Some crazy hack.
Before you knew it there were over two hundred and fifty thousand people watching her Instagram Live, with the number rising by the second. And what they were all watching was not Fiona Clemence shopping for make-up, or giving hot yoga tips.
Instead, they were all watching the Chief Constable of Kent Police admitting to a multimillion-pound fraud on a livestreamed video.
You couldn’t see who he was talking to, but he was in some sort of library, and he was talking about mobile phones, and doing deals with criminals. The viewership continues to rise and rise as word is getting out. Insta, Twitter, TikTok, even people’s dads are WhatsApping now. They’re all watching, they’re all commenting, they’re all calling for the head of this Andrew Everton guy.
Even the hair-straightening technician she is with this morning shows Fiona his phone, and says, ‘You seen this?’
Apropos of nothing, Fiona also sees her number of Instagram followers race above four million as the saga unfolds on her ‘hacked’ account. At the moment, the Chief Constable is looking around the room, and you can hear someone tapping on a keyboard. The comments section is going crazy.
That’s all Elizabeth had asked for. The login and password for Fiona’s Instagram. ‘Only for an hour or so, dear,’ she had said. ‘I’m sure you won’t even notice.’
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Andrew Everton sits patiently while the Viking types something into his laptop. So far, so good. He likes the Viking; the Viking seems to like him. More importantly, he trusts the Viking, and he feels safe in this cosy room, in the middle of nowhere. Andrew Everton gets the feeling he is going to leave here considerably richer than when he entered it.
The Viking closes his laptop. ‘You kill anyone?’
‘No,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘It was clean.’
‘You sure?’
‘Listen, I made money, I broke the law, I did bad things, but I didn’t kill anyone.’ What if the Viking decides this is too risky for him?
‘It says the journalist was called Bethany Waites,’ says the Viking. ‘Bethany Waites, she used to work at South East Tonight, she was the journalist who reported your story?’
‘That’s the one, yes,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘And she died,’ says the Viking. ‘Someone killed her?’
‘Yup,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘Not me though. You’ve got no worries with me.’
‘I think I do have worries maybe,’ says the Viking. ‘The woman who went to jail, she was called Heather Garbutt?’
‘That’s right,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘And she died too?’
‘Again, yes, she did,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘And, again, nothing to do with me. She killed herself. Tragic, but –’
‘And your accomplice, Jack Mason?’
‘Let me stop you there,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘Yes, he died too.’
‘A lot of people dying around you,’ says the Viking. ‘That worries me.’
‘Of course, absolutely, it should do,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘So I need you to be honest,’ says the Viking. ‘There’s just you and me here, and I need to trust you. Did you kill them?’
‘No,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘Perhaps you killed one or two of them,’ says the Viking.
‘I didn’t kill any of them,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘It’s a big coincidence,’ says the Viking.