by Linda Coles
“I’ll do both. Though she’s pretty full-on with her own things and the wedding at the moment.”
“And how’s it going, the planning?”
“Fine, I think. She’s taken it over. I just need to show up on the day at the required time. And get a dress made.”
“And I’m hoping at this late stage you have that in hand? You can’t turn up in your work suit and boots to this one, Lacey.”
“All in hand. Matching fabric, different dresses. I hope I don’t let the side down.”
“How so?”
“I don’t want to look like Little and Large as we walk down the aisle together. She’s somewhat more feminine than me, with a much nicer figure.”
“You’ll look great together, I’m sure,” he said, smiling at her side. She caught it from the corner of her eye. He said the sweetest things sometimes.
With the end of that particular topic, Jack reached up and pushed play on the CD player. He’d always found music a tool to help him think and, as they were a bit stuck, he figured he’d give it a try. Pink rang from the speakers.
“Don’t you have anything else? Something a bit more . . . male?” he groaned?
“I don’t keep CDs in the car. I’m not even sure what that one’s still doing in there,” she said, pointing to the CD slot.
“What do you listen to, then?”
“I stream, like most folks in 2017. Don’t you?”
The only stream Jack knew about ran near the bottom of his road and dried up in summer. She caught his frown. Rummaging in her pocket as she steered, she passed him her smartphone.
“What am I supposed to do with this? Phone someone?”
“You’re such a luddite, Jack. Look for the Spotify icon and open it.” Glancing over, she smiled as he searched. “It’s green and black. That should narrow it down.” She watched his chubby finger finally press the correct icon. He needed to trim his fingernails.
“Tap in the search box what you want to listen to, and then choose it,” she instructed. They were nearly back at the station by this stage, but she didn’t say anything. He hated being thought of as a luddite, but he made no attempt to be anything else. As she turned into the station yard, the distinctive first guitar strings of Rainbow’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” filled the car, and Jack threw his head back in delight as he realized he’d actually done it. For a detective, he didn’t explore much in his own life – only in other people’s. She pulled into a parking space and turned to him.
“Well, it’s a bit too late to listen to it now, but you’ll know how to do it for later,” she quipped, and smiled along with him. Jack was a huge ELO fan so it was no surprise he’d picked something similar from around the same era. And she also knew what he’d actually been thinking about in the car a few minutes earlier as they’d talked about weddings. Since you’ve been gone… Amanda knew how he’d struggled when his wife, Janine, had died, and that he thought of her often. He’d almost gone out of his head, she knew, but he’d muddled through with the help of those around him. Janine had been his teenage sweetheart, and Amanda had arrived at Croydon not long after she’d died. A close bond, almost father–daughter, had developed between them, and they’d been very close friends ever since.
“I think I’ll sit here a bit and think things through,” he said now. “I’ll be in in a moment. You go on.”
She was about to admonish him about brooding but thought better of it. Sometimes he just needed his alone time. “I’ll make us some coffee, then. Come when you’re ready.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Jack sat back in the passenger seat of Amanda’s car and closed his eyes. The lyrics were still dancing in his head, and he thought back to Janine. What would she think of him now? Would she tease him as a luddite? Would she have reprimanded him over his slight shabbiness, his hair that always needed a trim, or his fingernails? She’d had a thing for neatness and he’d always pleased her, but now as he looked at his tie, he knew he might have let things slip. His tie was clean, but in what century had it been purchased? Not a recent one. He opened the door slowly and put one foot on the ground, ready to push himself up and out.
But nature had other plans.
The pain tore through his right side and then stabbed him hard in the groin. He cried out, then gasped and breathed deeply through the spasm. It only lasted for a few seconds, but his brow was damp with sweat and he took out his handkerchief and wiped it. Taking a few more deep breaths, he waited until he was sure the pain had completely gone before stepping towards the rear entrance of the building. The car door clicked shut behind him and he made his way into the coolness of the corridor. While he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, the jolt of pain had frightened him, and he did his best to rearrange the mayhem that was written across his face before Amanda asked him what had happened. Keeping his head bowed as he entered their office, he took the proffered mug of coffee and made for his desk chair to sit down. No one was any the wiser.
But it didn’t stop Jack worrying.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Amanda drove the short distance home. The rest of Rainbow’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” was playing, having been picked up when she’d turned the engine on. Ah, the magic of Bluetooth, she thought, connecting itself automatically. While she typically enjoyed music from after the eighties, these lyrics still made her smile. She’d never met Jack’s wife Janine but knew all about her from Jack; sometimes she even felt Janine was in the car on a case with them, hanging on for dear life in the backseat, watching and wondering.
As the music ended she absentmindedly turned the stereo off and listened to the relative quiet of rush hour traffic travelling along with her on Purley Way. Could it ever be truly quiet in Croydon? She pressed her favourite speed dial, and Ruth’s voice connected through the speakers. She sounded like she was outside somewhere.
“Hey, Amanda, you sound like you’re driving.”
“Hi, hun. That’s because I am. Headed home for a shower – how about you? You sound like you’re outside somewhere.” A horn, probably from a truck or a bus, sounded somewhere in the distance through the loudspeaker. Maybe Ruth was still in town.
“Just heading to the tube and home, so shouldn’t be too long myself. Are you coming over, or shall I head to yours?”
Even though they were engaged, they still each had their separate houses and lived separate lives. For now. And that was something they’d both have to adjust to when they did get wed – living together full time. They both secretly hoped it wouldn’t be too much of an adjustment.
“Thought I’d ask you a question now before you put your work brain to bed. I didn’t want to talk shop at home.”
“Sure, fire away. What is it?”
“Why would someone hack into a company’s database other than to steal the contents? Like a competitor, for instance? What else would they want it for?”
The hands-free loudspeaker throbbed with the sound of traffic as it chugged past Ruth walking somewhere on the other side of London. Amanda could almost smell the exhaust fumes that would be mixing with the occasional greasy roadside food vendor and it made her gag. That aspect of London never appealed to her.
“Good question. And one that deserves a good answer.” Amanda could almost feel Ruth smiling down the phone.
“Care to share?” Amanda smiled back.
“Well, the most obvious reason after database theft is to sell access to it for some other reason, something more sinister maybe. Probably through the dark web or another connection already in place. Stolen ‘access to order,’ perhaps. If it’s not a competitor, I’d say it’s someone up to no good.”
That was an angle Amanda hadn’t considered. What would a model agency specializing in body parts have that someone who wasn’t a customer would need access to?
“What’s the scenario?” Ruth asked. “Hypothetically, of course. Maybe I can be of more help.” This was her way of helping Amanda talk about a case without disclosing information she shouldn�
�t be discussing with a civilian.
“Of course. If you don’t mind?”
“Fire away, until I lose you in the underground, that is.”
So Amanda fired away. What Ruth then told her made perfect sense.
“So a certain someone wanted a way in so they could see the models’ data, not the business’s data.”
Now it fit perfectly: the guy who had been cautioned for approaching the models, the theft of Stephanie’s hair fifteen years ago, and the theft of the more recent victim’s hair. An agency that specialized in people with perfect body parts and two cases of perfect hair being stolen could point to a fetish service of some kind. Was someone supplying hair, and God knows what else, to order, perhaps? Fulfilling clients’ desires at the expense of others?
Amanda furrowed her brow, thinking. “If you had access to the system in question, hypothetically again, could you see how they got in or who they were? Could you trace their steps back? Does it work like that?” She was hoping it really was that simple.
“I’d very much doubt it. If they were clever enough to hack in, they would have covered their steps. And it was also a while ago. Still worth a look, though. Does your cyber team have any hackers on board? Ideally, a kid who’s been done for hacking and given the option of working with a security team as their penance after a crime.”
“I’ll ask,” Amanda said. “But I doubt this case will be a priority for them. Unless there’s been a heinous crime like a murder, a bit of hair fetishism will go to the bottom of their pile in a flash. It could be months before the case sees the light of day again. Hence you.”
“Before you ask, Ms. Lacey, no. And you know it wouldn’t be admissible in court even if I found something. I’m not a detective, remember? I’m just the fiancée of one.”
Amanda knew she was right, and her heart missed a beat at the word ‘fiancée.’ Hell, she loved this woman. She started to reply, but her voice was cut off as the phone coverage dropped out. Ruth must have entered the tube station. With a heavy sigh, she stared at the blank phone, half expecting it to jump into life again. It didn’t. But at least she had some partial answers, a clue as to the direction the case might be heading, even if she had no idea how to find whoever was responsible.
The name Chris Smeeks would be the place to start.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The following day, Amanda arrived at the station earlier than usual. Having stopped at McDonald’s and grabbed an Egg McMuffin and fresh coffee, she’d sat in the small car park as early rush hour commuters sped past on their own way into work – if you could call two lanes of traffic on Purley Way heading north into London ‘speeding.’ At just gone seven in the morning, rush hour was in full flow and had been since about 6 am when the early shift headed in for the day. Amanda hadn’t slept too well. Jack had sent her a file on the man who’d been cautioned after harassing the modelling agency, and it had been disturbing. She had been fully awake by 4.30 and had seen no point in trying to doze off for another couple of hours, so she’d slipped out of bed and made coffee downstairs. The morning sun had been slow to rise, typical for the start of autumn, but as she sat in her car eating the greasy egg sandwich, it streamed through her windscreen, warming her. She smiled at the word ‘streaming’ as she thought it.
Jack was a good man but behind the times in so many things. His delight had been amusing as Rainbow had filled the car and she’d explained what streaming was. She wiped grease from her mouth with the napkin and scrunched the paper packaging up while she chewed the last mouthful thoughtfully. They needed to speak to the man who had been cautioned for harassing the modelling agency girls. Yes, she’d read the sheet about the incident and his warning, but it would be useful to meet him herself, see if anything came up that they could use. When he’d been interviewed at the time, there had been no reason to connect him to anything larger. Like fetishism on a grander scale.
The hot, dark coffee tasted good and strong, and was a welcome hit of caffeine on top of her first one earlier in the morning. Her stomach gurgled in satisfaction. She’d regret it later, she knew. The gurgling made her think of Jack again and the obvious discomfort he’d been in, though he’d tried to shrug it off. She knew that, living on his own, he didn’t eat as healthily as he should, and often she and Ruth would have him round for dinner and company. He needed someone to help take care of him, if only a decent housekeeper who cooked. A thought occurred to her that she put to one side to percolate and chat about with Ruth later. Her phone rang. It was Jack.
“Morning, handsome,” she said, bright and breezy. The second coffee had hit her bloodstream.
“What have you been smoking so early, Lacey?” She could hear him chuckling.
“Must have been the magic mushrooms in my omelette. Too early for smokes.” She loved their banter and so did he.
“Very funny. On to more serious stuff, I’ve fixed to go and see the kinky guy who was cautioned. You coming too?”
“Of course. But you can’t go calling him ‘kinky guy.’ What’s his name again, his real name?”
“Hadley Spinks. Who the hell would name their kid Hadley Spinks, for heaven’s sake? He’d be better off with ‘kinky guy.’ Did you read his file I sent you last night?”
“Yes, I did. That’s why I’ve been awake half the night. I look like shit.” She glanced into her rear-view mirror while she spoke and prodded at the bags under her swollen eyes. They looked more like overstuffed hold-alls after a bank raid. She could have done with a bit of Ruth’s make-up this morning.
“Well, any dude with a ponytail is dodgy if you ask me, and any dude with both a ponytail and a thing about feet is double dodgy. Nonetheless, he’s agreed to speak to us at four pm at his workshop. He’s at a trade show most of the day but will be back later. And as you know, he’s a footwear designer – how apt.”
Amanda thought for a moment, sending a ‘hmm’ back to Jack to let him know she was still there but thinking. “Well, I’m not a psychologist or whatever the correct ‘ologist’ is,” she said finally, “but I’d say that for someone with a fetish, which by the way usually means something sexual in its devotion and an abnormal degree of sexual gratification, working with feet all day would be absolute hell.”
“Eh? How do you work that out? He’d be in heaven, wouldn’t he?” asked Jack.
“Well, no, I don’t think he would. Imagine being surrounded all day every day by the very thing that arouses you the most. It would be quite stressful trying to hide your excitement, like an alcoholic working in a wine shop. Not to mention exhausting.” She let that sink in with Jack, then carried on after a moment of silence. “I’m wondering if he avoids beautiful feet completely to minimize his stress. Maybe he works as a shoe designer, for example, so he doesn’t need real feet at all.” She glanced down at her own feet, safely encased in her work boots. “In which case, his fetish would still need fulfilling and wouldn’t interfere with his everyday work – he could still keep the real thing ‘for best,’ as it were. Just like those into BDSM don’t do it every night just because they have a willing partner; it is something to enjoy on occasion, keeping it special.” She looked across at the McDonald’s wrapper in the well of the passenger’s side.
“Like when you have McDonald’s occasionally. It tastes really good but if you have it regularly, it loses that feeling of enjoyment. Of course, I’m no doctor. We’d have to double check all that, but it makes sense, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. Well, we’ll find out a bit more later on. In the meantime, I’m going to do a bit of research and have a chat to the doc, see if she can recommend someone who really does know about fetishism. But you know what, Lacey?”
“What’s that?”
“It doesn’t matter what he does for a day job, or with whom, because I can’t see how it helps our case. And just because he was cautioned for being a bit of a prick with the models doesn’t mean he’s a hair snatcher. He could be nothing to do with this, merely a coincidence.” As s
oon as he said the word he knew what he’d done. “And yeah, I know what you’re going to say.”
Amanda heard the deflation in his voice. No, neither one of them believed in coincidence.
Chapter Fifty-Four
His eyes rarely rose to the horizon. What could possibly be more interesting out there than the array of beauty at ground level, right there below him for the taking like jewels scattered on a forest floor? Such elegance, such poise, such visions of wonder. Made by nature itself. And all there in the same room as he.
Hadley Spinks allowed himself the luxury to look in detail only a few times per month, and at today’s tradeshow he was in his element. Forget kid-in-a-candy-store. He was sex-addict-in-a-whorehouse, the adult version of the cliché. Hadley chuckled to himself at the analogy, though he’d prefer the whorehouse to be a high-end shoe store.
Or a pedicure spa.
But never a chiropodist. No, beautiful feet were what turned him on, not the calloused feet of old spinsters or the verruca-encrusted feet of teenage swimmers. His passion, his intense interest, had a name – podophilia – but the ‘philia’ part sounded dirty to him, and dirty was far from what he desired. He desired the beautiful, the cared for, the well-shaped, the elegant. . . His mind wandered as he walked towards the coffee cart, navigating himself via the blue swirly-patterned carpet in the large hall. As long as he kept the bright orange outer circles of the pattern to the top he’d be heading in the right direction. It was one of the gaudiest carpets he’d had the displeasure of navigating in some time.
He’d long ago got used to walking this way – head down, eyes averted – and he knew onlookers might find it, and him, a little odd. They’d assume he lacked confidence, perhaps. That’s what it usually meant, didn’t it? But he didn’t care what the strangers who bustled about him thought, on their own mission to wherever for whatever was important at the time.