Perfect Prey

by Helen Fields

  ‘I’ll email you my notes and an address. Sorry to drop it on you, but I can’t leave the desk unattended,’ Biddlecombe said.

  ‘Just us wallflowers left,’ Salter said. ‘We can commiserate with cake. I’ll pick something up on my way back. Any preference?’

  ‘I’d rather have a meat pie, if you’re swinging past the bakers. Any flavour as long as it’s protein,’ Biddlecombe laughed.

  ‘Right you are. Email’s come through. I’ll call in and let you know what I’ve got.’

  Salter picked up her badge and a set of keys to an unmarked vehicle. If nothing else, she could take it slowly, wind down the windows and enjoy the sunshine for a while.

  Ben was watching television and waiting to see if any of the code he’d thrown at the webmaster’s communications network was going to get him in. The clock was ticking. He’d had confirmation by text from Lance that another woman had been taken. If he could identify an email address or mobile number for Sem Culpa, the police stood a much better chance of finding the latest victim alive.

  His doorbell rang at 6.47 p.m. and he found Lance clutching a bag inside which, judging by the smell, was fish and chips.

  ‘Dinner,’ Lance said, holding up his prize.

  ‘Come in. Beer’s in the fridge. Do you want a fork or not?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Not,’ Lance said. ‘And don’t worry about the code now. I saw Luc. There were a few search engine hits about the current abductee and her work. It was enough to have put her on the killer’s shortlist. No one could have controlled the choice of victim just by suggesting a human rights lawyer.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Ben asked, pulling hot newspaper parcels from the bag.

  ‘I read them. They were definitely about her, with plenty of detail about where she works and the people she’s represented. It would have taken about thirty seconds to have found her address and phone number. Poor woman didn’t stand a chance,’ Lance said, opening a beer and landing heavily in a chair.

  Ben switched off the television and picked up his mobile, flicking through screens and typing one-handed. ‘No credited author on the first piece I’ve found,’ he said.

  Lance sat with his head back, eyes closed, nursing his beer and ignoring the fish and chips on his lap. ‘It’s not unusual for web pieces to lack an individual author’s name. They’re often just linked to a website,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not like this is coming from a newspaper, established blogger or a legal society,’ Ben said. ‘And it’s halfway down the first page of search engine results. Not sure why that would have attracted Sem Culpa’s attention particularly.’

  ‘Your point?’ Lance asked, opening his eyes and grabbing a handful of salt with a small amount of potato attached.

  ‘My point, and the point about the internet in general, is that it’s too easy to simply believe what you read. Come on,’ Ben said, walking into the hallway.

  ‘I’m being invited into the Great Unknown this time, am I?’ Lance asked.

  ‘You need to show me all the articles,’ Ben said, inputting the entry code into the pad at the side of his study door before also unlocking it with a key. ‘And leave your beer in the lounge. No liquid near my hard drives.’

  ‘Does that include ketchup?’ Lance asked, following Ben into the study. The doorbell rang again before he could pick up another chip. ‘I’ll get that for you,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m not expecting anyone. I don’t like people calling unannounced. You stay in here but keep the door locked. I’ll shout when it’s okay to open up,’ Ben said.

  Lance looked down at the computer screen which was a sea of shifting graphics.

  ‘You’ve accessed your computer though, right? I’m just wondering if I should touch anything or not …’

  ‘Not if you value your life,’ Ben said. ‘Just wait right there.’

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Alexina O’Rourke vomited. The purge came whilst she was on her back and it tasted like death. Vomiting upwards was perhaps the best metaphor for hopelessness. In the moments waiting for the heaving to begin, she couldn’t believe it had never occurred to her before how bad it would be. Her body’s only desire was to get onto her side, yet she could not move. She fought the eruption, knowing physics was the enemy, her throat closing against its wrong-way invader, but her stomach’s need to flush her system was too strong an opponent. When it came, it caused her such blind panic that she feared she would pass out and choke. She smelled the bile before it was even out of her mouth, bitter, cloying, with an overtone of spoiled dairy. Then her mouth was flooded. She couldn’t breathe in to spit it out, and she couldn’t move her tongue to force the vomit upwards because when she did that, it slid back down her throat. It was like gargling in puke, that was her last thought before everything turned a squirming grey before her eyes as her oxygen-depleted system began to give in. Her stomach saved her with a final gigantic heave that erupted the stationary contents of her mouth into the air with such force that she was able to clamp her jaws shut and close her eyes before the ejecta hit her, hot and stinking, full on in the face.

  Her hands were tied behind her back, her ankles bound together with their prominent bones bashing one another. There was nothing except fear and it crawled inside through every pore, cramping her muscles, shrinking her. Alexina was wishing for oblivion long before she came to look her captor in the eyes.

  Her face was stinging from its stomach acid mask, her eyes on fire with it, nostrils still full. Only as she was pulled from the back of the vehicle onto a makeshift trolley, bumping heavily, did she dribble out the last of the vomit. She was suddenly shivering violently, her teeth chattering. Rough material scraped her face, leaving her skin sore in its wake, but anything was better than the foul veil she’d been wearing.

  Fingers pressed hard against the inside of her wrist, then her head was propped up whilst she was given a sip of water.

  ‘You’ll feel better in a minute,’ the voice said. ‘Try to breathe. You were sick because of the tranquilliser leaving your system.’

  Alexina drank a few more sips and felt herself returning to normal, relief flooding her system, the fear flowing away with the kind words.

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I was so scared. Could you cut the strap around my wrist? I’m not sure what happened.’

  ‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid. I don’t have the time to go running after you if you try to escape. I’ll turn you onto your side in case you’re sick again. That should help.’

  ‘Aren’t you … I don’t understand. You have to untie me. Someone shot me and I fell …’

  The woman leaned down by Alexina’s side, stroking sticky hair from her forehead with rubbery blue fingers.

  ‘I shot you. It was nothing personal. I read the articles about your work. You’ve done a lot for prisoners’ rights. So misguided. If they’re stupid enough to get caught, they don’t deserve sympathetic lawsuits.’

  ‘You’re not rescuing me,’ Alexina said. The woman had begun fiddling with a tripod, positioning a tiny camera on the top attached by a lead to a laptop. ‘If you want money, I’ll call my mother. My father died last year. He left me enough to give you whatever you want. It won’t take long.’

  ‘I have plenty of money,’ Sem Culpa said, walking to the side of the room and repositioning a generator. ‘What I’m running out of is time. Twenty-four hours really wasn’t long enough to accomplish so much.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours? Then what? Who are you? Is this revenge for a case that’s gone wrong? I can have another look, lodge another appeal. Please, just tell me what you want!’

  ‘Save your voice for later. We’ll be recording sound. Now I have to get on. It took too long to get this set up, and the generator’s not as powerful as I’d hoped,’ Sem Culpa said.

  She returned to Alexina, her cropped hair blowing in the wind that billowed through the broken glass of the windows. Alexina tried to focus on where she was. It was an old factory
, once heavily industrial but now abandoned. She’d been unconscious for most of the journey, losing track of time with no idea how far from the city they’d come. There wasn’t much noise though – no obvious traffic, certainly no footfall. The only other feature was the smell, noticeable even through the reek of her own skin and drenched hair, sulphuric but meaty, both heavy and acidic at once.

  ‘You want information about what is happening?’ Sem Culpa asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Alexina whispered.

  ‘All right. I killed a boy at a rock concert, in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd of thousands. His name was Sim Thorburn. Then I murdered an old man in a library basement. Michael Swan. Him, I skinned alive. Does that tell you all you need to know or should I go on?’

  Alexina O’Rourke began to scream. The hopelessness that followed was caused by Sem Culpa’s lack of an attempt to silence her. She didn’t even bother to tell her to stop. That was when Alexina knew for sure that she was beyond help.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Polly was at Ben’s door holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a small plastic bag in the other.

  ‘Cabernet Sauvignon, Californian to make you feel at home, and the finest weed on sale north of the border. I thought after your rapid exit this morning, coupled with your non-appearance at Below Par to visit me today, you could do with a pick-me-up.’

  ‘I so totally could,’ Ben said, ‘but there’s someone here right now. I’m sorry, Pol. Could you maybe come back later?’

  ‘Of course I can. I’ll leave the red, but I’m taking the hash. A girl’s got to have something by way of compensation. Call me when you’re done.’

  She stepped forward and kissed him, sliding the tip of her tongue along his bottom lip, pressing her body against his. Ben was aware that Polly wasn’t wearing a bra and that he didn’t want Lance to stay very much longer.

  ‘You know what, we won’t be long. Come in, put the TV on. There’s food, beer, I’ll find a corkscrew from somewhere …’

  ‘It’s a screw top, but I’m not going to disturb your time with your mates,’ Polly said.

  ‘Are you going to make me beg?’ Ben asked. ‘Twenty minutes, no more. Say you’ll stay.’

  Polly rolled her eyes, walking in slowly and drawing a pack of cigarette papers from her pocket.

  ‘D’you want one?’ she asked, rolling up the paper.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said. ‘I’ll just go deal with this. Pour me a glass of wine?’ he called as he walked into the hall. ‘Hey, Lance, do you want a glass of wine or are you sticking with beer?’

  Lance frowned as he unlocked the study door for Ben to reenter.

  ‘Who’s here?’ Lance asked.

  ‘Polly,’ Ben said. Lance raised his eyebrows. ‘You know, from Below Par? She was here this morning when you called …’

  ‘I see,’ Lance said. ‘Are you sure now’s the best time? This could take a while. It might be better if it were only the two of us.’

  ‘Polly’s cool,’ Ben said, pulling a stool out from under a pile of magazines and settling himself next to Lance in front of the screen. ‘Let’s get on with this. Here you go. None of these articles can be traced back to where they were uploaded.’

  ‘And from that we can infer?’ Lance asked.

  ‘We can infer that the writer or writers of the articles didn’t want to be traced,’ Ben said, bringing up a search engine and typing.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lance asked.

  ‘It’s the awards longlist that Alexina O’Rourke was supposed to be named in.’ The two of them sat reading.

  ‘She’s not there,’ Lance said. ‘Could have been a mistake, or perhaps she was under consideration and didn’t make it.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Whatever happened to that guy’s razor?’

  ‘Occam,’ Lance said. ‘Never quote a journalist back at themselves. It’s undignified. But none of this explains why Alexina was chosen. These articles are all some way down the search engine lists. A couple are even on page two of the rankings. If someone went to the trouble of faking each article, there was no way they could be sure it was enough to lead Sem Culpa to Mrs O’Rourke as the obvious choice.’

  Ben tapped keys without speaking as Lance concentrated on his chips.

  ‘Rankings history,’ he said. ‘Jesus, this is … wow, Lance, you have no idea how right you were. Look at this. Last night, for just sixty minutes, every one of these articles was ranked top in the search engines. Every single goddamned one of them. And that hour started from the time the website vote for the next kill target ended. Straight after that someone altered the relevant search terms, causing them to slip down the listings.’

  Lance paused, a chip halfway to his mouth, his face drawn into a frown. ‘Why would, sorry, I’m being a bit slow …’

  ‘Last night when Sem Culpa was told to find a human rights lawyer to kill, these articles would have been the first ones she found. It left an obvious trail to a very specific target. And with only twenty-four hours Sem Culpa had to make a fast decision. She’d have done her research, chosen Alexina O’Rourke, and got on with her planning. Later in the evening those articles were well down the list …’ Ben said.

  ‘So to anyone else the articles about Alexina O’Rourke wouldn’t have stood out at all. DC Salter must only have found these articles after Alexina O’Rourke was taken. It made her abduction resemble the others – there had to be some plausible press coverage available – but there’s no way the police could have anticipated it was her who was going to be taken and stopped it. If we’re right, then all the other murders were simply a ploy to make this one look like part of a series. Four innocent people died to ensure Alexina O’Rourke didn’t stand out. We’ve got to get hold of Callanach,’ Lance said, grabbing his mobile and beginning to dial.

  ‘So, taking all we know, someone with substantial skill put together a darknet website. The same skill, in fact, that was employed in placing articles within a search engine to lead a killer to one particular target and then moving them to cover the trail. Someone with a grudge?’ Ben hypothesised.

  ‘Or with something to gain,’ Lance added, listening to the ringing on the line. ‘I’ll explain it to Luc. Find out all you can about Alexina O’Rourke.’

  It took only two minutes to get Callanach up to speed.

  ‘So there is someone else involved. God, Lance, I’m sorry. If I’d listened to you earlier we might have found her by now. I’m heading back over to the O’Rourkes’ now to see if her husband can think of anyone who might have a reason to want her dead. I’m not sure how the hell I’m supposed to break it to the poor man that his wife was the reason for so many deaths,’ Callanach said.

  ‘Whoever set this up had us all sucked in,’ Lance said. ‘If it weren’t for Ben …’

  ‘I know,’ Callanach said. ‘Tell him thank you. Keep working, would you? We may be a step closer to Alexina but we haven’t got long left. And Grom’s still out there with a victim who must have given up hope of ever being found alive.’ He hung up.

  There was a gentle knock at the door. ‘Can I come in?’ Polly called.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Lance said.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Ben replied, immersed in working his way through what information the internet was offering up about Alexina O’Rourke.

  ‘Ben, we have to get this finished. You don’t need any distractions,’ Lance said.

  ‘I need a life. Something other than a computer that responds when I touch it. It’s okay, Lance. Open up,’ Ben said.

  Lance opened the door, doing his best to smile at the girl standing there with a half empty bottle and a joint.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Motive hunting,’ Ben muttered. ‘Apologies for the lack of furniture. You could grab that crate from back there to sit on, if you don’t mind a bit of discomfort,’ he pointed behind himself. ‘Just put those hard drives on the floor in the corner. Now, where to start?’

  ‘Her
emails,’ Lance said quietly, glancing over his shoulder at Polly. ‘She’s bound to have both personal and work email accounts. Work is a law firm, so I’m guessing those will be pretty well protected.’

  Ben tutted. ‘It’s almost as if we’ve only just met,’ he said. ‘I’m already in her work emails. No encoding. Ancient security. Simple password and she’s replicated it for her personal email account. I can’t believe people still do that after the amount of warnings there’ve been.’

  ‘To us mere mortals, the idea of trying to remember a different password for every email, social media, bank and other type of account is bit overwhelming. You’re not going to tell me you have different passwords for everything you do online,’ Lance said. Ben raised his eyebrows at him. ‘Right, of course you do. What are we looking for in that lot?’

  ‘I’m searching keywords, but it’s an uphill battle. Normally you wouldn’t find many offensive terms in a person’s email text but she has statements, pleadings, all sorts of court cases relating to some fairly serious criminal offences. I’m never going to be able to filter through all this.’

  ‘What about looking for today’s date?’ Lance suggested. ‘Someone asking where she’d be, what she was doing, requesting a meeting? Trying to tie her movements down.’

  Ben tapped away as Polly leaned her head on his shoulder and stared at the screen.

  ‘Did I miss something?’ she asked. ‘Whose email is this?’

  ‘Just helping out a friend,’ Lance said, leaning over to point one particular email out on the screen. ‘She was supposed to have lunch with her mother today but cancelled it last week to see a client instead.’

  ‘You think her mother is involved?’ Ben asked. ‘That’s got to be a bit of a stretch.’

  ‘What’s the statistic?’ Lance replied. ‘I wrote an article on this last year. On average only one in eight females is killed by a stranger. Couple that with the fact that the evidence points to it being someone with a close vested interest in her, we need to be looking at her nearest and dearest first. Her email is too wide a net. I’m texting the broken lunch plan to Callanach anyway. No harm in getting him all the facts.’