Irma Vep for the 21st Century
Warren Ellis called for a nouveau version of classic femme-fatale/antiheroine Irma Vep on the Whitechapel forums. Seeing as I can't draw worth a damn, I'll contribute here.

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2015-12-01, 13:31:12-13:45:16 CET (UTC +1) Translated from French

"Your coffee, inspector."

"Good." [Drinking sound] "What do you have for me, Rachilde?"

"Well, the Imva Vep case. I've synthesized as much data as I could, and there's a lot of ambiguity. I had to apply fuzzy logic algorithms to--"

"I'm an old flic, Rachilde. Keep it simple."

"Yes, sir. I'll tell you one thing I'm certain of. There is no Irma Vep."
 "Then who have we been chasing all over the city for the past six months? Who traipses in and out of the Louvre like it's her private house? Who kicked me in the fucking balls last week, Rachilde?" [Fist hitting table]

"What, what I mean, sir, is that there is no one woman calling herself Irma Vep. I don't care how fast she is, she can't be killing a man on one side of Paris and stealing a diamond necklace on the other side at the same time."

"That dead guy in the apartment block, we know that was a copycat."

"Not a copycat, exactly, Old style pimp gets garotted in his home. We show up, everybody in the building swears it was Irma Vep. Leotard, bat wings and all. She's a collective alibi. I've been tracking other incidents supposedly attributed to Irma Vep, mostly assaults and vandalism. No consistent modus operandi, victimology or geographical profile. Irma Vep is a loose group persona, one character written by hundreds of authors with no editor."

"So there's nobody to arrest."

"I didn't say that, sir. I think there are three core people who comprise the Irma Vep persona. Admittedly, this is conjecture, but the data is pretty consistent. I've added an audit of--"

"Get to the point, Rachilde. Who are they?"

"Well, the big break was that bit of audio we got off your lapel camera when that woman, err, attacked you sir. What she said was actually a curse in Sorani Kurdish, specifically an idiom spoken mainly in Iraq. I think that woman was one of three sisters Immigration has been trying to find for years. They may have been involved in those dead traffickers in Trieste back in '09."

"I remember that. Can't say I particularly cared about the death of a bunch of child pimps."

"Nor do I, sir."

[drinking sound]

"At any rate... My best guess is, this began in Iraq. During the war the sisters bounced back and forth, working as guides, snitches, translators, smugglers, procurers, saboteurs, whatever. Learned every trick they could from the Americans, the jihadists, the mercenaries. Dressed as boys some of the time.. When Obama pulled the plug, they got out. Their mother somehow smuggled them into the EU. They were dosed with off-lable melanin antagonists so they'd look white instead of Middle Eastern. They blended in with the Czech, Poles, Russians and others living here illegally.

"There isn't much hard information on them, not even their real names. We've designated them Alpha, Beta and Gamma.

"Alpha is the information support. She operates the sixth largest botnet in the world, and rising. Plus her work is all open source. She's probably mobile, poaching wireless here and there. Police net is probably compromised."

"I know that. Why do you think I had us meet in person?"

"Beta does the social engineering. Scores of alternate identities, She's kind a venture capitalist for subcultures, giving them money, phones and laptops, material supplies, display spaces. Kids are putting togther ID card cloners with her help. The number of false positives on RFID trackers has tripled over the past three months."

"Don't forget the graffitti, Rachilde. 'Never work.' 'Be reasonable, demand the impossible.' 'No gods, no masters.' The last time I saw those on a wall in this city, I was younger than even you are, Rachilde."

"Those slogans have been appearing on compromised ad networks all over the EU as well, sir."

"And Gamma?"

"Field operations: theft, sabotage, vandalism, public displays. She a legend in parkour circles. And there's a savate master who claims she sparred with him to a draw."

"And she's the one who kicked me in the balls."

"Most likely, sir."

"So, is this political, instead of criminal?"

"One could be a diversion fo the other. Or perhaps we should stop distinguishing between the two."

"At any rate, the thefts are our department's responsibility."

"I don't understand those myself. These people are so capable, yet they bother with breaking and entering, and not even for high value items?"

"Gold and diamonds aren't worth much anymore, Rachilde. Think about it backwards. If you want to steal something, and you want it to be worth your while, what do you steal?"

"Err... Industrial espionage, I suppose, sir. Technical secrets."

"No, too easily traced to a buyer. Don't think about money, Rachilde. What's immensely valuable to you but not worth any money?"

"Sentimental value, you mean."

"Exactly. All the art objects and family heirlooms. They don't steal to make money, even through ransom. They steal to create loss."

[15 second pause]

"Sir... sir?"

"Those girls across the street. You see them?"

"Sir, they're not even twelve, they can't--"

"The way they're dressed. Those cape things. Their haircuts."

"I know, sir. They're all over the city."

"Even if we arrest the sisters, Rachilde, we can't even prove that they did the all of the Irma Vep crimes, or even did the first ones. People can always think the sisters were copycats."

"I know, sir. We're fighting a legend that began a century ago."