by Seb Kirby
He took his eyes off the road as he replied, increasing the feelings of impending danger I was struggling to conceal. “It’s safe enough and we don’t have any time to lose.”
I realized that I was not going to change his mind about his driving and said no more, not wishing to interrupt his concentration any further. We listened to the radio in silence.
It was one of those pop music stations that plays old hits interspersed with phone-in discussions and news headlines. The DJ played the role of shock jock, inciting callers to disagree with his illiberal views. The hits were of the kind that appear in the oft repeated movie and TV ad cliché where a carload of punters who should know better sing along out of tune and the disrespected viewer is supposed to take this as a sign that they’re having a good time. But we were in no mood to sing along.
The music stopped for the news headlines.
The second headline chilled me to the bone.
The body of missing teenager Cathy Newsome was found by a man walking his dog near railway sidings in Dagenham. Police say that her family has been informed.
Brogan could see I was shaking. “You’ve gone white. Are you OK?”
As the headlines finished and the music started up again, I was struggling to find a reply. I wanted to tell him what I knew about the missing girls, the reason why news of Cathy’s death had come as such a shock. Right up until this moment, a part of me had been holding on to the hope that Cathy would be located safe and well. And that, after all, my visions of her death were just that – imaginings with no basis in reality. Now this last vestige of hope had been taken from me.
But I didn’t have a clear enough idea of what Brogan’s reaction was going to be if I told him. I didn’t know enough about who and what he’d become since our days together as children. I didn’t know if I could trust him.
I decided to take the chance.
I told him about the girls.
He turned off the radio and listened as he drove.
When I’d finished there was a long silence before he replied. “I’m glad you told me. A man shouldn’t have to carry that kind of thing around on his own. Who else knows?”
“You mean about the visions?”
“Yes, about what you’ve just told me.”
I understood the importance of his question. “Janet. She was the first I told. Then Mr. Healey, my medic. Oh, and I tried to tell the police. DI Ives.”
“Did any of them believe you?”
“One way or another they’ve all tried to find a way to tell me that I must have invented the whole thing.”
Brogan paused as he pulled into the outside lane to overtake a tailback of slower moving trucks. “I think they might have to reconsider now.”
CHAPTER 54
Ives picked up the phone.
It was DS Lesley. “You should come and hear this, Steve.”
In the interview room, Lesley was seated opposite a tall, thin blonde with her hair in ringlets.
Lesley introduced her to Ives. “This is Meryl Price, sir. She’s agreed to tell you what she’s just been telling me.”
Ives sat next to Lesley and prepared to listen.
Her voice was quiet. It was clear she was uncomfortable in these surroundings. “I don’t want to waste your time and I’m not used to saying anything to the police but I can’t keep it to myself any longer. Not after hearing what happened to Cathy.”
Ives prompted her. “Cathy Newsome?”
She nodded. “So young and such a waste.” She paused. “There are other missing girls, aren’t there?”
“What makes you say that?”
“What I’ve heard.” She shuddered. “There’s a guy out there. Boasting about his kills. I think it could be he’s responsible for Cathy and for others.”
Ives held up a hand. “Slow down. How did you get to know this?”
“A friend of mine. Worked with me at Diamond Escorts.”
“She has a name?”
“Stella. Stella DaSilva.”
DI Lesley whispered in Ives’ ear. “Stella DaSilva. I’ve read the reports. She died. A heroin overdose.”
Ives turned back towards Meryl. “And what exactly did she tell you?”
“That she had a regular client, someone close to her, someone frightening her. Seems it was a come on for him to tell her how he’d killed these girls. At first she thought it was just a weird fantasy but when he kept talking about the murders in such detail, she began to think his stories might be true. She told me she was scared of him. That she might be next.”
“You say what convinced her was she was told all the details. How did the victims die?”
“She told me he said he strangled them.”
“Names? Did DaSilva mention the names of any of the women he said he’d killed?”
“I think she said one of them was called Rebecca. Might have been Rebecca Francis or Rebecca French. Another was called Felicity, I’m almost sure of that.”
Something unspoken, a long knowing look, passed between Ives and Lesley as they heard these words.
Ives pressed on. “No surname for Felicity?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“And mention of Cathy?”
“Cathy, yes, I thought you’d know that. It’s why I’m here.”
“But no surname?”
“No.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“I don’t think Stella told me anything else. But she kept a diary, I know that for a fact. There could be more in there.”
“And you’re sure that’s all you can tell us?”
She nodded. “I just wanted to make sure someone knows.”
Ives thanked her. “We appreciate you taking the time to come forward.”
Lesley returned after showing Meryl out. “Worth hearing, sir?”
Ives stretched his arms out at his sides. “Yes, we need to check it out.”
CHAPTER 55
Brogan’s apartment in Shadwell was small and cramped but it was what he could afford. He told me it was a good place to live since it was near his work and he could take the Docklands Light Railway from Shadwell direct to Canary Wharf.
He showed me the two packing cases he was given when he’d asked for Della’s things. He tried not to look distressed as he showed them to me. “Strange to see it like this. All that’s left of her. Can’t say it amounts to much or that I’ll leave much more behind myself.”
I tried to lift him by concentrating on the reason we were here. “You have Della’s diary?”
He handed the book to me. As Janet expected, it was a decoy that screamed this is my secret diary at anyone who would come looking for such a thing. The cover was synthetic white leather and there was a telltale brass colored metal lock attached. “Anything important in there?”
“Nothing. Just useless information. Hairdresser and medical appointments, memos to self, shopping lists. Nothing that would have a hold on anybody.”
I started leafing through. “So, if Janet is right and the real information Della was collecting is on an online journal, we’re looking for a login and a password.”
“If she went online.”
“Where else would be safer? And, if Janet is right again, Della will have wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to be locked out of her own journal if she ever forgot those details. Like so many others, she’d have written down the login and password.”
Brogan stared at the packing cases once more. “And we have to hope the details are somewhere here.”
We began with the decoy diary itself. Maybe she’d used that. But after searching every page in minute detail we drew a blank. Brogan leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes. “There’s nothing here.”
I resolved to remain positive. “Then we start on the cases.”
Della was not a bookish person. She’d left just three airline thriller paperbacks. We scoured the pages of each and found nothing to suggest that she’d added anything to them in her own hand.
&nb
sp; She was a handbag person. There were twenty designer bags, most high end. We searched the interior of each and every one of them, becoming optimistic when Brogan pulled out party invitations and paper scraps that could have been used to conceal the material we wanted. But to no avail.
Above all, Della was a clothes person. The majority of the monetary value in what she’d left to the world was here in the designer dresses that were so much a part of the glamour in her life.
I looked at Brogan as we laid the clothes out on the carpet. “Where do we start?”
“Not many pockets.”
I agreed. “I don’t think they feature much in haute couture.”
Nevertheless we searched, though we had little confidence this was going to lead anywhere.
It was midday when Brogan made a discovery. He held up the shiny silver party dress that Della had worn when he first met her. “She told me this was her favorite.” When he turned it inside out, he discovered a secret pocket, accessible only from that side.
He reached into the pocket and pulled out a wrap of brown powder. He held his head in his hands. “They told me she was an addict. I didn’t believe them.”
I tried to console him but he pulled away. “She must have kept it there as a last resort.” He clenched his fists. “Such a waste. If I could get my hands on the lowlife that supplied her I wouldn’t have to spend too long thinking about what to do to him.”
He handed the wrap to me. A small piece of paper, a cloakroom ticket stub, was beneath it. “It’s here.”
I showed him what was written on the back of the ticket stub.
DaSilva91919191
Bashtree_1995
He smiled. “The kind of information you could easily forget.”
“She remembered the tree as something important to her.”
“Which means?”
“I think we have something, Marshall. The first would be the login and the second the password.”
“So where do we log in?”
He pulled out an old laptop PC from under the coffee table and turned it on. It took an age to power up. “It’s slow but it gets there.”
“You have a connection?”
“It’s a modem but, yes, it’s connected.”
“OK. First, search for online journal.”
He hit the keys and pulled up a listing. “There look to be dozens.”
“But ranked in popularity.”
We started at the top of the list, called up each site and typed in Della’s login and password. The fifth site down, SurePen, opened to reveal a page with an icon on it that said Della’s Journal.
We clicked on the icon and we were in.
On the left hand side of the page was a listing of the posts she’d made. I scrolled down. There was one for each day, going back over two years. I clicked on one of the posts. It was long and detailed. “It’s going to take time to find what we’re looking for.”
Brogan looked more contented than I’d seen him since we’d met in Lichfield. “She told me what she had in there. It’s going to point us to her killer, I’m sure of that.”
This didn’t last long.
Brogan’s laptop died.
We were looking at a blank screen.
He answered before I had time to ask. “The battery. It’s been on the blink. Looks like it’s gone for good.” He was becoming angry once more. “And before you ask, Tom, yes I should have bought a new machine and no on the money I make at Canada One I can’t afford to. We’re not all living in listed property.”
I recognized the old enmity that had been between us from the moment we met as kids. The rivalry that was the real centre of the bond between us.
I chose not to retaliate. “OK. Blame me. I left home without my tablet. We could have logged onto Della’s journal from there.”
“So, we find a web café and read the diary there.”
I had a better idea. “That’s too public. I’ll go into my office at the newspaper. Log on there. I’ll print the whole diary out and bring it back here so we can both go over it.”
“You have the login?”
I checked that the ticket stub was safe in my pocket. “I have it.”
CHAPTER 56
With care, so as to not disturb the piles of documents set out on the long table at the center of the Ives’ office, DS Lesley placed the file she was carrying in the last available space.
“As you requested, sir, here’s what we have on Stella DaSilva.”
“You’ve read the post mortem report?”
“Not much to be made of that. Looks like straightforward accidental death. Overdose. Opiates in the bloodstream - enough to kill a sumo wrestler let alone a nine stone woman.”
Ives picked up the report and started leafing through it. “Do you think anyone could ever intake that much heroin before passing out?”
“Hard to say, sir. It wouldn’t be the first time that some novice dealer got hold of a pure batch of the stuff and didn’t cut it properly. Addicts take what they think is just enough for their normal fix when in fact it’s enough to kill them.”
“Any other indications?”
Lesley pointed to the relevant page. “She did have abnormally high levels of insulin in her blood.”
“So, she could have been injected with insulin first. Then, once she’s passed out, the heroin?”
“There’s no other evidence to support that, Steve, but it’s a possibility. Or she could have been an undiagnosed diabetic.”
Ives rubbed his chin. “What else do we know about Stella DaSilva?”
Lesley brushed back a wisp of hair from her face. “Not much. Her real name is Della Brogan. As Meryl Price told us, she worked for Diamond Escorts. Which makes her a high-class call girl in all but name. It seems she was well known on the high life circuit, seen in the company of wealthy men, the likes of Tyrone Montague, the investment broker. Even made the columns of some of the less serious women’s magazines. No criminal record and that’s remarkable as she was in and out of children’s homes for the best part of her life. Her possessions were claimed by her brother, Marshall.”
“Anything more?”
“If you don’t mind me asking, can we afford to be this interested, sir? OK, she has a client who leads her to think he’s a serial killer, but in the line of work she’s in, she’s bound to hear that sort of stuff and worse from the fantasists and losers that make up her client list. She looks like a side issue. Unless you’re saying Markland was that client?”
“We don’t know that but you’d have to say that the names given for the girls by Meryl Price are eerily similar to those given to us by Markland. Too close to be any kind of coincidence.” Ives paused to take a drink from the water bottle beside him. “By the way, why haven’t we interviewed Markland again?”
“He’s no longer at home in Lichfield. There’s an alert out for him, but nothing back as yet, sir.”
“And his wife?”
“She says she doesn’t know where he is. I spoke with her on the phone. She was genuinely distressed. I think I believe her. I suggest we have a man there with her full time.”
Ives nodded his agreement. “So, back to Stella DaSilva.”
“Meryl Price mentioned some kind of record that DaSilva was keeping. Or should we be calling her Brogan? A diary or journal of some kind.” Lesley paused. “Don’t forget her brother. It might have been in the things of hers that he collected.”
Ives was pleased. “OK. Find out what you can about him.”
Lesley returned ten minutes later with what she’d found. “Marshall Brogan. Juvenile offender, in and out of children’s homes like his sister. He’s been straight since going into the Merchant Navy. We have an address in the East End. And a place of work. He’s a security guard at Canary Wharf. Works out of Canada One.”
“OK. Let’s talk to Brogan.”
Ives paused. “Anything else?”
“The other girls. The ones mentioned by Markland and now by Price. You want to sa
y they’re more than just missing?”
Ives shook his head. “We can’t be sure, not yet. It’s too early to say we’re looking for a serial killer.”
Lesley smiled.
Ives knew that she’d made her point.
CHAPTER 57
I found that my desk in The Herald office had been used as a file store and general drop off point for office junk while I’d been away and spent the first hours tidying and organizing my workspace.
When I started up my computer, I was surprised to find that the email stream was as full with messages as if I’d never been away. It was the main means that the workload of the team was managed. When Hamilton sent a message, he copied it to every member of the team, including me. When any member of the team replied, it was habit to copy in all the other members from the initial message. On an average day each member spent at least an hour going through the messages, sifting out the dross of services and products no one wanted, dealing with their own personal messages that had found their way onto their inbox and then, responding to what was important. But now, here I was looking at the accumulated workflow of the team for the whole time I’d been away.
I had to fight off a feeling of hopelessness that the system somehow continued independent of those it was meant to be supporting. As if somehow we were working for it and it continued whether we paid it attention or not as the system continued racking up messages oblivious to the fact that we weren’t there.
Then I realized that what I had before me was an asset as much as a problem. If anyone had been sending sensitive one-to-ones to other members of the team, those messages were not going to have been copied to all but the majority of messages sent were here and I could follow the flow of the investigation as it had been going on in my absence. At least in outline. From the meetings called, the reports filed, the minutes attached, I could start to build a picture of what I’d been missing.
But those missing weeks had produced a flood of messages and I knew I was going to have to be patient in allowing time to go through them all.
Yet I knew I needed to concentrate on what was of prime importance in my coming here.