Hurt (DS Lucy Black) (4 page)

Her own office was on the first floor. She hung her coat over the back of her chair and, standing on tiptoe, peered out of the small window high on the wall behind her desk to where the last of the previous night’s raindrops glistened off the barbed wire curling along the top of the compound fence.

As she turned her attention to the room again, she noticed the small red flashing light on her desk phone indicating that she had a message. She dialled in her code then listened to the various options available to access her voicemail. As she did, she glanced up to where the picture of Mary Quigg remained pinned to her noticeboard. Lucy had sworn to herself that it would remain there until she had found Mary’s killer, Alan Cunningham.

The message was from a man who introduced himself as David Cooper. He was with the Information and Communication Services Branch, a team specially developed to support operations that involved analysis of computer equipment. Lucy guessed that he’d been tasked with examining Karen Hughes’s phone. Karen had been reported missing from the residential unit on Thursday night. Lucy had called at the unit to find that Karen’s phone had been left in her room. When she still hadn’t turned up on Friday, she’d released the first press appeal and sent the phone to ICS to be examined.

Lucy dialled the number he had left on the message and, when he answered, introduced herself.

‘DS Black. Thanks for getting back to me. I’ve taken a look at this phone and I’m pretty sure I’ve found something. I’m over here in Block 10. Can you come across?’

Designed during the North’s Troubles, the various blocks in Maydown Station had not been geographically placed in sequential order; Lucy suspected that, as with the small, high windows, it was an attempt to reduce the likelihood of an attack from outside. If someone wanted to target Block 3, for instance, they couldn’t be sure that the third block from the entrance was indeed Block 3. Of course, those attacking the compound probably wouldn’t have realized that, so rather than preventing an attack, it would simply mean that the wrong block would be targeted. Someone would still get hurt – just not the intended victim. This thought offered her scant comfort.

Block 10 was at the opposite end of the compound from the PPU, so it took Lucy a few minutes to get across. The man who buzzed her in was tall, carrying a little extra weight around the gut, but not much. His hair was wavy brown, his features even. He wore a black suit over a white cotton shirt.

‘DS Black? I’m Dave Cooper. Come in.’

She followed him into an office which sat to the left of the main corridor. Once inside, she realized that, in fact, the room spanned the entire left-hand side of the corridor. His desk, which had been visible from the doorway, sat at the top of a huge room. Along one wall, on a worktop, over a dozen computers and laptops hummed quietly as lists of operating system information ran up the screens.

‘I’m afraid I’ve only started a few weeks ago here, so I don’t really know anyone yet,’ Cooper said as he led her across to his desk on which sat a large iMac.

‘I’m here over a year and I still feel that way,’ Lucy said, gaining his smile in reciprocation.

‘I’m not sure if that’s comforting or not,’ he said. ‘I’ve hacked into this phone. Look at this.’

Lucy moved in closer as Cooper leaned in towards the screen, bringing up on the iMac an image of what was showing on the phone’s screen. She felt the pressure of him beside her, but didn’t move.

When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, quieter, as if in accommodation of her proximity. ‘Up until about eight weeks ago, she was using this phone for everything. Texting, calls, the lot. Then she stopped. The only calls she made to and from there are to four different numbers. Here.’

He pointed on screen to the listed numbers. Lucy immediately recognized one as the number for the residential unit in the Waterside run by Social Services where Karen had been resident, and the second as Robbie’s work mobile number. Robbie had been Karen Hughes’s key worker. He was also Lucy’s former boyfriend. Lucy told Cooper the first of these pieces of information.

‘The other two numbers are also to mobiles registered with Social Services,’ he said.

‘But she didn’t make
any
other calls?’

Cooper shook his head.

‘She must have got a new phone and didn’t tell them,’ Lucy said.

‘That’s what it looks like. She also stopped using this one for internet access. But I was still able to trace her history from before she changed. I also managed to access her Facebook account. She has about a hundred friends,’ Cooper said. ‘I managed to trace a lot of them back to the contacts listed on the SIM card of the phone.’

‘You’ve only had this since Friday afternoon,’ Lucy commented, impressed.

‘The case has changed from missing person to murder. I assumed that took priority over checking bankers’ accounts for fraud.’

‘I’m not complaining, trust me,’ Lucy said.

Cooper smiled as he turned to the screen again. In the wake of the movement, Lucy could still smell the citrus scent of his aftershave.

‘She has a number of friends who she’s not really in contact with – pop groups and that. And a few fellas who obviously know friends of hers in real life, based on their messages to her on Facebook.’

He scrolled through the friends list and stopped at someone called Paul Bradley. ‘Then we have him.’

‘Paul Bradley?’

‘They became friends three months ago. I’ve printed out the status comments between them. Here.’

He handed her a list of messages which she read through quickly. The first was dated 18 September. Karen and Bradley had become friends and he had thanked her for adding him, which suggested he had made the first approach. The same day, Karen had posted a comment about a band she was listening to, and Bradley had liked her comment. This continued until Karen had, according to her news feed, updated her profile picture two months previous. In the picture, her eyes were not quite meeting the lens, her smile embarrassed. Her hands were clasped in front of her as though crossing one arm over the other.

The message from Paul Bradley simply said, ‘
Cute pic
.’

Karen’s reply had been simply ‘
LOL
’.

‘Laugh out loud,’ Cooper said. ‘It’s one of those—’

‘I am younger than you,’ Lucy said.

‘Do you think?’ Cooper laughed gently.

Lucy smiled as she read Bradley’s reply. ‘
Seriously. Cute pic. U R gorgeous
.’

‘
HaHaHa
,’ was Karen’s response.

‘That’s a standard expression of amusement, both for the younger generation and indeed for my own,’ Cooper said.

‘That’s useful to know, Officer Cooper.’

‘David,’ he said.

Lucy scrolled on through the wall posts, but no more came from Bradley.

‘Is that his only contact with her?’

‘Oh no,’ Cooper said. ‘From then on in, he contacted her through her messages rather than her wall. More privacy.’

He opened her message account and opened the first message. It was posted the same day as the comments about her picture.

Hey Karen, Don’t put yourself down. Too many people will do that to you. U look lovely. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Friends, family, whoever. WTF do they know anyway? Don’t take any shit from anybody. Paul x

‘He knows how to impress a fifteen-year-old girl,’ Lucy said. She read through the rest of his messages. Many of them commented on music or books he had read, with Karen replying that she loved the same song, or the same author. ‘They’re remarkably well matched, too,’ she added.

‘Everything he mentioned there, she had listed as her Likes. It’s like he’s tailor-made for her.’

About eight weeks earlier, Paul had suggested they should meet. They agreed to do so in the Foyleside Shopping Centre, at his suggestion, at 3.30 on the following Saturday afternoon.

‘He chose a public place to meet,’ Lucy commented. ‘To make her feel safe.’

‘Every update she made thereafter to her page is made via iPhone,’ Cooper said. ‘That seems to have been when she got her new phone. And her messages to him stop completely. So, either they fell out on their first date ...’

‘Or they found an alternative method of communication.’

‘I assume her iPhone hasn’t been found, or I’d have been examining that too.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘You can’t trace it, can you?’

‘I can try reverse tracking it through her account for a number, then try the mobile networks to get access to the records but it’ll take weeks, probably.’

Lucy nodded. ‘Can we trace Paul Bradley?’

‘That might be a little quicker. He says in some of his messages that his mobile is broken, so there’s no number recorded for him here. Presumably after Karen got her phone, he gave her a number that she was able to use. I could get a warrant and ask Facebook to give me the ISP address for his activities.’

‘And for the younger generation that means?’

‘Where he used the internet. His home Wi-Fi or that. We can trace back to the phone line that he was attached to each time he logged on. It’ll take a day or two to get, but it is one way.’

‘That would be great, David.’

‘You’re very welcome, DS Black,’ Cooper said.

‘Call me Lucy.’

‘Lucy,’ he agreed.

Burns was standing with the CID team investigating Karen’s death in the incident room when Lucy arrived just before noon. Two smaller desks had been pushed together in the centre of the room, around which were placed ten chairs. The two main walls were covered with corkboards onto which already a variety of crime scene pictures had been pinned, including ones depicting Karen’s remains in situ. A timeline ran along the top of the noticeboard, marked from Thursday, when she had first gone missing, until Sunday night, when she had been found. A few markers had already been placed along its spectrum.

DS Tara Gallagher was standing at the coffee urn with a newly promoted DS whom Lucy had met before called Mickey Sinclair, a thin faced, handsome man. When they saw Lucy, Tara raised a polystyrene coffee cup interrogatively, to which Lucy nodded.

‘Inspector Fleming’s not joining us?’ Burns asked, approaching her. Now, out of the forensics suit he’d been wearing the previous night, Lucy could see that Burns’s hair – loose, sandy curls – was already thinning. His face was a little shapeless, as if a little extra weight had robbed him of his definition, his features soft, his cheeks fleshy. But his eyes were still sharp and bright and Lucy realized with a little embarrassment that while she was studying him, he’d been doing the same with her. Instinctively, she put her hand up to cover her mouth.

‘I’ve not seen him yet, sir,’ Lucy said. Then added, ‘I know he had some stuff to follow up this morning.’

‘I see,’ Burns said. ‘In that case, we’ll get started, shall we?’ He turned to address the room. ‘Grab your coffees, people, and take a seat.’

Tara brought Lucy over her cup. ‘Milk and one,’ she said. Lucy nodded, a little flattered that Tara knew how she took her drink.

Burns took his place at the top of the table and introduced Lucy to the team, then quickly introduced each of them in turn.

‘Mickey, perhaps you’d start us off with the results of the PM?’

Tara nudged Lucy as Mickey stood up. ‘Cause of death was the cut to the throat. Time of death was sometime on Sunday between eight in the morning and lunchtime, despite her body not being left on the train tracks until that evening.’

‘Which means the killer held on to the body until dark before moving her,’ a DC commented unnecessarily.

‘The stomach contents included peanuts,’ Mickey continued. ‘But little else. She didn’t seem to have eaten much. There were signs of sexual contact in the hours before death. Significant signs, the pathologist said. He’d taken samples for testing, along with toxicology samples for drugs and drink.’

‘Was she raped then?’

‘He wouldn’t rule out consensual,’ he said.

‘Not that that means anything,’ Burns commented. ‘Anything else?’

‘That’s all he had to start with. The full report will be sent on when it’s done.’

‘What about SOCO, Tara?’

Unlike Mickey, Tara stayed in her seat, clearing her throat before addressing them. ‘Blood smearing on her clothes suggested she’d been wrapped in plastic sheeting for the transport of her remains. And they pulled dog hairs from her boots. Black dog hairs.’

‘DS Black, maybe you can update us on the work you’d done, to put it in context for the team.’

Lucy nodded. ‘I’m afraid there’s not a huge amount to tell, sir. She went missing last Thursday. She didn’t come back to the unit from school but that wasn’t entirely unusual.’

‘She was in residential care?’

‘Yes. Social Services contacted us and we started looking for her in the usual haunts: shopping centres, the Walls, places like that.’

‘Had she run away before?’

‘A number of times,’ Lucy said, nodding. ‘Initially we assumed it was more of the same. She usually came back the next day – often she’d spent the night with friends, boyfriends maybe.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘Nobody serious. Not that we know of so far.’

‘But she
was
sexually active?’

‘She was fifteen, sir,’ Lucy said.

Burns nodded, jotting down notes as Lucy spoke.

‘So you put out the press appeal?’

‘After she went missing, the social workers in the residential unit found her phone in her room which panicked them. They alerted us and we did the press release,’ Lucy said. ‘Then someone found out about the connection with her father yesterday and the papers ran with it.’

‘Any idea who told them? Could it have been one of us?’ He glanced around the room as he spoke. ‘One of you’ was actually what he meant, and Lucy knew it. PPU had been handling the case – herself and Tom Fleming essentially.

‘I wouldn’t think so, sir,’ she replied. ‘Derry’s a small city. Everyone knows everyone else here. You’ll find that once you’re here a while.’

‘Do you think she was targeted because of who she was?’ Mickey asked.