The Coroner, page 34
Alison said, 'I'm here to collect evidence that's been ordered by the coroner. You understand what that means, Mr Yates.'
'If you wouldn't mind, I'd prefer to discuss this privately.'
There were sounds of movement, Alison following him from the room. A door closed behind them, shutting out the office noise.
Dropping all pretence at politeness, Yates said, 'What's going on here? The coroner's been suspended. She's got no legal authority and our staff aren't obliged to give you anything.'
'This order was made before the Danny Wills inquest was adjourned. As far as I'm concerned, it has to be complied with. If it isn't, there will be consequences.'
'We'll take them.'
'You realize you're obstructing a coroner's investigation?'
'Let's cut the crap. I've just spoken to the head of legal at the local authority and you shouldn't even be here. Either you leave now or I'll call security.'
'Mr Grantham has no jurisdiction over the coroner's office.'
Yates said, 'Nice try. Come back with an arrest warrant and we might take you seriously.'
There was a moment of silence, then a click as Alison reached into her pocket and ended the call.
She found Jenny at the corner table swallowing her lunchtime pills, no longer making any effort to conceal them.
'How much of that did you hear?'
'Pretty much everything. Sounds like he called your bluff.'
'What was I meant to do - lie? He'd spoken to Grantham. He knew you'd sent me on a fishing trip. Face it, Mrs Cooper, we're not going to get anything out of them.'
'I'm not your boss any more. You can call me Jenny.'
'I'd prefer not to.'
Alison sat stiffly on the edge of her chair, avoiding Jenny's gaze, annoyed with herself and embarrassed at her failure. She said, 'I suppose that's it, then. We're not going to get any further here.'
'Not by asking politely we're not.'
'We've got no authority, Mrs Cooper. It'll have to wait until you're back in post.'
'I appreciate your optimism, but I think we both know what'll happen to those files in the meantime.'
Indignant, Alison said, 'You make it sound as if it was my fault. I don't see what else I could have done.'
'You couldn't, they were wise to us. If they won't let us through the front door we'll just have to go through the back.'
Jenny pulled out her phone and address book and looked up a number. 'You don't have to be involved with this. In fact, you probably don't want to be anywhere near it.'
'Who are you calling?'
'Tara Collins. She claims to have a young hacker friend.'
Alison said, 'I'd better be getting back to the office.' She stepped away from the table. 'I'll find myself a taxi.'
Jenny waited until she was out of earshot.
Tara answered her land line with a cautious 'Who is it?'
'Jenny Cooper.'
'Hi. I was going to call you - I saw the Post. Tell me they fitted you up.'
'Something like that.'
'Allowing your premises to be used? I don't like to pull rank, but it could be worse.'
'I'm working on it.'
'I've had Simone on the phone wanting to know what the hell's going on. I used to think she was flaky enough to survive this but I'm not so sure.'
'I don't know how safe it is to talk to you on this thing—'
'What the hell. For all I know they've got a bug up my backside.'
Jenny thought of suggesting they meet somewhere but it was nearly one. If Peterson's files were still intact by the close of business she'd be amazed.
'I've had some information. I need to get hold of certain computer files on the Vale District Hospital server - transcripts of Peterson's post-mortem notes. You mentioned you knew a kid-'
'I do.' A note of excitement entered her voice.
'Do you think he'd be able to help? It's urgent.'
'I can call him, but there's a problem.'
'OK . . .'
'As I recall, the Vale's on an intranet. There's no outside access and no wi-fi. He'd have to work off one of the terminals in the building, or at least get a lead plugged into the system.'
'I'm here now. Any ideas?'
'Have a look around, I'll call you back in a minute.' She rang off.
Jenny pocketed her phone and went in search of a spare computer terminal. The admin floors were out of bounds, limiting her to the clinical areas of the building. She scouted along corridors, glancing into offices and reception areas of obs and gynae, paediatrics and gastroenterology, but each area of the building felt as if it was already holding twice as many people as it was designed for. Playing lost, she wandered through two adjacent geriatric wards on the first floor; the handful of terminals were all behind glass in the nurses' stations, positioned to keep patients and public well away from them. She nudged at the doors of a housemen's common room, but it, too, was overcrowded, young doctors queuing up to get at the handful of grubby machines. An under- resourced hospital was a tough place to get screen time.
She was coming back down the stairs to reception, wondering what secret corners the intranet cables passed through and whether, like in a movie she'd seen, it could be spliced into, when Tara Collins called back. She said that Tony had agreed to help, but wanted a hundred to cover the risk. Jenny said fine, but they'd need to move fast. How soon could they get here?
'Be there in half an hour. Found a terminal yet?'
'You've got to be joking. I was thinking about hacking into the cable.'
'Not a chance. They'll all be in armoured conduits running between the floors. Keep looking.'
Jenny was there to meet Tara and Tony as they climbed out of her battered Fiat. Tony was a pale, skinny kid wearing a baseball cap and a fluorescent waistcoat, IT TEAM, printed across the front and back. He had a laptop bag over his shoulder and a jumble of leads stuffed in his waistcoat pockets.
He looked at her with grey, unblinking eyes and in a flat drawl said, 'Hi, I'm Tony. Tara said you were cool about the money.'
'Sure. I'll give it you as soon as I get to a cashpoint.'
He shrugged, happy with that.
Tara said, 'How are we doing? Have you found a terminal?'
'Not a chance. Every one I've found is being used or has got a queue for it. I was hoping you'd have some ideas.'
Tony said, 'I'd usually go into someone's office, say I'm fixing a problem.'
Jenny and Tara exchanged a look. Tara said, 'He's done it before.'
Jenny said, 'How long do you need?'
'We're probably talking about a six-digit password made up of letters and numbers. Could take maybe half an hour with my software, or quicker if I can get a link out and get some remote machines working on it.'
Tara said, 'Password hacking takes computing power. You basically have an electronic dictionary containing every permutation, millions of them. Tony's part of a network that shares the load - hundreds of machines around the world get working on it at once.'
Tony, faintly bored, picked at a spot on his chin.
Jenny thought about trying to get him into one of the offices she'd passed and couldn't see how. More than likely people who worked at the same computer all day would smell a rat. She was thinking about the geriatric ward, maybe finding a way to distract the skeleton staff of nurses, when she realized they were standing thirty yards away from the hospital mortuary.
On the two occasions she'd been inside there'd been only Peterson and a couple of technicians in the building. She fetched out her phone and scrolled through its address book, looking for his number.
Tara said, 'What are you thinking?'
'Give me a moment.'
Peterson's phone rang five times before the answer machine clicked in. She glanced at her watch - it was just gone two.
She rang off. 'Right. I've got an idea. We'll go straight to Peterson's office - he's not in there now and there's a good chance he'll be in the autopsy room for the rest of the afternoon. I'll go in with Tony and cover for him, pretend I'm there to speak to Peterson personally if anyone asks questions.'
Tara said, 'Wouldn't it less risky if he went in by himself?'
Jenny said, 'I'm taking full responsibility. And besides, I'd like to have a root around.'
Tara moved her car to a space close to the mortuary entrance, facing out so she could keep watch while Jenny and Tony went to the door. Tony pressed the intercom but there was no answer. Jenny guessed it meant Peterson and his technicians were busy. They waited a while before buzzing again - still no response. Tony wondered about trying some of the windows around the back. Jenny said no, too risky, but when they'd been standing there ten minutes she started to flirt with the idea. Tony was all set with a thin plastic blade he said could slip most window catches and Yale locks when Jenny saw the Filipina cleaner she'd met on her first visit, pushing a steel janitor's trolley across the car park.
She hurried over and, in a mixture of sign language and pidgin, indicated that she needed to get through the door. The woman took a moment to place her, but when she had she gave her a tired but friendly smile and took a detour with her trolley, pulling a heavy bunch of keys out of her overalls. She unlocked the door and Jenny gave her a warm thank-you.
She walked a few paces ahead of Tony, telling him to act as if they were here on separate business, at least until they got into Peterson's office. The entrance hall was empty, as was the small lobby and the two offices which led off it. Jenny noticed they were signed 'Technicians' and 'Reception'. She glanced through the safety glass and saw that reception had become an ad hoc storeroom housing boxes of files. The technician's office looked more like a common room; there was a computer terminal inside but the door was locked. She gestured Tony to follow her to the slap doors, warning him that he might see some dead bodies.
Tony was unimpressed. 'You should see rotten.com.'
She nudged through the doors into the main corridor. Corpses stretched along the wall in an unbroken line, parked two deep at one point: the result of her no report no release policy. The shrill whine of a buzz saw came from the autopsy room and up around the corner, out of sight, she could hear a gurney clattering and a drawer being slid out of the fridge. She moved quickly and quietly over to Peterson's office, Tony following, and pushed down the door handle. She walked straight in, ready with her lines in case he was in there, but he wasn't. She motioned Tony to follow and took a breath. Despite an extra beta blocker her heart was pounding; her shirt was sticking to her back.
Tony got straight to work. Having checked that Peterson hadn't left his machine on and logged in - no such luck - he started to unplug leads and reroute them through his laptop. He set up an external modem and stuck an array of flash drives into both Peterson's machine and his own box of tricks. Pulling up a chair, he said, 'Ever heard of Crack 5 or John the Ripper?'
'No. Should I have?'
'Password-cracking programs, meant to be the best, but the one I've got, they wouldn't see it for dust.' He started tapping on the laptop, his eyes flicking between it and the desktop's screen. 'Does this look suspicious?'
'I'd have to say so, even with the waistcoat.'
'Then you'd better try doing something with the door and open the window.'
Fighting a sensation of panic which was rising despite the heavy wall of medication, Jenny tried to keep her breathing even and shallow as she dragged over the spare chair and wedged it tightly under the door handle. The window was more of a problem: it had a simple pull-down catch and a side hinge but wouldn't open more than a few inches.
Tony said, 'There's a lock on the bottom. There'll be a key around here somewhere.'
She scoured the windowsills and shelves but couldn't find it.
Tony said, 'Guess there's only one way out.'
She flapped the front of her blouse. 'How long's this going to take?'
'A while.'
He was crouched over the laptop, the peak of his cap pulled down over his face. Jenny didn't know what he was doing or how he was doing it, she just wanted it to happen fast, before her nerves gave way.
She tried to distract herself by nosing around Peterson's things. She got the impression his office was somewhere he didn't spend much time. He had five shelves of textbooks and journals, mostly covered in a thick layer of dust, and the same again of box files filled with copy post-mortem reports, but they seemed to peter out two years ago: probably when the hospital intranet went in. His desktop printer was only a small inkjet which wouldn't have coped with more than a few pages.
She guessed the system was designed to keep things paperless and centralized.
On the wall behind his desk was a noticeboard with all the usual corporate regs and a dull calendar from a medical supply company. A couple of snapshots of his daughter's birthday party had been added since her last visit. The way he'd tacked up the birthday photos, at the bottom of the board, felt uncomfortable, like he didn't know if his children's images should share the same space as a lot of dead people. She repeated the thought to herself, dead people . . .
Tony glanced up from his keyboard. 'There's eighty-five machines working on the password. I'd like more but America's only just waking up.'
'No clue how long it's going to take?'
They both froze at the sound of footsteps on the tiles outside the door. The door handle rattled, then rattled again. A voice that wasn't Peterson's said, 'He-llo?'
Jenny shot Tony an urgent glance. He twitched his shoulders, passing the problem back to her. She stepped over to the door, tiptoeing on the carpet, and held the chair steady as the handle jiggled a third time. 'Dr Peterson?' It was a local accent, maybe one of the technicians. Jenny felt the sweat drip down her back, gather at her waistband and trickle round towards her stomach. Whoever it was grunted, sounding puzzled, and moved off to the right towards the autopsy room.
Jenny said, 'How long?'
Tony said, 'Ask the machine.'
She scanned the room and started searching - what for, she didn't know. She rifled through each of the drawers in the filing cabinet, checked the two drawers in Peterson's desk, then started on the box files she hadn't already checked. There were invoices from undertakers, supplies contracts, receipts and service agreements for technical equipment and bulletins from the Royal College of Pathologists. Many of the files weren't marked and it looked as if Peterson had stuffed them away without any thought to finding the contents again. A busy man with no assistant to do his legwork.
The door handle rattled again. This time the voice was firmer. 'Hello? Anybody in there?'
Jenny stood still but a file on the end of the row chose that moment to tumble sideways and spill its contents on the floor.
'Open the door. You've got no permission to be in there.'
The rattling became more determined. Jenny rammed the chair harder up against the handle. The man on the other side said, 'I'm calling security.' Jenny heard him hurry across the corridor to the internal phone, shouting through to the autopsy room, 'There's someone in there.'
'Can't you hurry up?'
Tony hit some more keys. 'I think we're getting somewhere.'
Jenny pulled down another two files and tipped the contents on the floor. More invoices, minutes of meetings. She reached up to the shelf again and in the line of dust saw a small Allen key. She picked it up and took it the window. It opened the lock, the window swung open.
'Yes. Got it.'
Jenny spun round. 'What?'
Tony's fingers were flying over the laptop. 'Angelz. Romantic.'
'I want all his documents created in April and May this year.'
Tony hit some more keys and scanned the screen. 'Everything's in the one file.'
'Take it all.'
He yanked out a couple of flash drives, stuck another into the laptop.
More footsteps approached the door, several sets. It was Peterson's voice this time. 'Who's in there? Open up.'
Tony said, 'I've got it,' and started pulling out leads and stuffing them in his pocket. 'Get my machine in the bag.'
Peterson was alternately wrenching at the handle and pounding on the door, the chair legs starting to slip.
Jenny shoved the laptop into its case as Tony grabbed the last of the trailing leads.
'Now what?'
'Out the window.'
Peterson bellowed through, 'OK, this door's coming in.'
