Easy As Falling Off a Bike pt 3097

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The Daily Dormouse.
(aka Bike, est. 2007)
Part 3097
by Angharad

Copyright© 2017 Angharad

  
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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
*****

I told the girls not to go bothering the police or to go messing with the crime scene site. I’d already decided that he was probably a local gangster and had been shot by one or more of his associates probably over drugs or the like and provided they didn’t fly tip their bodies in my garden or directly affect anyone of my knowing, family friends and colleagues, they could do what they liked to each other.

Simon was miffed that it wasn’t like an archaeological dig where they share their finds of the day with the public, they weren’t saying anything very much to us at all. After a couple of days, David returned home, having heard nothing of it on the news, he was a little surprised to find a police caravan on his usual parking spot. He wasn’t exactly pleased, neither were Si or Tom having to ask the cops to move vehicles for them to go to work.

How the system we adopted worked was for Tom to get them to move the car or van blocking the gate, which would then use his spot and I could then get my car out full of school girls. At times it felt like we were a studio lot for some crime drama and it went on long enough for the girls and some of the plod to know each other’s names.

I learnt after a few days that they all knew Trish then Livvie spilt the beans. Trish would deliberately jam her iPad and take it to one of the blokes in the caravan to unjam, while she was in there she’d photograph everything with a hidden camera. It would take the police computer guy longer each day to sort because she’d increase the difficulty of the problem, so by the time he said he couldn’t do it, she had almost information as the police did.

Once I found out what was going on I went to tear her off a strip and she simply protested, “How am I going to solve it for them if I don’t have all the info?”

“Perhaps they can solve it by themselves.”

“Duh,” she sighed, “they haven’t got a clue, you could do it better than them.”

“Gee thanks.”

“It’s true, I had to send them an anonymous email to seach for a guy who who’d been missing for a few days.”

“Don’t tell me, by then you had a DNA match?”

“Ha ha, no but I had circumstantial evidence to go for a probable ID.”

“And he is?”

“Mikos Stavos, some Greek bloke who’s been here for about a year working for organised crime.”

“How d’you know that?”

“You don’t wanna know, Mummy.” That was probably correct, I didn’t really want to know.

“Just don’t get caught, remember they only knew in the CIA that the Russians had been hacking the Democrats, was because GCHQ in Cheltenham told them.”

“’S okay, I worked out how to leave a false trail for them a year ago. Just don’t say anything over a phone to anyone that you don’t want eavesdropped. Is that the word, eavesdropped?”

“It is, sweetheart.” She beamed with pride, using a new word correctly, so she doesn’t always mangle the English language.

I left her to it. So we had a dead Greek in our garden. I was so tempted to call James and ask him to dig about a bit, but speaking about it on the phone would show I knew more than I was supposed to and could then put Trish at risk.

I did tell her off about the scam she was using to glean information from the caravan and she said she’d stopped because she’d managed to decrypt their wi-fi stuff, so could plug straight into stuff. It’s quite frightening what a child of twelve can do these days with a computer, especially one with a mind like Trish.

The day before they went back to school, Trish announced, “The police were going to make an arrest, but it’s the wrong guy.”

“How d’you know that?”

“What that they were going to arrest someone?”

“No, that it’s the wrong one.”

“Oh easy enough...” there followed a long detailed piece of logic which I could follow. But apparently the plod couldn’t.

“Never mind in a few years all policemen will have a degree.”

“That won’t make them any cleverer, just more educated, sort of. I mean look at the stuff you lot turn out.”

She was totally unself-conscious about destroying my whole department in a sentence, not to mention my whole career so far.

“What d’you mean, the stuff I turn out?”

“The degrees you award, hardly worth having, are they.”

“They are degrees and the university decides what the level of achievement required is to attain one. Exactly the same as any other university.”

She sniggered, “You take the bait every time,” chided Livvie, “I told you not to tease her,” she said slapping Trish on the arm, who was still sniggering.

A week after the girls were back in school, the police caravan disappeared andwith it, I hoped Trish’s ability to hack into their system. Alas it wasn’t to be, and she was doing it with her iPad and smart phone while she was in school.

“Isn’t that downright stupid?” I asked her especially as she was aware that GCHQ were checking nearly all internet and mobiles.

“Don’t worry, it’s all under control.”

“I don’t want Special Branch rushing about all over this place, even if they agreed to take all the others into custody.”

“Don’t worry, Mummy, it’s all under control—honestly.”

“So I suppose you know who did it?”

“Oh god, known that for ages.”

“So who is it then—the killer?”

“Yeah, that’s right the killer killed ’im.”

“Don’t get clever with me, young lady.”

“I’m waiting for an email from Canada to confirm it.”

“From who in Canada?”

“Some guy at McGill University.”

“How did you convince him to assist you?”

“Told him I was a post grad student from your place.”

“Why would an ecologist be looking at forensic evidence?”

“No, your forensic science department.”

“So you hacked into one of our university computers so you could pretend to be a student there to speak to another university.”

“Yeah—duh.”

“Do you not realise if you were caught, I’d be for the high jump and so would gramps.”

“How are they going to catch me?”

“I’m not a computer nerd but I suspect by a trail that they could follow.”

“Relax, I haven’t left one. Look it’s perfectly possible to use the dark web without leaving a footprint anywhere, I do it all the time. When you learn enough about computers to be able to switch one on by yourself, I’ll show you what to do.”

“Right.” I ran through what she’d just said again. “Just a moment, missy...” she fell about laughing.

“The problem is you don’t listen properly, so you’ll never make a lawyer. You think you’re listening but that’s all based upon assumptions, so unless I say something completely opposite to what you’re expecting, you just monitor bits. The same is true of computers, people aren’t really listening to what the machines are telling them—so I can slip in and do what I want. Sammi is even better at it than me.”

I knew that anyway but for Trish to admit that someone is better at something than she is, is quite an achievement.

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Comments

you lost me

Maddy Bell's picture

At turn it on!

Mads


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Madeline Anafrid Bell

I will be very interested

littlerocksilver's picture

... in seeing how she uses the evidence to identify the correct killer. Can't believe with over 50 kudos I might be the first to record a comment. Nope, not quite.

Portia

GCHQ

Can even hack/eavesdrop through your printer, let alone your Ipod or mobile and through bluetooth if you've got it in your car. Nowhere's safe. The safest way these days is Lemon-juice, an old fashioned fountain pen, some poor-quality photographic paper an envelope and postage stamp.

bev_1.jpg

Just ordinary paper

Angharad's picture

will do, wait till the lemon juice dries. then hold it over a heat source and the 'ink' turns brown.

Angharad

Loved this one!

I was chuckling throughout the piece at Trish and her ability to get information.

Trish...

Trish... {shaking my head}

At some point she's bound to meet someone cleverer than her and get in a load of trouble.

Kris

{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}

Re: Trish...

There already is someone possibly cleverer than Trish in the story, at least around computers, and Trish admits it.

Other than that, yeah, it might be a while until she comes up against someone cleverer than she is.

I sincerely hope that the

I sincerely hope that the cops are smarter than we give them credit for... But I doubt it.

I do believe Livvie and Trish

I do believe Livvie and Trish enjoy running Cathy in circles with many of their comments to her or about her. However, I can also see the great love they both have for her as well.
Trish needs to be fully aware that is the DB in their garden was "connected" as the mob or government use the word; that she could be monitored in her use of the computer by that BAD element of low lifes and thereby placing them all in danger.
As Cathy said, there is always someone smarter than you. The sad part is you don't know it until you meet them "the hard way".

Random?

Podracer's picture

What is puzzling, is why that garden to leave a body? If it's a random event then maybe Cathy's otherworld connection is distorting the probabilities.
Oh Trish. Still hasn't learned the difference between "can" and "should".

"Reach for the sun."