“What is that?” I ask, looking at what he’s making.
“Pot roast.”
“No, not that, that.” I point at what he’s cooking it in. A massive saucepan, but different somehow too.
He turns around, looking confused. “Oh. That. It’s a pressure cooker. My mom uses them a lot. It’s the only way I know how to cook.” He watches me a moment, then goes back to chopping up carrots.
We talk about nothing much for a while, then James asks me to lay the table for him, which I do, but a bit confused, since I still don’t really know why I’m here, nor why it had to be a secret. It is true I’ve been getting on better with James and Oscar recently, but I’m still closer to Eric, and to Lily of course.
I finish with the plates and cutlery, and then Oscar gives me a shout and asks me to bring his pressure cooker in. So I do. I go to pick it up with the cloth so it doesn’t burn my hands but he stops me, saying he’s already let it cool.
“I need the cloth,” he tells me, when I look confused. He takes it from me and uses it to open the oven door. I shrug, and do what he asks, carrying it through and putting it on the table. I think how it’s probably good Lily isn’t here, she makes the table look much nicer than this.
“What’s this all about?” I ask, when – a few minutes later – the three of us are sitting down and eating Oscar’s pot roast. It tastes OK, but nothing amazing.
“I love Billy’s directness, don’t you?” James says to Oscar, who gives a bit of a laugh.
“Billy, you remember you asked me if we’re still – operating?”
I nod.
“And I said we might be. Well, we just might be.”
I wait for him to go on, and he does, but on another tack.
“Did Lily ever get back to you about those dead sea horses, by the Fonchem site on Lornea Island?”
I look from one to the other. “No.”
“Do you think she even told her dad?” James’ eyes are level on mine.
“I…” I shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Do you even care?”
“What? Of course I care.”
Neither of them speak. But then James nods his head. “Good. Good. Because Oscar’s come up with something.” He turns to Oscar, who puts down his fork.
“There’s a public meeting on Lornea Island next month, where they’ll decide whether to grant the extension of the Fonchem site. It’ll go through, it’s guaranteed to, because Fonchem has spent a ton of money on the idea that it’ll create much needed jobs, and there’s no risk. It’s how they operate – not just Fonchem, every firm like it. Except…” He glances at James. “Except, there’s your campaign, about the sea horses.” Oscar stops.
“No one’s paying any attention to my campaign, in fact I haven’t even paid it…”
“But that’s because you have no evidence.” James cuts me off.
I don’t reply.
“I told Oscar about those photographs you showed me, and he did a little digging into the Fonchem mail servers. He found…” James stops. “Actually Oscar, could you explain this? I’ve never understood what it is you do.”
Oscar’s eyes narrow in the way they do when he smiles.
“OK. This is complicated. But I’ll do my best. They run a virtual box with a Kali Linux instance, and when you boot it with the mail server ISO you can see that...”
“Woah there!” James interrupts again. “This is gonna be easier if you use plain English. So that Billy can understand?” James shoots an apologetic smile in my direction. But I just watch him a second then turn back to Oscar.
“Where do you get the server ISO?”
Oscar’s eyes widen slightly. Just for a second. He glances at James, then turns back to me.
“I queried it from DNS records.”
“What? They had them open?”
Oscar hesitates, he seems to be thinking hard. Finally he goes on. “Yeah. That’s the point. It was all open, which is why I figured they must be using a third party app, with end-to-end encryption.”
I nod. I can see where this is going. But also that James is a bit left behind.
“Hey! What? What am I missing here?”
So I turn to him and explain. “Normally you wouldn’t be able to just access someone’s DNS via a simple query. You’d need to run port scans against a DNS range, and find it that way. But if it’s open then the whole thing is open. You can’t send private emails, they may as well be left on a public message board.”
“Or put on Twitter,” Oscar continues. And he’s right.
“What?” James says again.
“I didn’t know you knew this stuff, Billy?” Oscar says. And I shrug. “I don’t really, I’m not an expert.”
Oscar gives me a sly grin.
“Do you wanna just maybe carry on with the explanation?” James tells him, and he does.
“OK. Bottom line is. Once I was in I ran a series of keyword searches, on all the company emails, around the times when you got the reports of the dead fish on the beach. I wanted to see if anyone was reporting any problems at the site, anything that might have caused it. You’d be amazed, just how stupid some people are, they still think email is private.”
“And?” I lean forward. I didn’t think of doing this. I mean I wouldn’t do it anyway, it’s completely illegal, but maybe if it had occurred to me. I just didn’t imagine the DNS would be listed.
“What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nearly nothing. Except this.” He stops and takes out a printout from the pocket of his jacket. It’s an email
