2 The Dante Connection (7 page)

“Later. Can I watch the video now?” When Francine nodded, I tapped the screen and watched. The two couples stumbled to the left as Francine moved to her right, towards the camera. The moment the laughing couples were out of sight, two masked men left the building from the same door and ran to Francine.

She must have heard the footsteps and started turning to the sound, but they were already on her. One man punched her hard in the face. She fell backwards into the arms of the taller man. He grabbed her around her waist and lifted her off her feet. The first man punched her again.

At first she allowed her body to go slack, giving both men the illusion of compliance. Her body language communicated female pleading and fear. The tall man loosened his hold slightly and the first man moved in. As soon as he was close enough, she used the tall man’s hold on her as leverage and delivered a jarring kick to the other man’s groin. He dropped to the ground in visible agony.

She didn’t wait for the tall man to recover from the shock of her sudden display of violence. Francine fought like a martial arts student. My trainer would have been impressed with her. I most certainly was. The tall man was still holding her, his face an easy target when she slammed her head back into it. There was no doubt in my mind that move had broken his nose.

He reacted by holding her even tighter, but was not immune to a ten-centimetre heel jabbing into his foot. His mouth opened wide in a scream and he released her. By now the second man was slowly pushing himself up. The moment Francine’s feet touched the pavement, she started running. The first man grabbed at her and managed to catch her left calf. It was enough to unbalance her. She slammed into the ground.

The tall man limped over as she kicked at the hand still holding her calf. Both men’s body language conveyed severe aggression. She had provoked fury in them. The tall man reached her side and kicked her so hard in her ribs that I flinched. I was amazed that her injuries were not more serious. She had lost one shoe, her pantyhose were ripped and she was curling in on herself to protect her torso from being kicked. The tall man delivered a few more kicks until Francine’s body appeared to relax in unconsciousness.

The first man crawled over. One of her frantic kicks must have connected with his head. He was bleeding from a deep cut above his right ear. He lifted his right hand and an involuntary gasp left my lips. He held a large knife in his hand and a sneer pulled his mouth into a cruel smile. He was going to kill her.

Obviously these men did not have a high intellect or they would’ve learned from experience. Francine used the same tactic as she had earlier. Still pretending to be unconscious, she waited for the first man to be close enough before she executed a sequence of elegant moves so fast I could only see flashes of moving limbs until she punched him hard in his throat. His head snapped back and he dropped to the pavement, clutching his throat. Her punch had been hard enough to cause possible damage to his spinal cord. It definitely caused his trachea to collapse. He was going to die from lack of oxygen.

The tall man stared at his comrade for a second. His nostrils flared, increasing his oxygen intake and so preparing him for action. Francine must have seen this. She grabbed the first man’s knife from the pavement, jumped to her feet and staggered. She favoured her left side, her ribs causing her enough pain to inhibit her agility. The tall man reached behind him and pulled a revolver from the back of his dark pants. Francine didn’t give him time to move it past his side.

With a speed that only a rush of adrenaline could provide, she stepped into him and drove the knife into his heart. How he did not see it coming or react to it, I didn’t know. The weapon dropped from his hand onto the pavement and he looked down in surprise. His eyes locked on the knife protruding from his chest and he slowly went down on his knees. He looked up once at Francine before he fell over and stilled. The first man had stopped moving. The horror on her face was visible despite the grainy image. She bent over and heaved. I tapped the screen and looked at her.

“They tried to kill you.”

“Yes.” Her eyes were glued to the paused screen on the tablet computer. She looked pale under the bruises.

“Why?”

She looked at me. “Watch the next two minutes.”

Usually I preferred to watch political thrillers or art films. Movies with absurd amounts of violence didn’t appeal to me. Watching someone I had recently called my friend get beaten up was not pleasant. I steeled myself and tapped the screen again.

Francine was frantically wiping her hands on her dress. That explained the blood on her designer garment. Her movements were disjointed and I could see that she was in shock. Wearing only one shoe, she stumbled out of view.

“I went to my car and came straight here,” she said softly. “Continue watching.”

For a few seconds I only saw the two bodies lying prone on the pavement. A dark, shiny pool grew from the tall man’s chest. Blood. I shuddered. The door opened and three men, also dressed in dark clothes, walked to the death scene. They didn’t even take time to check the attackers’ vitals. One man rolled out two sheets of what looked like hard plastic and within a minute both bodies were rolled and bound. One by one, they carried the bodies to the left of the camera, out of view. When they returned, they disappeared inside only to come out with cleaning equipment a few seconds later. They started cleaning the pavement.

“They spend about ten minutes doing that,” Francine said. “I’m sure that pavement has never been that clean.”

“What happens after they finish cleaning?” I asked, watching them scrub the pavement with hard-bristled brooms.

“Nothing. People come and go. I watched the video until it became light. No police. Nothing,” she said again. “My guess is that they put the bodies in a car and got rid of them somewhere. God, I can’t believe this happened.”

I tapped the screen and looked at her. “You are an excessively paranoid person. Why would you go to a place like this? What made you think it was safe?”

“I got hacked.” I couldn’t clearly see the anger in her face, but her tight fists and hard breathing communicated it loudly. “The only way that could ever have happened is if someone had physical access to my computers. Every single one of my computers has been built from parts, none of which has imprinted hardware ID’s. I also compiled my own operating system with FreeBSD…”

She must have noticed the confusion on Vinnie’s face and lack of interest on mine. Colin was the only one nodding his head in understanding. Francine sighed heavily. “My computers were completely safe from external hacking. I would never, never, insert a CD or USB drive in my computer without knowing where it came from, who it came from and what was on it. In other words, someone had broken into my super-secret apartment and loaded their crap onto my computers.”

“Do you know who?” I asked.

“I’m working on it. When I checked my connection logs, I noticed traces in the data. That is how I knew I was hacked. Now I’m working on finding the little bastard.”

“But what does this have to do with you attending this party?”

“Ah, yes. Sorry. I get angry every time I think about some bastard breaking into my place, raping my computers, and forget what I was really talking about. This bastard had access to my entire database, so he knew all my communication, everything. A lot of success in hacking relies on psychology. You need to know what your intended victim will respond to. Studying my communication must have made it clear that I would’ve accepted an invitation from my contact. So they made the invite to look like it was sent from him. Someone had wanted me to be there.”

I allowed this new information to process for a few seconds. “How easy is it to hack someone’s system?”

“Most systems are shockingly easy to get into,” she said. “Banks, law enforcement agencies and a few other institutions have better security. Breaching that is a challenge, especially to get in and out unnoticed. Your company installed a professional security solution, which is pretty much an internet security package. This is then regularly audited by a computer security company. On top of that, the firewall and packet filter made getting into your computer a bit of a challenge, but not much.”

“When did you hack into my computer?” I asked. This was the better question of many begging for answers. The other questions would require knowledge that I did not have. The fact that she had gotten past the security that Phillip had once boasted of was interesting. Phillip would be livid. I was curious.

“You’re not angry that I hacked your computer?” Francine blinked a few times when I lifted my shoulders in a universal sign of indifference. “Okay. Well then. I got into your computer months ago. Why do you ask?”

“I think that someone hacked my computer yesterday. Things were different when I got to work today.”

My calm announcement was met with an outburst. Vinnie jumped out of his seat, demanding to know who it was. Colin overrode any reply with a barrage of questions. I was almost amused by them attacking me with questions without waiting for any answers. Almost. Being boxed in by Francine on the one side, Colin on the other and Vinnie hovering over me was becoming too much.

I had expected a reaction, but not one so overwhelming. It made me take notice. I saw the worried look Francine gave Colin and the slight headshake he gave her as a warning. I also noted Vinnie’s posture change from friend to bodyguard. This had to be connected to the secrecy between them that I had observed a few times. I wondered if it was related to the case and whether I needed to know why they were so concerned.

Chapter SIX

“I think we’ve all calmed down now,” Colin said, sipping his coffee. They had realised that their method of bombarding me was not getting them anywhere, so Colin had suggested a time-out. While Colin had gone to make coffee, Vinnie had explained the expression to me. I liked it.

“Genevieve, why do you think your computer was hacked?” Francine asked.

“I always log off any program or site before I switch off my computer. When I switched it on this morning, I was already logged into my email account. And two of the icons on my desktop had been moved.”

“Have you told Phillip?” Colin asked.

“No. I forgot about it when he and Manny came into my office. Then I lost myself in my work until you appeared. And I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.”

“From the little you’ve told me, it is not conclusive that your computer was hacked,” Francine said. “But taken in the context of what has been happening, I’m convinced.”

“What has been happening?” I thought back to our trip to the hospital. “Does this have to do with your uncle?”

“I think you should tell the whole story now, Francine,” Colin said. “I, for one, would seriously like to know what’s going on.”

“Yes, of course. My uncle’s house was broken into a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

“Is he okay?” Colin asked.

“He’s fine. Just supremely pissed off. Nobody wants to take responsibility for what he calls the royal fuck-up.”

“How old is your uncle?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

“Eighty-three. He’s actually my great-uncle.” She rolled her eyes. “He thinks he’s still forty. My uncles tried for years to get him to move into a retirement village, but stopped when he threatened to disown them last year. His body might not be the strongest, but his mind is sharper than most thirty-year-olds’.”

“Should I assume that your family is affluent?” I asked.

Vinnie snorted. “You could say that.”

“Yes,” Francine said. “My mother’s family comes from old money. There are a lot of artworks that have been in the family for generations.”

“Her family is the Lemartins,” Vinnie said with meaning.

“I don’t know what that means,” I said when all three of them looked at me expectantly. Was I supposed to react in some way?

“They are one of the most influential families in France,” Colin explained. “Old money, high standing and power.”

I was about to comment on Francine’s lack of social standing when I noticed the warning on Colin’s face. I pressed my lips together. Francine saw this and laughed, but immediately grabbed her ribs and breathed through the pain.

“Don’t worry, Genevieve, this is one of the reasons I started hanging out with you. You don’t give a fig about social importance. It’s annoying to be with people who are in awe of my bloodline. You’re not. And you’re most likely right in whatever it is you’re thinking right now.” She started ticking off on her fingers. “I’m financially independent from my family and they so don’t like it. But that is not the biggest issue they have with me. My loving family doesn’t want anything to do with me because I don’t care about the stupid little elitist clubs they belong to. I don’t brownnose, I don’t care what other people think of me and I definitely don’t care about their money.”

She had become more emotional talking about her family, so I didn’t think it prudent to ask about the many words she used that I was not familiar with. I did, however, understand the gist. I had always been a social outcast. At least until I had learned to copy social behaviour. Personally, I had never felt the strong urge for belonging, but knew it was important to most people and they would do whatever it took to gain acceptance. Anyone not succumbing to social pressure was remarkably courageous in my opinion.

“You’re brave,” I said.

“Or just stupid,” Francine said with a smile in her voice. “At least that’s what my mother’s family always told me. Except for my great-uncle. He is a bit eccentric and as he gets older, he supports me more.”

Most often people said more by not saying something. Francine’s omission of support from her parents was telling. I also observed her increased discomfort with this topic. She had seldom ventured into her personal history during our lunches.

“Back to the burglary,” she said, her tone less emotional. “Two weeks ago, my great-uncle was in Monaco for the weekend when his house was broken into. Of course he is insured, and he also employs a security company to watch over his house. He has a top-of-the-range security system throughout the property, but none of the alarms were set off during the burglary. There was no visible point of entry, no broken windows and the security cameras did not record anything. Basically, the crime did not happen, except for the missing art.”

I glanced at Colin. His left eyebrow was lifted and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Just like the others.”

“What others?” Vinnie asked.

I told them about the burglaries that I was looking into. Colin had to listen to it for a second time. He shook his head when I finished.

“You haven’t told them everything, Jenny.”

“God, these burglaries are definitely all related,” Francine said. “I want to find these bastards. What else is there about this case?”

“At some of the crime scenes the thieves left a red flower. The type of flower has not yet been confirmed and I’m not a botanist so I couldn’t identify it from the photos. Because these cases took place in different places with different types of law enforcement agencies handling it, no one picked up on that similarity.”

“You did,” Francine said.

“I saw the flowers on the crime scene photos. Manny confirmed it.”

“Millard?” The venom in Vinnie’s voice surprised me. “He’s involved in this?”

“He’s the one who brought the case to Rousseau & Rousseau,” I said. The glances between the three of them became too much for me. “What is going on here? You’re having whispered conversations and I can see from your nonverbal cues that you have a secret you don’t want me to know. Usually I wouldn’t care about people and their secrets, but this happens whenever I talk about this case. It also happened when we were in the hospital. What is this about?”

“You have to tell her,” Francine said. She had said this before.

“Tell me what?”

There was a moment of silence. Francine shifted next to me.

“Fine, I’ll tell her,” she said and immediately continued, not giving the men a chance to stop her. “The reason I insisted on having you in the hospital with me was to know you were safe. And also for you to find out what has been happening. I had hoped the men would tell you, but obviously they haven’t. I think your life is in danger.”

I laughed. “My life? Who would be interested in me? I sit in a viewing room all day. If I’m not analysing video footage of interviews, I’m looking for anomalies in data. How could this put my life in danger?”

“How many people have gone to jail because of your body language analysis? Or because you found an anomaly in some accounting somewhere that caused a forensic investigation?”

I was surprised that Francine knew so much about my job. I knew I hadn’t told her about this. She must have learned this while illegally accessing my computer. “In the last six years? Eleven people have been sentenced to time in prison and twenty have been given suspended sentences. There are even two people who were extradited.”

Francine stared at me with her mouth slightly agape. “Wow. And you don’t think that maybe one of these people could be pissed off enough at you to come for revenge?”

“My contract states that I will never be named in any legal proceedings.”

“Nobody knows that you’re the one who got them investigated?”

“No. So you can see how I strongly doubt that my life is in danger.”

Francine’s lips thinned as much as it could through the swelling. She grabbed her tablet computer and narrowed her eyes. “Two minutes. Time me.”

I looked at my watch, even though I suspected her order to have been symbolic rather than serious. She was tapping away on her tablet computer. I looked at Colin and Vinnie. Maybe they knew what Francine was doing, but both of them just shrugged.

“Here.” She pushed the tablet in my hands. “Look.”

“It was one minute and,” I glanced at my watch, “twenty-three seconds.”

“Look,” she almost shouted.

I narrowed my eyes at her tone, but looked at the screen. The
corrugator procerus
muscles pulled my brow lower and together. “This is my email account.”

“Your secure work email account. I’m totally in your system now. Whatever is on your internal main server is mine. Anything that you’ve saved, worked on, emailed, it is all mine. Your contact lists, your data, anything private that you might have revealed in emails or saved on your system. I can send emails in your name, I can download all your data, I can open all your files. You are mine, bitch.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Um, sorry. That one just slipped out.”

“What is the point you’re trying to make?” I asked.

“She’s trying to tell you that even a weaker hacker could get in after some time and know everything about you within a few hours,” Colin said. He lifted an eyebrow at Francine. “Maybe you should tell Jenny how you got into her system.”

Francine sighed. “I was just trying to prove a point. Truthfully it would take me longer than this to hack into a secure system, especially from a tablet. When I first got into your mail server, it took me eighteen minutes. Now I had all your access data and that is why it only took one minute and twenty-three seconds.”

“A rather dramatic way to make her point,” Colin said. “But it shows that some hacker could get into your mail or computer, and they would know which cases you worked on, who you had investigated or audited. You are not as secure as you think. Or as anonymous.”

“But these are white-collar criminals. Like you. They are not violent killers.” My voice tapered off towards the end and I tried my best to not look at Vinnie. Nobody had ever said it out loud, but I was pretty sure he had committed many violent crimes in his past. Maybe not his recent past, but he was not a gentle sophisticated art thief. From bits and pieces that I had overheard and observed, I had drawn the conclusion that he might have been a mercenary. Although not the kind working for the government. I tried not to ponder too much on that.

“Did you see you have four new emails?” Francine asked.

I squinted at the screen. Indeed there were four new emails in my inbox. One caught my attention.

“What’s wrong, Jenny?” Colin asked.

“I didn’t order anything,” I said and opened the perplexing email.

“What didn’t you order?” Vinnie asked.

“Oh, she got an email that there is a package waiting for her in her mailbox.” Francine was leaning closer to look at the table computer in my hands. “This email says that it has ‘urgent’ written on the packaging.”

“You don’t have mail delivered to your apartment?” Colin asked.

“No, I don’t like strangers knowing where I live. I got a mailbox at this twenty-four hour office centre to limit accessibility to my private life.”

“And now you know that someone with hacking skills can have full access without much effort.” Sympathy softened Francine’s tone. “If you let me, I can make sure that it will take the best of the best hackers days to get into your computer. And your smartphone.”

“My smartphone?” I glanced at my handbag next to me. My smartphone was in its usual pocket inside the lining of my bag. “Of course. It is also a computer and has internet access, so it is equally hackable.”

“And it can remotely be switched on and off. It can even record voice and video without your knowledge. And like any other smartphone, it can be used to trace your location with incredible accuracy.”

Cold flooded my body. This was not a life I wanted. As it was, I already was bordering on obsessed about my safety. I had five locks on my front door and a reinforced door to my bedroom. And one for my bathroom. It had become part of my evening ritual to check all the locks. Sometimes I checked twice.

Sure, I was aware of the dangers of hackers. That was why I never opened unsolicited attachments and I never downloaded something that hadn’t gone through two virus checks. I also had an antivirus programme and passwords on my smartphone. My proactive internet security attitude used to make me proud. Now these attempts seemed feeble. And useless against people like Francine.

“Jen-girl?” Vinnie’s voice carried the tone of someone who had been calling me for some time.

“Yes?”

“Would you like me to go and get this package for you? I have to go to the shops in any case. We’re going to need more supplies if I’m to cook for all of us.”

“You don’t have to cook for me, Vinnie,” I said. “I’m going home.”

“Which is next door and you don’t have enough food in your fridge. You’re staying for dinner.” Vinnie stood up. “So, do you want me to get this urgent package for you?”

I suspected there was more to Vinnie’s offer. My lips tightened on the realisation. “You don’t want me to go out.”