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Prologue

The cursor blinked: a small, glowing pulsation. Fry Guy watched the computer screen. Beside him a small electronic box chattered through a call routine, the numbers clicking audibly as each of the eleven digits was dialled.

Then the box whistled, a shrill, electronic signal that it had connected.

The cursor blinked again. The screen changed. ‘Welcome to Credit Systems of America,’ it read. Below, the cursor now pulsed beside the prompt: ‘Enter account number.’

Fry Guy smiled. Two hours ago he had rung a local hi-fi dealer, a CSA subscriber.

‘Hi, this is Joe Boyle from CSA . . . Credit Systems of America,’ Fry Guy had said, dropping his voice two octaves to sound older – a lot older, he hoped – than his fifteen years. He modulated his natural mid-Western drawl, giving his voice an Eastern twang: more big city, more urgent.

‘I need to speak to your credit manager . . . uh, what’s the name? Yeah, Tom. Can you put me through?’

Tom answered.

‘Tom, this is Joe Boyle . . . from CSA. You’ve been having some trouble with your account?’

Tom hadn’t heard of any trouble.

‘No? That’s really odd . . . Look, I’ve got this report that you’ve been having problems. Maybe there’s a mistake somewhere down the line. Better give me your account number again . . .’

And Tom did, obligingly reeling off the eight-character code that allowed his company to access the CSA files to confirm customer credit references. As Fry Guy continued his charade, running through

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