“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
