21

Clive took a seat in one of her modernist chrome armchairs. She had a deck view over the park. Hot sunshine gleamed like a hungry tiger’s eye.

“Can you explain me to myself?” Clive urged, reeling from her account.

“Would you really want me to do that?”

“Then what else do you have?” he asked.

“You hacked the Winchurch systems. Honestly I knew you were good, but not that good,” she admitted. “The other guys hated you, but they began to respect you.”

“I wouldn’t have to be that good, Pix,” he insisted. “I’m not some teen genius in his bedroom! It would only be a matter of tampering with black boxes, or even social engineering. It doesn’t take genius to achieve that, I can assure you.”

“Not unless you are a specialist,” she told him.

“No, you just talk to the engineers. I had access to PENTEST and would just leverage weaknesses in the system,” Clive explained.

“So you wouldn’t have to use proxy servers?” Pixie asked.

“No, not as such, as I was categorised as code staff. Why would I consider an attack? Not while I had legitimate access. Why position risk? I had a back door into the system, using naming conventions. So presumably I created an account... with elevated rights... leading back to nothing in that case...with a hall of mirrors to hide my tracks,” he argued, trying to retrace his steps.

“This came out over dinner one evening,” she recalled.

“Well you’re the ‘head and shoulders’ girl. You are the expert on risk. So who better to discuss this with?” Pitt wondered.

“That evening we considered seeing a movie. Taking a walk down to the Everyman. I was scared by the implications.”

“No, I don’t suppose we were in the mood for a movie,” he told her.

He followed a super jumbo, floating like a balloon into Heathrow, crossing from one time zone into another.

“You admitted looking at documents. Septimus moved money around, setting up off shore accounts, inventing revenue streams. You discovered segregated parts of the network. These hadn’t been audited, or logged and made non-accountable. ”

“Very interesting, because I would be adept at finding misappropriated funds.”

“That’s what made Sep so incredibly bitter about you.”

“Clive Pitt, the grateful Halifax grammar school boy, an inside threat all along,” he said.

“You made copies, you indexed and annotated. You siphoned away the evidence... somehow...somewhere. You’d enough to cause an earthquake in the City and beyond. Presuming you could circulate the information - to get the attention of regulatory bodies.”

“I was the guy with the capacity to damage him. This strategy was dangerous, but I don’t suppose the authorities keep a hot line for whistle blowers,” he commented.

“There were names there... important people, some of them had been given state visits here. Literally guards of honour by royalty. They are the sponsors of operas and football clubs of course... they spend their pocket money on these hobbies, speculating on the currency markets, buying up bonds, five year and ten years...and picking up cheap stocks as a sideline.”

“These are high value customers... global business people and financiers,” Clive agreed. “We fully know who we’re dealing with.”

“But we were both afraid. It was enough to turn our hair grey,” she conceded. “We thought what good can this do for us or anyone? What is the use?” she recalled.

“We can do something,” Clive argued. “If we can remember where I’ve stored this data and information. Where in hell did I put it all? Is it possible to retrieve it?”

“Clive, I keep telling you, that I don’t have the least idea,” Pixie admitted.

“Or if that info is really lost now forever - in the clouds... if that’s the case then so am I. So are we. I’ve dragged you into this black hole after me,” he apologised.

Pixie was suddenly drained of breathe and colour. “Sep’s team didn’t know you’d hacked his systems. He was back at work, buzzing around the trading floor as usual, hopping from one desk to another. But in the evening, when many of the guys were leaving, he called me back in. He’d started to worry about the deal, because he wanted to ask further questions.”

“What did he want? He suspected you?” Pitt asked.

“Hardly. He was trying to confide his troubles.”

“Why would he want to do that?” Clive wondered.

“He needed to speak to someone. I’m the daughter he wished to have. Ironic,” she said, “as my parents disowned me. Anyway that’s how Sep rationalises his fondness for me. That’s how he rationalises his wish to be near me,” she explained.

“The old bugger. Is that because you are close to me?” he countered.

“I’m literally a canary in the cage. Anyway he adopted a considerate tone with me. Whatever we may think of him he’s incredibly driven. Of course he is ruthless. It’s ancestral. He had a fixed idea that you want to ruin him. He explained how sensitive, secret files had been copied. This theft had the potential to throw us out of our jobs, he warned.”

“He surely knew I was the guy responsible,” Pitt argued.

“Obviously Sep had suspicions about you. Your behaviour pattern was irregular. He heard about your ethical objections...rumours and hunches don’t remain secret. He doubted that you were to be trusted. On consulting with ZNT he decided to employ heavier tactics.”

“Oh right, so exactly what tactics did they employ?” Pitt enquired, trying to get on top of his nerves.

“You may remember the thick necks? The guys who tried to teach you a fatal lesson? They rounded on you, in a toilet at the football ground. They caught up with you just before half time, when you popped down for a wee,” she recalled.

“You’re pulling my leg?” he said. “They worked me over in the toilets, at a footie match? Definitely qualifies as dirty ‘tactics’,” Pitt said, disgusted.

“A premier football game, I think you told me. You got a pair of complementary tickets...a seat in their hospitality area. I didn’t want to go with you. They kicked and punched you to an inch of your life.”

“Bloody hell, as bad as that?” he considered.

“The police and stewards thought you were the random victim of hooligans. You know, rival football fans. If the wrong people found your body, then it could be passed off as murder. But probably your enemies didn’t intend anyone to find you.”

“This is incredible,” he declared. His stomach was in his mouth, just to hear about this afterwards. “That explains the gouge under my eye, do you see?” he demonstrated.

“A couple of fans at the game tried to intervene. They managed to save your life. But they were also beaten up... though not as badly. You were in the general hospital for a month. There were stories on the news about this. Because there isn’t mindless thuggery at top games anymore, they argued. But then there aren’t any security cameras in the loos,” she pointed out.

Clive made an astonished face. “You’re confident that Sep knew about this? That he organised this attack?”

“I don’t think he organised that. He commented that it was suitable punishment. Probably his powerful friends were behind the assault. He was concerned about media coverage.”

“He’s a charming old gentleman isn’t he!” Pitt said.

“He argued that you required a psychiatrist, not a doctor. They said you’d probably suffered a breakdown. Your colleagues claimed you were paranoid. You had a persecution complex.”

“This beating could explain my memory loss,” Clive observed.

“That’s definitely a good theory,” Pixie agreed.

“But there are other theories. Otherwise you wouldn’t be taking a blood sample.”

“Our colleagues were full of praise for Winchurch... because he agreed to treat you at his private hospital. You were put into the hospital. You stayed there for weeks. Then suddenly you came back to work again.”

“You are saying that I didn’t lose my job?” Clive asked, amazed.

“Sep gained credit for retaining you.”

“I reckon there was already enough scandal... without firing me,” he argued.

“Sep wanted to keep an eye on you.”

“But how could he tolerate the risk?” Pitt wondered.

“Don’t we live with risk... don’t we gamble every day? Don’t we get a buzz out of it? They didn’t want to be another Lehman’s. At other times you sat in our area, staring blankly at your monitors, talking to yourself... refusing to speak to anybody.”

“You’re painting a lovely picture. I had already suffered a terrible alteration of personality.”

“One afternoon you got into a heated argument with Spence. Again it was your obsessive hatred for the deal. In the end you put your hands under a desk and threw everything over. There was a terrific rumpus at this stage. A pile of guys jumped on you and tried to restrain you. But you’d somehow got the strength. You were a man possessed... by a sense of outrage I suppose.”

“Bloody hell,” he murmured. “Just as well I can’t remember this.”

“Security was called, although you’d fled the building.”

“They regarded this as my resignation?” Clive suggested.

“We didn’t see you again until the garden party.”

“The garden party again,” he commented. “Why would he invite his staff to his country estate? Did he ever ask you before?”

“Well he was not thrilled to see you. We all know what took place in the woods after that,” Pixie said.

“What is alleged to have happened,” Clive reminded her.

“Something happened. Emmy and you are the only people who know the truth...unless there was somebody else lurking about there.”

“Right. Is that possible?” he said. “Do you think it was a set up?”

“But I should go into the office as normal. There I will try to meet with Sep about this. Gauge his attitude to the whole affair, at this point,” she offered.

“Did you say I was sent to his private hospital?”

“You may have escaped from the hospital, when I saw you last.”

“On Friday afternoon, do you mean?” he said.

“But I can visit Emmy and talk to her about you. So that we can get her version of events. It’s the only way forward,” she argued.

“You can’t be late for the office today,” he remarked.

“No, but first of all I want some of your blood.”

Clive gave a jump. “Now we’re talking.”

PART TWO