Black Mail (2012) by Bill Daly Page B

scraped the last piece of boiled egg from its shell and opened up
The Herald
at the sports pages.
    ‘Busy day in prospect?’ Jude asked casually as she stretched across the kitchen table for the coffee pot to refill her cup.
    ‘Looks like it might be a bit of a bugger.’ He spoke from behind the newspaper. ‘I’ll probably be late home tonight.’
    ‘Not too late. Don’t forget we’re going to the opera.’
    ‘Oh shit!’ He crumpled the newspaper in his fists and quickly got to his feet. ‘Look – why don’t you get someone else to go with you? I can’t be sure of getting away from the office in time and it would be a shame to waste the ticket.’ Jude didn’t respond. ‘What do you think?’ he insisted.
    ‘Makes sense, I suppose,’ she said slowly. She stopped spreading marmalade on her toast and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’ll give Laura a call. She’ll jump at the chance. Mike was supposed to get them tickets but he conveniently managed to forget because the date happened to clash with one of his poker nights. By the time Laura found out he hadn’t booked anything it was sold out. She was spitting blood at the time.’
    Simon lifted his jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it over his shoulders. ‘That’s a good idea. Go with Laura.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Must run.’ He bit the end off a slice of toast and picked up his briefcase. ‘If I’m not home before you go out,’ he called from the hall, ‘have a good time.’
    Simon drove across town to the car park beneath his office block and again parked at the lowest level. Glancing at the car clock he saw it was half-past nine. He took out his diary to check a phone number and tapped it into his mobile.
    ‘Could you put me through to Bjorn Svensson, please? He works in the computing department.’
    The line clicked and an extension rang. ‘Bjorn? It’s Simon Ramsay. Sorry to bother you at work.’
    ‘No problem. What can I do for you?’
    ‘I’m looking for a bit of technical advice.’
    ‘Fire away.’
    ‘Someone’s trying to wind me up by sending me an email under a false name. I was wondering if there’s any way I could find out who actually sent it?’
    ‘Who’s his service provider?’
    ‘All I’ve got is a phoney ID, followed by “hotmail.com”.’
    ‘It all depends how much trouble he’s gone to.’
    ‘How’s that?’
    ‘If he used his own name and address when he set up the ID then Hotmail will have a record of it, but I doubt if they’d give that information out. On the other hand if he used a false name when he established the account I don’t think there’s any way they would know. It’s a free service and a user ID can be set up online without an identity check.’
    ‘I was afraid you’d say something like that.’
    ‘If you’re really serious about finding out who sent it, an email can usually be traced back to the originating computer, but if someone wanted to cover their tracks they wouldn’t use their own PC. They’d go to an internet café and send it from there. If they did that the most you’d ever be able to find out is what café the message was sent from. I suppose, if the sender paid for his computer time with a credit card, that could be traced, but if he paid in cash you’d be none the wiser. Tell you what, I’ll drop round to your place this evening on my way home from work and have a look at the email on your machine. If I play around with it there might be something I can do to trace the source.’
    ‘No thanks. Don’t bother.’
    ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble.’
    ‘I said – no thanks!’ He cut the call quickly.
    Simon was still huddled and shivering in his car when his mobile rang on the stroke of ten o’clock. He felt his skin creep as he snapped the phone to his ear.
    ‘Liam Black here,’ the disembodied voice intoned. ‘Have you got the money?’
    ‘I’ll have it by tomorrow.’
    ‘Excellent! I knew you’d see sense,
Simon
. Listen carefully