Can Anybody Help Me? (31 page)

Her back ached and her head felt fuzzy. Those blood
pressure tablets were a nightmare. They caused more harm than good, she reckoned, leaving her with a permanent feeling of being slightly stoned, distant and distracted. And she couldn't even have a coffee to give herself a bit of an edge. Still, exercise was supposed to be good for pregnant women. Reprimanding herself for whingeing, she picked up her pace and, passing two more identical landings finally arrived on the fourth floor.

The Netmammy offices had a small sign outside, printed in the familiar navy script, and a buzzer. But Claire didn't feel like announcing herself. Instead, she pressed gently on the handle and was rewarded when the door swung silently inwards. The office inside was far bigger than she had imagined, the company clearly occupying the entire fourth floor of the building. But the sense of space was almost completely overwhelmed by the boxes, files and what looked like scrap paper piled on every available surface, and on the floor. Dust swirled in a beam of sun that came through a dirty, closed window and Claire could feel her nose prickle.

‘Can I help you?'

It was the least helpful tone of voice imaginable and Claire pushed her shoulders back as the tall blonde woman stood up from behind a computer screen. On the far side of the room, the top of a man's head could be seen behind an identical terminal, but he didn't look up as the blonde strode across the floor.

‘Do you have an appointment?'

The woman was in her mid-forties, overweight but dressed to compensate in a brightly patterned wrap dress and suit jacket. As she rocked backwards on her high heels, Claire felt a heavy
floral perfume hit the back of her throat and resisted the urge to cough.

Instead, she pulled her ID out of her pocket.

‘Detective Claire Boyle. Can I have a word with whoever's in charge?'

The woman pasted on a bright smile. If she thought it was unusual that a pregnant plain-clothes police officer would arrive in her office alone, unannounced and in the middle of the day, then she wasn't going to query it. Not for the first time, Claire sent a silent prayer of gratitude to the mixture of suspicion and grudging respect that was most Irish people's attitude towards their national police force. Came in very handy sometimes.

Keeping her tone as friendly as possible, Claire outlined what she wanted, or what she thought she wanted. An investigation into a serious crime. A suspicion that one of the perpetrators used the Netmammy site. Permission to look at the files?

‘Absolutely out of the question.'

Ah, so her deference was only going to go so far. The blonde, who introduced herself as Sandra Johnson, Netmammy CEO, said all the right words – data protection, client confidentiality, search warrant – but her attitude screamed, ‘I'm the boss around here, up yours.'

Claire hit back with a few buzz words of her own; time was of the essence, matter of major significance, blah de blah de blah, but she could tell by the woman's demeanour that she was getting nowhere and when the blonde mentioned ringing Collins Street to get more information, she knew it was time to go. The last thing she wanted was for the Super to find out what she was doing.

Muttering darkly about warrants being obtained and cooperation being appreciated, she turned, pulled the door shut behind her and headed back down the grubby stairs as quickly as she could manage.

Too quickly. Her head swam as she fumbled her way down, step after step, landing after grubby landing. Surely this was the ground floor? She tried one door, then another. All were locked. Maybe one more flight? Her head pounding, she grabbed onto the banister and tried to slow her breathing. Stupid, not to have told Matt where she was going. She hadn't brought her meds with her either, hadn't thought of it, even though she was due a tablet in less than an hour. Her knees gave and she sank down onto the grubby stair, her head in her hands. Just a minute, just a minute's rest and then she'd head for home …

‘Are you alright?'

Her heart thudded as she felt the hand on her shoulder. Struggling to her feet, she blinked as a face swam into focus.

‘You don't look too good.'

Dark hair, glasses … after a moment, Claire recognised the man who'd been working on the computer at the far end of the Netmammy office.

‘I'm fine.'

‘Yeah, well …'

The man was thin, but tall and well-built with muscular arms emerging from a brown T-shirt. His green eyes narrowed behind his glasses' thick black frames.

‘Look, are you really a cop?'

Claire nodded, unsure of how much to give away.

‘Yeah.'

‘You didn't get very far with Sandra.'

Claire paused, and then decided she had nothing to lose.

‘She wasn't very forthcoming, no.'

The man snorted, shrugged his shoulders.

‘That one? She wouldn't give you the steam off her piss.'

The old Irish phrase, like something her mother would come out with, was so at odds with the hipster uniform that Claire let out a sudden peal of laughter. He squinted at her, not getting the joke.

‘Look, is there somewhere we can go? Do you have a car or something? I think I might be able to help you.'

‘Sure.'

Claire turned, and began to walk down the stairs again.

‘I'm in the car park. Follow me.'

‘So, yeah, I've been working there for six months. Head of Technology should be the official title, but she wouldn't let me use that, of course. She wouldn't last five minutes if I walked. You know yourself. Thinks she runs the place, but she hasn't a clue what goes on under the engine.'

Claire nodded encouragingly.

Shawn – he had emphasised the spelling not once, but three times – was one of nature's most useful informants, a disgruntled employee. His job as an intern or, as he continually referred to it, an underpaid slave, at Netmammy had taught him a lot about how the company was run and he seemed determined to talk Claire through every little detail, never missing an opportunity to express his utter disregard for his boss while he was at it.

The first five minutes of his rant actually held her interest. Although she was now a daily user of Netmammy, Claire hadn't given much thought to how the site was actually run. But according to Shawn, the business was in fact a very profitable one. Ireland was going through yet another baby boom and Irish suppliers of everything from eco-nappies to bottle warmers were happy to take out ads on the homepage. Sandra Johnson was apparently making a decent living from the site she had originally started, with her husband, in their front room. The husband was now an ex – Shawn had to be hauled back from the brink of a long discussion of how lucky his escape had been – and following his departure with most of the company's technological expertise, Shawn had been employed.

‘For slave wages, totally. I mean …'

‘Yeah, okay.'

Claire held up her hand. She could probably now enter Mastermind with Sandra Johnson as her specialist subject, but was no closer to getting what she actually needed. She was also starting to realise that, despite the cool clothes, Shawn was something of a bore. She would have bet a tenner that Séan was the spelling on his birth cert. too. But he was all she had and she decided to risk a direct question.

‘I need to get into someone's account. Can you help me?'

Colour flared on his cheek and he jiggled his right leg up and down, his shoe making a tapping sound on the car floor.

‘Is this, like, official police business?'

‘It is, yeah.'

Well, technically, Claire thought, she was being honest. It was LIKE police business. It just wasn't police business, not exactly. But he didn't need to know that.

‘Cool. Well, you've come to the right man.'

He began to slap his thigh in time to the foot jiggling and Claire worried that the car would actually begin to rock under the onslaught.

‘Actually, I'm handing in my notice next week, got a new gig, paying punters, you know yourself. So, shoot. Anything to help our brothers in blue, you know? And sisters. I mean …'

His voice trailed off and he used his non-jiggling hand to push his glasses back up on his nose. He had become, she noticed, slightly sweaty and she resisted the urge to open the window and let in fresh air. Instead, she took a deep breath and concentrated on letting him know exactly what she needed.

‘I need to get into someone's account. Check their private messages. Two accounts actually.'

He wrinkled his forehead and the thick black glasses slipped down again.

‘Actually, that's pretty hard. They're all password protected?'

‘So you've no way of getting into them? Have you ever had to check them, go into an account yourself?'

‘God, no.' He grimaced. ‘I stay as far away as possible from the actual punters, to be honest with you. I mean, have you read some of the shit they come out with? Just a load of whiny women. Whinge whinge whinge. Idiots, most of them. And they can't spell.'

Claire, who found herself rather unnerved by the ferocity of his response, said nothing. And after a moment, his face brightened.

‘I'll tell you what though, I can crash the system for you. But you'll have to be quick. Do you have a computer here?'

She picked up her iPhone and waved it at him. He nodded, satisfied.

‘That'll do. I'll reset everyone's password to PASSWORD, all caps. You can get into any account you like then. But you'll have to be really quick about it. Some of those women are addicted, they'll spot there's a problem within minutes and then they'll be on to the office, bitching and moaning as usual. I'll tell Sandra it's a system glitch and that I'm working on it.'

He sat back, self-importantly, the leg finally silent.

‘She knows that whatever it is, I'll be able to fix it quickly. You can have twenty minutes, max. That do you?'

Claire nodded. It was the best offer she was going to get. No doubt there was a legal, ethical and technical way to get the information she wanted. But she didn't have time. This method would get her into six degrees of shit when her bosses found out what she'd done. But it sounded effective. And fast.

Shawn straightened his glasses again and looked directly at her.

‘Do I get a reward for this?'

‘Only the reward of knowing you've done a good deed.'

His eyes narrowed, making him look older than he had first appeared.

‘That's a bit shitty.'

‘Well, it'll have to do.'

Suddenly the space within the car was too small, the air suffocating. She wanted him out, quickly.

‘I'll give you my card, okay? Give me a shout in a few days and I'll see what I can do.'

The only phone number on the card was her desk in Collins
Street, and she wouldn't be back there for the best part of a year. But as she had suspected, he didn't read it, just nodded smugly and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans.

‘Sound. Okay. Give me a chance to get back up there. And then work as fast as you can.'

In the end it only took her a quarter of an hour.

Tapping furiously on her phone and praying the 3G connection would hold, Claire found the Netmammy homepage and logged in as LondonMum. ‘Shawn' may have been a weirdo, but he had come up with a nifty solution to her problem. She typed ‘PASSWORD' into the blank space in the log in screen and LondonMum's homepage unfolded beneath her thumb. The woman was a very frequent user of the site and the page was crowded with posts, ‘liked' products and bookmarked pages. Scrolling quickly down Claire found the personal message page. Opened up the Sent Mail folder. And began to read.

LondonMum had sent a lot of messages. There was several to MyBabba, sent over a period of months. Two each to Farmers-Wife, MeredithGrey and Della. And, of course one to Claire herself, SofaBound.

And then there was the one she was looking for.

Claire checked the time and date. And navigated her way back to the Inbox.

PRIVATE MESSAGE

It was five past one. She had only a vague notion of what she would do when she got there, but if she wanted to intercept this meeting she would have to leave now. But there was one more account she had to check first. Quickly, she logged out as LondonMum and in as FarmersWife. The account, once ferociously busy, had not been used for a week. She repressed a momentary feeling of guilt and began to check through the messages. One leapt out at her.

PRIVATE MESSAGE

And the response:

MammyNo1. Claire recognised the name from the site of course, but wasn't sure where it fitted into this story. But she didn't have time to figure that out right now. She checked her watch. She had to leave. But if she could grab just one more minute …

She logged out and went back into the site for a third time, this time as MyBabba. This account was even more active than LondonMum's. She checked the private messages. There were hundreds, going back almost three years. She checked the most recent ones. The messages to LondonMum, organising the Wicklow meet-up were there. She went back a couple of weeks. And found what she was looking for.

PRIVATE MESSAGE