by Iain Cameron
‘I don’t know Inspector. It would be a serious breach of protocol.’
‘I’m sure you lot do it all the time.’ He nodded in the direction of the various programmers and analysts working in the department. ‘Are all these people looking at legitimate websites? I mean, the guy I passed on the way in, the big guy with the beard near the door was playing a Formula 1 game and it looked to me as if it was coming straight from a website.’
He smiled. ‘I was only joshing with you Inspector but,’ he said wagging a finger in his face, ‘if I catch you looking at a mucky website at any other time, I’m afraid I will have to report you to the headmaster.’
Henderson returned to his desk and quickly found Lehman’s website and began to search through the pictures. If Louisa Gordon wasn’t there, he decided he would go home immediately and as much as it would gall him to give money to men like Jon Lehman or Dominic Green, he would take out a subscription to the website, just in case her pictures were only available to paying customers.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, as even though he knew the people behind the site, he was always wary of posting credit card details over the web, especially for such a nefarious activity as this. The risk of being fired was being traded off against the risk of having his credit card details stolen and in his book, that wasn’t much of a choice.
In any event, his fear was unfounded as in the space of only five minutes of searching through pictures of busty blondes, vivacious brunettes and lusty redheads the face and everything else of Louisa Gordon filled the screen. In stark comparison to the cold corpse he saw sliced up on the post-mortem dissection table, her lips were full and red, her skin looked tanned and warm and her smile was enigmatic and engaging, as any beautiful young woman would be when lying naked with her legs apart.
He was just about to send one of her pictures to the printer as irrefutable proof to Lehman, if he ever tried to deny it, when Walters walked in without knocking. He tried to angle the screen away from her view but he wasn’t quick enough and there was enough flesh on show to make her jaw drop.
‘I’ll come back later sir, you’re obviously busy,’ she said turning to go, her face rapidly reddening.
‘Come back in here Carol!’
She stopped and looked round, a hard but cautious look on her face.
‘Now before you start spreading rumours about me looking at illicit stuff when I’ve got nothing else to do, you need to see this. Come in and shut the door.’
Reluctantly, she did as she was told and when seated, he swung the screen round for her to see. ‘Now take a look at this girl’s face.’
‘Good God, sir! It’s Louisa Gordon! I should know, I’ve been staring at her picture for the last couple of hours.’
‘Yep and this is Jon Lehman’s web site. The two dead girls are connected not just by their attendance at university, but by featuring on this bloody web site. And the implications of that are what, do you think?’
‘Any girl that has appeared on this web site is now in serious danger?’
‘I couldn’t have phrased it better myself.’
TWENTY-FOUR
The number of officers attending DI Henderson’s update meeting on Monday afternoon had grown substantially as now it included the members of two murder teams. It started at six-thirty prompt as Henderson was keen to crack on. He was more abrupt than usual as the lack of progress on the Sarah Robson case was getting him down and after completing a few formalities, immediately demanded an update on the search for Mike Ferris, the identification of the killer’s dump site at Mannings Heath and the progress being made in following up interviews with car, taxi and bus drivers.
‘It’s most likely our suspect is in the Scarborough area,’ DS Harry Wallop said, ‘as the Lincoln police have already got back to us and confirmed they made contact with Ferris’s mother and she swears she hasn’t seen him for at least a month and doesn’t want to see him either, as she’s upset that he split up with his wife. Scarborough Police are following up on three possible sightings of a man fitting Ferris’s description and they think they’ll have something for us by latest, noon tomorrow.’
‘That’s something at least.’
‘If I could add a little more to that story, Inspector,’ DS Steve O’Donnell said. Steve was a sergeant in the Divisional Intelligence Unit and a specialist at finding people. Dressed in a smart grey jacket over a checked shirt, the large mop of thick, grey hair was swept away from his face and held in place by gel, and he frequently flashed a cheeky smile that made him look more like a punter after a successful day at the Lingfield Races, than a smart copper with good contacts at numerous hospitals, charities, private investigators and Interpol.
‘One of the sightings Harry mentioned was in Trafalgar Square in Scarborough and its probably the best one yet. This is an area of flats and bedsits surrounding a small patch of grass near the cricket ground and seafront, but crucially, close to the place where it is believed his wife has moved to, and in the same area as her sister. The local police are probably round there now as we speak.’
‘Excellent Steve, thanks. Tanya, what news on the hunt for the dump site?’
Detective Constable Tanya Stevenson was a no-nonsense lady who smiled little and as far as he knew, didn’t have many friends in the force but she was a good person to have on an investigation like this, as she was indefatigable, tenacious to a fault and never took ‘no’ for an answer, even though he was sure the job he had given her to do this time was beyond even her legendary powers.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have good news for you sir, despite having over thirty officers conducting fingertip searches on four probable sites.’
She went on to detail their findings but all they found was old bottles, cigarettes ends, used condoms and other assorted detritus, discarded by numerous dog walkers, car drivers and hikers over the years and nothing to indicate that any of it was left behind by their killer.
‘I’m sorry to hear that after all the work you’ve put in but I think we’ve done all we can up there and I don’t think we’re ever going to find it, unless someone can tell us what vehicle he used or we get a definite sighting of where he stopped.’ He paused for moment letting everyone absorb the implications. ‘With immediate effect, I’m terminating the Mannings Heath search and I want you to scale your team back to ten officers and redeploy them to West Hove.’
Like a good soldier, Tanya took it on the chin.
‘At Mannings Heath,’ Henderson continued, ‘we could have targeted twenty or twenty-five places where he might have left his car, but at West Hove there’s only one or two. It’s complicated by the fact that all our vehicles were parked in more or less the same spot on Thursday night, but there’s a chance he may have left something behind in the bushes.’
‘Very good sir,’ she said, ‘I’ll get that organised.’
‘Seb. How did you get on with your trip to Dominic Green’s porn warehouse?’
This elicited a number of catcalls from his colleagues, causing the young man’s face to redden. He waited until they had finished. ‘Of course, they offered me a part but I turned it down as I like working with you lot so much.’
Henderson let them blow off steam for a short time before calling the meeting to order.
‘The guy who operates the computers, like keeping the web site going and signing up new members, is a strange looking bloke called Brian Calder, although he prefers to be known as DeeZee, whatever that means. It turns out he’s Dominic Green’s nephew but he’s nothing like him. Calder’s fat and slobby and more interested in the space the pictures take up on his hard disks than what’s on them.’
‘How good’s his alibi?’
‘Through the wonders of modern technology, he showed me how he works late most nights, because he likes to be there when the US comes on-line as traffic is heavier, and on the nights when the girls were killed, he was still at work. He showed me date-stamped documents to prove he was still at his computer.’
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‘Could they be faked?’
‘With the knowledge he has, probably, but he didn’t remotely look the type and he’s so laid back, I couldn’t see him having the necessary anger or aggression to kill these girls.’
Henderson considered this. There weren’t many people directly connected to the web business except Calder and two photographers and Henderson was harbouring a hope, clearly in vain that Calder would be of interest as he had ample opportunity and access. However, Seb was right, their killer did require strength and aggression, neither of which was much in abundance with this guy.
‘Good work, Seb. See if you can talk to both photographers sometime in the next two days.’
‘Will do.’
‘Now to taxi drivers and bus drivers. Where are we up to on following up the promising interviews?’
‘That’s progressing sir,’ DC Phil Bentley said, ‘but so far we can’t find anyone who gave her a lift or spotted her walking along the road.’
Henderson sighed in exasperation but kept his negative thoughts in check. ‘I suppose its understandable as it was late at night and who notices one girl walking along the road, especially busy cabbies and bus drivers who’ve got other things to worry about? Keep trying Phil, you might strike lucky.’
The face of DS Walters suddenly lit up as if a light bulb was suddenly switched on.
‘What is it Carol, have you just realised you’ve left a pot boiling on the cooker?’
‘No, I’ve just remembered something. Late night buses and taxis are not the only way for students to get back to the university or reach their accommodation.’
‘You mean she might have been given a lift?’
‘No, because we’ve asked around the university and nobody admits to giving her one. While I was out there trying to identify the girl at West Hove and waiting for the registrar to show up, I spotted a flyer for another bus service, specifically for students. It’s called The College Link Bus and runs regularly between all the universities and Brighton town centre. It does a circuit from Lewes University, to Sussex and lastly to Brighton University, before heading into town. It goes along the Lewes Road, right past the area where Sarah lived and where there are loads of student flats.’
The sudden awareness of a new line of enquiry which wasn’t spotted earlier, always created a buzz in any investigation and this one was no different.
‘Now you mention it,’ DS Gerry Hobbs said when the room was finally quiet, ‘I’ve seen these buses when I’ve been going along the Lewes Road but I never twigged they were just for university students.’
‘Yeah, they run a regular service during the day,’ Waters said, ‘every fifteen minutes or so, and a late night service every half hour, I think until about three in the morning.’
‘Do you know the routes?’ Henderson said. ‘Was Sarah maybe walking down West Street to catch one at the Steine?’
Walters shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, sir. There’s a stop on West Street that she could have used. She must have walked right past it as she came out of Havana Bay.’
‘We know she was angry, perhaps she just wanted to walk off some of the anger, I know I do sometimes,’ Sally Graham said.
‘Maybe she didn’t have any money or it was full,’ Hobbs said. ‘I presume they’re not free or is this something else we give away to bloody students.’
‘They’re cheap but they’re not free.’
‘Carol can you check that out? It shouldn’t be too difficult, as you’ve already spoken to some of the people who were with her at the club. I think they might know if she spent all of her money.’
A phone began to vibrate, something he frowned upon as he expected everyone to turn them off and concentrate on what was an important meeting, but he swallowed a rebuke when he saw it belonged to O’Donnell, as technically, he wasn’t a member of the team and more dependent on his phone for doing his work than anyone else. He excused himself and left the room.
‘So,’ Henderson said, ‘if we shift our focus away from Sarah’s intentions for a minute, the driver of the College Link Bus would not only know the students, possibly by name but he would also know their movements and whether they lived on or off campus.’
‘For sure,’ Walters replied.
‘What we need is a list of all the current drivers and those who have left the job, up to five years ago. Carol, can you and Sally take that on?’
‘Will do sir.’
‘From that list, draw up some questions and then take a couple of officers from this team and six or seven uniforms and interview every one of them.’ His bad mood was lifting as now their thinking was shifting away from a bus driver or a taxi driver who might have murdered her in the heat of the moment, in a fit of panic or in a burst of anger, a scenario he didn’t find entirely plausible, to a man that might have known her well and was probably planning her abduction for months.
‘Right sir, I’ll get that organised.’
Sally Graham was about to speak when Steve O’Donnell came back into the room.
‘Great news,’ he said. ‘Mike Ferris has just been arrested.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Two men walked through the main entrance to Lewes University and while one headed towards the enquiries desk, the other sauntered over to the notice board. DS Gerry Hobbs didn’t go to university and had never really considered going either, despite gaining three A-Levels at Six-Form College. His father was an engineer at a large food manufacturer in Pontefract and it was expected he would follow in his footsteps but he didn’t, and instead joined the police force.
Some students were scurrying about as if late for a morning seminar, while others were sauntering along or leaning against a wall and chatting as if they had all the time in the world. He turned to look more closely at the notice board and was pleased to see that after the murder of two students, warnings were now posted instructing girls not to venture out without a companion. Their tone was paternal without too much panic and with the Easter holidays due any day now, it would give many students the chance to get away and forget about it for a while.
DC Seb Young strode towards him, exhibiting little trace of the easy humour that normally creased his face. ‘Right, we’re checked in. We can go up and see him now that is, if you’re not too busy trying to decide between a Tai Chi class or doing a bit of creative writing.’
‘Yeah, I’m finished. I was just getting a feel of the place. Let’s go.’
Jon Lehman’s office was small and it was a tight squeeze to fit in two extra bodies with such a big desk, numerous filing cabinets, cupboards and large piles of paper and magazines. Lehman had been expecting them and by the look on his surly, ashen face it was not a meeting he was looking forward to.
Hobbs liked the occasional flutter and would have taken 3-1 that Lehman was worried about saying something that might incriminate himself but a more cautious man than he would also entertain the possibility that he was suffering from a hangover, evidenced by trembling hands and bloodshot eyes. Hobbs, like any gambler, continually searched for information that would shorten the odds in his favour and after shaking hands with the lecturer, he knew his initial assumptions were correct, as he could not detect the smell of booze.
‘As I explained on the phone,’ Hobbs said in the calm, measured way he liked to start an interview, ‘I am in charge of the team investigating the death of Louisa Gordon, a student from this university whose body was found in bushes on the grounds of West Hove Golf Club, a week last Saturday.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ he said.
‘Even though Louisa was a student of Sociology and unlikely to be taught by you...’ He looked at him for confirmation.
‘Yes, that’s right, she wasn’t in any of my classes.’
‘However, she does appear as a model on the academic-babes website, a website owned by you, Alan Stark and Dominic Green.’ He paused. ‘And I don’t think you need reminding Mr Lehman, so was Sarah Robson.’
‘Yes, I was aware of tha
t.’
‘Have you anything to say about these two murders, sir. I assume you can see why we believe they are both connected?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ he said nervously running fingers through thick, black hair. ‘Somebody is obviously targeting the girls on the site but I don’t know why. Why would I know? We’ve looked and looked but can’t find anyone in our web site community who dislikes any of the girls, or me or the other founders, so much that they would want to murder those girls... those students. I just can’t see it. I can’t get my head round it.’
‘What about Mr Green, surely he must have some serious enemies. He’s been mixed up with some fairly rum characters in the past.’
‘You probably know more about him than I do, but it’s true, he is the type of guy that likes a bit of danger and mixes with some unsavoury people. I know he’s been looking at this too and there’s a good chance he’ll come up with something.’
‘Isn’t it just a tiny bit convenient for you to blame it on Mr Green and say it’s nothing to do with me? What about you sir, you must feel some responsibility?’
‘Of course I bloody do!’ he exploded. ‘I think about this every day, every damned day if you must know.’ He spun round on the chair and stared out of the window at the early spring landscape. His office was at the back of the university with views over a small patch of ground that included a few trees and bushes and an area of grass, replete with fading daffodils and snowdrops.
‘Let’s talk about Louisa Gordon.’
He turned back to face them. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘We know she was a third year student of sociology, she lived in a big flat with five other girls and a bloke in the Queens Park district of Brighton, her parents live in Cardiff, that’s about it.’
‘She’s tall, short black hair and big in so many ways; big boned, big personality, always spoke her mind, and if you talk to people who have taught her, a brilliant student. She liked to get involved in everything, whether it was rag week, the sociology annual bash, even showing visitors around on open days, it didn’t matter.’ He paused, staring into space. ‘What a waste.’