Buch lesen: «The Courier»

1

Harry had a rule about breaking into safes: never do it for a client you couldn’t trust. She studied the woman sitting behind the desk and wondered how on earth she could tell.

‘We don’t have long,’ the woman said, picking at Harry’s business card with her nail. ‘He’ll be back in an hour.’

Harry tried to read her eyes but couldn’t see them behind the oversized sunglasses. ‘Perhaps we should do it another time.’

The woman’s mouth tightened. She dragged a hand through her hair, spiking up her short pixie cut.

Her name was Beth Oliver, or so she’d said. She’d called Harry an hour ago, asking to meet at her home on the seafront to discuss a specialized job. So far, they’d skirted around the details, but Harry could tell there was more.

Beth jerked to her feet and began pacing the room. Her figure was boyish, flat front and back, making it hard to pin down her age. She came to a halt by the large sash window that overlooked Dublin Bay.

‘I can’t wait any longer.’ Her fists were clenched. ‘It has to be today.’

Harry glanced over at the tall, stainless steel construction that occupied one end of the room. ‘You’re sure the laptop’s inside the vault?’

Beth nodded, shoving her hands deep into her pockets. Her outfit was casual, trainers and jeans, the kind Harry favoured when her own scams needed a quick getaway.

Inwardly, she sighed. Six months ago, her internal wiring would’ve sorted through all the signals, but lately her judgement had been off. Maybe it wasn’t surprising after all she’d been through, but surely she should’ve snapped out of it by now?

She snatched up her case and got to her feet. Playing it safe was not in her nature, but her instincts were too unreliable to take a chance right now.

‘Your best option is to call the vault manufacturers,’ she said. ‘They could probably open it for you.’

Beth spun round. ‘But they know my husband, they’ll ring him to check it’s okay.’

‘Any reason they shouldn’t?’

‘I told you, he can’t know about this.’ The pitch of Beth’s voice was ramping up. ‘Besides, I need you to examine the laptop. That’s what you do, isn’t it?’ She pushed Harry’s business card across the desk, the Blackjack Security logo visible in one corner. ‘Recover information from hard drives?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Among other things.’

‘Well, that’s why I’m hiring you.’

‘Look, Beth, I’ll be straight with you here. For all I know, you could be a stranger off the street who’s just broken into this house.’ Harry held up her hand at Beth’s outraged look. ‘And even if you are who you say you are, I have no legal authority to break into your husband’s safe and examine his laptop without his permission. I just can’t do it.’

Beth’s knuckles were white. ‘What if I could prove the safe belongs to me?’

Harry frowned. ‘Does it?’

She snorted. ‘Everything in this bloody house belongs to me. Cars, bills, mortgages, I pay for it all. Garvin’s been bleeding me dry for years.’ She resumed her patrol of the room. ‘He’s always on the point of making it big, but everything he does is a disaster.’

She stopped in front of the steel vault, arms folded, shoulders hunched. Harry moved up beside her, the polished metal reflecting her own approaching image: navy suit, tangled black curls, dark smudges for eyes. Beside Beth’s pipe-cleaner frame, her own modest curves looked buxom.

For the first time, Harry studied the vault up close. It was the size and shape of a triple wardrobe, with a heavy-duty door along its centre panel. Mounted on the handle was a brick-sized entry device complete with small keypad and screen. A red light blinked on and off in one corner.

The back of Harry’s neck tingled. She was close enough to the vault to reach out and touch it, and the challenge to crack it open made her fingertips buzz. She dragged her attention back to Beth.

‘So you can prove you own this?’

She tried to keep the hopeful tone out of her voice. There was a lot here that needed clearing up before she could accept Beth as a client.

Beth marched back to the desk and snatched an envelope from one of the drawers. ‘I’m well used to people not believing what I say.’ She handed the envelope over. ‘Especially where Garvin’s concerned.’

Harry opened the flap. Inside, she found a passport and a bank statement, both in Beth’s name. The passport showed a woman with high cheekbones and a slight upward tilt to her eyes. Harry glanced over at Beth. It could’ve been her, but the bug-eyed shades made it hard to tell.

The bank statement showed a payment to Bull Safehouses Limited and another to a local computer store. Stapled to the back were a receipt for a Dell laptop and an invoice for the vault, both dated some six months previously.

Harry raised her eyebrows at the woman’s efficiency. Either her personal accounts were in better shape than Harry’s, or she’d been planning this for some time. She ran her eye over the rest of the statement, noting the substantial payments made to men’s clothing outlets, utilities, supermarkets and petrol stations. It was clear Beth paid for a significant chunk of the household outgoings, whether her husband contributed or not.

Harry handed the paperwork back to Beth. ‘So what’s on the laptop that’s so important?’

‘Proof that he has money of his own.’

Harry threw her a sharp look, and Beth nodded.

‘He’s had money for some time, I’m convinced of it,’ she said. ‘Six months, maybe more. His suits are flashier, he’s upgraded his car. And I haven’t been getting the bills.’

‘Surely that’s good?’

Beth stared at Harry from behind her dark shades.

‘I’m about to divorce him. I need to show he has money of his own, otherwise he’ll come after mine.’ A tiny muscle flexed in her jaw. ‘And he’s had all he’s getting from me.’

Harry flashed on the scam she’d pulled in the Bahamas that year. She’d soft-soaped a banker with tales of a cheating spouse and the need to hide her assets before her divorce. Sympathy and plausibility. Vital ingredients for any fraud. Was Beth’s story really any different?

Harry stared at the woman’s pinched profile reflected in the vault door.

‘Has the black eye anything to do with it?’ she said.

Beth shot her a look, and Harry pointed at the shining steel.

‘The glasses hide a lot, but you can still see it from the side.’

Beth checked her reflection, then dropped her gaze. She slipped off the glasses and fiddled with the stems, not meeting Harry’s eyes.

She looked older without the shades, her weathered skin at odds with her youthful frame. She was probably in her mid-thirties, just a few years older than Harry, and she had the slanted eyes and fine bone structure of the woman in the passport photo. The only difference was her left eye. The skin around it was plum-purple, the cornea shot through with blood.

‘How’d that happen?’ Harry asked.

Beth didn’t answer. Instead, she tugged her shirt collar tighter round her neck, but not before Harry had spotted the bruises. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Finally Harry said, ‘Are you planning on cleaning him out?’

Beth hugged her chest. ‘I don’t want anything from him, I just want to get away.’ She glanced at her watch and rubbed her arms, as though trying to keep warm. ‘Look, are you going to help me or not? Because we’re running out of time, and believe me, you don’t want to be here when he gets back.’

Harry studied her for a moment, tossing around the possibilities. The bank statement, the passport, the black eye. Her eyes flicked towards the gleaming vault, its winking light daring her to crack it open. She made up her mind.

‘How long do we have?’ she said.

Beth’s good eye lit up. ‘Forty minutes, maybe less.’

Harry whipped a standard contract out of her bag and filled in the blanks. As she watched Beth sign, her mind ran through a checklist of the tools she’d brought along: torch, pliers, plastic bags, screwdriver, bottled water and a packet of wine gums. She’d left her laptop on the back seat of her car. She could go back out if she needed it.

She tucked the signed contract into her bag, then turned her attention to the vault. Below the small screen on the security panel was an ATM-like slit. Below that was a recessed opening with a flat metal pad about the size of a large coin. And engraved in gold at the bottom of it all was a tiny padlock logo.

Beth shifted her feet. ‘Like I said on the phone, it’s got biometric access. Have you bypassed that kind of thing before?’

‘A few times.’

In truth, Harry had only done it twice. Hacking biometric security was an unpredictable science, and mostly it took time. She peered at the slit and the small metal pad. On the face of it, she’d need two things, neither of which she had: a digital keycard and one of Garvin’s fingers.

‘He always keeps the card on him,’ Beth said, as if reading her mind. ‘Even at night. There’s no way I can get hold of it.’

Harry nodded. In her experience, people kept a backup for something that important. She moved over to the desk, scrutinizing the items on its surface: phone, pens, notepad, some disconnected cables and a silver-framed photo.

She rummaged in her case and found her torch. Then she crouched down low, training the beam on the underside of the desk. She’d once known a target who’d taped an envelope to the bottom of his desk, a secret stash for all his bank accounts and passwords. Ever since then, she’d paid attention to nooks and crannies.

She craned her neck, squinting between the cross-planks and into all the corners. Nothing.

Harry straightened up and sank into the office chair, scooting in close to the desk. Most people kept notes to jog their memories, but this guy kept things clean. No doodles, no scraps of paper, no printed reports. Her own desk was a lot more topsy-turvy.

She opened the drawers. Paperclips, spare pens, boxes of staples. She hitched the drawers out of the desk, hoisting them around and checking every surface. Still nothing.

Beth prowled around the room, checking her watch at ten-second intervals.

‘Relax,’ Harry said. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘You don’t know what he’s like. The last time he came home and found someone unexpected in the house, he just threw her out.’ Beth waved a hand in the air. ‘Oh, he was very civil about it, but she must have known something was wrong. She still left, though.’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘She was family, she should’ve known.’

Harry shot her a look. Beth was slumped against the vault, picking at her nails.

‘Known what?’ Harry said.

Beth shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘That he’d turn on me. The minute she’d gone, he smashed up a chair and used it to break my ribs.’

‘Jesus.’ Harry stared at her. ‘Why?’

‘No reason. There never has to be a reason.’

Harry blinked. She tried to imagine being tied to a man who made you feel afraid. Without warning, she flashed on a familiar face: someone she’d trusted, who’d later tried to kill her. Her heartbeat picked up, and she shook the thought away.

She drummed her fingers on the desk, trying to re-focus. Her gaze flicked over the silver-framed photo, and she reached out for a closer look. A young girl in a school uniform smiled up at her with Beth’s tilted eyes.

‘My little girl, Evie,’ Beth said. ‘She’s in boarding school. Safer there.’

Harry nodded, and turned the photo round in her hand. The glass seemed loose, the backing board not quite flush with the frame. She prised up the clips and tipped the photo out on to the desk. Tucked in against the backing board was a blue plastic swipe card, with a gold padlock logo in one corner.

Hairs rippled at the back of her neck. Beth strode towards her.

‘Don’t get too excited.’ Harry headed over to the vault. ‘We still need your husband’s fingerprint.’

She fed the card into the slot. The red light flipped to amber, and the screen prompted for her next move:

Please Scan Fingerprint

Beth fidgeted behind her. ‘What now?’

‘If we had more time, we could lift Garvin’s prints from around the house.’ Harry wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe make some kind of mould. Problem is, with ten fingers to choose from, it’s a bit hit and miss. We only get three shots before the vault locks us out for good.’

Beth groaned. ‘We’ve only twenty minutes left.’

Harry peered at the recessed opening. ‘When did your husband last open the vault?’

‘This morning. Why?’

‘Has anyone touched the finger sensor since?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Harry fetched her torch and shone it into the recess. The beam picked out a faint smudge of grease on the metal pad. She snapped off the light and ran through her options. She could hack the sensor in a few different ways, but the priority here was speed.

‘What are you going to do?’ Beth said.

Harry shrugged. ‘Use the only fingerprint we have. The one on the sensor.’ She saw Beth’s blank look and explained. ‘I’m going to try and reactivate it.’

Harry bent down low so that her mouth was on a level with the metal pad. It was a capacitive sensor that measured electrical changes across its surface when a human finger touched it. A high measurement meant a ridge in a fingerprint, and a low measurement meant a valley. The sensor put it all together to reconstruct a fingerprint pattern.

The trick now was to make it think that Garvin’s finger was still there.

Harry swallowed, and licked her lips. She needed to breathe on the surface of the sensor, letting the moisture from her breath gather between the lines in the grease stain. With luck, it’d be enough for the sensor to measure the capacitance and mistake it for an actual finger.

Gently, she breathed on to the surface of the pad, exhaling for three or four seconds. The screen beeped, and she glanced up at the message:

Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.

Damn. Probably too much moisture. She must have exhaled for too long. She could try it again, but in her experience, tricking around with her breathing technique wasn’t going to help.

‘Now what?’ Beth’s voice was shrill.

Harry aimed for a confident tone. ‘Plan B.’

She reached for her case, but before she could open it the desk phone rang. Harry jumped. Beth’s hand flew to her throat and they both stared at the phone.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Harry said.

Beth shook her head. After four rings, the answering machine kicked in.

‘If you’re there, pick up the bloody phone.’ The man’s voice was gravelly, his accent clipped. New Zealand? He waited a beat before continuing. ‘Forget it. I’m nearly there, I’ll see you in two minutes.’

The call ended with a click. Beth stepped backwards, wide-eyed. Her fear was infectious, and Harry found herself checking over her shoulder.

‘Can you do it?’ Beth’s voice was a whisper.

‘In two minutes?’ Harry swallowed. ‘Maybe. Or you could bail out now?’

Beth’s headshake was almost imperceptible. A voice in Harry’s head shrieked at her to run, but she blocked it out. Fumbling through her case, she found a clear plastic bag and a bottle of water. Trying to hold the bag steady, she half-filled it with water, then tied a knot in the top. She kneaded it, testing its pliability. It wobbled like jelly in her hands. She squeezed a corner of the water-filled plastic into a marble-sized balloon. Then she turned back to the vault.

She felt Beth’s eyes on her like a pair of hot skewers. Holding her breath, she lowered the balloon on to the sensor and counted to three.

Beep. Beth cursed. Harry’s gaze shot to the screen:

Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.

Hot sweat flashed down her back. She’d only one shot left. She grabbed her torch and shone it on to the sensor. The smudge was still there, faint but visible.

‘One minute left,’ whispered Beth.

Harry ripped out the packet of wine gums from her case, the contents exploding on to the floor. She snatched up an orange jelly. Its surface was soft and dry. She pushed her index finger into it, coaxing the smooth jelly round her fingertip with her thumb and middle finger.

The jelly had the same capacitance as the skin on a human finger. Hackers called it the Gummi bear attack, and there was a small chance it could fool the sensor.

Harry moved her fingers into the recess. Wheels crunched on gravel in the driveway outside, and Beth gasped. Harry froze, a pulse hammering in her throat.

A car door thunked.

Harry swallowed and lowered the wine gum towards the pad, her fingers trembling. Footsteps scraped against stone outside. She touched the jelly against the metal, keeping the pressure even.

One, two, three.

The light flashed green. Bolts clinked inside the vault. A split second later, the door to the house crashed open.