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McLean in her Ford LTD, a station wagon with faux wood panelling. It was a lot of car for one person; I guessed she ferried computer equipment to and fro in the spacious back. We stopped en route for Japanese takeout.
    The house was also big for one person. Swan explained she was renting until she found something she really liked. The neighbourhood was quiet and wooded, denuded trees reaching into a grey sky. I got a glimpse of a big back-yard inch-deep in new snow. The driveway was clear, thanks to neighbourhood kids in need of video game quarters. Swan pressed the big button for the door remote and parked the station wagon in the empty garage.
    Swan only seemed to live in three rooms of the house – kitchen, living room, study. The other rooms were empty, or contained boxes of electronic equipment. One room was ajumble of phones of various vintages. There was an unzipped sleeping bag scrunched up on the sofa; I assume that’s where she slept.
    We sat at the table, balancing our takeaway on top of wires and papers. Swan had ordered for both of us: plastic bowls of soup with about two dozen baby octopuses floating amongst the noodles. I gingerly made a pile of them next to my plate. Swan stared at me as I ferried ex-octopuses with my chopsticks. ‘I’m no good with sushi.’
    â€˜We’re top of the food chain, Mr Peters,’ she told me, slurping up one of the soft little balls. ‘We eat everything, and nothing eats us. That’s the way we’re made.’ It was more the thought of tiny octopus guts that had put me off, but I kept my mouth shut.
    Swan sat down in front of a TRS-80 set up on the kitchen table. (One side of the room was an impassable jungle of cables.) I scraped a chair across the floor and sat down behind her.
    What I saw made my scalp tighten. Swan had a line into the Department of Motor Vehicles. With a few taps of the Trash-80’s keyboard, she was in their database. She had the same access to licence plates, home addresses, and phone numbers as if she was a DMV clerk sitting at a desk in their offices, rather than a hacker in jeans and sweatshirt sitting in a jumbled suburban kitchen.
    Swan had jotted down her intruders’ number plate. She typed it into the relevant field on the screen. After several long seconds, the computer blinked and disgorged a fresh screenful of information. The van was registered to the university. Swan scowled. ‘I was hoping for a home address.’
    But she had narrowed the field right down. The van hadn’t been reported stolen; whoever was driving it had ready accessto the college’s vehicles. As well as the technical know-how to set up a Lisp Machine. There couldn’t be a whole lot of people who fit that description.
    Swan was looking for ways to impress me further. ‘Want to see your own record?’ For a moment I was tempted – as though to prove to myself that what I was seeing was real. I’d investigated a lot of fraudulent use of computers, but I’d never seen anyone with such simple and complete access to public records.
    â€˜Uh, no thanks.’
    â€˜I can look you up any time I want,’ boasted Swan.
    â€˜I believe you.’ I sure did.
    Whoever had hoodwinked Swan, I reckoned they’d be better off in the hands of the police than subject to her tender mercies. In fact, the guy I called next had once tangled with her. That was why he never had the same phone number for more than a week at a time.
    Ian Mond – known as ‘Mondy’ to the handful of people who did know him – lived a shadowy existence in motel rooms, warehouse corners, and other people’s garages. He carried just a trunkful of equipment with him, often sleeping scrunched in the backseat of his second home, a midnight blue Ford Escort, after doing some ‘fieldwork’: conning information out of telco staff, making unauthorised adjustments to the phone system, and tip-toeing into Ma