Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (37 page)

He joined his flatmate and his boyfriend. Their table was littered with their half-consumed cappuccinos and cakes. After swapping greetings and pleasantries, Brody became aware of someone standing behind him. He turned to see Stefan, the head barista.

“Ah, Mr Brody, so glad to see you. I was just asking Mr Leroy where you been lately.”

Leroy chuckled, “Yeah, and I told Stefan that you’ve been busy playing handcuff games with a sexy policewoman.”

“He’s always joking is Mr Leroy. Always joking. What can I get you Mr Brody? Let me guess . . .”

Brody allowed Stefan to play out their customary guessing game. He still felt bad for his behaviour two days ago. As usual, Stefan guessed correctly: a single espresso. Realising how famished he was, Brody requested a toasted ciabatta with Parma ham and sun-dried tomatoes. Stefan skipped away with the order.

“So, how was it?” asked Leroy, sitting forward eagerly. “I was just telling Danny about your dodgy voyeur site, the dead babysitter and the foxy police detective you’ve just conned your way into meeting.”

“There are easier ways to get dates, Brody,” chimed in Danny, with a big, beefy smile.

“Really?” responded Leroy, with a knowing wink. “And you think following me into every night club in Key West counts as subtle?”

“I think you’ll find that you’re the one who did all the stalking,” retorted Danny.

“It wasn’t a date,” stated Brody bluntly. “I was working.”

“Working?” Leroy’s question was filled with convivial incredulity. “Since when have you ever had to hold down a job like us mere mortals?”

Normally, Brody enjoyed nothing more than bantering with Leroy and Danny. But he was itching to get going with his new inside track into SWY. He fished his tablet PC out of his bag, opened it up and powered it on. 

“See,” he said, pointing at his computer. “I’m still working.”

Leroy sensed the seriousness in Brody’s reply, looked at his partner and shrugged.

Ever since Jenny — he couldn’t think of her as DI Price, despite her initial insistence on professional formality — had dropped him off at Holborn tube station earlier, he had been dying to explore his newfound knowledge. The journey back had not elicited much more information. She had spent a lot of it on the phone but with earphones plugged in so that he could only catch her side of her conversations, most of which were her asking questions about the progress on the cases, hearing the responses, and asking more. It amazed him the level of detail that the police had to wade through when processing a murder case. Never mind two.

But the cases were none of his business. His objective had been to learn how the webcams at the Saxton household were routed through to SWY. While it turned out to be far more convoluted than he’d thought, at least he’d made some progress. 

“You didn’t answer my question, Brody,” persevered Leroy. “How was it?”

“Interesting,” said Brody, noncommittally. His tablet had woken from sleep mode and connected to his private Wi-Fi network successfully. As always, he rerouted his traffic via TOR and two proxy servers. Once he was safe, he brought up the HomeWebCam site that the Saxtons had been using to remotely view their webcams. 

Brody had been pleased with the subtle way that he’d got both Hilary and Derek Saxton to login, on
Brody’s
computer, to
their
accounts on the HomeWebCam site. Before he’d turned the tablet around for them to login to the site, he’d switched on a keystroke logger. Both their passwords were now neatly stored on his tablet PC in plain text. Brody looked up Derek’s password and logged into the HWC site using his credentials. As far as the HomeWebCam administrators were concerned, Derek Saxton had just logged in.

Leroy explained to Danny, “When he’s like this it’s easier to get blood out of a stone. Watch this . . .”

Brody had three or four theories as to how SWY received the feeds from the Saxton household. 

“. . . Look!” exclaimed Leroy. Through his peripheral vision Brody was vaguely aware of Leroy pointing at something. “That kid has just nicked Stefan’s tip from that table. Can you fucking believe it, Brody?”

Brody clicked through to Derek’s account settings within the HomeWebCam site. As he thought, a specific IP address and port number were listed against ‘webcam server’ alongside space for his username and password details. Brody surmised it was the public IP address of his broadband router and that port forwarding would be configured on the router to send all traffic on the named port through to the PC located within the Saxton household. Acting as a local network video server, it consolidated and stored the high-bandwidth video traffic and was the point of contact from external sources such as the HomeWebCam site. 

Leroy added, “Bloody hell! Now he’s reaching over the counter and helping himself to the money in Stefan’s till. Shouldn’t we do something, Brody?”

Having met Derek Saxton, Brody surmised that configuring port forwarding on a router was way beyond the ex-rugby player’s capabilities. Which meant that the CCTV installation firm he had mentioned had probably done it as part of the service they provided. Which probably meant they’d made life easier for themselves in regard to helpdesk support. He fired up the remote desktop application built into Microsoft Windows and pointed it at the same IP address, but over port 3389. He waited, not really sure if this would work.

Leroy reared back in his chair and sucked air through his teeth as if in pain. “Jesus-fucking-Christ, Stefan’s only slammed the till on the thief’s fingers. Look Brody!”

It worked. Up popped a Microsoft Windows login screen, but from the screen of the network video recorder PC in the Saxton household fifteen miles away. The remote desktop application, which Brody knew from common knowledge defaulted to port 3389, allowed him to interact with the PC as if he was right in front of it. Brody reused the username and password details he’d already conned out of Derek Saxton. The mouse pointer icon turned to an hourglass for a second . . .

“I reckon we’d better phone the hospital,” said Danny, reaching for his phone. “And the police. This is going to get ugly. Brody, what do you reckon?”

. . . He was in. The PC was running Windows 7. He quickly navigated around, looking for the master webcam program so that he could understand how it was all set up.

“I give up,” said Leroy. “See, he’s so single minded when he’s like this.”

Brody found the webcam server application. It was set up for all seven cameras. There were no others. There were settings for everything: how many minutes to maintain recordings on the PC; full motion or drop the frame rate down to a more manageable number to save disk space; audio configuration; motion activation; and a myriad of lower level settings. 

Stefan returned, placing Brody’s toasted sandwich, espresso and glass of tap water down beside him. 

“Don’t worry, Stefan. It’s not you,” said Leroy. “He’s plugged into cyberspace like in
The Matrix
. He has no idea you’re even there, mate.”

Stefan shrugged and left.

With this additional information, Brody was now down to only two working theories as to how the webcam feeds made it through to SWY. The first, and more likely, was that the SWY website was also connecting into the server in the Saxton household using the same port and security credentials as HomeWebCam. Which meant, unbeknownst to the Saxtons, their webcam server was being accessed remotely by two completely different websites. The legitimate one they knew about, HomeWebCam, and another that they had been completely unaware of, SecretlyWatchingYou.

There was one way to confirm and it looked as though the CCTV installers were making it easy for him once more. Microsoft Network Monitor had been installed on the network video PC in the Saxton household. He guessed that the CCTV installers had done this so that they could quickly debug any issues remotely should the Saxtons ever call their helpdesk with a problem. Using the Network Monitor, Brody was able to study the network traffic in and out of the webcam server at packet level, the lowest level of detail.

“Shall we head off then?” asked Danny.

After scanning the network logs on the remote PC, Brody discarded his theory that SWY was directly accessing the webcam server in the Saxton household. The only access to the Saxtons’ PC was from the HomeWebCam site itself. Which meant that Brody was now down to one last working theory, one that would be much harder for Brody to progress from here. This theory was that SWY was obtaining its webcam feeds indirectly from the HomeWebCam website. Which led to the obvious question: were the HomeWebCam site administrators oblivious to this access by SWY or were they in on it?

Brody sighed. This challenge truly was impossible. He still hadn’t tracked down a back door route into SWY.

“May as well,” agreed Leroy. “One last attempt at communication. Right, here goes. Brody, we’re off. See you later, mate.”

Brody looked up, noticing his friends were gathering their belongings. “You off?” he asked.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“What?” asked Brody.

* * *

Sarah’s phone rang. Number withheld.

She hoped it wasn’t that finance lady from the Sunnyside again. But then Sarah remembered that when she’d phoned earlier, the care home’s phone number in nearby Burnham Beeches had popped up on her screen.

Hesitantly, Sarah answered it. “Sarah McNeil,
Commercial Aviation News
.”

“Ah, Miss McNeil. I wonder if you can help me.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been given your name by John over at the CAA. He told me that
Commercial Aviation News
is the best business-to-business magazine in the UK for aviation.”

John must have been someone she had cold-called at the Civil Aviation Authority, although she didn’t recall any meaningful conversations with the CAA. Still, it was nice that someone had listened and word of mouth still worked in this day and age.

“Yes, we have a monthly readership of over one hundred and twenty-three thousand professionals right across the broader UK aviation industry. How can I help you, Mr . . .?”

“Oh yes, sorry I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Francis Delacroix. I’m the Marketing Director for FCS Software. In the USA, we’ve developed an advanced flight control computer system that’s now in use in many American commercial airports. We’re looking to launch with a bang in the UK over the next four weeks.”

Sarah could all but see pound signs going off like fireworks all around her. She took a breath and tried to stay calm. Finally, she had struck gold.

“You’ve come to the right place, Mr Delacroix. Through our magazine, Internet presence and our annual exhibition – which is in four weeks I might add – we should be able to help you build awareness with virtually everyone in the UK aviation industry.”

“That sounds fantastic. Well, I’m looking to do eight-page advertorials, exhibit at your event and place some standard adverts, print and online, for an initial run of about six months. Are you the right person to assist me?”

“Why yes, I am Mr Delacroix!” Sarah’s sales training kicked in. “Do you have a budget in mind?”

“Well, yes of course. Good question. Glad to see I’m dealing with a professional,” he laughed. “We need a high impact product launch, so our marketing budget is well over $200,000. I haven’t decided how to break that down yet, but I’d really like to discuss this with you in person.”

Two hundred thousand dollars. Sarah quickly calculated the exchange rate. He was going to spend around £120,000. Her monthly target was only £5,000. This was a life-changing deal. She would be
numero uno
on the leader board overnight and stay there for at least six months. 

But she was an internal sales representative.

“Well,” she hesitated, “I usually do all my business over the phone . . .”

“Oh, that’s disappointing. Well, I’m told there’s also the CAA’s own industry magazine, but —”

“— No, don’t worry. Yes, of course we can meet.”

“That’s great. Let’s see. I fly into Heathrow tomorrow and I’ve got some meetings in the afternoon. Would you be able to meet me at our offices in Windsor in the morning? Say, 11:00 a.m.?”

Windsor was only about twenty minutes’ drive from her home. Thank God he hadn’t said Edinburgh or somewhere far away. But her job was to find and close deals over the phone. She wasn’t like the more experienced external sales people working the more prestigious titles who met with customers face-to-face all the time, wining and dining them. If she mentioned this to Joe Ashley, he would take control of the opportunity himself,
and
all the commission. No, she would do this herself. She would book a half-day’s annual leave for tomorrow, claiming something had come up with her Dad. That way, she could land this opportunity singlehanded, prove herself and make sure all the kudos and, more importantly, the unimaginable amounts of commission, stayed with her.

“Yes, I can do 11:00 a.m. Can you let me have an address and phone number, please?”

* * *

Jenny pushed open the door of the major incident room’s adjoining meeting room and felt the tension immediately. Da Silva and the core officers from the murder investigation team — DS Coombs, DC Malik, DC Jones, Jason Edmonds from SOCO, the pathologist Dr Gorski and DS Schuster, the press officer — all sat rigidly around the long table.

“Ah, good timing, DI Price,” said a relieved Da Silva from the top of the table.

What the hell was going on? The next briefing was supposed to have been in an hour from now. What had happened to the pact Da Silva had made with her yesterday? They had agreed that they would plan the team briefing sessions together and pre-assign actions, then jointly host the briefings. All in a collaborative effort to help Da Silva gain credibility with the team.

Alan caught her eye and nodded knowingly to the speakerphone in the centre of the table. She saw that its three LED lights were green, indicating it was on.

“DI Price as well, eh?” sniggered a deep voice from the speakerphone. Jenny recognised DCS McLintock’s West Country accent. “Raul, you may as well call me back from the middle of the incident room. You seem to have pretty much squashed the whole enquiry team into that alcove.”