by Helen Fields
‘We’re working on the theory that Kate’s abductor first came into contact with her through her work,’ Callanach said. ‘And we’re checking everybody out. We don’t know where he is at present but we hope some information on Kate’s laptop will help us find him.’ Ava opened her mouth to speak but Callanach shook his head. ‘That’s as much as we’re certain about for now. We’re going to keep you updated though, all the time. Your local police force will make sure they talk you through every step and relay information as we get it. You can also use them to contact us with questions.’
‘How do you know it’s the same man who hurt those other girls? You can’t know for sure …’
‘He left an item, something personal to the last victim, in Kate’s pigeonhole,’ Ava said. ‘It’s what he did the first time, too.’
‘What did he do to those other girls?’ Mrs Bailey asked. ‘I want to know. Did he rape them? Torture them? How did they die?’
Ava looked her directly in the eyes and spoke quietly but deliberately. ‘One girl was raped, the other was not. They were each held for a week before he inflicted wounds to their abdomen and their back. The blood loss caused their deaths. There is some media coverage which is speculative, not entirely accurate and which won’t help you. I know you’ll want to look, it’s only natural. For your own sake, I’m going to urge you not to. Let us answer your questions instead. Local police will stay here on a shift pattern twenty-four hours a day if that’s what you want, until we can resolve the situation.’
‘Or until you find her body,’ Mrs Bailey snarled.
Ava didn’t answer. She wouldn’t lie, however tempting it was.
‘Bloody Edinburgh!’ Mrs Bailey shouted. ‘I wanted her to stay here, go to Durham University. But her father studied in Edinburgh and all she ever wanted was to be like him. They love each other so much. When he became ill, it broke her heart. This is going to kill him.’ She broke down again, her momentary flash of anger dissolved in a new wave of grief. ‘I’m going to lose them both. I’m going to lose them both.’
The uniformed officer took over, taking Mrs Bailey by the shoulders and returning her to the kitchen chair, where she sat rocking back and forth.
‘We have a specially trained counsellor coming over,’ the officer said, ‘and my sergeant’s joining me soon. I know you have to leave.’
Ava knelt next to Mrs Bailey’s chair. ‘We won’t rest until we’ve done all we can to find her. Don’t lose hope yet. Are you caring for your husband all by yourself?’
Mrs Bailey nodded. ‘We get by,’ she said. ‘If we want extra nursing care, we have to pay for it. There’s just no money left over at the end of the month. When my husband was diagnosed, he had to stop working. His benefits just about cover the mortgage.’ She stopped there. It wasn’t necessary to explain that there was little money left for anything else. ‘Kate sends what she can, of course.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘She’s such a very good girl.’
They left quietly, wondering how the news would be broken to Mr Bailey, wishing he could be left oblivious, but he had a right to be informed. They should have a doctor there when they did it, Ava thought, texting that instruction back to the uniformed officer they’d left with Mrs Bailey as the taxi transported them to the train station. Twenty minutes later they were headed back towards Edinburgh, soothed by the rocking of the train.
‘Lively says they’ve identified the bus crash victim,’ Callanach said, reading from his phone. ‘Melanie Long, aged thirty-three. Officers are with her partner now. They’ve one child, a boy aged five, but he lives with his grandparents.’
‘MIT delivering one bereavement notice and one kidnap notice to different parties on the same day. That has to be a record,’ Ava said bitterly, staring out of the window.
‘Lively’s also notified Overbeck that the facial assaults have been upgraded to a murder enquiry. She’s pulling some more bodies in to bolster MIT while we handle the two cases. Sounds like the detective sergeant’s doing a good job,’ he commented.
‘I bet he is,’ Ava said. ‘I’m sorry. Ignore me. It’s so tiring, watching other people’s pain, unable to help.’
‘That and the fact that you haven’t slept for days. You should close your eyes a while.’
‘I can’t. It’s not comfortable enough, and I should call Natasha. She’ll be in such a state by now.’
‘Natasha can wait. You need to rest if you’re going to focus on either case. Jonty told you the same. You’re going to burn out, Ava. It was the right thing for us to go and see the Baileys in person, but you know neither of us will see our homes for a few days after this. Put your head on my shoulder if you like. I’ll keep an eye on messages between here and the city, and I promise to wake you if there’s anything you should see.’
‘I’m not sure I should be falling asleep on my detective inspector’s shoulder.’ She smiled. ‘Seems to me that might be a breach of protocol.’
‘Then pretend I’m nothing other than a friend for the next hour. No rules against that,’ he said.
‘I appreciate the offer but I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep anyway,’ she murmured, closing her eyes and keeping her head upright for another five minutes, before sinking slowly down to rest it on Callanach’s shoulder.
He brushed a long brown curl away from her face, thinking how young Ava looked when she was sleeping. He only ever saw her alert, often tense. Whilst she kept her team upbeat, even when she wasn’t feeling it herself, he rarely saw her with her defences down. It was such an intimate thing, having someone sleep against you. He could feel the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth from her skin. He shifted slightly to leave her head at a better angle and she smiled briefly, finding some happier place in her dreams. When Selina slept at his house, it was as if she was still awake, constantly moving and shifting, the energy she had unable to find peace. Ava was more like a child. Wilful and brilliant whilst awake, trusting and serene in slumber. It was unfair to compare them, he thought, guilt rendering him uncomfortable. Selina wanted nothing more than to make him happy in every way, and she was determined to succeed. Ava had never tried to be anything other than herself, whether that made Luc happy or not. Perhaps when you were just friends with a member of the opposite sex, it was easier to be yourself. No pretence, no complications. He forced his gaze off Ava’s face and back to his mobile, reading incoming emails and making sure nothing was missed. Keeping his mind off his personal life.
Ava awoke an hour later, as they were drawing into Waverley station. A minute later, her phone began to ring.
‘Ma’am,’ Tripp said. ‘We have CCTV footage of Kate meeting a man in a shopping centre. Professor Forge has confirmed that it’s her.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘SugarPa won’t give us any information at all,’ Tripp said, striding along the corridor to keep up with Ava. ‘We’ve sent an email request and followed it up with phone calls.’
‘Did they say why they wouldn’t cooperate?’ Ava asked.
‘They say we have no proof that the man she met through their website is holding her or that he is the same person who left the item in her pigeonhole. Technically they’re right.’
‘Get a court order,’ Ava snapped. ‘I want a lawyer in my office in the next hour preparing the paperwork. If they won’t comply, I’ll get a judge to force them.’
‘Actually, it’s more complicated than that,’ Tripp said.
Ava stood still. ‘Tell me.’
‘The company who owns and runs the SugarPa website is based in Spain. In order to save costs, their servers have been outsourced to another company, situated in Russia. That means we have to deal with Scottish law, European Union law and potentially Russian law as well. Even if we could get through to the Spanish company, forcing the Russians to provide information might prove …’
‘Impossible,’ Ava said. ‘It’ll prove impossible, and it’s going to take too long to get results. Kate has four days left, in all likelihood, before she’s beyond
saving. What did we get off her laptop?’
‘Just the normal front-end stuff. We got into all of Kate’s previous conversations, which is how we came to check out the shopping mall. They were incredibly good about reviewing their CCTV, which is why we got a hit so quickly. The footage is in colour and the man Kate met was at the corner they’d agreed, carrying a red umbrella as per his suggestion.’
‘Great,’ Ava said. ‘Does his image match the one he used for his profile photo on SugarPa?’
‘The profile photo was taken down when he cancelled his membership. It’s one of the pieces of information we’re trying to get from the website, but Natasha mentioned that the photo wasn’t helpful in any event,’ Tripp said. ‘The man on the CCTV footage was wearing a hat, an old-fashioned one, like a trilby, pulled down low over his eyes. We can see that he has dark hair, fairly standard length from the back view. He was also wearing thick-rimmed glasses and had a scarf around his neck that covered the lower section of his chin. He’s tall, but he was wearing a long overcoat so we can’t make out much more of his figure. The tech team are trying to enhance the images now.’
‘Get the footage ready for viewing in the incident room straight away, and gather whoever is still in the building. We need to expand our search based on what we have. I’ll be there in five minutes. I just need to speak with DI Callanach first.’
Ava ran to Callanach’s office, knocking as she walked in.
‘I need a favour,’ she said. ‘Your friend, the hacker who helped with a previous investigation.’
‘Ben Paulson,’ Callanach said.
‘That’s right. Ben. Is he still in Edinburgh?’ Ava asked.
‘I’m pretty sure he is, although we haven’t talked for a while. He’s working for himself now but I don’t think he’s gone back to the USA,’ Callanach said.
‘Good. I want him to hack into the SugarPa website for me. I need all the information available on John White, the man Kate Bailey met at the shopping centre. The name will prove to be a pseudonym, but there should be an email address, IP address, credit card details. SugarPa won’t play ball and it’ll take more time than we have to get through the legal red tape.’
‘You know, Ben was a suspect in a serious case led by your former fiancé. He has very little love for the police, and now we’re asking him to break the law on our behalf. He might be wary,’ Callanach said.
‘I’ll go with you and beg him if I have to, and I’ll pay whatever it takes. I’ll even give him a signed confession that I blackmailed him to force him to break the law for me. It’s the only conceivable way I can get this information, Luc. Ben Paulson helped you before and it saved a woman’s life. I can’t think of anyone better qualified to help us now.’
‘All right,’ Callanach said. ‘I’ll make the call, but he’ll want to see me alone and in person. Ben doesn’t discuss work over the phone.’
‘That’s fine. We’re about to start a briefing on the CCTV footage. You handle this. Check in with me once you’ve spoken to him. I’ll be in my office.’
The team was already gathered in the incident room. Tripp turned the lights off as a huge screen, split into four quarters, showed different angles in a covered shopping mall. The strip lighting was unhelpful, but the cameras weren’t bad. The man first walked into shot from an exterior door, moving directly to the corner of a toy store, where he waited, keeping his head down.
‘He should be looking around for her,’ Tripp said. ‘Suggests he was aware of the cameras. Why risk meeting in a place where he knew they’d be filmed?’
‘It’s a calculated risk,’ Salter said. ‘It’s probable that many of the students making money through SugarPa don’t tell anyone what they’re up to. He had no way of knowing she’d confided in a counselling service. Likewise, that she’d left her password plugged into the website on her laptop. He deletes his profile, disappears, chances are no one would ever trace the time or place they were due to meet.’
‘It’s still a risk though. There are plenty of places he could have suggested they meet up that have no CCTV coverage at all.’
‘I think he chose it to reassure Kate, to stop her from getting spooked,’ Ava said. ‘It’s clever. Let’s meet in a busy, public place, guaranteed to have CCTV cameras. Better still, let’s meet outside a toyshop. Brilliant subliminal messaging. It says, I’m a child-friendly person. I know where the toyshop is. I am non-threatening and unafraid to be seen.’
Ava un-paused the footage until Kate came into view from the opposite direction, walking straight up to the male and pointing at the red umbrella. They exchanged a few words then turned back in the direction of the exterior door through which the man had come, exiting together.
‘Perfect. He minimised the view we got of him but seemed harmless enough for Kate to leave the safe area straight away. Tripp, get me the best lip reader you can find. I want to know what he said to her, if he has any speech impediments, an accent if they can tell, mannerisms, the works.’
‘Got it,’ Tripp said.
‘Salter, get the maths done from the scale of the outside markings on the shop window. We know the angle of the camera, so we should be able to figure out his height to a precise measurement. How are interviews going with the people working in the other stores nearby?’
‘A couple of people confirm noticing him but not paying any real attention,’ a uniformed officer said. ‘It’s been cold and wet, so people in hats and scarves going into the shopping centre from the outside are two a penny. No one has been able to give us any additional facial details and no one heard him speak. We are tracing another potential witness who seemed to take an interest in the male, although she moved on quickly when approached by a shop assistant.’
‘I don’t understand. What woman?’ Ava asked.
‘There’s a women’s clothes shop on the opposite side to the toy store, two units down, called Night and Day.’ All heads turned to the screen again to search for the shop. ‘Its usual customers are aged between eighteen and late twenties, lots of students. The woman in question was standing between a couple of racks of clothes for several minutes, not moving or browsing, staring out of the front window from behind the mannequins. The shop assistant originally thought she might be a shoplifter as she was behaving oddly, then became concerned that something might be wrong. When she approached her, the woman made an excuse and left the shop. The assistant remembers the male at the corner of the toyshop, because she automatically looked to see what the woman had been staring at and noticed a man holding a red umbrella. As soon as the woman left, she was asked to help another customer and thought no more about it until we started interviewing staff in the vicinity,’ the officer said.
‘Jealous partner, maybe, who’d caught on to the fact that her husband or boyfriend was using SugarPa?’ Tripp asked.
‘Quite possibly, especially if she was staying out of sight of the male, which means that if we find the woman, we can identify the man,’ Ava said. ‘Contact the security staff at the mall. They need to review their CCTV again for all clips of that woman, particularly which exterior entrance or exit she used, then see if we have further cameras that can follow her to a vehicle or bus stop in the city. Any joy with exterior cameras for the male?’
‘None,’ Tripp said. ‘He chose a route where he wouldn’t be seen by cameras, so presumably he used side streets, potentially going into premises such as pubs that have a front and rear entrance to make it hard to follow.’
‘So let’s stick with the information we have.’ Ava rewound the footage by a few seconds and played it again. ‘We’ve got a good, recent image of Kate where she was last known to have been. We can release that image with this male in shot. Even if we can’t identify the woman in the clothes store, if that’s his wife she might just respond to publicity. Kate is wearing jeans, black boots, a green jumper and a scarf. She’s carrying a small black handbag. We should also have officers looking for those items on the streets to see if any of them have been dumped i
n alleyways or public bins.’ She paused the footage. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the male in the last visible frame. ‘He’s hidden the umbrella underneath his coat before leaving the shopping centre. He had no intention of using it outside, even though it was still raining. You can see through the external doors. That means he didn’t want to be noticed carrying it on the streets.’
‘Far too memorable,’ Lively said. ‘Which means there’s no doubt he was up to no good.’
‘So we’re proceeding on the assumption that the man Kate Bailey met still has her, and that he killed both Zoey and Lorna. The pubic hair gave us DNA, so we can exclude other suspects easily and quickly, but he’s not on the police national database, which means his fingerprints will prove useless too. Anyone got anything else?’ Ava asked.
‘Nothing helpful,’ Salter said. ‘We interviewed the security staff at the halls where Kate lives. The package was left outside overnight, found by a security guard and put in her pigeonhole in the morning. The guard assumed Kate had dropped it by mistake. Given it had Kate’s full name, room number and hall on it, it was easy to return it to her.’
‘Was that information available on Kate’s SugarPa page, or given in her conversations with the man she met?’ Ava asked. There was a rustling as notes were checked, and the consensus in the room was negative. ‘No. So either he was stalking her for some time, which would have been difficult – he’d have been noticed in the halls and I think someone would have come forward to tell us by now – or he got the information directly from the source.’
‘You think he managed to get those details out of Kate once he’d taken her, and left the doll there after that?’ Lively asked.
‘I do,’ Ava said. ‘It’s the simplest solution. He’s having to achieve a lot in a short space of time, which means he’s organised rather than chaotic, meticulous rather than compulsive.’