“I just can’t believe,” Harding commented, “that there isn’t an actual crime in here anywhere.”
Wentworth had been impressed from the very beginning with Harding’s zeal for her work. He hadn’t seen this level of conscientiousness in other police officers he’d worked with. She was absolutely determined to find a way of putting pressure on Lyon. A lever, she called it, something she could use to force new information from a man who had been involved with at least one underage girl.
“Writing HTML code isn’t a criminal offense,” Jack told her. “He did decent work for people who weren’t breaking the law. They paid him. The end.”
“But there are regular payments to him for no apparent reason.”
“Yes, there’s that. But so far there’s nothing to take to a judge.
“Ah, yes,” Harding said. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Wentworth wondered what was coming next. There seemed no limit to the effort Harding was prepared to put in to bringing Lyon to account.
“Yeah, after our conversation with Susan Miller, we pulled in a few favors. Well, the DI pulled in the favors, and I did the legwork. As a result, I am delighted to be able to give you,” she said, reaching into her desk drawer, “this.”
“Don’t tell me,” he smiled. “Andrew Lyon’s hard drive.”
“The very same,” Harding said. “The data from his ISP was reason enough to carry out a search and seizure. You should have seen the look on his face when we showed up with the warrant.”
Wentworth immediately went to work cataloguing what he had in front of him, then took out an adapter cable he kept in his work satchel.
“Thing is, I doubt there’s a smoking gun in there,” Harding said. “I mean, unless he’s the most complete kind of idiot, he’ll have deleted anything to do with Beth.”
“If,” Wentworth cautioned, “he had anything to do with her disappearance at all.”
“Of course.”
Janice’s initial certainty that Lyon stood at the center of this mystery had been tempered by Susan Miller’s strong insistence that Lyon had nothing to do with the case. The thought nagged at her. “People do strange and inexplicable things all the time,” she said, mostly to herself.
Wentworth clicked the cable home. “Sounds as though you’re familiar with the Jersey dating scene, Sergeant,” he quipped. “Alright, the drive is functioning and… Hey, presto!”
Wentworth’s laptop screen immediately showed a window listing the drive’s contents. “I know you said that he’s unlikely to be idiotic enough to leave evidence hanging around for us to find, but I have to tell you, that’s often just how it works.”
“Really?” Harding asked, shoulder to shoulder with the young man as she read the screen in front of her.
“I helped the St. Helier police nick a guy who had illegally bugged his wife’s laptop,” Wentworth explained. “He installed spyware, which might sound like nothing, but it breaks the law.”
“Sure does,” Harding confirmed.
“He was trying to find out if she was having an affair, but when a security scan caught the spyware, and she saw the install date, she called the police on him. They grabbed his hard drive, just like you’ve done with Mr. Lyon here,” Wentworth said, “and do you know what the incriminating folder was called?”
“Enlighten me,” Harding smiled.
“’Spying,’” Wentworth said, rolling his eyes. “With subfolders called ‘Gina’s Skype Chats’ and ‘Gina’s Emails.’ I mean, honestly.”
“Honestly,” Harding echoed.
“So, some people are not as smart as you think they…” Wentworth’s explication of the idiocy of common criminal habits came to a gradual stop as he found something that demanded his attention. “There are over a hundred files in this folder,” he said.
“What’s the folder called?” Harding asked, peering over Wentworth’s shoulder. Then she saw it.
“Beth Ridley.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GRAHAM ARRIVED AT the station half an hour early, pulling into his parking space a few minutes before eight. He knew that Janice would not have requested this early meeting unless something of real significance had emerged from her work with Wentworth. The air of excitement around them as they prepared to begin the presentation of their findings was palpable.
“Hang on, you two,” Graham said. “I’m a morning man, but only when I’ve had my second mug of tea.” Janice smoothed the process by boiling the kettle while Wentworth double-checked the presentation on the laptop. “Are you going to sell me a timeshare, or is this something about Beth Ridley?” Graham asked.
“Very much the latter, sir,” Wentworth assured him.
Once her boss was seated behind his desk, sipping on Earl Grey, Janice launched into her prepared spiel. “Sir, I want to thank you for your help in securing the warrant to seize Lyon’s hard drive,” she began. “Without it, we’d never have found all of this.”
She began to click through a set of slides showing newspaper articles on Beth’s disappearance, pages from her school essays, and scans of her school photos, including some that Graham remembered seeing on Ann Leach’s living room wall. “We found all of this, unencrypted, on Lyon’s hard drive. Right there in a folder labeled with Beth’s name.”
She continued to show slide after slide of evidence that demonstrated Lyon’s obsession with the case.
Graham sipped again. “Go on, Sergeant.”
“He kept records of every local and national newspaper report on her disappearance, coverage of events surrounding each anniversary, and even TV news clips relating to the case.” Janice clicked to an example, which showed a newsreader recounting the details of Beth’s strange vanishing. “He’s been studying and archiving the case, sir.”
Another sip. “And?”
Janice stared at him. “Well, sir, it’s very suspicious. This isn’t normal behavior. Why would he be so meticulous about recording a case like this?”
“I’m meticulous about tea, Sergeant,” Graham retorted. “And although I often tell you I could murder a cup, it doesn’t make me a criminal.”
“But, sir,” Harding began.
“Say that someone keeps a detailed file on every aspect of the Kennedy assassination. That doesn’t tell us that he was the man on the grassy knoll, now does it?” Graham continued.
“Sir, I see what you mean, but don’t you find it very suspicious that Lyon would have a collection like this, especially given that he was Beth’s teacher… I mean, his collection is comprehensive, sir.”
“He’s still bothered by her disappearance,” Graham said. “It occupies his mind. He might even be fixated on it.”
“Because he did it?” Janice tried. She was still clicking through slides.
Graham stood, walked around his desk and closed the laptop, ending their presentation. “Sergeant Harding, you’re a fine police officer. One of the most zealous and committed I’ve ever worked with.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, blushing slightly. She glanced at Wentworth.
“But you’re culpable of putting two and two together and getting seven. Fascination doesn’t equate to criminality. Obsession doesn’t connote murder. And his preoccupation with Beth Ridley shouldn’t lead us to assume guilt. What you have here is evidence of “suspicious activity,” perhaps a good working definition of “circumstantial evidence,” but without something more concrete…”
Janice’s face fell. “But think about the ISP results, sir. All those websites, you know, the ones I showed you…”
Graham raised his hands. “He’s strange. I don’t doubt that for one second. He’s got tastes in digital entertainment that are going to get him into trouble. But the reason we don’t yet have him under arrest is that we can’t charge him. And we can’t charge him because we have nothing to charge him with.”
“I think we could, sir,” Harding protested. “The Crown Prosecution Service would probably find the case pretty reasonable and�
��”
“I simply don’t agree, Sergeant. Having questionable predilections doesn’t make him a murderer. In the absence of any hard evidence, which this folder unfortunately is not, we’d have to hear the words directly from his own mouth. It would have to be a full and willing confession.”
“Then let’s go over there and get one,” Harding said, more directly and a good deal more loudly than she’d ever spoken to the DI before. “Let’s show him this folder and the ISP records and pressure him into making a statement. Force him to admit what he did.”
Graham sighed and returned to his seat. “I could equally go back to Weymouth and arrest the Updikes,” he said.
Janice reeled for a second. “But they’re just a doddery, old couple.”
“According to the criteria you’ve applied to Lyon, the one-legged doll would more than satisfy the requirements for bringing a criminal case against them,” Graham said pointedly. Then he stopped and pulled out his notebook. “That reminds me. Would you two give me a moment, please?”
Harding and Wentworth exchanged a glance and left. Janice closed the door behind them with a decisive click. Graham dialed a number and waited for Dr. Miranda Weiss to pick up.
Dr. Weiss was head of the forensic science lab in Southampton that Jersey Police cases were referred to. She was a tall, sturdy woman in her early fifties, with salt and pepper hair that curled over her shoulders and a penchant for hats that spanned the range from wide-brimmed, formal feather confections to wooly beanies.
An adjunct professor in criminology at the University of Southampton, Miranda Weiss could be stern, but was nevertheless revered by her colleagues and beloved by her students. After thirty years in the profession, her reputation for careful, diligent work that had sent many a criminal to jail was spotless.
“Good morning, Dr. Weiss,” he said brightly. “I wonder if you have any news on the doll we submitted to you.”
Miranda Weiss was an unabashed coffee addict and was still in that foggy part of the morning between receiving her first cup of caffeine and actually drinking it. “Yes, indeed I do, Detective Inspector” she began. “But I hope you know how much of a longshot this is.”
“I know, Dr. Weiss, but your thoughts would be most helpful,” Graham admitted. “A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the last ten years.”
“You can say that again,” she replied, “So many people must have come into contact with this doll.“
Graham sighed. “But we know what we’re looking for, don’t we?”
Dr. Weiss did not have good news. “Well, not exactly. The hair and fiber samples from Beth Ridley’s room were imperfectly stored, I’m afraid, and there’s been some deterioration.”
Graham swore silently.
“Even if we got a solid hit from DNA on the doll, I don’t know if a jury would be convinced. It’s been so long. I just wouldn’t be able to prove that it was hers, not beyond reasonable doubt.”
Dr. Weiss paused to take a sip of her coffee.
“We’ve got fingerprints from three individuals. You can try running a match, but they’re faded and partial. Probably inadmissible. There’s also DNA from two females, but that’s the most I’ll ever be able to tell you about them.”
Making notes as usual, Graham asked, “Two females? Definitely no males?”
“You’re assuming her abductor was male?” Miranda Weiss asked.
It was both a practical question and something of a challenge to the preconceived notions with which most investigators began missing schoolgirl cases.
“I suppose I was,” Graham said, “There’s little hard evidence either way.” He dropped his pen resignedly. “Is there any good news, Dr. Weiss?”
“Only for the Updikes,” she said. “Reconditioned and fully restored, a doll like this could fetch a pretty penny.”
Graham drummed his fingers on his desk.
“I know it isn’t what you wanted to hear, Detective Inspector,” Miranda said, her voice a little more brisk and confident now that the day’s first caffeine was beginning to race around her system, “but the technology only reveals the evidence. The information has to exist first. We can’t invent it. It has to come to us through luck, good judgment, or most often, just painstaking, excellent police work.”
It was a timely reminder. ”You are right, of course. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll run the fingerprints through our database and go from there.”
“Any time. Let me know if anything else comes up.”
Graham sat at his desk, alone and in silence, for another twenty minutes. Even if the Updikes, with their quirks and strange habits, were actually responsible for Beth’s disappearance, the chances of proving it had just shrunk dramatically. But Dr. Weiss was right, the evidence had to be the master of their suppositions. Everything flowed from that.
He strode into Janice’s office where she and Jack sat at their computers.
“We can’t arrest someone because we feel they are suspicious,” he said, abruptly picking up the conversation where he’d left off. “Our legal system is the envy of the world, exactly because we presume innocence until guilt is firmly proven.”
“Right sir, but…” Harding stopped and frowned, feeling embarrassed. In that moment, made worse by Wentworth’s silent presence, she knew that she was being taught another valuable lesson.
“I mean, say that we asked the CPS to read Roach’s transcript of his meeting with the homeless man, Joe Melton,” Graham continued. “Constable Roach brought up the abduction, and the guy didn’t deny it. Said it would have been ‘easy’ to abduct a girl like Beth. Should we get the Guernsey police to pick him up?”
Staring at her shoes, Janice sighed deeply. “Sorry, sir. Guess I got a bit carried away.”
“For all the right reasons,” Graham added. “You’re focused and passionate, I’ll give you that. And you want to nail whoever did this, just like the rest of us. But you’re angry with Lyon.”
“Bloody right I am,” Janice growled.
“We know what he did to Susan Miller. We know he works on dodgy websites and has socially unacceptable tastes. We know he’s not a pleasant man.”
Harding nodded. “But that’s all we know, sir.”
“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, that’s all we know.”
“Sorry again, sir.” She brushed down her uniform and straightened her jacket. “I let him get to me.”
Jack Wentworth who had been sitting stock still, his eyes flicking between the two throughout this tense exchange, cleared his throat. “Sir, we did find something else rather interesting,” he said.
Graham ushered them both back into his office and took the opportunity to regard the computer engineer. Wentworth was perhaps five or six years Graham’s junior and reminded him of a Hollywood actor whose name he couldn’t quite remember. He noted the younger man used gel in his hair. It was spiked up at the front. This was all he needed to underscore their dissimilarity. “You’re a civilian, Jack. You get to call me David.”
Janice gave her boss a look as though he’d suggested streaking naked through the middle of Gorey.
“David it is then,” Jack continued. “Thing is, there are repeated payments to Lyon from at least one Danish website from 2007 right up to the present,” he reported. “The website has hardly changed at all during that time, as far as we can tell. Certainly not enough to warrant bringing in a web design professional. If that’s not too charitable a description for Mr. Lyon.”
“So, what were the payments for?” Graham asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Wentworth said. “He must still be providing them with something valuable.”
Graham considered this for a moment. “Maybe they’re paying him for his silence,” Graham wondered aloud. “Maybe the website’s really a front for some illegal activity and Lyon demanded regular payoffs to keep quiet about it.”
“We’ll keep digging,” Wentworth promised, and nodded for Janice to lead them both out. “
Thanks for your time. I’m sorry this wasn’t more of a slam-dunk.”
“Oh, they never are,” Graham chuckled as Janice and Wentworth turned to leave. “Building a case is more like achieving a maximum break in snooker. You just keep chipping away and chipping away until you get there.”
Janice was nodding as she left. Her disappointment was visible, but she knew her boss was right. And, painful though it was, this setback would do absolutely nothing to slow down her pursuit of Andrew Lyon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CAPTAIN SMITH TAPPED out his pipe on a black-painted stanchion by the marina’s railing. “You mean,” he said, his gray, bushy eyebrows askew, “like some kind of Special Forces types? Like the ruddy SAS or something?”
Captain Drake, for whom a crackpot theory was always worthy of at least a little enjoyable speculation, set his old friend straight. “All I said was they use stealth,” he reminded him. “You know. Creeping around at night, and what have you. Dark clothes. Silent movements. That kind of thing.”
Barnwell pretended to continue making notes, mainly to mollify these two furious mariners. They could now count five occasions on which their boats had been “boarded and burgled,” as Drake put it. There had also been another instance of brazen daylight shoplifting from the nearby store.
“Sorry, Captain Drake, what was that?” Barnwell asked.
“Stealth,” he said once again. “They sneak around, low and quick, like bloody commandos. That’s my theory.”
“It’s a theory, I’ll grant you” Smith commented, “but not a particularly good one.”
“Oh yeah?” the other man said, pointing his finger accusingly at Smith. At sixty-seven, Drake thought of the other man as the junior captain, despite both of them having logged an unlikely number of sea miles, many of them in foul conditions. “Let’s hear your theory, then.”
The Case of the Broken Doll (An Inspector David Graham Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 9