And had become a far more expert and adept surfer than any on Wakiki beach. There were few firewalls she could not electronically scale or burrow beneath or systems she couldn’t hack into. She justified the intrusion to her own satisfaction by only ever using what she discovered to expose financial wrongdoings, never valid business manoeuvrings. It was an operating integrity with which she had no difficulty and would have been uninterested in that of others had others known, which none did, not even John Carver, from whom she had no other secrets.
Normally she roamed the world and its Web from the comfort and convenience of her SoHo apartment on Princes Street. Today, persuaded by what Carver told her, she decided against working from home, even though she always avoided the possibility of inadvertently leaving her own electronic fingerprint on any detection equipment or device with which she was unfamiliar by never going direct into a target system but always hacking first into an unsuspecting intermediary business or organization to make her penetration via their site.
Alice set out early and was at the door of the Space for Space cybercafe on Canal and West Broadway when it opened, to ensure she didn’t have to queue for a station. She surfed and at random chose the European headquarters booking system of an international hotel chain based in the southern-English town of Basingstoke to be her cut-out host, isolating their password after just five attempted hits and within minutes established her Trojan Horse, her personal password-accessed site undetectable within the chain’s mainframe into which she could come and go without their having the slightest knowledge of her presence.
The obvious search was for the three names Carver had given her. Alice selected Mulder first, in a global sweep, and was startled by the number of immediate hits, just as quickly recognizing the names to be the parent company registration in Grand Cayman. She began the familiar password hunt and after thirty minutes became irritated, as well as impatient, at the repeated rejections from Grand Cayman. Frustrated, she scrolled through the other listings, which curiously covered a large number of the American states, with the addition of overseas subsidiaries in a matching number of European and Asian countries. Obeying the hackers’ lore when confronted with initial refusal, she closed down on Mulder, moving at once to Encomp, and got what appeared to be a virtually identical number of hits, with the same American state and worldwide spread. Innsflow International matched the preceding two. She spent more than an hour trying to get into Encomp and Innsflow in Grand Cayman and was consistently rejected.
‘Mystery upon mystery,’ she said, at once embarrassed at having spoken aloud, although she often did when upon such expeditions from her Princes Street apartment. She answered the manager’s enquiring look with a half wave and a gesture towards her empty coffee cup, genuinely needing a refill after being so effectively and irritatingly defeated.
Knowing the frequency with which initial registrations were often used as cut-outs in much the same way as she was using the hotel chain’s computer set-up, she surfed all the Caribbean offshore islands for minimal variations on the three parent companies she was trying to penetrate but found nothing she considered a possibility. Alice spread the search further afield, to Switzerland and Israel, but found nothing. She entered the market registrations in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and on Wall Street – even though any listing should have shown with her first search entry of the names – with the same lack of success. Which was the same when she hacked into the newspaper reference archives of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and The Times in London, the Washington Post, London’s Financial Times, Fortune and Forbes.
Alice recognized that the surfeit of subsidiary but linked names risked overwhelming her, certainly in such public surroundings. She needed the quiet, reflective security of Princes Street. And to try to evolve a way to get past the Grand Cayman hacking shield. As she, with forced patience, printed out the state-by-state and international listings, Alice conceded to herself that it was not the first time she’d drawn such a total blank. But she couldn’t remember it happening more than twice before. And both of those had eventually emerged under police investigation to be criminal enterprises, which objectively she further acknowledged had no real bearing on this attempt but which nevertheless inclined her to regard it in that light. It took her a further thirty minutes to print out.
As Alice paid for her time the manager said: ‘You’ve been working hard.’
‘Not sure what I’ve got,’ complained Alice.
‘There’s good days and bad days.’
‘Today’s a confused day.’
‘Come back again: better luck next time.’
‘I think I’m going to have to come back a lot,’ said Alice. After all, she had a new Trojan Horse password in an unsuspecting host system and John might come up with something that would give her a short cut. How long would it be before she and John could get together again? Not long, she hoped.
Jack Jennings was in the hallway, waiting for him, when Carver got back, and he said at once: ‘Mrs Carver’s just woken up. The doctor’s with her. And Manhattan called. The helicopter will be here by eleven thirty.’
Carver held back from going directly upstairs, instead gesturing the other man towards the study and going immediately to the desk holding the unidentified keys, which he laid out close to the wedding photograph of Muriel Northcote. ‘I need your help with these, Jack. You know what the unidentified ones fit?’
Jennings stared down for several moments, separating some from others with a finger before isolating a second country-club locker, the pool house and several garden-equipment outhouses. One had housed the fatal tractor. Three were left unnamed and Carver thought one, oddly coloured red, could have been a safe deposit or left-luggage locker.
Carver said: ‘You don’t know these three?’
Jennings shook his head. ‘Don’t mean anything at all.’
‘Something else,’ encouraged Carver. ‘Where did Mr Northcote keep things: things that needed to be carefully looked after?’
Jennings indicated the bookcase cupboard. ‘The safe, I guess.’
‘Nowhere else? No special place?’
There was another head shake. ‘No, sir. Nothing like that.’
‘What about yesterday?’ persisted Carver, sure he was right about how Northcote had been tortured. ‘It’s a long way from the house, I know. But I think you might have heard if Mr Northcote yelled out, when he fell?’
‘If he had and I’d heard it – if anyone had heard it – I’d have gone looking. I didn’t hear any cry for help. Nor, obviously, did anyone else in the house.’
‘Anyone visit Mr Northcote yesterday? A stranger, maybe? Someone you didn’t know?’
‘No, sir. No one came all day.’
‘So there was nothing.’
The other man considered the question. ‘There was a phone call.’
‘What phone call?’
‘Just after lunch. It was a man who said he wanted to talk to Mr Northcote. I asked for a name but he said it didn’t matter: that Mr Northcote was expecting the call. Which seemed to be right. Mr Northcote heard the phone and came out into the hall behind me. Would have got it first if I hadn’t already been there.’
‘Did you hear the conversation?’
The butler’s face stiffened. ‘I don’t listen to other people’s telephone conversations, Mr Carver. Anyway, Mr Northcote took it in here, in the study.’
‘Had he told you before then that he was going to take the mower out?’
Jennings frowned, in recollection. ‘No, not before then.’
‘So he wasn’t dressed for it: wasn’t in his usual work overalls?’
‘No.’
‘How’d he seem, after the call?’
Jennings shrugged. ‘Just like always.’
‘Were you with him when he left the house? See him?’
Jennings looked curiously at Carver. ‘I wasn’t with him. I saw him through the kitchen going towards the tractor lock-up.’
‘Was he carrying anything… anything like an envelope?’
The man paused. ‘Has something come up with the sheriff, Mr Carver?’
‘No,’ said Carver. ‘Just one or two things I need to get sorted out in my mind.’ When Jennings didn’t speak Carver said: ‘So, was he carrying anything like an envelope in his hand?’
‘No, sir,’ said the other man. ‘He was just setting out to drive his tractor!’
