Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

car drove in from left of frame and stopped; its driver, Proctor, opened the door and closed it again without getting out. He opened it a second time about five minutes later, then walked out of frame to the right. During those five minutes he had made the transmission. For that period, the windows remained opaque with reflected sky.

Saskia sighed. “Any ideas?”

Hannah gestured with his sandwich. “I don’t know about ideas, but there is an odd thing: the door. Why did he open it twice?”

“Yes. The door. He is the only person in the car. What model of car is that? Does it have an advanced computer onboard?”

Besson shook his head. “That’s a Merc. An expensive model with hands-off driving module, but the computer is thick. Course, Proctor may have installed a computer himself. It could interface with the car, control it. Anything’s possible.”

Saskia checked against the notes on her recorder. “Garrel mentioned that Proctor had a personal computer. A very miniature one. Perhaps the computer handled the communication. Picture it: Proctor arrives, he opens the door, then the computer calls him back in. He closes it again and receives the transmission.”

Hannah grunted. “Maybe the computer said who’s calling.”

Saskia snapped her finger and thumb. “Maybe. You will make a fine FIB Detective one day, Deputy.”

“Gee thanks. Am I allowed to eat my sandwich now?”

“No. Paul, can we see a visual of the sound at that point?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” Besson spun the dial on his mouse anticlockwise and the video began to reverse. Proctor walked backwards to the car and opened the door. “That’s the end of it the transmission.” He wound it back still further. The door closed. He kept cuing. Thirty seconds later – for Proctor, five minutes earlier – the door opened again. “Right,” Besson said. “Here’s the visual of the sound. There are two waveforms because it’s stereo.”

The image was replaced by two graphs. They were flat but for a little peak in the middle of each waveform. Despite the cold, they reminded Saskia of lonely, Pacific islands. “Play it,” she said.

“Way ahead of you,” muttered Besson.

He played it. It sounded like the wind. Somewhere far away she heard an irregular sound. It might have been a footfall, a snapping branch or a voice. “There is definitely something,” Saskia said.

“I agree. Let me get this cleaned up. I’ll filter out the noise and have the computer make a guess. It’ll take about an hour.”

It took forty-eight minutes. Hannah’s phone rang as he and Saskia were finishing their fourth cigarette under the awning. They had been discussing the facts of the case. Hannah had said, “What do you reckon to Proctor then?”

Saskia thought for a moment – primarily to infer Hannah’s intended meaning – and then said, “I think he may be innocent of some crimes. At least, not guilty in the way we think. I don’t trust Garrel.”

“A stitch-up?”

“A conspiracy perhaps. Trust me, it happens.”

And then Hannah’s phone rang: ‘Scotland the Brave’. It was Besson.

“I have it,” he said, and hung up.

Saskia and Hannah jogged back up and found Besson sitting triumphantly before the computer. Leaning over his shoulder were Charlotte and Henry. Hannah wheezed to a halt and Saskia looked at Besson’s finger, poised over the mouse button.

“Do it,” she said.

Besson did it. Over the speaker, with some digital distortion, a woman’s voice said, “Professor Proctor, it is your daughter.”

Everybody laughed. Saskia clapped Besson on the back and Hannah elbowed Henry in the ribs. “Not too shabby, eh, Henry?” Charlotte nodded with pursed lips.

“Good work, Paul,” said Saskia. She stood back and let her smile fade. “Now, I want a complete analysis of every electronic communication between Proctor and his daughter. Everybody work on it. Divide the labour according to three equal periods of time since her tenth birthday.”

Charlotte said, “You know, it would save us some time if we had some access to the GCHQ files.”

“Explain.”

“The General Communications Headquarters. It is part of the UK government intelligence apparatus. It monitors electronic transmissions. Sifts through emails, too, if the person is flagged for surveillance. Do you think Proctor is flagged?”

Saskia turned to Hannah. He nodded. She remembered her conversation with Garrel. The West Lothian Centre had been bombed twice. Proctor had been strongly suspected of the first. Unofficially, he was guilty. In 2003 all governments had been more sensitive to terrorism following the World Trade Center bombing. He was certain to be flagged.

“Call ’em up,” said Hannah. He began to walk towards to door. “I’m going to talk to the Super about the new lead. We can check her emails, but I’d rather interview her.”

Charlotte, Henry and Besson set about their computers. Saskia grabbed a phone and called Jobanique. She said, in clumsy German, “I need to access GCHQ electronic surveillance on Proctor.” The line went dead. Five minutes later, Jobanique called and said, “You have it. There’s a website. I’ve sent the address via email. Log on with your badge number.” He hung up.

The day had begun so slowly, and now the speed of events began to accelerate. Saskia logged onto the GCHQ computer and deferred to Charlotte. Charlotte trawled the emails for over two hours: text communications first because they were quicker to process. She made better progress than her colleagues, who were confined to more conventional snooping techniques. They could not help because the GCHQ computer would not allow Saskia to log on from more than one computer. It was frustrating, but they were rewarded with good indications early on: an email from Jennifer Proctor, aged sixteen, enthusing about her mathematics class, writing that it would ‘b2kool’ to use an encrypted transmission.

Hannah became excited. He smelled the scent.

Saskia, for her part, was saddened by their story. The emails were long from the daughter and short from the father. In the most recent transmissions, Proctor wrote only one or two lines. They were invariably apologetic: “Sorry I can’t write any more right now,” “CU Gotta go,” “Write more soon, I