Lisa Stone - Stalker

‘Or Mr Osman often forgets to lock up.’

‘Yes, I know. But I think I’ll spend a few minutes looking at the CCTV footage for the weeks before the break-in to see if it shows anyone loitering around the shop. The camera at the rear was only installed two weeks ago so it won’t take long to have a quick whizz through.’

Matt grinned broadly. ‘And who knows, you might be able to add yet another case to your conspiracy list so that before long every crime in the world will be linked by a giant string theory.’

She took a sheet of paper from her desk, rolled it into a ball and lobbed it over the top of her monitor.

‘Missed again!’

‘You spend too much time locked in your room with all those computers,’ Elsie Flint said as she and Derek sat down to eat. ‘That’s what puts you in a bad mood. It’s not healthy. Why don’t you go down the pub like normal men? That’s what your father did.’

He glanced at her, saw her jaw set in a grim expression and hated her when she was like this.

‘And look where that got you,’ he returned, and immediately regretted it. She looked crest-fallen, her usual hard-bitten determination replaced by vulnerability. She could change in a second and it stung now as it always did. ‘I’m fine, Mum. I’ve just had a few difficult days.’

‘Doing what?’ she asked, an edge of criticism creeping back into her voice.

‘There have been some incidents on premises where I’ve fitted CCTV. It’s nothing for you to worry about but Paul was no help.’

‘Paul?’ she asked, eyeing him carefully.

‘Yes, my apprentice. I had to let him go.’

‘Oh. They change so often I can’t keep up. What did that one do or not do?’

‘It’s a long story, I’ve dealt with it,’ he said, and changed the subject. ‘Nice bit of lamb. Not too well done.’

‘Good. At least I’ve done something right.’

Half an hour later, Derek sat at his workstation with his bedroom door bolted, continuing where he’d left off before dinner. Beads of perspiration had gathered on his forehead and his mouth was dry, not from anything his mother had said but because of the crisis that seemed to be unfolding in his business. Three break-ins in as many weeks to properties where he’d fitted the CCTV and where the footage from the cameras was of no help in solving the crimes. It was unprecedented and the clients were furious. He relied on word of mouth recommendation and business was dropping off. The stress of it was taking its toll.

The incidents had all happened when he’d been away from his monitors – at work or asleep – so, unlike the Williams (and others he’d helped), he hadn’t been there to send a warning email alerting them to what was happening. While these break-ins weren’t the most serious of crimes – no one had been physically hurt – to have your property broken into was disturbing and traumatic for the owners. Surely there must be something – a shadow, someone or something out of place, an irregularity that could give a clue to what had happened or even help catch those responsible? That was, after all, why these people had fitted CCTV in the first place.

Sandra was already at work in The Mermaid but he didn’t linger there now. Much as he liked her, he wasn’t in the mood; his thoughts were full of more pressing matters. As satisfied as he could be that all was well with the other clients he monitored, he returned to the footage of the premises that had been broken into, going through them again sometimes for the fourth or fifth time. Exactly what he was looking for, he couldn’t say, but he was now concentrating on the edges of the images, searching the peripheries for anything he might have previously missed as he had done with the nightclub stabbing. But as he continued examining the footage – peering down side passages, into hedges and shrubberies, through people’s windows where the camera angle allowed and enlarging the images until he could even see the food on their plates – nothing new appeared.

Suddenly he started as a large eye appeared on the screen, a pop-up advertisement with a camera lens at the centre of the eye in place of the pupil. Beneath the image were the words ‘Watching You’.

‘Bloody advertisements!’ he cursed.

He clicked on the small white cross in the corner of the box to close it but the image perversely remained, obliterating most of the screen and making further work impossible.

‘How the fuck did that get in!’ He ran the most advanced security software, which updated automatically and was supposed to keep out this sort of thing: malicious spyware, viruses, hackers and pop-up adverts. He knew search engines were often to blame for pop-ups; they were becoming increasingly clever at placing tracking ‘cookies’ on computers, which not even advanced spyware immediately recognized. A cookie had probably identified his business from the surveillance equipment he’d viewed online and now he was being targeted as part of the company’s advertising campaign.

There was no company name showing on the advert yet but doubtless that would follow soon. He clicked again on the corner of the box but the eye remained staring out at him. Watching You .

‘Fuck. Watching you too, mate!’ he said aloud. Did firms really believe this type of aggressive advertising would win them new business? He certainly wouldn’t be buying from them ever – when he found out who they were.

Unable to remove the pop-up by clicking on its close box, he now clicked on the cross in the corner of the screen to close the whole page, but that was frozen too. ‘Damn!’ he said, stamping his foot, and tried again. A standard software message appeared – End task: this programme is not responding.

‘I bloody know that!’ he cried.

He clicked to end the task and waited but again nothing happened. The whole computer was deadlocked! Anger spilled over as he pressed the caps lock key to see if its light came on. The bloody pop-up had snarled up the whole system. He pressed control-alt-delete to open the windows task manager to try to end the program, but that didn’t work either. Red in the face and furious that he was wasting so much time on this, there was no alternative but to switch off the computer at the plug. It wouldn’t do the machine any good but there was no other choice. He flicked the power switch and watched the advert disappear as all four screens went blank.

Derek waited thirty seconds to make sure all the electricity had gone so the connection with the Internet had been severed, and then rebooted. The screens came back to life with various standard warning messages telling him that the computer hadn’t been shut down properly – which he knew – and did he want to start it in safe mode? No, he didn’t.

More technical information followed as the system configured and finally it was up and running again, the screen savers drifting leisurely across the monitors. Thank goodness. Before logging into his surveillance website, he checked his spyware settings but nothing seemed to have changed, and the last update had only been an hour before so he should have the latest protection. But to be on the safe side – and Derek was always cautious and played safe when it came to surveillance – he went into the computer’s control panel and cleared out all the cookies, temporary Internet files, browsing history, saved passwords and web form information. Only then did he log in to his website and as he expected there was no sign of the pop-up.

He returned to where he’d been checking the footage from the break-ins and continued but still couldn’t find anything of significance. There was no indication in the days leading up to any of the break-ins that anything untoward had happened or was about to happen. Sometimes you could see someone loitering or a new untrustworthy cleaner or shop assistant had been appointed, but that didn’t apply here. He had nothing to work on, no leads, and, with the number of cases growing, he felt he was losing control over his empire. He pressed rewind and began going through the footage again.