by Louise Voss
Gareth hesitated. ‘But . . . Winkler told me to speak to him first. I mean, it was him and me who saw Hammond go in that place. Me and Winkler who’ve been tailing him. Adrian said you’d step in and try to take all the credit as soon as we got our man.’ Gareth’s eyes glinted in the artificial light, damp from the emotion it took to give this speech.
‘For fuck’s sake. Can’t you see? Winkler’s using you.’
‘No! He’s the only one who recognises my potential. You treat me like the canine unit treat their dogs. Loyal, useful but dumb.’
Patrick took a step back, shocked at the turn this conversation had taken. Gareth was visibly shaking now and Patrick was reminded of an argument with Gill, when she accused him of being uncaring, of taking her for granted. At home, he always admitted that Gill had a point. But here? What had he done to make the young DS feel like this? He tried to think back, was going to suggest that they arrange a meeting to talk about it – a necessary evil of being a manager, a higher rank, the kind of touchy-feely stuff he instinctively shied away from – when Gareth said, ‘Winkler’s a better detective than you.’
A flash of anger propelled Patrick towards the younger man, until their faces were just inches apart.
‘Say that again.’
‘You heard me.’
Patrick pulled himself up to his full height. But what happened next surprised him. Instead of reaching boiling point, the anger in his veins drained away as he realised how ridiculous this was. It wasn’t really like an argument with Gill; it was like being at school.
Patrick walked away and sat down, inviting Gareth to do the same.
Gareth stared at him, breathing hard, nostrils flaring.
‘Come on, Gareth, take a seat.’
To Patrick’s relief, the other man did as he was asked. He sat stiffly, his back straight, but he appeared to be calming down.
‘We can talk about this later, OK? When emotions aren’t running so high.’
Gareth nodded reluctantly. Now he appeared embarrassed.
‘Tell me what happened at the children’s home. What did they say about Mervyn Hammond’s visit?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on, Gareth . . .’
‘No, I mean they wouldn’t say anything. The manager refused to talk about it, and the staff were obviously hiding from me. All the kids were at school, so I couldn’t talk to them.’
‘Really? That’s very . . .’
‘Suspicious.’ Gareth had relaxed a little now, his body less rigid. ‘What have they got to hide?’
Before he could reply, Patrick saw Carmella walk past the room. He stood up.
‘All right. Let’s arrange a meeting, just you and me. I’ll talk to you later. I need to talk to Carmella.’
‘OK. Boss.’
‘Good man.’
Patrick hurried out of the room, calling to Carmella. As he hurried up to her, Gareth came out of the room and walked off in the opposite direction.
‘What’s up with your man?’ Carmella asked.
‘Gareth?’
‘Yeah. He looks like you just told him you don’t want to go out with him anymore.’
Patrick sighed. ‘Come on, I’ll update you on the way to the car.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘What would you say if I told you we’re going to talk to someone about erotically charged teenage fantasies involving boy-band members . . . and vampires?’
‘That I want a transfer?’
He smiled. ‘Come on.’
StoryPad’s British office was based in a converted warehouse close to Silicon Roundabout, where many of the UK’s Internet start-ups are based. Mervyn Hammond’s office wasn’t far from here, nor was Global Sounds Music. This investigation had drawn Patrick close to a world of glamour he’d once dreamed of living in. But now he’d seen what it was really like, he half-hoped the next murder investigation would start somewhere at the other end of the glamour spectrum, like the Kennedy Estate or an old folks’ home.
Patrick filled Carmella in on what he’d learned from Chelsea Fox, that she believed Jess and Rose had collaborated on a piece of fiction on StoryPad.
‘It’s the only link between them that we’ve been able to establish so far – assuming Chelsea isn’t mistaken.’
‘But there’s no connection to Nancy Marr through StoryPad?’
‘Hmm. I don’t think she’s quite their target market. But I spoke to one of Strong’s team who confirmed that StoryPad was in Wendy’s browser history, that she’d been looking at it in the days before she was killed.’
Carmella was checking out the website on her phone as Patrick drove. ‘I remember Martin mentioning it in one of the briefings, but, apart from that, I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Nor had I. But it’s incredibly popular among teenagers, especially girls. According to the “about” page on StoryPad, they’ve got over thirty million users, and there are something like ninety million stories on there. It’s pretty straightforward, really. Users can post pieces, either short stories or whole novels, which are divided up into chapters, and other users can read and comment on them. I guess the users compete to get as many reads as possible because then they get ranked higher, which leads to more reads. It’s like a big popularity contest. Plus, of course, it gives these girls an outlet for their creativity.’
‘I used to write poems, but I never wanted anyone to read them,’ Carmella said. ‘Ugh – cringe.’
‘Same with me and lyrics.’
‘Really? Were they any good?’
‘No, they were shit. But this is the Instagram generation, isn’t it? They share everything and they all want to be famous.’
‘You’re sounding like a grumpy old man again.’
They reached their destination and pulled up in a courtyard outside the old warehouse. ‘It goes without saying,’ Patrick said, ‘that the most popular category on the site is fan fiction, and stories featuring OnTarget make up about fifty per cent of that. I looked through some of it last night. My God, some of it is almost pornographic. They call it “shipping”, short for “relationshipping”, and imagine these . . . trysts between members of the band.’
‘And between band members and their fans?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the vampires?’
‘Oh, in a lot of the stories, Shawn and Blake and co happen to be immortal blood-suckers with a thirst for the blood of virgins.’
‘Well, I know what I’ll be reading tonight.’
They walked towards the front door. ‘I’m guessing you weren’t able to find anything that Rose and Jess had co-written?’
‘No. Either it’s buried so deep that I missed it or it was deleted.’ He paused for a moment, fixing his strategy in his mind. ‘It might be nothing. But if I’m right and Mervyn Hammond does turn out to be another false lead, this is all we’ve got.’
Chapter 47
Day 14 – Kai
Kai had only slept for two hours in the previous twenty-four since the party at Mervyn Hammond’s house – which was extra-annoying, because he was truly worn out. Never again, he thought, would he be persuaded to dress up in a stupid bow tie and an apron so long that it had come down to his shins, making his legs look even shorter, working his arse off for six quid an hour. Slave labour, that’s what it was! Not to mention the ingratitude of everyone involved. As far as he was concerned, it totally had not been worth it just for the sake of being in the same room as OnTarget and all those other D-list celebs. Hell, he got to be in the same room as OnTarget at the book signing just days before, and all that had involved was queuing in Piccadilly for an hour or two. The only thing that really made the whole thing worthwhile was what he’d left at the house. Now that had been funny.
His hands were still bright red and chapped from loading and unloading the dishwasher, and
once he’d forked out for a solo cab home – that took two hours to arrive – he only had £23 wages left. He had assumed that he and Jade would be splitting the cab fare, but oh no, she had ‘sorted herself out’, as she’d informed him at the end of the party, the chill in her voice almost frightening. She had refused to tell him how she was getting home – but he could guess. That frigging bodyguard, doubtless.
Since then he had rung her numerous times, and been round to her house twice, but her phone just rang out, then went to voicemail, and nobody had come to the door despite him leaning his finger on the bell for ages. He remembered Jade telling him that her mum, Alison, was going away for a couple of days. He’d been excited at the prospect of having Jade and her small council house to himself for a while, without having to make small talk with Alison, who scared him, with her wrinkly lips from decades of sucking on fags and God knows what else, and her enormous arse. Jade hated her too, although she pretended that they were ‘bezzies’ when she wanted to ponce twenty quid off her.
Now, with a pang, Kai realised that Jade might well be taking advantage of her mum’s absence by temporarily shacking up with Kerry the bodyguard. The thought of it gave him such pain that he felt murderously angry. If there had been a kitten nearby, he’d have twisted its head right off, no question.
Shame he couldn’t do the same to Kerry. As if.
‘Where are you, bae?’ he cried in an anguished voice, addressing the bathroom mirror in his house and noticing another new crop of zits as he did so. Kerry the frigging bodyguard didn’t have zits.
A sudden inspiration occurred, and he slapped the side of his head at his stupidity in not remembering before: the tracking app!
A couple of weeks back they had both installed a phone-tracking app on their phones so that if they got separated at the OnTarget gig at Twickenham, they’d be able to find each other by identifying where the other one’s phone was. Jade had once got really upset when she lost him in Guildford Spectrum, and he’d been well pleased at his resourcefulness when he found and installed the app. She had twined her arm around his neck and cooed into his ear what a genius he was, and how much she loved him . . . Mind you, he thought, she wouldn’t be so chuffed with him if she knew what he’d done afterwards, when he’d told her he was un-installing the app so that she needn’t worry about him keeping tabs on her. Instead, he’d slid the app into a folder on Jade’s iPhone screen, buried among a load of other apps she never, ever used. The folder was labelled ‘Health’, so she’d never notice that the phone-tracking app was in there.
Holding his breath, he clicked on to the app on his own phone. A green pulsing circle on a map indicated that Kai’s phone had found Jade’s.
Kai punched the air and zoomed in on the map. To his puzzlement – and then anger – Jade appeared to be very close to the Thames, near Hampton Court, in a place called Platt’s Eyot. It looked like there was a little wood nearby and he immediately imagined her leaning against a tree with the bodyguard, her legs purple with cold and her skirt up around her waist.
Fuck him, thought Kai, sliding a carving knife out of the knife drawer in the kitchen – making sure his mum, who was watching afternoon telly in the next room, didn’t hear him – then grabbing his parka and calling out a goodbye on his way past the living room.
He could get the train from Wimbledon to Hampton Court, he knew; he’d seen the station stops. On the map, the river and wood didn’t seem very far from the station. He didn’t even hurry, particularly – with the app working, there was no rush. He’d be able to find her. And when he did, the bodyguard’s muscles would be of no use to him. All the muscles in the world couldn’t stop you from getting stabbed in the back, could they?
Chapter 48
Day 14 – Patrick
Patrick and Carmella sat in one of StoryPad’s meeting rooms, all of which were named after famous writers. This was the Orwell room and Patrick wondered if the CCTV camera that pointed at them from the ceiling was functional or a wry joke.
After initial reluctance, mutterings about privacy and confidentiality, and lots of whispered conversations between various members of staff, a young woman called Dawn Latuske had ushered Patrick and Carmella into this room and sat down with them, placing an iPad on the desk. Latuske was a black woman in her late twenties with trendy, thick-framed glasses.
‘I could come back with a court order—’ Patrick began, but Latuske stopped him.
‘It’s OK, Detective. We’re going to cooperate. The thought that two of our users have been murdered, that more might be in danger . . .’ She shuddered. Patrick had used the line about others being in danger to prompt StoryPad’s staff to help. ‘We’ve been in touch with Seattle and they’ve given us the go-ahead. So . . .’
She pressed a few buttons and a screen flickered to life at one end of the room. Patrick realised that the iPad was connected to the screen so they could see what Dawn was doing as she flicked and scrolled.
‘This is MissTargetHeart profile.’
‘Rose,’ said Patrick.
‘Yes, sorry. Rose. And this is Jess’s.’ The girls’ profile pages appeared side by side on the screen. ‘This shows a full list of the stories both girls submitted or contributed to, including any that were deleted. I’m basically showing you an admin view. Nothing is ever fully deleted – it stays on the back end until it’s a year old, at which point it gets archived. But this is everything both girls wrote over the last year.’ She flicked down the page. ‘There weren’t many – a dozen or so each. We can also see all their comments on other people’s stories, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of those.’
‘We might come back to that later,’ Patrick said.
Latuske nodded, then pushed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose. ‘I think this is what you’re interested in. A story that both Rose and Jess wrote.’
She clicked on a link, bringing the story up on the screen. Patrick felt that tingle – the one that made him love this job. Chelsea Fox hadn’t been wrong. This was it – the link.
The story was called Fresh Blood and according to the stats Patrick could see on screen it had been read 343,524 times and had thousands of comments.
‘I remember this story,’ Dawn said. ‘It was really popular last autumn, I think. It would have been featured on the homepage at one point. I didn’t realise it had been deleted.’
Patrick couldn’t make out all of the text on the screen. ‘Is it about OnTarget?’
Dawn laughed. ‘Yes. Well, Shawn and Blake. They’re vampire princes . . .’
Patrick and Carmella exchanged a look.
‘. . . who both fall in love with a mortal girl called Ella. It’s quite . . . fruity, as I recall.’
‘Hang on,’ said Patrick, spotting something. ‘The authors’ names . . .’
He stood up and moved closer to the screen, wondering if he needed glasses.
‘There are four co-authors,’ he said. ‘MissTargetHeart, YOLOSWAG, F-U-Cancer and Jade.’
‘That’s right,’ said Dawn.
He turned to her. ‘Can you give me the real names of the other two users?’
‘I don’t know.’
He slammed his palms down on the table. ‘Dawn. These girls could be the next targets of a serial killer. I need to know their names.’
Dawn Latuske swallowed visibly. He could see the war going on in her head: job versus conscience.
In the end, she switched off the screen, tapped her iPad a few times and said, ‘I need to use the loo.’
She got up, leaving the meeting room, the iPad still on the table. Carmella grabbed it.
‘Here we go. Jade Pilkington and Chloe Hedges. We’ve got their addresses, dates of birth and email addresses.’ Patrick took out his Moleskine to note the details down, but Carmella took a photo of the iPad screen using her iPhone.
Patrick put his notepad away, feeling hopele
ssly old-fashioned.
‘Chloe Hedges,’ Carmella said. ‘How come I know that name?’
‘I . . . Oh shit – she was Jess’s best friend. Gareth interviewed her. Right, let’s head back to yours, pick up your car and you go to Jade’s address while I head to Chloe’s.’
Chapter 49
Day 14 – Chloe
Chloe’s stomach was fizzing with excitement. Even though they hadn’t confirmed a date and time yet, she felt as though the imminent meeting with Shawn Barrett had been dropped into the puddle of her insides, like the lurid Vitamin C tablets in water that her mum forced her to drink every morning. It was a secret that was hers and Shawn’s alone and she hugged it to herself with glee, feeling so grown-up to have been entrusted – by one of the most famous people in the country – with such a responsible and glamorous task. They had exchanged a dozen or so messages on the private message board of the forum over the past twenty-four hours, to the point that it had almost become normal to see his name pop up in her inbox. Almost. Their conversation had developed from Shawn’s first, slightly formal request into a more chatty tone. She might, if she allowed herself, even believe that Shawn was flirting with her.
It was too exciting for words.
Last night, she had been telling Shawn how lucky she felt to be alive, after the cancer, and that had made her think about Rose and Jess, and her idea about what had happened to them, the connection that had led to their deaths. Before she could chicken out she had sent Shawn a message:
You know those girls that were murdered? Rose and Jess. I knew them on StoryPad, co-wrote a story with them along with another friend. I’ve been thinking: what if it’s got something to do with their deaths?
A reply had come back ten minutes later.
Why would it, babes?
She wrote back. I don’t know. But . . . we did something . . .
She needed to tell someone, after all this time keeping it secret, hiding her shame over what she and the other girls had caused to happen. She let it all out now, spilling the secret that only she and Jade, and possibly Kai, knew about. The terrible thing they’d done. She’d wanted to ask Kai about it the other day, when he came to see her to get Jade’s UV nail lamp back, but he’d been acting like such a dick that she changed her mind. Kai was making out that he was a massive hero, that Jade was going to think he was the bee’s knees for getting the lamp back. All Jade had needed to do was ask. Instead, her dozy boyfriend had messaged her via the forum and arranged to come to her house to pick the lamp up. Chloe guessed Jade simply didn’t want to see her, because of what had happened before.