“It’s being looked into very carefully,” Malik said. She was watching me, her face grave and patient, and full of sympathy. “And you know, Cole had given a huge amount of testimony before he died. Believe me, every thread is being followed up at the highest level.”
I nodded. I believed her. I didn’t flatter myself that MI6 were particularly bothered about the death of a lowly hacker. But who knew how many journalists and dissidents had had their phones compromised by Watchdog, their whereabouts tracked by Cole’s software. Who knew how many people had been quietly assassinated at a time they had believed they would be safe, how many diplomats’ children now had their photographs in biometric databases in some far-off country, thanks to Puppydog.
What had happened to Gabe—that was on Cole, and now he had paid the ultimate price. And the men who had cut Gabe’s throat, well, I would never know for sure, but last summer two corpses had been found floating in the Thames, with DNA that matched microscopic traces recovered from the bathroom window. When Malik had told me the news, I knew what she’d wanted me to feel—that it was over, that the people who had killed Gabe had been, if not caught, at least run to ground, and in a way it was true, but though it was strange to admit, I had never been that interested in the men who’d wielded the knife that night. To me they’d always felt like bullets in a loaded gun—killers, yes, but in a strange way, not the ones ultimately responsible for Gabe’s death. To me that had always been Cole… and his handlers. And now Cole was dead. But the group behind him was a more shadowy, amorphous thing, and in spite of what Malik was saying, I didn’t know in my heart whether a group like that could ever be pinned down, let alone brought to justice.
Whoever the individuals were behind the Puppydog hack, they were just one part of a vast dark web of unseen players, a network that encompassed everyone from national security agencies to organizations like the Lazarus Group, right through to some kid in his bedroom in Canada or Poland or Bangladesh, pressing buttons and causing havoc because he could, just like Gabe had once done. And yes, they could be fought, maybe some individuals might even be arrested, but you might as well try to prosecute cancer. They would always exist. Slippery, shadowy, forcing their way through the cracks in our online security and the doors we left open for them in our digital lives.
All I could do was tell myself that I had closed one door—the door Cole had carved out for them—and thousands, maybe millions of people were safer for it. And now I had to let it go.
“What was the other thing?” I tried to force my voice into a semblance of normality, but it came out strained and false, and I knew that Malik knew, and was sympathetic, but was trying to be businesslike for both our sakes. “Any better?”
“Maybe. I hope so, anyway. I’m not completely sure if this is public yet, but I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“Yes?”
“I just heard from Eltham Green. The investigation’s been concluded. They found Jeff guilty of gross misconduct.”
“You’re kidding?” My face felt strange and stiff, as if it wasn’t sure what expression to make, or whether to laugh or cry. “What does that mean?”
“It means… well, he’s been sacked, basically. He can’t work as a police officer again. And two of his colleagues have had formal reprimands over their behavior towards you after the breakup. I know it’s probably too little and it’s definitely far too late, but, well, I hope it’s something.”
“Oh my God.” I felt like I’d had a punch to the stomach. I put my hand there, feeling the twisted knot of scar tissue beneath my T-shirt, where the hospital had cut into the ragged, suppurating wound in my side to take out my spleen, and not completely succeeded in repairing the damage. For some reason, the feeling of it—the raised, tender edges, the still-perceptible traces where the sutures and surgical staples had been removed—anchored me. I had survived that. I had survived Gabby’s birth, accumulating more stitches, more scars. I had survived Gabe’s death, and I was still here, not whole exactly, but still standing.
“Thank you,” I said at last to Malik, and she gave a nod, a little formal, as if she too wasn’t sure what the two of us should be doing with this information—whoops and high-fives didn’t feel that appropriate, and Malik knew it.
“Okay. Well, that was it. I’m sorry to spring it on you now, and a double whammy, I know that. But… I wanted to tell you face-to-face.”
“I know,” I said. I touched her arm and forced a smile. “Thank you. I mean it.”
And then I got in the car and drove away, Malik watching me as she grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
I was almost at Salisbury Lane, lost in my thoughts, lost in memories, when a song came on the radio, one that I couldn’t place at first. I only knew that the intro, an insistent little repetitive refrain that ticked along with the indicator as I waited to turn into our road, gave me a strange feeling—a mix of panic and wistfulness and yearning.
And then I realized. “This Must Be the Place.” The song that Gabe and I had played at our wedding, the song we had danced to on a warm summer’s night, surrounded by our friends and family, holding each other, and then laughing as we beckoned Cole and Noemie to join us on the dance floor, Hel and Roland, Gabe’s parents, all the other friends and family who had come to wish us well in our life together.
But the panic was because beneath that was the other memory, of Cole, whistling the refrain as he came through the sea mist towards me, as I huddled in the dunes, in fear for my life, not knowing if he was friend or foe.
Cole. Cole, who had betrayed his best friend, who had driven me to the very edge. Who was now dead in a prison cell.
I stopped the car at the curb and sat there, listening, as David Byrne sang of love and dreams and the hopes of being human—and the meaning of home.
I found there were tears on my face—I seemed to cry a lot these days, though not always from sadness—but it was Gabe in my head as the song wound to its end, not Cole. Gabe’s hand in mine as we danced together under a hundred glimmering lamps, his arm around my waist, turning me, leading me, holding me in the warmth of his love and the promise of our future together.
And then the song ended, and I wiped my eyes, switched off the engine, and got out of the car. I turned to face our little house, the house where Gabe had lived and loved me and died, and the house where our daughter had come wailing into the world—a wailing I could hear now, even from outside the front door.
My heart filled with a joy that was so close to pain, I wasn’t sure if I could have told the difference, except that this time I was smiling through the tears. Because behind that door, our daughter—mine and Gabe’s—was waiting for me, and she was gorgeous and red-faced and furious, and everything I needed her to be.
I opened the front door. I was home. And that was where I wanted to be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have a litany of thank-yous for this book, which is always the case when tackling a subject you knew little about before you started writing.
This book was born in large part out of the many, many podcasts I listened to in lockdown, podcasts that I first became intrigued by when writing The Turn of the Key and One by One, which explored the world of technology and apps from very different angles. There are many shades of cybercrime and just as many intriguing podcasts on the subject, but the one that had the greatest influence on Zero Days was undoubtedly Darknet Diaries, hosted by Jack Rhysider, where I first heard professional pen testers and social engineers speaking directly about their experiences, in sometimes hair-raising detail. So first thanks to Jack, for making a complex subject so very accessible and entertaining, and second thanks to all the hackers and security experts who shared their wealth of knowledge, and who help to make the world a little safer.