The Dali Deception Read online

  Escalate it had and as a result she had been thrown out of school. So Zoe had worked hard, studied hard and over the next five years honed her skills and became one of the most talented and prolific hackers the north of England had ever seen.

  The incident with dear old Mr Coleman hadn’t left her entirely cold; she had been affected by it. Not that she actually regretted it, but she’d felt, after watching several crime films on the television, that she should have some sort of code. At first she would kid herself that it was because she wanted to be a noble criminal, only stealing from those she believed deserved it in some way. But it wasn’t really for that reason.

  Yes, she did have a particular type of target and yes, she tried to justify that each one deserved to be a target. In fact it just gave her an excuse to exercise more of her hacking talents. It was petty theft. With showboating.

  So she would spot someone on the street on their way to the bank. Smile please, you’re on CCTV and...

  Click.

  She’s got your photo and the first search can start (also potentially useful for identity theft further down the line).

  You take your purse or wallet out of your pocket and slide your card into the cash machine. Don’t forget to cover your PIN as you type it in...

  Oh dear, you forgot to cover your PIN, we’ve got that on CCTV too – thank you.

  Or, alternatively...

  Well done, you covered your PIN, but unless you REALLY try to obscure what it is I’ve watched so many people enter PINs I can guess them with 97% accuracy just from watching the back of your hand.

  Now the biggest risk for Zoe comes as she dips into the bank’s network. Stay hidden, drop in, just for a second and... Thank you very much, I’ve now got your Name, Account Number and Card Number.

  Time to find out if you’ve been naughty or nice... and off Zoe would go, into the ether, searching databases, newspapers, police records, public files, private files, drawing up a picture of you as a person from your digital footprint. Well... not just your digital footprint but also the footprints that have kindly been left behind in the snow by any organisation you’ve ever been in contact with.

  And Zoe would blast through them all with ruthless efficiency until she made the decision.

  Are you naughty or nice?

  This particular man fell at the first hurdle. He was a banker. And that was enough for Zoe. She didn’t care if he was counter staff or a city toff. Works for a bank. Ruined the country. Fair game. And on to the list he went, ready to be robbed at her leisure at a future date.

  How long she kept this up for varied. Sometimes she set herself targets, sometimes she just found the one person who pissed her off. If she did, she would pack up shop and move on to stage two.

  Sometimes... Zoe stopped in her tracks as she spotted a familiar face heading into the bank. It was the woman who had shouted at the kids in the library – only now she was, for some reason, child-free. Zoe couldn’t resist. She tapped a button, took a photo of the woman’s face and waited for her to put her card into the machine. The woman was third in the queue and Zoe drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk as she stared down the YouTube page, waiting for her quarry.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours but had, in fact, been less than two minutes, the woman put her card into the machine. The first thing Zoe noticed was that the woman moved fast, the card in, the PIN entered, the cash amount requested, all happened in a flurry. She was fast. But Zoe was faster. In and out. She had the details and she flipped screens.

  The woman had taken out three grand. Was that even possible? Well she had done it so Zoe guessed it must be. She grinned, knowing that was the sort of person that she loved to scam. But her grin fell from her face when she saw the name of the woman.

  Zoe.

  Zoe Zimmerman.

  Zoe Zimmerman panicked, simultaneously pulling the plug on her carefully constructed set-up and scrabbling around inside her bag. Her purse. Where was her purse? This woman had been here and now she was there and she had stolen her fucking purse.

  It was gone and, moments later, so was Zoe, shoving her belongings haphazardly into her bag as she sprinted through the library, down the stairs four at a time, barely keeping her feet from falling over each other as she sprinted out the front of the library and caught sight of the bank. But the woman was no longer inside.

  “SHIT!” Zoe screamed at the top of her lungs. “SHITSHITSHITSHIT!”

  People were staring, but Zoe didn’t care. She spun in a circle, whipping her head left and right when she finally spotted the woman once more. And she was walking towards her.

  “Hi Zoe,” said Violet, holding out a purse that was stuffed with cash. “I believe this is yours.”

  Zoe’s mouth opened. And closed. Then it opened again.

  “My name is Violet Winters. You might have heard of me?”

  Zoe closed her mouth and nodded slightly.

  “I’ve being doing some research and I’ve heard about you too,” Violet continued. “Judging by what just happened your reputation is justified.”

  People were beginning to move on now. The crazy shouty girl wasn’t doing anything interesting so they began to wander off.

  Zoe blushed slightly at the compliment.

  “Fancy going for a drive?” asked Violet, still holding out the purse.

  “Yeah.” Zoe finally snatched the purse and shoved it in her bag. “Alright.”

  “Come on then... we’ll need a car first. A really expensive one.” Violet smiled.

  Zoe grinned back and tapped her satchel. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  5th September

  * * *

  Still 5 weeks to go…

  Chapter 9

  Violet pushed down the accelerator and immediately she and Zoe were pinned back in their seats as the car hurled them forward.

  “You look like you’re gonna puke,” said Violet with a grin.

  “I will if you keep doing that,” Zoe frowned and stared out of the window.

  “Six point five litre engine the rental guy said,” Violet replied. “Whatever that means.”

  “What it means is that maybe you shouldn’t have worn heels as high as that to drive it.” Zoe’s hand went to her mouth and the colour drained from her face.

  “Nought to sixty in less than three seconds, the bloke said.” Violet’s foot slipped from the accelerator and the car lurched, the seatbelts locking. “He didn’t say much about driving in heels. Although he looked the type.”

  “I can see the Ferraris do not suit madam,” Zoe trying to sound posh and putting on a deep voice. “I think the Lamborghini Aventado may be the perfect choice.”

  Violet laughed and slowed the car down as they took the exit from the motorway. “Anyway, you better not vomit in the car, I need both of us to remain unsullied by your lunch.”

  Zoe relaxed a little, touching a button to lower the window. Everyone on the pavement was gawping at the car. At her. She blushed, punched the button to raise the window and turned away.

  “Sooooo...” said Violet. “I have to ask... What’s with the whole schoolgirl thing? I mean you’ve got to be... what? Twenty-two?”

  “Twenty. And a bit.” Zoe shifted in her seat, adjusting the seatbelt against the dress Violet had instructed her to wear. “It’s camouflage. And it works. No-one is going to look for a hacker in the kids’ section of the library. The rest is... it’s...”

  “Window dressing?” Violet nodded and checked her side mirror. Some joker in a BMW was itching to get past them. She slowed down to wind him up. “So how the hell do you hide those bad girls then?” Violet fluttered her fingers towards Zoe’s chest.

  The BMW was revving his engine and ducking out to see if he could find a point in the road to overtake.

  “Sports bra. Industrial grade,” said Zoe. “I get them specially made by a team of cross-dressers I keep locked in my basement.”

  Violet hammered out her staccato laugh. “Well, you’ve certainly
developed a reputation, young lady.”

  Zoe raised her eyebrows.

  “People up the chain have noticed you. They just didn’t know how in God’s name you were pulling it off.”

  “But you did?” said Zoe.

  Violet said nothing, just eased the car to a halt at a traffic light. The engine idled with a noise that sounded like a tractor playing a sousaphone.

  Zoe stared at her.

  Violet watched the pedestrians start to cross the road.

  Zoe couldn’t take it any longer, “Okay, I give up. How did you work it out? It’s obviously not that you were a better hacker than me because – well... you wouldn’t need me if you were that good. So how the hell did you work it out?”

  “I started from the bank,” said Violet simply. “I started from the bank and looked at where I would go if I were going to rob the place. Where the surveillance would start. Once I had that figured out I just worked backwards until I found you.”

  “So you reverse engineered my disguise?”

  “If you say so. Not to blow my own trumpet but I figured I’m a pretty smart cookie. If this was the way I would have pulled off the job, and you were doing something vaguely similar, then at the very least I wanted to meet you.”

  Zoe smiled with pride. She desperately wanted to impress Violet, to be allowed to be part of whatever job she had planned. The traffic lights changed from red to green.

  Violet didn’t touch the pedals, just sat in silence for a second before turning back to Zoe. “But the schoolgirl thing...”

  “I’ve been approached three times,” Zoe interrupted. “Three different gangs. The first two when I was still at school, sixteen and... these men were...”

  “I’ve probably met them, I can imagine,” said Violet. “But you were sixteen?”

  “I can handle myself now but then I just panicked. The only way I could lose them was to learn how to blend in. Back into the crowds of school kids. Plus my sister Agatha always says I look about twelve so...”

  “You kind of do. In a certain light.”

  There was a honking of horns behind them as Violet continued to ignore the green light. A crowd had begun to gather on the pavements on both sides of the road.

  “Twice already today you’ve proved to be exceptional at all that computer malarkey and I would love to have you on the team. If you’d like.”

  Zoe stared, her eyes widening. This was it, the moment she’d been praying for since Violet had revealed who she was. She waited a split second, trying to play it cool, and then blurted, “What’s the job?”

  The blaring of horns stopped for a moment and was replaced by the slamming of a car door. Glancing in her mirror, Violet could see a man striding from the BMW towards their car.

  “All in good time, darling.” Violet placed her index finger on her lips. “Are you in or are you out?”

  Zoe began to speak but the heavy clunk of the driver’s door opening interrupted her. Violet had timed opening the door so that it coincided with the BMW man drawing level with the car. She extended her arm out of the car and he stopped in his tracks.

  She tutted and then snapped her fingers three times in quick succession, and the man came scuttling up to the car.

  “Help me please,” she said, affecting as posh an accent as she could muster. She winked at Zoe and the man leaned forward into the cockpit of the Lamborghini to see two beautiful women inside. “I said help me please!” Violet snapped her fingers one more time and the man gently took her hand.

  Violet swung her legs out of the car, which was so low that real concentration was required not to break the illusion and show all the onlookers the colour of her knickers.

  “Pull!” she barked.

  The man gently pulled and Violet extricated herself from the car and drew herself to her full height which, given the four and a half inch heels she was wearing, was a damn sight taller than usual. Looking at the man for a moment, she knew that the choice of outfit had been perfect. If the little black dress, stilettos and too much make-up worked on Mr BMW it would certainly work on their next target.

  Getting back into character, she sighed and finally made eye contact with the man. “You were... toot tooting.”

  He broke eye contact and didn’t say anything so Violet continued. “Why, please?”

  “Erm – well... I thought...” he began.

  “You thought what?” she shouted. The crowd were all staring at them now. “That your dick was bigger than mine because of the car you drive?”

  “Buh,” was all he could manage.

  Violet rolled her eyes and held out her hand. BMW man took it gently and reached forward to kiss it. Violet slapped him in the face. “No!” she shouted. “Help me back into the car.”

  The man did as he was instructed. Violet closed the door of the car and slammed the accelerator. As she did the lights flipped back from green to red, leaving the unsuspecting BMW driver to face the same abuse he had tried to rain down on Violet.

  “Well?” asked Violet.

  “I am soooo in,” said Zoe.

  Chapter 10

  Lucas Vaughan stared across the road at the imposing Victorian terrace opposite, struggling to see through the bay window of his own office. The walk back had been uncomfortable, mainly due to the dire quality of the shirt and suit he was wearing. He squinted in the bright sun and scratched at the collar of his polyester shirt. Finally he spotted what he had been looking for: the two marks sitting in the reception area waiting for him. He took a deep breath. For some reason he felt nervous. And that wasn’t right. This was the day: the culmination of all his hard work, all the hours he had put in. He took a deep breath as the pedestrian crossing turned from the red man to the green man and he walked slowly across the road.

  It was because of the money he felt like this. Or rather it was because of the lack of money he felt like this.

  Usually he would rent an office, dress it, employ a secretary. Usually he would get some samples of... well... of whatever the hell he was supposed to be selling. Usually he had three or four times more money to invest up front. Now every penny he had rested on the sale of an X-ray of an orang-utan's chest.

  Lucas began to lengthen his stride. They were sitting in reception with his secretary, he told himself. There is absolutely no reason to be nervous. The marks have come back to buy the X-ray.

  And what marks they were. Lucas always had a sixth sense for finding the perfect target. He knew the places they went to relax, the bars they would drink in, the restaurants they dined in. And Lucas was a member of all of these places many times over. After all, you never knew when you would need to be someone else. It always astounded him how easy it was to appear different: a moustache, a beard, a pair of thick glasses, a pair of round glasses, a dark-haired wig, the list was... well actually the list wasn’t much longer than that.

  He would reach the stage where he went in so often he recognised the staff. It was strange, he noted, that no matter how he changed his appearance they never recognised him. Either they really didn't know it was the same person in a different wig or, more than likely, they just weren't paid enough to care.

  Unfortunately, in chasing money you also had to spend money and unfortunately he had been going through something of a dry spell. The cupboards weren’t simply bare, they had been licked clean to the point where he had splinters in his tongue.

  Reaching the office entrance he began to piece together his character for today. He reached forward and touched the carved golden plaque he’d had made.

  Logan Price & Associates

  Dealers in Obscurities & Ephemera

  There was a time a couple of years ago when he could have afforded for the plaque to have been made of metal instead of plastic.

  It was time. Lucas took a deep breath. After today he would be back at the top of his game. And...

  He hurried through the porch and, as he strode through the office door, swept the blond hair of his wig out of his face. “Miss Nicholson
,” he began.

  Miss Nicholson, a bird-like woman in her early twenties, raised a hand as if at school. “Mr. Price,” she began, her voice thin and unusually high in pitch. “The gentlemen...” she waved over at the two men seated on a sofa against the opposite wall.

  Lucas pretended to do a double take and threw a big, warm grin across his face. “Mr. Redford,” said Lucas and grabbed the man by the forearm as he rose to his feet, shaking his hand vigorously.

  “Mr. Price,” Redford nodded back.

  “Mr. Beeks.” Lucas released his grip on the first man and grabbed the hand of the second, pumping it just as hard. “Please, please, come through to my office. I trust that my secretary has made you comfortable?”

  “Er, no. Not really,” said Beeks, a small rotund man with a wisp of grey hair that seemed to float above his otherwise bald head.

  The three men began to make their way towards the door to the right of Miss Nicholson’s desk.

  “We’ve been here seven minutes,” Redford glanced at his watch. The watch, Lucas was happy to note, was a beast: huge, metallic and very, very expensive. He resisted the urge to fall back on his old pickpocket ways and ushered the men through the door. “And not a sniff of a cup of tea.”

  Beeks shook his head. “Not what we expect.”

  “Not at all, what were you thinking, Miss Nicholson?” Lucas turned back to her and glared.

  Miss Nicholson pursed her lips and gave a tiny shake of her head, her feathers ruffled. He wasn’t surprised. If you want loyalty you had to pay for it and he had been promising to pay her last week’s wages for three weeks. He wasn’t even really sure why she kept turning up. But he was bloody glad she did.

  “Gentlemen, please take a seat,” he continued. He could feel himself relaxing into the role.

  Beeks lowered his overfilled frame into one of the chairs and Redford crammed his bony backside into the other. Lucas smiled and picked up the phone on his desk.