Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel

by Angela Clarke

  ‘What’s he said?’ Tibbsy asked.

  ‘Is it another tweet, Freddie, I can’t see it.’ Nasreen had her own mobile out now.

  ‘They’ve outed me!’ Furiously, Freddie skimmed the article:

  The Family Paper can reveal the infamous Typical Student columnist is none other than the same Freddie Venton who has been lauded in some newspapers for her undercover work on the #Murderer case. Single Venton, 23, who has no problem sharing photos of herself in revealing clothing online, has defended her promiscuous lifestyle in this very paper. Just how much do the police know about their new recruit? The Family Paper can reveal, though Freddie Venton seems to come from a respectable middle-class family, a quick look at her Facebook page shows she has squandered her privileged upbringing on years of drunken antics.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Moast snatched the phone from her hand.

  ‘No!’ Freddie watched as his eyebrows travelled up his forehead.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Moast turned the phone toward them all, revealing a photo of Freddie in a police jacket and suspenders and the word ‘pigs’ on a sticky label on the fancy dress helmet.

  ‘Whoa! Nice pins, Venton,’ Tibbsy whistled.

  ‘It was a joke. Fancy dress party. Uni. Years ago. They’ve been on my site. They must have pulled it from there.’ Rage and embarrassment burned through Freddie.

  ‘Oh, this is just perfect.’ Moast was scrolling through the article. ‘DCI Moast, who appeared flummoxed by the presence of Miss Venton in a recent press conference…’

  ‘Sir, I’m sure it’s not that bad.’ Nas’s eyebrows threatened to meet.

  ‘You’re in here too, Cudmore.’ Moast tapped at the phone.

  ‘What?’ Nasreen’s hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘There, see? They’ve even got a photo of you.’ Moast waved the phone around. ‘Sergeant Nasreen Cudmore, who poured her curves into a fetching two-piece suit for the press conference, is known to have attended a well-respected school with the unlikely consultant, Miss Venton.’

  ‘Hey! Why haven’t I got a mention?’ Tibbsy asked, peering over Moast’s shoulder. ‘You look good though, Cudmore. They’ve even told people where you can buy that suit. Karen Millen. Very nice.’

  ‘Shut up, Tibbsy!’ Nasreen smacked his arm with the back of her hand. ‘Are they allowed to do this?’

  ‘Christ.’ Freddie sat back on the table behind her and let her face fall into her hands. No wonder the troll army were out for her this morning. How could Sandra do a number on her? How could she expose her like this? She’d written for them for free for years. She’d never seen her as an equal, had she? Never considered her to be a colleague. Just a bloody content driver.

  ‘What the hell did you say to them?’ Moast was still waving the phone in front of her. His cheeks inflamed, his eyes bulging.

  ‘Nothing. I swear. Why the hell would I give them photos like that?’ Freddie’s anger at Sandra seethed round every word she spoke.

  ‘You were told: no more talking to the press.’ Moast slammed her phone face first down onto the table to his side.

  ‘Hey! Watch it!’ Freddie grabbed the phone, checking the screen wasn’t damaged. ‘This is not my fault. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, Venton.’

  Freddie’s phone vibrated in her hand. ‘It’s him.’

  ‘I said shut it.’ Moast swiped at his hair. ‘Cudmore go get me a fucking coffee, I can’t think with all this going on.’

  ‘Don’t pour your curves in the cup, hey Sarg?’ Tibbsy said.

  ‘Put a lid on it, Tibbsy,’ Moast snapped.

  Freddie stared at her phone. At the link to the photo she’d opened. ‘Will someone please listen to me! @Apollyon has tweeted.’

  ‘Shit,’ Tibbsy said.

  ‘Show me.’ Moast’s voice was calm.

  Nas held out her own phone, like an offering. ‘It’s Sophie Phillips’ room.’ Moast put the phone down on the table and they all looked.

  ‘Lilac walls, purple duvet, butterfly stencils above the bed. Sophie Phillips’ room,’ Freddie said. There was no hiding it.

  ‘But no body?’ said Nasreen.

  Tibbsy whistled through his teeth. ‘I wonder when he took it?’

  ‘What does it mean?’ asked Freddie. There were no words with the tweet, just the photo.

  Moast rubbed at the uneven stubble on his chin. ‘It means whoever is tweeting from that account is either the killer or has one hell of a coincidental access to both crime scenes before and after the murders.’

  ‘It’s a message,’ said Nas. ‘Only those close to Sophie Phillips and us would know that’s the crime scene, sir.’

  Moast blew air through his teeth. ‘He’s taunting us.’

  ‘Freddie’s right: @Apollyon is our killer,’ Nas said. ‘And the tweets, these clues, they’re from him. He’s toying with us.’

  Moast looked grim. ‘It would seem so.’

  Finally they were agreeing with her, but Freddie felt no satisfaction. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. ‘Apollyon’s conducting the whole thing online. All in front of an audience.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Moast. He gathered himself. ‘We need to double back over what we’ve done and align it with what Venton has compiled on the online usage of Apollyon, Mardling and Sophie Phillips. Get the IT bods up to speed with this latest development, and have everything they’ve found compared with the results of our door-to-door enquiries and canvassing of friends and family. I want two timelines: one of the victims’ movements in reality, and one of their, and Apollyon’s, activity online.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Nas.

  ‘Sir,’ Tibbsy nodded.

  Freddie felt the air compress around her as she watched the team realise what they were up against. This was a sick, gruesome performance, and the anonymous Apollyon was calling the shots.

  The incident room door opened as the rest of the officers working on the case began to arrive. Clutching coffees, files, laptops and printouts. Freddie watched them talk to each other and report in to Moast. Working alone and in groups. Surely this many police could find whoever @Apollyon was before…She didn’t want to finish her thought: before he kills again.

  She couldn’t just sit here. Following directions from Jamie, she took the back stairs of the station and looked for room 01.203, which housed the tech team. She knocked on the door and waited.

  ‘Come in!’ called a cheerful voice from inside.

  Freddie opened the door into what she thought at first was a cupboard. The small, dark, windowless room smelt like a teen boy’s bedroom. Sat in front of two computers were two men.

  ‘Hullo,’ said the guy nearest to her. He was tubby with a nice open face, his black tie bouncing on the white shirt that was stretched over his belly as he turned his wheelie chair toward her.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘I was looking for the tech team.’ She started to back out of the room.

  ‘That’s us,’ said the jovial guy. ‘I’m Sergeant Griffiths and this is Sergeant Patel,’ he jerked his thumb at the slight man who sat behind him. Sergeant Patel smiled shyly, and the moustache that looked as soft as a feather on his top lip turned up at the ends.

  ‘No need to ask who you are, we’ve seen you on Twitter,’ said Sergeant Griffiths.

  ‘You’re actually on Twitter?’ said Freddie. ‘I thought the whole station was banned from it?’

  ‘Different rules down here, isn’t that right, Patel?’ Griffiths turned his swivel chair back toward his screen. Sergeant Patel nodded and smiled again.

  ‘You guys are the tech team?’ Freddie looked at the hard drives, phones in plastic bags and laptops that were stacked in the windowless room.

  ‘Ack, we may not be your e-crime super geeks, like them digital forensics they have on the top cases.’ Griffiths grabbed a can of Coke from his desk. ‘This isn’t yours is it, mate?’ he asked Sergeant Patel, who smiled and shook his head. ‘But we do a mighty
fine job with what we’ve got.’ He took a swig from the can. ‘Who do you think cracked the metadata on your Hashtag Murderer photo your suspect posted online?’

  Freddie nodded. ‘Okay, fair point. And they keep you in a dark room because?’

  Griffiths took a swig from his drinks can. Sergeant Patel opened a drawer and took a napkin and held it out for his colleague. ‘Cheers, mate,’ said Griffiths. ‘All the rooms on this side of the station are artificially lit.’ He wiped his chin with the napkin.

  ‘Oh,’ said Freddie. ‘I thought maybe it was a darkroom, like for photos and stuff.’

  ‘We tend to digitally print all photographs now,’ Sergeant Patel spoke so softly she just caught his words.

  ‘Of course,’ Freddie felt dumb. ‘So have you had any luck tracing the device that posted on @SophieCat111’s account?’

  ‘The posts can all be linked to a mobile phone mast in the Leighton Buzzard area,’ said Patel.

  ‘And it looks like the phone was turned off in that area. The last post was transmitted by the same mast,’ said Griffiths.

  ‘Do you know where it was when it was switched off?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘Ah, come now, as our very own Social Media Advisor you should know that without the phone’s number or a GPS-encoded metadata file we cannae do that,’ Griffiths said, quite friendly.

  ‘I have traced the GPS coordinates that were embedded in some of the images the @SophieCat111 account posted.’ Sergeant Patel lifted a pile of photographic prints from on top of a nearby laptop. ‘From the time range and spread of locations – across the globe – I would suggest that @SophieCat111 only shared images that were taken by others,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe she didn’t have a camera phone?’ Freddie said.

  ‘Possible, but most smartphones have cameras these days, and her online posts would indicate they were from a smartphone.’

  Then where was Sophie Phillips’ smartphone? It wasn’t in her flat, or her office, she had no car, or other place she frequented that they knew of. Perhaps she lost it, or it was taken by the killer? ‘Can I have those photographs?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sergeant Patel. ‘I’ve written the date, time and location on the back of those I’ve identified.’

  Perhaps there was a pattern to where Sophie pulled her images from? A Reddit thread or specialist website? If Freddie could compare the images and locate a common source, she might build a better picture of Sophie’s online life. ‘Thanks.’ She took the pile of photos.

  ‘Ms Venton?’ Griffiths said, as she turned to go. ‘If things continue down this road, with this Apollyon guy, then do feel free to tell DCI Moast he might want to call in the big boys.’

  ‘The big boys?’ she asked.

  ‘Yup. Me and Sergeant Patel here do a mighty fine job with what we’ve got, but a Digital Forensic Analyst, a specialist, might be able to glean more.’

  ‘But the posts on Twitter? The clues online? Apollyon?’ Freddie couldn’t believe this. Surely that was enough of a motivator? ‘Why hasn’t Moast called a Digital Forensic in already?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Griffiths. ‘They’re in short supply and take up an awful lot of the budget. We tend to use them to corroborate existing evidence, but I think they might be useful on this case. If it continues to develop in this way.’

  ‘We saw the photo of the victim’s room that was posted,’ said Sergeant Patel. ‘I can find no GPS coordinates hidden in that one. It was probably taken on a pay-as-you-go phone.’

  Freddie was trying to process all this: Moast seemed to finally acknowledge Apollyon might be the killer. ‘Do you think he’ll call in a Digital Forensic now?’

  ‘Ack, don’t you go getting worried about it, pet,’ said Griffiths. ‘You know your stuff surely, else the Superintendent wouldn’t have hired you. You may cost less than a Digital Analyst, but I bet you’re twice as smart aren’t you!’ Griffiths beamed at her. Sergeant Patel looked down at the floor. Freddie managed to nod and backed out of the room. ‘Tell your DCI we’ll have the results on Sophie Phillips’ hard drive soon,’ Griffiths called as she closed the door behind her.

  She couldn’t compare to a digital specialist. Had Gray used all his budget on her? No wonder Moast was pissed. She looked down at the photos in her hands, what was it her mum used to say? If you can’t get round something then you’ve got to go through it. She had to get on with this. People were relying on her.

  She took the photos to the canteen and spread them across one of the long tables. She began to group together photos or memes of what looked like the same cat, or memes that used the same text font, or had what looked like the same background. Occasionally she checked Twitter in case there were any further updates. Blocking the idiots who hurled abuse at her online. And ignoring those she’d previously thought of as friends, asking with undisguised glee how she was holding up following The Family Paper’s smear attack on her this morning. Plenty were too eager to feast on her humiliation. What could she say? She felt sick all the time, but not because of her photos in The Family Paper, but because there were two people dead and she felt like nothing she did helped. She was divorced from her previous life of quick-fire cynical puns. No more hilariously inappropriate Cards Against Humanity games; the reality of death had altered her very idea of life. It wasn’t so much that she’d tasted death but that it had tasted her. And now it had that taste, it kept coming back.

  Again, she thought about Brian’s strong hands snaking round her. It was madness to imagine they were the same hands that closed round Sophie’s neck. And yet she couldn’t shake the thought. There was no trace of him online. It was as if he never existed. She’d geotagged herself that night. She’d let it be known online where she was. Was he in the bar already or did he arrive after? Did @Apollyon know who she was? Her face had been all over the newspapers. Had he come close enough to taste her? No. She was going crazy. This wasn’t about her. It was about Sophie. She picked up the pile of cat photos: a change of scene might help.

  Walking back to the incident room, Nas stepped out of the ladies’ room in front of her, shaking the last drops of water from her hands. Her hair scraped back into a practical ponytail. She nodded. They stood, awkwardly for a moment. ‘I’m sorry about the shitty Family Paper,’ Freddie tried. How did every communication between them sour so quickly?

  Nasreen’s lip twitched. ‘Forget about it. Can’t be helped.’

  Freddie felt herself exhale. It was okay. She didn’t hate her. Well, no more than normal. They both moved to walk back toward the incident room in unison. Like they were strolling the pinboard-covered halls of Pendrick High again, they fell into step beside each other. Nas, tall and streamlined, each click of her heels on the floor a flag planted, ground gained. Freddie, sloping, hunched into her baggy hoodie, her DMs squeaking. ‘Any further news on Sophie’s Internet devices?’

  ‘We’re still waiting for access to be granted to the work machine. The hard drive on the computer in her flat was wiped clean.’ Nas swept an imaginary hair from her forehead. Her nails rounded pink petals against her cappuccino skin.

  ‘Why would he wipe her hard drive?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘Presumably there was something on it that linked Sophie to him. Whoever did this not only knew what they were doing, they also took their time.’

  Freddie felt a wave of nausea. How long had Sophie hung between life and death? Drugged, but potentially still saveable. ‘If we’d worked a bit quicker…’

  ‘We didn’t have enough to go on. It’s not worth thinking about,’ Nas said flatly.

  ‘But if we’d worked out the clues quicker?’

  ‘Then what? There are thousands of Sophies, hundreds of cat lovers. He knew that,’ Nas said.

  ‘So why do it, why tweet clues?’

  ‘Attention. Theatrics. To create panic. To prove how clever he is. I don’t know.’ Nas looked tired. ‘The DCI has requested a profiler for this case, but the paperwork will take time to process.’

  Freddie couldn
’t escape the feeling she could have done more. And now there was another dead body. Another victim. It was different than Mardling though. ‘It’s not just the missing cat is it?’ she said out loud.

  ‘What is?’ Nasreen stopped and turned to her. A black-haired constable came towards them. They stepped aside to let him pass.

  ‘I mean, it was different. The murder.’

  ‘Constable.’ Nasreen nodded as the copper passed. ‘You mean the method?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Freddie thought of Mardling’s butchered dripping body. ‘No blood.’

  Nasreen chewed the side of her cheek. ‘I thought that, it felt less…angry. The spiked sugar implies they knew her routine. And the way she was laid out. Sacrificial. The attention to detail: that white dress. Virginal. Bridal perhaps. It felt like there was love there. Or at least care.’

  ‘Yeah, certainly none of that with Mardling.’ Freddie tried to focus her thoughts. Keep on the details. Stay away from the face of Sophie.

  ‘Apollyon and the same bleach being used at each crime scene are the only definitive links between the victims we’ve found so far,’ said Nas.

  ‘The clues, and the photos posted by Apollyon of Mardling and now Sophie’s empty bedroom, must mean the killer is the same person,’ said Freddie. ‘Or at least using the same account. Could it be more than one person?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Nas.

  ‘Sophie and Mardling, it doesn’t feel the same. There’ve been a lot of suicide groups and pacts drawn up over the Internet. I read a report about it on xoJane. Could this be something similar? A murder group? A killing pact?’

  Nas’s lips puckered in thought. ‘I don’t know any more. It sounds so extreme. But then a week ago so did the idea of a serial killer posting on Twitter.’