Page 71 of A Death in Cornwall

They stopped at a nearby hardware store long enough for Ingrid to purchase a screwdriver and a roll of gaffer tape, then started back to Cannes. It was late afternoon by the time they were back in their rooms at the hotel. Gabriel attached the camera to his computer and kept an eye on the feed while Ingrid made her first tentative moves against the nameless network. By eight that evening she was in.

“How?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s impossible to explain the process to someone like you.”

“A moron?”

“A layman.”

“Try.”

She spoke for several minutes in a strange and foreign tongue. Derivation function, cryptographic hashing algorithm, wired equivalent privacy, deauthentication frame, medium access control, physical layer protocols, something called “evil twin access points.” The upshot of all this gibberish was that she had deceived the network into surrendering its own password.

“Are you still connected?”

She shook her head. “It’s not safe for me to be logged on while he’s working.”

“Did you happen to notice anything interesting before you took your leave?”

“Two desktops, two laptops, four phones, and an alarm system.”

Gabriel swore softly.

“It’s not a problem. I’ll disable the alarm before I go in, and I’ll reset it on my way out the door. He’ll never know I was in his apartment.”

“Unless you happen to bump into Madame Martineau or Herr Schmidt on your way out.”

Ingrid looked at the screen of Gabriel’s computer. “Or the lovely Fiona Ashworth.”

The British estate agent was returning home from her office on the Croisette. She punched in the passcode—five, one, seven, nine, zero, two, eight, six—and went inside. A moment later the lights came on in her second-floor apartment. The windows of Madame Martineau’s unit were likewise illuminated. The apartment above hers, however, was in darkness.

“Does he ever turn on the lights?” asked Gabriel.

“Blackout shades. A trick of the trade.”

“We can’t prove that he’s the hacker. Not yet, at least.”

“And if he is?”

“I’m going to have a word with him.”

“You’re not going to lose your temper, are you?”

“Not me,” said Gabriel. “I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

Ingrid smiled. “That makes two of us.”

***

Shortly before eleven o’clock, with the occupants of the apartment building apparently bedded down for the night, they walked to the Vieux Port for a quick pizza at Cresci. This time they sat in a darkened corner of the dining room so Ingrid could keep an eye on the feed from the camera.

“Who was the other gunman that night?” she asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“The other assassin who helped you kill Zizi al-Bakari.”

“You met him once.”

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