The Insider

She remembered the newspaper headlines: Insider Trading Ring Exposed Over Sorohan Fraud; KWC Ring Leader Charged by Stock Exchange. A hard knot burned inside her chest. That was almost eight years ago: 7th June 2001, to be precise. The day the shutters had slammed down for good between herself and her father.

But who the hell would lodge twelve million euros into her account? Not her father, surely. He was locked up in Arbour Hill prison, and she doubted that online banking was a facility the inmates enjoyed. She slammed her laptop shut. Not only had someone stashed a chunk of money in her account, but somehow they’d done it without leaving any tracks. It didn’t make sense.

She pushed herself up off the bed and trudged into the en-suite bathroom. Too tired to deal with a complicated-looking Jacuzzi shower, she made straight for the sunken bath in the corner and spun the taps on to full blast.

Harry stripped off her clothes and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror. Her legs were splotched with dark bruises, like blackening bananas. Her sooty face was hollow-eyed and anxious, with grazes along the cheeks. She looked like one of those waifs they used to send up chimneys.

She lowered herself into the steaming water an inch at a time. Then she closed her eyes and let her mind drift. She found herself thinking, not of her father nor of the twelve million euros, but of Dillon. And not the Dillon who was downstairs on the phone cutting a deal, but the boy of twenty-one who had once sat in her bedroom and held her by the hand.

11

‘Why do you want to hack?’

Thirteen-year-old Harry groped for an answer that would impress this dark, good-looking boy with the half-smile. She couldn’t think of one, so she just told the truth.

‘Because I can.’

She waited for his reaction, but there was none. Instead he seemed absorbed by the collection of soldering irons and screwdrivers that littered her bedroom shelves. He was dressed all in black, like a young priest, and his hair fell in a heavy fringe over thick brows. If only she wasn’t wearing her brown school uniform and ugly lace-up shoes.

Her mother had shown him up to her room, acting as though the FBI had landed on their doorstep. When he’d introduced himself as Dillon Fitzroy, an investigator with the Dublin Stock Exchange, a whisper of fear had tickled Harry’s spine.

She watched as he picked up one of the screwdrivers and tapped the business end against one hand.

‘So tell me, why Pirata?’ he said, referring to her hacker pseudonym.

‘Pi-rrata,’ corrected Harry, pronouncing the word with a rolling ‘r’ and rapid-fire delivery. ‘It’s Spanish for pirate.’

It suddenly sounded childish, but he nodded as though this were a sensible choice. He held her gaze, compressing his mouth into a neat smile. ‘Is it okay if I ask you these questions?’

She nodded and felt the heat rise in her cheeks. She sat down on the bed and glared at her chunky shoes, willing her fiery colour to subside. She was acutely aware of her mother standing on the other side of the door, listening to every word.

Dillon’s eyes swept the room, taking in the jumble of dismantled computer hardware and gutted radios. ‘Are you building something?’

She attempted a casual shrug. ‘Put me in a room with a box that has wires in it and I’ll take it apart.’ Then she bit her lip, regretting the flippant attitude. She was in trouble here, and she knew it.

Dillon wheeled out the chair from under her desk. There was a large red parcel on the seat. Harry snatched it out of his way and cradled it on her lap. He sat down facing her, arms folded.

‘You understand why I’m here, don’t you?’ he said.

Now they were getting to it. She stared at the floor. ‘Yeah.’

‘Mind if I take a look?’ He gestured towards her PC.

She shook her head, but he’d already turned round to face the screen. His fingers sped across the keyboard. Harry edged further along the bed until she was close enough to see what he was doing. Text flew up the screen as he browsed through her files and checked out her hacking tools.

‘Nice house you live in,’ he said, without looking at her.

Harry raised her eyebrows. ‘I suppose. We’ve only been here a year.’ She looked at the frothy white curtains and the lacy bed linen. It was a princess’s room. Absurd that she should still miss the poky converted attic she’d shared with Amaranta, with its narrow divans and the skipping rope her sister had stretched along the floor to demarcate her territory. But her dad had got this new job. Her mother harped on about how badly the Schrodinger job had ended, but her dad said this time everything would be different. He was right about that.

She turned back to Dillon to find him watching her. His gaze flicked over her school uniform and came to rest on the shoes that made her look like she had club feet. She closed her eyes in mortification.

‘Did you move schools too?’ he said, turning his attention back to her files.

Something gnawed at her insides the minute she thought about school. She shrugged, and made the kind of face that said it was no big deal.

‘Yeah, but I can handle it. Except all they talk about are skiing holidays and designer clothes.’ She lowered her voice and nodded towards the door. ‘Mum thinks I should be making more friends.’

‘Mums are hard to please.’

She darted a quick look at him. There was no hint of mockery in his dark eyes.

He indicated the package on her lap. ‘Christmas present?’

She shoved the parcel to one side. ‘It’s for my dad. Haven’t given it to him yet.’

‘He’s away?’

‘He played poker on Christmas Eve. He’ll probably turn up in a day or two.’

Dillon stopped what he was doing. ‘He missed Christmas?’

Harry shrugged. ‘He misses most Christmases.’

Dillon was silent for a moment. She shoved the parcel on to the bed, the contents rattling. She’d bought her father a full poker set: six hundred plastic chips, two decks of cards and a thick rule book, all stored in their own shiny black case. She’d saved up for it for months.

Dillon turned his attention back to the screen. His eyes narrowed as he worked through one of her files, and Harry peered at the screen to see what had caught his interest. It was the code for one of the hacker tools she had designed herself.

With a staccato flick of the keys, Dillon snapped the file shut and opened up another one. He scrolled down through it, and then stopped to examine it line by line. He gave a low whistle, his eyes riveted to the screen.

He pointed to a line in the code. ‘What’s this bit doing?’

Harry read through it and then started to explain her design, the words tumbling over each other in her impatience to communicate her ideas. She had to lean across him to reach the keyboard, and she became aware of the warmth of his body and the light spicy soap that he used.

When she finished, he looked at her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face. ‘Did you do all this yourself?’

‘Yes.’ Harry took a deep breath. ‘Can I ask you a question now?’

‘Sure.’ His eyes never left hers.

‘How did you find me?’

‘That was easy. You posted too many details of your exploit on the bulletin boards. Security guys monitor those things all the time, you know. Stay online long enough and we can track you down, too.’

Harry felt like an idiot. So simple. She’d been careless. But then, she wasn’t used to hiding.

Dillon tapped a few keys and closed down her files. Then he spun the chair so that he was facing her. He picked up the screwdriver again and began turning it end over end on the desk.

‘You interfered with trading records belonging to the Dublin Stock Exchange,’ he said. ‘Do you know what happened when they found the error?’

‘No.’

‘The database administrator almost lost his job.’ Dillon leaned forward, his face stern. ‘He’s only twenty-four and his wife is pregnant.’

Harry hung her head. Her skin crawled as though she had a nasty rash. ‘I didn’t think. It seemed such a small thing to do.’

Dillon shook his head. ‘You’re not just messing with computers here, you’re screwing up people’s lives.’

She couldn’t look at him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So tell me about the other systems you’ve damaged.’

She jerked her head up. ‘But I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t damage things, I just look around.’

He watched her for a moment. She couldn’t tell if he believed her. Then he tossed the screwdriver on to the desk with a clatter and folded his arms, as though he’d made up his mind.

‘Okay, I’ve seen how you hack,’ he said. ‘Now I want to know why.’

‘But I’ve told you why.’

‘No, you haven’t. Your answer was a cop-out. Tell me again. Why do you want to hack?’

Harry’s mind went blank. What kind of answer was he looking for? She felt as if she was back at school, with the teacher asking a series of questions designed to lead her to a single answer. But what was it?

She tried to analyse how she felt when she started an exploit. ‘Okay, well, maybe I love to break into things and be somewhere I shouldn’t.’

‘So you like taking risks. Why? Does it make you feel powerful?’

Harry thought of the way the hairs stood to attention on the back of her neck whenever she felt close to cracking a system. She thought of the exhilaration that pumped into her bloodstream like a drug as she unlocked the final door into someone’s network. He was right. Hacking made her feel powerful in a way no other part of her life ever could. But there was something else.

She shook her head. ‘That’s part of it, I suppose. But mostly I just don’t believe people when they tell me I can’t break into a system. Just because it says it in the manual doesn’t make it true.’ She rubbed her nose, as if that would unscramble her thoughts. ‘I know there’s always a way in, if I stick at it long enough.’

‘So it’s about the technology? You want to find out what makes it tick?’

‘Yeah, in a way. It’s like … I dunno.’ She looked into his face. ‘It’s like finding the truth.’

Dillon’s eyes glowed and he sat very still. ‘That’s exactly what hacking is all about. The search for truth.’

Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in front of him. His face was inches from hers.

‘People think hacking is all about destruction, but nothing could be wider of the mark. It’s about exploring the technology, about pushing it to its limits and sharing the knowledge. A true hacker expands his mind beyond what’s in the books or what he’s been taught. He finds a way to do things when conventional thinking fails.’ Dillon locked eyes with hers. ‘Hacking is good. It’s people that are bad.’

He grasped her hands in his. A flash of heat shot through her and something jolted inside her chest.

‘Think of hacking as an attitude,’ he said. ‘We don’t just hack computers, we hack our whole lives.’ He squeezed her hands, pumping them for emphasis, and his eyes burned into hers. ‘Never let yourself be limited by what other people tell you. Never accept their version of how things have to be.’

Harry listened, mesmerized. Limited. That described how she felt every minute of her day. Boxed in by her mother, who was always so disappointed in her; labelled at school where she failed to measure up. With a flash of insight, Harry realized he was telling her how to cope with her life.

Without warning, Dillon dropped her hands and sat back, as though suddenly embarrassed at his own intensity. ‘End of lecture. Thanks for talking to me.’ He jumped to his feet and headed for the door. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

Harry stood up, dizzy at the sudden change. ‘But wait – what happens now?’

Dillon shrugged. ‘Probably nothing. I’ll need to inform your parents about everything you’ve been doing, but no one’s going to prosecute a thirteen-year-old girl. Do it again though, and you’ll be in trouble.’

He stood with his hand on the doorknob and looked over at her, his eyes still slightly feverish. ‘Someday I’ll have my own company, with the best engineers in the country.’ His lips twitched, and he winked at her. ‘Stay out of jail long enough and maybe I’ll hire you.’

12

Cameron stood outside the wrought-iron gates. The girl was inside the house, and had been there for almost an hour. He pressed himself up against the bars. He badly needed to finish what he’d started.

He dug his fingernails into his palms. The train station had been such a fuck-up. She’d been so light, like a child. But the instant he’d broken contact with her, the mob of commuters had barged in front of him, blocking his view. He’d heard the shrieking trains, seen them crashing by. But the crowd had robbed him of the sight of her fear.

Without that, it wasn’t finished.

He peered through the gate. The driveway looked like a landing strip with all those fucking lights. He made out the shape of the house ahead, two lit windows glowing in the dark. He leaned his face against the cold metal and imagined the girl in one of those rooms. Heat filled his groin.

But he’d been told to back off.

He shook the railings, testing their strength. They stretched at least twelve feet into the air, welded on either side to a concrete wall that rolled away into the shadowy road. A pole-mounted surveillance camera rotated above him, panning its way down the driveway back towards the gate. Cameron ducked to one side, out of its line of sight. Houses like this were all the same. Prison walls, fence-mounted sensors, infra-red cameras. Maximum perimeter protection. For all the good it did them. There was always a way inside.

He began to circle the property wall, trailing his hand against the ivy that had stitched itself into the brickwork. He could smell the damp woodiness of the forest around him. Something rustled in the undergrowth, a small mammal on the move. Cameron reached a side gate and gazed again at the long L-shaped house. How spectacular it would look swallowed up in flames.

But he’d been told no fire. Not yet.

Not many people understood fire the way Cameron did. Mostly they were afraid of it. But Cameron had spent time getting close to flames, so close that he could almost touch their trembling colours and slender tongues.

He moved further along the wall, caressing the ivy leaves. Trapping someone in fire was so much more satisfying than shoving them in front of a truck. You got to stay in the shadows and watch the effects of what you’d done. Not like a road accident, where everything was over in a single scream. With fires, the build-up of euphoria was gradual, ending in a trance-like state that sated his need to see things burn.

He’d heard that many serial killers were fire-setters in their adolescence. Son of Sam, for instance. He’d started thousands of fires. Cameron smiled. He wasn’t in that league yet. One day, maybe.

He tried the latch on the side gate. It was locked, but the steel bars felt crumbly, the paint peeling away in his hands. He took a closer look. The gate was older and rustier than the other one, the welding not so secure. Cameron’s breathing quickened.

He might have been told to back off for a while, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get close to her.

13

The wardrobe turned out to be a walk-in closet bigger than Harry’s own bedroom.

She padded over to the rail that ran the length of one wall and browsed through the hangers. The clothes seemed to come in a variety of sizes, but all bore the same designer labels and glitzy evening style. Harry sighed. With her bruised face and battered shoes, it wouldn’t be a good look.

She turned to rummage in the shelves behind her and found a pair of men’s jeans, a wide belt and some crisp white shirts still in their cellophane wrapping. A few minutes later she was dressed, the shirt tucked in and the belt cinched tight over the loose-fitting jeans. She made her way downstairs, wondering about the women who’d left their clothes behind.

Harry found the room at the back of the house where she had left Dillon, and pushed open the door. There was no sign of him.

She peered around the room and guessed this was where he did most of his living. It was a combination of office and bachelor’s den, and smelled of leather and grilled cheese. In front of the television was an oversized armchair complete with footrest and beer holder. Harry had a hard time picturing Dillon with his feet up watching TV.

Dominating one wall was a large black-and-white photograph, maybe five foot by four. It was a recent shot of Dillon, taken from an aerial viewpoint. He was sitting cross-legged on a deserted beach, and all around him were a series of lines and spirals traced in the sand. The pattern was Celtic in effect, and formed an ornate grid that took up half the beach.

‘It’s a simply connected maze.’

Harry spun round to find Dillon standing in the doorway watching her. He’d changed into smart chinos and a blue rugby shirt, and he carried a silver tray in his hands. He nodded towards the photograph as he moved into the room.

‘I used to carve them out everywhere I went. In the grass, in the snow. Once I even built one with mirrors.’

Harry turned back to the photograph. The confusing swirls reassembled themselves into paths and dead-ends, and she recognized it as the sort of maze she used to do as a child.

‘What does simply connected mean?’ she said.

‘Every path you choose leads either to another path or to a dead-end.’ The tray rattled as he set it down on the coffee table. ‘The paths never re-connect with one another, so it’s the simplest kind of maze to solve.’

Harry squinted at the maze and tried to follow one of its paths, but her eyes started to cross and she gave it up.

‘I never knew you were so hooked on mazes,’ she said.

‘Didn’t you ever wonder how I named my company?’

She threw him a questioning look.

‘Lúbra is the Irish for labyrinth,’ he said.

Harry smiled. ‘Nice.’

She eyed up the tray. He’d brought a bottle of brandy, two crystal balloon glasses and a plate piled high with sandwiches. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten all day.

Helping herself to a sandwich, she sank into one of the chairs. Dillon handed her a brandy. He raised his eyebrows at the men’s shirt and jeans, but made no comment.

Harry slugged down a mouthful of brandy. ‘Look, I’m sorry about all that stuff with Ashford.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m sorry about earlier, too. When I clammed up on you. I do that sometimes.’

Dillon busied himself with a sandwich. ‘That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’

Harry sighed. She may as well come right out with it. ‘It’s because of my father. I think he’s involved.’

Dillon frowned. ‘In what? The break-in?’

‘All of it.’

‘The guy at the train station as well? But that’s crazy. Why?’

‘Because of what that guy said. The Sorohan deal, the ring – it all points to my father.’

‘I don’t get it.’

She held his gaze. ‘The Sorohan deal was the one that blew up in my father’s face and got him arrested.’

Dillon’s expression cleared. ‘Oh. I see. But what –’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t ask me any more, I haven’t worked it all out yet. The point is, you know how I get about my father.’

Dillon rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah. Prickly.’

She smiled and shrugged. ‘Yeah, well.’

‘Have you mentioned any of this to the police?’

Harry flashed on an image of the silent detective who’d come to her apartment that evening. She shook her head. ‘I can’t. They might start investigating him again.’

‘Well, he’s already in prison. What else can they do to him?’

Harry put her sandwich down. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry any more. ‘He’s getting out.’

‘I thought he got eight years.’

‘Remission.’ Harry’s throat seemed to be closing up. ‘He could be out any time.’

Dillon seemed to work it out. ‘So if he gets investigated for any of this, his remission will be on hold?’

‘Or thrown out altogether.’

There was a pause. She could feel Dillon’s eyes on her.

‘Look, you need to talk to your father,’ he said. ‘I’ve been telling you that for months.’

She shook her head and stared at her glass. She cupped it in one hand and swirled the golden liquid around in it. ‘When I was a kid, I thought he was wonderful. He made all these marvellous promises, and the ones he kept were magical.’ She traced a nail through the grooves in the diamond-cut crystal. ‘Almost worth the disappointment of the ones that he forgot.’

‘Sounds like you and he had quite a bond.’

She smiled. ‘My sister Amaranta had a hand in that. When I was five, she told me our parents had found me on the street as a baby. She said they were going to keep me for a while, but that later, they planned to sell me on to the neighbours.’

Dillon laughed. ‘Typical big sister stunt.’

‘Trouble was, I believed her. For months I felt like an outsider in my own home. My mother was distant with me anyway, for reasons of her own, so that didn’t help. I finally blurted it all out to my father, and he cleared things up for me. I suppose from then on, I saw him as some kind of ally.’

Dillon sipped his brandy. ‘And that all changed when he was arrested?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d already had enough long before that. Living with constant let-downs gets to you after a while. When he got sent to jail, that was kind of the end.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘We don’t get to choose our parents, do we?’

‘I suppose not. Although you could say my parents chose me.’

Harry raised her eyebrows.

‘I was adopted,’ he explained. ‘My adoptive parents couldn’t have children so they took me in when I was a baby. But by the time I was two, my mother was miraculously pregnant.’

‘Don’t tell me, you got overlooked in favour of the natural child and it gave you a mass of complexes.’

Dillon paused. ‘For a while, maybe. I certainly know what it’s like to feel you’re an outsider in your own home.’ He shrugged. ‘But then they tried to make amends and ended up over-compensating. I got all the attention, and it was my brother who got the complexes. He went right off the rails in the end. Drugs, prison – the works.’

She sucked down her brandy, not sure what to say. ‘So we both have families with murky pasts?’

‘Looks like it.’

Harry waved her arm around the room. ‘Well, it hasn’t done you any harm. Look at this house. It’s amazing.’ Her ears started to buzz and she wondered was she getting a bit drunk.

‘It’s not bad.’ Dillon looked pleased with himself.

Harry scanned the room. ‘Mind you, you seem to do most of your living in here.’

His smile slipped a little. ‘Not when I have guests, which is most of the time. And when I don’t, I can shut the world away. High walls, electronic gates – if there’s one thing money can buy you, it’s privacy.’

‘Or isolation,’ Harry said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Dillon frowned, and stood up.

‘Come on, you look exhausted. You should get some rest.’

He grasped her hand and helped her to her feet. She stood facing him for a moment, only inches away from him, their body heat mingling. Then he turned away and strolled over to the French doors on the other side of the room, beckoning for her to follow. ‘But first I want to show you something.’

14

The first thing Harry noticed when she stepped outside the door was a pungent scent that reminded her of Christmas trees. It hung in the air like eucalyptus, and instantly cleared her head.

She peered into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Then she saw it. Inky black, looming up from the centre of the lawn, was a gigantic wall of hedge maybe twelve feet high and wider than a football pitch.