Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (25 page)

Crooner42 smiled to himself; a private little pat on the back for his genius. His sheer ingenuity in creating SWY in the first place; his commercial savvy in developing a money-spinning machine; his mastery in hardening the site so well that it had survived a twenty-four hour-long attack from one of the best; and his cleverness about manipulating Fingal into this no-win position.

Crooner42 was desperate to know if Fingal had given up. The silence was killing him. He decided to provoke a response to at least determine if Fingal was still in the game. He composed a post on the forum.

Crooner42:
It’s awfully quiet out there. Has SWY got you beat Fingal? Matt_The_Hatter? You’ve had 24 hours already – way more than enough.

Crooner42:
COME ON YOU LOSERS – ADMIT DEFEAT!!!

He waited a while. As he’d hoped, some of the usual suspects weighed in.

Mawrpheus:
Losers, losers, losers! I agree with Crooner – admit defeat you losers.

Random_Ness:
Rubbish. 48 hours is about right for this. Crooner, you can’t declare you’ve beaten them until at least this time tomorrow.

Doc_Doom:
Crooner you’re an overconfident fool. One of those two will take your site down soon enough. Just you watch. And learn.

Crooner42 was pretty sure Doc_Doom was friends with Fingal. Did that mean that he knew for sure that Fingal was still in the game?

Crooner42:
Brave words Doc. But I think not. They are going down…

Doc_Doom:
You’ve changed your tune. Up until yesterday you were a timid mouse on these forums. Now you’re an arrogant prick. 

Crooner42:
Fuck you Doc. I’ve taken out Fingal and Matt_The_Hatter in one swoop. Name anyone else who’s done that.

Doc_Doom:
You’ve done nothing yet.

Crooner42:
Yeah, well where are they then? 

Mawrpheus:
Good question!! Where are they? Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Random_Ness:
LOL

He needed to be more patient. The longer Crooner42 let the competition run, the greater Fingal’s failure would be and, more importantly, the more sensational Crooner42’s victory would be.

He would grant Fingal another day.

While all the unusual network activity was to be expected from a coordinated hacking attempt, Crooner42 did find Fingal’s behaviour, when logged into SWY itself, quite unusual. From observing the logs, he’d noticed that Fingal had maintained a focus on a single webcam location – the one that Crooner42 had christened
Au Pair Affair
. Why would he do that? Why pick just one? It didn’t really make any sense. And why that one? There was nothing special about it as far as Crooner42 could tell. There were far more intriguing locations on the site.

Crooner42 decided to check for himself. He swiped his tablet computer to select the large screen in the centre of his wall of screens. On it, he brought up the
Au Pair Affair
location. There were seven feeds. All showing various rooms in a huge residential house. Ah yes, he remembered this one. It was a huge mansion just outside Watford. A classic nanny-cam fit out. And he’d named it
Au Pair Affair
because, just after he’d added it to the SWY site about eight months ago, he’d once clocked the husband getting it on with the nanny. 

He saw movement in the kitchen. He maximised the feed and turned on the audio.

A woman holding a baby tightly to her chest was confronting six people. He could see the mother full on, and two of the six were men, but from the angle of the camera he could only see the shoulders and backs of the heads of the other four. Even so, he was sure that two of them were uniformed police officers. Interesting.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” demanded the woman.

“No,” said a female voice, softly. Crooner42 couldn’t tell which of the four with their backs to the camera had spoken.

“Where is your husband?” asked another. A male voice.

“Derek? What’s this got to do with Derek?”

“Where is he, Mrs Saxton? We need to talk to him. Urgently.”

“He’s at work.”

“And where is that?” asked the woman.

“In his office in Watford.”

Crooner42 saw two of the figures turn and look at each other, knowingly. From this new side-on view, he could see that the one on the left was the woman. She had shoulder-length brown hair and wore a tight fitting maroon suit, with three-quarter length sleeves revealing slender wrists.   

“The Flexbase building on Clarendon Road?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

The same two figures looked at each other again, this time with genuine confusion.

“My mistake. What’s the address of his office?” asked the woman. Clearly she was in charge.

“On the trading estate on Tolpits Lane. Halfway to Rickmansworth.”

“I know where that is,” said one of the men in full view.

What the woman with the baby said next sent a chill down Crooner42’s back.

“But it can’t be Audri you’ve found! Surely you’ve got it wrong? She’s just a kid, really. She can’t be dead!”

* * *

Brody couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

What the hell had he stumbled into? The nanny, dead?

In his mind, he replayed what he’d observed yesterday. Audri receiving the hand-delivered letter. Getting ready to go out, leaving the house naked under her red coat. Lying to Hilary that she was off to see her friend, when she was clearly meeting the husband illicitly. 

And now she was dead. Murdered even.

Did his knowledge of what he’d seen via SWY make him some kind of witness? Did that mean he had to get involved? Come forward? The last thing he needed was to be forced to explain the webcam site and his involvement with it to the police. If it came up, he’d say he was a normal customer of the website. They’d probably think he was some kind of pervert.

Or should he instead say nothing to the police? It was obvious the perpetrator was Derek Saxton. They’d pull him in, interrogate him and put him away for Audri’s murder. 

Yes, there was absolutely no need for Brody to involve himself at all.

The last thing he needed was the police poking around in his life.

Ten minutes earlier, when the three police cars had screeched to a halt outside the gates to the Saxton household, Brody had been right in the middle of impersonating a BT engineer, which, like most things he did, was probably illegal in some way. 

As the bodies piled out of the cars, Brody thought quickly, checked his clipboard and spoke to the first of them, “You lot here for Number 87 as well?”

The copper said, “No, this is 85.”

“Is it?” Brody made a show of looking for confirmation, pointed at the number sign on the wall and then hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, tutting. “You’re right, I’ll leave you to it.” Brody picked up his silver briefcase and started off in the direction of Number 87. After a few steps, he turned back to the policeman. “What’s going on?”

“None of your business. On your way, mate.”

Brody walked away, attempting to maintain a measured pace, completely against the wishes of his legs, which desperately wanted to break into a sprint. 

He stopped at Number 87. It had a solid wooden double-gate for vehicles and separate arched doorway for people on foot. An old-school bell push was mounted on the door. He pretended to press it, waited, and looked back at the police.

Number 85’s electric gate started to slide open. Brody’s eyes were drawn to one of the two women in the group. She wore a sharp maroon suit with three-quarter-length sleeves, slender arms, skirt just above the knee, bare legs and shiny black heels. Exuding a business-like air, she swiftly entered the premises. The others followed close behind.

With no one left watching him, Brody turned and walked off. Once out of sight, he removed the yellow vest and the fleece with the BT logo, rolled them up in a bundle and placed them under a bush at the border of someone’s garden. He turned around and casually walked back to his car parked in the cul-de-sac opposite. From the driver’s seat, he was able to observe Number 85. The right-hand gate was now open and a uniformed officer stood guard at the front door.

Brody opened up his tablet PC and reconnected to the Internet, pulled up the SWY site and quickly brought up the feed, which was when he’d heard Hilary Saxton’s disbelief at the news of her nanny’s death.

“We’ll need to get the body formally identified to be sure,” said a woman’s voice. He was unable to determine which of the seven people in the kitchen had spoken. Two were in full view alongside Hilary Saxton, who was holding her baby to her shoulder, so it wasn’t either of them. The others all had their backs to the camera. The voice continued, “Do you have any contact details for her family?”

“Yes, I think so, DI Price. Somewhere.”

“Can you get them, please?” From the head movements, Brody had determined that the female voice belonged to the leftmost person. DI Price. He spied the maroon-coloured shoulder, the same as the suit jacket he’d noticed earlier.

“They’ll be in the study. I’ll go get them.” 

When the door closed behind Hilary, DI Price began giving orders.

“Right. Al, you get yourself down to the husband’s office on Tolpits Lane. Joe, can you go with Alan, a bit of local knowledge and all that.”

Brody caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked up from the computer. The front door opened and two uniformed policemen walked out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. He presumed that two of them were Alan and Joe. They walked over to one of the marked cars.

But, back on the screen, no one had moved. DI Price was still handing out orders.

“I’d prefer it if you could just verify Saxton’s there, make sure he goes nowhere and wait until I join you. I want to be there when we arrest him. Take some uniform with you.”

“Where are we taking him?” asked one of the plainclothes officers. Either Alan or Joe, Brody couldn’t tell.

“Holborn.”

The four men made to leave the kitchen, the same four men he’d already observed exit the house from his vantage point across the road. Brody realised abruptly that the video footage was a minute or so behind real time. 

Price said she’d only be a few minutes behind them; she just wanted to secure the crime scene first. Hilary Saxton returned and handed over a piece of paper.

“Audri made me promise never to contact her family. She only gave me the address because I demanded it for emergencies. She said she had fallen out with her mother.” Hilary’s voice cracked, clearly not far from tears. “God, that’s terrible. To be told your daughter has been killed…” She pulled Izzy closer to her and rocked from side to side.

“She’s from Sweden?” asked Price, having read the piece of paper.

Hilary nodded, tears falling now.

“Mrs Saxton, can you show DC Jones here where Audri’s room is?”

Hilary nodded and wiped her eyes. She left the kitchen. The person on the right followed her. As they moved more into the camera’s range, Brody could see that DC Jones was also female.

The front door opened again. Brody looked up from his PC. The attractive detective, in her maroon suit, exited, followed by a man with olive skin. On-screen, they were still in the kitchen. The time lag was confusing.

“Karim, you stay here with Mrs Saxton,” she said onscreen. “Make sure she doesn’t tip-off the husband we’re coming.”

In front of him, the same woman walked down the path towards the gate and the cars. As she neared, Brody began to make out her features more clearly. She briefly looked upwards and flicked her hair to one side, a gesture that revealed soft, full lips, a delicate, straight nose, prominent cheekbones and dimples. An attractive police detective. Now that was interesting.

The onscreen Karim said, “Sure, Jenny.”

Brody spoke aloud: “Looks like you and I need to get to know each other, DI Jenny Price.”

CHAPTER 9

Alan Coombs was waiting for them as Jenny and Hamid exited the lift.

“That’s his office, there.” He was pointing at a closed door with
Saxton Sports Management
engraved on its frosted window. “I’m pretty sure he’s in there, Jen.”

“Unless he’s done a runner without his car,” said Jenny. “I was talking to DS Selby downstairs. He spotted a Merc in the car park with a personalised number plate and ran a PNC check.”

“So you’ve not seen Saxton then?” asked DI Hamid.

“Nah. Just made sure no one came in or out. I can hear voices and movement.” 

Jenny knocked on the door and entered without waiting. Alan and Hamid followed behind her.

A pretty girl, almost bursting out of a short, green dress, looked up from reading a wedding magazine. She was behind a small, smoked glass reception desk in the centre of the room, her long, tanned legs visible through the glass. Shiny, black rectangular leather sofas were pushed up against the walls offering seating for waiting guests. Above them and all around the room, large, square framed black and white portraits of sports stars — most caught in action, a few posing — adorned the walls, each with messages and autographs scribbled on them in marker pen. Jenny recognised a few of them. 

On either side of the only other door in the room, behind the reception desk, were two much larger prints, both showing the same young rugby player in two different strips. 

Coombs pointed at them and whispered to Jenny, “That’s Derek Saxton in his glory days.”

“Can I help you?” asked the receptionist, standing up. She was a little taller than Jenny, but glancing down, Jenny realised the girl’s improbable stilettos accounted for most of the difference.