Couple of reasons for that. One, the hotel was arranged around a central courtyard, where the hotel restaurant was located beneath a glass atrium, and I didn’t want any inquisitive guests or staff to spot my torch beam bouncing around. And two, I was determined to stick to my new rule and make sure I didn’t glance out the window and spot some dastardly crime.
Once the curtains were drawn, I took a second glance around the room. My torch beam bounced back at me on a whole spectrum of crazy angles. The light was being refracted by a wall of thick glass tiles positioned between the sleeping area and the en suite bathroom. Clearly, this wasn’t the place to stay if you or your partner happened to be a prude.
I have to say I liked it. I liked the high ceiling and the high window. I liked the yellow, modernist armchair. I liked the bold writing desk, fashioned from some kind of lush olivewood, and I liked how the bed frame and headboard had been manufactured from the same timber. I was a little confused by the way the king-sized bed had been made up. The linen was a startling white and high quality, but there were two duvets, and they’d been formed into rolls at the bottom of each side of the mattress. One for each guest, I assumed, unless like Jane Parker you were staying on your own.
But enough about the décor. I had a task to complete and not a vast amount of time to do it in. There weren’t many likely hiding places for whatever it was I was supposed to find, but I knew where I planned to start.
I returned to the hallway and opened a low cupboard down by my knee. The minibar. Not what I’d had in mind, but I scanned it all the same. There was nothing I wouldn’t have expected to see. Alcoholic miniatures. Tiny cans of soft drinks. A couple of chocolate bars and some mixed nuts and potato crisps.
I tried the tall cupboard door on my right. This was more like it. A selection of jackets, blouses, trousers, and skirts were suspended from a metal rail. I patted the clothing down, for form’s sake if nothing else, and then I dropped to my knees and aimed my torch at what I was really interested in.
No, not the laundry service bag. The room safe.
It was a dinky little thing, and the way it was squatting there, acting all tough, was sort of like a kitten pretending it was a jungle cat. There was a ten-digit electronic keypad and a short list of helpful user instructions printed on the plastic fascia. The safe itself was fashioned from reinforced steel, with concealed hinges, and it was about as secure as a wet paper bag. Seriously. I know of at least eight ways to defeat one of these suckers without breaking a sweat. Some of them are simple, and some of them are ingenious, but most of them require a fair amount of time.
Which is why I was going for the fastest option.
Removing Victoria’s smartphone from my pocket, I connected to the Internet. Alas, Web access wasn’t complimentary inside the hotel, so this was going to hurt just a smidgen when Victoria eventually saw her roaming charges.
I typed in the Web address for the blog I was after. The site is administered by a guy in Poland who has an interest in hacking a wide variety of security devices. His real passion is complex intruder systems, but he started out small, and if you search through his archive, you’re nearly guaranteed to find what it is that you’re after.
I found the name of the manufacturer of this particular safe smack in the middle of a handy alphabetical list. I clicked on the name, then waited for the relevant page to load, and once I had it, I held the screen up next to the keypad and started to type.
What was I doing? Well, it’s really quite simple. With any appliance that’s designed to be used by human beings, tolerances have to be built in for the mistakes that will inevitably occur. Take a hotel room safe. There’ll be times when a guest forgets the code they’ve selected. On other occasions, a guest might check out of a hotel
Once the curtains were drawn, I took a second glance around the room. My torch beam bounced back at me on a whole spectrum of crazy angles. The light was being refracted by a wall of thick glass tiles positioned between the sleeping area and the en suite bathroom. Clearly, this wasn’t the place to stay if you or your partner happened to be a prude.
I have to say I liked it. I liked the high ceiling and the high window. I liked the yellow, modernist armchair. I liked the bold writing desk, fashioned from some kind of lush olivewood, and I liked how the bed frame and headboard had been manufactured from the same timber. I was a little confused by the way the king-sized bed had been made up. The linen was a startling white and high quality, but there were two duvets, and they’d been formed into rolls at the bottom of each side of the mattress. One for each guest, I assumed, unless like Jane Parker you were staying on your own.
But enough about the décor. I had a task to complete and not a vast amount of time to do it in. There weren’t many likely hiding places for whatever it was I was supposed to find, but I knew where I planned to start.
I returned to the hallway and opened a low cupboard down by my knee. The minibar. Not what I’d had in mind, but I scanned it all the same. There was nothing I wouldn’t have expected to see. Alcoholic miniatures. Tiny cans of soft drinks. A couple of chocolate bars and some mixed nuts and potato crisps.
I tried the tall cupboard door on my right. This was more like it. A selection of jackets, blouses, trousers, and skirts were suspended from a metal rail. I patted the clothing down, for form’s sake if nothing else, and then I dropped to my knees and aimed my torch at what I was really interested in.
No, not the laundry service bag. The room safe.
It was a dinky little thing, and the way it was squatting there, acting all tough, was sort of like a kitten pretending it was a jungle cat. There was a ten-digit electronic keypad and a short list of helpful user instructions printed on the plastic fascia. The safe itself was fashioned from reinforced steel, with concealed hinges, and it was about as secure as a wet paper bag. Seriously. I know of at least eight ways to defeat one of these suckers without breaking a sweat. Some of them are simple, and some of them are ingenious, but most of them require a fair amount of time.
Which is why I was going for the fastest option.
Removing Victoria’s smartphone from my pocket, I connected to the Internet. Alas, Web access wasn’t complimentary inside the hotel, so this was going to hurt just a smidgen when Victoria eventually saw her roaming charges.
I typed in the Web address for the blog I was after. The site is administered by a guy in Poland who has an interest in hacking a wide variety of security devices. His real passion is complex intruder systems, but he started out small, and if you search through his archive, you’re nearly guaranteed to find what it is that you’re after.
I found the name of the manufacturer of this particular safe smack in the middle of a handy alphabetical list. I clicked on the name, then waited for the relevant page to load, and once I had it, I held the screen up next to the keypad and started to type.
What was I doing? Well, it’s really quite simple. With any appliance that’s designed to be used by human beings, tolerances have to be built in for the mistakes that will inevitably occur. Take a hotel room safe. There’ll be times when a guest forgets the code they’ve selected. On other occasions, a guest might check out of a hotel
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