by Paul Gitsham
Behind her, Donnie, the hotel manager, was looking on, irritation radiating off him. She’d only heard his side of the conversation, but it didn’t sound as though the two guests in room 201 were very impressed about being phoned during their guided tour of King’s College and told they needed to return to the hotel to remove their belongings from the room. Unfortunately, the Easy Break Hotel wasn’t the sort of establishment that could soften the blow by upgrading them to a luxury suite, and breakfast was already free.
‘Any sign of his car?’ asked Warren, his voice tinny over the desk phone’s loudspeaker. Mobile phone reception varied enormously throughout the hotel, and Hardwick had eventually tired of going into the kitchen to get a signal.
‘They have free parking, but they don’t record guests’ licence-plates. There is a wide-angle CCTV camera covering the building’s entrance, but the one that appears to cover the rest of the car park is a fake, placed there as a deterrent. We have no footage of cars entering or leaving the car park.’
‘Naturally,’ grumbled Warren.
‘However, I have found him checking in and checking out on the reception camera.’ She looked closer at the screen. ‘Timestamp says he arrived at 18:28 on Thursday 24th.’
She manipulated the controls on the security system. ‘He’s on his own, carrying a grey backpack. It looks big enough for a spare change of clothes and wash kit, with a bit of space left over.’
‘Get a screenshot and description, we’ll add it to the list of items we need to find,’ ordered Warren.
‘It looks like there’s a logo on the back of his hoodie,’ said Hardwick. ‘I’ll ask the Video Analysis Unit to examine it in more detail.’
‘What about checkout?’ asked Warren.
‘He just left his keycard in the box. I have him leaving at quarter to seven Friday morning wearing the same hoodie. His keycard was one of only two dropped off before the morning receptionist swiped it to mark the room ready for housekeeping.’
‘Good work. The CSIs will be there in about ten minutes to start processing the room and secure the footage, Hutch is organising a team to question the staff. I’ll get Mags to pull up the traffic cams to see if we can find his car.’
Hardwick acknowledged him and hung up.
Behind her, Donnie shifted. ‘Could you please tell me what the hell is going on?’
Chapter 15
‘IT have accessed the logs of Rainbow Hookups, the dating app on Anish Patel’s tablet,’ said Pymm. She called up a fresh window on one of her screens.
‘I’ve not heard of that one,’ said Hardwick, before expertly pitching her finished can of Diet Coke into a nearby waste bin, the caffeinated beverage finally starting to combat her fatigue.
‘It looks as though it’s a fairly new, free service. It’s pretty basic, just a profile picture and a few details such as location and preferences. No subscription, so no credit card details, name or address required. All you need is an email account.’
‘Damn,’ muttered Sutton.
‘Anish has been using it for a little over twelve months.’ She clicked a link. ‘This is his profile. As you can see, he portrays himself on this site much the same way he does on social media.’
The pictures showed Patel in a variety of poses. In all of them he was dressed in well-cut suits, his sleeves rolled back just enough to reveal the expensive watches that they had found in his flat. In two of them he lounged confidently against the front wing of his convertible Mercedes.
‘He’s been honest about his age, but he describes himself as a businessman and entrepreneur,’ said Pymm, ‘and lists his interests as working out, fast cars and fine dining.’
‘Sounds like quite the catch,’ said Hutchinson.
‘Or a good target,’ said Warren.
‘I’ve made a list of the contacts he’s made since he joined. The site rather cutely refers to anyone who expresses an interest as a “nibble”, and if that interest is reciprocated, a “bite”. There are an awful lot of fishing puns on there.’
‘How many are we looking at?’ asked Warren.
‘Twenty-six nibbles, and nine bites,’ said Pymm.
‘Is that normal?’ asked Sutton.
‘I have no idea,’ said Pymm. There was an awkward silence.
‘Well, don’t look at me,’ said Ruskin. ‘Alex and I met the old-fashioned way after a few too many in the Students’ Union. Neither of us have ever used one of these apps.’
‘Sorry,’ muttered Sutton. ‘I shouldn’t have assumed you’d know.’
‘Have any of the bites turned into anything more substantial?’ asked Warren.
‘Five of them progressed beyond a bit of flirting within the app, and they exchanged mobile numbers. You can probably guess what that’s referred to.’
‘And do any of these “catches” appear on his phone log?’ asked Warren.
‘All five, but they usually only communicate for a few days; generally a brief flurry of text messages and maybe a phone call. Then a single exchange of texts and nothing more.’
‘Thanks for a lovely date, best wishes for the future?’ suggested Ruskin.
‘I imagine so, although judging by the profiles that I’ve been reading, “date” might be a bit generous. There’s no way to know without access to their phones,’ said Pymm.
‘Who hooked who?’ asked Sutton.
‘The first catch was initiated by Anish to a Johnny74 on October the 28th last year. A lover of all things car-related according to his profile, he was also the first to offer his mobile number – an unregistered pay-as-you-go, naturally. It looks as though Anish mulled it over for a bit, before finally texting him. I guess if this was Anish’s first foray into internet dating, he might have been a bit nervous.’
‘What happened then?’ asked Warren.
‘They exchanged two more texts each that evening, over the space of about an hour. The next text was from Anish at 7 p.m. the following evening, followed by a reply less than sixty seconds later. Then nothing until 8.30 the next morning, when Johnny74 texted. Anish replied within a minute and then nothing since.’
Pymm pushed her glasses back onto her nose. ‘It’s impossible to work out exactly what’s going on without access to their phones so we can read the texts, but I think we can probably divide these relationships into two groups: those that are just a quick hook-up for sex, and those that are perhaps looking for something a bit more long-term.’
‘And what do you think Johnny74 is?’ asked Sutton.
Pymm looked thoughtful. ‘I think the former. Looking at the pattern of the texts, I don’t think there’s much flirting going on. To be honest, if they were just hooking up for sex then all they’d need is to decide on a time and a place. The text the following day could have been “I’m at the bar, where are you?” and the next morning, “thanks for a lovely night. Don’t call me.”’
‘You’re a brutal woman,’ said Sutton.
‘You have no idea,’ replied Pymm sweetly.
‘Of course they could have moved their conversation away from text messages,’ said Ruskin. ‘There’s not a lot of space for deep and meaningful conversation in a text.’
‘Good point,’ acknowledged Warren. ‘See if Anish started any email conversations with new recipients at that time, Rachel …’ He paused, looking at Ruskin. ‘What?’
‘Well, I don’t want to be rude, Sir, but email is a bit … formal.’
‘He means “old-fashioned”,’ interjected Sutton helpfully.
‘So how else would they have kept in touch? WhatsApp?’ asked Warren, ignoring Sutton.
‘Perhaps,’ said Ruskin.
‘Can we access his WhatsApp account on his tablet?’ asked Warren.
Pymm shook her head. ‘It’s not on the list of installed apps that Pete Robertson sent over. Besides which, WhatsApp is associated with a phone number. Most people don’t sync it to multiple devices.’
‘So, they could have continued their relationship via WhatsApp, and we’d n
ever know it without his phone?’ said Warren.
‘Afraid so, Sir,’ said Pymm.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Sutton. ‘They met up months ago. But there’s no phone calls either. I can completely understand using WhatsApp instead of texts, but it seems unlikely that they never phoned each other for a chat.’
There was a moment’s silence, before Pymm spoke. ‘Do you want to tell him, Sir?’
Warren smirked. ‘You can make voice calls using WhatsApp. Perhaps you should ask one of our younger colleagues for a tutorial?’
‘I did not know that,’ muttered Sutton as the rest of the team laughed.
‘Well let’s at least see if we can track down this Johnny74,’ said Warren. ‘We know what time the texts were sent, so see if you can cross-reference the location data. Presumably they will have met up and gone somewhere if they had sex. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out that Anish went back to Johnny74’s residence, or at least get a decent headshot of him on CCTV; I’m not sure if I trust these profile pictures.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Pymm, ‘Anish contacted a gentleman calling himself “Brown Bear” on the 8th December. Mr Bear claims to be thirty-two, but judging by his profile picture, either he needs to sack his photographer, or he’s knocked twenty years off his age.’
Pymm’s rather waspish assessment was correct. There was no way that the man calling himself Brown Bear was less than fifty.
‘How did this relationship pan out?’ asked Warren.
‘Based on the evidence that we have here, they spent a bit more time getting to know each other. They flirted for almost a week within the app before Anish took the initiative and sent his mobile phone number.’
‘How did that go?’ asked Sutton.
‘Pretty well by the looks of it. They sent a half-dozen texts each, and had a long phone call on the evening of Sunday the 13th. Again, there was a brief text exchange the following evening just before 8 p.m. Then a single text the following morning from Anish. No reply.’
‘Ouch,’ said Ruskin.
‘Could it be that they had a date on Monday night which didn’t go entirely as planned?’ asked Sutton, ‘and Mr Bear wasn’t happy about the brush-off?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Warren. ‘Or the date went very well and they decided to move to some other means of communication. Either way, I think that working out who this Mr Bear is should be a priority.’
‘Regardless of whether the date went well or not, it didn’t stop Anish from continuing to use the app,’ said Pymm. ‘He continued to pursue more nibbles.’ She called up a new screen. ‘Meet Blondie92.’
The screen showed an image of a young man in his twenties, with short, spiky blonde hair. The headshot was accompanied by three more photos, all taken at the beach, revealing a slim, lightly muscled torso.
‘Can you zoom in on that tattoo on his left shoulder?’ asked Warren.
Pymm clicked her mouse, and the man’s shoulder expanded to fill the screen.
‘Looks like he’s a Chelsea supporter,’ said Hutchinson.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Warren staring at the pixelated blur.
‘Chelsea is a football team, Sir,’ said Pymm with a straight face.
‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ replied Warren. ‘And there was me thinking we had a netball fan. Tell me what we have for Blondie92.’
‘Well first of all, he contacted Anish, who responded less than twelve hours later. That was on the 1st of January this year.’
‘New year, new start,’ said Warren. ‘What happened next?’
‘A bit of forward and backwards – I’ll spare your blushes – suffice to say that it was Blondie92 who gave Anish his number.’
‘Unregistered, I assume?’ said Sutton.
‘Naturally. Anyway, Anish was clearly interested. He texted within twelve minutes. I count eight messages between them over the next hour.’
‘It looks as though Blondie92 hooked his fish,’ said Warren.
‘Possibly. There were two more texts from each of them the following morning, and a fourteen-minute phone call – initiated by Blondie92 – the following evening. The next day there are two more texts in the morning, and then one at lunchtime. The last text exchange that day was at half past five.’
‘Setting up for an early evening date?’ asked Ruskin.
‘Well don’t get too excited,’ cautioned Pymm. ‘That was the last time the two of them made contact. There wasn’t even a follow-up text the following day.’
‘Ouch,’ said Sutton. ‘That’s harsh.’
‘I don’t want to be uncharitable, but I think Anish might have been punching a bit above his weight there,’ said Pymm. ‘We know that his profile pictures were flattering to say the least. Blondie92 may have been a little disappointed.’
‘What about the other two bites?’
‘Car_lover12 – I think we can spot a theme here. He claims to be thirty-five and offered his number on the 16th of June. There was a bit of back and forth over text and one phone call, initiated by Anish and a follow-up text exchange a few days later, first thing in the morning, again started by Anish.’
The photo this time was of a tall, well-built black man whose age seemed to match the one listed on his profile, photographed in front of a variety of sporty-looking cars.
‘Do what you can,’ instructed Warren. ‘That was only five months ago. That’s not that long to bear a grudge, if you’re the sort of nutter who dumps a body in a ditch then removes the fingerprints and smashes the teeth in. Anyone else?’
‘Most recently, HotnReady. They connected on September 28th. A few, frankly eye-watering exchanges, then HotnReady passed on his number. Two text messages apiece the following day, and then nothing. No idea if they met up or not,’ Pymm clicked over to the man’s profile pictures.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Sutton, ‘I think we’ll have to crop that one if we’re going to show it to a jury.’
After the laughter had died down, Hutchinson spoke up. ‘If Anish was continuing to see other men, even if he was in a relationship, that could have been a source of jealousy. Presumably his profile must still have been live if he continued to receive nibbles, so any boyfriend would know that he was still looking.’
‘As far as I can tell, his profile has remained active from the moment he joined the site,’ said Pymm. Her voice softened. ‘It’s still active now. Somebody nibbled yesterday.’
The room went quiet, nobody really sure what to say. The site had no subscription fees. Presumably, Anish’s profile would remain active until somebody told the site to take it down, or the company archived it due to inactivity. In the meantime, how many users would click on the picture of the smiling man leaning against the bonnet of his Mercedes car, and feel a twinge of disappointment when he never responded?
‘I’ve been looking at the Bespoke Pairings app installed on Anish Patel’s tablet,’ said Hardwick, addressing the late afternoon briefing. ‘It appears that after a few false starts, he found a match. A young woman called Latika.’ She gestured to the headshot of a pretty, Asian woman that she had projected onto the wall of the main briefing room.
‘According to her profile, she’s twenty-eight years old, a teacher, enjoys yoga and is looking for marriage and children without a sexual relationship.’
‘Well the name matches what Reva told us,’ said Sutton. ‘Do we have contact details for her?’
‘Yes. After a dozen exchanges through the site, Anish sent her his Gmail address, where they continued their relationship. They agreed to meet up at a café for coffee in March and Anish sent her his mobile number. Unfortunately, she didn’t send hers back.’
‘Damn. Without the address book stored in his phone handset, how can we contact her?’ asked Ruskin. ‘If she has any common sense at all, she isn’t going to respond to an email out of the blue claiming to be from Hertfordshire Police asking her to get in touch.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ said Hardwick.
She switched
slides to a list of phone numbers, and gestured with a laser pointer. ‘This is his call log. He received a text message from this number the day after he offered his mobile number to her. Since then he has made and received dozens of calls, pretty much up until the present.’
‘Have you traced the owner of the phone?’ asked Warren, although he had a suspicion he knew what her answer would be.
‘Unfortunately, no. The number is one of the numerous unregistered pay-as-you-go numbers he has contacted.’
‘That would make sense if she was conducting her relationship in secret,’ said Ruskin.
Warren tapped his teeth thoughtfully. ‘We won’t get a warrant to tap her phone or track it; she’s not suspected of any crime. So, unless anyone else has a bright idea, the only thing to do is call the number and see if she picks up.’
His request was met with an apologetic silence. Warren gave a sigh; it wasn’t the way he’d hoped to end his day, but there was no way around it.
‘Mags, what have you got for us?’ he continued.
‘Welwyn had a rush job done on the CCTV Karen found of Anish leaving the Easy Break Hotel on the Friday morning. He left alone, with nobody obviously following him.’
‘Did he appear on any other cameras?’ asked Hutchinson.
‘No. There isn’t much in the way of working CCTV around the hotel, but we don’t see him in reception again and he didn’t go to the bar or the dining room.’
Warren turned to Pymm. ‘How does all this fit in with his phone’s location data?’
‘It doesn’t. He turned his mobile off at 17:38 just outside Clancy’s where he worked. It then doesn’t power up again until he sent the text to work, later on Friday morning,’ said Pymm.
‘Sounds dodgy to me,’ said Sutton.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Hardwick. ‘The mobile phone signal in the hotel is atrocious, even the manager says as much; there’s only a handful of spots you can get any reception at all, guests need to stand right in the middle of the car park to make a call. It’s why they offer complimentary WiFi. If Anish was a regular there, he’d have known.’