Perfect Prey

by Helen Fields

  ‘Joe,’ her voice was scratchy. He had to strain to hear properly. ‘It’s my mother. She passed away this afternoon. I know it’s bad timing, but could you call me back? Please?’ Joe could hear her tears, her voice fading as she ended the call.

  He glanced at his watch as he put his phone back in his pocket. There was no time to call Ava now. There would be paperwork for her to fill out and other family members would have gone running. If he returned her call at this stage, he’d get caught on the phone for who knew how long. It wasn’t as if the death had been a shock. Sooner than expected maybe, but inevitable nonetheless. And it would allow Ava to be free of Edinburgh, to start a new life with him. He brought the phone out of his pocket briefly, wondering if he could just phone and explain how busy he was, then decided against it. Ava’s mother would still be dead later in the day, and he could offer the shoulder Ava needed to cry on then. For now, there were more pressing matters for him to attend to.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Callanach sprinted into Accident and Emergency. Ava had called twenty minutes ago and he’d found it impossible to decipher what she was saying, only that she was at the Royal Infirmary. He’d taken a marked car from the team he’d been briefing and flown across the city with lights blaring.

  ‘DI Ava Turner?’ he shouted to the reception assistants, one of whom showed him through to the treatment area. ‘Is she hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s through here. The doctor wanted to give her a sedative but she refused.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Callanach said, walking in. It was a day room, no more than a small waiting area, all pastel shades and mismatching wipe-down chairs. ‘Ava,’ he said. She looked up at him from a yellow plastic chair, her face its own tale, tear-stained, her eyes glassy.

  She held her hands out to him and he knelt before her, letting her wrap her arms around his neck then fall against him. He knew better than to expect her to speak before the crying was done. A year ago he would have shied away from such close physical contact, cringing every time a woman laid a hand on him, creating a barrier around himself he’d thought impenetrable. But Ava had softened him again through friendship, honesty, and sheer bloody-mindedness. Eventually she lifted her head and took a tissue from the table where they were no doubt regularly restocked.

  ‘My mother died,’ she said. ‘Here. This afternoon.’

  ‘Was there an accident?’ he asked.

  She shook her head, blowing her nose then plucking at the edges of a new tissue as she spoke.

  ‘She had cancer. A blood clot went to her brain. It can happen with chemo.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea …’ Callanach said, realising Ava should have been confiding in Joe instead and that what she probably needed most was for him to fetch her fiancé. ‘I’ll get the station to locate DCI Edgar. It won’t take long.’

  ‘He’s in a briefing,’ Ava said. ‘I left a message on his mobile an hour and a half ago. It’s a big day for him.’

  A number of different responses fought to be spoken aloud, but in the end Callanach let only the simplest of them out.

  ‘It is,’ he said.

  ‘I need to go and see her. To say goodbye. They’ve taken her body downstairs, but I’m allowed one last look. Would you come with me, Luc? I don’t think I can do this alone.’

  He took her hand. They followed the signs to where a blank-faced attendant allowed them entry. Callanach let Ava dictate how much of him she needed, happy to let her leave him behind at the final moment if she wanted a solitary goodbye, but she wrapped his arm around her waist and leaned against him as they walked.

  They had both been through the same procedure so many times. Steel bed palettes, a single sheet covering the body, the cold that was necessary to slow degradation, the air-conditioning required to make working there feasible. And they’d seen many worse cases than a natural death. But love was the most brutal and destructive of emotions, Callanach was all too aware of that. And the loss of it, the easy slipping away, was a torture whatever the circumstances.

  Ava ran gentle fingers over her mother’s face, doing her best to control the sobs she was internalising that made an earthquake of her body. Callanach barely recognised her mother. He had met her only once, at a party Ava had insisted he accompany her to. As protection, she’d said. When he asked from what, she’d claimed it was from the wealthy bachelors her mother would have invited for match-making purposes. Callanach had found the evening pleasant, if something of a spectacle. He himself had been the subject of plenty of speculation, but Ava’s mother had been kind, made conversation. He’d avoided the specifics of his work and any topics likely to cause offence. The food had been good, the wine plentiful, and Ava had shone in spite of her reticence about attending. She had been able to talk to anyone, without a moment’s hesitation. Callanach had watched her making her way round the room greeting old friends, making new acquaintances, before returning to him and declaring it was time to make their escape. The woman laid before him now was almost emaciated, the cancer eating more than its fair share of her, the treatment no match for its voracious appetite.

  ‘We can go now,’ Ava said, winding her fingers through his, gripping as if she were walking a tightrope across an abyss until she reached the safety of the corridor beyond the double doors. ‘Oh, God,’ she cried suddenly, covering her face with her hands. ‘Luc! What are you doing here? I forgot. I forgot everything that was happening. You have to go. You have to find Alexina O’Rourke.’

  ‘Every single police officer in the Edinburgh area is looking for Mrs O’Rourke. You needed me here,’ Callanach said.

  ‘If Overbeck finds out …’ Ava said.

  ‘Fuck Overbeck,’ Callanach cut across her. ‘You’re more important than my career.’

  Ava stared at him, her fingers still intertwined with his, until a porter coughed politely and waited for them to move.

  ‘You have to go now. I couldn’t bear the thought that you stayed with me when you could have made a difference. My family is on its way. I’ll wait for them, then head back into the city and find you.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ Callanach said. ‘Go home. Take the time you need.’

  ‘I need to be useful. That’s what I chose. And my mother told me she was proud of me. I got here in time for that, at least. I think she’d be most proud if I carried on and did my bit. Now get lost, okay? That’s an order.’

  ‘I had no idea you were my boss,’ Callanach said, kissing her gently on the cheek.

  ‘You wish!’ Ava managed a small smile. ‘But I think we’re stuck with Overbeck.’

  Callanach looked at his watch as he jogged back to the car, wheel-spinning out of the mud he’d parked in, and putting the blues and twos on when he hit the road. It was five o’clock and there were no messages on his phone. The trail had gone well and truly cold. Hopefully the same wasn’t true of Alexina O’Rourke.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Lance had spent the day feeling as if his guts were being gnawed by an undernourished rat. Something had struck him as wrong since he’d spoken to Ben that morning, but he’d been in no position to do anything about it until Edinburgh’s nine-to-five workforce had taken to the streets clutching their gym bags, skinny lattes and overpriced bottles of wine to accompany dinner. Ben finally answered his call at half past five.

  ‘Jesus, Lance, what’s happened? I’ve twelve missed calls from you,’ Ben said.

  ‘Apologies. Are you home yet to check the information we were looking for this morning?’

  ‘I’m three minutes away,’ Ben said, puffing in time with his footsteps. Lance fought the desire to tell him to walk faster. ‘I’ll call you back when I’m in. It’ll be faster that way. Takes me a while to get though my security set-up. Hang cool, okay?’

  ‘God almighty,’ Lance said aghast into his phone. ‘We’re pinning our hopes on a boy who says hang cool. Please let this not have been some dreadful mistake.’

  Lance put the kettle on, swit
ched it off again and got a beer from the fridge. He’d almost finished it when his phone rang.

  ‘Did you get it?’ Lance asked before Ben could speak.

  ‘Give me a minute, would you? I’ve got some data back but it’s still decrypting. What is it specifically that you’re trying to deduce from this?’

  ‘Just take me through the votes. They should speak for themselves.’

  There was some beeping, the click-clack of keys as Ben’s fingers flew over them, accompanied by the whirring of computer unit cooling fans. Lance began tapping his foot and counting the seconds.

  ‘Got it. This list is only visible to the moderator, not to other users on the site, listed chronologically according to time of entry. Wow, there’s loads, really diverse. Greenpeace activist, disabled support worker, counsellor, dinner lady, podiatrist although that’s spelled wrong so it could have been intended as something else, foster carer, alcohol and drug dependency worker, seniors carer, probation officer, gardener, prosthetics designer – someone really thought about that – soldier, police officer although that only had one vote …’

  ‘Stop, stop,’ Lance said. ‘Just look for lawyer. How many times does it come up?’

  Ben muttered as he surveyed the screen. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘That can’t be right. It’s definitely ours. I have time codes for each entry, and I know that’s when we were online.’

  ‘Do any of the other suggestions have more than one entry?’ Lance asked.

  ‘Some do,’ Ben said. ‘Foster carer was input by at least four different people. Counsellor had three votes. Quite a few had two. So why the hell did he pick up on ours, unless the webmaster was onto us. Maybe he’d been in touch with the real Rory Hand and was teaching us a lesson.’

  ‘Occam’s Razor,’ Lance said. ‘The simplest explanation is that it had nothing to do with us at all, and everything to do with the person controlling the game. After all, why amend it to specify a human rights lawyer if he was making a point to us? We might never have realised that we were the only ones who had made the relevant suggestion.’

  ‘I don’t get where this takes us,’ Ben said.

  ‘I’m going to find Callanach,’ Lance said. ‘Stay where you are. There may be more we can do. It’s nearly six o’clock now. Give me an hour – I’ll come to you. See if you can get any more information from that website. We need to get into the webmaster’s communications files. He gathered a lot of detailed information about Rory Hand before allowing membership. Somewhere he has the same information about the killers.’

  ‘It’ll be heavily encrypted, and that’s if he doesn’t dump the information once he’s finished vetting applicants. You’re going to have to come up with something more reliable than my hacking skills given what little time we have left,’ Ben said.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  DC Salter was in the incident room where she’d been manning the phones all day. Callanach burst in first, demanding a full update. She’d wished there had been more to report, but the person who had seen a large four-by-four behind the O’Rourkes’ hadn’t been suspicious enough to take a licence plate, or notice the make or model. Randomly following the progress of dark-coloured four-by-fours in Edinburgh was a bit like spotting a fish in a loch and trying to figure out which way it was going to swim.

  Callanach had explained DI Turner’s absence, instructed Salter to keep the pressure off Turner unless unavoidable, then disappeared off towards his office. He was avoiding Superintendent Evil Overlord and Salter didn’t blame him. The super had darted into the incident room several times during the day, each visit more furious than the last, demanding random useless snippets of information as if Salter were personally responsible for the lack of progress.

  An hour after Callanach’s sudden reappearance, another man hurtled down the corridor accompanied, or rather chased, by PC Biddlecombe from the front desk, puffing to catch up.

  ‘He’s signed in and I’ve check his credentials,’ Biddlecombe called desperately, ‘but he’s press.’

  It was as if the man had been carrying an infectious disease, Salter thought.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Salter shouted, rising to head the man off. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘Where’s Callanach?’ the man asked. ‘I’m Lance Proudfoot. He’s not answering his calls. I tried his mobile but it went to voicemail.’

  ‘That’s because he’s a wee bit busy, and to be honest he’s not in the mood to talk to journalists. Perhaps you could tell me what’s happening and then I …’

  Salter had found that as her years in the police went by, her ability to be surprised was waning. She’d expected the man before her to insist on seeing Callanach personally, to get huffy, to refuse to speak to an underling, or all of the above. Instead, he took her gently but firmly by the shoulders, looked her straight in the eyes, and spoke clearly.

  ‘The human rights lawyer target wasn’t chosen as the most popular suggestion. It was planted by whoever runs the website communications. Someone had a motive for choosing this particular target. If Callanach wants to find the target, he needs to figure out who chose her.’

  Salter spent no more than three seconds staring into his eyes before breaking into a run.

  ‘Stay there, Mr Proudfoot. Right where you are,’ she shouted.

  It took no more than the same length of time again for Callanach to come striding back down the corridor.

  ‘Lance, you’re sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, Ben retrieved the data,’ Lance said.

  Callanach shushed him, pushed him into the incident room, beckoned Salter in to follow, then shut the door.

  ‘Quietly and don’t say any names,’ Callanach said, watching the internal windows and hoping none of Edgar’s men walked past. Lance had been observed with Callanach entering Ben’s flat. Now wasn’t the time for him to be seen in the police station.

  ‘We found the list of all the target suggestions submitted to the webmaster,’ Lance whispered. ‘Lawyer definitely wasn’t the most popular choice. Foster carer was suggested by four different individuals. And human rights lawyer wasn’t mentioned at all.’

  ‘You’re saying it’s a set-up?’ Callanach asked. ‘But the other victims, the whole competition between Sem Culpa and Grom, that wasn’t faked. This lawyer thing must just be an anomaly with the data.’

  ‘No, it’s felt wrong to me all day. The data didn’t come to us rigged, it was too well protected for that. I can’t tell you about the other victims – if they were chosen at someone else’s whim or under the guise of a user vote – but this target is deliberate and specific. It sure as hell had nothing to do with that vote.’

  Callanach looked at his shoes, waiting for the answer to come. It made no sense. It was bad enough when it had seemed to be some sick game, but the thought that the whole thing had been rigged …

  ‘Salter,’ Callanach said. ‘You found articles on a search engine that could have suggested Alexina O’Rourke as a victim. I need to see them.’ Salter brought them up on her computer. ‘Here you go, Lance, this is what we found. Even if the category of a human rights lawyer was a set-up, these articles seem to be what prompted Sem Culpa to choose Alexina O’Rourke. It’s the same as the other victims. Someone within a specified profession who had received public attention for doing good work. Maybe whoever runs the site is cheating a bit. Taking a suggestion from the list without worrying about the maths. There could be any number of explanations. Perhaps a lawyer seemed a more visible target, get a bit more press, attract extra attention. Assuming the human rights lawyer category was set up, without naming a specific victim this doesn’t take us any closer to finding her. There were other lawyers with similar press reports, so there’s a randomness to Mrs O’Rourke being selected. It may simply be that she was just the easiest victim to locate.’

  Lance rubbed his temples and sat down.

  ‘I’m sorry, Luc, you’re right. I’m wasting your time when you’ve got a thousand other things to do. The web
master didn’t specify Alexina O’Rourke. I’ll leave you in peace.’

  ‘Sometimes the pieces don’t quite fit together,’ Callanach said, ‘but if you hadn’t noticed the graffiti to begin with, we wouldn’t be here now.’

  ‘I hope you work it out,’ Lance said, clapping Callanach on the shoulder. ‘And thank you, too, Detective Constable Salter. Sorry to have caused such a stir.’

  ‘No problem at all, Mr Proudfoot. It was nice to have met you,’ Salter said.

  Lance smiled at her. ‘Old-fashioned manners in a time of crisis. That’s the rock that Scotland’s built on,’ he said, raising a hand as he plodded away down the corridor.

  The phone rang. Callanach motioned to Salter that he was headed back to his office, and she picked up the line.

  ‘DC Salter, MIT,’ she said.

  ‘It’s PC Biddlecombe. We’ve got a lady just phoned in, worried about an elderly neighbour. They live quite remotely. Says she normally sees her once a week but the neighbour isn’t picking up the phone. She walked to her house to check on her, neighbour didn’t answer, and the lady has no known family. I can’t get hold of anyone. Every uniformed patrol is in the city because of the operation today and DCI Edgar has taken all the other spare bodies. I’m literally out of officers. I saw you earlier and I wondered, if I divert your phone to me on the front desk …’

  ‘I’m reduced to driving miles to wake up old ladies who can no longer hear their doorbells,’ Salter sighed. ‘Fine, anything to get me out of this chair.’