by Helen Fields
‘There’s a woman in your office,’ Lively said.
‘Bit more information, Sergeant, or am I supposed to guess?’
‘Name’s Leigh-Anne Hoskins, born Stimple if that gives you a clue. She wants to know what the progress is with locating her mother. And she’s upset.’
‘Of course she’s upset,’ Callanach said. ‘Have someone bring a cup of tea and ask Salter to come in. It’d be useful to have another woman in the room.’
‘I’ll get the tea,’ Lively said. Callanach wondered if he’d heard right. Lively had never been known to make a drink for anyone other than himself. Salter came through holding a notebook.
‘You won’t be needing that,’ Callanach said. ‘I’ve got to break some bad news to Julia Stimple’s daughter and I thought you might be able to, you know …’
‘Hold her hand?’ Salter asked.
‘Exactly,’ Callanach said, walking through to his office.
Leigh-Anne Hoskins was startlingly like her mother, size and all. Not just large, but tall. She sat stony-faced, bag clutched on her lap. Callanach introduced himself and Salter, and sat down as Lively entered with the tea. The detective sergeant didn’t leave as Callanach had expected, choosing instead to lean against the wall and drink his coffee. None had been brought for Callanach or Salter, naturally.
‘Miss Hoskins, we’re doing everything we can to find your mother,’ Callanach began.
‘It’s not enough! My poor old mam, God knows what she’s going through. Have you got any idea where she is?’
‘Not yet, but we’re getting closer. We believe the man holding her is Slovenian and we’ve circulated a good description of him.’
Leigh-Anne pulled out a handkerchief and began wiping her eyes.
‘But you definitely don’t know where he’s taken her. Is that right?’
‘I’m afraid not. There is some other news, though. I’m sorry to have to tell you that the man holding your mother has taken action to persuade us how serious he is.’
‘Really?’ Leigh-Anne asked, eyes wide, cup of tea frozen half way to her lips. She looked from Callanach to Salter to Lively. ‘What?’
‘There’s no easy way to break this. A section of your mother’s finger was removed and sent here. It was left with a note referring to our recent press conference.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Leigh-Anne asked. Her face was taut, eyebrows pulled high, mouth open. Callanach had no desire to explain in any more detail. ‘How is that possible?’
‘Ms Hoskins, is there someone we can phone for you? You’ll need support,’ Salter said, putting a gentle hand on the woman’s arm. Leigh-Anne shook the hand off.
‘This isn’t right,’ she shouted. ‘I need to get out of here.’ She stood up, sending her teacup flying, spraying liquid across Callanach’s desk.
‘Don’t worry about that, I’ll clear it up,’ Salter said. ‘Shall I organise transport to get you home? You probably shouldn’t drive. We appreciate how much of a shock that was.’
‘What about your brother?’ Lively asked. ‘We haven’t been able to speak with him yet, but if you have a mobile number, we could ask him to pick you up.’
‘He’s working away and doesn’t want to be contacted. Too upset. We all are. So what happens now?’ Leigh-Anne said.
‘We’re working on some leads. Hopefully we’ll have answers soon. You’ll be the first to know should anything change,’ Callanach said.
‘I’ll be speaking to the press,’ Leigh-Anne said. ‘You people should never have let this happen. You knew she was at risk. My mum should have been moved to a safe house.’
‘Ms Hoskins, giving a statement to the press at this stage might make things worse. Specifically, you should avoid referring to the information I’ve just given you. The murderer is craving attention. Any wrong moves might push him to do something more drastic.’
‘The public has a right to know what’s going on,’ Leigh-Anne said, blowing her nose loudly. ‘I’ll get myself home.’ She walked out.
‘Do you want me to go after her, sir?’ Salter asked.
‘That’s all right, Salter, I’ll go,’ Lively said. ‘Put your feet up. You’ll be no good to that baby if you don’t.’
‘You told them then?’ Callanach asked when Lively had gone.
‘Aye. Figured it was time. I just didn’t want to seem to be asking for special treatment or have people acting differently around me. It’s hard. I like being a detective. The pregnancy wasn’t exactly planned,’ Salter said.
‘Maybe that’s the best way. You’ll be a great mother. And your career will be waiting when you’re ready to come back.’
‘It took a while to get used to the idea,’ Salter said, cleaning up the tea. Callanach fought the urge to take the cloth from her. Salter was right, his immediate instinct was to treat her differently. ‘But now I spend every free minute imagining the first time I’ll hold my baby, thinking up names, worrying, feeling ecstatic. Strange how you can love the idea of something before it’s actually there for you to touch.’
Salter had tears in her eyes. Callanach felt a surge of protectiveness, glad that Ava had burst in when she did, however complicated that had made things.
A phone rang – the one Ben had given him. He looked up at Salter.
‘It’s all right, sir. I was just going,’ she said. Callanach locked the door behind her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ben was in no mood to help the police. Callanach had sent DCI Edgar’s girlfriend to him, for Christ’s sake. Like that wasn’t a set-up from the start. That was on top of the fact that his boss at CyberBallista was deeply, deeply pissed off with him. He’d had a whole morning of interrogation, putting strategies in place, and resetting their internal security system. He wouldn’t get fired, he knew that. He’d been head-hunted to CyberBallista when a former colleague from his Silicon Valley post had mentioned Ben’s unique talents. There were very few people who could do his job. That was the only thing saving him at the moment.
Now he had to disappear off for another lunch hour when he should have been at his desk tidying up yesterday’s shitstorm. The police hadn’t found anything. He wasn’t that sloppy. They’d have to get into his apartment whilst his computers were logged on to get anywhere near evidence, and that was never going to happen. He’d even prepared for the prospect of a police raid. If they barged in, he had only to hit two keys in combination and everything got wiped. It was foolproof.
There was no way he would risk going back to his apartment straight after a visit from DI Turner. Callanach may have been an idiot to have trusted Turner, but he was a well-intentioned idiot, doing police work for the right reasons just like Ben’s dad had. Promotion was irrelevant to a good cop, so occasionally the rules became irrelevant too. All that mattered was catching the bad guys and protecting the innocent. His dad had always expressed a simple view of life. Now that his father was gone, the things he’d stood for seemed to be all that mattered. Justice, equality, standing up to the wealthy upper classes who contributed so little to those they looked down upon from their penthouses and corporate skyscrapers.
Ben grabbed his laptop, repeated Ava’s lie that his place had been broken into and began the walk round to the Below Par cafe. On his way, he texted Callanach to meet him for coffee. He’d know where to go. Polly met him with a smile.
‘All right, Ben? Didn’t expect you in today. You need the back room or are you here for the pleasure of my company?’
She was wearing a cut-off T-shirt and denim shorts, her hair tied up in a pink scarf. The emerald stud she always wore in her belly button cast a green light back on his own white shirt. He wanted to reach out and touch it. That would be dicing with death. He’d seen Polly cut more than a few men down to size when they’d taken liberties. She shot from the hip. It was one of the reasons he liked her so much.
‘The room, please, Pol, if no one’s in there.’
‘Ham on sourdough and a coffee?’ she smiled, walki
ng ahead to open up.
‘You’re an angel,’ Ben said. ‘There’ll be a guest, same as before. Let him straight in, would you?’
‘Killjoy,’ Polly muttered. ‘It was fun last time. But seeing as you asked nicely.’
‘I always ask nicely, in case you hadn’t noticed. Maybe that’s it, has my accent been hard to understand? It would explain why you always say no when I ask you on a date.’
‘Maybe it’s just about persistence,’ Polly said. ‘A girl needs to know if she’s just a quick fix or a long-term deal. Sounds like you’re about to give up already.’
‘Nope. Not going anywhere. Especially not now I’ve been given something that feels a bit like hope,’ Ben smiled at her.
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ she said, laughing as she walked off, hips swaying ever so slightly. Ben watched, conscious of the fact that she knew he was watching. Even so, looking away was impossible. Below Par belonged to a friend of a friend, someone sympathetic to The Unsung and their work. The cafe was a meeting point, a safe house away from prying eyes. You came and went, and whatever you’d done there went with you. When Polly started working there, Ben had become a more regular visitor. He was so used to Californian clone girls – golden tan, white teeth, size zero, blonde hair – that Polly had seemed like a cure-all to what he hated most. The establishment. Conformity. Society was the gossiping neighbour peering in next door’s windows, jealous of success, quick to point out failure. The earthiness of Scotland had been an antidote to all of that.
Ben fired up his laptop, ready for Callanach to join him. The five-minute security sequence finished, he opened the email to Rory Hand from the webmaster. There were instructions with it. You could only access the site if your machine was running encryption software. Standard stuff for the darknet. A username had been provided that Ben would be able to change once he was in. The password was a random series of twenty-one numbers, capitalised and small letters.
Callanach opened the door and walked in without speaking. Polly followed him and left coffee and the promised sandwich on the table.
‘You ever pull a stunt like that again and we’re through,’ Ben said.
‘It was complicated,’ Callanach said, ‘involving the theft of a piece of paper, a pregnancy and a threat.’
‘Spare me,’ Ben replied. ‘I take it there’s been a development.’
‘A delivery from the killer. We’re out of time,’ Callanach said. ‘What do we have?’
‘Rory Hand’s history was enough to convince the webmaster that he was eligible for membership to the club. I’m just about to enter the password.’ Ben typed for a few seconds then waited. A menu of options appeared.
‘Where first?’ Callanach asked.
‘Ignore User Profile, we don’t want to add details. The less attention we draw the better. Your choices are Polls, Forum and Gallery.’
‘Gallery seems the most obvious way to check we’re in the right place,’ Callanach said, shifting his chair closer to the table.
There were four sections within Gallery labelled Thorburn, Lott, Swan and Balcaskie. Callanach didn’t want to open any of them. It wasn’t what he would see that bothered him – chances were that the files held few surprises. It was more the sense that he was stepping into a world he had always opposed, tainting himself with the bloodlust of people who had no place in society. Ben clicked on the first window.
There were photographs of Sim Thorburn stolen from social media, a sign of an age where the populace was so addicted to recording everything that a few had taken snaps of the young man bleeding out. There was a copy of the autopsy documents, the press coverage, links to video news reports. It wasn’t dissimilar to the incident room wall. This was here for very different purposes though. Callanach knew what they were going to get on the other gallery pages. There was little point reminding himself how bloody the deaths had been.
‘Go to Forum,’ he told Ben. The click moved them to a list of threads, complete with user numbers and the date of the last posted comment. Some were discussions about the crimes, others were general conversations about killing techniques, more on serial killers in different countries and various conspiracy theories. There was a thread dedicated to recommended snuff videos, and another detailing weapons purchasing from knives and guns to poisons and chemicals. ‘How many users, do you think?’ Callanach asked, scrolling through the list of people posting.
‘Hundreds. The site must have been running a while. It’ll be attracting global traffic.’
‘And we can’t trace any of the users?’ Callanach asked, doing his best not to fixate on any one aspect of what he was reading. If he started, he had a suspicion he’d never stop.
‘No, the encryption software is too good for that,’ Ben said.
‘So where the hell do we start?’
Ben clicked on the final link. The polls section was split in two halves. The first was entitled ‘Next Kill’, although it had no other information available.
‘It’s disabled at the moment,’ Ben said. ‘I should be able to click in the box and type but I can’t. I guess there’s no poll open now. Let’s try the other one.’ He tapped his mouse button over the heading ‘Kill Grades’.
An instruction box opened up. Ben read it aloud. ‘“One vote per user, per kill. Vote cannot be changed once posted.” I don’t get it.’ He scrolled down and found each victim’s name. When he rolled the mouse over the name, three new boxes appeared to the side. ‘Proficiency. Originality. Fear. It allows you to enter numerals up to 100.’
Callanach put his cup down. His temples were throbbing. ‘That’s what this site is about? They’re grading the kills?’ He lowered his head, trying to combat the dizziness he was experiencing with additional blood. It didn’t work.
Ben said nothing, just stared at the screen.
‘How do we catch them, Ben? Now we know exactly what they’re doing. This whole thing is a fucking game. What good is this if we can’t get any closer to them?’
‘The killers will be in here somewhere,’ Ben said. ‘This is how they’re being given instructions. I need time to go through the threads, see what I can pick up. I’ve got to get back to work this afternoon though. I’ll start as soon as I get home tonight.’
‘You’ll need help,’ Callanach said. ‘We could ask Lance.’
‘I’ll call him,’ Ben said. ‘You don’t look well. Can I get you anything?’
‘You can get me the address where they’re holding Julia Stimple,’ Callanach said. ‘Because as soon as her abductor figures out how to score maximum points for killing her, we’ll be too late.’
Callanach left first, followed a few minutes later by Ben. Neither of them noticed Ava Turner across the street. She saw them though. She saw Callanach looking scared and exhausted as he exited, then Ben hurrying out, checking his watch. And she saw the girl who put a closed sign up in the window afterwards.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lance phoned Callanach. His hands were still shaking. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at, but he knew it wasn’t good. The morning had started positively. A quick jog before work to get the heart pumping, some leads on a few stories, and a birthday card from his son who was travelling for a year but who’d managed to remember. It had been a pleasant ride in to his tiny rented office – little traffic, bike running smoothly, no rain. Then the post had been delivered and he’d had the misfortune to open the package whilst eating a late lunch.
‘Hey Lance,’ Callanach said. ‘I was just dialling your number. I’m going to need your help this evening. Ben will contact you to …’
‘Someone’s sent me a piece of someone,’ Lance said. ‘Sorry, that didn’t make much sense. I mean, I’ve just opened a package and it contains what looks like human flesh. A soft part, not sure what.’
‘Julia Stimple,’ Callanach said. ‘Where are you?’
‘In my office. I don’t know what to do.’ Lance looked down at the blob that had once been a healthy pink and which no
w resembled an uncooked prawn.
‘Don’t move. Literally not a muscle. I’ll have a team there in minutes. Don’t touch anything at all, especially the packaging. I’m on my way.’
Lance wasn’t ordinarily squeamish. He’d patched up friends over the years, carried his fellow rugby players off the pitch in his youth, helped at his fair share of accidents. He’d even delivered his second child himself when things had moved faster than he and his then wife had anticipated. But this was infinitely worse. It was the knowledge that someone had had to endure having a piece of themself cut off.
When the first crime scene investigator came in, she was already suited. Lance felt as if he’d been caught in the middle of a science fiction movie. The officers checked he was all right, photographed him with the flesh on his lap where it had fallen, inspected it, bagged and tagged it, then repeated the process with every piece of packaging. Finally Lance was allowed to leave the room, fingerprinted to eliminate his prints from the packaging, and taken to a quiet place to give a statement.
Callanach arrived as Lance was being brought a cup of tea by a uniformed officer. ‘Lance, what happened?’
‘Envelope must have been put through the front door. These are shared offices. They get hundreds of items of mail each day and bring them round just after lunch.’
‘I’m sorry this happened to you,’ Callanach said.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Lance responded.
‘If I hadn’t used you to leak the false report about Michael Swan’s death the killer would have chosen a different outlet. Forensic pathologist says it’s a piece of earlobe, by the way. Nothing life-threatening if that makes you feel any better.’
‘Good God, poor woman,’ Lance said.
‘I didn’t know this was your office, Lance,’ DS Lively said from behind Callanach’s shoulder. ‘I’d fetch you a dram of single malt, only I suspect the DI here would frown on me so much as handling the stuff during working hours. You all right?’