Chapter Six #3
I looked at her sharply. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Just now. I went out for lunch. When I got back it was here.’
Tentatively I leaned over to move the mouse and as I did the words disappeared immediately, leaving an innocent word document.
‘It’s just the screensaver,’ I said, slightly relieved. As far as I knew — not much admittedly — an easy fix.
‘I think it might be Peter,’ said Emily in a low voice.
‘Why?’
She paused avoiding my eye, fiddling with the seam of her pale blue miniskirt. ‘He sent me another email yesterday.’ Her fingers plucked at the linen fabric.
‘Another one?’ I asked. ‘He’s a glutton for punishment.’ I looked closely at her.
She was still picking at her skirt, her eyes down.
‘What did you do?’ I asked. I had a really bad feeling about this.
She flushed slightly before blurting it out. ‘Well . . . he wasn’t nice this time. Had a go at me about leading him on. Said I was just like all the rest.’
‘And . . .’
‘I was having a terrible day,’ she said defensively. ‘His bloody email was the last thing I needed and you weren’t speaking to me.’
So it was all my fault now.
‘I sent him one back, except . . .’
‘What did you say?’
She went very quiet, opening her mouth once before thinking better of it. ‘I told him to fuck off and leave me alone.’
‘Subtle,’ I said sarcastically.
‘What was I supposed to do, Miss Goody Two Shoes? He wasn’t very nice and I was having a very stressful day. Miranda is being quite difficult. You have no idea how hard it is working with celebrities.’
‘Spare me, please.’ I leant down to study the screen. ‘So you think this is from him?’
Her eyes scanned the room and she lowered her voice. ‘Well, who else is it going to be?’
‘I don’t know. Who else have you upset recently?’ I tried to be funny but it didn’t go down terribly well. She glared at me.
‘Sorry, Emily.’
‘What am I going to do? How did it get here? Do you think it’s some kind of virus?’
I only had one answer to all her questions. ‘I haven’t a clue. Check your emails,’ I said, seizing on something practical to do.
Sure enough, there in her inbox was Peter’s name.
His response to Emily’s ‘get-a-life-you-sad-loser’ email was a rambling, nonsensical rant about the faithlessness of double-dealing women and their evil wiles.
His personal philosophy seemed to be based on a mix of misogyny, Greek mythology and homespun chauvinism.
Unfortunately, no handy confession, ‘By the way, I’ve messed with your computer. ’
‘He’s not a happy bunny boiler, is he?’ I observed.
‘That’s not even mildly funny.’
‘Oh! I don’t know.’
‘Do you think he hacked into the system to do this?’
My approach to modern technology was strictly need-to-know. I had no idea but I did remember at the speed-date Peter had said something about working with computers.
‘I think you’d better give Dom in IT a call. He’ll know.’
‘You do it. Dom likes you.’
Only because I always asked for his help nicely, instead of screaming at him down the phone as most people did when their computer threw a wobbly.
I made the call. Dom, our office IT boffin, spoke in another language most of the time about mainframes, motherboards and Ethernets. Once I spilt a whole glass of Ribena over my keyboard and he gave me a new one without reproach, after he’d stopped laughing.
‘Dom, its Olivia.’
‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess? If it’s Coca-Cola you don’t stand a chance—’
‘Dom, it’s urgent. Please could you pop up to Emily’s desk? No . . . it can’t . . . can you come and look now?’
He agreed to come straight up from his little, cramped cubbyhole down in the gloomy basement. His choice — apparently he liked it down there. There were days when I was tempted to join him.
When he arrived, the first thing he did was that irritating ‘I don’t like the look of this’ head shaking, flicking his long wispy hair over his stooped shoulders.
‘Nasty.’ He was a man of few words. We looked expectantly at him. He looked back at us. It was one of those moments when you want to crank someone up. Insert a clockwork key in his back and give it a couple of sharp twists.
‘So,’ I asked eventually, ‘has someone hacked into Emily’s computer to do this?’
‘Nah.’
‘So . . .’ I prompted.
‘Inside job.’
God it was like pulling teeth. ‘What does that mean, Dom?’
‘It weren’t a hacker. Someone did this here.’
‘What here at my desk?’ asked Emily horrified, taking a hasty step back from the computer as if it might bite her at any second.
‘Yeah,’ said Dom.
‘What, they just used my computer?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said.’
‘How?’ I asked.
He looked at me. ‘Durr, like this.’ He took the mouse and with a few quick clicks the screensaver was changed back to the default one. ‘It would have taken ’em less than a minute.’ He leaned back in Emily’s chair. ‘You ’ad a bit of a row wiv someone?’
Emily and I exchanged glances. I called over to Cara who sat at the desk next to Emily’s. ‘Has anyone been near here while Emily was out at lunch?’
Cara’s sleepy brown eyes looked puzzled. ‘No,’ she said, hesitating for a second. ‘Only the plant man.’
‘Plant man?’
‘You know, the people that come in and water the plants, polish the leaves. One of them came in — didn’t say much. The other girl’s much friendlier.’
‘What did he look like?’ I asked sharply.
‘Baseball, I think it was green . . . or it might have been red.’ Cara pulled an apologetic face. ‘Sorry, should I have said something to him? I thought he was quite helpful. When he knocked Emily’s bag on the floor he put everything back.’
She turned to Emily and shrugged. ‘I knew you had your purse with you so I wasn’t worried he was going to nick anything.’
Emily looked anxiously at her bag.
‘Do you think he’s . . . you know?’ she asked me, reaching out and touching the conker-brown leather.
‘What?’
‘You know, tampered with it or something?’
‘What, booby-trapped your bag?’ I asked, although given the computer stunt it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. He could have left something in there.
We looked at her pride-and-joy bag. It appeared innocuous. Was there anything nasty lurking inside, like a dead mouse or a mouldy sandwich? Had he emptied his watering can in there or tossed in a couple of handfuls of compost?
Emily poked nervously at it. ‘If he’s put something in my Fendi bag, I’ll kill him. This bag cost me a fortune.’
Didn’t we know it? It was a limited edition — one of only fifty in the country.
Gingerly she started removing everything, which took some time — she had half of Sephora’s product lines in there. Finally she reached the bottom.
‘That’s all right then. I was worried he might have ruined it.’
That was so like her, whereas I would have been worried about him taking something. Had she checked everything was there?
‘Emily, is anything mi—’
She patted her bag as if it were her favourite pet. ‘As long as my bag’s OK. You know it’s a limited edition. There are only—’
‘Emily, we have to tell someone,’ I interrupted urgently.
‘Tell them what? We went on a speed-date and picked up a lunatic who’s emailed me twice and sabotaged my computer. It’s hardly Jack the Ripper.’
‘Yes, but what if he’s done something else?’
‘Like what?’ Emily was renewing her acquaintance with her lipstick collection. Opening each one and putting a smear of colour on her hand.
I wanted to shake her.
‘I don’t know, bugged your phone, set up something that sends copies of all your emails to him. I’ve no idea about all that.’
‘Let’s ’ave a look.’
I swung round guiltily. I’d completely forgotten Dom was still there.
He grinned cheerfully at us. ‘Speed-date eh, girls? You shoulda said. I could fix you up with a coupla mates o’ mine.’
I smiled weakly at him, while Emily looked down her nose with complete disdain. Quickly, to stop her saying anything — we needed Dom’s help — I said, ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Jus’ lemme know next time,’ he said, swinging back to the keyboard.
We stood in silence behind his hunched back, watching as his fingers tapped away, a blur of motion, while he muttered under his breath. He was a lot chattier to the computer.
After a while he leaned back, put his hands behind his head and swivelled the chair to face us, smiling grimly. ‘It’s clean. Only changed the screensaver. No time to do nuffink else. Wot ’ave you bin doin’ to upset ’im?’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘You might say I was doing a friend a favour.’
As Dom heaved himself out of the chair and slouched off shaking his head, she turned to me again. ‘All’s well that ends well, then.’
‘You think?’ I asked, looking at the restored screen.
‘He’s made his point, although we can’t prove it was him.’
‘Suppose not.’
‘I shall just ignore it,’ said Emily disdainfully. ‘I’m not rising to his pathetic little tricks. If he thinks I’m a bitch — that’s his problem, not mine. He’s burnt his boat now. Hardly going to bother me again, is he?’
I was still worried. Very worried. Coming in here to make his point was pretty risky. Would that be the end of it?
In the meantime, there was no harm in letting Barney know. I was quite looking forward to that. It might wipe the smirk off his face for at least ten seconds.