Gareth Dawson Series Box Set

by Nathan Burrows

  He’d not chosen this particular cafe because of its opening hours or fast internet connection. He’d chosen it because it was discrete, operated in cash only, and had no visible CCTV cameras. Ronnie handed over enough rupiah to pay for an hour on one of the terminals and made his way to his preferred computer in the far corner of the room. The table that the monitor was on was angled so that no-one else could see the screen.

  Ronnie brought up the home page for Protonmail, the encrypted and anonymous e-mail service he had used to send a message to the slut, and logged in to his account. When he saw that Annette McGuire hadn’t replied to his e-mail, he swore under his breath. She had received the photographs, so why hadn’t she replied to him? Bitch, he muttered. His hand hovered over the mouse as he considered what to do next. He could send her some more photographs of her dearly beloved husband—Ronnie had enough of them—or he could up the ante a bit more.

  He came out of the e-mail page and navigated to his online storage. Like Protonmail, the service he used was anonymous and encrypted. It had to be for what he kept in there. When the browser window showed him the folders, he scrolled to find the one he had set up for the McGuires. Opening the folder, he selected a photograph of Annette and her husband that he’d saved from her Facebook page before it disappeared.

  In the photograph, the slut was standing with Philip in a pub. In the background were a bunch of other people, frozen mid-drink. Philip had his arm around her shoulders and was holding her tightly as the photograph was taken. Demonstrating ownership. Ronnie zoomed in on their faces and looked at Philip’s. His expression was contented and unambiguous, as if he wanted whoever was taking the picture to know that he was going to take this woman home and do whatever he wanted to her. The slut’s face, by contrast, wasn’t quite as contented. Perhaps she was thinking the same thing?

  Ronnie closed the photograph down and tapped his index finger on the top of the mouse as he considered his options. None of his marks to date had done what she had done, which was ignore him completely. A few of them had needed some more encouragement to part with their cash, but none of them had just blanked him. They weren’t that stupid. Did she think that if she ignored him, he would go away?

  He reopened Protonmail and clicked on the icon to send a new e-mail. There was no way of telling whether she’d actually received the e-mail or not. He could use the read receipt function, but if she declined to send one, then he would get nothing. Plus, it smacked of desperation. He needed something subtler.

  Ronnie opened up Paint on the computer and created a one pixel by one pixel image which he saved to the desktop. Then he navigated to a website hosting package that he had carefully set up a while ago though an intermediary but never used—he’d had to change his original plan because of the police in the United Kingdom, so it sat dormant, unused, and untraceable. He placed the tiny image onto a blank webpage and saved it before copying the web address of the image. Finally, he inserted the same address as a piece of code into the e-mail he was about to compose. It was perfect. She wouldn’t see any trace of the image unless she looked at the source code of the e-mail—which was unlikely—but when she opened the e-mail, his website host would register the fact that the image had been downloaded.

  Grinning to himself, Ronnie glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no-one could see his screen before navigating back to his photograph collection. He selected a photograph of Philip that wasn’t particularly explicit and attached it to the e-mail. It was much tamer than the ones he had sent her in the post, but clearly showed the slut’s husband and a young girl. A very young girl.

  His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he considered the message he was about to send. It needed to have the right tone so that she knew he could be trusted, but at the same time, should be feared. In the end, he decided on something simple.

  We need to chat, or the next one’s going to the newspapers.

  19

  Annette lay in bed, the duvet wrapped around her legs. She had been tossing and turning for the best part of a couple of hours, but couldn’t get to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the photographs of Philip on the back of her eyelids. Even though they were shredded and burned, they hadn’t gone away. Annette couldn’t un-see them.

  In a sense, she wasn’t surprised. Horrified and sickened, yes, but not surprised. Philip had always had a nasty streak, sexually speaking. He’d managed to hide it well, at least until they were married, but the veneer he put over the top of his desires was fairly thin and soon disappeared.

  It had started with what had seemed at the time to be fairly normal role-playing games. That wasn’t something that Annette necessarily enjoyed, but he was her husband, so she went along with it at first. She would be a secretary, and he would be the boss. Then, she would be a secretary who had done something wrong, and needed to make up for it. Then a secretary who had done something awful and needed to be punished.

  Annette had drawn the line when Philip had ordered some handcuffs from the internet, suggesting that they would add a new level of fun to their ‘games’. Except they weren’t games. Not for her, anyway.

  “I’m not doing that, Philip,” she had said at the time when he had produced them. He had been to the pub for a drink with his mates, and pulled them out of his pocket with a lewd smile. “I’m drawing the line at that sort of nonsense.” She was standing in the lounge of their house and had turned to walk into the kitchen. When she turned around to see what he was doing, that had been when he had hit her for the first time.

  It wasn’t a punch, but a slap. A hard slap across the cheek with an open hand. The force of it made her gasp in pain, and her hand flew up to her face. As Annette stared at him, open-mouthed and not able to comprehend what he had just done, she felt the handcuffs clicking around her wrist, covering up the small Celtic tattoo she had on the inside of it that he hated. He’d spun her round, wrenching her other hand behind her and cuffing that wrist too, before he manhandled her upstairs and onto the bed. Her biggest mistake, Annette thought as she stared at the ceiling above her trying to wipe the memory of that awful night from her mind, was not leaving him the minute he took the bloody handcuffs off.

  She got to her feet and made her way downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink of water. “Sod it,” she muttered when she reached into a cupboard for a glass. A few seconds later, she was sitting in her lounge, the glass full to the brim with wine.

  As she sipped her drink, Annette’s mind wandered back to the meeting with the police the previous day. The policewoman had been as nervous as anything, and Annette thought that she’d not delivered many messages like the one she’d delivered to her before. Bad news messages. Ones that would change people’s lives forever in an instant.

  Laura had been fantastic. While the police were still in the house, she had made a phone call to a friend of hers who was, according to Laura, quite the expert in cases like this one. Missing presumed dead cases. Her friend was going to e-mail Laura all the details, and Laura would come round at some point in the next few days to go over all the paperwork with Annette.

  When Gareth had come round the other day with the young lawyer in tow, Annette had watched them both closely, despite the circumstances. Working in children’s services meant that Annette had to deal with people day in and day out, and she was very good at reading them. Or so she thought. She’d missed a few tricks with Philip, but maybe he just hid it better than most people did?

  Laura liked Gareth, that much was obvious. She liked him a lot. But her big brother was too stupid to see that, or if he did realise, he was too stupid to do anything about it.

  20

  “Morning, Dave,” Gareth said as he walked into his office first thing on Wednesday morning. It was just after half-past seven in the morning but, as usual, Dave had got in first. One thing Gareth wasn’t was a morning person, but he was trying to be better than he had been.

  “Morning, boss,” Dave replied. He was in his early twenties and could
be described as a geek, both in terms of his dress sense and also his natural understanding of computers and all things electronic. The latter was why Gareth employed him, not for his black Pacman t-shirt and ripped jeans.

  “Is Charlotte in yet?” Gareth asked as he made his way to his desk.

  “She’s out the back, putting her war paint on. With a trowel,” Dave replied. Gareth grinned as he pressed the button on the back of the large Mac on his desk, an identical model to the one Dave was staring at.

  “Oi, I heard that,” a woman’s voice came through a door leading to the small kitchenette at the rear of Gareth’s compact office space. He looked at Dave, who had a cheese-eating grin on his face. His teeth were almost too white, and as straight as a movie star’s. They’d not always looked like that, though. Gareth had paid for the lad to have some expensive orthodontic work in return for some favours he had done in the past.

  A few seconds later, Charlotte came through the door to the kitchenette like a miniature whirlwind. She and Dave made an odd couple, but in many ways a perfect one. Charlotte compensated for Dave’s innate shyness by being just over the top about everything. The brightness of the clothes she wore, her high-pitched voice, the rapidity with which she spoke—it was all dialled up to eleven, and Gareth loved her for it.

  “Right then, Mr Big Cheese. Today, the only thing in your diary is an appointment this afternoon with a fish and chip restaurant in Yarmouth. The manager there’s convinced one of his employees is having too many chips from the fryer, so to speak, so he wants some covert surveillance set up. You’ve got to be there before three, though. He opens at six so wants it all in place by then. David’s already got eyes on the tills.” Gareth raised his eyebrows. He always suggested to clients that they allowed his firm access to their electronic till systems when they were investigating this sort of thing, but they rarely agreed.

  “You have got permission, I take it, Dave?” There was no reply from behind the screen. “Dave?”

  “Um, I just thought it would be worth making sure we can access them, just in case they say yes. It’ll save time.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Dave,” Gareth said, irritated. “How many times have I told you? That’s against the bloody law.” He knew that Dave didn’t see it that way, but had to make the point, any way.

  “So, till number three is the interesting one, boss,” Dave continued, almost as if he hadn’t heard Gareth. “There’re a lot of transactions being cancelled. Last night, someone ordered cod and chips twice, three battered sausages with a small chips, and a pickled egg at eight thirty-three. Two seconds later, the void button was pressed.”

  His irritation gone, Gareth walked to look at Dave’s screen. The lad was right, but then again, he usually was.

  “You don’t really need to go all the way to Yarmouth, Gareth,” Dave said, pointing at the screen. “It’s all here.” It was a common enough scam. When the till was counted up at the end of the evening, the money from the cancelled transactions would end up in someone’s back pocket.

  “It won’t stand up in court, Dave. Because you’ve obtained it illegally.”

  “A chippy’s not going to take someone to court for nicking, boss. They’ll just fire the thieving bastard.”

  “Oh,” Charlotte said from her desk. “The Old Bill phoned.”

  “What?” Gareth said, looking up at her. She looked back at him and pouted. “Was it about Annette?”

  “No, it was that Griffiths bloke. He wants you to have a look at a scene in Costessey with one of his coppers.” She pronounced the suburb’s name as Cossy, which caught out many people visiting the area. “I’ve got the address here. I said you’ll be there for half eight. The Old Bill will meet you there.”

  Thirty minutes later, Gareth was behind the wheel of his Hilux truck with Dave in the passenger seat next to him. He’d asked if he could tag along, and Gareth had agreed. At least the lad would get some Vitamin D one day this week.

  “I meant what I said, Dave,” Gareth said as they made their way toward Costessey. The sat-nav dangling from the windscreen told him they were only a few minutes away from the address that Charlotte had given him. “About the tills.”

  “I know, I know,” Dave replied. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Gareth smiled, knowing the young man was lying through his teeth. “Charlotte’s such a bloody snitch, though.”

  “Dave, what I don’t know about can’t hurt me, can it?” Gareth said, “but you’re right. She’d be no good at poker, would she?”

  “I think it’s this one,” Dave replied, pointing at a semi-detached house with a white van outside. On the side of the van were the words Norfolk Police Forensic Services in discreet black letters. Gareth parked behind it and got out of the truck just as a woman walked toward him.

  “Mr Dawson?” she said. “We met the other day. I’m DC Hunter.”

  “Kate, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep, that’s me.” She extended a hand for him to shake, and he was surprised at the strength of her grip.

  “This is Dave, my assistant.” Kate shook Dave’s hand and flashed them both a brief smile.

  “It’s this way,” she said, walking toward a path that led down the side of the house.

  “Bloody hell, boss,” Dave whispered as they followed her down the path. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

  A few moments later, they were looking at a broken window in the rear of the house.

  “So, we got a call from the householder,” Kate said, pointing at the window. “He came back from work last night to find this, but claims he was too disturbed to call us until this morning. Spent the night sitting in the kitchen with a poker waiting for the burglars to come back so he could give them the good news. Just mind the flowerbed—there’s a footprint in it.”

  Gareth glanced down to see the footprint the policewoman had just referred to. It was large, the tread of the shoe visible in the soft earth of a flowerbed under the window. Kate opened the back door and led them into the kitchen. On the inside of the broken window, shards of glass littered the worktop.

  “Did they take much?” Gareth asked, inspecting the glass on the worktop.

  “Cleaned him out, allegedly,” Kate replied. “He had a lot of money in the house. Didn’t trust banks is what he’s saying.”

  “I take it you think it’s a setup?”

  “I quite like him for it. Whoever broke in managed to find the money under his mattress straight away and didn’t bother nicking much else apart from a brand new iPhone he’d only bought a few days before.”

  “Was it really under his mattress?” Dave asked, receiving a withering look from Kate in return. Gareth leaned over to inspect the back door to hide the smile on his face.

  “Not literally, no,” the policewoman replied. “It was in a lockbox in the lounge, but the thief went straight to it.”

  “So, it’s either someone who knows the chap keeps his life savings in a box in the lounge, or it’s an insurance job,” Gareth said, looking at Kate. She looked back at him, her eyes piercing and a slight frown on her forehead. One thing Gareth did know is that he wouldn’t want to be on the other side of an interview table from her.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you need to have another word with this chap. He’s almost certainly after the insurance money.”

  “Well, he won’t get any. There’ll be limit on the amount of cash that can be claimed for, but what makes you say that?”

  “First, if someone had climbed through that window, they managed to get over all that broken glass on the worktop without any problems. First thing they would have done would be to sweep it on the floor so they could get in.”

  “Noise?”

  “If they’ve just broken a window, they won’t be bothered about that,” Gareth replied. “But why would they break a window?”

  “Sorry, I’m not with you, Gareth,” Kate said, a quizzical expression on her face. Gareth looked at her hair, which was cut into a sh
ort bob.

  “I take it you don’t have a hair grip with hair that short?” A slow smile spread across her face as Gareth asked this. “Because if you did, I would show you how easy that lock is to pick.” He pointed at the lock on the back door. “That’s an ERA rim cylinder. Even Dave here could open that with a decent set of picks. Why would you break a window and risk someone hearing when you can go in nice and quietly instead?”

  “Thank you very much, Mr Dawson,” Kate said, her smile fading. Gareth didn’t envy the next person she was going to be speaking to. “That is very useful indeed.”

  21

  Laura opened the door to her office and, after stooping to pick up the mail that had piled up, walked inside. A ray of bright sunshine was flowing through the window, highlighting dust motes in the air. The thick pile carpet on the floor of the office didn’t help, but Paul was insistent that it created the right impression for their clients, as did the antique furniture dotted about the interior. Laura stopped and tilted her head to one side, listening. Something wasn’t quite right. It took her a moment to realise what it was—the grandfather clock that had pride of place in the corner of the room had stopped, its ornate hands stuck on five minutes before three o’clock.

  The air in the office smelt musty, so she crossed to the window and forced it open. Outside, the traffic noise from rush hour in the city centre of Norwich was loud and frantic, but Laura wanted the fresh air more than peace and quiet. She opened the door to the small office that Paul sat in to let some fresh air in there as well, but decided against opening the window in there.

  She flicked on the kettle in the small kitchenette to make a brew for her and Paul, flicking through the post as she did so. Laura separated out the post into two piles—one for Paul and one for her. The pile for Paul was much larger, and not much of the other handful was actually addressed to her, but to the firm.