Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel

by Angela Clarke

  ‘Are you thinking he could have dressed her in it after?’ Moast said, resting a gloved hand on the floor to peer under the bed.

  ‘Possible. It does feel very ritualistic,’ Nas said.

  Freddie shuddered. Closing her eyes, she could already see the body of Sophie Phillips floating there before her.

  ‘Do we have a time of death, guv?’ Tibbsy was poking the end of his biro into the basket of Sophie’s make-up on the dresser.

  ‘They’ll confirm after the post-mortem, but the pathologist reckons somewhere in the last 24-48 hours based on rigor,’ Moast said. ‘If it’d been any warmer, she would have started to decompose.’

  Freddie felt the floor buckle. Oh, Sophie.

  ‘Okay, Venton?’ Moast looked at her, his stance steadfast.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. It’s just…’

  ‘Need a minute?’ He stepped toward her, hands by his side.

  She wouldn’t pass out. ‘No.’ Freddie concentrated on slowing her breath. If they could all stand there then so could she. She would show Moast she really cared. She would help. ‘If it was yesterday morning, I mean if that’s when it happened, then it can’t have been long after the first few tweets. He tweeted Hope is rearranging her name at 10:17am.’

  ‘Interesting point, that’d rule out a killing inspired by the tweets and the fuss around them, sir?’ Nas said. ‘Unless of course someone knew of a Sophie who happened to live on Baker Street. Bit of a gamble though. She didn’t show up to work. Someone could have come looking for her. They would have had a small window of time, say two or three hours max, until her work called her. And then, if they were worried, they might have come over. The council offices aren’t far from here, one of her mates could’ve popped over on their lunch break. The perpetrator’s been so meticulous with everything else – like the planning at Mardling’s, how they got in the house, the bleach, knowing he’d be awake and online then. Presumably.’ She stood up. ‘It’s the same again here. It feels like planning’s gone into this. Someone that’s this specific isn’t going to want to take any chances, they’d want to get in and out before there was any risk of being discovered.’

  ‘Okay,’ Moast said. ‘Confirm with the pathology lab when the girl was killed. If we can narrow that time window then we can start to work out just who would have known where and when Sophie would normally have been expected to be. Anything to add, Venton? There’s the computer. You can take a look at what the IT guys find on it when they get it back to the station.’

  To the right of Freddie, backed into a corner next to a white Ikea wardrobe, was a small grey metal computer stand. On it rested a cream plastic hulk of a monitor. ‘Christ, I haven’t seen one of these since school. Remember, Nas?’ Computer Sciences in the tech block of Pendrick High, or Computasaurus Studies as they’d called it. The processor column was shunted underneath the desk with barely any room for the user’s legs. Something tugged at Freddie’s mind, but she couldn’t quite get to it. ‘Where’s her phone? She can’t just use this?’

  Nasreen walked round the bed. ‘I’ve not seen one. Let me check with the local DCI if they’ve taken it in as evidence.’

  Freddie stood aside for her to pass, turning back she tried not to look at the soles of Sophie’s feet, which danced in the corner of her vision. She stood next to Tibbsy at the dressing table. Three neat towers of shiny fifty pence pieces and pound coins were stacked next to the make-up.

  ‘There’s something behind here, guv.’ Tibbsy crouched and peered round the back of the unit.

  ‘Where?’ Freddie leant forward.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ Moast said. ‘Stand back, Venton. I don’t want your DNA turning up in my forensic reports.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, I’m not an idiot.’ Bloody hell, he blew hot and cold. She shivered at her accidental pun. ‘You’ve all got your gloves on,’ she nodded at Tibbsy’s ones. ‘Least you could do is give me some?’

  Moast snorted. ‘Fine.’ He fished a spare pair of disposable gloves from his pocket and passed them to her. ‘Tibbsy,’ he said, handing him a pair of plastic tweezers.

  She stretched the latex over her cold fingers as Tibbsy stuck the tweezers down the back of the unit and pulled out a photo.

  ‘Who have we here then?’ A smiling lady with tightly curled grey hair beamed out at them.

  ‘Turn it over.’ Freddie’s hand hovered near the photo, impatient.

  ‘I said don’t touch, Venton,’ Moast growled.

  ‘I’ve got gloves on now, I’m fine!’ Idiot.

  Tibbsy turned the photo over. Written on the back was: Auntie Em, Brighton Pier, 2003.

  ‘Family,’ said Moast. ‘See if the boys can trace her, Tibbsy.’

  ‘Yes, guv.’ Tibbsy produced a role of plastic baggies from his back pocket and tore one off, dropping the photo into it.

  Someone’s niece. Someone’s loved one. The sobbing in Mardling’s kitchen. The smiling face from the photo. Freddie couldn’t bear to think of it. Of this woman, this girl, being ripped from life. Imagine if someone knocked on the door while her mum was having a cup of tea in front of Coronation Street, before Dad got back from the pub, to tell her Freddie had been killed? Pain tore through her heart. Her vision misted with tears.

  ‘That’s enough now, Venton. Take a break. Go outside. Wait in the car.’ Moast’s tone was perfunctory.

  She nodded, relieved. She was glad Nas was out of the room. Genuine concern would have tipped her over the edge. She sniffed. Walking back through the lounge, past the kitchen, the tiny bathroom. This was someone’s world. A purple-painted inner sanctum for Sophie. The Internet wasn’t fazed by that, it trespassed everywhere. Through wires, through walls, permeating our machines, our fingers, our thoughts.

  ‘You okay?’ Nas was stood in the doorway of the flat.

  ‘Yes,’ Freddie croaked. Pleaded with her eyes for Nas not to say anything else.

  ‘Okay.’ Nas opted to play along. Or perhaps she just missed it. She held up a small baggy. ‘Got the phone – it was in her handbag.’

  Freddie nodded at the brick of a Nokia. ‘Good.’ For a second she thought Nas might reach out and touch her. She couldn’t cope with that. ‘I’m going to wait in the car.’ Nas nodded. Freddie passed the cop on the door, took the stairs at speed. She pushed the heavy door to the block, it opened like a seal: as if she were being spat out by the building. Taking in the clear night sky, she looked up and away from all this. The stars were bright. It wasn’t until she was halfway to the car that it hit her. That nagging thought that had played round the edges of her mind. She saw it clearly. She ran back, ducking under the tape.

  ‘Hey, all right there?’ The uniform on the door tried to steady her.

  Freddie shook him off, wrenched the door, took the stairs two at a time. ‘Nas! Moast!’ The words screamed out of her. The red-haired cop raised his eyebrows but held the door for her. ‘Nas!’

  Moast and Nas appeared at the entrance to the lounge. ‘What’s wrong?’ Worry dripped from Nas’s mouth. Tibbsy appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  The words tumbled out: ‘No lead. There’s no modem lead.’

  ‘Slow down. What?’ Moast said.

  ‘Shit.’ Nas pulled Sophie’s phone from her pocket.

  ‘Show me?’ Freddie held out her hand, closed it around the bag, felt the sturdiness of the bulky plastic, looked at the small screen. ‘Analogue. Not a smartphone.’

  The colour drained from Moast’s face. He shot into the bedroom, they hurried behind him. Freddie still fighting for her breath. Moast was down on his hands and knees.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Tibbsy was behind them.

  Freddie dropped down, squinted behind the wardrobe. There wasn’t enough room: it was too close to the wall.

  ‘Nothing,’ Moast said, still crouching.

  Freddie leant against the cool wall, Sophie’s toes at her eye level. ‘There’s no modem. No way this is wireless.’

  ‘Am I missing something?’ Tibbsy asked.
<
br />   Nasreen held up the phone.

  ‘That’s not on the Internet.’ Freddie pointed at it. ‘This isn’t on the Internet.’ She gestured at the ancient PC.

  ‘So how the hell does she tweet?’ asked Moast. Nasreen turned and walked out of the room. ‘Cudmore?’ Moast called.

  ‘Hang on, sir, just checking…’

  Freddie stood up, taking in the length of Sophie. As if she were sleeping.

  Tibbsy’s steadying hand had her by the shoulder. ‘Okay, I think you need some air.’

  She let herself be steered into the lounge. Nasreen appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘There aren’t any. No server. No hub,’ Nasreen said. ‘And there’s something else, sir.’ Freddie was aware of the bulk of Moast behind her, she was gliding, leaving, over the grey carpet, the red-haired cop held the door, Tibbsy at her side. ‘Where’s the cat?’ Nas said.

  ‘It’s not her then,’ Moast said. ‘This SophieCat111 or whatever it is. Her name, the street name: that’s all circumstantial. Just another distraction. Let’s focus on the victim’s life, the facts, what we do know about her: known associates, work colleagues, did she have a boyfriend?’ As the door to the flat closed behind them, Freddie caught the last of Moast’s words: ‘Until we have proof to the contrary, let’s assume this has nothing to do with this Apollyon character.’

  Gasping to get enough air, to stay lucid, Freddie wanted to object. This didn’t feel right. Why would Apollyon follow only Alun Mardling and now @SophieCat111? It had to be the same person. There couldn’t be another Sophie who lived on Baker Street who’d been murdered. There had to be a link. But why would Sophie, Apollyon’s selected online cat-lover stereotype, not have Internet access or a cat at home? Something wasn’t adding up.

  Chapter 23

  GR8 – Great

  07:30

  Wednesday 4 November

  2 FOLLOWING 115,280 FOLLOWERS

  Freddie stood at the front of the Jubilee station’s incident room with Nas, Tibbsy and Moast. She’d been unable to sleep last night: images of Sophie Phillips’ dead body seemed to levitate in her bedroom. She’d given up around 2am and got up to research syntax similarities and if you could identify two seemingly different writers as the same person through semantics and dialectical quirks. She compared Paige Klinger and Apollyon’s tweets but found nothing analogous between their spelling, cadence, tone or sentence structure. It wasn’t until around 6am, when the sound of one of her flatmates, Anton, stirring, and commuters could be heard bustling outside, that she let go and slept. Less than an hour later and her alarm had gone off. Now 7.30am, she was attending the pre-meeting arranged by Moast. He looked like he’d shaved in the dark. Tibbsy’s eyes were barely visible in hollowed-out sockets. Even Nas seemed edgy. All three were pulled into suits that were comically at odds with their knackered faces. Freddie hugged a coffee and her phone. She was in her jeans and a purple hoodie.

  She’d gone back over the clues from Apollyon – was it possible they’d got the wrong answers? ‘I’ve tried looking at it from every different angle, and I still think Sophie Phillips must be @SophieCat111,’ she said.

  ‘But then where did she tweet from?’ Tibbsy’s tiny eyes blinked.

  ‘We don’t know that there’s a link between the victim and the person tweeting as Apollyon,’ said Moast. ‘There’s nothing conclusive to link the two. Have the IT bods been able to link the victim with the Twitter address @SophieCat111?’ Freddie saw a grey smudge on his white shirt cuff, the kind you got from walking down the Tube station escalator resting your hand on the moving rail.

  ‘No.’ Nas looked taut, as if her skin was stretched so tightly she might split. ‘Nothing’s shown on either the phone or the home computer, but the IP address for the device sending messages from @SophieCat111 has been traced to the Leighton Buzzard area. We’re speaking to her work colleagues this morning to request access to her computer there.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Moast. ‘Then as of yet we’ve no confirmation that @SophieCat111 and Sophie Phillips are the same person. I don’t want to waste valuable time on this. We need to focus our resources on identifying possible suspects, starting with those known to the victim.’

  ‘But what if it is Apollyon?’ Freddie couldn’t drop it.

  Moast sighed. ‘Okay. Venton, you can look again at everything this @SophieCat111 posted: look for any identifying details that would link it concretely to Sophie Phillips. Have you gone to see the IT lads yet?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head guiltily. There hadn’t been time. Everything had happened so quickly.

  ‘Okay, get down there today and see what else they’ve got on the SophieCat Twitter account.’

  She nodded dumbly.

  ‘I want the rest of us to stay focused on the facts. There were similarities between the Mardling crime scene and this one. As with the scene at Blackbird Road, Sophie Phillips’ bedroom was clean; forensics have only found traces of the victim’s DNA in the flat. In addition to this, there was evidence of bleach found in the victim’s bedroom and on her computer. The SOCO team have confirmed it was the same brand of supermarket bleach that had been used at Mardling’s, albeit more liberally.’

  Freddie remembered the overwhelming sickly smell at Sophie’s flat. ‘Was it vanilla-scented?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Moast.

  Why would the killer use more at Sophie’s flat? ‘Were Alun Mardling’s computer and keyboard bleached?’ Freddie thought of the blood splatters.

  ‘No, there were traces of bleach on the door handles, on the back of the chair – presumably where he braced the victim before cutting him – and at other points in the room and leading to it,’ said Moast.

  ‘So why did he bleach Sophie’s computer?’ Freddie said.

  ‘It implies he touched it, sir,’ said Nas.

  ‘Possibly, or he had more time to clear up after himself. Sophie’s flat is discretely located,’ said Moast. ‘Perhaps the perp didn’t fear being seen. As such, we can assume our killer wore gloves and is very meticulous. Time of death has been narrowed to sometime between 4am and 9am on Monday 2nd November. Dr Fisher has yet to complete Sophie Phillips’ autopsy report, but traces of Temazepam and Flunitrazepam –’ he looked at Freddie – ‘what you might know as roofies, the date rape drug that’s used to render victims unconscious – were found in her bloodstream and also in the sugar bowl in the kitchen. Whoever did this knew Sophie Phillips took sugar with her tea. That indicates this was someone who knew the victim and her habits and perhaps not someone who was selected because they watched cat videos.’

  ‘Was she interfered with?’ Freddie tailed off. Rape? This was too horrific.

  ‘There’s no evidence she was sexually assaulted before or after she was strangled,’ said Nas.

  Freddie thought of the blue and white striped mug. Did Sophie unwittingly feed herself the drugs that sedated her while she was killed? Awful.

  Moast continued: ‘Her colleagues indicated she didn’t have much of a social life, but perhaps she just didn’t share it with them. If someone new came into her life, someone who knew how she drank her tea, someone with potential access to her flat, I want to know about it. Go back over it with the neighbours. Do they remember anyone visiting her in the last few months: a new friend, a lover, had she started acting out of character? Look at her bank balance, where’s she been?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ said Nas.

  ‘Have the local team canvas cafes, bars, restaurants and shops in the area. Does anyone remember seeing Sophie with anyone? Have we found any recent photos of her we can use to jog people’s memories?’

  Tibbsy dropped his blue eyes from Freddie. ‘No, sir. Nothing in the house so far, and Freddie found none on the @SophieCat111 account, which as you say, may not be hers anyway.’ Freddie tried to piece all the information together; she had a nagging feeling she was missing something obvious.

  ‘I can ask the employers, sir, when I speak to them this morning,’ Nas added.

  ‘Good. Do t
hat. I want a copy of all the door-to-door enquiries from the Bedford force. The local team have gone in to speak to the vic’s manager and colleagues in person. Cudmore, you and I will follow it up.’ Moast was flicking through his notepad. ‘See if anything pops. Keep me up to date with any developments, and we’ll reconvene after lunch to run through where we are. This concludes this morning’s briefing. I just want to say I’m sure I speak for you all when I say the sooner we catch this creep the better.’

  Nas and Tibbsy nodded and gathered up their notes.

  ‘So you’re just going to ignore @Apollyon?’ In the corner of her eye, Freddie saw a message alert flash across her locked phone. And another. And another.

  ‘It’s not a question of ignoring,’ Moast said.

  There was another, flickering across her screen: what the hell was going on?

  ‘It’s a question of process,’ Nas was saying.

  ‘Hang on,’ Freddie held her palm up. ‘Something’s happening.’ She heard Nasreen’s hands close round the file she was holding.

  ‘What?’ asked Tibbsy. ‘Is it another clue?’

  Freddie slid her thumb across her phone and clicked onto Twitter. She had 57 messages. What the hell? Clicking into her notifications, her screen scrolled with mentions.

  Roger Morris @RogerMorris1954 • 1s

  @ReadyFreddieGo You’ve tarnished the name of The Family Paper. Your actions shame you.

  Feelin Groovy @KevinMastetron • 34s

  @ReadyFreddieGo Dirty slag – I’ll teach you a lesson. Over my knee girl! #FamilyPaper

  What the hell was going on? She was being tagged into a Family Paper link. She clicked. The screen widened into the newspaper article. Freddie’s mouth hung open. There, on the homepage of The Family Paper, was a photo of her in a bikini, taken when she was fifteen at a friend’s barbecue birthday party. She was straddling a bottle of Cider White and pulling what she’d thought then was her best sexy duck face. They’d pixelated her right breast to make it look like the original image flashed a nipple. It didn’t. Emblazoned across it was the headline: The Truth About The #Murder Journalist. ‘Son of a bitch!’