We reconvened at the office the next morning to sort out what to do next. Darren was already on the news. The police had gone to his flat and found the body. I’d called Ken and Clive and told them the news, but it was best to let Sandra sleep. The gods were gathered at the back watching us. I continued to do my best to ignore them.
“Two bodies now,” Roger said. “This is getting well tasty.”
“Any more and the police start sniffing around,” David said. “We’re going to need to be clear where we are legally if they find out we’re involved.”
“Now, if we do this right, the filth will never get a whiff of us at all,” Roger said.
“Any luck on unlocking that drive?” I asked.
“You wanted me to brute-force an encrypted drive.” She sniffed. “Yeah, sure, let’s cure cancer. That would take less time.”
“So how long is this going to take?”
“Anywhere between a few hours and NEVER.” She pouted.
“Christ.”
“Look,” Olivia said. “The weak link in an encrypted drive is usually a weak password, but this one’s turned out to be pretty strong.”
“Can’t you feed it through a password sorter or, or write a program or a bot to crack it?”
“Most sorters go through combinations of numbers and single words. We were hoping Darren was crap at passwords, but it looks like he actually got a clue and decided on a combination of words or a phrase as the password; no bot can truly predict that, and we’re buggered.”
“Well, perhaps Ms. Rodriguez knows the password and is just holding it close to her chest,” Roger said.
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Mr. Chandra Singh?” Slight nasal whine in the voice.
“Speaking.”
“Paul Mullins, Morning Post. Sandra Rodriguez gave me your number. We need to talk.”