48 Hours - A City of London Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

my
opponents was a stunningly attractive woman.
    I sat on my bed and shook physically. Perhaps it was delayed
shock. Perhaps it was the thought that at best I was about to lose
all of my life savings, and at worst I could lose my life. I felt
panic rising in my chest. My heart was beating uncontrollably and I
began to hyperventilate. Slowly I regained control as I breathed
through my nose and sipped chilled water from a bottle by the
bed.
    “ Why me?” I thought, but no matter how hard I tried I could
think of no reason why anyone would choose me for such a scam. I
eventually fell asleep with the question rolling around in my
befuddled brain.

Chapter 7
    City of London Police HQ, Wood St, London: Thursday,
9am.
    I was sitting in Inspector Boniface’s office watching a young
man setting up his laptop and some associated cables and gizmos.
Dee Conrad sat beside me. I stole a quick glance at my BlackBerry.
There were no new messages but the newly installed countdown
application clicked onto twenty seven hours as I
watched.
    After a restless night, punctuated by nightmares, I had awoken
early before Dee had a chance to rouse me from my fitful sleep. We
were in my office by seven fifteen. Dee watched as I cleared my
messages and post before we set off for the police station to meet
the technician, who was now settling down into the chair on the
opposite side of Boniface’s desk.
    “ Right, Mr. Hammond,” the young man said. “My name’s Simon,
and I’m a forensic computer analyst. I’ve been shown the messages
you have received to date, the texts and the email. I am also aware
of the paintballing incident last night, which must have been
terrifying for you.”
    “ Not as terrifying as the real thing,” I countered.
    “ No, I guess not.”
    I watched Simon as he set up his equipment. He was in his
mid-twenties, I guessed, perhaps six feet tall and dressed in jeans
and a polo shirt. He wore metal rimmed glasses and a friendly
smile, and the word “geek” could have been invented to describe
him. The forensic analyst turned to his laptop which had now booted
up. A thin, square black box, connected to the laptop by a USB
cable, showed a glowing green diode which had been flashing but was
now steady. Simon tapped the keyboard and turned the laptop around
so that the screen would face us.
    “ If I have an enemy in this game it isn’t the criminals, it’s
Hollywood and the TV producers. They give the impression that a
computer genius can access anything anywhere and find addresses for
the police to raid. Unfortunately, that isn’t generally true. Let
me start with the email.” Simon touched a key and the email came
into view, exactly as I had remembered it. “Now, keep your eye on
the header.” We looked intently at the lines which denoted my email
address as being the recipient of Bob’s email. Simon clicked a few
more keys and the header lengthened to cover half the
page.
    “ This is the email address that sent your email.....
‘[email protected]’, which is a South African domain. As you
can see, there is a large amount of routing information in the
header. This lists the IP address where mail was sent from and the
addresses of all intermediaries until it arrived with you at your
IP address at Dyson Brecht. The unfortunate thing is that the email
was sent from the IP address of Quadrille Hotel Services, who
supply public area internet access and room internet access to
hotel customers in the City of London. With further investigation
it’s possible that we could get Quadrille to narrow the address to
the actual hotel, but as anyone in that hotel could access the
internet from the lobby, restaurants, gyms and so on, it’s unlikely
we can do much about identifying the blackmailer with that
information alone.”
    Dee asked for clarification. “So, Simon, what you are saying
is that, even if it’s possible that we could get Quadrille to
identify the hotel the message was sent from, that