‘Don’t look for anything logical, Prof – look for the accidental, the oddity, the thing that could easily never have happened but did …’
‘Thanks – that narrows it down,’ I reply, aiming for sarcasm and mis-hitting my tone. Instead, I sound grateful, which I should be, because what Gary tells me to do now changes everything. We are about to make what Gary calls a monumentous breakthrough.
The dates she looked for stalker advice were 25–29 November. If it’s connected to something she saw online, that something will be close by. Surely. A few hours, a day, two days, but not much more than that.
We look through the week before, working backwards, from the morning of the 29th. She received twenty-six messages and eighty-three profile views across three days. She logged on nine times, too, which is more than she had done in the whole three months before. She had been with Tim for almost thirteen months – long enough to know she wasn’t interested in other blokes. So what was she looking at? And why was she suddenly, after weeks not bothering with the site, checking it at such short, such breathless, nervy little intervals? One of the checks is at 1.38 a.m.; the other at 5.45 the same morning.
Gary is standing over me. ‘Those aren’t the habits of someone in a normal state of mind. Look—’ he jabs the log-in times with his finger when I look up at him, baffled: ‘Don’t you get it? She can’t sleep. She’s worried. If she’d met some handsome wordsmith like me, then maybe, yes, she’d be checking for replies, hooked on the rush of contact and repartee. But she hasn’t. She hasn’t messaged anyone ever, let alone recently.’
‘That leaves the other possibility – the only other one – that she’s checking for someone she doesn’t want to see.’
‘That’s right, Prof – she’s scared, creeped out. She suddenly logs in nine times in three days – months of not going on the site, looks up information about stalkers in that same three-day window, then forgets about it. Or doesn’t.’
‘Then gets killed.’
‘Yep, then gets killed. But not straight away. And in her own flat – not at the other end of town or some faraway edgeland or a dark alley or the ring road. In her home. What’s the link? And if she was afraid of someone online, why didn’t she tell people?’
‘I suppose there’s still a bit of a sense that internet dating is for the desperate, or those who can’t meet people in the real world. You sure she told Tim that she’d joined a dating site?’
‘She did! Look back over the notes: he said she told him soon after they met and that she’d leave the site. They didn’t have secrets.’
This is stuff I should know, but I don’t. I left all the computer checks to others and I was wrong to because now we’re getting close and we should have got closer sooner.
‘Okay, but she was still on the site, wasn’t she?’ I tell him.
‘Yes, well, technically yeah: you pay by direct debit, and the longer you sign up for the cheaper it is. I know this, Prof, I’ve been there and done … well, not much. She went for a one-year package and then a six-month package, and had another twelve weeks of the second one to go. You can see the reminders here’, Gary marks them out with his pen: they’re from ‘Admin’ and the subject line is variously ‘Get three months extra FREE if you buy now’, ‘Premier Service just got cheaper!’ and ‘Get Ready for Valentine’s Day!’
I’ve got it now. I know what Gary means. ‘She wasn’t looking for a soulmate, or any sort of mate … she was checking to see who was checking on her?’
‘Exactly. But why?’
‘Because she knew him, or she’d seen him, or she knew he’d seen her somewhere other than a computer screen, that’s why.’
‘You got it, Prof.’
Of the men who have checked her out, sixty have sent messages and nearly two hundred have simply looked at her, read her profile, and moved on. There’s no way of telling how they did it, or what went through their minds: you can’t see their palms sweat or hear their breathing like you can in an interview room.
The messages are of no use. Generic, apart from a couple so clumsy they can only be sincere. I imagine Sigrid trawling through stuff like this, and wonder how she picks out people to ‘chat’ to and then take it further. She tells me that anyway it’s the body that decides in the end. The head and the heart are hopeless against the body. You might like the way someone speaks or writes, but what happens when you meet them? The words don’t matter: it’s the other person’s smell, the temperature of their skin, their open pores. It’s all happening under the words you speak and the thoughts you think.
All those brains cells, all that language, all that education, just to get told what to do by your nose.
One of Sigrid’s dates: ‘He looked great, talked nicely, dressed like a gent, was kind and funny … solvent … just didn’t have any … smell. I couldn’t … how can I explain it? I couldn’t steer my body towards him … it kept veering away. I had to close my eyes to see if I could jump-start the erotics, but no … nothing.’
Of the direct messages to Zalie, only five are what we’d call ‘local’ – the site triages people according to distance: 5 miles, 15, 30, 40, 60 and 70+. They’re from Brighton, Southend, Folkestone, Dover, Romney, Deal. And London. Lots of London. Men leave much more information on the site than women: the guys look genuine, some of them look handsome and might even be the age they claim to be. Two of them even tell the site where they work. One of them tells us his favourite pub. Just in case someone might want to check him out offsite. A woman giving that information is putting herself in danger. A man doing the same is just trying his luck.
I look for the repeat viewings of Zalie – anyone who has clicked on her more than once … anything that looks obsessive or fixational. I then try to match them to Zalie’s own browsing. That takes just a few minutes, because she only looked at a couple of dozen men in all the time she was signed up. And only six of them in the days and nights we’re interested in. And of those six, four of them she looked at more than three times in the first week of joining the site. And of those four, there’s one she looked at two, three, five, eight, fifteen times in all. Recently. A week before she died.
There he is.
Mister B. Age 32. Actuary. That’s not as boring as it sounds (Okay, it is but I’m not!).
Height: 6.2.
Hair: Dark.
Style: Smart casual. Dressy when necessary.
Looking for: Casual/serious/fun/chat/friendship.
‘Got all the bases covered, hasn’t he?’ says Gary.
Likes: Cooking, jazz, travel, Thai food, Scandinavian crime fiction, European cinema.
‘Ah, our old friend European cinema …’ says Gary, ‘that’s good enough for me: let’s pick him up right now …’
Dislikes: Politics, cyclists, curry.
‘It’s a pretty basic profile, isn’t it? He checked out Zalie twice, didn’t message her at all. But she checked him out almost ten times. Didn’t contact him, but looked at that profile over and over.’
‘Did she recognise him?’
‘Not from the photos – he didn’t upload any face shots.’
‘Did she recognise any other bit of him?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Gary, this isn’t a Carry On film!’
‘Okay, Prof. Sorry.’ He puts on a mock-solemn face. Then a real thinking face. Then he’s keen again, and then he’s got it: ‘Turn the question round: did he recognise her?’
‘That’s more like it. Well, if so, he doesn’t give any indication of it – no messages, no chat requests, nothing …’
‘Check how far away he is,’ says Gary.
The site tells us: 0 miles. The next closest person who viewed her was 1.3 miles away.
‘Oh Christ,’ says Gary, ‘To be 0 miles they need to have the same postcode – these sites use the Post Office zoning system that delivers your mail. We’re talking a few houses away … literally the same street.’
We’re almost there now. Gary enlarges the three shots of ‘M
ister B’ that he has posted online: a pint of beer (denoting easeful blokeishness), an exotic snow-capped mountain (that’s travel, plus money: broad mind/broad wallet), and a record by Miles Davis (jazz vibe: classy but not recondite). He’s telling everyone: I’m homely, intrepid, educated. I like vinyl, craft beer, and I can afford to ski. There’s no face, but we don’t need the face now.
‘Same street? It’s the same bloody house! It’s that guy from upstairs! Ben!’ Gary yells to Small-Screen: ‘Tell the Drone – we’re bringing him in.’
‘Don’t do that, Gary – not right yet. Leave him to enjoy Mad Lynne’s hospitality a little longer. Let him think he’s safe. His flat’s empty so we’ll get warrants to search it, check his phoneline, his internet, his bank accounts … the whole lot. Same goes for the girlfriend.’
As we wait for Deskfish to arrange the paperwork, Gary and I turn to the station TV.
‘It’s Mr Lawnder!’ I shout at the screen.
‘Who?’ asks Gary.
‘Don Lawnder, young guy who taught English, had a kind of breakdown after two terms then went to work in the parks … Turn it up!’
The remote has been lost for so long that no one even remembers it, so Gary goes over and unmutes the TV:
‘ … a kind, supportive colleague and a generous teacher. The school has behaved despicably towards him … cut him adrift on the say-so of a lynch mob.’
‘You believe he’s innocent?’ It’s Ellie Nash again.
‘He’s innocent of the allegations made about him during his teaching days, yes – this is a witch-hunt culture …’
‘What about murder?’ asks Ellie who obviously owns the story now, even more than Mad Lynne does.
‘That’s for the justice system to determine, but the man I knew was gentle and thoughtful and highly intelligent – not the sort of person who would turn to violence.’
Where did they find Lawnder? Whenever I’ve thought of him, which is more than occasionally and less than often, I’ve imagined him moving slowly amid municipal greenery, making small changes to places we don’t notice.
But I’m wrong. I’m stuck in time – I’m stuck where I left him. Don Lawnder isn’t: he wears a blue canvas jacket and round glasses like the poets he liked so much. He looks strong and well. He’s standing outside a stately home in Hampshire. I recognise it from school trips: Shapley Hall. There’s a bar at the bottom of the screen that calls him ‘Dr’ and tells us he’s an ‘Architectural historian’. His voice is as soft as ever, but hardier, and though he hasn’t grown, he has bulked out and looks less like a battered sapling. His skin has the near-tan of someone who spends most of his life outdoors, and he looks a lot better on his – what would it be? – fifty-five? sixty? years than I look on my forty-seven. Lean, intelligent, fearless, he lays into Chapelton College:
‘When the time comes, the school and its headmaster, the attention-seeking ex-pupils with their lies, will have to account for themselves and the way they’ve been complicit in the demonisation of an innocent man.’
Cut back to Ellie Nash, bright-faced in the arc lights and with her hair blown about by the wind.
‘As more people come forward to speak for Michael Wolphram, to defend his reputation or just ask for him to be treated fairly, we have to pose the question: Did the police move too fast on this? Did they let the public’s need for a suspect affect their judgement in those crucial early hours?’
‘Yes!’ shouts Gary, clapping delightedly, ‘Yes, they did!’
*
To reach Ben’s flat we’ve had to come in through the back, opening up a fence-panel in the garden of the house behind and crossing the lawn. This is because of the heave of TV vans and photographers on motorbikes on the pavement in front, spilling onto the road so that cars have to klaxon to be let through. The crowd is bulked out by members of the public, and the selfie sticks poke up like masts in a stormy marina. We have surfed from the fatberg to the monster on a wave of headlines. There’s new graffiti, too – around the surrounding houses and walls, because the house itself is guarded twenty-four hours a day.
We have KILLER, Peedo [sic] scum, the mandatory ROT IN HELL (twice in different hands), and HANG ’IM in huge letters. The apostrophe is painted as a noose, the fat bit of the sliding knot carefully done to express the braiding of the rope. I wonder if there’s a lynching emoji. If not, this should be it. Then the flowers and the tea lights, a field of them, spreading out along the street. Her parents’ house is mobbed, too, their front gate covered in teddies, flowers and cards which the TV cameras scan like barcodes and broadcast as visual filler while their reporters confect packages about outpourings of sympathy and shocked communities united in grief …
The front of the house is a contradiction of tributes and memories, abuse and threats. There can’t be many streets which housed the murderer, the victim and the falsely accused. And the murder itself. There’s something for everyone here: the sad and respectful, the angry and blood-lustful, the nosy, the indignant and the outraged.
One of the channels has pulled together a documentary for the New Year TV sump. It includes the obligatory showbiz shrinks-for-hire, conspiracy theorists, ex-colleagues, tenuously remembered friends, neighbours-with-grudges and a few of those pupils currently coming forward and breaking their silences. It won’t include: Danny, Don Lawnder, Neil Hall, or any of those who have spoken up for Wolphram. The programme is called Schooled in Murder?. They’ve asked someone from the investigation to appear and Deskfish has agreed.
Even the shop where she bought her last meal has a few bouquets and candles in front of it. As well as a sudden tripling of customer-flow. The office where she worked, her local pub and even her gym. They’re hunting her down wherever she went. She’s dead but they won’t stop haunting her.
What strikes us immediately – Gary and I and six frenzics – is the soullessness of Phelps’s flat. All chrome and leather, it’s generic bloke-habitat: huge flat-screen TV, hi-fi, DVD and Blu-Ray players; framed photographs of mountains and sunsets; Xbox (just the one console, Gary notices), CD cases, titles facing outwards, slotted into CD towers. There’s a low, grey, frosted-glass-topped coffee table with a pile of men’s lifestyle magazines, edges flush with each other and aligned with the corner of the table. There are two thick slate coasters underlaid with green felt so they can slide noiselessly along. The sofa is big, rectangular, deep and made of black leather. The cushion on one side is so deeply imprinted by Ben that I could probably guess his weight. Three remote controls and the Xbox console are lined up in front of it.
The kitchen is as spotless as Wolphram’s and laid out in the same way. The window overlooks the gardens of the houses behind. There are two of everything on the draining board. But no more than two: two knives, two forks, two spoons, two plates. Two wine glasses and one pewter pint tankard. A line of craft beers. A few bottles of New Zealand or Australian wine with names that sound like soap operas: Blossom Hill, Hardy’s Crest, Murray’s Landing.
Gary opens the cutlery drawers. Empty. In a cupboard by the fridge there are more plates and cutlery, but they’re still in the box they came in. The Lansdale’s receipt is Sellotaped to the side. All unused. No guests. No one to get back to but each other.
‘I’m getting a bad feeling here, Prof …’ says Gary. ‘Emptiness. I don’t mean empty drawers and stuff. I mean a hole somewhere where there shouldn’t be a hole.’
I know what Gary means. For all the symmetry, the paired plates and glasses don’t feel right. The cupboard under the sink contains only cleaning products: bleach in three different brands, antibacterial sprays, wire brushes, a bumper pack of sponges, oven cleaner, and carpet foam. Washing-up gloves – five pairs still in their unopened bags. I am about to move the bottles of cleaner and root my way to the back of the cupboard, but Gary stops me.
‘Leave that to frenzics, Prof, what we’re after is the gut feeling, we need to look at the stuff not move it about. Everywhere has its vibe, its bouquet, you’d call it. Wha
t are you getting?’
‘Control.’
‘It’s those coasters, man, controlling people love coasters. I’m not getting a sense of a couple. Or even two people, to be honest.’ Gary shakes his head: ‘It’s just him, isn’t it? Nothing’s hers. It’s like she doesn’t live here, just stays here.’
In the bathroom, Ben’s grooming products occupy a whole shelf, and are neatly lined up. Hers are in a small bag in the mirrored cupboard above the sink. Minimal, too: lipstick, foundation, blusher and eyeliner. One of each, whereas he has two different shaving foams, four razors and two hipster moisturisers with fake-English names intended to summon up Jermyn Street panache: Chatterton’s Classic Grooming and Dashwood’s Skin Care for Men.
In their bedroom, it’s the same: plush and impersonal as an expensive hotel room. That’s what it wants to be, I think, the whole place: a hotel suite. On her bedside table she has a photograph of her parents and her sister with a baby. In the drawer, her contraceptive pills and a book with an art gallery bookmark with a tassel. It’s the first time we’ve found anything that could be described as her space. His wardrobe is large but reiterative: three pairs of the same shoes for work, two of the same going-out shoes, two pairs of identical trainers, five of the same shirts … all of them labels, brands, designer stuff with motifs.
There are no traces of her in the flat except here, and what little there is is either scrubbed clean or tucked away.
‘She doesn’t live here, Prof,’ says Gary, ‘she just moves her body around the rooms then puts it down in bed until it’s time to go to work again.’
‘I don’t see anything suspicious though,’ I tell him.
Gary is at the laundry basket, lifting the lid and peering in. ‘Nothing there, Prof, nothing in the washing machine, nothing in the drier.’
‘Must’ve done the washing before heading out to enjoy the newspaper’s hospitality. But I still can’t see anything odd.’
‘Don’t worry, Prof, frenzics will find something. Anyway, what we really need’s his computer. It’ll all be online with him. In the old films your cops would arrive, find nothing, then at the last moment, just as they’re leaving feeling shitty, one of them notices the key to a lockup that’s crammed with evidence. No need for lockups anymore. Today’s lockup is the laptop, and he’s taken his with him.’
Throw Me to the Wolves Page 26