Stacey went to the box and pulled out the laptop. She fired it up and put in the code from Ridgepoint to bypass the password screen.
She searched around his computer and found the same thing. Clean. No photos, no lists, no financial spreadsheets or scanned documents.
‘Restored,’ she said, feeling a rush of excitement.
‘What?’
‘Restored to factory settings,’ Stacey said.
‘That sounds like bad news.’
‘It is because it means the information isn’t readily available but doesn’t mean it’s gone.’
‘But it’s been wiped?’ Penn insisted. ‘It’s as blank as it was when it left the factory, hence the phrase.’
‘Bloody hell, Penn, do you always take a nap during our cybercrime refreshers?’ she asked, chuckling.
‘Most times,’ he admitted.
Stacey could understand his boredom. The majority of police officers avoided cybercrime. It wasn’t what they’d signed up for. But she loved the fact that humans made machines and yet they were still fallible. She loved finding a way through a locked door.
She rifled in her pen pot and threw him a pencil.
‘A quick demonstration. Write your name on a piece of paper.’
He did so.
‘Now rub it out,’ she instructed.
He did.
‘Can you see it?’
‘Nope.’
‘But it’s still there. Not in the same form but the indent of the pencil is still in the paper. The only way to destroy it is to rip the paper up completely or set fire to it. It’s the same with the hard drives. The factory reset removes apps, programs, photos, anything installed after it left the manufacturer. But it can’t completely erase the data until it’s overwritten with fresh data.
‘You can get specialist software to perform complete data erasure or degauss to destroy the magnetic field on the—’
‘Glazing over now, Stace,’ Penn said, passing his hand in front of his eyes. ‘The only question that matters is: do you know how to get to it?’
‘Nope,’ she answered honestly. ‘But I think I know a man that can.’
SIXTY-EIGHT
Kim’s meeting with Celia was still on her mind when they pulled up outside the Exodus premises.
Penn had uncovered some colourful history for Charles Stamoran’s receptionist and guard dog, Lorraine Abbott, that, given the nature of the crimes, couldn’t be ignored.
Bryant parked right next to the Jag so they’d know immediately inside that they were here.
Kim got out of the car and pressed on the intercom.
‘Mr Stamoran is in a meeting,’ Lorraine said curtly.
‘Good, because it’s you we came to see.’
‘I’m afraid I’m busy.’