The expression on the Inspector’s face was something Bridge had never quite seen before.
It seemed to be a mixture of suspicion and fear, and she couldn’t really blame him. This was the same policeman who’d spoken on the news earlier, but now he looked much less self-assured. Here he was, overseeing what looked like a simple homicide case, when out of nowhere two strange women rocked up and demanded to be given access as a matter of national security. One was a fortysomething diminutive Scots terrier of a woman, all severe haircut, shoulderpads, and cheekbones to match. The other was younger, a full head taller and pale-faced, with a long black fringe and baggy black cardigan. The Inspector probably thought he’d stumbled into a comedy of errors — until Andrea and Bridge flashed their service IDs, at which point she was worried the poor man might have a cardiac.
“Should I be calling the bomb squad?” he asked warily.
“No,” said Andrea. “At least, not yet.”
“How comforting,” said the Inspector. “Do try and give us some notice if that changes, won’t you?”
Bridge and Andrea had slipped disposable forensic booties over their footwear — Bridge’s block-heeled boots, Andrea’s very sensible flats — so as not to leave any conflicting trace evidence at the scene. Now they both pulled on latex gloves, as the Inspector stood aside to let them pass and enter Declan O’Riordan’s house.
She’d met Andrea Thomson twice before. The first time was at a COBRA briefing on Libya, where Giles had taken Bridge along as technical backup when the questions turned to whether Egypt’s cyberwarfare division were taking an interest in Tripoli. They were, of course — every cyber warfare division, in every government around the world, takes an interest in every other government. But the Cyber Threat Analytics unit was still relatively new, and Giles wanted Bridge there to demonstrate how useful it could be. Andrea had sat across the table from Giles, part of Five’s briefing team, as they discussed monitoring Libyan nationals in the UK. The Scot had taken copious notes, but said little, and at the time Bridge wondered if she was perhaps too timid to interrupt her male colleagues.
That notion was firmly put to rest the second time they met, at an inter-agency meeting with the Joint Intelligence Committee to address the government’s options over Iran’s nuclear programme. Bridge was there to explain Stuxnet, the mysterious worm creating havoc by infecting and destroying Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. It was an open secret that Stuxnet had been built by Israel with American support, but Grosvenor House would admit nothing, despite backchannel assurances of discretion. The Oval Office might leak like a sieve these days, but the NSA remained tight-lipped as ever.
MI5, meanwhile, had been concerned with the possible leakage of information from Britain’s own strategic nuclear commands to native British people suspected of being Iranian agents. And in contrast to the previous occasion, this time Andrea spent much of the meeting not only interrupting but actively contradicting Giles, C, Honourable Members of the committee, GCHQ representatives, and anyone else who stood between her and the extra resources Five was arguing for. Bridge noticed how Andrea’s male colleagues were happy to sit back and let her go on the offensive, but couldn’t decide if that was because they knew she’d get the job done, or simply to let her take all the heat if things went off the rails.
So it wasn’t unexpected when Andrea greeted her by name outside Catford station. After all, Giles had called and asked her to accompany Bridge to the crime scene. When Andrea referenced both of their prior meetings, though, she was surprised. Andrea was more senior than she was, both in age and office, and Bridge hadn’t realised she’d made an impression. “I’m surprised you remember,” she said.
Andrea smiled. “What I remember is you patiently explaining to the Minister how, if we could get into Tripoli’s servers, so could the Egyptians. I hear a lot of rubbish about ‘golden keys’ these days from people who should know better, and I’ve nicked some of what you said in there for my own meetings.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I’m…flattered?”
“You should be. Now, let’s go and see if Declan O’Riordan really was a terrorist.”
Bridge was shocked. “Why would you think that? The news didn’t say anything about terrorism.”
“The first coppers who checked the house said it’s packed to the rafters with computer paraphernalia. Naturally, they brought it to our attention.” Now it was her turn to be confused. “I assumed that was why you were here?”
“Not exactly,” she said, and explained how and why she believed the dead man was her friend Tenebrae_Z. In return, Andrea told her what they knew so far about Declan O’Riordan. He’d been born in Dublin, but moved to the UK when he was 22 after gaining a degree in the then-early field of computer science. He worked for various technology companies, then internet-related businesses, before becoming a freelance consultant thirteen years ago. He had no family here in England; his father was dead, his mother had returned to her childhood home in west Ireland, and his younger sister remained in Dublin. For more than twenty years he’d lived here in Catford, alone, in the terraced house now surrounded by police and forensic teams.
Bridge didn’t want it to be him. As they entered the house she wanted this to be her imagination running away with itself, a case of mistaken identity, for Ten to turn up on chat this evening and regale her with an amusing story about how last night he met a computer geek, a hacker like them, who bought Ten a pint for solving the ASCII puzzle.
Per procedure, the house lights hadn’t been activated, and the Scenes of Crime Officers had instead erected lamps to illuminate the rooms. The lamps threw hard, harsh shadows over anything not within their light field, making it difficult to tread carefully. The floor was almost completely covered with O’Riordan’s belongings — books, newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs, bags, shoes, coats, candles, incense sticks, computer cables, portable hard drives, old computer games, new video games, even board games.
She turned to a SOCO and asked, “Was there a struggle? Is this all from a fight?”
“Not as far as we can tell, love.” The man fixed her with a lopsided smile. “Some people are just messy bastards.”
“Not what you expected?” asked Andrea.
Bridge stepped over a leather jacket on the floor, noting the Mission logo painted on the back, and peered into the lounge. “I’m not sure what I expected, to be honest. This gives my place a run for its money.”
The lounge was the focus of the forensics team’s efforts, and she could see why. It was packed with stuff, bookshelves overflowing (and not just with books), barely a flat surface visible under the piles of papers, magazines, and more books, walls covered in posters and cork boards…
One cork board was covered in photos, a combination of printouts and real photographs, of goths. She peered at it, and quickly realised she recognised some of them — other members of uk.london.gothic-netizens, either people she’d met herself at club nights, or who had posted JPEGs of themselves to the group. “Shit,” she sighed, “it’s him.”
“What makes you so sure?” asked Andrea.
Bridge gestured around the room. “Everything.”
The posters were all bands she knew Tenebrae_Z was into. The Mission, All About Eve, Faith and the Muse, Dream Disciples, and an old Joshua Tree era U2 poster. She’d never understood Ten’s love of U2, but then she hadn’t known he was Irish. Now she’d never know him at all, never chat with him again at two in the morning, never roll her eyes at his boyish pride in fitting a new exhaust to his latest sports car.
And it was all her fault. If she hadn’t stayed subscribed to france.misc.binaries-random, if she hadn’t noticed the ASCII posts, if she hadn’t mentioned them to Ten, if she hadn’t spent weeks musing with him on what they might mean…none of this would have happened, and Declan O’Riordan would still be alive, making bad jokes, fixing cars, and listening to all the wrong bands.
There was no way to make up for that. No way to turn back time, or undo the things she’d done. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to be able to snap her fingers and make Ten live again. It was impossible. But finding whoever did this to him, and bringing them to justice? That was possible. That, she silently vowed to do, no matter how difficult it was or how long it took.
“One hundred per cent bachelor pad,” said Andrea. “I expect he was a lonely soul.”
That wasn’t true, but trying to explain online friendships, and the goth lifestyle, would take more time than Bridge had patience for right now. Instead she turned to the desk, noting an empty space, and called to the SOCOs, “Where’s his computer?”
“Which one? They’re all bagged and in the van,” replied a woman. “Weirdo like this, they’re probably full of porn and guns. We’ll get our nerds on it.”
Perhaps sensing Bridge was about to say something impolitic, Andrea cut in, “No, I don’t think so. We’ll handle the computers. What about his phone?”
The forensic officer shrugged. “Nothing here, maybe it was on the body. Ask me, this is all a lot of trouble for a rando who got stabbed.”
Bridge jerked up from the desk in surprise. “Stabbed? I thought he drowned?”
“Maybe I heard wrong,” said the officer, shrugging again as she exited the room with a bag full of computer software boxes. “Best ask the Inspector.”
“I’ll go,” said Andrea, “and I’ll get whatever laptop was on that desk while I’m about it. You stay, see if you can find anything here that might tell us who he was meeting.” Bridge was pretty sure his computer would hold that information, but something in Andrea’s tone suggested she didn’t trust her not to start punching people for their gallows humour. She was probably right.
It wasn’t hard to see why Andrea would assume Ten, or rather ‘Declan’, was lonely. Despite his age, he lived like a student bachelor. The large flatscreen TV on the wall was hooked up to an expensive home theatre system, and one of every modern videogame console. His stereo could have come straight from a showroom, and was surrounded by racks of CDs piled three-deep or towering on top of the speakers. There was just enough space on the sofa for one person to sit, so long as that person didn’t mind being surrounded by books, magazines, DVDs and videogames taking up the other seats, piled over the arms and back.
And the newspapers. God, the newspapers.
Bridge had a similar mini-tower of her own, old copies of Private Eye she kept around ‘just in case’, but Ten seemed to have bought and held on to almost every newspaper printed in the past year. The broadsheets she could understand, especially for a freelance consultant, but the tabloids baffled her. Ten had his foibles and the occasional odd opinion, but he’d never struck her as a Sun reader, let alone the Mail. There were a few copies of the Daily Star lying around, for heaven’s sake, which didn’t even have a crossword —
She stopped, stared at the piles of newspapers, realising why her mind had focused on that. They were all open to the crossword, but only a few were fully completed. Most had maybe half a dozen answers filled in. Here was the Times, June 18th. Four clues answered. Meanwhile, a copy of the Mirror from the same day had just two answers completed. Then there was the Sun, also June 18th…and the Guardian, June 18th…
Bridge found a second pile of newspapers, all different publications, and flicked through the pages. All from the same day, last month. She turned to another loose pile, thumbing through them. All from a single day, six weeks ago. All with part-finished crosswords. There was something here. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“Hang on, isn’t this you?”
Andrea re-entered the room. Under one arm she carried an evidence bag, inside which was a bulky Alienware laptop covered in stickers, and with her other arm pointed at a photograph printout on the cork board, pinned along with all the others.
“It can’t be,” said Bridge, looking over Andrea’s shoulder. “We never met, and I don’t post photos of myself to — oh.”
Andrea raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think this is a selfie.”
The picture was taken from a distance, and Bridge could make out the tell-tale pixellation artefacts betraying excessive digital zoom. It was her, in everyday clothes, stepping out of a coffee shop in East Finchley. On her way to work.
She swore under her breath.
Andrea looked at her sideways. “You’ll understand that I’m going to have to take this laptop. I can’t let you have it, not after seeing this.”
“Hang on, what mad conspiracy theory are you cooking up? Do you think I’d have gone to Giles, and got you involved, if there was something going on here?”
“Maybe not. But you know ‘maybe’ isn’t good enough. Once we’ve taken a look around, we’ll determine how to proceed, and if everything’s kosher I’ll read you and Giles in.”
“Ten — sorry, Mr O’Riordan — was a serious hacker, remember. Does Five have anyone good enough to crack into that thing?”
Andrea stifled a laugh. “I’m going to assume that was sarcasm.”
“Hey, I’m trying to help. Just…try ‘ponty’ for the login password.” She spelled it out, without explaining the joke. “It’s my online handle. You never know.”
“First thing I’ll do when I get back to the office. Now, I think we’ve seen enough.”
“Not yet,” said Bridge, looking again at the newspapers. “There’s something about these newspapers. This isn’t obsessive everyday purchasing, but it’s not random either. They’re piled in groups, all from the same day, all with crosswords partially completed.”
“Is there a pattern to the dates? Same day every week, or month?”
“No, the distribution seems random. But Ten was methodical, tenacious. There has to be some kind of purpose to it.” She took sample pictures of the dates and crosswords on her work phone. “And we need to check with the pathologist, see if they found his phone. I think it was an HTC.”
“Asked the Inspector when I went to grab the lappy. No phone or wallet on the body, and yes, he was definitely stabbed before going into the river, although they’re not releasing that information yet. They’re still assuming a mugging, to be honest. This,” she gestured around at the forensic teams, “is all belt and braces.”
“Mugging, my arse,” Bridge snorted. “Whoever he went to meet last night killed him, and probably because he solved those ASCII art puzzles.”
Andrea smiled. “Now who’s wearing the tinfoil hat?”
“But nothing else makes sense. It has to be connected.”
“Why? What’s in those puzzles?”
“I don’t know yet. Ten was going to tell me when he got back from the meeting. But whatever it is, somebody killed him over it.”
Bridge shielded her eyes against the sudden bright sunlight as they exited the house. The SOCOs were finishing up, and the few reporters still hanging around stood on the other side of the street, recording to camera with the house as a backdrop. She and Andrea made their way to the back of the forensics van to remove their booties and gloves.
“I’ll get our people looking over the laptop,” said Andrea. “Meanwhile, see if you can figure out those puzzles. You might want to call on GCHQ. Maybe they can help.”
“Monica in our unit used to be a Doughnut. If I can’t crack it myself, I’ll see what she suggests.”
“Just try not to get yourself stabbed, OK? Unless you do turn out to be a filthy traitor, anyway. Then you can burn in hell for all I care.” Andrea winked, and commandeered the nearest police car to take her back to Thames House.
Bridge took one last look at the house, then walked back to Catford station.