‘Where do they live?’ Sam demanded.
‘Not too far from here. We could get a bus.’
‘We’ll get a cab,’ Sam said shortly. ‘Come on.’
It was a scant twenty minutes later that Sam was putting a ten-pound note into the hand of a cabbie. They were in a residential street that was almost indistinguishable from the one where Clare lived. Only once the cab driver had driven away did Clare lead Sam towards one of the houses. It was a gentrified-looking place: two stories and an elegant pathway with black and white tiles in a chequer pattern. Clare turned to him. ‘His name’s Patrick,’ she said. ‘He’s sweet, but he’s a bit of a… a teenager, if you know what I mean. A bit… Just go easy on him, that’s all.’
‘I’ll be good as gold,’ Sam murmured.
Clare led him up the path and rang on the doorbell, while Sam lurked a metre or two behind her.
It took a minute for anyone to answer. When the door opened, a kid stood in the frame. He was thirteen, maybe a bit older – Sam had no talent for judging such things. His hair was lank and he had whiteheads on his forehead and cheeks. Fuck, the kid had a face like a pepperoni pizza. He stank of BO and sly wanks. He was probably in the middle of a crafty hand-shandy when they had arrived. That was probably why he was in such a foul mood. He looked at Clare about as enthusiastically as he might look at a door-to-door salesman.
‘Hi, Patch,’ Clare said brightly.
‘It’s Patrick,’ the teenager replied.
‘Mum in? Dad?’
He shook his head.
‘Mind if we come in?’
Patrick looked over her shoulder at Sam, appearing to measure him up. ‘He your boyfriend?’
An awkward pause. From behind, Sam saw her put her fingers lightly to her hair. ‘This is Sam,’ she replied. ‘Can we come in please, Patrick?’
The kid shrugged and stepped aside.
It was warm in the house. Warm and quiet. The kid shut the door and then loitered uncomfortably in the hallway, too gawky to look directly at his aunt or her guest. ‘Actually, Patrick,’ Clare said, delicately, like she was tiptoeing, ‘it’s you we came to see. We need some help. Sort of a computer thing.’
Patrick did his best to pretend not to be interested.
From under his jacket, Sam pulled the laptop. ‘Forgot the password,’ he said. His voice sounded a bit clumsy in his ears. He wasn’t used to talking with children.
Patrick looked at the laptop, then up at Sam. ‘No one forgets their password,’ he said.
‘Please, Patrick,’ Clare interrupted quickly. ‘It would be a real help. Can you get into it?’
Patrick shrugged again. It looked to Sam like this was a default action for him.
‘Yeah,’ he droned grumpily. ‘Probably. Just load the BIOS and repartition the…’
‘Tell you what, mate,’ Sam interrupted him. ‘Why don’t you just do it?’
‘Sam!’ Clare whispered; at the same time Patrick, looking offended, spoke.
‘I’m busy,’ he retorted. He turned petulantly and headed towards the stairs.
Clare gave Sam an annoyed look, but he ignored it. He strode towards the teenager and put a firm hand on his bony shoulder. ‘Tell you what, Clare,’ he announced. ‘Why don’t you give me and Patrick a couple of minutes?’ Clare looked unsure of herself, but with a meaningful glance from Sam she disappeared along the hallway and into the kitchen. Sam spoke to Patrick in a low whisper. ‘Here’s the deal,’ he said. ‘Either I go up into your bedroom and make a quick list of all the websites you’ve looked at in the past few hours and show them to your aunt, or you stop acting like a twat and help us out.’
Patrick blushed. He looked as though he was searching for a response, but his angry, embarrassed expression got in the way. ‘Deal?’ Sam asked.
Patrick managed to look, if anything, more surly. ‘Deal,’ he replied.
Minutes later, the three of them were in his bedroom. It was quite a big room, but still managed to be dingy by virtue of the musty, unwashed smell. Two computers sat next to each other, both of them whirring; Patrick glanced guiltily at them, then up at Sam who had to stop himself from smiling. He and Clare took a seat on the kid’s unmade bed, while he took the laptop from them and sat on the floor to open it up.
Patrick’s pallid face glowed in the light of the computer screen as his fingers tapped the keyboard deftly and speedily. There was no sound in the room; just the faint clack of the keys. Sam found himself holding his breath. A nervousness at the pit of his stomach.
Time seemed to stand still. He could feel Clare occasionally looking at him. He ignored her.
The clacking stopped. The glow on Patrick’s face dimmed and a confused expression came over him.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sam demanded.
Patrick pretended not to hear. He just stared intently at the screen.
And then the light returned, illuminating his acne-ridden face just as it had done before. He smiled, then turned to the two adults sitting on his bed.
‘Done it,’ he announced.
He tried very hard not to look pleased with himself as he stood up and nonchalantly handed the laptop back to Sam.
FIFTEEN
The screen was blue. A couple of familiar icons shone in the top left-hand corner. One of them was yellow and shaped like a folder. Underneath, in rounded white letters, were the words RED LIGHT RUNNERS.
The two adults exchanged a look.
‘What was the password?’ Sam asked distractedly.
‘“Max”,’ the kid replied.
Sam’s stomach knotted.
‘Not a very good password. Should be longer, have a few numbers in it…’ Patrick looked offended that nobody seemed to be listening to him.
‘Let’s go,’ Sam said, closing down the computer and standing up. As he walked to the door, he was aware of Clare fishing in her bag and pulling out a tenner.
‘Give my love to your mum,’ she said, handing the note to her nephew. Patrick grunted. He didn’t show them out.
Sam didn’t speak until they were on the street. ‘We need somewhere private,’ he said. ‘Somewhere to read this. Is there a hotel near?’
Clare shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Probably.’
They hit the pavement, Clare having to trot in order to keep up with Sam. It didn’t take them long to find a hotel – the Abbey Court in a residential road called St James’s Gardens, a shabby, converted house with rooms to rent which reeked of curry. They were eyed suspiciously by an immensely fat Pakistani woman who demanded payment for the night in advance and clearly didn’t believe the pseudonym that Sam gave off the top of his head. The room itself was far from comfortable. A TV in one corner, a lumpy bed with a floral bedspread in the middle. As a hotel room, it was the pits. For their purposes, it was absolutely fine. They sat together on the edge of the bed as Sam cranked up the computer. Using a single finger he entered the password to be greeted once more by the blue screen. He directed the cursor on to the folder, then double-clicked.
A window opened. It contained more icons, perhaps twenty. Each one was labelled with a name. Sam stared blankly at it. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, more to himself than to Clare.
Her hand brushed against his as her fingers searched out the mouse. She directed the cursor to one of the icons at random, then clicked it. A short pause and a grinding from the laptop’s innards. Then a document appeared.
There was a photo at the top, a young man with shoulder-length blonde hair. Beneath the photograph, laid out neatly and stretching far beyond the bottom of the screen so that Clare had to scroll down to see it all, was a startling array of personal information. His name, of course – Paul Harrison – and his address. But also his sexual orientation and a list of known previous girlfriends. His parents’ address and telephone number. His national insurance number. A list of three official police cautions. Parking fines. His Tesco Clubcard number. His likes and dislikes. Every car he had ever owned. Every job he had ever had, and the wage he had been paid. A graphic of his signature. His closest acquaintances – their names and addresses. A link to his Facebook profile and a list of all his ‘friends’. His credit card numbers and certain purchases that he had made. His bank account numbers and security details. Three e-mail addresses and their passwords. The IP address of his computer and the most popular websites visited from that address. Films he had seen, TV programmes he had watched. Music he listened to.