The Ardmore Inheritance by Rob Wyllie (reading the story of the .txt) 📕

thus far to find any trace of the hacker. This was out of character for his boss and he knew instantly what had prompted it. It was the news that a selection of ACC Katherine Frost's amateur porn videos had now surfaced on the web and as was to be expected, were gathering 'likes' by the ton. This guy had to be caught, and quick.

The fact that Eleanor had concluded the text with a kiss had been a surprise which, not being a normal feature of their communication, he assumed was either a reflex action or maybe an effort on her part to soften the blow of this unexpected failure. He found her at her adopted desk, which seemed to be now her permanent location, her visits to her official office over in Maida Vale labs now few and far between. Like himself, she preferred to work on her own, and by keeping out of sight in his Department 12B enclave, she could avoid the tedious schedule of weekly stand-ups and team meetings and communications briefs she hated so much. It also meant that, out of sight of her boss, she could spend more time on the phone to her on-off boyfriend Lloyd. Time when really she should have been working. But for the second time in a fortnight, Frank had failed to catch her out, which he reckoned might be some sort of a record.

'Hi Eleanor,' he asked brightly, pulling up a battered plastic chair alongside her desk, 'Lloyd ok?'

'Like yeah. Why do you ask?' she answered, giving him a suspicious look.

'No reason, it's just what people do. It's called exchanging pleasantries. You should try it some time.'

'Whatever.'

He smiled. 'Aye, whatever yourself. So wee Eleanor, are you going to explain that cryptic message you sent me last night? Because first you got me all excited then you broke my heart.'

'Yeah, soz,' she said, furrowing her brow. 'I thought I'd cracked it until I talked to Rosie.'

'Rosie?' he said, giving her a puzzled look. 'Who's Rosie?'

She shrugged. 'Rosie Winterton. She's like Director of IT or something. My mate Zak put me on to her.'

He smiled to himself. He'd learnt this was how Eleanor operated, informally drawing in a diverse range of expertise from across the law-enforcement landscape, her tentacles spreading beyond the Met into MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ and other more secretive groups that didn't even have the benefit of an acronym. And most of her contacts it seemed only had first names, this Rosie Winterton being the exception that proved the rule, he guessed on the basis of her obvious seniority in the organisation.

'Right, well you better tell me the whole grim tale,' he said. 'Go ahead please, leaving no stone unturned.'

'Do you want the good news or the bad news first?'

'I think I already know the bad news, which is that you.. sorry, I mean we can't actually do whatever it is needs to be done. So you'd better give me the good news then I suppose.'

She gave him an uncertain look, which was not at all like her, because generally speaking, self-doubt was not Eleanor Campbell's thing. 'I don't suppose it really is good news if we can't actually do it.'

'No no, I'm sure that's not the case,' he said encouragingly. 'Come on, let me be the judge.'

'Ok. So when you gave me the task, I needed to get all the data together on this Georgie guy...'

'Geordie.'

'... yeah, that's it. So I talked to Pete and he sent me a summary of the incidents that we had recorded in London.'

He didn't need to ask who Pete was, because he already knew. His good mate DI Pete Burnside, as obliging a bloke as had ever been issued with a warrant card.

'So there were like eight incidents in our area and I added the porno woman from Manchester to make nine in all.'

Frank laughed. 'Can I remind you that the porno woman as you call her is Assistant Chief Constable Katherine Frost, so please, show a little respect for the rank. And don't say whatever again, ok?'

'Whatever. So with that data set,' she continued, ignoring his sharp look, 'I realised we could do a cross-reference against the cell-phone databases and look for a match.'

'Explain please,' he said, interested.

'So we know where he was at particular points in time because of that weird graffiti he leaves behind? That means if we have the cell phone databases for each of those times and places, we could in theory do a giant cross-reference search and see if a particular phone number appeared in all the locations. Because it would be more than a coincidence if more than one number appeared in each of these places and at these specific times. Do you see?'

It was a lot of words to take in, but for once, he did see, a rare occurrence when he was on the end of one of her convoluted technical explanations.

'Christ that's bloody genius Eleanor, so it is.' But then he remembered the bad news. 'So why can't we do it then? This cross-matching thing.'

'I talked to Rosie,' she said, the disappointment obvious in her voice, 'and she said we would have to stand up a mountain of tin and then implement a bank of multi-threaded database servers. To do it, that is.'

'I'm sorry Eleanor, but I didn't understand a word of that. Can you simplify it for a technical cretin like me?'

She was happy to oblige. 'We'd need a really big computer. Rosie said it would cost three hundred grand and take about six months to set up. And we would need to get all the individual databases from about ten mobile phone companies and join them all together which would take a ton of project management because of all the data protection hoops we'd have to jump through.'

Frank sighed. 'Well it does sound like a hell of a job, and I don't think DCI Smart's going to sign off an three hundred grand budget. It's a pity,