Ghost in the Machine: An edge-of-your-seat serial killer thriller (DC Scott Cullen Crime Series Book 1)

by Ed James

"How many calls were made?" said Cullen.

  "Just the one, actually. I can give you the number if you want."

  "When was the call?" said Cullen.

  "Seven thirty-nine pm on Wednesday."

  "You said thirty-nine pence has been used," said Cullen. "Is the phone still active?"

  "Hang on." Archibald breathed through his mouth for a few seconds. "Aye, it's still active."

  "When was it last used?" said Cullen.

  Archibald sounded bored. "Wednesday."

  "Is that as in used to make a call," said Cullen, "or the thing being on?"

  "Both."

  "So it's not been on since Wednesday?" said Cullen.

  "That's right," said Archibald.

  "I want to know where the call was made from."

  "Good luck."

  Cullen frowned. "Don't you store the GPS information of the calls?"

  Archibald laughed. "No, pal. This is the most basic model we sell - I'm surprised we still do, to be honest."

  "So you can't tell me where the calls were made?" said Cullen.

  "Not with this phone."

  "If we knew where the call was made," said Cullen, "we might be able to build a picture of who was using the phone."

  "I see. We've done a bit of that in the past. You'll need to check on the cell sites to get anything meaningful."

  "And what's a cell site when it's at home?" said Cullen.

  Archibald sighed. "When you use your phone, it connects to the nearest mobile mast or cell site, which is connected to our network. That's logged with the call."

  "And can you run a cell site search for me, then?"

  Archibald sniffed. "You'd have to get your Phone Squad or whatever they're called to do it. We only give them access to the data."

  "Fine," said Cullen. "Do you have any information about how the phone was bought?"

  Archibald whistled through his teeth. "Let me have a wee look." The keyboard sounds were audible down the telephone line. "Here we are. Sold to Tesco. Part of a batch."

  "Any idea where it went after that?"

  Archibald laughed. "Hardly. You'll need to take that up directly with Tesco." He read out a consignment number and a depot contact.

  Cullen rubbed his forehead. "Is there anything else you can tell us?"

  "Not really. There's precious little here. No texts, one call and that's your lot."

  "What about personal details?" said Cullen. "Home address, bank account, that sort of thing?"

  Archibald snorted. "It's Pay As You Go, we don't get an address or anything like that."

  "So anyone could buy a phone and you don't know who's using your network?" said Cullen.

  Archibald spoke in a monotone. "That's the case."

  "Can you email that information through?"

  Archibald exhaled down the line for a few seconds. "Will do."

  Cullen gave his Lothian & Borders email address. "Thanks for your help. Hopefully it can help us track down the killer."

  He ended the call and slouched in his seat, trying to think through what he could do next. He knew the phone was bought in Tesco. It might lead somewhere.

  Bain had his head down, scribbling on a notepad.

  "Brian," said Cullen.

  Bain looked up. "Come on, Sundance, I've got this press conference coming up."

  "I know. I've got a lead from this phone number, wanted to walk you through it."

  Bain exhaled through his nose. "Right, fire away, Sherlock."

  "Caroline's mobile received a call from an unknown number at seven thirty-nine on the night she was killed."

  "This is your latest wild goose chase, right?"

  Cullen shrugged. "Maybe not so wild."

  "So she got a call from this number and the next thing we know she's dead in that hotel?" said Bain. "What do you know about the phone?"

  "Cheap Pay As You Go, bought from Tesco," said Cullen. "Can I chase it up?"

  Bain nodded slowly. "Go for it. Let me know if you get anywhere. This guy has to have made a mistake somewhere."

  "The other thing is we need a cell site search for that call," said Cullen.

  Bain shrugged. "Go for it." He went back to the notepad.

  Cullen fished out the envelope with Caroline's call records. The Forensic Investigation Unit had provided the extract. Cullen found a number.

  "Phone Squad. Tommy Smith."

  "Tommy, it's DC Cullen at Leith Walk. I'm looking through that set of phone records you got for Caroline Adamson. Couple of things. First, have you had a look at the phone?"

  "Aye," said Smith, "Jimmy Anderson handed it into us to look through."

  "Did you find anything?"

  "Not a sausage," said Smith. "Not even a wee willy winkie."

  "Right," said Cullen. "Can you run a cell site search on one of the numbers off the list?"

  "Aye, I suppose I could."

  Cullen gave him the number.

  "Might take a while," said Smith, "there are a few hoops I have to jump through."

  "If the hoops are to do with the network," said Cullen, "then we've got RIPSA approval."

  "How do you think I managed to have a look at her phone?" said Smith. "DI Wilkinson approved it."

  Cullen sighed - nothing was joined up on this case. "Give me a shout if you get any bother from them."

  "Will do, buddy," said Smith, "will do."

  "How long will it take?"

  "About a day," said Smith, "maybe two."

  Cullen leaned back in his chair. "Could you get it done any quicker?" He rubbed his temple. "This is a high priority case now."

  "They all are," said Smith. "I'll see what I can do, buddy."

  "Give me a call tomorrow with your progress."

  Cullen slammed the phone down then dialled the Tesco depot number Archibald had given him. After the expected redirecting and lengthy periods on hold, they eventually managed to trace the mobile phone shipment to a store in Edinburgh.

  He sat up in his seat, looked over at Caldwell.

  "I'm so desperate for a coffee," she said.

  "Better hope you can hold out," said Cullen.

  "Why?"

  "We're going shopping."

  thirty-three

  "The traffic's always this bad on a Sunday," said Caldwell. "Usually have to battle through it on my way home from a day shift."

  They were driving out to the Tesco at Hermiston Gait, their route was more like a car park than a road at three on a Sunday afternoon. They were trudging through Corstorphine, a large characterless expanse on the west side of Edinburgh.

  "You live out here, right?" said Cullen.

  "Aye, Clermiston, right at the top of the hill. It's not exactly great, but it's a house in Edinburgh. Where do you stay?"

  "Portobello," said Cullen. "Shared flat."

  "Don't you want your own place?"

  Cullen sighed. "Been saving for a deposit for two years, but the amount I need to save keeps going up. If it's not house prices, it's the percentage I need to put in."

  "We've had our house for five years now, think it's doubled in value in that time," said Caldwell.

  "All right for some."

  "Well, the prices have been going down for a while."

  "Aye, but the deposits have been going up," said Cullen. "Last year, I needed a five per cent deposit, this year it's fifteen."

  They finally got over the roundabout, past the purple PC World building, a giant Tesco to their left - roughly a mile from their target - continually in a state of extension. Cullen pressed the accelerator down and headed west.

  "You can get some good deals out in Livingston," she said.

  "You couldn't pay me to live out there," said Cullen. "Used to be in F Division."

  "Where were you based?"

  "Livingston, Broxburn then Bathgate," said Cullen.

  "Ooh, lovely," said Caldwell. "The Wild West."

  "Aye."

  "Did you enjoy it?"

  "Yes and no," said Cullen. "I liked
being in the police, but I didn't like the people I dealt with."

  They passed the Marriott, heading on to the Gogar roundabout, the multi-level construction currently being rebuilt to let the new tram system flow above, the works undoubtedly the cause of their hold-up.

  "You enjoy being a detective?" she said.

  Cullen pulled to a halt at the roundabout. "Aye, it's much better than the beat. It's what I wanted to do."

  "How long were you on the beat?"

  "Six years," said Cullen.

  "That's a long time."

  "Tell me about it."

  "And six months as an Acting DC?" said Caldwell.

  "Aye, St Leonards." Cullen pulled away, turning left onto the City Bypass. "Why all the questions?"

  "Oh, no reason," said Caldwell.

  Cullen nodded at her and smiled. "You're thinking of applying for CID, aren't you?"

  She looked away. "Maybe."

  "You'd make a decent detective, you know."

  "You think?" said Caldwell.

  "If Keith Miller can get through," said Cullen, "anybody can."

  She laughed. "He doesn't seem like the sharpest tool in the box."

  "Indeed." Cullen pulled off at Hermiston Gait before navigating through a series of roundabouts, eventually finding a free space in front of the supermarket.

  "Why did it take you so long to apply to be a detective?" she said. "Miller's only been in the force two and a half years."

  "I applied loads of times," said Cullen. "I was seconded a few times to murder cases early on, just like you are now, and really enjoyed it. I applied for CID about six times but I got knocked back because of my sickness record."

  "How?"

  "I had three bloody colds in six months," said Cullen, "which triggered absence management. I passed my sergeant's exams, too, but kept getting knocked back because of it."

  "That's rough."

  "Bain was saying something about me being an idealist the other night," said Cullen. "I suppose I must be. Nobody would do this job otherwise."

  As they walked over to the store, Cullen could see people looking at her uniform. He thought the biggest advantage from the number of uniforms seconded to the investigation was it provided a visibility his suit didn't.

  At the customer service counter, Cullen showed his warrant card to the young girl, her face plastered with cheap make-up. "I need to speak to a Sam Weston." The name was on the invoice for the mobile phone consignment.

  The receptionist looked nervously at Caldwell then picked up the phone, calling for Sam Weston, her mouth moving slightly ahead of the projected sound. "Should be here any second." She looked past them at the next customers in the queue.

  Cullen and Caldwell moved off to the side, waiting in silence.

  A stocky man in a suit approached them. He held out his hand to Cullen, his smile revealing gleaming white teeth. "Sam Weston."

  Cullen knew the type - Management Trainees. He had dealt with a fair few of them in West Lothian, mainly thefts from the Asda in Livingston. Get a degree from a former polytechnic somewhere down south, work your arse off in a series of roles supervising shelf stackers then, with luck, get your own store to manage with the company car, pension scheme, health insurance and all the other benefits. Cullen wasn't the sort to chase money.

  Cullen introduced them. Weston nodded at Caldwell. "Do you have anywhere we can go to talk?"

  Weston grinned again, though he looked nervously at both of them. "Sure. Let's go to my office." He led them past the fruit and veg section then through the big doors at the back of the store. They followed him up a set of stairs.

  Cullen had worked in the Tesco in Dalhousie when he was at school, though it was nothing like the scale of this place.

  Weston showed them into a tiny office, basically a computer on a desk with a chair. He brought over two more seats, squeezing them into the tiny room and struggling to shut the door behind them. "Now, how can I help?"

  "We're investigating the murder of a woman named Caroline Adamson," said Cullen.

  "Ah yes," said Weston, "I heard about that on the news just then. Awful business."

  "We're looking for a mobile phone which was used to call the victim shortly before she disappeared." Cullen leafed through his notebook and clicked his pen. "We have managed to trace the mobile to a batch delivered by the GoMobile network to your store."

  "I see," said Weston.

  "We were wondering if you could help us identify who bought the phone," said Cullen.

  "Do you have a serial number?"

  Cullen handed him one of the prints. "This is from the supplier. Your central stock system said it came here."

  Weston logged on to the PC on his desk. He swivelled the monitor around to let Cullen and Caldwell watch as he navigated through a sophisticated stock control system. He pointed on the screen. "There's the delivery. I'll see if I can trace the unit through to a transaction. The system's updated hourly, so we know exactly which units are on the shelf at any one time." He tapped away. "There. Arrived on the twenty-third, four twenty-three pm and out on the shelves the following morning, eight sixteen am."

  Cullen checked the printout. "Good. This phone was activated on the twenty-fifth. Just after two pm. We know it was sold that day between eight sixteen and then." He looked at the big year planner on the wall and tried to think. "Is there any way you can check when that particular phone was sold?"

  Weston nodded. "I can have a look at the transactions database for the barcode for those units." He pulled up another system, typed through a few screens. "Here you go. Found one. Sold at eleven thirty-two am."

  Cullen scribbled the reference numbers down from the screen. "Any credit card or Clubcard information?"

  Weston's finger traced along the screen. "Sorry, no. Paid by cash."

  "Bollocks." Cullen clicked his pen a couple of times. He'd had high hopes for this.

  "We've got the time and till, though," said Caldwell. "You can surely cross-reference that to the CCTV cameras."

  Weston nodded. "Don't see why not."

  "Don't you overwrite the recordings?" said Caldwell.

  "Not for the last ten years or so," said Weston. "It's all DVDs and hard drives these days."

  "Can you get us the footage?" said Cullen.

  Weston beamed his white smile. "Sure thing."

  ***

  An hour later, Cullen and Caldwell were back in the Leith Walk station car park, heading to the stairwell. Caldwell carried a Tesco Bag for Life filled with printouts of the transaction and stock systems and a DVD with the CCTV footage from all store cameras covering an hour either side of the transaction.

  "The amount of information they keep is frightening," she said. "From a serial number, he managed to take it through to a transaction to all that CCTV footage. I shop there every other week - how many times have I been caught on their system?"

  "Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?" said Cullen.

  As they started up the stairs, Cullen's mobile rang. Charlie Kidd.

  "Cullen, you're a hard guy to get a hold of."

  "What is it?"

  "You're not going to believe this," said Kidd. "I've found Martin Webb."

  thirty-four

  "Show me." Cullen was out of breath from running up the stairs.

  Kidd wiggled his finger at the screen. "Look at this." He fiddled around in his browsing history, clicked on a link and a page popped up. "There." He pressed the screen so hard it discoloured, as if bruised.

  Cullen squinted at the image. "What is it?" His mouth was dry. Then it hit him. The image was Martin Webb, the picture on his Schoolbook profile. "Where did you find this?"

  "That search I told you about," said Kidd, "it came back pretty quick." He pointed his finger at the screen again. "That's your boy there."

  Cullen's eyes darted around the screen. "What is this site?"

  "Digby Models dot com," said Kidd.

  "Martin Webb's a model?" said Cullen.


  Kidd laughed. "Kind of."

  Cullen was always frustrated with that sort of response from people. "Either he is or he isn't."

  "That's just it," said Kidd. "I think he both is and isn't."

  "Explain."

  "Fine," said Kidd. "Don't interrupt, okay?" He paused to compose himself. "This is a photographic model site, right? This page is in their stock library, so it's just full of photos people can pay for and use in design or whatever, like adverts. Martin Webb has nicked a photo off this site, cropped it and pretended it was him." He pointed at the screen. "Here, watch this."

  He pressed a few keys to open Photoshop, a program Cullen was vaguely familiar with from a brief flirtation with photography. Kidd pasted the image from the website into the application. There was a logo at the left hand side, obscuring part of the image, which he cropped out. He double-clicked, and created an almost exact replica of the image on Schoolbook.

  "Jesus," said Cullen. "So how does this work? How did you find it?"

  Kidd shrugged. "No idea. I just press the buttons."

  Cullen laughed.

  "Seriously, though," said Kidd, "I think it's something to do with just a string-matching search. An image is just a series of ones and zeroes in a set format. It's a case of matching your ones and zeroes with any other in that format. Get enough groupings of matches and you've got something." He grinned. "It just matches chunks of data. Pretty smart, eh?"

  "This is good," said Cullen.

  Kidd held up a sheet of paper. "Here you go. Something else for Bain's file."

  "Cheers."

  Cullen raced off towards the Incident Room and found Bain and Miller at their desks, Bain looking as pissed off as usual and Miller on the defensive.

  "Ah, Sundance, there you are," said Bain. "Nice of you to pitch up."

  The Tesco bag was on Cullen's desk. He held it up. "Got something for you."

  "I hope it's custard creams," said Bain.

  Cullen ignored him and took the DVD out. "It's CCTV footage from Tesco. We might be able to see who bought that mobile phone."

  Bain looked disinterested. "Great."

  "Try to sound a little bit impressed," said Cullen.

  Bain grunted. "Have you watched it?"

  "A bit." Cullen ran his hand through his hair.