Break In

Sam Malone was the first into the office most days, and today was no exception. Things were not as they usually were when he arrived.

When he opened the front door and went to disarm the alarm, he found that it was already disarmed. How could this happen? In the past, if he or another staff member has locked up and failed to arm the security system, he has received a call from the monitoring firm reminding him that the system still had not been armed.

As his mind was racing through possible explanations of these unusual circumstances his eyes were scanning around the office to see if anything was out of place. Everything seemed to be in its normal place until his eyes rested on the filing cabinet, where the top drawer was slightly proud of the cabinet. These files were locked each night and they could only be locked when the top drawer was fully closed.

At this evidence his heart started racing in response to a growing inner anger that someone had interfered with his business then fear about what they may have done or could do with what they had discovered.

What should he do? If his office had been burgled he should be careful not to touch things until the Police have been able to examine things, but until he had had a look at things to determine what was missing he was unsure about the wisdom of involving the police. They might find things completely unrelated to the burglary that could raise their curiosity and complicate Sam’s life unnecessarily.

He decided that it was more important for him to know what was going on than to get the police to uphold the law. Even with his adrenalin pumping he had the wit to move slowly and methodically through the contents of the filing cabinet. Everything seemed to be in the proper place, but it was clear that someone had been at the files. Some of the papers were slightly out of alignment, but files were all in the right order.

After examining all four drawers in the front office he made his way into his own office where he found exactly the same evidence of someone having very carefully but thoroughly gone through the contents of the filing cabinets.

On his way back into the front office he passed the utility room in which the photocopier, fax and mail-franking machine were located. On the work bench beside the photocopier he noticed the empty wrapping of a ream of copy paper. Whoever had broken in had made copies of the documents they wanted – but which ones, and how many?

Sam knew that he could get the Copier Service Company to send a technician round right away and find out how many copies were made and at what time. He wondered if the computer innards of the photocopier might also keep a record of whatever was copied – if it did he would know what the burglars were looking for and how much they had taken.

He also noted that he should call the security company and see if they have any record of when the system was disarmed. As he was thinking through this he had the horrible feeling that this might have been an inside job – after all, the door had not been jemmied open, so presumably keys had been used, as was the case with the filing cabinets; none had been broken into.
He decided first of all that he should carry on as if this had not happened, so far as the other staff in the office were concerned. This was clearly the work of his opponents, but which ones? That was a crucial question. It could be the ferals gathering evidence to throw at him some time later. It could have been Quartermaine and his crew, but Sam was not sure they would stoop to something so illegal as to break in. It could be Tony Cassidy from the Tribune, looking for a scoop. But how would they get in without breaking locks?

By about 9.30 Sam decided he had to tell someone about it, so he left the office with the intention of visiting Tom Knight, his chief ally among the Ward Councillors. Tom was a senior manager of the port and rail facility that processed all the primary produce that the Quarabup hinterland produced onto bulk-carrier ships that visited the port on a regular basis. Grains of various sorts were brought in by rail for shipping. Mineral sands were stockpiled for shipping. Woodchips were produced from tree-farm logs and shipped out through the port. They even managed to arrange a few ships per year for raw wool in bales.

Sam phoned ahead as he was driving to let Tom know he was coming and Tom met him in the car park. “I’ve got half an hour,” he said to Sam as he hopped into the passenger seat. “Let’s go to Windy Point.” As they were driving there, Sam unloaded the events of the morning and what his initial thoughts were about what had happened, as well as what he thought might need to be done.

“Clearly, whoever has done this has some class. Either they can pick locks, or they got hold of a set of keys, or they have a friend on the inside that let them in. AND they disarmed the alarm!” Sam said this while at the same time thinking he didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work that out.

“If the ferals did it I reckon they would bash and trash the place, so I doubt it was them.” Tom said this with a confidence born out of the sense that this was self-evident. His mind was really further on, toying with the possibility that that Dan Quartermaine might just stoop that low to get some dirt on Sam Malone. While he had fun entertaining the idea, he hesitated to think that he would take such a risk. This left only the paper sleuth, Tony Cassidy as a suspect. If News Ltd journos could stoop to phone hacking, perhaps Cassidy would be willing to sneak around his office in the dead of night. Over the years he seemed to have been willing to do anything to get circulation up, even though his was the only local paper. There was none other to choose from.

The question Tom and Sam were now deliberating on was “Should we confront Cassidy?” This would be inherently risky. If Cassidy had done it, he might launch straight into some form of blackmail. If he had not done it, the conversation would alert him to the fact that something was amiss.

Perhaps it would be best to lie low and see what develops. They could confidently anticipate that whoever has taken this information will make a move with it, and hopefully they will do a bit more fishing for information that will give them away.

Tom agreed that this was the appropriate course of action. “And make sure you find out how much, at least, has been copied on your photocopier. If it was a small amount you can be sure they knew exactly what they were looking for. If they made hundreds of copies, then they were fishing. That will mean they might take a while longer to act.”

They made their way back to work, and Sam got the Copier Service man in. Sam quizzed him a bit about what kind of information was recorded by the copier. “Does it keep copies in its memory of what has been copied?”

“Nah! Only Faxes incoming! And scans to email addresses.” Now that could be interesting, thought Sam.

Sam made out that he wanted to see which departments were using the copier most. Given their conversation it would be worthwhile to see if any scans were being sent outside the office. They all had quick-address keys on the copier, but an email address could be added manually. The technician was set the task of preparing a report of all copy transactions for the past month and of forwarding from the sent-box to Sam’s email address any scan emails sent to external email addresses.

While each user had an access code for the copier, they were not highly secure. In fact, they were listed on a laminated sheet above the copier. Sam’s was 0001. Each Sales Rep had number beginning with 100, and the Secretary used 2001.

All this information was duly catalogued on nine pages listing all copier transactions by time, day and operator for the past 30 days. The technician didn’t even take any notice of the fact that last night user code 0001 authorised the copying of 246 pages between the hours 2.24am and 3.11am. Whoever did this had a sense of humour at least.

So, it seemed like they were on a fishing expedition. This information made it clear that this was done in the dead of the night. The pay dirt was in the emails that were forwarded to Sam. During that same time period five single-page documents had been scanned and forwarded to a coded email address – p4p4s3@live.com

The scanned attachments were very specifically related to his business relationship with Spandos International, and gave details of arrangements to meet for the inspection of properties. The correspondence was intentionally innocuous but together they did provide a sleuth with a sequence of connection that might be embarrassing. With no idea about owner of the email, the only option was still to wait. At least they knew what was of most interest.