by Marion Todd
‘Think?’
She shrugged. ‘Who knows. I like my house, my life – maybe things not working out with Geoff is down to me not wanting to compromise. Maybe I’m not marriage material.’
‘And you’d like to be married?’
She shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ She met his eye and forced a smile.
‘But… Attracto, Clare? I mean – with this investigation – you’re not seriously going to…’
‘No of course not,’ she bit back. ‘I just wanted to see who was on the site. And I really did think it might help with this case,’ she added.
He didn’t look convinced but said nothing further.
Clare smiled. ‘So, enough introspection. Let’s get back to Ingrid. Can you check through her social media accounts while I try to get hold of Diane?’
Chris headed back to the incident room while Clare called Diane’s number. It went straight to voicemail so she left a message asking if Diane could find Ingrid’s Attracto password. Then she joined Chris who was scanning Ingrid’s Facebook data. ‘Just over a hundred friends,’ he said. ‘Not too many.’
‘Can you see Messenger?’
He scrolled again. ‘Here you go.’
They read through the messages. ‘Lots of photos,’ Chris muttered. ‘Mostly holiday snaps and friends with babies.’
‘Okay. Let’s try WhatsApp.’
Chris navigated to the WhatsApp data. ‘Looks like she’s in a few groups.’
‘We’ll have to go through them all. Ooh, look at this one…’ Clare indicated a group which was called Schoolies. ‘School pals, probably,’ she said. ‘See if Alison Reid’s in the group.’
Chris scrolled through the names. ‘Nope. Unless she’s using a pseudonym.’
‘Dammit. I was hoping there would be something linking them. Keep looking.’
There was a family group with Ingrid’s parents and a Tradgear group for staff which seemed to be mainly about shift swaps and climbing trips. They scrolled through the other messages looking for possible connections with Alison Reid.
‘What’s this one?’ Clare said, spotting a group called LPS.
Chris scrolled through the group data. There seemed to be a lot of members with different conversations going on. And then they saw a photo. It was of a school class in three rows, the first sitting cross-legged on the floor, the middle row sitting on a long bench and the back row standing. ‘Looks like a school group,’ Chris said. ‘LPS…’
‘Lamond Primary School,’ Clare said. ‘Check for Alison Reid.’
‘She’s there!’
‘Great. Now we’re getting somewhere.’
‘Are we though?’ Chris frowned. ‘I’m not sure how this helps us. The McKinnies already told us Ingrid and Alison were at school together.’
Clare’s face fell. ‘Yes, of course. But it does look like they were in the same class. And it’s pretty unusual for two murder victims to have been at school together. Even in a small town.’ She sat forward in her seat. ‘Let’s look for conversations they both took part in.’
It took twenty minutes to sift through all the threads in the group but there seemed to be no direct interaction between Alison and Ingrid. There were suggestions of a school reunion in the spring but it didn’t look as if it had gone beyond a discussion.
‘Dammit,’ Clare said. ‘I was hoping for something there.’
‘If it’s not a link, Clare, we’re as well finding out now.’
‘Suppose. They were both on Attracto, though. That’s quite a coincidence.’ She sat back, thinking, then said, ‘We need to compare any men – or women – both Alison and Ingrid had in common.’
‘Want me to call Diane back? See if she can save us some time on that?’
Clare was about to answer when Janey and Robbie came into the room.
‘Robbie thinks he has something,’ Janey said. Her expression said otherwise but Robbie ignored this.
‘It’s in the kitchen, boss,’ he said. ‘Alison’s.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, everything’s really tidy. Like the neighbour said. All the dishes and mugs neatly stacked. Even the mug handles turned the same way.’
‘And?’
‘The wine glasses. There’s two missing.’
Clare looked at him. ‘How can you tell?’
‘She’s got six of everything. Six dinner plates, six bowls, six matching mugs, even the cutlery. Six beer glasses, six champagne flutes… but only four wine glasses.’
‘Maybe she only had four,’ Chris said.
‘That’s what I told him,’ Janey said, but Robbie shook his head.
‘The cupboard where she keeps the glasses – there’s space for six. You can see how she’s arranged them.’ He held out his phone. ‘Flick through the photos.’
Clare took the phone and began swiping through photos of Alison Reid’s kitchen cupboards. ‘Mm. See what you mean, Robbie. I think if she’d only had four she’d have spaced them out more.’
‘She could have broken them,’ Chris said. ‘Not had time to get replacements.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Robbie went on, ‘but remember that cork we never found a bottle for…’
‘Checked the bin again?’
‘Yep. Nothing there.’
‘Bedroom?’ Clare asked, although she doubted someone as tidy as Alison Reid would have left dirty wine glasses lying around.
‘Nope.’
Clare motioned to them to sit down. ‘So why would two wine glasses be missing? Let’s think what we know.’
‘She was at home,’ Chris began. ‘Drank some wine…’
‘Must have had a visitor,’ Janey said, ‘for two glasses to be missing. And that food in the oven, remember. You don’t eat a dozen sausage rolls yourself.’
Clare nodded. ‘Go on, Janey.’
‘Whoever it is comes in – maybe brings wine, they share a glass, visitor slips Rohypnol into Alison’s glass then kills her.’
‘But why take the bottle and glasses away?’ Chris said.
‘DNA, probably,’ Clare said. ‘Fingerprints too.’
Chris frowned. ‘Seems a bit OTT, unless it’s someone whose prints and DNA are already on the system.’
‘Yeah, could be.’ Clare sat, considering this. Then she glanced at her watch. ‘Can you get everyone back here for two please, Chris?’ She rose from her seat. ‘I’m going to try Diane again. We need to get into these Attracto accounts. If there is someone on the dating site who’s picking off women, we’d better find him – and quickly.’
Chapter 21
Clare was about to start the briefing when her mobile began to ring. A St Andrews number she didn’t recognise.
‘Oh, Inspector,’ a familiar voice said. ‘This is Tanya Sullivan. Alison Reid’s neighbour.’
Clare sighed inwardly but she sank down in her chair and made an effort to sound bright. ‘Yes, Mrs Sullivan. How can I help?’
‘You asked me to let you know if I remembered anything else. Well, I have remembered something. I mean it might not be important. But what I always say is…’
‘What is it you remembered?’ Clare said quickly, cutting across Tanya’s monologue.
‘A car.’
‘A car?’
‘Yes. Outside Alison’s house.’
‘Was that unusual? Perhaps the street was busy.’
‘Oh no, Inspector. In fact that’s why I noticed it. Alison never had visitors. Or not very often, at least. And it was such a nice car, you see?’
Clare picked up a pen and pulled a notepad across the desk. ‘When was this?’
‘The twenty-third of December,’ she said. ‘Two days before Christmas.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Clare asked.
‘My turkey.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I was waiting for my Christmas turkey delivery. I order from a local farm you know and for an extra fiver they deliver to your door. My delivery slot was between 11 and 1 but they were late, you see, so I was lo
oking out of the window.’
‘And you’re sure about that?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve got the receipt somewhere, if you want to see it, Inspector?’
‘No, that’s fine Mrs Sullivan. I don’t suppose you remember the time?’
‘Well my turkey came about half past one and I was watching for it, off and on from about quarter to one so sometime around then.’
‘And the car was where?’
‘Right outside Alison’s. I mean I didn’t think much about it at the time. But it was a nice car so I noticed it. Somebody’s got a bob or two, I said to myself.’
‘And did you see the driver at all?’
Tanya shook her head. ‘Sorry, no. Just the car. But I can tell you it was a Mazda. A red Mazda.’
Clare jotted this down on the pad. ‘What made you notice that?’
‘I had one myself. A few years ago now, but I still recognised the badge on the bonnet. Of course this one was a lot fancier than mine but a Mazda all the same. Good cars,’ she added.
Clare ended the call and sat for a few minutes, mulling this over. A fancy car parked outside Alison Reid’s house a week or so before she was killed. Unusual enough for her neighbour to remember it. She pushed back her chair and went in search of Jim.
‘It’s a long shot,’ she said, ‘but could you find out what Miles and Cheryl Sharp drive, please?’
A few minutes later Jim tapped on Clare’s office door. ‘Got the cars, Clare. Mrs Sharp has a silver Audi TT and he drives a dark red Mazda MX5.’
* * *
They filed into the incident room just after two, some still munching on sandwiches. Someone had ordered pizza and the smell of garlic hung in the air, the heat from the pizzas steaming up the windows.
‘Okay,’ Clare said. ‘Let’s make a start.’ She looked round the room. ‘Who wants to kick off?’
Chris raised his hand. ‘Kelvin Black…’
‘Ingrid McKinnie’s boyfriend?’
‘Yeah. He checks out, Clare. Still in Canada. He’s working at a ski resort in Lake Louise. Been there right through December.’
‘Lucky for some,’ Bill said, glancing out at the grey January afternoon.
‘Okay, thanks Chris.’ Clare looked round the room again. ‘Who was in touch with the school?’
Gillian raised her hand. ‘I spoke to the secretary. She’s only been there five years but she said she’d check with the head teacher and get back to me. Said it might be at the end of the school day, though.’
Clare clicked her tongue. ‘You said it was a murder enquiry?’
‘I did. But they have two staff off with flu so the head’s teaching all day.’ Gillian glanced at her watch. ‘It’s only another hour, boss. I’ll call back after three.’
The phone in the outer office began to ring and Jim went to answer it.
Clare waited for him to leave then checked her notepad again. ‘There might be two wine glasses missing from Alison Reid’s house,’ she went on. ‘Add that to the cork in the kitchen that we couldn’t find a bottle for and the snack food in the oven, and it looks like Alison had a guest. Pound to a penny, the guest drugged and killed her. But there’s something else.’
She looked round the room to make sure they were all listening, then she went on. ‘Both victims had signed up to a dating site called Attracto.’ She noticed Sara stiffen and she quickly scribbled Zoe on her notepad to remind herself to warn Zoe about the site. ‘Now it’s possible the women were drugged and killed by someone they had arranged to meet through Attracto. But we can’t assume that. It could be the school that’s the link. Or – and this is the worst case scenario, guys – the killings could be entirely random.’ She paused to let this sink in then said, ‘If our killer is picking off victims on a whim then we really will struggle to find him.’
‘Or her,’ Chris added. ‘Could be a woman.’
‘Yes you’re right, Chris. No reason it would have to be a man but remember most violent crimes against women are committed by men they know.’
Nita raised her hand. ‘Boss, did either of the women have current boyfriends?’
‘Not as far as we can tell, Nita. No extra toothbrushes or that kind of thing. Alison’s work colleagues told us she’d recently updated her Attracto profile. But that doesn’t mean she had a date. And there’s nothing to suggest Ingrid was seeing anyone either.’
The door opened and Jim came back in. ‘Diane,’ he said. ‘She’s got into both women’s Attracto accounts and she should have Alison’s WhatsApp data up on the network shortly.’
‘Okay, thanks Jim. Can you co-ordinate checking Attracto in the meantime, please? You’re looking for common links between the two victims. Anyone they’ve both Liked or who’s Liked them. Messages between them and other members – that sort of thing.’
Jim indicated he would do this and Clare pressed on.
‘As far as WhatsApp goes, we know from Ingrid’s phone that both victims are in a group called LPS. We think it’s a primary school group. Chris and I had a quick look at the conversations but I need them checked thoroughly.’
She glanced round the room and her eye fell on two of the uniformed cops. ‘Robbie and Gillian, I’d like you to help Jim with that. Okay?’
The pair nodded to Jim and Clare pressed on. ‘I’m going back to Alison Reid’s workplace to speak to the receptionist again. Her boss was present when we spoke to her on Tuesday and I get the feeling she might be more forthcoming if he wasn’t there.’ Clare glanced at Chris. ‘I think I’ll see her alone, Chris. She might say more if you’re not with me.’
Chris shrugged and Clare looked back at the board, running over the notes she’d scribbled there earlier. And then she remembered Tanya’s call. ‘Just one more thing: Alison Reid’s neighbour says there was a red Mazda parked outside Alison’s house around lunchtime on December twenty-third. It seems Miles Sharp drives a red Mazda so…’ she scanned the room, ‘Chris, I’d like you to go back and ask him about that. And take Nita with you. Caution him if you have to but try to keep it relaxed.’
Chris rolled his eyes at this but Clare ignored it.
‘Okay, that’s it. Keep in touch.’
Jim returned as they filed out of the room. ‘More shoplifting,’ he said.
‘Where is it this time?’ Clare asked.
‘Soldier Blue. Vintage clothing shop in Market Street.’
‘Much taken?’
‘They think a denim jacket and some earrings. Sounds like the same person from the last couple of reports. Long black padded coat, big scarf round her neck and a hat pulled down. Hard to see her face.’
Clare sighed. ‘We just don’t have time for it.’
‘Want me to look in?’
She considered this. ‘On balance, I’d rather you were here, Jim. It’s important we find any possible links between the two victims. Can you ask Sara please? She’ll be going round the pubs anyway.’
‘Will do.’
Clare glanced at her watch. Quarter to three. She wondered how quickly the head teacher would return Gillian’s call. And then she remembered Zoe. She looked over and saw Zoe’s head was down, tapping at her keyboard. She turned back to Jim and lowered her voice. ‘Could you get onto whoever’s running that dating site, please, Jim? Let them know we might want to take it offline, until we get to the bottom of these killings.’
‘Aye, no bother, Clare. I’ll speak to them about making their safety advice more prominent too.’
‘Thanks, Jim.’ Clare glanced across at Zoe again. ‘Zoe,’ she said, ‘spare me a minute?’
Zoe’s expression clouded. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
Clare smiled. ‘No, nothing like that. It’s just a quick thing.’
Zoe followed Clare into her office and sat on the edge of a chair.
‘I wanted to give you a heads-up,’ Clare said. ‘About that dating site – Attracto.’
‘What about it? It’s just a bit of fun, Clare. No harm in it.’
Clare look
ed at Zoe and, for a second, an image of Alison Reid lying in a bath full of water flashed across her mind. She blinked it away. ‘That’s just the thing, Zoe. I think it might be dangerous. It’s these two murders…’
Zoe stared.
‘The victims – well, they were both on Attracto. Now I’m not saying that’s how the killer found them but… well, just be careful, yeah? At least until we’ve caught him.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘I’m afraid so. I’m going to speak to the DCI about having the site taken offline. But meantime…’
‘You do know I always meet them in a coffee bar or something like that?’
‘I’m sure you’re really careful, Zoe. Just – well, be extra careful. Don’t leave your drink unattended or give out your home address – that sort of thing.’
‘I’m not daft, Clare,’ Zoe said, her face flushing. ‘You don’t have to tell me this.’
Clare smiled again. ‘Okay, Zoe. I just wanted to be sure you were taking care.’ She brightened. ‘How are you getting on anyway? Everything okay?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine. I like it here.’ She scraped back her chair and rose. ‘And don’t worry. I’m a big girl, Clare. I can look after myself.’
Clare sat on, after Zoe left, mulling this over. ‘Can you, though?’ she said softly. ‘Can you?’
Chapter 22
It was after four o’clock when Gillian tapped on Clare’s office door.
‘No luck with the school,’ she said. ‘The headteacher now’s a Mrs Curzon but she’s only been at the school for twelve years and none of the current staff were there when our two victims were pupils.’
‘They’ve no class records?’
Gillian shook her head. ‘Only the year group, not who was in which class. But there is one person who might be able to help.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The previous head was a Celia Crawford. She’s retired now but Mrs Curzon’s going to try and contact her.’
Chris tapped on the door as Gillian left. He entered the office and sat down heavily.