Da Silva clasped his hands and allowed silence to fill the room.
He turned his back on them and studied the wall-to-wall whiteboard. On it were written the bullet points from yesterday’s briefing that Jenny had led and Fiona had written up. Added since were other new lines of enquiry, smiling photos of both victims, blow-ups of both bodies in situ, other shots from the crime scenes and copies of all three communiqués from the killer; the email inviting Anna Parker to her fake audition, the note to Audri Sahlberg asking her to come to Derek’s fake office, and the instructions Audri followed when she arrived at the meeting room.
While his back was to them, people started looking at each other, shrugging and mouthing things like, “What the fuck?”, “Where did he pop up from?” or, more simply, “Dickhead” and worse. Jenny sat still, still bristling from how discourteously Da Silva had treated her in front of her peers and juniors. No DCI had ever done that to her before.
“The video footage from the two Flexbase receptions,” said Da Silva loudly, quieting the crowd, “Where are we with that, DC Jones?” He kept his back to them.
Jenny could see that he had read the first line of enquiry from the board.
“We received both video files from the Flexbase headquarters about an hour ago,” said Fiona. “They’ve only got footage of the reception in both buildings. Neither had CCTV anywhere else. I’ve just started going through the footage.”
“Is it just you going through the two video files?”
“Yes, guv.”
“That’s not enough. Get someone else to help you.”
“Right, guv.”
“While we’re on the subject of CCTV, who’s pulling together footage from the area around both Flexbase offices?”
“That’ll be me, guv,” said Karim. As Da Silva did not turn to face the new speaker, Karim added his name and rank.
“Well, DC Malik. What’s your update?”
“Nothing for Watford except Watford Junction train station at the end of Clarendon Road, but that doesn’t seem to be much use to us. Paddington Basin has some. We found footage of Anna Parker exiting the tube station, carrying her cello, but other than that we don’t really know what we’re looking for.”
Da Silva whirled around theatrically. “You don’t know what you’re looking for?” He stared Karim down. “Someone help DC Malik here please. What should he be looking for?”
No one spoke. Da Silva looked around the room, the challenge in his eyes. “No one?” he asked the room, surprise in his tone. “I don’t believe this. Call yourself a murder investigation team?”
One of the indexers, a middle-aged woman, sat at the front, tentatively raised her hand.
Da Silva said, “Go on.”
“Search the CCTV footage for the prime suspect, Mr Saxton?”
“Correct. A gold star for you. DC Malik, did you hear that?”
“Yes, guv.”
“Right, next. The fingerprints on the letter delivered to Audri. Who’s on that?”
“Me, sir,” said Alan.
Jenny was wound up now. She hated seeing her team treated like this, especially in front of the rest of the supporting staff, civilians and uniformed officers. She’d already heard enough snickers of derision to know this had gone far enough. She stood up, placed her hand briefly on Alan’s shoulder to let him know not to say any more and shuffled her way to the front.
Da Silva stared at her incredulously.
“What do you think you’re doing, DI Price?”
“Can I have a word in private, sir?” She spoke conversationally.
“Not right now.”
“It’s important, sir.” Jenny held up her phone. “I’ve just received a text message with some new information that may change the direction of our whole investigation. But it’s delicate. I need your personal input.”
Da Silva looked at her suspiciously and then said to the room. “Okay, let’s dismiss for now. You heard what I said. Two hundred per cent. Nothing less.”
The room emptied.
“Let’s go to my office, then.”
Jenny had already walked off in the direction of his office. Da Silva caught up with her. She entered the room and immediately began lowering the blinds to block visibility from the floor; this was not something that anyone else should see.
Da Silva entered behind her and said, “What do you think you’re doing, DI Price?”
“Saving you from yourself, that’s what I’m doing. With respect, you were making a fool out of yourself out there, sir. It was becoming obvious to me and, most likely to every one of those officers, that your experience of leading a major investigation is . . . limited.”
Da Silva stared at her impassively. She held his gaze, willing him to register that she was putting her neck on the line to help him. It was obvious he was weighing up his situation, deciding how to handle this, perhaps wondering how much he could trust her. He was hung up on rank; she knew that. Could he overcome the fact that she was a junior officer? Or would he revert to type, let his pride get in the way and throw her out on her ear for insubordination? She hadn’t thought through the consequences of her actions. It slowly dawned on her that he could actually suspend her for this.
It was up to him now.
Da Silva slowly sat down. “But I have to lead from the front.” He spoke quietly.
Jenny sat in the chair on the opposite side of his desk, perching sideways to avoid seeming confrontational.
“Since when? You’ve done all right these last two weeks.”
“Not everyone would agree with you . . . ”
He was right. He was the main subject of gossip at the water cooler.
Da Silva stared down at his hands, then looked up at her. “You know I’ve being relying on you these last two weeks.”
The vulnerability in his eyes caught Jenny by surprise, but not as much as the admission. She had been sure that there was some nefarious ulterior motive to the way he had allowed Jenny to lead the team briefings and suspect interviews. She had thought him lazy. Or that he was giving her enough rope to hang herself. Something that benefited him to her detriment. But what she hadn’t considered was that he was completely out of his depth. That he had relied on her.
“Only in the details, sir. The overall investigative strategy, keeping DCS McLintock at bay, handling our liaison with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, the media engagement. That’s all been you. From the front.”
“Some of it, but not the operational tactics, prioritising lines of enquiry, following the leads, interviewing the witnesses, all that stuff. I’m the SIO and I’ve not been close enough to any of it. You’ve done all that.”
“Why did you leave it to me?” she asked.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Because . . .”
“. . . Because the Met’s Murder Investigation Manual is all process, policy and procedure. I’ve read it plenty of times. I’ve completed the training courses with flying colours. But without the experience of having actually been part of a murder investigation, it’s hard to know which bit to apply when. You do.”
Jenny was flattered. She had not expected that at all.
“What was your last role, sir?”
“I ran the kidnap unit in Scotland Yard.”
“And did you personally negotiate any kidnappings?”
“No. I had a strong team. They all knew what to do when we had a case. I focused on making sure everyone had the correct training, the resource levels were right and all the other management activities were handled correctly.”
“Right. The background strategy was your forte and you relied on your team to do their job.”
“Yes.”
“Which is what you’ve been doing for the last two weeks. What happened to make you change that today?”
He looked at Jenny and leaned forward. “This conversation is absolutely confidential, DI Price.” He looked at Jenny’s raised eyebrow and corrected himself. “Sorry, I mean Jenny.�
�
Finally, a first name. Maybe there was hope. “Of course, sir.”
“Somehow, word has got back to the Chief Super that I’ve been running things from a distance. Delegating a bit too much. This afternoon, the real reason McLintock tore me a new one was because of that. It was nothing to do with only having circumstantial evidence so far. Although, he isn’t happy about that either, but he expects us to pull through on that now that we have Saxton in custody.”
“And do you think that your approach in front of the troops earlier was the right one?”
“Clearly not, given this conversation.” He chuckled. “I thought that it was time I showed a firm hand.”
“So you thought giving that speech, belittling me and my team in front of everyone, and generally lording it up would generate the right level of respect for you as DCI?”
Da Silva didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“Okay, I have a few suggestions . . .”
For the next twenty minutes, Jenny and Da Silva spoke over his options. He allowed her to help him. He listened to her ideas. They agreed on a plan of action that would leverage the skills he had and utilise Jenny for the tactics in the field, building upon the approach he had taken naturally in the first two weeks. They agreed how to keep communication lines open between them so that he was always in the know. Established where he could safely learn on the job without exposing himself. In suspect interviews, they would make sure it was just the two of them. Each day, they would get together in his office and prioritise the lines of enquiry, which he could then assign to the team. He agreed to it all.
Jenny reminded herself that while she had also passed all the courses and been a senior member of murder investigation teams before, she’d never been the Senior Investigating Officer and had certainly never worked a double murder. She pointed out to Da Silva that there were other, far more experienced DCIs and DIs from whom he could take advice. But she only said it for effect. And he dismissed it anyway.
* * *
Back at his apartment, Brody cracked open a new, untraceable pay-as-you-go SIM card and placed it inside a spare mobile phone. He entered the destination phone number from memory. Then he keyed in the text message he’d thought up earlier.
DI Price. I have critical information on the Audri Sahlberg case that you need to know. I will only discuss with you personally. Tomorrow 10:00 a.m. Alone. Somewhere public. Let me know where. His finger hovered over the send button.
Brody had obtained DI Jenny Price’s mobile number by phoning Holborn Police Station pretending to be DCI Jeffries from Watford police station. He had come by DCI Jeffries’ name by first phoning Watford and asking who was in charge of the murder investigation on Clarendon Road. All facts he had overheard earlier, while parked outside the Saxton household.
He knew that when he pressed send on this text, there would be no going back. The law was binary: zero or one, right or wrong, black or white. Brody was a hacker, someone who operated very much in the area between the black and the white. As a white hat, he discovered and publicised weaknesses in systems that would otherwise be kept secret and exploited by black hats with low morals and malfeasant purposes. His deeds always had honourable intentions, but his methods were problematic. They were often the same ones used by the criminals. In his own way, he fought fire with fire. The only problem was that it was difficult for laypeople to see the difference. To see who was white and who was black. To them, they were all grey.
And despite this, here he was choosing to jump into bed with the police.
But what choice did he have?
Brody pressed the send key and waited.
* * *
Jenny sat at her desk, smiling to herself. Across the major incident room, through the glass half-walls of Da Silva’s office, Bruce Nichols, the Office Manager, was making copious notes in his notepad as he took a long list of instructions from a very animated Detective Chief Inspector Raul Da Silva. Da Silva frequently pointed at his whiteboard, where each thread of the case was already listed in Jenny’s handwriting — he hadn’t complained this time when she’d taken marker pen to the whiteboard — to help make his points. Nichols was fourth in a line of officers that Da Silva had briefed since his chat with Jenny an hour before. The Press Officer, the Finance Manager and the HOLMES 2 Support Manager had all been summoned, consulted, briefed and dismissed.
Although she hadn’t planned the confrontation with Da Silva earlier, or its surprising outcome, Jenny wondered at her own motivations. She could easily have stood back and allowed Da Silva to screw up. The way he was going, it wouldn’t have taken long. It could still happen despite their off-the-record pact. And then there would be a vacancy for a new DCI. But she knew that she was still three or four years away from being in a position to even be considered for promotion. No, her motivation was more straightforward. The situation gave her an opportunity to shine. An experienced DCI would personally run all key lines of enquiry, with Jenny in his shadow. This way, she would lead — albeit not in name — and obtain investigative leadership experience far more quickly than she otherwise might. Da Silva had his fast-track career sorted. This could be her own mini version.
“Got you!” cried Fiona, from across the room. She turned around and waved Jenny to come over a big grin on her face. “Look at this,” she said, pointing at her screen.
Black and white CCTV footage of the Flexbase reception in Paddington was paused on her computer screen. It was mounted high and took in all of the reception area, the desk on the left, the entrance doors in the centre and the waiting area to the right. The female receptionist sat behind the reception desk painting her nails. A time code in the bottom corner said, “16:09.” Fiona resumed playback. Nothing happened for a moment and then the entrance doors rotated and a cycle courier walked in, carrying a large letter. He wore trainers, a shiny charcoal tracksuit and carried a backpack. His head was still covered in a black cycle helmet and facemask, the kind used by cyclists to filter carbon monoxide. He spoke to the receptionist, although nothing could be heard, as there was no audio. She nodded and he walked forwards towards the camera and then underneath, out of sight. Fiona stopped playback.
“Right ?” said Jenny, noncommittally.
“Now watch this.” Fiona pulled up another CCTV feed. Jenny recognised this as the reception area from Watford, smaller and less grand than its cousin in Paddington. This time, a security guard sat behind the reception desk, doing a crossword in his newspaper. The time code showed, “19:13.” Fiona pressed play. After a moment the guard looked up towards the entrance doors. He pressed a button and the doors opened. A cycle courier walked in, in exactly the same garb as the one from the Paddington footage. After a short conversation with the guard, he too was allowed to enter the building.
“It’s the same guy in both, I’m sure of it.” Fiona rewound, put both video feeds on the screen and allowed them to run simultaneously. It was the same man. He wore the same clothes and moved in the same way. “And in both cases, he’s arrived not long before each victim. You can see them coming in later.”
“That’s great work, Fiona.” Jenny was impressed with the constable’s initiative. “Have you got footage of the courier leaving?” She was thinking of the time code.
“That’s the strange thing. There’s no footage of him leaving at all. It’s like he came in and never left.”
“That is odd.” Jenny studied the two feeds. “What do you think? Is that Derek Saxton under that mask and helmet?”
“It’s hard to say. Could be, I suppose.”
Jenny wasn’t sure. Saxton was powerfully built and muscular. The dark tracksuit bottoms and jacket worn by the cyclist made it difficult to gauge his build.
“Can you work with O’Reilly to see if we can get a close-up of his face? We might at least be able to see his eyes or something.”
“I’ve just emailed him the two MPGs and asked him for exactly that.”
“Good. And can you contact the team on-site
at Derek’s house and office? Ask them to search for any cycling gear.”
“Already done,” beamed Fiona.
When Jenny returned to her desk, she noticed a missed call on her mobile phone. Then she remembered that she’d left it on silent since the team briefing three hours earlier. She pressed a button and saw that she had missed four calls, all from different people: April, Alan, Karim, and Harry.
Her sister would have phoned to confirm arrangements for the coming weekend. It was Kevin’s birthday. Which reminded Jenny, she needed to buy a present for her nephew. Alan, who was at the morgue, would have called to give her an update on the formal identification of Anna Parker, whose mother had travelled up from Torquay for the grotesque formality. Karim, who was at a different morgue in Watford, would have been giving her an update on the Audri Sahlberg post-mortem. And Harry, who had been forensically analysing Derek Saxton’s laptop and home computers, searching for evidence of the Anna Parker email invitation or the Audri Sahlberg letter and instruction note, was returning her call. She had left him a voicemail earlier, telling him to meet her the next morning in Canary Wharf, and accompany her during her visit to the Flexbase headquarters. Given that they were looking into the meeting room booking processes, she wanted the computer expert with her for when the techno babble started.
She saw that three of the four had left voicemails. And then she noticed that she had also received a text. It was from a number she didn’t recognise. She read it and gasped.
DI Price. I have critical information on the Audri Sahlberg case that you need to know. I will only discuss with you personally. Tomorrow 10:00 a.m. Alone. Somewhere public. Let me know where.
What the hell was this? She looked at the time. It had arrived twenty minutes ago. She composed a response and pressed send. Who is this? How did you get my number?
A minute later the reply arrived. Insistent. Tomorrow 10.00 a.m. It will be worth it.
Instead of replying with another text, she dialled it. It rang and rang. No voicemail. Eventually, she gave up. She thought about where to meet and recalled that she was going to Docklands tomorrow morning. She knew somewhere.
Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) Page 22