Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (52 page)

Jenny clicked the ‘decline’ button. “Nah, it’s only my Mum.”

“Why are you blushing, then?” enquired Fiona, with a smirk.

Her phone buzzed again. A text this time. Glad of the distraction, she clicked on it. 

Her heart jumped into her mouth.

* * *

Brody stared at his phone on the desk next to his computer. It had full signal. Why didn’t she ring him back?

He stood up and paced around the room, circling his desk so that he could quickly grab the phone when it rang. She would ring. She had to.

Was there something else he could do? Someone else he could call?

No, just give her one more minute.

Like a caged lion, he paced around the mobile phone, then picked it up and re-checked the text he’d sent, just to make sure it was strong enough.

Ring me URGENTLY. Discovered location of killer’s next murder. Happening RIGHT NOW. Brody.

After his talk with Leroy earlier, when he’d finally thrown in the towel on trying to pwn SWY, he’d turned his attention to helping Jenny with her case. At least he’d be trying to help someone, a real person, just as Leroy had suggested. 

Brody had decided to find out for himself if the Flexbase meeting room booking system stored the IP address of whoever connected to their site when they booked a meeting room. Brody hadn’t been at all convinced when Magnus Peggler, the Flexbase IT Director, had said they needed to ask the vendor of the system to access that information. It just didn’t make sense, when all he had to do was access the application’s back-end database with a few SQL queries. Any techie with half a brain could do that. If the police knew the IP address that the killer used when booking the meeting room, then they would obtain a court order and force the Internet Service Provider to divulge the real world location of the IP address’s owner. 

Brody obtained access to Flexbase’s internal systems via the back door Trojan he’d installed the previous day, when he’d visited their head office with Jenny. It had been an impromptu action. Even now, he wasn’t sure why he’d done it. At the time, he hadn’t been sure if Flexbase somehow played into the whole SWY setup and so, to be on the safe side, he’d taken the opportunity to give himself easy future access should he ever need it. 

At least that was what Brody told himself. 

But part of him knew that he’d done it because he
could
. Like a sweet-toothed kleptomaniac stealing a cake when the baker’s back is turned, Brody had installed his remote access Trojan on David Dawson’s laptop. As Jenny and Brody followed Dawson to seek out Ray Stone, Brody had made up an excuse that he’d left his phone in the CEO’s office and ran back for it. In the privacy of Dawson’s office, he’d jumped onto Dawson’s computer and navigated its browser to one of Brody’s compromised websites. It had immediately installed a special payload on Dawson’s computer, ready for whenever Brody chose to use it. Brody had closed down the browser and rushed back to Jenny and Dawson, waving his phone at them.

Through this back door, Brody had full control of Dawson’s laptop, its owner completely unaware it had been enslaved and was being accessed remotely. Dawson was CEO of the company and so he had decent security access. Even so, it didn’t take Brody long to elevate to administrator level and grant himself access to all other servers on the Flexbase network. 

He poked around, trying to stumble across the meeting room booking system from within. What he discovered provided far more information than he could have expected. 

The building control system was web-based and soon he found himself looking at status dashboards for the Docklands building. By floor, he could see air conditioning, temperature, as well as how many people were present, based on entry and exit through the building’s security system. He was able to patch into its CCTV system. He found the cameras above the reception, noticing the redheaded super-model receptionist. The blonde one was absent. He found cameras monitoring the secure datacentre room on the floor above, neat rows of computer racks. He clicked through to the dashboards for the datacentre and saw real-time graphs displaying the flow of electricity, battery charges within the uninterruptible power supply should the external power supply drop, and even the status of oxygen levels within the room. The datacentre employed a hypoxic fire suppression system that lowered the amount of oxygen in the room to below the amount required for combustion to take place, but high enough to breathe safely. 

Brody was intrigued; he’d never hacked into a building control system before. Most of them were proprietary systems, and not usually connected to the IP network, making it almost impossible to gain access remotely. But Flexbase had installed the most ultra modern systems in order to show off their prowess. If only they knew that by doing so, they had opened themselves up to attack. It was a good job he wasn’t a black hat or performing a pentest; he’d have a field day.

Eventually, he discovered the back-end database server used by the meeting room booking system and gave himself full access.

He ran some initial sizing queries and, discovering that it wasn’t that huge, downloaded a complete copy of the database so that, offline, he could safely analyse it to his heart’s content. It didn’t take long for him to find the database table with the core booking records. He scanned the columns and clenched his fist in triumph. There was indeed a column in the table that stored IP addresses. 

Filtering the records based on the dates of the murders and the locations of Paddington and Watford, Brody rapidly homed in on the meeting room bookings made by the killer. The IP addresses used for both bookings were the same. Excited, Brody quickly cut-n-pasted the address into a reverse IP lookup website to see if it could shed any light on the real world location.

To his initial surprise, a specific address in the town of Newbury in Berkshire was listed.

Newbury? Wasn’t there something about Newbury?

After a moment, Brody remembered what it was and smiled grimly at the screen. The murderer was either dead lucky or dead smart. The address was for Vodafone, the massive mobile phone company, with headquarters located in Newbury. Which meant that the murderer had accessed the meeting room booking website via his mobile phone. Brody couldn’t take it any further himself without access to Vodafone’s systems. However, the police could work with Vodafone to obtain the mobile phone number mapped to the IP address at the time the booking system was accessed.

If they were lucky, the phone number would come with a name and address of the account owner. However, if it was a pay-as-you-go number, there would likely be no details. Brody was pretty sure it would be pay-as-you-go. No one would be that stupid. Especially someone intent on committing murder.

Brody ran a query using the IP address as the search key to see if the murderer had made any more bookings. He was shocked at the results when he saw hundreds of records. But then he realised that many Flexbase customers must access the system from mobile devices connected in via the Vodafone network.

Brody was about to stop there but, staring at the raw records of the Watford meeting room booking on his screen, he noticed something. Following the train of thought, he quickly brought up the Paddington booking and saw the same pattern. In both cases, the murderer had booked more than one room in the building. Brody recalled Jenny explaining this yesterday. 

Brody reckoned that it would be unusual for multiple meeting rooms to be booked at the same time by the same person. And with that in mind, he constructed a query against the database that searched all Flexbase offices for meeting room bookings with a similar pattern. He narrowed it down to the last six months. After a few refinements, the query returned the two bookings he knew about, as they naturally fitted the pattern.

But there were also four others.

Brody stared at his screen, initially not believing the breakthrough he’d achieved. He checked the IP address used to make the bookings and saw that it was the same. He’d found four more of the murderer’s bookings. Four they knew nothing about. 

And then he spotted the date and time of the first booking. It was for today in a Flexbase office in Windsor. He looked at his watch with a sinking feeling. Shit, the reservation had begun fifty minutes ago.

Immediately he’d phoned Jenny, but had got no answer. He’d left a voicemail and then rapidly typed out his text to her.

The other three reservations were for dates over the next few weeks, in different Flexbase offices all over the country.

Still pacing around the desk, Brody willed his phone to ring.

When it did, it made him jump. He grabbed at it, clumsily knocking it flying off his desk. But his adrenalin was flowing now and he managed to grab it before it hit the hardwood floor.

“Jenny, he’s struck again.”

CHAPTER 18

“Miss McNeil?”

Sarah had been surprised to hear her name come from the man’s lips. 

She’d been playing the guessing game as internal staff came down to greet their guests. It was a busy reception with a constant stream of visitors. Each time a man exited the lifts behind reception and made his way through the turnstiles, she’d predicted whether or not he was Francis Delacroix. So far, she’d been wrong twice. Both times the person had called out someone else’s name and escorted them back through security. Sarah was expecting a middle-aged gentleman, overweight from too many client lunches, and wearing a sharp suit without a tie, his shirt collar open — after all, she knew he was American.

She had completely discounted the man who was greeting her now, with his dark beard and moustache. He wore black jeans, black boots, a plain black sweatshirt, a black cap and large dark sunglasses. The only colour was the flash of gold in the prominent Adidas logo embroidered on his cap. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Yes I’m Sarah McNeil.” 

Hesitantly, she held out her hand.

“Francis sent me down to collect you. He’s stuck on a conference call with the States.” With a slight smirk, he stared at her outstretched hand. As if making an important decision, he finally reached out his own and they shook hands lightly. She couldn’t help but notice his sweaty palms and she did her best not to wipe her own hand after he turned his back and headed towards the security turnstiles.

Rather than go through the staff turnstile, he waved a security pass at the receptionist and stood by the glass door. The receptionist pressed a button and it swung backwards, allowing them both through.

The lift opened silently at the press of a button. Inside he pressed ‘six’, the top floor. The doors glided to a close.

Sarah stood slightly behind the man. She was disconcerted by his casual appearance and complete lack of graces. He hadn’t introduced himself and offered no small talk. He hadn’t even looked her in the eye, although it was hard to tell behind those dark sunglasses. And anyway, why the hell was he wearing them indoors?

Sarah collected herself. In her mind, she rehearsed her opening chitchat, reminding herself to politely ask about Mr Delacroix’s flight. She tapped the leather satchel hanging from her shoulder. Inside were the last six issues of
Commercial Aviation News
. She would walk Mr Delacroix through them. She straightened her skirt and made sure her blouse was tucked in.

The doors opened and, without a word, the man stepped out and turned left. Sarah followed. Half-height sections of clear glass between the building’s structural pillars acted as a continuous wall, preventing anyone plummeting six floors to certain death. She glanced into the open space of the atrium and was abruptly reminded that she was uncomfortable with heights. She immediately adjusted the line of her walk so that she was within touching distance of the grey wall on her left, which made its way right around the perimeter of the atrium, regularly interrupted with numbered oak doors.

At Room 613, the man stopped, opened it and indicated she should enter.

“I’ll go get Mr Delacroix.” 

Sarah entered the meeting room and looked back to see the strange man close the door behind her. She was alone. 

An oak meeting table with eight black leather and chrome chairs took up most of the space. A large window looked out onto the town. At this height, she had a wonderful view of Windsor Castle. She wondered if the Queen was in residence. Sarah had once toured the castle on a school trip and recalled that the Queen often held Easter Court during March and April. She spotted a Union Jack flying above the castle, but then couldn’t remember whether its presence meant the Queen was there or not. 

Admonishing herself for not keeping her mind focused on her meeting, Sarah turned her back on the view.

She placed her satchel on one of the chairs and then noticed tea and coffee flasks, cups and saucers, bottles of water and upside-down glasses laid out neatly on a side table. There were even biscuits, which made her realise she’d skipped breakfast. She wondered whether she should pour herself a drink, but decided it was probably more professional to wait for her host. But maybe, if she was quick, she could sneak just one biscuit? Their presence had set her stomach off. She was starving. She even felt an ominous rumble and then began worrying that it would be audible during her meeting. Damn, what a basic mistake to have made.

The door opened. 

Sarah turned to greet Francis Delacroix, only to find that it was the same man again, still wearing his cap and sunglasses. She did her best to mask her disappointment. He walked around the table towards her.

“Mr Delacroix said he’ll only be another five minutes.” With one hand he indicated the beverages, the other remained behind his back. “Would you like a cuppa while you’re waiting?”

“Uh, yes thanks.” 

The man made to move past her, but she said, “It’s okay, I can make it.” If he left, then with five minutes’ wait she could munch through a few biscuits and stop her stomach from gurgling.

She turned her back on him and took a cup, trying to decide between tea or coffee. She reached for the coffee flask.