The man in black - chapter 4 (short story)

  chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3

“That wasn’t much use, was it?” asked Anna, “purple shirt? Seriously?”

“No, we know all we need to know,” said Cassie.

Everyone looked up at her. Cassie did like showing off, but she did not enjoy the feeling of having everyone stare at her.

“What do you mean?” asked Selene.

“First, the video. Look at the video. There’s an important clue there.”

Selene took her phone out and looked at the video. Anna also looked at it over her shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“The shoes, but also, he’s left-handed,” said Cassie, “at least, that’s likely. Sure, he’s holding the board in his right, and slings his bag over his right shoulder, but you’d think he’d grab something like a pistol with the hand he’s more used to.”

“Not necessarily,” said Selene, “I prefer using my left hand too, but that’s because I draw a lot and I want to protect my right hand.”

Cassie digested this information. “Okay, but there’s another clue. He nearly crashed into stuff three times over about 150 m.”

“In a crowded mall,” said Lex.

“But did you crash into stuff?”

“Nah, but we were slowed by, you know, trying to avoid the debris.”

“Run that distance now. The mall is more crowded than it was then,” said Cassie.

“Fine. Stay out of the way,” said Lex.

He walked back to the coffee shop, and then started running towards the bathroom. He ran past them at full speed, nearly ran into someone coming out of a shop, and then reached the bathrooms.

“Well?” asked Cassie.

“Depth perception? That’s what you’re trying to say, right?” asked Selene.

“Yup. The guy wears glasses, and they’re probably fairly powerful,” said Cassie, “you may not have realised it, but they can really mess with depth perception if you’re used to wearing them and then take them off. None of the men had sunglasses, and they couldn’t use those with a prescription because the lens power would give them away immediately.”

“Possible,” said Selene, “But the artist guy was the only one wearing a shirt, and he wasn’t wearing glasses. That’s not accounting for the colours of what they were wearing. What about the purple shirt?”

“Let’s go back to the shop,” said Cassie, “well, you probably already know where this is going, but let’s ask them ourselves.”

Lex joined them as they entered the shop. The woman who talked to them was at the entrance.

“Could you tell us where you were when you saw the robber run past?” asked Selene.

“Inside the shop,” she said, “come on in, I’ll show you. I was standing right here, hanging the new earphones that had come in when I heard the noise. I turned and saw him run past. He was starting to open the coat as he ran.”

“Preparing to dump it once he reached the bathroom, I suspect,” said Selene, walked up to where she was, “so… wow!”

“Oh!” said Dany, “The lights at the entrance. They flash red, blue, green and yellow, and it would hit anyone near the boxes.”

“And if it was flashing red, a light blue shirt would look purple. Neither beige nor grey would look purple under any of the colours. So, why did you say it was a shirt?” asked Selene.

The woman looked mystified.

“It was a t-shirt with a collar, I think. I didn’t see it very clearly, but the way the collar sat was a bit like what she’s wearing.”

She indicated Cassie. Cassie was wearing a black t-shirt that fit that description. Her collar was a mess, with one side sitting higher than the other. Cassie knew from experience that shirt collars, especially those made of materials that men’s shirts were usually made of, didn’t do that unless someone wanted them to look that way.

“Then we have a suspect,” said Selene, “good job noticing it, Cassie. Let’s go ask him.”

They returned to where Mark was, along with the suspects.

“We have three new witness statements. One, that the perpetrator nearly crashed into a pile of books, then into a customer, and then a box of cables. Two, we know that he was wearing a t-shirt with a collar that was bluish. Three, we know from the statements from everyone who saw the robbery that he was wearing black leather shoes. That means we have enough circumstantial evidence against Hal.”

Mark looked at Selene. He took a minute to process what was being said. In the meantime, Hal stood up.

“That doesn’t prove anything! First of all, how did you know that the guy you’re looking for went in here?”

“Judging by how the door slammed, I suspect they heard you,” said Adam.

“Both of us saw you,” said Bella, “if you’re sure you’re innocent, let them test the money you have for fingerprints. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”

“Of course Liv’s fingerprints would be on it!” said Hal, “I go to that café whenever I come here, so…”

“Not hers,” said Cassie, “we’re talking about the two that paid for that huge order.”

“Exactly,” said Selene, “or you have an excuse for that as well?”

“I know them alright,” said Hal, “they’re from the newspaper office. They’re having a bit of a get together today. I recommended the shop to them. Their fingerprints could also be there.”

“They pay you in cash?” asked Darrell, “that’s funny. I would have thought cheque, or a direct funds transfer to your account would have been more, well, normal.”

“Besides, even if they paid in cash, it’s unlikely that both sets of fingerprints would be on the same notes,” said Mark, standing up, “so I guess we’ll figure it out. Come with us to the police station. We’ll know soon enough.”

Then a security guard came up to them.

“They found a black bag, a pair of sunglasses, a toy pistol, and a pair of black track pants on the ground outside the mall building. It looks like it fell from one of the ventilation windows on the toilets from one of the upper floors, including this one. The pistol was cracked open. I told them to not touch anything.”

“What about the gloves and mask?” asked Lex.

“In the toilet?” asked Cassie.

“We’re going to have to search the toilet then,” said Mark, “but there should be evidence we can use in the hat, and possibly the glasses. You’re under arrest for armed robbery.”

Hal knew the game was up, and he didn’t really resist after that. Selene called for more help to deal with the evidence. They showed up some time later. Then Selene took their statements. They barely made it in time for the movie.

Next morning, Cassie ran into Anna at the convenience store. There, she updated her about the situation. Hal’s hair had been found in the hat. They found nothing on the pistol or sunglasses. He also had a lot of cash, they found notes with Liv’s fingerprints, which also had fingerprints from the two at the newspaper office. Hal had confessed when presented with all this evidence. Cassie waited until Anna was done.

“So, do you know the motive?” asked Cassie, “and why the coffee shop?”

“Money,” said Anna, “apparently the newspaper office didn’t pay him in time, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.”

“He robbed the coffee shop.”

Anna shrugged. “If you read his articles, you’d know he’s not that smart. So, when’s your flight?”

“Five hours. The taxi should be here in half an hour.”

“See you in two weeks then.”

Cassie said goodbye to Anna. The case was done. Now, she just had to look forward to the holidays.

THE END

This is the second chapter uploaded today, so if you missed chapter 3, please check it out below.

Previous chapters: chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3

You can also follow me on Facebook here.

I don't have another short story in the pipeline just yet (and no time for it right now, honestly), but I'll try to get another out in maybe a month? No guarantees though.

Until next time!

The man in black - chapter 3 (short story)

 chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 4

Selene sat the three men down on a bench.

“Okay, let’s start with Darrell. Tell me what you’ve been doing today.”

“I woke at around two in the afternoon. Then I worked on a painting, started another, and then remembered a commission I was supposed to do, tried to start on that, realised I didn’t have the colours I wanted, came here to shop, the shop told me they didn’t have the paints but their supplies would be coming in a little later. So I visited a few other shops, and walked to the gallery upstairs, hung around there, talked with the people there for a while, browsed the bookshop – you know, the usual.”

Cassie didn’t know whether she was worried about him or for him. Still, the story made some sense. Possibly.

“Okay, Hal?” asked Selene.

“Did some writing, watched some stuff because I couldn’t concentrate, and then realised I needed new headphones. I was also browsing for a pen drive and maybe a good keyboard, but I didn’t find anything I really liked. Other than that, I’ve also been looking for a microphone, but again, I didn’t really find anything.”

“I thought you were a writer?”

Hal shrugged. “I was thinking of doing some instructional videos online, and I have a face fit for radio.”

“That’s why you weren’t looking for a camera?” asked Darrell.

“Yup.”

Cassie didn’t think he needed to worry about it that much. Maybe he was just shy.

“Then, Adam?”

“I’ve been here since morning, except for the times I was drinking copious amounts of coffee at Ed’s shop. Mostly at the repair shop, actually. Seriously though, if I wanted to rob a shop here, I’d start with our cash register. The stuff we sell are usually more expensive, you know.”

“But don’t most people pay using cards?” asked Phil.

“Not always,” said Adam.

“Yeah, who’d rob a coffee shop?” asked Darrell, “there are three bank branches, a few shops selling extremely expensive clothes and stuff, a few expensive restaurants, several shops selling phones, phone accessories and computer accessories, a couple of shops selling actual computers, cosmetics shops, at least three fast food restaurants, and probably many others. Why would anyone target a small coffee shop?”

“They had a pretty big order today,” said Cassie, “and they paid for it in cash. Someone probably knew about it in advance.”

“Internal information?” asked Selene, “interesting. So, anyway, this would be a lot simpler if one of you could confess. So, did any of you do it, and could you tell me the approximate amount that was stolen if that is the case?”

The three men looked at each other. All of them shook their heads. Selene sighed.

“Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way then. You know we’re going to find out, right?”

The other policeman, Mark, returned just then. Cassie noticed that Liv and Ed weren’t with him.

“It appears all three visit the shop often enough to be remembered,” said Mark, “They knew Adam very well, and apparently the other two visit the shop regularly as well, though they didn’t know their names and occupations for sure.”

That makes sense, thought Cassie. Hence the whole communicating with boards thing – he didn’t want anyone to hear his voice.

Selene turned to Mark. “Could you take over here? I’m going to go look for eyewitnesses.”

“Sure.”

Selene turned to them. “Anna, coming?”

Anna nodded. “Sure, sis. Cassie, Dany, Phil, are you coming too? They’re great at noticing stuff.”

Selene looked at Cassie. “Sure. Come along then. Who chased the perp to the bathroom?”

“Bella and Lex,” said Cassie, “it’s a good idea if one of them tag along as well.”

“Yeah, I’ll stay,” said Phil, “I forwarded it to Dany and Cassie, but I have to show it to Mark as well.”

Cassie nodded. Selene looked mystified. Cassie looked in her messages, found the video, and forwarded it to Anna, as they set off. Lex joined them, as Bella would be more useful in a fight.

Anna got the message and forwarded it to Selene. “Sent you the video, sis. Phil videoed the guy robbing the shop.”

Selene was her sister? Cassie had never heard of it, but then again, the two of them rarely talked about their families.

“That’s what you were talking about,” said Selene, “I’ll take a look at that. So, he ran through here?”

“Positive,” said Lex, “Dude crashed straight into a bunch of cables in boxes around here, about landed on his face, but he didn’t actually fall. The cables weren’t that lucky.”

“Let’s ask the people in the shop then,” said Selene.

She walked in and talked to the two women who worked in the shop. As it turned out, one was busy with a customer and didn’t see what happened, but the other saw the incident clearly.

“He straight up kicked the box, and almost fell on his face because of that. I think we’ll be digging cables out from here for the next millennium. Anyway, I didn’t see a lot, except for him being about average height, dressed in all black except for a light purple shirt. Then he and a girl came running after him.”

Selene tried to press her for but details, but that was all she could say for sure. None of the men had been wearing a light purple shirt.

The next shop Lex indicated was a music shop, where the perp had narrowly avoided a collision with a customer. Selene went inside and talked to the owner of the shop. Cassie followed her in again.

All they got this time was that the man was definitely wearing something light coloured with a collar, which fit all three men.

Next, they stopped at the bookshop, where the cashier confirmed she had seen the chase, but couldn’t describe the man at all other than say he narrowly avoided falling on his face due to almost running into a stack of books on a low table. He did manage to knock a few of it to the ground.

The whole distance was maybe 150 m. They talked to several other shops as well, but they didn’t know much more about the man. Finally, the five of them stopped near the music shop.

END OF CHAPTER THREE

Sorry for the delay! Things happened and updating this sort of slipped my mind. 

I will upload two chapters today (this and the final chapter).

Previous chapters: chapter 1 | chapter 2 

Next chapter: chapter 4

You can also follow me on Facebook here.

Until next time!

The man in black - chapter 2 (short story)

chapter 1 | chapter 3 | chapter 4

There was no doubt about it, this was a robbery. Jake appeared to have noticed what was going on as well, but Dany held his hand. He stopped. Lex and Bella stopped their discussion immediately. Cassie remembered that Bella was a bit serious about martial arts. Would she attack? Cassie didn’t know a lot about fighting, but the chairs were light, and she could use it as an emergency weapon if she had to be Bella’s backup.

Bella stood up. “Hey, is everything alright over there?” she asked.

The robber turned and pointed a pistol at them, while keeping the cashier in range as well. Cassie also saw the paper.

“Put all your money into the bag. Do not call the police.”

Pretty brazen, pulling this off in the middle of a crowded mall. All the cashier had to do was to stall. Someone would walk in. Unfortunately, the inside of the shop was not visible from all sides of the shop, due to a sticker on the glass, though they could see everything on the outside. There were also no cameras inside the shop.

The cashier continued stuffing the cash in the register into the bag. The waiter was also frozen on the other side of the counter. The robber folded the paper in two with one hand, displaying the message ‘hurry up’.

Was the pistol real? Cassie couldn’t tell – she had never seen a real one up close, and she suspected it was the same for the others with her. She didn’t dare move. The cashier finished stuffing all the money from the cash register into the bag. The robber grabbed the bag with one hand and backed out slowly, still aiming the pistol at them. Then, the robber turned and ran, straight through the mall.

Lex recovered first.

“After him!”

A look passed between him and Cassie. Both understood. Lex ran after the robber. Bella followed. Anna immediately placed a call to the police, as she was the only person from around there. Cassie walked up to the cashier. She had collapsed back into her chair. She looked shaken, but Cassie couldn’t afford to dawdle.

“Do you know who that was?”

The cashier shook her head. The waiter was also trying to take a call. Phil took his phone out of his shirt pocket. That was when Cassie noticed what he had done.

“Can you identify the guy?” asked Dany.

“I don’t think so,” said Phil, “you might be able to work out his skin tone around his ears and neck, but that’s about it.”

“Wasn’t wearing earrings,” said Cassie, “that might be useful. About average skin tone, couldn’t see whatever they were wearing under the coat, probably a man because those shoes would be odd on a woman, trousers were surprisingly baggy – will probably be thrown out. Average or slim build – hard to say. Height’s about 170 cm unless they were wearing lifts in their shoes. Did anyone smell perfume? Or deodorant or aftershave?”

Cassie looked at the cashier. She shook her head. That wasn't surprising, as most people wouldn't notice that unless the smell was offensive or they were wearing too much of it.

“The police is on the way,” said Anna.

Then Cassie’s phone rang. It was Lex. She answered.

“We chased him into the men’s bathroom,” said Lex, “I ran in, but dude had disappeared into a stall. The coat is on the floor, as is the hat. I don’t know which stall he ran into, but three stalls are occupied.”

“Where’s Bella?”

“She’s outside. She can’t come in here, can she?”

“Good point. The police are on the way, so try to hold them there. And stand guard outside the door because you won't stand a chance if it's not a one man job. We’ll join you as well.”

“I was about to do that. Bring the waiter or something. No one’s going to take a bunch of foreigners seriously.”

“Good point.”

Cassie, Jake, Dany, and Phil ended up leaving for the bathroom with the waiter, leaving just Anna and the cashier in the shop. The cashier agreed to close the shop immediately.

It took them a couple of minutes to get there. Bella was waiting outside, directing people away from the bathroom. Clearly, she wasn’t doing a good job of it. The waiter intervened immediately. Then a security guard joined them and helped them out once the waiter explained the situation. Jake and Lex went inside. The rest of them waited outside and kept others away from the scene. They heard arguing from the inside. The waiter went in as well. Cassie figured they were trying to detain those inside.

That was when the police arrived, along with Anna and the cashier. A police officer went inside immediately, and another, a woman, listened to their version of the story. Then the other policeman came out with three men in tow.

Two were wearing the same sort of shoes as the robber, Cassie noticed. Cassie didn’t think anyone would have a change of shoes with them. Shoes would be too bulky to hide under someone’s coat. If it had been in the bag, the cashier would have noticed it. It could have been hidden in the bathroom, but disposing of it once used would have been a problem.

Cassie also noticed that none of the men were dressed like the robber. Sure, the hat and coat were discarded. The gloves and mask could have been cut up and flushed. That was possible with the bag as well, as it was a drawstring bag. The trousers – well, that would be on the possible side, as they didn’t look too thick either. It would be more difficult to flush the sunglasses. There was a problem with this strategy though, as Cassie was sure that flushing that much fabric would create an epic clogging problem.

So where were the rest of the clothes?

There was another problem. Build and height wise, any of these three men could have been the robber. Cassie had hoped that would give the robber away immediately, but clearly, they had no such luck.

The policeman asked the security guard to lock that bathroom. Then he turned to the cashier.

“I’m Mark. Can you tell me your name?”

“Liv,” she answered.

“Alright, let’s go talk somewhere else. You too, Ed.”

The two employees of the shop followed him away. The other officer turned to the three suspects.

“Alright. Let’s go sit on a bench over there. Please tell me all about yourselves. I’m Selene, by the way.”

The first to speak was a man of about average height, wearing a beige short-sleeved shirt and a dull green cap./

“Darrell. I’m a painter, here to buy supplies. I’m not very successful or well known.”

The next to speak looked almost like a teenager. He was wearing a grey polo shirt, blue jeans, a baseball cap and fairly plain sneakers. He also wore glasses, but they didn’t look too powerful. Cassie couldn’t help noticing the dark circles under his eyes.

“Adam. I work at the laptop repair shop that’s over there.”

Looking at him more closely, Cassie judged it was likely. He was the sort of guy who didn’t really look his age. Or maybe he really was barely older than a teenager but a genius with laptop repairs.

The last to speak was wearing a light polo shirt and black jeans. He, too, wore glasses.

“Hal. I’m a freelance writer. I’m moderately successful. I mostly write online.”

Cassie could see they had their work cut out for them. All three men had the same height and build. All three had short black hair. All three had about the same skin tone. Their voices were different, but the robber hadn’t said a word during the robbery. And if their shirts were seen by an eyewitness, well, their shirts were about the same colour too.

END OF CHAPTER TWO

Previous chapter: chapter 1

Next chapters: chapter 3 | chapter 4

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Until next time!

The man in black - chapter 1 (short story)

chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4

Cassie laughed.

“Yeah, that’s the most likely answer!”

“Sure, laugh!” said Anna, “I’m not sure it was technically in the syllabus!”

Cassie was in a small café in the mall near their university. The semester was over, and many of them would be heading home for the next month. That is why they had gone there for a movie, some gift shopping, and to have some fun with friends before that.

“Can we talk about something that’s, you know, not subject related?” asked Jake, “for example, which film are we watching?”

“There are a few good options,” said Dany, Jake’s girlfriend and newest addition to their group, “Okay, two as far as I am concerned. What about the rest of you?”

Phil had the website of the theatre up on his phone. “Boring romance, comedy, with huge inverted commas around 'comedy', not in English, not in English, superhero, action movie, and super serious awards bait. Dany’s right, there are only two options.”

“You can go watch the awards bait,” said Lex, “it might help you catch up on some sleep.”

“Very funny,” said Phil, “seriously, which one shall we watch?”

Cassie noticed a huge stack of boxes at the counter of the coffee shop. Probably some sort of order, she thought. There were two employees in the shop, and they were stacking it there. Cassie expected someone would come pick it up.

By now, the shop was almost empty except for them. That was no wonder, as they were a little past teatime. Most people would start having dinner. Cassie wondered who would be ordering stuff from a café at this time. Maybe it was for a party. That sort of made sense, especially if they’d be having dinner at late at night.

Anna sipped her coffee. “Let’s pick one when we get there. What do we do about food? Smuggle it in, or buy popcorn?”

“Eat once it’s over?” asked Dany, “it’s less illegal, somehow. They don’t want you smuggling food it because it stinks.”

“She’s got a point,” said Phil, “but I’m not buying popcorn. Seriously, why isn’t this a watch party at one of our rooms again?”

“Never occurred to anyone?” asked Cassie.

A pair of men came into the café. Cassie noticed they were dressed somewhat formally, but fancily. It was a party, probably some sort of minor cooperate event, thought Cassie. They started talking with the cashier. The waiter went out to get a trolley. Cassie could see why that would be needed. The car park was not that far away, but it was a lot of boxes.

“Let’s have a bit of a snack before the movie starts,” said Phil, “we have at least an hour to kill as it stands because someone’s idea of shopping was, well, strangely efficient.”

“I don’t like shopping, that’s why I made a list,” said Dany.

“Not judging you. Just an observation.”

“So, order some sandwiches?” asked Jake.

They all looked at each other, and a few of them nodded. Jake went up to the counter and placed the order. Just then, the waiter returned with a trolley. Cassie admired his self-control. She would have used it as a skateboard.

Both employees and the two men who came with them were kept busy filling up the trolley. The seven of them sipped their drinks slowly, trying to decide on a film, which then drifted into debate/ discussion about a previous film. Cassie hadn’t watched it, so she let Phil, Lex, and Bella debate it. The trolley was filled up, the men paid in cash, and they wheeled the trolley out. The waiter followed them, presumably to help them load it into a vehicle.

The waiter returned a few minutes later. He collapsed on a chair behind the counter. The cashier went into the kitchen. Cassie assumed it was to make the sandwiches they had ordered.

Outside, the mall was fairly crowded. The shop was a little glass island in the middle of the mall. There was a speciality food shop a little way away. It was way out of their price range. There was a couple of branded clothes shops. There was also a bookshop. Cassie wanted to go in there, in a way, but buying physical books didn’t make a lot of sense given her current living situation.

Cassie had her work cut out for her over the break. She had decided to go home for two weeks. The air ticket was expensive, but she wouldn’t have a chance to go home over the next summer because of her internship, which meant it was now or never. Going home would probably mean a trip, lots of food, and buying lots of stuff to bring back. On the other hand, she would not get any work done during that time, and she really wanted to practice what she had learned that semester, at least to stay in touch with things.

She had her sandwich mostly in silence as the discussion turned into a full-blown debate between Bella and Lex. She spent her time studying those around her. The couple sitting at the next table sat up. They finished and then paid the bill. They were dressed well. Possibly a date, Cassie decided. There was another man sitting alone at a table, staring at his phone and inhaling coffee. He wouldn’t be there long either, thought Cassie. He desperately needed to be awake for something, probably work of some sort given how he was scrolling through something on his phone.

The man stood up, as Bella launched into a tirade about a scene in the film they were talking about and how it illustrated her point. He paid the bill, and left. Their group was the only one left in the café. It wasn’t an issue, as there was a couple of hours to the displayed closing time.

Then someone walked in. Cassie sat up immediately. This person was wearing a long coat – a weird choice given the climate – as well as a black hat and a black mask, with dark sunglasses. They were also carrying a plain black drawstring bag and wearing gloves. Cassie couldn’t tell anything more about them other than their height – roughly in the 170 cm range – and the fact that they were wearing regular shoes most men would wear to work. Also, their hair was black and a little longer than shoulder length, but that was likely a wig.

Cassie stiffened. She nudged Dany, who was seated next to her. Phil, too appeared to have noticed what was happening.

Then, this person unfolded a piece of paper from their coat pocket and displayed it to the cashier. Cassie noticed her eyes widen.

Cassie realized it immediately – the shop was being robbed, and they were in the way if anything were to happen.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

Next chapter: chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4

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Until next time!

The Cipher - Chapter 4 (short story)

chapter 1  | chapter 2 |  chapter 3

After the snack break, they got back to work again. Cassie looked at the program Phil had created. It was at a higher level than she would have programmed, but she understood what it did. She looked at the snippets again.

There was no way the divisible by four thing was accidental. This cipher worked in pairs of hexadecimal numbers. It could be the Playfair cipher, but that would be hard to crack. No, that couldn’t be. Dany wouldn’t expect Jake to crack that. It was doable, but it would require a considerable amount of subject knowledge and a lot of maths. She couldn't expect Jake to convince someone else to do it for him either.

It had to be much simpler. Especially if, as she suspected, it had something to do with Jake’s upcoming birthday. That would be completely consistent with Dany’s character.

Unless it really was Playfair and the keyword was something significant to the two of them. If that was the case, they were doomed. There was no way Jake could recall something like that, and they'd all be caught in the crossfire.

Cassie pushed it to the back of her mind. The Playfair thing would be a last resort. No, she had to think simpler. What if two hexadecimal characters represented one letter? Sure, it was wasteful, but it would work.

How would she do that?

The most obvious would be adding the two characters followed by modulus 26. Cassie decided to try modifying the program on her own.

This took a bit of time. She had Phil’s code as a starting point, but she still had to look stuff up. After messing with it for about ten minutes, she ran the code. Immediate syntax error.

Cassie was used to this. She checked the code and realised she had missed a single quotation. She fixed that and ran the code. It spit out a result for the first message.

VLLIXIHXUETNONBRZMBNQWHGJWDGMNKSLRRFQOCJMMIEXPMAPPKZJOQXQHQZOXXMFQPWOTDWAUNAIUCVNKBNGNWFYWGUZANGWKTLELOXJECRZLLAA

That didn’t look better than anything else they had so far.

Cassie leaned back in her chair.

She thought for a moment. Then she remembered what they had attempted before the snack break. She could try other alphabets, such as including a space, including numbers, special characters, all of that. Now that the code was set up, it was child’s play. She ran it with just letters and space first, so that it would have 27 possible characters.

I CAN ARRANGE SOMETHING AT THE MALLTHE CAFE ON THE SECOND FLOOR DOES PARTIESYOUR JOB IS TO LURE HIM THERE SOMEHOW

So that was it. It was absurdly simple. You just added the adjacent hexadecimal numbers, found the remainder when it was divided by 27, and matched it to A-Z and zero. There were no keys, nothing. The really clever part was a sort of randomness built into the code that would fool most traditional code breaking approaches. 

She had to be friends with Dany.

Cassie forced herself down to earth again. She looked across at Jake. He was on his phone, smiling at something. He was still distracted. He hadn’t seen her reaction. Good.

She put the next message in, line by line this time.

STOP STRESSING ABOUT IT
EVEN IF HE SUSPECTS SOMETHING HE WONT REALLY KNOW UNTIL THE DAY
CAN YOU THINK OF A WAY TO INVITE HIS FRIENDS WITHOUT ALERTING HIM

Both looked like messages to Dany from someone. Cassie copied the next message into the code.

JUST TELL CASSIE OR ANNA
YOU WERE IN THE SAME CLASS IN THE FIRST YEAR WERENT YOU
ANYWAYS I DIDNT BOOK CAFE
STUDY AREA WILL DO AS YOU SAID

Yep, this was definitely Dany’s way of inviting them to the party. Cassie nudged Phil and showed him the results she had copied into a document. She also typed in “don’t tell Jake, it’s about his birthday party,” under it very quickly. He understood. She nudged Lex and showed him the document. He nodded. Anna was staring at her laptop, so there was no way to get the message to her without alerting Jake.

Phil took a look at her code quickly. Then he stopped the decoding program he was running and started creating a program to do the ciphering. It took him some time. He was in the middle of this when Jake looked up.

“Any results yet?”

Cassie quickly collapsed the run panel on her IDE so that Jake wouldn’t be able to see the decoded answer, even if he walked over and looked at her screen.

“Not yet, but we might be getting warmer,” said Lex, “this might take a bit of time.”

“So, what cipher is it?” asked Jake.

“Playfair, probably,” said Cassie, quickly, “that seems statistically likely.”

“So are we looking at a long solving time?” asked Jake.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of possibilities, in the tens of thousands if my maths is correct,” said Phil, “I need to concentrate.”

“Okay,” said Jake. He returned to his phone.

Meanwhile, Cassie looked up Jake’s birthday. It was the next day. Well done, Dany, she thought, well done.

Cassie watched as Phil typed in the code as fast as he could. Cassie had some idea about what Phil would do. He was trying to write a reply to Dany.

It took him a few tries to get it to compile without errors, and two more tries to generate a proper message that Cassie could decode. Finally, he generated a message and sent it to Cassie.

d2783b90471d752cd54cfe32cd7b5b4690a56d39bd48a12e56166e8bc44ead2aa39c992c32966fc5e6ae8638c54d0848c88f47b37c2adc431e01
1dcaf1909e5da00de12c5435950d179d298b1496dc0031a6c366692b441a5c9794af8919fb050ab6aecbf7a904368fcc

Cassie decoded it.

GOT THE MESSAGE WILL BE THERE
PHIL CASSIE ANNA AND LEX

Cassie nodded. So did Lex.

Phil sent the ciphered message to Dany.

Lex stretched like a cat.

“Look, this is going to take a while,” he said, “wouldn’t it be better if Phil ran this overnight?”
“Good point,” said Phil, quickly.

Anna looked up.

“You sure it’s Playfair?”

“Pretty sure,” said Cassie,

“Okay, let’s meet again tomorrow then,” said Anna, “Jake?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

They all went their separate ways after that. Phil messaged her afterwards with a ciphered message from Dany. She checked it. It was Dany simply confirming it. She was about to reply when Phil sent another message saying he decoded it already.

The next day, Cassie showed up at study area on time. Dany had informed them that she’d bring Jake along after all. Phil had managed to keep Jake at bay by telling him that they had to consider another alphabet for Playfair and that they were all working on it remotely.

That was how they managed to surprise Jake completely.

After they cut the cake and had a bit of a party, Dany finally came clean about the cipher.

“So wait, you were using it to plan a birthday party?”

“Affirmative,” said Dany, “and I used it to send a message to them as well.”

“You were in the know the whole time?” asked Jake.

“Nah, we cracked it, realised what was going on, and messaged her.”

“So, when did you really crack it?” asked Jake.

“Yesterday,” said Phil, “when Cassie said she was sure it was Playfair.”

“And you’ve all been lying to me since then? And I had no idea?”

“Basically,” said Lex, “Hey, it was for a good cause.”

“Show me the messages.”

Cassie showed him the translations. Jake read the messages over and over a few times.

“How did you know it wasn’t a kidnapping?” he asked.

Cassie rolled her eyes. “First, the sender, Dany, doesn’t have the social skills to organise a kidnapping, no offense, Dany. Secondly, that’s an incredibly insecure cipher for one, and thirdly, no kidnapper would basically send us an invitation to the same place, and fourth, I remembered your birthday was on the day we had our end-term party last year. Is that a satisfactory explanation?”

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. He was clearly trying to not laugh. 

“Yes, it is satisfactory, unless someone was planning to kidnap all of us.”

“From within the university where everyone is recorded at the entrance?” asked Dany.

“Good point,” said Jake, “So, have I introduced two groups of cipher nuts to each other?”

Cassie looked at Dany, and Dany looked at Cassie. Dany nodded.

“Yup,” said Cassie.

------------------------THE END ------------------------

Read previous chapters: chapter 1  | chapter 2 | chapter 3

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this interesting.

Next week will be the code for this cipher, for enciphering and deciphering. Stay tuned for that.

The week after that, Cassie and co will tackle a real crime. Stay tuned for that!

You can also follow me on Facebook here.

Until next time!

The Cipher - chapter 3 (short story)

chapter 1  | chapter 2 |  chapter 4

Cassie decided to sleep on the problem. She knew that helped with some problems, particularly when she was stuck on assignments. Her dreams that night were filled with hexadecimal numbers and all sorts of ciphers, but she slept well regardless.

She spent the morning doing other stuff. After all, Phil wasn’t going to be up until midday anyway, and they didn’t have lectures that week. They had one coursework presentation, and then next week, they’d be free to leave the campus.

She had lunch and watched some stuff just because. She was halfway through it when her phone rang. It was Jake, who wanted to meet in the study area for a cipher cracking session. He promised snacks, and Phil had agreed to come. Cassie had no objections to that.

She joined the others there. Phil’s ridiculously powerful laptop was running, and currently, it sounded a bit like a hairdryer. He looked up when he saw Cassie.

“No results so far. How about you?”

“Same. Any new leads?”

“Nope.”

Cassie put her laptop bag on the table. “I’ve been thinking, like, should we change our approach?”

Phil gave her a quizzical look. Cassie took it as an invitation to continue.

“Well, how would you encipher something if you wanted to communicate with someone in secret?”

Phil thought for a second. “I’d use a proper cipher algorithm.”

“No, if you couldn’t do that?”

“Why would that be difficult? Vigenere with an easy to remember, ridiculously long key,” he replied, “Do you know it’s theoretically unbreakable if the key is as long as the message?”

True, and if that was the case, there was no way they were breaking it. Cassie turned to Jake.

“What about you?”

“I’d type it in windings.”

“Forget I asked. Anna?”

“Same? Or maybe A=1, B=2, and so on. That’ll be easy to break though.”

“It’s extremely easy,” said Cassie, “seriously, guys, can’t any of you think of an original approach?”

“Maybe if given time,” said Phil, “all that’s required for a cipher to work is that it takes some texts and spits out unintelligible text at the other end, which can be translated to the original text at the receiving end. Ideally, you wouldn’t lose any information in the process. Or introduce ambiguity because languages are a mess as is”

Cassie nodded. “But additional information would be okay.”

“Absolutely,” said Phil, “but it’ll be wasteful.”

“Wouldn’t be a problem if you’re not putting it on the internet, or dealing with large volumes,” said Cassie.

Phil nodded. “So you’re saying this cipher might be a bit wasteful.”

“I’m just considering possibilities.”

“Like skip codes?” asked Anna, “what if you ciphered a skip code the traditional way?”

“Yep, that could work,” said Phil, “I’ll try that on the text we translated the way Cassie suggested.”

“Assignments?”

Everyone turned. It was Lex, a fourth year.

Jake told him what was going on. He immediately volunteered to help. He, too, sat down with his computer, which he had with him for some reason.

“The skip code idea has some merit,” said Lex, “but it’s a bit basic, don’t you think?”

“Hey, not everyone remembers resistor codes, let alone using them for a random cipher,” retorted Cassie.

“Look, I detest econ with my entire being. I simply wanted some sense of normalcy, hence I defaulted to what I liked, what I was comfortable with, and did not include weird interest calculations…”

“So you’re saying we need to find what Dany likes?” asked Anne.

“Easy,” said Jake, “she reads / watches a lot of mystery-related stuff. She is also absolutely obsessed with fantasy as a genre. She loves programming and solving silly little problems that most people would do with pen and paper. She is very good at maths and enjoys it. She is organised in a chaotic way. She has also developed an obsession with fermented food recently for some reason and I think I’m catching it too. I think that’s it.”

“Fermented food?” asked Anna.

“Yeah, that’s the least relevant thing, let’s focus on that,” said Lex, “though seriously, liking maths and programming for the hell of it sounds more relevant to me. This suggests something simple but effective. Such as a Vigenere cipher.”

“Exactly, thank you!” said Phil, “we’re not going to crack this.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. She turned to Jake. “You said she’s weirdly happy about this situation. What sort of happy is she?”

Jake shot her a blank look.

“Is she the evil-I-have-fooled-you happy or is she just super giggly?”

“Well, she has been giggling a lot and I haven’t seen an evil witch look on her, so…”

“That means we can break this! Don’t you see? She wants us to break it,” said Cassie, “that means it’s a breakable cipher, or at least she thinks it is, which is not always the same thing, there was this once time….”

“Alright, so you’re saying it’s not Vigenere?” asked Phil.

“No, I’m saying it’s breakable even if it is Vigenere,” said Cassie.

“Alright, I’ll try that next,” said Phil, “once this is done trying what it’s trying right now. No results so far though.”

Cassie looked at the numbers again. It was a groups of four. Then another idea struck her.

“What if it’s Playfair, but converted to hex and she’s added a random multiple of 26 on top to fool us? That would definitely work.”

“Actually, that would,” said Phil, “but we’ll have research about breaking a Playfair cipher then.”

“Why 26?” asked Anna, “why are you assuming it’s just letters? She could have added numbers and spaces and special characters and all of that.”

“Normally you’d replace spaces with an Z before you cipher it,” said Lex, “and you’d avoid special characters and spell out any numbers.”

“But what if she didn’t?” asked Cassie, “how obsessed is she with ciphers, Jake?”

“Based on other people in my life, about average, I guess?”

“So she likely knows about that trick,” said Lex, “and she’d use it unless she plans to talk about pizza a lot….”

"She does like pizza," said Jake.

“You could replace it with an X,” Cassie pointed out.

“True,” said Anna, “but what if she chose not to? If she added just space, it’s going to be 27 characters. If it’s upper and lower case letters, it’s 52, plus space, it’s 53. If you add numbers, it’s 62 or 63. I think we should try all of that.”

“Easy enough,” said Phil, “so, did you guys do any programming?”

“A bit of micro c, python, java…” started Cassie.

“Perfect. Can I burrow your computer? I’ll just code that quickly.”

“Sure.”

“Dark mode IDE. I see you are a woman of culture, Cassie.”

Cassie bit back a retort. Sure, she didn’t have a good sleep schedule, but she didn't think Phil could look at a light mode anything for more than ten minutes at this point.

Phil produced the first output in a few minutes.

“This is A-Z plus space.”

KZA LSEX OUGWFZTJIMPUURQORDXMGP LBLUHMRRKZRXGAISMPTAEWTABGEAXDAMFWUSXPILI AENNPODYVLF MOSXPZBZTAAHCCKQASZGQNUVPZCBOMVLWQGIUVZTJRBCWTROASHTTXFWLGSBBHVKRBNLSXFPYUYCBI PIUPLUPEOLPBSZQYCFGHNXVCCOMFCSRTUTHNGOUVKFMAEEWBRYRUTYHDEP UC

“This doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Lex.

Phil was typing away furiously.

“And this is with upper and lower case, no spaces.”

QffgNYjZgrzjWLZyJlOqYvRWSwJEvGRauFmampVsQAyyGbMUrsuCGxAGBllCfFdpLaxUyTnsKgdlooqtieAmiaQOWbqZgGVfIHIhtrhSAjYqvVudIiQrAqevGIaXAXRVcdxTXSAWPZTAFYoItHimdKsiuovZLRYxFIcIHunaTNxqGQqPcWbvDdmImNdXGhUMoItRZUALVjOxCMLMfEfzeyaRaZDiehVFxd

“That’s objectively worse,” said Lex.

“And this is with upper and lower case and space.”

NcddMVhYdqxiWIZwJkNqWvRTQuGArGQaqDmXkoTsN vyGbKTpruBFxxDBjiBbEcoIYwTyRlpJdciooqrgbymhaOOUZqZeCUdEHFfpreS iUpvVsbFfPpyoatGIXW VNTcdxTUQAULWTzFXnHtEfkZKsfrnuYIQYwBFcIDslXRMwqFPoPcUatAdjHkNaWEfRMkFtRWUxJRiOwzLIMdEfydvZRXWAiegSCwd

“And this is with numbers.”

u9J C2NO gdYWpZcJaDqCvR07anXDGGaCum4Qe su0RyGb1JVhu26xTkBPE2y5SepEmJy8RL  SEooqXM8emXa5OAFqZKZKJbHmLBrAS0YrfvVYHmBFVeUxZGI4M0Bk cdxT17AAi3TpFNd8tlBQwKsBNdkOpGYmYmcIaYR48Cmq6FUPcAQZhdF8QN7MvLyM7mtR3UT0oYOmVBpMJEfoTRPR43hieWzjmd

“None of them make sense,” said Lex.

“Well, something has to,” said Cassie, “Unless this is a convoluted ploy by Dany distract you, Jake.”

“Why?”

Was it a significant day to the two of them? Say, the day they met each other? Not according to what Cassie could remember, unless they were already dating before they joined the university. That was unlikely as their nationalities were different. What about Jake’s birthday? That was possible. She remembered going out for a term end / birthday party last year, so that was entirely possible. But then, Jake should have realised that.

“You can figure out if that’s the case,” said Cassie, “unless you have any other pertinent information that may help us…”

“Seriously, does anyone have any ideas?” asked Lex.

“Snack break talking about something else?” asked Anna, quickly, “like which movie we are watching on Friday?”

That made sense. The group decided to have a snack break. As promised, Jake bought snacks. Phil’s laptop still sounded like it was preparing for take-off. They spent a few minutes chatting about other stuff.

END OF CHAPTER THREE

Read previous chapters: chapter 1  | chapter 2 

Next chapter: chapter 4

Thank you for reading! Do let me know if you manage to crack the cipher. It doesn't need a key, and the stuff they've figured out so far might give you a few clues. (hint: it's straightforward, but not a common cipher algorithm).

You can read more about the Vigenere Cipher here if you're interested. The cipher in question here is not a Vigenere Cipher though.

The next chapter will be uploaded next Monday, 11th April.

You can also follow me on Facebook here.

Until next time!