Sergeant Jackman had said he probably wouldn’t be needed but Adrian Fielding had to be in the building just in case. He sat next to Jackman’s desk marking assignments and waiting for news on the prosecution. When he got bored, he leafed through his copy of the file, refreshing his memory on the details of the network configuration and the exact sequence of the e-mails. He looked up to see Jackman come in through the glass doors.
“You’re on, Prof.” He’d taken to calling Adrian ‘Prof’. Adrian had corrected him the first few times but it seemed to amuse the sergeant to continue. Perhaps he just knew the future of the department? Adrian smiled at the thought, picked up his bag and followed him out into the corridor. The police HQ was a bit of a labyrinth – corridors with offices and interview rooms so you had to pass through security doors every few feet. They headed down a flight of stairs and Adrian glanced to his left through the glass and wire mesh of a security door. Two men were walking away from him down a long corridor.
There couldn’t be two gangling beanpoles with that wig-like hairstyle. The dreaded hacker was clearly on his way back to the cells. Where he belonged.
“Have they been interviewing Corby?” Adrian thought he’d better not use the word ‘questioning’ even if Jackman was on the side of right and justice.
“Yes. Prosecution Service bending over backwards for him.”
“But they’re still going to prosecute?”
“I’m relying on you, Prof. The lawyer’s a bloody-minded bozo.”
They went into the room where a couple of uniformed policemen and a woman in a business suit were sitting at a table. Some intros – the woman was Mrs Weston from the Crown Prosecution Service – and she started to grill him.
“You’re the University representative? What is your precise role in this investigation?”
Adrian explained that he’d volunteered as an IT expert because the technicalities were quite complex.
“One of the key points we would have to prove is that the fake e-mail originated from a computer that only Dr Corby had access to. How can we be sure of that?”
“We have a trace from the e-mail server that gives us the Internet address of the computer the mail was sent by.”
“And only Dr Corby had access to that machine?”
He started to explain how the Internet addresses are allocated and that Corby was the administrator for the segment where his private machines were and so on, but she cut him off.
“Are you saying you don’t have a record of which of those machines the e-mail came from?”
“I’m saying it was one of Corby’s machines. He had over three hundred of them, mostly obsolete and a health risk, which is why we had to dispose of them. It doesn’t make any difference which particular machine it was. He controlled it.”
“Yes,” Jackman cut in. “We can show conclusively that all those addresses were allocated to him.”
“Sergeant Jackman, I’ve already asked you, in our session with Doctor Corby, not to interrupt my interviews.” She turned back to Adrian. “Can you demonstrate that he was the only person with access to those machines?”
“We know that he worked alone. Everyone knew that he was the only one involved in that particular research. It was an unauthorised private project. He wouldn’t even discuss it with the rest of the staff, let alone the students he was supervising.”
“And you could state under oath that he had not involved anyone else? Those students, for instance?”
“Clearly he was the only one with the motivation, but it might be hard to be that definite. He was a loner. I don’t think anyone would want to help him and I’m sure it’s true, but since the computers are no longer available, it’s hard to prove conclusively.”
“Very well. Let’s leave that for the moment. What was the function of the virus?”
“That’s hard to say. What we know for certain is that he loaded a program – the virus – onto a server and, as a result, the contents of the machine were erased. It looks as if that was simply revenge because he was turned down for a research grant.”
“But how do you know that’s what he intended? You seem very sure of his motivations.” She glanced up from her notes and took off her glasses to look him in the eye.
“Er, we can infer intent because he used a false name to send out the original e-mail. He was aware that he didn’t have authorisation load things onto that computer.”
“That’s as may be, but might he not have thought the program he loaded was innocuous?”
“He’s a clever man – a computing expert – who’s has been behaving psychopathically, assaulting people. I’m sure he would have known what he was doing.”
“Assaulting?”
“He even attacked me.”
“He assaulted you? Was that in connection with your involvement in this investigation?”
“Mrs Weston,” Sergeant Jackman interjected. “Mr Fielding isn’t accused of anything. This hostile questioning’s totally unnecessary. In London we’d have gone ahead without this level of antagonism.”
“I don’t care how things are or aren’t done in London, Sergeant. This is nothing compared with what a defence barrister would do. Even if we think that Dr Corby probably did intend to cause criminal damage, I don’t see how we can prove it. And without that, I don’t see how we can prosecute. Thank you very much for your time, Mr Fielding. Sergeant Jackman will see you out.”
Jackman looked as if he wanted to argue but thought better of it.
“Stupid, negative cow! Didn’t even look at most of the file. Nothing on his prior associations.” The door banged to behind them.
“So you can’t charge him?” What a fiasco!
“Without her say-so? No.”
“And he gets away with it? Surely that can’t be possible after all the work we’ve put in?” And the obstacles overcome to get the University to involve the police at all!
“Sometimes you have to accept you’re on a loser.” They walked a few paces. “But this isn’t one. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Where the lawyers haven’t got the balls to do what needs to be done.”
They went on down the corridor without speaking and Adrian decided not to press him further. At last they came to the glass security doors at reception.
“Thanks for coming down and all your help.” Jackman held out his hand. “I need to talk to someone down South and I’ll let you know how it goes. If things work out, you’ll need to tell them the story too.”
No comments:
Post a Comment