Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [37]
‘But first, I have an errand for you to run.’
Peri jumped up and saluted. ‘What is it?’
He handed her a wodge of cash. ‘Go and buy a printer for this thing,’ he said. Peri stuck out her tongue, but she went.
And so began the hackers’ version of legwork. I drove Peri to a computer shop and dropped in at my apartment for a change of clothes. By the time we got back, the Doctor had broken into Swan’s credit card records. (He was more worried that Swan might notice than that the credit company would.) The Doctor printed out page after page of Swan’s credit card transactions – almost a year’s worth. The printer chewed steadily through the paper we’d bought, until the last sheet fluttered out onto the floor.
‘Oh well,’ said the Doctor, ‘that should be enough.’ He gathered up the bundle of dead tree and handed it to Peri.
‘Your job is to look for anything interesting, anything unusual.
Anything which might tell us something useful about Swan and – her activities.’
Peri flipped through the first few pages of the massive printout. ‘Looks like she spends most of her money at computer stores.’ She sat down, already absorbed in the thickly printed lines, twirling a highlighter pen around in her fingers.
And there we sat for the next few hours, while Peri muttered to herself and made the occasional mark on the page, and the Doctor stared into the Apple’s screen and made little
‘aha!’ noises. I would have liked to borrow the machine, dial up my news service, and type up a report, but they’d have killed me.
The Doctor fooled around online for a little longer, then went back to fooling around with the Eridani’s plastic ball. I took a nap. Only two things interrupted the boredom of the next few hours. One was a delivery of a dozen red roses, which the Doctor sent back as it wasn’t for us. The other wasBob’s triumphant return from the land of phone crime.
‘How did you get on?’ said the Doctor.
Bob gave him a thumbs-up. ‘Mission accomplished. We can listen in to Swan’s phone calls any time we like.’
Peri looked up from her pile of printouts. ‘I hope we’re doing the right thing.
Bob knew it was a bad idea, but he reckoned that with his sandy hair stuffed under a toque and in the rented car, he was pretty difficult to identify. So on his way back, he had driven past his house, just to take a look.
Everything looked just like it did any day. There were no police cars or crime scene tapes, no-one in the street. His house looked fine. Bob cruised past again, trying to see if anything inside had been touched.
He couldn’t stand it. He had to know if they’d confiscated his computers. He especially couldn’t stand the thought of losing that brand-new, five-grand IBM PC. The driveway was full of snow: he parked in the street and crept in through his back door.
The study was untouched. His notes and books and hardware had not been shoved into cardboard boxes and carried off by the Feds. Bob relaxed. Nobody had been in here since their panicked run to Baltimore. At the time, bolting had seemed like one hell of a good idea, especially after finding that tap. Bob gave his phone an evil look as he passed it on the way to the kitchen.
Bob actually leapt backwards through the kitchen door in fright. Taped to the fridge was a huge occult symbol drawn in thick red and black marker.
He was gripped by several conflicting urges: tear the thing off the fridge door, run out of the house, run back into the study to check again everything was OK, run through the house to check there wasn’t a dead snake in his bathtub or a live snake in his bed, grab the phone and call the Doctor (argh!
no!), or just stand there slack-jawed and try to analyse the symbol.
He pulled the paper off the fridge with shaking hands. The seal was drawn freehand, but extremely neatly. It was all contained in a circle; inside that, a ring