Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (66 page)

“Exactly. Well, we tracked down the killer earlier today by correlating user activity within the site. He’s a Flexbase employee called Ronald Keeble. That’s the company whose meeting rooms were used. As an employee, he knew their booking systems inside out and he was in the SecretlyWatchingYou user database. The police are arresting him right now.”

He copied the Gmail address that Keeble had used, the same one that was linked to his PayPal account. He flipped windows and pasted the address into the PayPal login screen.

“I think they’re arresting the wrong guy.”

He switched back to SWY. He found the corresponding password details. Not caring about user privacy, Crooner42 had stored them as plain text. He copied the password, switched back to PayPal and pasted it in. Pressing enter, he prayed the passwords were the same on both sites. 

“And you know all this because?”

“Because the guy they’re arresting is gay. A gay man is hardly likely to be going about raping and killing women.”

The password worked. He was inside the PayPal account. He navigated through the account settings and brought up the bank account details linked to the PayPal account. 

“And that just dawned on you upstairs, did it?”

“Kind of. Danny wears a rainbow ring. So does his boyfriend, Leroy. They bought them for each other a couple of years ago. I think the rainbow refers to the gay pride rainbow flag.”

“I’m not with you.”

“I was in Flexbase the other day and I met Keeble. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he was also wearing a rainbow ring. But seeing Danny’s ring just now jogged my memory.”

“So how come you narrowed down on him in the first place?”

“I didn’t. I narrowed down to an email address in his name. It was linked to a PayPal account.”

“The email and PayPal accounts are not his then?”

“No.”

“Whose are they?”

Brody turned the PC to Gibb, who bent over to look at the screen.

“They belong to Magnus Peggler, the Flexbase CIO.” Brody threw his hands up in the air. “God, I’m a fucking idiot. I should have checked this.”

“Checked what?”

“Hold on a second.” Brody dialled Jenny on his mobile. Eventually it was answered. Brody went to speak but then heard Jenny’s recorded voice. “This is DI Jenny Price. Please leave a message.”

“Jenny, ring me as soon as you get this. Ronald Keeble’s the wrong guy. The killer is Magnus Peggler. Please be careful.
Please
.”

He hung up.

He didn’t know whether she just wasn’t answering him because of their earlier conversation or because she couldn’t.

He texted her as well, just in case. 

Brody grabbed his tablet PC and ran. As he charged past Gibb, he pointed his car keys through the window at his car and pressed the remote, then threw them back to Gibb and said, “Here, you drive.”

The hazard lights flashed twice and Brody jumped into the passenger seat.

Brody reached over and opened the driver door as Gibb stepped out of the shop, halting suddenly. “I can’t fit in that thing! Have you not seen the size of me?” It would indeed be a tight fit. “Wherever we’re going, let’s take my car.”

“There’s no time, come on. Jump in.”

Gibb folded himself into the car, reaching down and pushing the seat back as far as it would go. With his head bent down by the car’s roof, he looked like an adult trying to ride a vehicle on a child’s merry-go-round.

He started the car and reversed out. “Which way?”

“That way. Drive towards Docklands.”

Gibb blindly pushed out onto the road, not worrying about any passing traffic. The police had set up a cordon outside Brody’s apartment, preventing any vehicles from travelling along Upper Street. He changed into first and floored it.

“You said you should have checked something. What was it?” asked Gibb.

“The bank account details within the PayPal account. They don’t belong to Keeble; they belong to Peggler. The clever bastard set up the email and PayPal account in an email address that looked like it belonged to Ronald Keeble, but everything within the account is Peggler’s. It’s impossible to make PayPal work without a real credit check, but you can use any email address you control as the account name.”

“Clever. So Peggler was able to pay for SWY using PayPal linked to an account that, at first glance, looked as though it belonged to someone else.”

“Yes.”

“But the police would have worked this out eventually.”

“Maybe. But it gives him plenty of time to run for cover. He sees the police arrest Keeble and off he goes.”

“So why have you got me driving like a lunatic towards Docklands?”

“Because the two police officers I’m worried about have gone to Flexbase, where Peggler is waiting to meet them.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“They’re both women.”

Gibb put his enormous foot down.

* * *

You don’t know whether to be angry or happy.

Angry that your source of gullible women is gone or happy that the policewoman is still alive. That she somehow survived the fall when you prised her fingers off the railing.

Angry that they’ve tracked down your account on SecretlyWatchingYou or happy that they’ve fallen for your little insurance trick that pointed them towards that disgusting homo who worked in the CCTV control room.

Angry that you’ll soon need to run and hide or happy that the policewoman brought you a nice friend to play with for when you’ve finished with her.

The shock on her face when you put on the hat and sunglasses was comical. You laughed like you haven’t laughed in a long time. You were already laughing from watching them hunt down the non-existent queer in the datacentre. That was so fucking funny. You couldn’t believe they would be gullible enough to have fallen for that.

And hadn’t you done well? Thinking on your feet like that. You hadn’t expected two of them to show up. One you could easily handled with your massive dagger, but two? That was too risky. Tricking them into the datacentre was so damn clever of you. And making them leave their mobile phones behind, that was a masterstroke. As if phones affect computer equipment! What a joke. 

You are a fucking genius, if you do say so yourself. 

And your genius has no end tonight.

You watch the policewoman throw a blade server from one of the racks at the window. It bounces off harmlessly. She is swearing at you.

“Sshh,” you say to her, loudly enough for her to hear. She stops shouting.

You turn your tablet computer around and place it flat on the window so that she can see it. She comes up close. You look at her cleavage while she looks at the screen. You feel the movement in your boxers below. Ooh, looks like someone wants to come out and play. 

“Look at this,” you say. “These are the controls for the hypoxic fire suppression system.” 

She looks confused. The other one too.

“It regulates the amount of oxygen inside the datacentre where you are now. It’s normally set at fifteen per cent. High enough to breath but low enough to prevent combustion.”

Understanding settled on her face. The other one too.

“Yes, as you can see, I’ve set it to lower the mix to below five per cent oxygen.”

Panicking, the whores looked around the computer room helplessly.

“It might take about ten minutes, but soon you will become faint and fall unconscious. There is nothing you can do to stop it.”

They shout at you. Pleading. But you ignore them.

“And when you are unconscious, I will come in there and then we’re going to have some fun.”

For effect, you lift your dagger in front of you. They haven’t seen it until now.

You watch the horror on their faces and laugh.

You have a major hard-on now.

But you must be patient.

* * *

As they flew down Commercial Street, Spitalfields Market on the right, Brody slammed his fist on the dashboard.

He felt so powerless.

He’d already caused the death of one person close to him today. He couldn’t bear to be the cause of another.

They were still at least fifteen minutes away; even with Gibb’s race car driving.

Gibb had called for backup and the same armed response unit that had raided Brody’s apartment was now regrouping and heading over towards Docklands. But they would take even longer to get there.

Brody had called O’Reilly, the only other number he had of anyone on Jenny’s team. The only reason he had it was because of the non-existent school bullying trick he’d pulled on Wednesday morning, which had enabled Brody to meet Jenny alone. O’Reilly was still at Patrick Harper’s apartment. He explained the situation and asked for Da Silva and Coombs’s numbers. O’Reilly complied, saying he would head over to Flexbase immediately, as he was only a mile or so away. He’d be there fairly quickly if he were able to hail a taxi. 

Brody phoned Da Silva but got voicemail. Alan Coombs picked up and listened to Brody’s story. He swore a lot and then told him to leave it with them.

But they would all be powerless when they got there. The Flexbase physical security systems were top notch. Without the right access, no one could get in. Peggler would have all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted.

Unless . . .

Brody powered on his tablet PC and connected to the Internet again. 

“What are you doing now?” asked Gibb.

“Hacking into Flexbase.”

“From here in the car? That’s impossible.”

But Gibb didn’t know that Brody already had full access to the Flexbase systems from his hacking session the day before when he’d got hold of the IP addresses and found the Windsor meeting room booking that had enabled Jenny to save Sarah McNeil’s life.

“I broke in there yesterday. I already have the access I need.”

“See, it’s exactly that kind of behaviour that would go down so well in GCHQ.”

“Not now, eh?”

Brody logged in and negotiated his way through to the CCTV system. He began combing through the video feeds, searching for movement. Eventually, he found what he was looking for. 

“Fuck.”

Jenny and Fiona were in the main datacentre, on the floor, their backs to the wall opposite the main entrance. Their eyes were shut. They weren’t moving. 

He found the audio, but could only hear the air conditioning system. 

Then he heard Jenny cough and splutter. What the hell was going on?

Where was Peggler? He looked around and discovered him in the room outside. He was just standing there, turning a massive dagger over and over in his hands, as if he was waiting for something.

Gibb leaned over for a brief look. “That’s fucking impressive.”

Brody found his way through to the building control system.

He saw the fire alarm systems and, next to it, the emergency public address system for the building. He patched his computer in, selected the speakers on the datacentre floor and began talking.

He kept the two CCTV feeds playing, showing him Peggler in one, and Jenny and Fiona in the other.

“Jenny, its Brody. Can you hear me?”

There was no reaction.

Damn. He checked the settings, making sure the microphone was turned on. It was. Just as he was about to re-examine the building control system settings, he saw movement.

Jenny and Fiona both opened their eyes, looking around in confusion.

Peggler gave no reaction. He was unable to hear Brody.

Brody realised there was a time lag as video and audio made its way back over the Internet to his PC.

“Jenny, are you okay? What the hell is going on there?”

After a long moment, she replied. She said one word before breaking into a cough and splutter. “Oxygen.”

And immediately Brody understood what Peggler was doing.

He quickly flipped back to the building control system, tracked down the hypoxic air control system he’d noticed yesterday and saw that the oxygen levels had been lowered beneath five per cent. Peggler was waiting for them to fall unconscious before going in. Fuck.

Brody quickly raised the oxygen bar as high as it would go, but he had no idea how quickly or slowly the system worked. 

Glancing out the car window, he got his bearings. “Jenny, we’re ten minutes away. There’s an armed response unit on the way. I’m hacked into the Flexbase systems. I’ve reset the oxygen levels; hopefully you’ll start to feel it come through very soon. Peggler can’t hear me. Give me a sign you’ve heard this.”

Jenny lay prone with her back to the wall. He thought he heard her whisper something, but couldn’t catch it. 

“Fuck, there’s nothing else I can do.” His voice rose in utter desperation. “I’m so sorry Jenny. For everything.”

And, after a minute, he watched Fiona fall to one side.

And then Jenny.

* * *

You watch and wait. You have been patient.

You will make these good ones. You won’t waste the opportunity like before. You’ll make this the best one ever. Perfection. And then repeat it again with her friend. Or maybe you’ll swap the order. You’re not sure. You’ll decide when you get in there.

You head into the CCTV control room inner office and find the emergency oxygen mask. You chuckle to yourself. You’ll need that.

Once you’ve checked they’re nice and unconscious, you’ll reset the oxygen levels. After all, you want them alive when you fuck them. When you hold a knife to their throats and make them squeeze tight. 

You remember you’ll need rope and retrieve some from your bag. You’ll need to tie them both up good and tight. Can’t have one sneaking up behind you while you’re otherwise engaged, can you?

With everything set, you hold your security pass up to the double doors and type in your code. The first door slides open. You’re confident the additional weight of the tablet PC, knife, mask and rope is within tolerance levels. You remove your shoes and leave them outside just to be safe, to balance out the weight. It wouldn’t be smart to get trapped in there. That would be silly. 

The door closes behind you. After a slight pause, the door in front slides open.

You’re in, breathing through the oxygen mask.

There’s a strange background noise. The air conditioning sounds different. But then you realise it must be because of the oxygen mask.