The Mello Code

Mello and Matt were ushered into a relatively plush office the second they reported into the reception at Greater Manchester\'s police headquarters. Frowning slightly at one another, they nevertheless allowed themselves to be seated, whilst an officious looking policewoman raced to find her superior. Neither man spoke, their eyes taking in all of their surroundings. This welcome was unexpected. A plain clothed employee rushed into the room. "May I offer you refreshments?"



"No, thank you." Mello replied immediately. Matt didn\'t reply at all. They were left alone again.



Several minutes passed before the door opened to emit an individal, whose air and stripes distinguished him as a Chief Superintendent. He bustled across to their seats and Mello rose to shake his hand. "Apologies for the wait, you were a little early. I was speaking with the Home Office and," he paused, scanning their expressions, "Watari."



"Apology accepted." Mello smirked and waited for the man to sit down before resuming his own seat.



"I am Chief Superintendent Bennett. Am I right in believing that I am addressing one of the letters?" He was watching Mello, whose eyes flickered briefly in Matt\'s direction. Mello was pondering correcting that to \'two of the letters\', but the officer misunderstood. He turned his own attention to Matt and smiled. "Sir." He leaned forward to shake the redhead\'s hand too, which Matt allowed with a faintly dismissive air. "You will forgive me. I was unaware of the existence of the letters until this morning. I do know of L, of course, who doesn\'t?" He chuckled, betraying nerves that were not otherwise apparent in his confident demeanour. "One of my team triggered a rather strange alert when she entered the name \'Mello\' into the nationwide database. You are very well connected." They both surveyed him in silence. He was visibly becoming anxious now. "I have just been, ahem, speaking with the Home Secretary. Sir, may I offer you anything? Refreshments, erm..."



Matt took a cigarette out of his pocket. "An ashtray?"



CS Bennett\'s eyes bulged slightly. "I\'m very sorry, Sir, it this is a non-smoking building." He quickly gushed on. "All of England and Wales have been rendered smokefree in the workplace. As indeed have Scotland. Northern Ireland. Erm, perhaps an exception could be made for such a distinguished visitor." He looked very ill at ease.



Mello responded, his voice rasping, "I\'m sure he\'ll cope for ten minutes without a cigarette. We are, after all, only here to inspect a car. I admit to being rather surprised to find ourselves being escorted into your presense, Chief Superintendent."



"Ah, yes, indeed." CS Bennett appeared both relieved and burning with curiousity. "May I enquire as to why one of the letters is in England? And, well, interested in this case."



Matt wouldn\'t ordinarily have spoken up, but the man\'s attention hadn\'t left him, even when he had responded to Mello. "The Home Office told you to give us everything we required, didn\'t they? And the Home Secretary asked you to find out why we\'re here. Is he worried it\'s a matter of national security?"



The officer\'s face flushed. His skittish gaze took in the prominent no smoking sign on his desk. "The Honourable gentleman was merely trying to ascertain if the British government could be of further assistance. Is it a matter of national security?"



"It might help you to know that I\'m not Mello. He is." Matt flicked a finger in Mello\'s direction and they watched the Chief Superintendent turn crimson. The man turned his whole body towards the Slav. Matt smirked and silently watched him.



Mello\'s expression was blankly neutral. "I\'m afraid that I can\'t tell you any details of my investigation. I understand that you have already verified me with Watari." CS Bennett nodded and would have spoken again, but Mello quickly continued. "Then I would be grateful for sight of any casefiles and I would like to look at the car now please." He took out a bar of chocolate and began unwrapping it. The Chief Superintendent noted it and relaxed very slightly. It had obviously been a sign that Hal had told him to watch out for in assurance that this was M. Mello wasn\'t sure what to make of that. He determined that it probably wasn\'t worth worrying about and so took a bite as soon as the chocolate was revealed. "Have your people reached any conclusions so far?"



CS Bennett brought himself up to his full height, evidently more sure of his ground here. This was law, not politics, he had experience here. "We are currently treating this as a simple theft. We were on the verge of contacting the owner to collect his vehicle when your call came. Recently, we have been watching a contraband smuggling ring, whose couriers pick up from here in stolen vehicles and transport their stock around the country. Liaising with Merseyside, as it\'s coming in through their docks. We opened the boot solely to ascertain whether this was part of that operation, though Hampshire is outside the usual area of these people. That\'s when we discovered the equipment and passed a courtesy enquiry back to Winchester." He peered at Mello. "It\'s not a simple theft. Not if you\'re involved. What is it?"



"Interesting." Mello smiled, unblinking in his gaze upon the man. "I would see the files and the car now please."



They were escorted to a room lined with filing cabinets and filled with computers. Here a uniformed officer\'s assertion, that the files logged into the police database could not be copied onto a memory stick, was quickly disapproved by Matt. It left her disconcerted and obviously keen to understand how he had done that, but the urgent gestures of the Chief Superintendent forestalled her asking. Mello and Matt were taken down to a back yard, where a police car took them to a lot a couple of miles away. Mello requested that they be left alone to inspect the car and their escort melted away. They waited until they were behind the car and turned away, before exchanging bemused looks. Matt spoke first. "What the fucking Hell was that?"



"Did you know it would trigger all of that?"



"No!" Matt laughed. "Though I suppose it makes sense. Any government believing that they have L or an associate crawling over their country is going to be interested in why."



Mello nodded quickly. "Just as I thought." He grinned. "Fucking hilarious though. But interesting that the Home Secretary doesn\'t know what Wammy\'s House is."



"Or he\'s not telling CS Bennett."



Mello snorted. "What the fuck was CS Bennett on? He was only interested in whichever of us was the \'letter\' and didn\'t even bother to ask who the other person was. Sycophantic tosser. Can\'t you just tell he got where he is by fawning over the \'right\' people?"



"Fucking surreal." Matt was referring to the whole experience. He had already dismissed CS Bennett as unworthy of his interest. "Right. Car." He lit a cigarette. "You want me to strip it."



Mello bit his lip and glanced at him. Then yawned and strode away to the boot. "I\'m beginning to think we\'re here on a wild goosechase. It\'s easy to piece together what has happened here and it\'s everyone working to their own agendas. Hal\'s panicking because it\'s basically outside her orphanage..."



"Looked After Children\'s Home."



"Ignoring you." Mello inspected the lock, which was already open. Then he frowned. "Is \'looked after child\' supposed to sound all warm and caring in today\'s politically correct palance?"



"Fuck knows."



"Do you feel like you were a \'looked after child\' or a fucking orphan?"



"Well, there wasn\'t much fucking going on. Not much being looked after either from what I recall. I was more your illegally trafficked potential child soldier being worked to the bone with no parents to stop it happening." Matt shrugged. "Not quite as catchy as \'looked after child\', I\'ll give them that."



Mello scratched his head. "It makes it sound like kids with parents aren\'t looked after."



"Inorite."



"Matty," Mello sighed, "there are whole reasons that Leet is a written language. The major one being that you sound like an uneducated twat trying to speak the words." He lifted the boot and inspected the device inside. "Voila!" Mello pulled his Manchester United scarf out of his pocket and wrapped it around his neck, then secured a piece over this mouth. Then he took out a tiny pack and began dusting for fingerprints with magnetic powder. Matt crouched on the ground beside him, reading the casefiles on his laptop. "I don\'t know why I\'m bothering to do this. It\'s had policemen crawling all over it."



"Because you\'d regret it later if you didn\'t." Matt mumbled, distracted. "This just says \'some kind of listening device\'." He looked up at Mello. "So what is it?"



Mello shrugged. "It\'s some kind of listening device, that I\'m yet to properly look at because I\'m fingerprinting before I start poking it." He winked at the upturned face grinning at him. "Ok, I have fingerprints. I have many fingerprints in fact. I have a fucking useless number of fingerprints. Hurrah." He took out his digital camera and spent a few minutes photographing them. "Shit, I\'ve got fucking powder on my lense. Oh. I haven\'t it\'s just a bit of fluff." Mello stepped back. "I just need to do the rest of the car now." There was no movement from the ground. "A geek! A geek! My kingdom for a geek!"



Matt switched browsers. "I\'ll see if I can find one in Ask Jeeves for you."



Mello chuckled. "You look first, see what you come up with. I\'m going to dust the rest." He dropped his camera into his pocket and took up his pot of dust and the magnetic applicator. "I like fingerprinting. It\'s theraputic."



Mello chuckled. "You look first, see what you come up with. I\'m going to dust the rest." He dropped his camera into his pocket and took up his pot of dust and the magnetic applicator. "I like fingerprinting. It\'s theraputic." As Matt rose, Mello kissed him on the lips before moving on to the driver\'s side. He started on the outside and worked inwards. "You know, I haven\'t properly dusted anything since class. Never had to do it in the outside world. In fact, there\'s a million things I learned there that I\'ve never used since." The wool of the scarf over his mouth was becoming hot and wet with condensation from his breath. "Greek mythology. When have I ever needed Greek mythology?"



"Times crossword puzzles." Matt commented from the depths of the boot of the car. "Sssh."



Mello twisted around, "What\'s up?"



"That was \'ssssh\', as in \'hush\'." Matt rose from the boot and picked up his laptop, positioning it so that Mello could see the screen. He opened a notepad and typed onto it, \'There\'s a microphone and there\'s a transmitter, with an amplifier on the mike. Where\'s the on/off switch?\'



Mello frowned and glanced back at the boot. He looked down at his gloved hands, covered in magnetic powder and mouthed, "Still on?"



Matt typed, \'No way of telling.\' He bit his lip and glanced into the car. Then typed, \'You carry on dusting, I\'ll see what I can work out from the equipment. So far I have that it\'s pretty powerful. It must have cost a fair bit to be abandoned in a car.\' Mello nodded and so Matt took his laptop back to his bag and held it while he ferretted inside. They had come prepared with tools and equipment of their own. Matt took out a screwdriver and several cables. The latter were looped over his forearm. Inside the car, Mello silently dusted, bending under the steering shaft, where the car had been hotwired. His eyes took on a distant look, as if he stared from a great distance away, though he didn\'t miss a single spot in his work.



Behind him, Matt took the casing off the listening station and smiled at what he uncovered. The digital gage was moving but he had somewhere to connect with now. It was a simple USB socket, so he linked up his laptop and threw the other cables back towards his bag. His programme registered it but couldn\'t find the data. Matt bit his lip and tried another four pieces of software, before giving up and going back to the first. He blew out his cheeks and checked the preferences, checking and unchecking various boxes to try and force through the information. Nothing happened, though it did seem that his programme was trying. It was an encouraging sign. He logged onto his wireless IP and forwarded a port, though he doubted very much that this was on-line. The software stopped even attempting to upload anything.



Kneeling down on the tarmac, Mello was picking hair and unidentified bits out of the carpet inside the car. He had dusted all the loose change and other random junk lolling around the floor and in the nooks and crannies. Most, if not all, of this would belong to the original owner of the vehicle, but he hoped to find something. His mind kept careering off into tangents. Mello worried that this was a wild goosechase. That it really was just a car theft with surprising equipment inside. Perhaps the surveillance hardware belonged to the owner and the thief had simply wanted a ride to Hampshire. Then Mello would remind himself that it had been outside Wammy\'s House and that was a matter of international security in itself. He would loop through berating himself silently for not taking it seriously when Hal had first noted it. But it could just be a car theft. It could just be a wild goosechase. He added another hair to a clear plastic bag and dropped it into a larger bag with all the rest.



The laptop started to slip from its precarious perch, resting between Matt\'s upraised thigh and the edge of the car\'s boot, so Matt grabbed at it. Data suddenly swam into his programme, scrolling through with a loading tag telling him that there were 3051 lines coming through. Matt raised his eyebrows and glanced down at his hand, where it had hit the USB socket in catching the laptop. The damn cable hadn\'t been inserted fully. He bit his lip and peered across at the top of Mello\'s head. The blond hadn\'t noticed anything. Matt breathed a silent chuckle, thinking to himself, \'if you had a brain you\'d be dangerous, Jeevas.\' Even before it finished uploading, one fact was patently clear. All of the information had been forwarded to a group of ten IP addresses. That suggested just one computer within a group of dynamic name servers. Matt beamed in self-satisfaction. The person was as good as traced. He waited until everything was captured onto his own hard-drive, then reached out and switched the transmitter off.



Mello looked up quizzically as Matt approached him. The redhead smiled. "It\'s safe to talk. It was still transmitting, though it wasn\'t going anywhere since it was moved from Hampshire. I\'ve got the IP, so I\'ll trace it in a second, but I\'m deducing that the receiver is somewhere in Winchester."



"What were they listening to?"



"Dunno, it just records the packages."



"So it wasn\'t recording, just sending?"



Matt blinked and returned to the boot. He was followed. "I\'ll let you know."



Mello peered into the boot and looked at the exposed listening station. "Nice equipment." He pursed his lips. "Things like that don\'t just get abandoned in the boots of cars. The owner didn\'t report it missing and it must have cost more than the car itself." He took the laptop off Matt and scrolled through the list of transmitted packages. "Have you traced the IP?"



"Give me chance."



"It was sending at intervals. Every ten minutes. That\'s real time recording and not just sound activated. Why not just a live feed then?"



"Hard to do without it being wired." Matt had been sliding his hand down the back of the device, but had found nothing. He braced his knee against the bumper and leaned in to try and see any external memory sockets. There weren\'t any at the front and sides. His hand unravelled his keyring from his pocket and found the tiny torch. "Nothing but vents."



Mello grinned. "The self-restraint I feel right now. Your arse poking up into the air like that. Those policemen all over there and my voyeur fantasies starting to make themselves known." He sniffed and returned his attention to the laptop. "Pity I\'m working."



Matt climbed out again. "You\'d really have me with a bunch of coppers watching?"



"Fuck yeah." Mello smirked at the screen. "But shut up, I\'m thinking."



Matt shook his head. "It doesn\'t seem like yesterday when you were adamant that you weren\'t gay; that this isn\'t love and that you were only shagging me out of pity. You wouldn\'t even hold my hand in public, let alone do the dirty in the middle of a carpark with an audience. Oh! How the tide turns."



"Why would the police look in the trunk?" Mello wiped his gloves on his trousers and took out his chocolate. "They wouldn\'t. Not ordinarily. They would have looked at the reg. plates and linked it up with the report. They would have had no reason to look inside. Interesting." He snapped off a square and sucked it. "Run your trace, Matt. I think that the person receiving the data and the person who reported the car stolen might be one and the same. Call it a hunch."



"So you\'re not shagging me over the car?"



"No. I\'m solving this case." Mello moved his chocolate to the other side of his mouth. "Besides it\'s too cold and we\'re bound to bang the metal, which will freak you out." He pointed to the hardware. "Open it up and see about internal memory. Run the trace. I\'m going to finish up inside." He frowned. "Can we be sure that they were listening inside Wammy\'s House?"



Matt nodded. "Yes, the co-ordinates were set in that direction. I don\'t know how good it would be, because even amplified, you\'re not going to get the wired quality. It\'s powerful stuff, but not that powerful. Anything more and they\'d have been picking up half of Winchester, so individual voices would have been swamped. In fact, I can think of half a dozen better ways of getting audio data that would own this."



"Of course you can, Matty. But we\'re going to assume that whoever set this up hasn\'t got your anally retentive obsession with all things technical; and almost certainly hasn\'t got your genius backing it up."



"Was there a compliment in there somewhere?"



Mello was staring into space, his chocolate static between his lips. His mind was displaying the clues laid out before them, highlighting and lifting them into an order which made sense. There was still an insidious voice which told him that this case was beneath him, but Mello stepped into a patch of icy calm emotion deep inside himself and hushed it. Even if it wasn\'t a case worthy of him, then it was still a case. He could solve it as a puzzle with as much kudos as he gained in completing the broadsheet crosswords every morning. It needn\'t be in his portfolio. But then, there was a small chance that this was bigger than anyone imagined, in which case he was dutybound to investigate it. That settled, he put his doubts aside and looked at what was before him.



The car and its contents would have been returned to a single person. That person was the one who had reported it missing and to whom the car was registered. That person had no reason to suspect that the boot would be opened to reveal expensive surveillance equipment. That person could therefore expect that the car be either left where it was positioned, outside Wammy\'s House, or else towed away and returned to themselves. A third option was that the car could be stolen, but the person who had left it there had displayed a notice stating that the car was broken down. It would have been of no interest to a thief. There was no reason to believe that a thief had ever been involved in this case.



No losses, so where were the gains. Mello considered them carefully and came up with only one. The person receiving information from the transmitter would be listening inside Wammy\'s House. Therefore that was the only motive. He paused. "Matt, were they definitely listening into the institution, not any of the houses over the road?"



"It was a laser beam mike. It was directed at Wammy\'s."



"Ok, thank you." Mello moved the chocolate to the other side of his mouth. It was starting to melt and so left a film across his teeth and tongue. He bit it in two and swallowed it, snapping off another section to take its place. The motive was to listen inside Wammy\'s House. Was there anything else here? Matt had said that the quality could be better, but if it did the job then the audio needn\'t be crystal-clear. "Where in Wammy\'s was the laser microphone pointing?"



"I don\'t know. We moved the car."



Mello frowned. \'We\' hadn\'t done anything. It was himself. Mihael Stupid Arsehole Keehl who had moved the car. He closed his eyes and pictured it, as it had been when he first inspected it, in the street outside the institution. His own memory was not eidetic, as Matt\'s was, but it was still very good. He remembered it as he had seen it. He recalled looking down and seeing a long strand of ivy almost touching the pavement, scuffed at the bottom as if it had been kicked recently against the wall. He saw, in his mind\'s eye, the front tyre half over a drain. He imagined looking at the wall, then over it, into the orphanage itself. The beam skirted the eastern wall, down past the reception and through some classrooms. It would eventually touch upon the refectory, the kitchens and maybe Ann\'s office. On the floor above would bedrooms. "Matt, was the laser directed due north or at an angle? Also what\'s the range?"



"How do you mean?"



"Were they listening to things in a straight line along the laser\'s beam or could it have picked up audio from either side of that beam?"



"To be honest, I\'d be amazed if they were picking up anything at all." Matt stepped around the car to survey his husband. "You\'ve not worked much with these, have you?"



Mello pursed his lips, then swallowed. He threw back his shoulders and raised his head. "I\'ve never used one. I know that sounds fucking ridiculous, but I never have." His glare dared Matt to comment on that.



The redhead shrugged. "Must have done it after you left then. I just thought you might have covered it privately."



"I didn\'t."



"Right." Matt reached out to touch his shoulder. "Hey, it\'s ok. Not having studied something doesn\'t necessarily equate to an epic failure. I\'m going to teach you, right?" Mello just stared at him. "Ok! You get that it\'s a laser, right? Beautiful idea because it means that you don\'t have to enter premises to place a bug. You don\'t have to go back in to remove it again. You just get close enough to direct your laser and the audio feeds back. In this case, it feeds into the listening station, forms into a package, then gets transmitted back out. Stop me if I\'m telling you something that you already know."



Mello sighed. "I had kind of worked all of that out for myself."



"Good. However, your questions make me think that you hadn\'t worked out the limitations. The laser itself can only direct. It\'s not going to pick up much on its own, so it needs something to extend its range. The classic is a window. Think of glass. Flat, reflective, big. The laser hits it and suddenly a window becomes the microphone itself. Soundwaves hit the window, the laser picks them up, bounces back, the receiver filters it and bangs it into the transmitter. With me now?"



Mello nodded. "How is it hitting a window through the boot of a car and a brick wall?"



"It\'s not."



"Pardon?"



"It\'s probably picking up random people talking as they walk along the pavement and even then the sound will be crap. It\'s going to bounce off the perspex and get distorted as fuck. Even if it did make it out there and somehow hit the wall, the best it\'s going to manage is conversation in the garden. I\'m willing to bet the reputation of the Matt Code that it hasn\'t picked up a single sound from within the House itself." Matt grinned. "In short, if the object was hearing conversations inside Wammy\'s House, then the plan was shit."



Mello smirked. "Then I\'m off the hook. There\'s no case to answer!"



"Nope." Matt grinned, then shrugged. "Unless, of course, the car had been moved." He considered it further. "Or the equipment had been moved."



Mello gave him a withering look. "What questions should I be asking, Matty?"



"Was this car ever parked outside the front gates? Because if so, it only had to pass between the railings and it had access to loads of windows. Is there any holes in the wall? Because if there\'s a big enough gap for the laser to pass though, again there are windows." He stepped back to survey the car. "None of which explains how the idiot who set this up thought it would get through..." Matt paused and jogged back to the rear of the vehicle. He scrambled at the edges of the carpet lining the boot until it lifted enough for him to see beneath. "Ok!" Mello ran to look too. There was a cable leading into the spare tyre storage area. "Hold the carpet." Mello did so and Matt took his screwdriver to the screws holding the casing on. They could both see that there was no tyre in there. Matt shone his torch in and illuminated the gadget. A black cylinder facing towards the outside of the car. They could see daylight, tinged red with paintwork. "That\'s not bad. Not bad at all." Matt was impressed. He pushed past Mello to inspect the paintwork outside. "Ok, it\'s a hole that\'s been painted over." He carefully touched it. It dented slightly. "Some kind of film. Cling-film? No, something that won\'t tranduce the laser. Whatever! It\'s passing through, which means that if there is a hole in the wall or the car was by the railings, it was hitting a window and woot! It\'s inside Wammy\'s."



"Careful, Matty," Mello winked, "your intelligence is showing again." He caught Matt up, with an arm encircling his waist, then whispered in his ear. "And I find that really freaking hot."