of Kirsty with a tall, tanned man.  Neil browsed through them impassively. He opened the only other link in the history and was met with the Bank of North America remote access login screen. He closed the browser: if Daniel was pretending to work from home, then he was probably logged in from somewhere already – Neil didn’t want to risk detection by logging on at the same time.

He noticed the Skype icon in the corner of the screen. He clicked, and waited while the program loaded. He opened the history. Neil didn’t have to look hard: at the top of the list was a call to Kirsty. It had lasted for ten minutes. He scrolled down the list, not recognising any of the other contact names. There were numerous other calls to Kirsty – always Daniel calling her.

Neil scanned the desktop and opened Windows Explorer. Daniel had two hard drives. He opened the folders methodically, scanning the file extensions and sizes. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, rather for something that stood out.

When he had almost finished with the first drive, that something presented itself. It was the only program in the folder, which distinguished it immediately from the other crowded folders on Daniel’s system. He double-clicked. He was faced with a snapshot of a desktop. He could tell it wasn’t of the system he was currently searching: nothing on the desktop matched. For some reason, though, it was still familiar to him.

He opened the Programs link. Nothing stood out: this machine contained only the rudimentary programs that came with the PC. He opened ‘My Documents’. It was a mess of word documents and PDFs, with no meaningful subfolders. He looked at his watch. He didn’t have much time if they were to catch their flight. He scanned the list of documents. Nothing jumped out at him. He started at the beginning, opening them indiscriminately. In the fourth, he found a flight itinerary. He scrolled down quickly, scanning the screen for a name. His eyes widened, remembering the old CRT monitor in the small home office.

“Simon,” he yelled.

There was a moment’s pause before Simon re-entered the room. “Yeah? You find something? We really need to be going.” Simon walked up behind him.

“Look at this.”

“What am I looking at? Oh, it’s mine. Why are you hacking my email when you should be focussing on Daniel’s?” he stopped, watching the screen as Neil closed the document and navigated back to the desktop.

“It’s a snapshot of your desktop.”

“I can see that. But how did you get, and why do you need to look at
my
files?” Simon asked, confused.

“I didn’t,” Neil swivelled to face him.

Simon was silent; finally realising what Neil meant. “How long has he had this? How could he get it?”

“It’s pretty easy to set up, especially if you have the resources that this guy obviously does,” Neil said, gesturing around the sumptuous room. “In all likelihood, he just paid someone to get onto your computer and plan a bug. As long as you didn’t find it, he could log in and clone your computer just about every time you accessed the internet.”

Simon nodded, dumbstruck. “When did he do this?”

“I don’t know. I could dig deeper into the program and find out, but we don’t really have the time now. Has anyone else used your computer recently, aside from you?”

Simon thought for a moment. “No. Not in a long time.”

“No repairman, anything like that?”

“No.”

“They may have watched your house and broken in to plant it,” Neil shrugged, returning everything to the way he found it and shutting down the machine. He pushed the chair back and stood up.

Simon watched him silently, preoccupied. At last he spoke. “So it wasn’t a coincidence that he came to work at the bank?”

“I don’t know,” Neil answered truthfully. “Can you think of any reason why he’d purposely follow you there?”

Simon shook his head. “Anything’s possible with that guy.”