Authors: Iain Cameron
‘I don’t know
Inspector. It would be a serious breach of protocol.’
‘I’m sure you lot do it all the time.’ He nodded in the direction of the
various programmers and analysts working in the department. ‘Are all these people looking at legitimate websites? I mean, the guy I passed on the way in, the big guy with the beard near the door was playing a Formula 1 game and it looked to me as if it was coming straight from a website.’
He
smiled. ‘I was only joshing with you Inspector but,’ he said wagging a finger in his face, ‘if I catch you looking at a mucky website at any other time, I’m afraid I will have to report you to the headmaster.’
He
nderson returned to his desk and quickly found Lehman’s website and began to search through the pictures. If Louisa Gordon wasn’t there, he decided he would go home immediately and as much as it would gall him to give money to men like Jon Lehman or Dominic Green, he would take out a subscription to the website, just in case her pictures were only available to paying customers.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, as even though he knew
the people behind the site, he was always wary of posting credit card details over the web, especially for such a nefarious activity as this. The risk of being fired was being traded off against the risk of having his credit card details stolen and in his book, that wasn’t much of a choice.
In any event, his fear was unfounded as
in the space of only five minutes of searching through pictures of busty blondes, vivacious brunettes and lusty redheads the face and everything else of Louisa Gordon filled the screen. In stark comparison to the cold corpse he saw sliced up on the post-mortem dissection table, her lips were full and red, her skin looked tanned and warm and her smile was enigmatic and engaging, as any beautiful young woman would be when lying naked with her legs apart.
He was just about to send one of her pictures to the printer as irrefutable proof to Lehman, if he ever tried to deny it, when Walters walked in without knocking. He tried to angle the screen away
from her view but he wasn’t quick enough and there was enough flesh on show to make her jaw drop.
‘I’ll come back later sir,
you’re obviously busy,’ she said turning to go, her face rapidly reddening.
‘Come back in here Carol!’
She stopped and looked round, a hard but cautious look on her face.
‘Now before you start spreading rumours about me looking at illicit stuff
when I’ve got nothing else to do, you need to see this. Come in and shut the door.’
Reluctantly, s
he did as she was told and when seated, he swung the screen round for her to see. ‘Now take a look at this girl’s face.’
‘
Good God, sir! It’s Louisa Gordon! I should know, I’ve been staring at her picture for the last couple of hours.’
‘Yep and this is
Jon Lehman’s web site. The two dead girls are connected not just by their attendance at university, but by featuring on this bloody web site. And the implications of that are what, do you think?’
‘Any girl
that has appeared on this web site is now in serious danger?’
‘I couldn’t have phrased it better myself.’
The number of officers attending DI Henderson’s update meeting on Monday afternoon had grown substantially as now it included the members of two murder teams. It started at six-thirty prompt as Henderson was keen to crack on. He was more abrupt than usual as the lack of progress on the Sarah Robson case was getting him down and after completing a few formalities, immediately demanded an update on the search for Mike Ferris, the identification of the killer’s dump site at Mannings Heath and the progress being made in following up interviews with car, taxi and bus drivers.
‘It’s most likely our suspect is in the Scarborough area,’
DS Harry Wallop said, ‘as the Lincoln police have already got back to us and confirmed they made contact with Ferris’s mother and she swears she hasn’t seen him for at least a month and doesn’t want to see him either, as she’s upset that he split up with his wife. Scarborough Police are following up on three possible sightings of a man fitting Ferris’s description and they think they’ll have something for us by latest, noon tomorrow.’
‘That’s something at least.’
‘If I could add a little more to that story, Inspector,’ DS Steve O’Donnell said. Steve was a sergeant in the Divisional Intelligence Unit and a specialist at finding people. Dressed in a smart grey jacket over a checked shirt, the large mop of thick, grey hair was swept away from his face and held in place by gel, and he frequently flashed a cheeky smile that made him look more like a punter after a successful day at the Lingfield Races, than a smart copper with good contacts at numerous hospitals, charities, private investigators and Interpol.
‘One of the sightings Harry mentioned was in Trafalgar Square in Scarborough and its probably the best one yet. This is an area of flats and bedsits surrounding a small patch of grass near the cricket ground and seafront, but crucially, close to the place where it is believed his wife has moved to,
and in the same area as her sister. The local police are probably round there now as we speak.’
‘Excellent Steve, thanks.
Tanya, what news on the hunt for the dump site?’
Detective
Constable Tanya Stevenson was a no-nonsense lady who smiled little and as far as he knew, didn’t have many friends in the force but she was a good person to have on an investigation like this, as she was indefatigable, tenacious to a fault and never took ‘no’ for an answer, even though he was sure the job he had given her to do this time was beyond even her legendary powers.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have good news for you sir, despite having
over thirty officers conducting fingertip searches on four probable sites.’
She went on to detail their findings but all they found was old bottles, cigarettes ends, used condoms and other assorted detritus, discarded by numerous dog walkers, car drivers and hikers over the years and nothing to indicate
that any of it was left behind by their killer.
‘I’m sorry to hear that
after all the work you’ve put in but I think we’ve done all we can up there and I don’t think we’re ever going to find it, unless someone can tell us what vehicle he used or we get a definite sighting of where he stopped.’ He paused for moment letting everyone absorb the implications. ‘With immediate effect, I’m terminating the Mannings Heath search and I want you to scale your team back to ten officers and redeploy them to West Hove.’
Like a good soldier, Tanya took it on the chin.
‘At Mannings Heath,’ Henderson continued, ‘we could have targeted twenty or twenty-five places where he might have left his car, but at West Hove there’s only one or two. It’s complicated by the fact that all our vehicles were parked in more or less the same spot on Thursday night, but there’s a chance he may have left something behind in the bushes.’
‘V
ery good sir,’ she said, ‘I’ll get that organised.’
‘Seb. How did you get on with your trip to Dominic Green’s porn warehouse?’
This elicited a number of catcalls from his colleagues, causing the young man’s face to redden. He waited until they had finished. ‘Of course, they offered me a part but I turned it down as I like working with you lot so much.’
Henderson let them blow off steam for a
short time before calling the meeting to order.
‘The guy who operates the computers, like keeping the web site going and signing up new members, is a strange
looking bloke called Brian Calder, although he prefers to be known as DeeZee, whatever that means. It turns out he’s Dominic Green’s nephew but he’s nothing like him. Calder’s fat and slobby and more interested in the space the pictures take up on his hard disks than what’s on them.’
‘How good’s his alibi?’
‘Through the wonders of modern technology, he showed me how he works late most nights, because he likes to be there when the US comes on-line as traffic is heavier, and on the nights when the girls were killed, he was still at work. He showed me date-stamped documents to prove he was still at his computer.’
‘Could they be faked?’
‘With the knowledge he has, probably, but he didn’t remotely look the type and he’s so laid back, I couldn’t see him having the necessary anger or aggression to kill these girls.’
Henderson considered this. There weren’t many people directly connected to the web business except Calder and two photographers and Henderson was harbouring a hope, clearly in vain that
Calder would be of interest as he had ample opportunity and access. However, Seb was right, their killer did require strength and aggression, neither of which was much in abundance with this guy.
‘Good work
, Seb. See if you can talk to both photographers sometime in the next two days.’
‘Will do.’
‘Now to taxi drivers and bus drivers. Where are we up to on following up the promising interviews?’
‘That’s progressing sir,’ DC Phil Bentley said, ‘but so far we can’t find anyone who gave her a lift or spotted her walking along the road.’
Henderson sighed in exasperation but kept his negative thoughts in check. ‘I suppose its understandable as it was late at night and who notices one girl walking along the road, especially busy cabbies and bus drivers who’ve got other things to worry about? Keep trying Phil, you might strike lucky.’
The face of
DS Walters suddenly lit up as if a light bulb was suddenly switched on.
‘What is it Carol, have you just realised you’ve left a pot
boiling on the cooker?’
‘No, I’ve just remembered something. Late night buses and taxis are not the only way
for students to get back to the university or reach their accommodation.’
‘You mean she might have been given a lift?’
‘No, because we’ve asked around the university and nobody admits to giving her one. While I was out there trying to identify the girl at West Hove and waiting for the registrar to show up, I spotted a flyer for another bus service, specifically for students. It’s called The College Link Bus and runs regularly between all the universities and Brighton town centre. It does a circuit from Lewes University, to Sussex and lastly to Brighton University, before heading into town. It goes along the Lewes Road, right past the area where Sarah lived and where there are loads of student flats.’
The sudden awareness of a new line of enquiry
which wasn’t spotted earlier, always created a buzz in any investigation and this one was no different.
‘Now you mention it,’
DS Gerry Hobbs said when the room was finally quiet, ‘I’ve seen these buses when I’ve been going along the Lewes Road but I never twigged they were just for university students.’
‘Yeah, they run a regular service during the day,’ Waters said, ‘every fifteen minutes or so, and a late night service every half hour
, I think until about three in the morning.’
‘Do you know the routes?’ Henderson said. ‘Was Sarah maybe walking down West Street to catch one at the Steine?’
Walters shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, sir. There’s a stop on West Street that she could have used. She must have walked right past it as she came out of Havana Bay.’
‘We know she was angry, perhaps she just wanted to walk off some of the anger, I know I do sometimes,’ Sally Graham said.
‘Maybe she didn’t have any money or it was full,’ Hobbs said. ‘I presume they’re not free or is this something else we give away to bloody students.’
‘They’re cheap but they’re not free.’
‘Carol can you check that out? It shouldn’t be too difficult, as you’ve already spoken to some of the people who were with her at the club. I think they might know if she spent all of her money.’
A phone
began to vibrate, something he frowned upon as he expected everyone to turn them off and concentrate on what was an important meeting, but he swallowed a rebuke when he saw it belonged to O’Donnell, as technically, he wasn’t a member of the team and more dependent on his phone for doing his work than anyone else. He excused himself and left the room.
‘So,’ Henderson said, ‘if we shift our focus away from Sarah’s intentions for a minute,
the driver of the College Link Bus would not only know the students, possibly by name but he would also know their movements and whether they lived on or off campus.’
‘For sure,’ Walters replied.
‘What we need is a list of all the current drivers and those who have left the job, up to five years ago. Carol, can you and Sally take that on?’
‘Will do sir.’
‘From that list, draw up some questions and then take a couple of officers from this team and six or seven uniforms and interview every one of them.’ His bad mood was lifting as now their thinking was shifting away from a bus driver or a taxi driver who might have murdered her in the heat of the moment, in a fit of panic or in a burst of anger, a scenario he didn’t find entirely plausible, to a man that might have known her well and was probably planning her abduction for months.