Colin

Four of us stood in the corridor, sharing tense expressions and hushed words as we tried to get the awful measure of situation.

“There’s an appropriate adult in the room?”

“His father.”

“Has he asked for a solicitor?”

“He said we can talk without one … initially.”

“So we might get some understanding?”

“Hopefully. But the guy is obviously in shock, struggling to understand what all this involves. I’d guess he could change his mind at any time.”

“So we play it gently.”

“Despite all the evidence.”

“Yes. There are loads of things that can go wrong with this.”

We took a few steps towards the door. Only two of us were to enter the room, me and Jenny Mortimer. She had been trained for interviews with child suspects and proved she could be sensitive with the ability to get clear answers, but this was going to be different. We paused at the door and I whispered a question.

“How many dead now?”

“Eleven. But they’re fearing there are more to come.”

Jenny and I shared a glance, drew deep breaths and entered the interview room. The father and son were seated on one side of the table. The father looked at us, confused and anxious, clearly the type who had never been in a police station before. He kept a hand on the back of his son’s wrist. The boy, fourteen years-old, was dressed in a blue short sleeved T-shirt over long sleeves and stared straight ahead. As I sat to face him his eyes met mine but didn’t seem to connect. I couldn’t tell if he was scared, curious or angry that he had been taken away from his computer screen and off to a building where they took bad people. I spoke to the father.

“Are you happy for this to go ahead?”

“Yes, but treat him gently.”

I switched on the recorder and went through the protocol statements, noticing that the father gave the boy’s hand a squeeze. I let Jenny begin the questions.

“How are you doing Colin?”

He didn’t respond immediately but looked down and pulled his hand free of his father’s. For a few seconds he kept his gaze on the table surface. Then he mumbled.

“OK. I suppose.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Because I found a way in.”

“That’s right. But you know there’s more to it than that.”

He didn’t answer. I looked at his father and noticed his expression had stiffened. Jenny spoke again.

“You know you didn’t just find a way in. It was a hospital’s network, and you changed things on some of the systems.”

Colin kept his eyes down and nodded.

“And you know what some of those systems do. They help the doctors and nurses, help them to provide care for people who are very sick.”

He nodded again.

“So why did you look for a way in.”

“Because …. I had read about it.”

“Read about what?”

“That they don’t always make sure there are proper defences in place. They leave gaps and weak points.”

“You mean that hospital?”

“No. I mean all of them. Hospitals and schools and the government. They don’t know where all the vulnerable points are, so they need someone to show them.”

Jenny and I shared a glance. I had heard the term ‘ethical hacker’, but it didn’t seem to fit in this case. I asked the next question.

“So you found a way in. Why didn’t you tell them?”

Another pause. The father patted Colin’s hand. The boy looked at him for a moment, dipped his eyes again and spoke.

“Because I’m fourteen. They wouldn’t have listened. I had to do something to make them take notice.”

“So you got into some of the clinical systems and made changes, messed things around a little?”

He didn’t respond. I sensed that he might go silent. I looked at his father.

“Has he done anything like this before.”

I saw the fright in his eyes and knew the answer. I gave him a moment, then he spoke.

“Once, about six months ago. His mother caught him looking at a screen, he tried to switch off but she stopped him, and realised it was the staff records from his school’s IT system. She called me and we made him go back through the other pages he had accessed. There was something about complaints against a teacher, something about exclusions from the school. We decided that was enough and made him get out of the system and delete all the browsing history and cookies from the past month. He did what he was told.”

“That was once that you knew of.”

“Once that we knew of.”

“And you kept this to yourselves.”

“We thought that was the best thing to do.”

“Did you ask him if he had done anything like that before?”

There was a moment of hesitation.

“He said he hadn’t.”

“Did you believe him.”

“He doesn’t lie to us.”

Jenny tapped her knee against mine beneath the desk, a reminder not to push him too hard. I suppressed a mild anger; I wasn’t convinced. She spoke next.

“Colin, when you found a way in and began to look at the systems, did you know then what they did?”

He held back for a few seconds, then said yes.

“And did you know that it could be very dangerous to interfere with them? Or even to look at them?”

He kept his head down, balled his hands into fists and pressed them to the sides of his head. I looked at his father hoping that he would provide a nudge, but he remained still. Jenny broke the silence.

“Colin, you didn’t want a drink earlier. Would you like one now?”

He looked up, nodded, and asked for an orange juice. I stood up, reckoning they were seeing Jenny as more sympathetic, wanting to give them a minute or two with her. I asked the father if he wanted a drink. He said no. I opened the door and asked the constable outside if he could get a carton of orange juice from the vending machine. As he walked away I stood at the open door, listening, knowing the recorder was still running. Jenny changed tack, asking how long Colin had been into computers – since he was eight – and what he enjoyed about them. The father said the boy had been very withdrawn, almost always silent, when he was young, but computers had engaged his mind, encouraged him to communicate with other people – to some extent. Jenny commented that he was doing well, that he was obviously highly intelligent. Colin said he wanted to study computer science at university and didn’t want to have to wait until he was eighteen. His teachers had told him he may be accepted a year or two early. I thought that wasn’t going to happen.

A detective appeared in the corridor, stayed out of sight from the room and whispered to me.

“Another patient’s died. That’s twelve.”

I took a deep breath. It felt like a long wait before the constable reappeared with the orange juice. I closed the door and gave the drink to Colin. He slurped through the straw, then kept it between his lips, continuing to stare at the table. I thought I could see a trace of anxiety in his face. His father took the carton and placed a hand on his shoulder. Jenny asked a question.

“Can you tell us how you found the way in? I suspect it’s very complicated.”

Colin explained something I barely understood, talking about a firewall, access management, the fact that the hospital didn’t have a zero trust policy. I was sure that Jenny didn’t understand either, but she responded with a faint smile and when he seemed to have finished said she was impressed by how much he knew about it all.

“You’re obviously very bright. I bet there are a lot of people who work in IT who wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Colin looked up at her and smiled.

“I know. And it’s because of that they don’t get it that people like me can get into their networks.”

People like me. I had read reports of criminals and cyber terrorists grooming script kiddies to do their dirty work. It prompted me to ask a question.

“Do you know any other people like you?”

He stared at me, an extra intensity in his eyes, but said nothing.

“Have you been talking with people about doing something like this?”

He dipped his head and looked down. There was a silence that told me I had hit on something. Then his father spoke.

“He’s never told us anything about other people.”

We let the silence linger for a while, then Jenny tapped my knee again. Her turn to speak.

“Colin, we know that there are people out there who look for someone like you. They know there are some very bright teenagers who know how to do what you’ve done. And if there is someone who’s encouraged you to do this, then it’s them who are the bad people, not you.”

He was fourteen, he should know that screwing up a hospital IT system would hurt people. I kept the thought to myself. Jenny took the point further.

“If you can tell us about these people, give us some names, what they said to you, it will do a lot to help us. And it will help you.”

Colin kept his eyes down, but I noticed a shift in his father’s expression, conveying a small trace of hope. He gave his son’s hand a gentle squeeze and spoke softly.

“Colin, if there was someone, you should tell us about it. Help us all understand.”

He looked at me and Jenny. I felt a faint ripple of empathy in the room. He looked at his son again. Colin kept his eyes down. The silence began to drag.

“Colin.”

The boy mumbled.

“It’s only for us.”

“For who?”

“For us, because we’re special.”

It confirmed the suspicion – he had been manipulated into what he had done – but showed there was another barrier to overcome.

“Who told you that?”

He didn’t answer.

“Can you tell us any names?”

He still didn’t answer.

“Where did you speak to them?”

His father leaned towards him and spoke softly.

“Colin, it’s better if you answer the questions.”

The boy looked at his father and for a moment there was a faint smile, a moment of love between them. Then he straightened a little, pushed his hands over his eyes and forehead and into his hair and turned his head to one side then the other. I thought he was ready to open up. Then he dipped his head again, with elbows on the table and hands on his scalp.

“Colin.”

“No”

“Please.”

He shook his head.

“I’m special. We don’t talk with people who aren’t special.”

The father looked at us with a faint shake of his head. I shared a glance with Jenny, both of unsure what to say next. There was a pause, then she took the lead.

“Colin, you know it was a hospital that you broke into, and that hospitals are there to look after sick people.”

He kept his head down and nodded.

“And that when you mess up their IT systems it gets in the way. People get hurt. Did you know that?”

His hands were now over most of his face, but he could still speak.

“Who said that?”

“It’s bound to happen. It’s because of what hospitals do. That’s why we mustn’t interfere with their systems.”

“But they shouldn’t have let me get in.”

“But they couldn’t stop you. And Colin, sorry, but people have got hurt.”

He pushed his hand back through his hair and closed his eyes.

“Didn’t die.”

I felt a moment of inpatience and opened my mouth.

“People have died. Twelve of them.”

He looked up at me. There was a brief silence, then he let out a moan and began to move his head from side to side. His father placed a hand on his shoulder. Colin fended him off and sprung out of his chair. He moved back towards a corner of the room, letting out a wordless moan. The father followed, placed a hand on his arm and was fended off again. Then he turned and threw an angry stare at me.

“You idiot! You’re hurting him!”

I muttered under my breath: “He’s killed twelve people.” Jenny grabbed my arm.

“That’s it!” the father said. “No more until we have a solicitor with us.”

We sat for a moment, watching Colin as he pressed himself to the corner and repeated the moan. Jenny squeezed my arm, the sign for us to get out. She turned off the recorder, we got up and left the room. We were at the end of the corridor before I dared to say anything.

“Bollocks!”

She spoke quietly.

“You said what I wanted to say.”

“But you didn’t, I did. Now we’re in a swamp.”

“We were already in a swamp. Legal, ethical, psychological. We couldn’t avoid it.”

“But there might have been a way through. First step and I’ve taken us into the mire.”

She didn’t reply.

 

Image from Stupid Corn, public domain through Wikimedia

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