Hacker (6 page)
Authors: Malorie Blackman
Abbott, Julie: 15 Pillder Gardens: 045 2950:
cashier Grade 2: jabbott
Amritraj, Vidal: 2 Branstep Road: 045 2379:
programmer Grade 4: vamritraj
Andrews, Steven: 290 Eyeley Road: 056 7892:
cashier grade 3: sandrews
I only caught the first three rows of information before it scrolled off the screen. The file was being displayed so quickly that several screens’ worth had appeared before I thought to press the
test>
appeared again.
‘Right. I’m going to print all this off now,’ I said. I typed:
>CREATE KEY BRIEF=STAFFNAME,ADDRESS,PHONE, JOBDESCRIPTION/SORT BY STAFFNAME
>PRINT STAFFFILE/KEY=BRIEF
Immediately, the printer under the table started to rumble as the paper moved through it. Then it started to make an awful turbo-charged wheezy, screaming noise. It was really loud!
‘Gib, do something!’ I implored.
I looked up at the ceiling. Sleeping pill or no sleeping pill, with all this racket Mum might still come thundering down the stairs. Gib dived back under the table. He crouched over the printer, covering it with his body. It did help to muffle the sound, but the printer was still making a horrible noise.
‘How long is this file?’ Gib hissed.
‘I don’t know. But it contains the names of every person in the same office as Dad at Universal Bank so it might take a couple of minutes,’ I replied.
‘Minutes!’ Gib protested.
He looked down at the paper coming out of the printer.
‘Oh well! It’s started now. We might as well leave it printing until the last possible second.’
I watched the ceiling apprehensively but there wasn’t a sound from Mum and Dad’s bedroom. After what seemed like three hours rather than three minutes, the printer finally stopped.
‘You don’t have to print anything else, do you?’ Gib said.
‘Just some details from the transaction log,’ I answered.
Gib groaned. ‘Get on with it then. I’m getting pins and needles.’
‘Stop moaning!’ I snapped. ‘I’d rather be in bed too, you know.’ I glanced across to the LED clock display on our DVD player. One-thirty in the morning!
‘Do you think this transformers log file will tell us who put that money in Dad’s bank account?’ Gib asked, still crouching over the printer.
‘Transaction log file, not transformers log file, you pillock!’ I corrected.
‘Whatever,’ Gib dismissed. ‘So will the file give us the info we need or not?’
I thought for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ I said slowly. ‘The bank must already have checked that before Dad was arrested. The file probably says Dad put all that money in his account himself. But there might be some other clue in the file, that’s why I want to see exactly what it says. There might be something in it that the bank has forgotten or overlooked.’
‘Like what?’
‘Now how should I know that?’ I asked.
‘It’s a bit unlikely,’ Gib sighed.
‘I’ve got to start somewhere,’ I replied, annoyed. I was getting precious little encouragement.
‘Get on with it then.’ Gib came out from under the table and shook out his arms and legs. ‘My legs are going to sleep. I’ll crouch over the printer when you’re ready to print something.’
‘All right then. Now, let me think. I want to make sure I get this right.’ I was talking more to myself than to Gib. ‘Besides the cashiers, who else could have put that money in Dad’s account …?’
‘From the way Dad’s always going on, I would have thought anyone who was a good enough programmer could write a program to do it,’ Gib said, sitting down in his chair again. ‘Isn’t that why he’s always talking about how difficult his job is?’
‘Hhmm!’ I mused. ‘The thing is, if you write a new program or modify an old one, it’s supposed to be compiled, linked and tested by someone else, someone different, to make sure that you aren’t putting cons and tricks into it. Dad said programs only get added to the overnight batch job after they’ve been thoroughly tested. And then there’s Dad’s special checking program.’
‘Checking program?’
‘Dad wrote most of it himself. It runs at the start of every weekend. It adds about two hours to the time it takes for the batch job to run, so they only run it on Fridays or Saturdays,’ I said. ‘It checks to make sure that nothing strange has happened to the batch programs during the week. Dad said nothing could get past that.’
‘So what other way could it have been done?’ Gib said.
‘There
is
no other way. Either the money was transferred by two of the cashiers or someone wrote a program to transfer the money, which somehow got through the system without being detected,’ I said. ‘But if someone
did
write a program, why did they put the money into Dad’s account?
Why not their own?
’
‘How can we check to make sure it wasn’t a program?’ Gib said.
‘I could print off the details of each program in the batch-job library file, I suppose,’ I said doubtfully. ‘That’s where the details of all the programs are stored. That would tell us if any batch programs had been changed or added recently.’
‘How many batch programs are there?’ asked Gib.
‘I think Dad said between one hundred and fifty and two hundred,’ I replied with a grimace.
Gib stared at me. ‘How on earth are you going to check all those? You can’t know all the file names?’
I was tempted not to tell him the truth. He looked so impressed. But in the end I couldn’t be bothered to wind him up.
‘I don’t have to know all the file names. The batch library file works just like a real library. It keeps a record of all the batch programs. It tells you when they were compiled, who changed the program and when, and some other stuff. And it keeps a record of the latest version number of each program.’
‘Are you going to print out the programs as well or just what’s in the batch library?’
‘There’s no point in my printing out the programs. I wouldn’t understand them,’ I admitted.
I started typing again.
>PRINT LIBRARY
UNIBATCH/LIST=FULL/SINCE=15MAY
‘What does all that mean? I’m sick of asking you that all the time,’ Gib complained.
‘Then you should have paid attention when Dad was telling me all this,’ I replied, without much sympathy. ‘I’ve asked for a print out of all program modifications and additions made since last Monday, the fifteenth of May.’
‘What’s
UNIBATCH
?’
‘That’s the name of the library where all the bank’s batch programs sit. I think it stands for Universal Bank batch job – or something like that,’ I replied. ‘Now are you going to get under the table or not?’
Muttering under his breath, Gib scooted under the table. He picked up the printer and put it in his lap before bending over it. With one last nervous look at the ceiling, I clicked on the confirm print command. Within seconds the printer had started up again.
‘I’m going to get a drink,’ I said, standing up.
‘No, you can’t,’ Gib protested quickly. ‘If you open that door, Mum will hear us for sure.’
I sat down again. ‘This is going to take ages,’ I moaned.
‘At least you don’t have to sit under the table, cradling the printer,’ Gib snorted. ‘Besides, there can’t have been that many programs added or changed since Monday.’
‘Maybe I should have done it for the whole of May?’ I queried.
‘We can always go back further if we don’t find anything at first,’ Gib said. ‘But I think this is enough. Sitting here is cheesing me right off!’
After a couple of minutes, all the information had been printed.
‘Can I stand up now?’ Gib whined.
‘Oh, go on then. I’ve only got one more thing to print off and it’ll take some time to set up. I want to print off the transaction log file for yesterday. If two cashiers
did
do it then that’s where we’re going to find out about it.’
‘Haven’t we finished yet?’
‘Stop whinging,’ I ordered. ‘You’re getting on my nerves.’
Gib emerged, bending and straightening his legs to get the blood going again. I turned back to the PC screen, ready to start typing.
‘Oh-oh!’ I said. My heart began to hammer inside me.
‘What’s the matter?’ Gib asked, stopping his leg exercises to look at the screen.
>MESSAGE: THIS IS THE SYSTEM OPERATOR. WHO IS USING THIS ACCOUNT? PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELF.
>MESSAGE:
‘Do something!’ Gib said urgently. ‘You’re not supposed to be on the bank’s computer. Vicky, do something. Log off.’
I didn’t even bother to log off. I clicked on the icon for the router that allowed me to get onto the Internet, then clicked on the option to turn it off. It must have taken me about a second and a half.
>CONNECTION LOST
appeared on the screen. I quickly switched off the PC.
‘Will they know it was us?’ Gib asked anxiously.
‘I’m not sure. I think all the operators would’ve been able to see was that someone had logged on to the TEST account. But hopefully I disconnected us from the Internet before they could trace us.’
‘Are you sure?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure at all.
‘Great,’ Gib fumed. ‘We can’t help Dad if we’re arrested too.’
‘We won’t be. They can’t prove it was us,’ I replied, faking confidence.
‘You don’t know that for certain,’ Gib pointed out.
‘Well, we’ll soon find out,’ I said. ‘If they do know it’s us, they’ll do something about it.’
‘Like what, for example?’ Gib asked quietly.
‘Like call the police,’ I replied.
IT ONLY TOOK
Gib and me a couple of minutes to get back to our bedrooms. Gib said that he’d take the printouts upstairs with him and I didn’t argue. I went into my room, switched off the light and got into bed – but I didn’t even try to sleep. I knew that it would be impossible. How could I sleep when the police might knock on the door at any second?
‘Please,
please
don’t let the police arrive,’ I prayed into the darkness.
I was scared for myself, but I was more terrified about what it might do to Mum. How would she take it if Gib and I were arrested too? I tried to tell myself that it was just my imagination rushing about at warp speed, but it didn’t help.
‘Don’t panic, Victoria,’ I told myself. ‘Think of something else.’ But what?
I waited for something slight and silly to pop into my head. Nothing arrived.
Come on, Victoria Gibson, I thought sternly. Don’t you dare panic. You won’t help anyone by panicking. Victoria … Everyone called me Vicky – except Dad and Mrs Bracken. I preferred Victoria to Vicky. Vicky sounded like something you stuffed up your nose when you had a cold, but I’d never told anyone that. I didn’t want people to think I was trying to be grand or something, because I wasn’t. But Victoria was such a grand name. VIC-TOR-EEE-AH!
And I knew why I was called Victoria too. One of my real mum and dad’s friends had told the social worker who had told my current mum and dad.
I wasn’t called Victoria after Queen Victoria or even because anyone felt particularly victorious at having me. I was called Victoria because I was almost born there. At Victoria Station. My real mum and dad had just stepped off the Orpington train when my mum started getting labour pains. Some quick-minded person called an ambulance and Mum only just made it to Westminster Hospital in time to have me. And Victoria was a better name than Westminster!
I can’t remember my real mum and dad at all. I didn’t like admitting that to myself, but it was true. They had gone off for a weekend’s holiday. Their first holiday since I was born. They were on the last day of the holiday when the accident happened. I was only a few weeks old when they drowned. They were in a hired boat when a sudden squall blew up. They’d left me with friends until they got back – only they never got back.
They had died. I hadn’t. That made me feel strange, guilty – like somehow Mum and Dad dying was my fault in some way. Like maybe it was somehow wrong for me to live when they’d died.
It was as Gib said – they had needed to get away from me …
I thought about the only photo I had of my real mum and dad. It was taken at their wedding. I’d put it back in my top drawer under my socks and I was that close to taking it out again. I didn’t look at it very often – it made me feel funny peculiar. It was a good photo though. Mum and Dad were smiling at the camera and they looked so happy. I usually only took it out to look at when I felt happy too, but earlier I’d needed to look at them. I’d needed to remember that I had belonged once, to people who’d cared about me.
They’d
wanted me … except for the weekend when they went away on holiday … maybe …
Mum and Dad had given up all hope of having any children of their own, so they fostered me practically as soon as my real parents died. Then Mum number two discovered she was three months pregnant. They kept me though and, after a year, they adopted me. So I’m only a few months older than Gib. I’m one of the oldest in my year, Gib’s one of the youngest. He acts it too!