Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid Read Free Book Online Page A

broadened. ‘She’s not the first one, Tony. At some level, your brain has clocked that she’s not the first one.’

At the far end of the loft, Stacey Chen poured beans in the hopper of her coffee grinder with one hand, while she tapped on the screen of a mini tablet with the other. She couldn’t help herself. Even with the overwhelming and very tangible distraction of the man she’d never believed she’d tempt to her bed, the intangible world of cyberspace exerted its fascination.

Stacey knew she was a geek. Probably an uber-geek, if she was honest. Her immigrant parents had wanted the traditional route for her – the law, medicine, accountancy. But the first time she’d sat in front of a computer screen, she knew she’d found her natural home. She wanted to know how it worked so she could make it do her bidding and she’d plunged into the silicon world as if she was the bastard love child of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

While she was an undergraduate, she’d written a piece of game code that she’d sold to a major developer for an eye-watering sum. It was earning her royalties all these years later. Her fellow students had expected her to join a games company or a software giant. Nobody expected her to join the police. Now she was the leading digital forensics expert with Bradfield Metropolitan Police. And every other force that managed to snag some of her wizardry. In her spare time, she still wrote code; in the past year, she’d developed two mobile apps that had each earned more than her annual salary.

Very few people knew the extent of her success. Stacey didn’t want too much speculation about her reasons for staying with the police when she could have a much more lucrative life elsewhere. When pressed, she would talk about giving something back to the society that had welcomed her parents. The truth was too shaming to admit.

Stacey loved sticking her nose into other people’s data. And being a police officer gave her access and licence. Nobody knew enough about her world to have the faintest idea how extensively she crawled and trawled her way through people’s secrets. She’d wormed her way into almost every significant official data collection in the country and she had the back-door keys to all sorts of places whose users thought they were secret. It was helpful professionally. But nothing fired her up more than breaking through some high-level firewall into other people’s privacy. Not even Sam.

Stacey dumped the ground coffee into a cafetiere and poured the boiled water over it. As she waited for it to brew, she allowed herself a dreamy moment. They’d had a brilliant night. They’d ordered dinner from a local gourmet restaurant that delivered three-course meals, they’d opened a bottle of champagne, they’d streamed a movie that Sam had been eager to see, then they’d ended up in bed for twelve hours, alternating sex and sleep in a deeply satisfying combination. This was the first time Stacey had been in a serious relationship and she loved Sam so hard it made her stomach clench. After a night like this, the conclusion was irresistible. He loved her too.

It had been a few months now since she’d screwed up her courage and made her feelings known. He’d been a little wary at first. But they’d gone out to dinner and when she invited him back for a nightcap to her loft, he’d finally relaxed. They’d stood by the big windows, looking across the scatter of light that was Bradfield by night, and his arm had crept round her shoulders.

It had been a moment of pure magic. Stacey shivered at the memory, then plunged the coffee, glancing back at the screen of her tablet. As she read the alert she’d set up when she’d first joined the Major Incident Team, her mouth opened in a silent O.

Sam would be gobsmacked.
     
    When Carol went back to work, Tony tried to be dutiful and prepare his second pre-sentencing report. But what she had said intrigued him too much. Carol hadn’t been able