Robinson looked to Hoder either for confirmation of her words or for a second opinion.

‘It’s a valid point,’ Hoder said.

‘Still,’ Robinson said, his gaze sliding back to Darby, ‘I’d sleep a bit better knowing someone was keeping a close eye on you.’

‘I’m staying in a hotel packed with federal agents. What safer place is there?’

‘What I meant was I’d feel better if you didn’t travel anywhere alone.’

‘You want someone from the swinging-dicks club by my side.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘I’m a woman, so I can’t handle myself. Because I don’t have a swizzle stick and a big pair of peaches between my legs, I need a man by my side. If I did, you’d tell me to be careful out there and watch my back.’

‘I genuinely meant no disrespect, Miss McCormick.’

Darby could see that this was true. She sucked in air through her nose, pushed herself off the filing cabinet and let out a long breath. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m operating on only a couple of hours of sleep. It doesn’t help my disposition.’

Her phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. Another text message had been delivered.

24

Darby took out her phone and read the message displayed on the screen.

‘It’s Coop,’ she said. ‘He wants me to call him from a land-line. May I borrow your phone, Chief?’

Darby stood while she dialled the number Coop had included in the message. The line on the other end rang once.

‘Cooper.’

‘It’s me. I tried calling you earlier.’

‘I had my phone turned off. The computer guys at RCFL make you turn it off when you go into this particular section of the building, something to do with the cell signals screwing up some of their equipment.’

‘You got my message?’

‘About the pictures? Yeah, I got it.’

‘I take it you received copies as well.’

‘Two of them, texted to my phone.’

Darby heard the sorrow in his voice – and some pity too. The latter cut more deeply.

‘If it’s any consolation, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said.

‘That’s it? No smartass comment?’

‘I always wondered if the carpet matched the drapes, and now I know.’

‘That’s better,’ Darby said. As embarrassing as the situation was, she needed him to be normal. She didn’t want him to be tiptoeing around her like every other man here. ‘Have you been productive this morning, or have you squandered your time leering at my nude shots?’

‘Since I’m a professional FBI agent first and foremost, I managed to put aside my horn-dog tendencies and get some actual work done. Is Hoder with you?’

‘I’m standing next to him. We’re in Chief Robinson’s office.’

‘Any way to put me on speakerphone?’

‘Hold on.’

Darby relayed the request to the police chief. Robinson reached into his desk drawer and his liver-spotted hand came back with a small peach-coloured speakerphone unit that looked like it had been invented around the time of the rotary phone. It took him a couple of minutes of fumbling with the wires and appropriate knobs and buttons before Coop’s tinny voice could be heard over the speaker.

‘Can everyone hear me? Good. Okay, let’s start with the iPad found on the nightstand in the Downes bedroom. Darby’s theory about the killer recording what he did to the family is correct.’

Hoder’s eyebrows arched in surprise and admiration. The police chief gaped openly at her from the other side of the desk. Darby wrote in her notebook.

‘The Nerd Herd – that’s what these guys call themselves – found an app called iSeeu installed on the iPad,’ Coop said. ‘Software’s free, can be downloaded to iPads and iPods and iPhones, Android smartphones, Macs and PCs, you name it. It’s designed so you can spy on your significant other to see if he or she is cheating on you. Or maybe you want to monitor your teenage son, make sure he isn’t cruising around the internet looking for free porn. You can set up the software to send copies of texts, emails and your browsing history to your computer. Software runs invisibly in the background without the user knowing. Here’s the best part: you can set it up to record without alerting the user.’

‘Meaning?’ Darby asked.

‘Let’s say I suspect you’re cheating on me. I go off to work and because you’re a MILF, which stands for a Mother I’d Like To –’

‘We know what it stands for.’

‘Just wanted to be sure, as we have some older gentlemen in the room. Now, this app, if I’ve got it installed on my iPad and if I have its camera pointed at the bed when you’re going at it with your 22-year-old boy toy, enables me to watch you live and in stereo, or I can record you on my computer to enjoy at a later date. The iPad screen doesn’t have to be on. You don’t know you’re being watched and recorded, but I suddenly find out the reason why you’ve been walking around bowlegged three mornings a week.’

‘What about sound?’

‘Included. So in our scenario, let’s say the iPad’s camera isn’t pointed at your bed. I’ll still have audio of you initiating this innocent young man into the ways of the Karma Sutra. Again, the screen doesn’t need to be on.’

‘And the user really doesn’t have any idea that this software is running, turning the iPad, computer or phone into a spy device?’

‘Not a clue. The software is invisible. Runs in the background after you install it. The software does, however, do a number on the battery, since the electrical device is constantly on even when it appears to be in sleep mode. I suspect the Red Hill Ripper knows that, as we found the iPad plugged into the charger.’

‘Can you find out when this app was installed?’

‘Already did,’ Coop said. ‘It was downloaded and installed this past Tuesday, at 12.38 a.m.’

‘That would fit with the estimated time of death.’

‘The Ripper enters the house, and after he gets the family tied up he downloads the software and starts the show.’

‘Any technical expertise needed to install this software?’

‘No. It pretty much self-installs. The only thing you need to know is where to find it when you want to change the settings. The instructions, the how-to guide, whatever you want to call it, are posted online. It’s so simple a kid could do it.

‘Guys here said the app started running – started streaming audio and video over the home’s Wi-Fi – at 12.48 a.m. It was still streaming when we removed it from the Downes house last night.’

‘Meaning there’s a strong possibility he was watching us inside the bedroom yesterday.’

‘Watching and listening,’ Coop said. ‘The software was set to do both. That’s my guess on how he found out you were here, saw you moving around the bedroom yesterday.’

Maybe, Darby thought. Maybe he did find out that way. If the Silver Moon Inn is the only hotel in town, maybe he assumed I was staying there. But how did he know which room to watch?

Darby thought of the girl working the front counter last night. Laurie. Did he talk to her earlier in the day and find out my room number?

‘As for where the streaming data packets were sent – the Nerd Herd don’t know,’ Coop said. ‘The app uses something called the Advanced Encryption Standard, which is …’ The sound of pages being flipped echoed over the speakerphone. ‘Here it is. AES is a symmetric-key algorithm that runs on a substitution-permutation network, rather than the Feistel network, which is geek-speak for the kind of encryption that won’t allow them to trace to where the data packets were sent.’

‘And there’s no way to hack it?’ Darby asked.

‘No. That’s why governments, including our own, are so fond of it. The encryption takes place at both ends – when it’s sent, and when it’s delivered. At the point they started to talk about keys, they lost me. The bottom line is that, while we know the family was recorded, tracing the data packets through a bunch of networks is a dead end. That’s all I’ve got right now. Questions?’