Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (57 page)

No one would ever figure out his shadow network of network video recorder laptops, hidden in plain site outside each of the webcam locations. Which reminded him: he needed to pop down to Charlton tomorrow and remove the car that had been parked down the road from
Student Heaven
for the last few years. 

It was quite timely, as it turned out, because he had recently identified a new webcam location in Brighton to add to the SecretlyWatchingYou site. His original plan had been to pop across the river to Deptford that evening, buy a new car at auction and then drive it to the south coast the next day. But with the vehicle in Charlton no longer required there, he would redeploy it to Brighton instead.

The location in Brighton was a tricky one. He knew he’d need to be patient waiting for a parking spot, free of yellow lines, to appear on the residential back street perpendicular to the main road where his target location lay. If he could get a decent line of sight, then it would work. And the gay massage parlour that offered services way beyond what was written on the price list displayed outside would become a new source of revenue on SWY. While it was not to his personal taste, their hidden webcam streams were bound to become a hit with a fair proportion of his voyeuristic customers; after all, SWY didn’t discriminate. 

Crooner42 checked the customer count and nearly choked on his coke. He almost had to pinch himself at the numbers. It was a brand new record, well over six thousand viewers active concurrently. He checked the total number of paid registrations and saw that it had increased by nearly a thousand new registrations since he’d last checked the day before. At this rate, he’d have over one hundred thousand paying customers by the end of the week. 

Satisfied that SWY was in good shape, he moved on to his next task, the one he had been savouring the thought of all day. 

Crooner42 sat at his desk, using a proper computer with a keyboard, rather than the tablet PC he used to control SWY. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation and, tunnelling through VPN server and TOR, logged into the CrackerHack forums, confident that his IP address could not be traced. He navigated to the discussion area entitled ‘Vorovskoy Mir’s Cyber Most Wanted’. The third name on the list was labelled ‘Fingal’ and the reward for information leading to his capture was $1 million in bitcoins; no questions asked. Crooner42 had no idea what Fingal had done to upset the Russian Mafia so badly, but nor did he care. This was revenge. Soon enough, instead of a silhouette, Fingal’s real face would be displayed with the word ‘ELIMINATED’ across it, just like the four losers at the bottom of the list.

 Crooner42 clicked on a button to submit a tip. On the form that was presented, he entered the identity information he had uncovered for Brody Taylor earlier that day. His Upper Street address, his passport number; everything he had found. Crooner42 also entered his own bitcoin wallet address, the only linkage back to himself and even then it was almost impossible to trace. Although Crooner42 would have happily offered up Fingal’s identity for free, if the Russian Mafia wanted to pay him for the information, who was he to object?

Just as he was about to press the submit button, an alert sounded on his tablet PC. 

He picked it up and quickly navigated to the issue. It was the
Au Pair Affair
location. According to the error message, the shadow PC had gone offline. He brought it up on the centre screen on the bank of screens opposite. Sure enough, the video streams were completely black. 

He ran through the usual recovery processes. He sent a reboot command via the pay-as-you-go mobile phone connected to the computer at the location. He gave it a minute but nothing happened. He tried remotely connecting via the broadband router in the Saxtons’ house. Again, no joy. He started to resign himself to a physical site visit.

It wasn’t that concerning, just an inconvenience. Every now and then, a location would go offline and require in-person recovery. Most often it was a fault with the laptop or the batteries. One time, he’d arrived to discover the car had been stolen. He wondered what the thieves had made of the boot full of batteries and the laptop.

He looked up the address of the
Au Pair Affair
location on the system. It was in Bushey in Hertfordshire. He recalled the location. It was a well-to-do residential street with his car parked on the cul-de-sac opposite the massive detached house. 

He temporarily disabled it from the SecretlyWatchingYou site. That way his customers would no longer see
Au Pair Affair
listed and wouldn’t then complain about a series of black screens. But the problem would need to be dealt with swiftly.

It was looking like he would need to visit Bushey. 

Crooner42 returned his attention to the Most Wanted list. All the identity data he’d filled in about Fingal was still there. He took a deep breath and, with a flourish, clicked the submit button.

* * *

As the taxi disappeared down the road, Derek Saxton fished his keys out of his pocket. They spilled out of his hands and dropped to the ground. He bent down to pick them up but lost his balance, falling forward and crashing into the front gate outside his home. 

“Oops-a-daisy,” he slurred to himself. He grabbed hold of the gate and slowly pulled himself up, only just remembering to grab the keys.

This time, he concentrated harder. He pressed the remote control button on the key fob. The electric gate obligingly slid to one side. Tentatively, he made his way across his driveway, careful to put one foot in front of the other.

He reached the porch, assiduously selected the right key and attempted to push it into the Yale lock of the grand double door. It took him three attempts to pinpoint it correctly, but even then it wouldn’t go in more than halfway. Confused, he examined his keys. He’d correctly chosen the shiny silver one. The others were all brass or mortice keys. He tried again.

It slowly dawned on him what was going on and anger coursed through his veins.

“Hilary,” he shouted, banging on the door, “Fucking let me in.”

No answer. He shouted and thumped it again, this time with even more force.

“What do you want, Derek?”

Her calm voice came from behind him. He whirled around, but no one was there. His momentum continued and he staggered out of the porch and onto the granite paving stones of the drive, only just maintaining his balance. 

“You’re drunk.” Her voice was coming from above, oozing disgust. The upstairs hall window was open. She stood there regally, clutching a sleeping Izzy to her bosom. 

“You changed the locks.” It came out as an accusation rather than the question he had intended.

“What did you expect?”

“Let me in, Hilary.” It took every ounce of effort not to shout. He didn’t want to wake Izzy. In fact, he didn’t want Izzy to see him like this. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About us? You, me, Izzy.”

“Us?” her voice was high-pitched, incredulous. “You ruined
us
when you fucked the babysitter.”

“But . . .” He didn’t have an answer.

He had done that. But he hadn’t meant for it to turn out like this. 

It wasn’t really his fault. Not all of it anyway. He had tried to resist the temptress, who had constantly paraded around the house half-naked, leading him on, teasing him. And always when Hilary was out. But what hope did he have? He was a red-blooded man, not a stone cold statue. 

“It was your stupid idea to get a live-in au pair. Now I know why.”

“No. It’s not like that, darling,” he pleaded. “I was thinking of you—”

She hissed at him, “I’m not your darling.” Izzy stirred in her arms and Hilary rocked her gently. When she spoke again, she was calmer. “Not being able to keep your dick in your pants I can almost understand. You’ve never stopped pining for your damn rugby days; beer with the lads, women throwing themselves at your feet. I should know. I was one of them.”

“Hilary—”

She held out a hand to silence him. “But you know what I can’t get past, Derek?”

He had no idea. If it wasn’t sleeping with Audri then what the hell was it?

“I thought I knew you, Derek, I really did. But it turns out that you’re a disgusting, dirty old man. You repulse me.”

The damned webcams.

Her words cut him in two, but she wasn’t finished. “You’re not fit to be a father to Izzy. Now go away.”

She reached out her free hand and began pulling the window shut.

“I’m so sorry, darling. It was just a whim. A spur of the moment thing. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She stopped and railed at him, disgust dripping from every word. “You put one of those things in our bedroom, Derek. Our private space. And not content with that, you put one in our bathroom. But worst of all, you put one in the au pairs’ bedroom. They were young women, Derek. Just like Izzy will become one day.
Young women
.”

“But—”

“And to top it all off,” her voice rose as she hurled her accusations at him, “you turn our home into some kind of online Big Brother house, except on TV the contestants know the cameras are there. They
know
.” She took a sharp breath, stifling a sob. “We had no fucking idea. Me. Izzy. Audri. It’s a violation, Derek. You violated us all for your deviant perversions.”

“But I didn’t know, how could I?” he shouted her down, angry now. “I’m a victim too, you know.”

“There’s only one proper victim in all this, Derek. And it’s certainly not you. It’s not even Izzy or me. We’ve had a lucky escape. No Derek, the only victim here is Audri. First you fuck her and then you kill her.”

“I didn’t kill her!”

Hilary was about to retort but bit her tongue. Instead, she shook her head in despair and closed the window shut.

“Please Hilary,” he wailed, falling helplessly to the ground. “Please.”

And before he knew what was happening, he was curled up on his stone patio, crying like a baby.

* * *

“Do you think we should do something?” asked Brody.

“Only if he gets violent,” advised Jenny.

They had observed the whole sorry scene play out from inside Brody’s Smart car parked in the cul-de-sac opposite their house. Both of them had lowered their windows to eavesdrop on the exchange between husband and wife. Saxton was lying on the ground, convulsions racking his body. It was uncomfortable to watch. Jenny glanced at the upstairs hallway window, but Hilary Saxton had disappeared from view.

After a few minutes, Saxton slowly pulled himself to his feet and took a long look at the home he was no longer welcome in. Eventually, he shrugged, zipped up his jacket, buried his hands into his pockets and left by the open gate, turning right towards Bushey village, meandering drunkenly down the street. 

“Who needs SecretlyWatchingYou when you’ve got front row seats?” joked Brody.

Jenny offered a short grunt of agreement. She had little sympathy for Derek Saxton. She recalled his interview at the station a few days before and his complete lack of remorse over his extra-marital behaviour. It wasn’t her job to judge or take sides, but in this instance she’d very much enjoyed observing Saxton face the consequences of his actions. Although she felt sympathy for his wife and baby daughter.

She kept an eye on Saxton as he staggered past Karim Malik’s parked-up Vauxhall Astra, oblivious of the two officers sat within its dark interior. She could just about make out Alan Coombs’ profile in the passenger seat, despite the yellow glare reflecting on the passenger window from a nearby lamppost. Further up the street in the other direction Fiona Jones and Harry O’Reilly sat in Jenny’s own Audi A3, although she couldn’t really see them as they were parked in a much darker spot. 

When deciding on the stakeout, she had first phoned Da Silva to sell him the idea and obtain approval for the overtime. At first, he hadn’t been pleased with her interruption. He was still at Holborn with other members of the investigation team, up to their necks coordinating the following morning’s multi-force exercise to have local police officers show up at every address on the list of IP webcam installations provided by McCarthy. He had brightened when she informed him about the hundreds of cars registered at the fake address in Stratford, each containing the shadow PCs that made SWY work. For each address they found broadcast on SWY, then additional evidence would be provided by seeking out and seizing the car parked nearby. Delighted, he had eagerly approved the overtime without even checking with DCS McLintock.

Her team had been much less thrilled. They had still been in The Dolphin when she phoned, many more sheets to the wind than when she had left them. Well, except for Karim, who never drank. He had driven them up to Bushey for the stakeout, after collecting three walkie-talkies from the station. When they arrived an hour later, soft drinks and kebabs in hand, she introduced them all to Brody, only remembering that Harry had met him the day before when he deliberately snubbed Brody’s outstretched hand. She quickly organised the three vehicles so that they covered all entrances and exits to the area and each had an unobstructed view of the grey SEAT Toledo. 

It was going to be a long night. But probably much longer for Alan, Fiona and Harry, whose hangovers would no doubt kick-in halfway through. Thinking about her team made her recall the concerns they had voiced in the pub earlier. 

“Something’s bothering me, Brody.”

“I thought something was up.” He turned to look at her. She kept her eyes on the SEAT. “What is it?”

She folded her arms. “How did you figure out the booking in Windsor earlier?”

“Does it matter?” When she didn’t reply, he answered his own question. “Obviously it does.”

He gave the impression that he was disappointed that he had to explain himself. She turned to face him, needing to see if he would lie right to her face. Harry was convinced he was some kind of computer hacker and must have hacked his way into Flexbase to find out the information.

There was an almost imperceptible pause before he spoke. 

“I had help, but I promised not to give up his name. He’d lose his job.”