by Louise Voss
‘Spit it out,’ I tease.
I hear him take a deep breath, as if gathering up courage. ‘I wondered if – and please say no if you don’t think it’s appropriate – you might be up for a long weekend away? Surprise European destination. Two rooms, of course – although, ahem, you’d be welcome to visit me whenever you wished; then we’d really have time to get to know one another.’
I’m so thrilled that I’m momentarily speechless, and he mistakes my silence for concern.
‘Oh, sorry, Becky, am I moving too fast? It’s fine, really – we could just go out to dinner again instead. I swear I wouldn’t normally suggest something so full-on so quickly, but I really think we’ve got something special here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I whisper. I do. In my head, I’m standing at an altar in a Vera Wang gown, saying those same words to him. ‘And I’d love to go away with you, honestly. I was just a bit overwhelmed. We break up on Wednesday so that would be perfect timing. God knows, I could do with a little holiday!’
He laughs with relief. ‘Great! This weekend it is, then. I’ll pick you up on Thursday at five, text me your address. Pack a bag, and don’t forget your passport!’
38
Declan
Thursday, 25 July
Declan Adams sat at his desk, his eyes sore from staring at the computer screen for hours on end, his stomach emitting a series of growls and gurgles as it tried in vain to get his attention. All he’d eaten all day was an egg-and-cress sandwich from the Tesco Express down the road. He was living on instant coffee and adrenaline and had been since they got back from Chichester, even though that was almost a week ago. This case was completely consuming him like no other.
He had the photo of Amber Corrigan pinned up on the wall, staring down at him with those beautiful blue eyes. With her blonde hair and startling looks, she had the kind of face that people would notice and remember. But after fifteen years?
Declan and Bob had spent a day going around Tunbridge Wells, in the immediate vicinity of the Internet Futures Conference, and Stonegate, the closest village to the farm where Amber’s body had been found, asking if anyone remembered her. As Declan had feared, it was too long ago. Nobody remembered faces they’d seen a decade and a half ago, no matter how pretty they were.
The staff at the Pantiles Hotel, where the conference had taken place, had almost entirely changed, and nobody remembered the event, let alone Amber. Of course, everyone tried – everyone wished they could remember – but it was hopeless. What was Declan expecting? Someone to say, ‘Oh, yes, I remember her leaving with a really creepy-looking guy. I was so concerned that I took a note of his registration number – in fact, I still have it.’
Yeah, right.
In Declan’s experience, getting anyone to remember events from the day before was enough of a struggle, let alone any further back. He and Bob had driven back from Tunbridge Wells in silence, a gloom settling over them. The case had hit a dead end, and their SIO had given them twenty-four hours to make significant process before he moved them onto fresher investigations. Declan looked up at the photo of Amber. It killed him that someone was out there, walking free, after snuffing out this young life.
Bob came into the room, holding a carrier bag. ‘All right?’ he said, cheerily. ‘I brought you some dinner.’
He produced a Ginsters chicken pasty, a yoghurt, an apple and a slice of carrot cake from his bag, along with a bottle of Lucozade Sport.
‘Aw, thanks, Bob. You’re a legend.’
He ripped open the pasty packet and took a bite. Cold, greasy and saltier than Eastbourne beach – his belly gurgled with appreciation.
‘I wish Isobel agreed with you.’
‘In the doghouse again?’
‘Oh, you know …’ He shrugged. It was such a common phenomenon in police stations and offices around the country – probably the world. The police officer whose other half hadn’t believed how long their spouse’s hours would really be when they embarked on a relationship. ‘I got the list of the delegates who went to that conference. Bit of a struggle – the company who put it together went bust years ago. Another victim of the dotcom boom.’
‘So how did you do it?’
‘Ah. There’s this website called the Wayback Machine. It’s basically a massive archive of old web pages. Like taking a tour of a museum. It’s amazing how old-fashioned websites from the late nineties look now.’
Declan took a swig of the Lucozade.
‘So I had a stroke of luck. I found a couple of web pages with details of the conference. One page contained a list of speakers and the timetable – all these talks about how Internet dating was going to be the next big thing, how to start an auction site, why Yahoo! was the future of business … Then there was another page with a list of delegates. Amber’s name was on it.’
‘That’s amazing. Where’s the list?’
‘I emailed it to you, of course.’
Declan turned to his computer and logged on to his emails, bringing up the two lists.
The conference had taken place over two days and there were twelve speakers on each day, including a few people who had made up panel discussions. The delegate list was a lot longer. It had clearly been a popular event, with over 200 people attending. The opposite of what Declan had hoped for. Not only did it mean more names to check, but it meant the likelihood of anyone noticing anything that would stick in their memory reduced from unlikely to you-must-be-joking.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘The first thing we need to do is to check this lot, see if any of them have criminal records for violent offences.’
‘Already on it.’
Of course he was. ‘Maybe we’ll strike it lucky and find someone on the list who’s currently doing time for murder, and he’ll confess the moment we show him Amber’s picture.’
‘Then we can all go home for tea and live happily ever after.’
‘Are you telling me you don’t believe in fairy tales, Bob?’
‘Only the ones in which little girls get eaten by wolves.’ His expression darkened. ‘I’d better get home. Might just catch Jessica before Isobel puts her to bed.’
‘Good idea. Oh, and good work.’
‘Cheers. You should get home too, get some rest.’
‘Yeah, I will. Just going to finish this delicious feast first.’ He belched. ‘Oops.’
‘Charmed, I’m sure.’
After Bob had left, Declan snuck outside for a cigarette. He quit once or twice every year, but always went back to it, blaming the pressures of the job. He was thinking of trying those electronic cigarettes. Standing in the car park, he contemplated taking Bob’s advice. Go home, have a shower, watch one of the DVDs he’d got for Christmas and still hadn’t got round to watching, seven months later.
But the list of names from the conference was calling to him, like a bottle of whisky calling to an alcoholic, and he hurried back upstairs to his desk, popping a chewing gum into his mouth as he went. His head was full of missing girls. He had been looking through MISPER reports all day, wondering how many more there were out there. There was something about the way the murderer had tried to cover up what had happened, by making those closest to her believe she wasn’t missing at all, that struck him as well-planned – certainly better-planned than her ‘burial’ in the cesspit. Whoever put her in there must have known she would be found eventually.
The letter to Amber’s parents and the photograph of the house on the beach had gone to the lab to be analysed as soon as Declan and Bob had got back to Sussex. Fingerprints remain on paper for a long time and could be revealed using a chemical called ninhydrin. The results from the lab had come back that morning – the letter had, along with her parents’ prints, a good set of prints from Amber, but no one else. The photographs had no fingerprints on them at all. Declan wondered if the killer had gone to the trouble of visiting Brazil, or some other exotic-looking location – the picture could be of a villa in Torquay! – but doubted it. After al
l, it was easy enough to grab a picture off the Internet and print it out. The Corrigans had thrown away the envelope but, assuming it contained a Brazilian postmark, it wasn’t too hard to arrange to have an envelope posted from any country in the world without actually visiting it.
Declan had a copy of the letter on his desk and, returning from his cigarette break, picked it up and read it over for the hundredth time. The fingerprints were a clever touch, because if Amber’s parents had suspected that something awful had happened to their daughter, and the police took them seriously, it would have been easy to check the letter for prints at the time. The presence of prints would have made the letter appear authentic, had there not been any evidence – as there was now – that something awful had indeed happened.
It wouldn’t have been difficult to do, either – simply get Amber to handle a blank sheet of printer paper, or press her hand against it. Then her murderer could have handled it wearing gloves, written the letter at his leisure and used the piece of paper to print the letter on. Declan smiled darkly. If I were the murderer and it were my printer, he thought, it would most likely have chewed the paper up, wrecking my plans.
So if the killer had been clever enough to do that, why had he dumped the body in such an unsafe location? Had something panicked him and compelled him to get rid of the body suddenly? Did he foolishly believe that the cesspit would never be opened, that it would remain a sealed tomb for ever? Or was there some other reason?
Taking another swig of Lucozade, Declan started to Google the names on the speakers’ list from the conference. There were a number of Americans, over from Silicon Valley to teach the Brits a thing or two, but most of the speakers were from the UK. Nearly all of them were still around, still working on the web, and there were a few names he vaguely recognized. There was Maria Lake-Ford, who had started that big travel website, and Marvin Taylor, the guy who had got rich from a site telling other people how to save money. It was interesting how people who worked online rarely seemed to change careers.
He spent an hour on Google, writing down a few notes on each of the speakers. If nothing came back from the Home Office’s central record system, HOLMES, one of the next steps would be to talk to each of the speakers to see if they remembered Amber. Then they would have to do the same with the much longer delegate list. He inwardly groaned at the thought.
‘Time to go home,’ he said aloud.
He stood up, stretching to try to erase some of the aches and pains from his body. Now he really was looking forward to that shower.
As he made his way out, he saw that a few of his colleagues were still hard at work, including a detective constable with whom Declan got on well, Jessie Redmayne, sitting with her back to the walkway. The DC was a young black woman with big ambitions. Declan had a feeling she wouldn’t rest until she was at least a detective superintendent. He headed over to her desk. As he got closer he noticed that Jessie was looking at Facebook – perhaps not so hard at work after all. Declan wasn’t a big Facebook user. He had an account, and had been addicted to Farmville during his recuperation period, but these days he barely looked at it.
‘Caught you,’ Declan said.
Jessie spun round and Declan smiled to show he was joking.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.
‘Oh … this. It’s spreading around Facebook like wildfire. A woman in London has gone missing and her sister posted an appeal, asking if anyone has seen her or knows anything. It’s been shared, like, five thousand times in the last couple of hours!’
‘That’s amazing.’
‘The power of social networking, eh? Though no one seems to know anything useful.’
Jessie clicked on the small picture on her screen to show the full post, complete with a large picture of the missing woman.
Declan caught his breath. Suddenly he was no longer fed up about still being at his desk, starving hungry, at 7 p.m. ‘Oh, my god.’
‘What is it? Do you know her?’
Declan shook his head. ‘No. What’s her name?’
Jessie pointed. ‘Becky Coltman.’
‘Wait there.’
Declan jogged over to his desk, grabbed the picture of Amber Corrigan from the pinboard, then hurried back to Jessie. He held the picture of Amber against the screen and the photo of Becky Coltman.
‘Fuck,’ Jessie said.
‘Uncanny, isn’t it? They could be twins.’
39
Amy
Friday, 26 July
Dear Amy, I know who you are, and why you really contacted me. I know where Becky is and can take you to her – but you must promise not to tell the police or anyone else or they’ll kill her, and you. Meet me at 1 p.m. today in Old Deer Park car park in Richmond. The part of it nearest the community college. I’ll pick you up there. I’ll be in a black Range Rover. Daniel.
‘Are you all right, love?’
It was the same Big Issue seller who had sworn at her earlier. Amy gazed up at him, her mind reeling. She nodded blankly and he held out an arm.
‘Don’t sit in the gutter then. That never did nobody no good.’
She allowed him to help her up and he peered into her face. ‘You sure you’re OK? You’re white as a sheet. I’m sorry about earlier, you know, I hope I didn’t upset you.’
She managed a smile. ‘No, don’t worry – least of my problems. I’ve got to go. Thanks again.’
Back on the Circle Line, Amy sat as if in a trance. People were giving her odd looks, and one or two kindly souls asked if she was OK, but she brushed them off. She changed onto the District Line at Earl’s Court, waiting on the platform for the arrow on the old-fashioned overhead sign to click down, to indicate that the next train was destined for Richmond. She focused on the arrow, finding it hard to gather her thoughts into any sort of coherent order.
Who was Daniel, apart from a guy Becky had been on a date with? How did he know she was Becky’s sister – unless he had Becky, and she had told him? This at least meant that Becky was probably still alive. Her heart gave a momentary flip of joy that she might shortly see her.
But she would be insane to get into Daniel’s car without telling anyone where she was going. Now it really did sound as if Becky had been kidnapped. Was she just walking straight into a trap?
Who could she tell, if not the police?
She thought about her life. No partner, no relationship with her parents, no close friends apart from Chris and Vince, now settled far away in Edinburgh. She didn’t even have her bike any more. OK, she had a good business, but who cared about that?
At that moment, she didn’t. She realized with something like shock that she actually didn’t care what happened to her. If Becky was dead, she would want to die too. And if Becky was still alive, then Amy had a chance of saving her.
Nobody had come to rescue her, Amy, from Nathan. There was no way she would abandon Becky to the same fate. She had to go and try to save her, even if it was the last thing she ever did.
Apart from Becky, Boris was the only real tie she had. But what sort of a rubbish owner had she been to him, particularly in the last couple of weeks? He had spent so much time cooped up in her flat, with just a brief leg-stretch morning and night. He deserved better. She thought of him with a pang of guilt, imagined him pricking up his ears every time he heard a step outside.
Gary could have been a tie, perhaps. Although he had lied to her.
But he could do one more thing for her. She tapped out a quick text to him: Sorry I rushed off. Going to meet Daniel from CupidsWeb. Got a lead on Becky. Tell no one. But if you haven’t heard from me again by … She hesitated. How much time should she allow? … 6 p.m., then call the police. After thinking about it for a second, she forwarded the message from Daniel too. Then she had another idea. She sent him a second text with her iCloud login, which would give him access to her Find My iPhone app, which was provided by Apple to make it easy to find a lost or stolen iPhone. All you had to do was log in to your Apple iClou
d account and you were shown a map that pinpointed the exact location of your iPhone. She’d had to use it once before when she’d lost her phone, and had been able to locate it at a café she’d been in an hour earlier.
For a moment, she considered calling the police, but Daniel’s message expressly forbade it. It wasn’t worth the risk.
The train pulled into Richmond Station and Amy checked the map on her phone to see which way she needed to walk to get to the car park behind the college.
The time was 12.47.
Walking across the zebra crossing outside the station, it all felt like a dream to Amy, as if the past week had stretched out into at least a year, people and events moving in and out of focus as if underwater. The only person in sharp focus now was Becky. Amy kept her mind’s eye firmly fixed on her.
Her legs began to shake as she could see the car park ahead, but she made sure she walked with just as much purpose. It took a few moments to find the bit of it that backed onto the college – it was round a corner and in a quieter annexe of the car park. She looked around her, but all the stationary cars were empty and silent. There was nobody around. She sat down on a verge, her heart pounding like a jackhammer in her chest. It was 12.54. Gary hadn’t replied to her messages yet. She felt sick. If she’d been the praying type, she would have prayed.
At 12.59 a black Range Rover with tinted windows drove slowly into the car park. Amy stood up uncertainly, and gritted her teeth to stop the fear showing on her face. Think of Becky, she repeated to herself. She wondered if Daniel would look like his CupidsWeb photographs and she thought again that it was a bit suspicious that he had only had ‘private’ photos on the site. She had seen them when she logged in as Becky, but not when she first contacted him under her own made-up name, which meant that he had given Becky specific permission to view them. It was a classic ploy by anyone worried about being seen on Internet dating sites, and it usually indicated that they were already spoken for, or nefarious in some other way.
She couldn’t see through the tinted windows. She scrunched up her toes in an effort to stop her legs shaking. All her instincts told her to turn and run, but she had to do this, for Becky.