‘We get Grace to poke around in Daley’s computer.’
‘Why on earth should we—’
‘You’ve seen what she can do. She’s incredible. Anything that HCU can do, she can do better . . .’
‘Isn’t that a line from Annie Get Your Gun?’
‘And faster. If there’s anything to be found, she’ll find it. You know she will.’
Blunt thinks about it. But not for long enough. ‘Absolutely not. It’s not her job. It wouldn’t be fair to give her that responsibility. Can you imagine the outcry if she messed it up?’
‘She won’t. She can do this. I trust her.’ He pauses. ‘Look, how about this? We bring the computer to Grace just for an hour or so, or whatever it takes to dump all the files onto another machine, and then we send it straight to HCU. Nobody even needs to know she’s looked at it.’
‘Not exactly true, Cody. I’m not covering this up. Chain of evidence. There are rules we have to follow.’
‘Okay, okay. But you get the gist.’
Blunt rubs her hands up and down the arms of her chair. ‘And she won’t screw up the computer? Destroy whatever might be on there?’
‘You’ve seen how she operates. The woman is at one with technology.’
‘What if she doesn’t want to do it? I’m not going to force her into this.’
Cody says nothing, and Blunt reads it for what it is.
She says, ‘You’ve already asked her, haven’t you?’
Cody finds a spot on the wall that suddenly seems fascinating.
‘Nathan, why do I get the feeling that this is somehow connected with your sudden impulse to go after Daley?’
Cody looks back at her. ‘Do you really want me to answer that question?’
Blunt shakes her head, more in disbelief than in response to Cody. ‘I sometimes wonder who runs this team. There are certain members who seem to feel they can do whatever the hell they like.’
Cody shows her his best boyish smile. ‘I’ll take that as a yes to involving Grace. Thank you, ma’am.’
He starts to drag his body towards the door.
‘Just a minute,’ says Blunt.
Cody turns. ‘Ma’am?’
Blunt hits a key on the computer keyboard, continuing the video, and Cody watches himself on the screen. Sees how he abandoned his chair so abruptly and stumbled out of the interview room, as if he felt an urgent need to throw up.
‘What was that, Nathan?’
She does that sometimes. Calls him by his first name. Usually when she feels the need to be particularly motherly. He finds it disarming every time.
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘That wasn’t the graceful and professional exit I expect of one of my detectives. Looked to me like you lost it. And just before you asked Daley about the computer, it was as if you zoned out for a few seconds. Would I be wrong?’
Damn, thinks Cody. Was it that obvious?
He wonders if these final few seconds of the video are the bit on which Blunt was focusing her attention prior to his entrance.
‘Yes, ma’am. You’d be wrong.’
‘Nathan, we’ve been through this before—’
‘The ankle, ma’am. And the painkillers. I started to feel a bit spaced out. I’m fine again now.’
She stares at him for a long time. He holds her gaze, knowing that a glance away will give her the truth she already knows.
‘Go and talk to Grace,’ she says quietly.
Cody turns and, for the third time in the space of less than an hour, unknowingly leaves a woman thinking long and hard about him.
47
Grace stares at the lump of metal and plastic before her. She knows how important it is.
‘This is it, then,’ she says.
‘This is it,’ says Cody. ‘This is what might hold the key to putting a serial killer behind bars.’
Grace slides a finger gently across the closed lid of the laptop. It’s an old, heavy, bulky model – a veritable dinosaur by current standards. But it’ll do its job. More specifically, it can hold information – vast amounts of the stuff. And buried somewhere in all those binary digits could be the traces left by a murderer.
She finds it a sobering thought.
‘You ran this past DCI Blunt?’ she asks. ‘She’s okay with it?’
Cody – the man who said he could kiss her – says, ‘One hundred per cent.’
‘How? I mean, how did you manage to persuade her not to leave it to HCU?’
Cody shrugs. ‘I told her the truth.’
‘Which is?’
‘That you’re better than they are.’
And with that, he hobbles away again.
She waits until he is out of sight, and only then does she allow herself to smile. She smiles so hard that her face squeezes tears from her eyes.
This is it. Her recognition. Up until now, she has done all the pushing. Going against her nature, she made herself intervene whenever she could to make herself useful, to make people aware of her abilities. And now all that awkwardness and embarrassment has paid off. Someone has come to her. She didn’t volunteer this time. She didn’t draw attention to herself. Someone with a problem wondered who could solve it, and came up with the name Grace Meade. Ranked her even above others who would normally be the first to jump to mind.
It’s a big moment.
And now she has to live up to expectations. Has to show that their faith in her has not been misplaced.
Cautiously, as if dealing with an unexploded bomb, Grace slides the laptop towards her and goes in search of darkness.
*
Blunt’s office. Grouped around the desk are Blunt herself, plus Cody and Webley. Confronted by these expectant faces, Grace feels as though she’s in a job interview. But she is more excited than nervous. She is ready to knock their socks off. Even Cody doesn’t know what’s coming. On the way in here, she gave him the thumbs-up to let him know it’s good news, but she wants to surprise him most of all.
‘As you know, I’ve been asked to take a look at Colin Daley’s laptop computer, to see if I can find any incriminating evidence. Prior to this, information on two of the victims was found online. In the case of Cassie Harris there is a news article mentioning the fact that she was a prostitute who frequented the Metropolitan cathedral, while Sue Halligan put up several blog posts about herself. With this in mind, a natural starting point for my investigation was to search for any indication that Daley’s computer was used to access those online sites.’
She pauses, and sees that Cody is nodding and smiling, clearly pleased that she has manoeuvred things into this line of inquiry without compromising its legality.
‘Just so I’m clear,’ says Blunt, ‘you’re telling us that by poking around inside Daley’s computer, you can tell which bits of the web he has visited. Have I got that right?’
‘Yes, to an extent. It’s never complete, but a history of recent website accesses can often be found on a computer.’
‘So your theory was that the history on Daley’s machine might prove that he used it to read up about at least two of the victims?’
‘That’s correct, yes.’
‘And you could tell whether that was done before or after their deaths?’
‘Yes.’
Blunt looks to her colleagues, then back to Grace. ‘Well, that all sounds pretty impressive. Of course, it wouldn’t prove that Daley killed anyone, but it would certainly be valuable circumstantial evidence.’
Everybody is nodding and smiling now. Cody looks ready to start rubbing his hands together in glee.
‘So,’ says Blunt. ‘What did you find?’
Grace waits a couple of seconds. Drum roll, please, she thinks. She sees Cody tilt his head towards her, urging her to deliver the devastating announcement.
‘Nothing,’ she says.
Cody’s brow creases in puzzlement. The other two faces go blank.
‘Nothing,’ says Blunt.
‘No. Unfo
rtunately, I haven’t managed to find anything on Daley’s computer that confirms he accessed either the article on Cassie Harris or the blog site maintained by Sue Halligan.’
Cody’s utter disappointment almost screams across the room at her. Sorry, Cody, she thinks.
‘Wait,’ says Cody. ‘I’m confused. So Daley didn’t access those sites?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that evidence of such accesses is not present on his computer, as far as I can tell. As I mentioned before, the historical record on a computer is never complete. If, for example, Daley did access those web pages but it was some time ago, the computer cache may have been cleared since then.’
She detects a darkening in Cody’s mood – a suggestion that he is feeling duped and teased. Blunt and Webley also seem perplexed by the negative findings. It occurs to Grace that they’re probably wondering why she went to all the trouble of setting up a computer next to her if she’s not going to use it.
But it’s what Grace wanted. Take them down, then bring them back up. Act like the magician whose trick seems to go disastrously wrong, but then turns into the greatest illusion ever. Much more of an impact that way. So here goes . . .
‘So much for that theory,’ she says, adding a slight laugh to make light of her own apparent ineptitude. ‘But then I started looking elsewhere.’
The faces brighten. They understand the game here. It’s dawning on them that they’ve just been softened up for the showstopper.
She continues: ‘I found a number of files Daley had tried to hide. He moved them into one of the operating system folders, so they wouldn’t be obvious if you looked in the normal places people keep their documents. To make them look more like system files, he changed their names and file types, but it was amateurish. It was pretty obvious to me that the files didn’t belong there. He’d also encrypted the contents, but the algorithm he used was pretty old and insecure. It didn’t take much to revert them back to the originals.’
‘Grace,’ says Blunt, ‘please remember that some of us still have trouble finding the computer’s on switch. What are these files you found?’
‘It’s easier if I show you,’ she answers.
She turns to the computer next to her, then clicks the mouse, opening up a new window. It displays a video. Grace knows she doesn’t need to comment now: the video will speak for itself.
The scene is the changing room next to the school gymnasium. It is obvious that the recording has been made from a fixed camera positioned high up in a corner of the room. The girls are blissfully unaware of its presence as they laugh and chat in various states of undress. Now and again, girls cross the room from the shower area, towels wrapped around them.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ says Cody.
He’s uncomfortable with this, thinks Grace. He’s a good, moral man who doesn’t want to see these images. He would probably rather watch a post-mortem.
She decides to save him, and halts the video. ‘There’s a lot more,’ she says. ‘There are also videos taken in the shower room itself.’
Cody lets out a groan. Drops his gaze to the floor.
‘I know,’ says Grace. ‘It’s awful. But at least now you can throw the book at him.’
When Cody slowly raises his face again, she expects to see that he has managed to put his disgust behind him, and that he will be focused on the positives. We’ve got the bastard, he will be thinking, and we’ve got Grace Meade to thank for it.
But Cody’s countenance is grim. It draws heavy clouds over Grace’s optimism. Her preparedness for victory celebrations suddenly seems wasted.
He says, ‘Grace, what you’ve done here is really valuable. We can make sure Daley never does this kind of thing again. But don’t you see? It also gives him a reason for running away from us, a reason for being scared of us. A reason that’s not related to the murders.’
48
They call Prosser in first, to disclose what they’ve found on the computer. Prosser gives nothing away in his expression; he knows how to play this game. He watches the videos and he takes his notes and he tells the detectives that he will need time to talk to his client. But Cody knows what’s going through Prosser’s mind. It’s the same thought that won’t leave Cody’s mind – that this is a double-edged sword. It damns Daley, but it also exonerates him.
The detectives can only wait then. They pace and they drink coffee and they try to distract themselves with talk of the weather and Christmas and sport, while all the while their eyes keep drifting to the drab brown door of the consultation room, behind which Colin Daley and his lawyer are feverishly working on their strategy.
When they finally reappear, Cody feels a cramping in his guts. He has the sickening expectation that he is about to learn he has won a battle but lost a war.
He signals Webley. She comes over to join him, and then they escort Daley and Prosser back to the interview room.
Round two, thinks Cody, remembering Blunt’s boxing analogy.
He sets up the recorder, makes the usual announcements.
‘Colin,’ he says, ‘as I mentioned to you in our previous interview, we have seized your computer under the terms of our warrant, and I have to tell you that we have found some incriminating evidence on it.’
‘That was very quick work, Sergeant,’ says Prosser. ‘One would almost think that you fully expected to find something there.’
‘We have some very good staff,’ says Cody. He looks at Daley again. ‘Specifically, we found some video files that you had attempted to disguise. Would you care to comment?’
Prosser says, ‘Let’s not play guessing games. If you have something you want to discuss, get it out in the open and we’ll discuss it.’
Cody opens a file. Takes half a dozen images out of it. Lines them up in front of Daley.
‘These are stills extracted from just a couple of the many videos found on your computer. Your computer, Colin. Now, I’ll ask you again, what would you like to tell us about these videos?’
Daley looks to Prosser. Prosser nods. Cody knows what’s coming next.
‘No comment,’ says Daley.
He knows, thinks Cody. He knows we’ve got him bang to rights on this one. Going the ‘no comment’ route is his best chance of avoiding saying something that might trip him up.
‘Really? You don’t want to comment? I’m giving you a chance to explain all this away, and you don’t want to take it?’
‘No comment.’
Damn, thinks Cody.
‘All right, Colin. On your head be it. I should tell you that we’re sending some people over to the school right now. We’re going to retrieve the cameras. Any idea how they might have got there, Colin?’
‘No comment.’
‘I mean, somebody must have put them there. Somebody with access to the changing rooms and the shower. Someone who had the skills and the opportunity to install the cameras so they couldn’t be seen. Someone who could hide the wiring in the walls. Not many people in the school who could do all that, are there, Colin?’
‘No comment.’
‘You could, though. Piece of cake to a handyman such as yourself. Well, we’ll take a look. Probably find your fingerprints everywhere, I would think.’
He leaves that with Daley, and notices how it sets the man’s leg trembling again.
‘And then there’s the matter of how those videos ended up on your computer. I don’t see how that could happen unless you did it yourself, can you, Colin? No, it’s an easy one, this. You can say “no comment” all you like; all you’re doing is making it easier for the jury to work out that you’ve got no defence.’
Daley wants to say something, but a sharp glance from his solicitor causes him to bite his lip. His leg continues to talk, though.
Cody leans forward. ‘Have you always liked little girls, Colin? Always been a pervert, a paedophile?’
‘I’m not a—’
‘Colin!’ says Prosser, shutting his client up.
Webley says, ‘You don’t have to do what he tells you. You do realise that, don’t you, Colin? You can speak to us if you want. Anything he says is advice, that’s all. You can choose to ignore it. You can choose to explain your actions.’
Daley stares at her, his eyes moist. He wants to cry, thinks Cody. He wants to let it all out. He wants an end to whatever monstrous forces are tearing him up inside.
So come on. Let it spill out. Open the floodgates. The videos first, to pave the way. Then the murders. That’s how it went, isn’t it, Colin? That’s how it escalated. One bad thing leads to another, even more evil thing. Tell us about it, Colin. Make us understand.
‘No comment,’ says Daley.
*
Why does it always have to go like this? Why, when I think I’ve done something good, something really useful, does it all have to turn to shit again?
Grace sits at her desk, staring morosely at her computer screen. In her excitement she had failed to appreciate the implications of what she had discovered. She had thought that one thing would lead naturally to another – that clear evidence of Daley’s nastiness could be used as a crowbar to prise open a door into an even murkier chasm.
But it had the opposite effect. Cody saw it immediately. He saw that door becoming firmly sealed. He saw how the route ahead became impassable.
They’ll forget me again, she thinks. I did what they asked, but it wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted more, and I can’t always give them more. I can’t give them what’s not there. So my accomplishment will fade in their minds. I will go back to being that strange computer geek at the back of the room.
Out of desperation, she is trying one more thing.
There were hundreds of video files on Daley’s laptop. Grace copied them all onto an external disk drive, but she hasn’t got time to look through them all. That would take days.
What she can do, however, is run those files through her face-recognition software. She has already used it to scour many hours of CCTV footage, so why not these recordings, too? Mary Cowper worked at the school – perhaps she will have been caught on one of Daley’s hidden cameras. Perhaps she will be seen taking part in satanic rituals, or shooting up with heroin.
Hope to Die: A gripping new serial killer thriller (The DS Nathan Cody series) Page 27