He did not want to entertain the possibility that he might have been the sender.
Or someone or something here in his office with him.
He looked up at the ceiling with a start, as if he again sensed something there, looking down, mocking him.
Then he opened the Indian restaurateur’s email. It was every bit as bad as he expected. A litany of food hygiene regulations each of his restaurants had allegedly broken. And a livid reply from Bhattacharya.
For a moment he thought he was going to throw up at his desk. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to think clearly. Then he dialled Chris Webb.
‘Chris, I have an absolute emergency here. There have been more emails to those same two clients, and they’ve been copied to other potential clients. You’ve got to help me, we have to do something – my business is being destroyed.’
‘More emails?’
Ollie could hear a roar in the background, as if Webb was watching a football or perhaps rugby match on television. ‘Yes, in the past hour – while I’ve been sitting in front of my bloody computer. I just don’t know what’s going on. You’ve got to help me, please, could you come over?’
‘OK.’
‘I’d really appreciate that. How soon can you come?’
‘I’ll be with you in about forty-five minutes. Meantime, what I suggest you do is disconnect from the internet – or, even better, switch it off completely until I get there. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, right away, thank you.’
Ollie stared at the keyboard, then at the screen, as if scared something new might have appeared while he’d been talking to the computer guru. He did as instructed, selected Shut Down from the Apple menu and clicked on it.
He waited until the screen was dark and the machine was silent, then stood up, went downstairs and out into the garden, feeling desperately in need of some fresh air to try to clear his head. The sun in the clear blue sky barely registered, nor the warmth of the air, or anything around him as he walked down towards the lake, his heart like a massive weight inside his chest. He felt as if all the energy had been sucked out of him and he was just a dark, discarded husk.
He stood and stared bleakly at two mallards, a male and female, paddling seemingly aimlessly across the water. Just what the hell was happening to them all? Had they made a terrible mistake moving here – not just taking on more than they could cope with financially, but coming into some unfathomable darkness?
Should they just move out and put the place on the market? It was something he had considered several times in the past few days. And yet, it seemed absurd to give in, and give all this up, just because of – if Bruce Kaplan was right – some energy at large in the place. Both Bob Manthorpe and Caro’s strange client who had died, had advised requesting the diocesan exorcist – Minister of Deliverance – to come and clear the house. Maybe that was all it needed. And everything would be OK after that. The vicar had said this morning he would put in a request to the Sussex Minister of Deliverance and get back to him as quickly as he could.
His phone vibrated in his trouser pocket and began ringing. He pulled it out and saw a mobile number on the display he did not recognize.
‘Hello?’ he answered.
‘Ah, Oliver, is this a good moment?’
It was Roland Fortinbrass.
‘Yes, it is, thank you.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’
45
Saturday, 19 September
An hour and a half later Chris Webb was seated in Ollie’s office, in front of his computer. Ollie hovered anxiously behind him, peering over his shoulder at the screen. It was filled with a maze of rows and columns of numbers and letters that were meaningless to Ollie, but Webb was studying them with fierce concentration, emitting a string of comments out loud as he did so.
‘What the—? Oh, I see . . . But how the hell did you get there? What? What’s this?’
‘What’s what?’ Ollie asked.
‘I mean, that just shouldn’t be there!’
‘What shouldn’t be?’
‘Have you been in here changing any settings?’
‘No, why would I?’
‘Someone has,’ Webb said.
‘Someone? That’s not possible, Chris – I’m the only person who would ever touch this computer.’
Webb grimaced. ‘Could just be a Mac glitch – I’ve got a few clients where something similar’s happened recently on the latest operating system – settings changing of their own accord.’
‘Or could this be evidence of the hacker?’
Webb lifted the large mug of coffee Ollie had brought him, and drank some. ‘Well, this wouldn’t give anyone a pathway in. I think it’s more of an operating system glitch. Jade wouldn’t have been on this?’
‘Absolutely not. I’m certain.’
‘You see, I can’t find any footprints at all. I can see the tracks I left earlier, when I connected through TeamViewer, but there’s no sign at all of any unauthorized user having been here.’
Distracted by movement through the window to his right, Ollie saw Caro coming up the drive in her Golf, with Jade beside her and a figure, presumably Phoebe, on the back seat.
‘It’s a mystery,’ Webb said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m baffled. I don’t know what to suggest. We could put in an extra firewall and see if that stops it.’
‘Chris, I’ve got to do something to salvage the situation. I can’t afford to lose these clients.’
‘Of course.’
‘OK, I’ve had an idea,’ Ollie said, suddenly brightening up a little. ‘Cholmondley and Bhattacharya aren’t aware of each other. So, how about you write an email to each of them, explaining that you are my IT manager and that these emails have been sent from some malicious hacker who must have a grudge against them?’
Webb looked dubious.
‘I’ll compose it and give you the wording. All you have to do is just sign as yourself, as my IT manager. Then I can follow it up by phoning them, when hopefully they’ve calmed down.’
‘OK, sure. But—’
‘But?’
‘I’ll write it, sign it, whatever, but I’m not sure it’s going to be the end of it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ollie asked.
‘What I mean is I don’t think you’ve been hacked, mate.’ He stared at Ollie.
‘So who do you think wrote these?’
‘Someone in this house.’ Webb raised his arms. ‘Look, I know that sounds crazy to you, but I really don’t think you’ve been hacked. Unless it’s by someone a lot cleverer than me – and that, of course, is always a possibility!’
‘Chris,’ said Ollie, becoming impatient with the man’s intransigence about hacking, ‘those last two were sent while I was sitting here at my desk. Jade was out at a riding lesson and Caro sure as hell didn’t come in and start typing under my nose without my seeing her.’
‘All right, email scan be programmed to be sent at a scheduled time. Perhaps someone typed these during the night, when you were asleep, scheduling them to go at a specific time. Either by accessing this computer or by hacking it.’
Ollie shook his head. ‘Who the hell would do that, Chris?’
‘I don’t know. Have you made any enemies?’
‘No.’
Could it possibly be Jade, Ollie wondered, lapsing into thought? Sleepwalking and now sleep-typing? She was pretty computer savvy, it wasn’t impossible. Yet the language in those emails, the technical information about the Ferrari, the information about the restaurants, she couldn’t possibly have known all that. But who had? And equally importantly, why had these emails been sent? By someone out to destroy him, that was evident. But who, he thought again? Who the hell could it be – and why?
‘I honestly can’t think of anyone I’ve upset. This is just a complete mystery.’