Dead Embers (DCI Michael Lambert crime series Book 3)

by Matt Brolly

  Lambert took a seat opposite Boxall, as Matilda made a tour of the garage accompanied by an excited Stevie. ‘Yes, you took it down earlier today. Why?’

  ‘I noticed a lot of external attention. Hackers.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘Did you read the emails we sent you, or check the numerous messages left by phone?’

  Boxall’s shoulders drooped. It was clear the man was defeated.

  ‘Just tell the truth, Mr Boxall.’

  ‘The truth is, I was going to sleep on it. It was a bit overwhelming thinking the site was hacked, and then the calls. Why do you think I was sitting in the dark?’

  ‘With a gun.’

  ‘A replica,’ said Boxall, almost hopefully.

  ‘We’ll come to that later.’ Lambert told him about Turner and Berry, how their bodies were found in Jardine’s house.

  Boxall nodded. ‘And what has this to do with me?’

  ‘I think you know that,’ said Lambert. ‘We had just discovered that Turner and Berry were chatting on your site when you pulled the plug, as it were.’

  ‘Even if that was the case, there’s no reason for me to divulge details to you. This is a private site. The users have a right to privacy as well as anonymity.’

  ‘That maybe so, but I’m working a murder and missing persons enquiry and you and your site might may have a direct link to both cases. There’s a chance you’re technically an accessory to both.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Boxall, for a second regaining some of his earlier bravado.

  ‘You’ll find the English legal system works in mysterious ways. You cooperate now, you’re going to save yourself a lot of heartache.’

  ‘IT equipment is in the back,’ said Matilda, returning with the Rottweiler cross running between her legs and threatening to trip her up.

  ‘Shall we?’ said Lambert, leaving Boxall in no doubt it was an order and not a request.

  * * *

  The IT room was little more than a mismatched set of laptops and antique freestanding PC machines. ‘This is where the magic occurs?’ said Lambert.

  ‘It did,’ said Boxall.

  ‘How long has the site been running?’ asked Matilda.

  ‘Three years,’ said Boxall, folding his arms.

  ‘What made you start it?’ said Matilda, her voice soft, almost soothing.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No, I’m just interested. I imagine there must be a story behind it?’

  Lambert wanted to get down to work, wanted to push the man until he gave them all the information Lambert required, but he was happy to be patient whilst Matilda took a more gentle tack.

  Boxall shrugged. ‘I wanted to create a community where others like me could share their experiences. That was all.’

  ‘Others like you?’

  Boxall spoke to Matilda as if Lambert wasn’t present. ‘I suffer from depression. Sometimes I have suicidal thoughts. Look where I live, I’m not going to find much support around here.’

  ‘And the other stuff?’ said Matilda.

  ‘Other stuff?’

  ‘The arranged suicides?’

  ‘All of sudden I feel I need a solicitor with me,’ said Boxall.

  ‘We don’t care about your site, Mr Boxall. We’re trying to locate someone and some background information would be welcome.’

  Lambert was impressed by Matilda’s approach; the way she empathised with Boxall, searching for answers whilst remaining unthreatening.

  ‘Whatever users do on the site is their affair. If they decide to make agreements, it’s no concern of mine.’

  Lambert thought that Boxall would soon discover how much it did concern him. From the few glimpses he’d had of the site, there were links to the illegal purchase of narcotics which would assist in the process of taking one’s life.

  ‘Do you have any personal connections with the users?’

  ‘Occasionally. I moderate the main chat rooms. Sometimes I speak personally to some of the users.’

  ‘What about?’ asked Lambert.

  Boxall took a seat. Whatever fight there had been in him at the beginning had evaporated. It was almost as if he welcomed the company, the opportunity to unburden himself. ‘Believe it or not, the goal of the site is not to help people commit suicide. Never. Each user is made aware this is a last measure. The community exists to help one another, to offer advice or point to places where more advice is available. Sometimes…’ Boxall faltered, his eyes watering. ‘Sometimes no amount of words can suffice. There’s so much suffering out there, you can only guess. I suppose you encounter it at times in your line of work, but things like grief, long-term illness, we never talk about these things. That was all I was trying to do.’

  ‘You can help us now,’ said Lambert. ‘Two people are missing and you might be able to help.’

  ‘How?’ said Boxall.

  ‘We believe Mr and Mrs Jardine are still alive, and that their kidnapper used your site to contact Ms Berry and Mr Turner. That was why we hacked your site. We need to access every conversation involving Berry and Turner. Is this something you can help us with?’

  ‘Theoretically,’ said Boxall.

  Lambert gripped the back of the chair where Boxall sat. ‘Can you do it or not?’

  Boxall was close to tears. ‘I can do it but I’m not sure I should.’

  ‘You’re not sure you should? Berry and Turner were found in the living room of the Jardine house, burnt beyond recognition.’

  ‘Maybe it was what they wanted.’

  ‘And what about Caroline Jardine and her husband. Do you think they want to die?’

  ‘You need a warrant,’ said Boxall.

  Lambert looked at Matilda. He didn’t have time for this. ‘I could get a warrant within the next hour. If I apply for one you’ll be arrested as a murder accomplice.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Boxall, echoing his earlier statement.

  Lambert swung the man round in his chair, and bent to his haunches so he was eye level. There would be no warrant. Boxall would either agree to share the information with him now or Lambert would be forced to take a different, less pleasant approach. ‘A colleague of mine has been missing for three days and the only lead I have is you and your website. I am asking you politely, Mr Boxall, please, for Mr and Mrs Jardine’s sake, help us with our investigation.’

  Boxall matched Lambert’s stare, but Lambert could see in the man’s eyes that it was bravado. ‘OK, for them, I’ll help.’

  * * *

  Lambert kept a close eye on Boxall as he began tapping away at the battered keyboard of his PC. He acted compliant, but for all Lambert knew a single keystroke could delete everything.

  ‘I believe these are their accounts,’ said Boxall, producing a split screen displaying two files. One file was labelled RedStarBelgrade, the other MissMaisy. ‘Those were their usernames. At least those were the two files your teams were interested in this morning. Both accounts were anonymous, but Turner’s IP address was local to Devon and Berry’s IP address was situated in Peterborough.’ Boxall pressed a button on the file marked RedStarBelgrade. ‘I guess your team ran a search on their names.’ He pointed to one of the entries on the main chat room. ‘I presume Jonathan was RedStar’s first name?’

  Lambert nodded.

  ‘And MissMaisy, Maxine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s be thankful they used their first names,’ said Boxall.

  ‘Can you narrow the search to where they appear in the same conversation?’ asked Matilda.

  Boxall clicked a few buttons. ‘A hundred pages of results,’ he said.

  Lambert shut his eyes. ‘Is this all in the main chat room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could they private message one another?’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t keep those records.’

  ‘Private message boards?’ asked Matilda.

  Boxall looked away. ‘We don’t keep those either. The site was designed to respect the users’ privacy.’
r />   ‘You’re fucking kidding me?’ said Lambert.

  Boxall let out a low whistling sound. ‘Hang on,’ he said, tapping his keyboard so fast that Lambert struggled to keep up. ‘This might help,’ he said.

  Matilda leant towards the screen, squinting through her glasses. The backlight of the screen illuminated her face and Lambert saw up close for the first time the damage the fire had inflicted on her. The tissue on her face looked so damaged and inflamed that he wondered if she was still in pain. ‘What is this?’ she asked Boxall.

  ‘A list of the private chat rooms where either or both of them were involved in the chats.’

  Again, the list ran through many pages. ‘Can you display the usernames of the other participants?’ asked Lambert.

  Boxall made a few more keystrokes. ‘There,’ he said.

  Sixty-two entries appeared on the screen. Lambert stopped scrolling halfway down. ‘It can’t be that easy,’ he said, highlighting one of the usernames.

  Lambert clicked on the name.

  ‘Press there,’ said Boxall.

  Lambert clicked again.

  ‘That shows a private group used by three people. It was accessed two hundred and fifty times over in the last four months. That means they were all using it on a daily basis more than once.’

  ‘When was the last time it was accessed?’

  ‘Five weeks ago,’ said Boxall.

  Lambert exchanged a look with Matilda. Berry had officially gone missing just over four weeks previously and it was possible Turner had been missing for that time as well.

  ‘I think we may have found our man,’ said Lambert, pointing to the third member of the group. The username couldn’t have been more obvious if it tried.

  TheFireman1973.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After the local CID secured the area, Lambert and Matilda packed a squad car with all the tech from Boxall’s home which Matilda drove back to London.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ Lambert said to Boxall.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ said Boxall, looking at a local uniformed officer for support.

  ‘Do you want to be?’

  ‘I want to know my rights,’ said Boxall.

  Lambert glared at the uniformed officer, who suddenly found something more interesting to do. Without a word, Lambert cuffed Boxall and guided him to the back of his car. ‘You realise one of my colleagues is missing?’

  ‘So?’ said Boxall, grunting as Lambert threw him into the back seat.

  ‘Let’s get back to you London, so you can meet Caroline Jardine’s team. See if you want to repeat what you just said to me.’

  Lambert called Bickland as he drove, telling the DS to get all bodies together within the next couple of hours. Lambert had considered going through the files in Boxall’s home, but it wasn’t feasible to have two teams working so far apart.

  ‘What do you know of this Fireman?’ said Lambert, an hour into the journey.

  ‘I told you, I never accessed the private conversations,’ said Boxall.

  ‘Did you chat to him in the public rooms?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘Your site can’t be that busy,’ said Lambert.

  ‘You’d be surprised. People from all over the world use it. The majority don’t contribute. They use it for advice, or until they’re ready to join in.’

  ‘Are we going to be able to access the conversations between those three?’

  Lambert saw Boxall shrug in his rear-view mirror. The look of utter disinterest on Boxall’s face made Lambert want to pull the car over and teach him the meaning of police brutality. Instead, he wound down his window, placed a siren on the roof and began accelerating for home.

  * * *

  The team were already working by the time Lambert got to the station. Some of the officers were setting up Boxall’s equipment, whilst others were analysing the files Matilda had emailed earlier.

  Croft bypassed any pleasantries as Lambert led Boxall into the incident room. ‘We’ve been searching for the handle, TheFireman1973, on social media. No direct match apart from a Yahoo account which was accessed once in 2006. However, you’d be surprised at how many people use a handle with ‘fireman’ in it. Runs into the thousands. Don’t you think this is one hell of a coincidence, sir?’

  ‘Depends who we’re dealing with. If it is our arsonist friend he might deliberately be looking for attention, or he just might be so computer illiterate that it doesn’t matter. Find a room for Mr Boxall, would you?’

  As Croft led Boxall away, Lambert poured himself a large cup of coffee and retreated to his office. He pulled the blinds before drinking it in a number of uneasy gulps. After locking the office door, he leant back in his chair and went to sleep. Thirty minutes later he sprung awake, the coffee and brief sleep having vitalised him.

  He rubbed his eyes and opened the shutters, looking out at the activity in the incident room as if viewing a new day.

  A nervous looking tech guy Lambert had never met before knocked on the door. He swayed from foot to foot as he stood at the end of Lambert’s desk. ‘DC Robson, sir,’ said the man.

  ‘What you got for me, Robson?’

  Robson placed a sheaf of papers on the desk, smiling as nervousness made way for smugness. ‘We’re printing the rest, sir. There’s quite a few.’

  Lambert picked up the first page, sitting straighter in his chair as he realised what he was reading.

  ‘It’s the transcripts between the two victims and the Fireman,’ said Robson.

  ‘Thanks, Robson. I can see that.’

  Robson hovered at the edge of Lambert’s desk as Lambert scanned the transcripts. ‘Is there anything else, Robson?’ said Lambert, not looking up.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘OK then.’ Lambert reread the first page as Robson tiptoed out of the room. Neither of the three addressed each other by first name, though they were familiar with one another.

  ‘You’ve read this?’ said Matilda, walking into the office uninvited. She was still wearing her glasses and it was this, rather than the burn tissue on her face, which caused him to do a double take.

  ‘I’m trying to.’

  ‘It gets good. They made a pact, the three of them, to meet this year in November.’

  ‘A pact?’

  Sitting down, Matilda removed her glasses and pinched her nose. ‘To kill themselves.’

  ‘I see. What page?’

  Matilda flicked through the pages. ‘First mention is page eighty-eight.’

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ said Lambert, flicking through his transcript to the relevant page. He scanned the next ten pages, trying to make sense of the words. Try as he might, he couldn’t see any signs of coercion from the person using the Fireman handle. ‘What else do we have?’

  ‘We’re looking at all messages involving the Fireman. And the other two as well. We’ve lots of reading ahead.’

  ‘Any way we’re going to trace this guy?’

  ‘He was using an IP proxy as far as we can tell. We’re checking each time he logged in.’

  ‘I need you to read this for me, Kennedy, all of it.’

  ‘I’ll get a summary to you in the next couple of hours,’ said Matilda. ‘It’s great to be back,’ she added, waving the pages of the transcript at him as she left his office.

  It was nine-thirty am before Lambert left the office. He’d read as much of the transcript as possible since instructing Matilda to summarise it for him. The majority could have been skimmed, featuring as it did the mundane everyday conversation of three online friends, but Lambert studied each page in detail, searching for a hint that the two victims were somehow being manipulated by the Fireman.

  ‘Robson, where are we on finding the Fireman’s location?’ he shouted across the incident room before leaving.

  The nervous IT guy almost fell off his seat at the question. ‘Nothing yet, sir,’ he replied, confused.

  Lambert ignored him and walked over to Matilda to tell her
where he was going.

  ‘You want company?’ she asked, the long night showing in the darkness beneath her eyes.

  ‘I’ll go alone on this one. You can continue on the transcript. Anything else I should know? I reached page one twenty.’

  ‘It’s heartbreaking stuff. If the Fireman’s faking it, he’s one hell of a writer.’

  * * *

  Lambert decided to make the short walk to the school rather than driving, hoping the frost would reinvigorate him. He passed the high street, surprised by the volume of traffic on the roads. He stopped at a newsagent, remembering his last meeting with Mia Helmer. The little shop was illuminated by bright neon lights, regurgitated air filling the sterile atmosphere. Lambert peered down at Helmer’s newspaper, thankful not to see any mention of the case on the front page. He supposed he would have heard about it already if Helmer had published the story, but he decided to purchase the newspaper anyway.

  He tucked it under his arm as he walked up the hill, his thoughts focused on Caroline Jardine and her husband. He wondered if they were subject to the elements at the moment or if such human concerns were no longer relevant.

  A high-pitched buzzing sound assaulted his ears as he pressed the button at the school gates. ‘DCI Lambert for Mr Linklater,’ he said to the enquiring voice, which buzzed him in without a reply.

  A frizzy haired woman greeted him at the reception desk. ‘I’m afraid Mr Linklater can’t see you at the moment. He’s involved in a senior management meeting. You really should have made an appointment,’ she said, taking only a cursory glance at his ID.

  Lambert was in no mood for such a jobsworth, but was too tired to rant at the woman. ‘Tell Mr Linklater I will see him in the next five minutes, one way or another.’

  The woman was a parody of indignation, shaking her head as if Lambert had just insulted her mother. Lambert watched for a second in amusement before taking a seat. Two minutes later, Linklater appeared.

  ‘Could you not have phoned ahead at least?’ said the man, who looked as tired as Lambert felt.

  ‘Sorry to drag you from your meeting, Mr Linklater,’ said Lambert, getting to his feet. ‘We’ve had some developments you should be made aware of.’