‘Of course.’ The woman was all service.
Harry hung up. Then she grabbed her satchel and whipped out her laptop, hooking it into a phone jack in the wall. Within minutes she was online, logged into her Sheridan bank account. She clicked the balance option and stared at the screen. Then she refreshed the web page, checking it again. Same answer.
€12,000,120.42
Harry sank back on to the velvety bed. It had to be a mistake, a hitch in the bank’s paperwork. These things happened, didn’t they?
She examined the palms of her hands. The cuts from the gravel were like a row of teeth marks. She sighed and sat up. Who the hell was she fooling? She may not want to face it, but everything that had happened today just had to be connected. And her gut told her the connection was her father. If she was honest with herself, she’d known it from the minute the guy in the station had whispered in her ear. Sorohan was a name that had resonated with significance for her ever since her father’s arrest.
She remembered the newspaper headlines: Insider Trading Ring Exposed Over Sorohan Fraud; KWC Ring Leader Charged by Stock Exchange. A hard knot burned inside her chest. That was almost eight years ago: 7th June 2001, to be precise. The day the shutters had slammed down for good between herself and her father.
But who the hell would lodge twelve million euros into her account? Not her father, surely. He was locked up in Arbour Hill prison, and she doubted that online banking was a facility the inmates enjoyed. She slammed her laptop shut. Not only had someone stashed a chunk of money in her account, but somehow they’d done it without leaving any tracks. It didn’t make sense.
She pushed herself up off the bed and trudged into the en-suite bathroom. Too tired to deal with a complicated-looking Jacuzzi shower, she made straight for the sunken bath in the corner and spun the taps on to full blast.
Harry stripped off her clothes and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror. Her legs were splotched with dark bruises, like blackening bananas. Her sooty face was hollow-eyed and anxious, with grazes along the cheeks. She looked like one of those waifs they used to send up chimneys.
She lowered herself into the steaming water an inch at a time. Then she closed her eyes and let her mind drift. She found herself thinking, not of her father nor of the twelve million euros, but of Dillon. And not the Dillon who was downstairs on the phone cutting a deal, but the boy of twenty-one who had once sat in her bedroom and held her by the hand.
‘Why do you want to hack?’
Thirteen-year-old Harry groped for an answer that would impress this dark, good-looking boy with the half-smile. She couldn’t think of one, so she just told the truth.
‘Because I can.’
She waited for his reaction, but there was none. Instead he seemed absorbed by the collection of soldering irons and screwdrivers that littered her bedroom shelves. He was dressed all in black, like a young priest, and his hair fell in a heavy fringe over thick brows. If only she wasn’t wearing her brown school uniform and ugly lace-up shoes.
Her mother had shown him up to her room, acting as though the FBI had landed on their doorstep. When he’d introduced himself as Dillon Fitzroy, an investigator with the Dublin Stock Exchange, a whisper of fear had tickled Harry’s spine.
She watched as he picked up one of the screwdrivers and tapped the business end against one hand.
‘So tell me, why Pirata?’ he said, referring to her hacker pseudonym.
‘Pi-rrata,’ corrected Harry, pronouncing the word with a rolling ‘r’ and rapid-fire delivery. ‘It’s Spanish for pirate.’
It suddenly sounded childish, but he nodded as though this were a sensible choice. He held her gaze, compressing his mouth into a neat smile. ‘Is it okay if I ask you these questions?’
She nodded and felt the heat rise in her cheeks. She sat down on the bed and glared at her chunky shoes, willing her fiery colour to subside. She was acutely aware of her mother standing on the other side of the door, listening to every word.
Dillon’s eyes swept the room, taking in the jumble of dismantled computer hardware and gutted radios. ‘Are you building something?’
She attempted a casual shrug. ‘Put me in a room with a box that has wires in it and I’ll take it apart.’ Then she bit her lip, regretting the flippant attitude. She was in trouble here, and she knew it.
Dillon wheeled out the chair from under her desk. There was a large red parcel on the seat. Harry snatched it out of his way and cradled it on her lap. He sat down facing her, arms folded.
‘You understand why I’m here, don’t you?’ he said.
Now they were getting to it. She stared at the floor. ‘Yeah.’
‘Mind if I take a look?’ He gestured towards her PC.
She shook her head, but he’d already turned round to face the screen. His fingers sped across the keyboard. Harry edged further along the bed until she was close enough to see what he was doing. Text flew up the screen as he browsed through her files and checked out her hacking tools.
‘Nice house you live in,’ he said, without looking at her.
Harry raised her eyebrows. ‘I suppose. We’ve only been here a year.’ She looked at the frothy white curtains and the lacy bed linen. It was a princess’s room. Absurd that she should still miss the poky converted attic she’d shared with Amaranta, with its narrow divans and the skipping rope her sister had stretched along the floor to demarcate her territory. But her dad had got this new job. Her mother harped on about how badly the Schrodinger job had ended, but her dad said this time everything would be different. He was right about that.
She turned back to Dillon to find him watching her. His gaze flicked over her school uniform and came to rest on the shoes that made her look like she had club feet. She closed her eyes in mortification.
‘Did you move schools too?’ he said, turning his attention back to her files.
Something gnawed at her insides the minute she thought about school. She shrugged, and made the kind of face that said it was no big deal.
‘Yeah, but I can handle it. Except all they talk about are skiing holidays and designer clothes.’ She lowered her voice and nodded towards the door. ‘Mum thinks I should be making more friends.’
‘Mums are hard to please.’
She darted a quick look at him. There was no hint of mockery in his dark eyes.
He indicated the package on her lap. ‘Christmas present?’
She shoved the parcel to one side. ‘It’s for my dad. Haven’t given it to him yet.’
‘He’s away?’
‘He played poker on Christmas Eve. He’ll probably turn up in a day or two.’
Dillon stopped what he was doing. ‘He missed Christmas?’
Harry shrugged. ‘He misses most Christmases.’
Dillon was silent for a moment. She shoved the parcel on to the bed, the contents rattling. She’d bought her father a full poker set: six hundred plastic chips, two decks of cards and a thick rule book, all stored in their own shiny black case. She’d saved up for it for months.
Dillon turned his attention back to the screen. His eyes narrowed as he worked through one of her files, and Harry peered at the screen to see what had caught his interest. It was the code for one of the hacker tools she had designed herself.
With a staccato flick of the keys, Dillon snapped the file shut and opened up another one. He scrolled down through