Читать книгу The Perfect Couple - Jackie Kabler - Страница 10

‘And she had no explanation for it whatsoever? She really didn’t know?’

Helena, sitting on the edge of Devon’s desk, looked down at him and frowned. He swallowed a mouthful of tea, grimaced, and put his mug down carefully on the coaster next to his computer keyboard.

‘Nope. She looked absolutely gobsmacked, to be honest. She said as far as she knew he was excited about the new job and really enjoying it. Left for work early every morning, came home usually after six, sometimes a lot later. Been doing it every weekday since they moved. Which begs the question, if he wasn’t going to work at ACR Security, what was he doing?’

Helena nodded slowly.

‘Another job somewhere, that for some reason he didn’t tell his wife about? Or was he doing something else entirely? We need to check his bank account, Devon. See if he was being paid by someone else? Although if he’d only been working in Bristol for three weeks, he may not have had a payday yet, I suppose. It would probably be end of the month, wouldn’t it?’

‘Probably. But I’m already on it – well, Frankie is, anyway. We should have his bank records this afternoon.’

He gestured at the neighbouring desk, where DC Frankie Stevens was chatting animatedly on the phone.

‘OK, good. Did we get hold of a more recent photo of him, by the way?’

Devon nodded.

‘She’s emailed one over, yes. Couldn’t find any from the past few weeks – says her phone’s playing up, her recent emails and pictures haven’t saved or something. But it’s only a couple of months old. I’ve printed a few copies off. Should be fine.’

‘OK. All right, well, stay on it for a little bit longer, and keep me posted, OK? And I want this kept quiet for now – no missing person appeals in the papers or on social media or anything. This possible connection to our other two cases is still worrying me, and I don’t want any more speculation out there. Today was bad enough.’

She glanced at the front-page splash on the copy of that morning’s Bristol Post, which was lying on Devon’s desk, and sighed. It had been just as she’d feared.

SERIAL KILLER FEARS AFTER DOUBLE MURDER ON THE DOWNS

‘Bloody reporters. So hush, hush, right? And I know you’re working really long hours at the moment, Devon. I do appreciate it, thank you.’

‘Sure boss. Got nothing better to do these days, so that’s fine by me. Joys of being young, free and single, eh?’

Helena gave him a sympathetic smile, pushed herself off the desk and straightened her jacket. Poor old Devon had been dumped by his girlfriend of the past year just weeks ago, and while he didn’t seem outwardly broken-hearted, she had the sense he was feeling the loss far more keenly than he was letting on. She’d take him aside, maybe for a drink, at some point and have a chat, but there was too much work to be done at the moment, and now with this added complication … she shook her head slightly as she crossed the room, weaving her way between the desks piled high with scruffy stacks of paperwork. She was starting to get a feeling that there was something strange about the disappearance of Danny O’Connor, especially with the revelation about the job that never was, but without a body he was still just a missing person, and right now she had more important things on her mind, namely two actually dead men whose murders may or may not be connected, and a distinct paucity of leads. With a sigh, she reached her own desk and sat down, pushing aside a plastic container of half-eaten mozzarella and tomato salad and tapping her keyboard to wake up her computer screen.

The files for both sets of forensic results were open on her desktop and she flicked backwards and forwards disconsolately between them for the tenth time. There was nothing there, basically; the killer had either been very careful or very lucky, leaving no trace of his identity on either of the victims. Or her identity, Helena thought. No assumptions, not at this stage, even though right now her money was on a male killer. Although no murder weapon had been found in either case, both Mervin Elliott and Ryan Jones had been attacked with some considerable force with some sort of heavy object – both, it had now been confirmed, had died from their head injuries. Both were young, fit men, and it seemed unlikely that a woman would have been able to take either of them down so easily. Although … Helena thought about some of the women she saw at her local gym, on the rare occasions when she chose indoor exercise over running. Those bodybuilder types, the ones who entered those Miss Bikini Fitness contests or whatever they were called – they’d definitely be able to take a man down if they wanted to. So, don’t rule anybody out, she thought. It was far too early in the investigation to start doing that. Keep an open mind, about all of it.

She stood up again and crossed the room to the incident board, hands massaging the aching small of her back as she walked. Maybe she’d ask Charlotte to give her a back rub later, if she was still awake when she got home, she thought, then smiled wryly to herself, realizing how unlikely that was. Her wife, head teacher of a fairly challenging city centre secondary school, came home from work as exhausted as she did.

‘Will you be home for dinner? Or is that a stupid question?’ she’d asked sleepily as Helena had tried to slip noiselessly out of bed at six that morning, wanting to get a run in before what would undoubtedly be another long, frustrating day. She’d leaned across and kissed Charlotte softly on the forehead. She smelled of rose oil and sleep.

‘Sorry, did I wake you? And honestly … I don’t think so. This is a tough one, and I’ve got nothing to go on, Char, nothing. Probably better to assume I won’t be home for dinner for the foreseeable. I’ll make it up to you when it’s all over, promise.’

‘Yeah yeah. Heard that before.’

Charlotte had squeezed her arm and rolled over, eyes closing again, and Helena had dressed quickly and headed out into the dark, frosty morning, guilt nibbling at her guts. Charlotte was patience personified, but sometimes she wondered how long that would last. The job, as poor Devon had recently discovered, was a relationship killer. And Charlotte wanted children – well, they both did, really, but with them both being so busy …

Helena sighed. Charlotte would never put pressure on her, she knew that. But there’d been a few comments recently, a few occasions when babies had suddenly come up in an unrelated conversation. She’d changed the subject, dodged the discussion, but she couldn’t do that forever, she knew that. Maybe, when this was all over …

She sighed again and stared at the incident board. They had had one breakthrough that morning – after struggling for days to find any connection whatsoever between the two victims, a young detective constable had come to her a couple of hours ago, pink with excitement, to announce his discovery that both Mervin Elliott and Ryan Jones had used the same dating app.

‘It’s one of the new trendy ones, nowhere near as big as Tinder and so on, but getting more and more popular among people wanting something a bit more discreet,’ he’d said, his words tumbling over each other in his eagerness to share his news. ‘It’s called EHU – it stands for Elite Hook Ups. It’s not cheap – you have to pay quite a lot even for the basic version. A lot of the others allow you to use them for free at a basic level, and then have a subscription fee for the premium service. This one, well, you have to pay a hefty monthly fee up front to use it at all. Hence the “elite” bit, I suppose.’

The breathless DC – his name was Mike Slater, Helena remembered – had paused for a moment, turning the pages of his notebook, then looked up at her again, eyes bright.

‘But they’d both subscribed to it, and what was really interesting, ma’am, is that for some reason the app had actually been deleted from both victims’ phones. I started looking into it because both Mervin’s and Ryan’s friends said they definitely used a dating app – they didn’t know which one – to meet women, yet there was no sign of one on their mobiles when their bodies were found. I didn’t really know where to start, I’m married, so I’m not an expert, but I asked around, did a straw poll of all the singles in the office,’ he gestured vaguely around the room, ‘asked them which dating apps were big at the moment, and almost all of them mentioned this EHU one as being really popular. It only launched about a year and a half ago, and lots of people have apparently left the old favourites and joined it instead. Well, not everyone – Frankie sticks to Grindr; he’s addicted, says it’s the one with the hottest men and he’s not switching for anyone …’ He grinned and glanced across to where DC Stevens was sitting, then looked back at Helena. ‘Sorry. Anyway, I made a list of the top five apps everyone seems to be using, including this EHU one. I knew it was a massive long shot, but, well, I got lucky.

‘I started contacting the various companies and asked if there was any way I could find out if Mervin and Ryan had signed up to them. The first few wouldn’t play ball, even when I explained that the two men had been murdered, but then I called EHU and they had a think about it and then came back to me and agreed to release some very basic data. And it turns out they were both signed up to it. Mervin and Ryan I mean.’

He paused again.

‘Both had been registered with the site for a few months …’ He consulted his notes. ‘Mervin since last September, and Ryan since November. So a bit weird that the app wasn’t on either of their phones when their bodies were found. I can’t explain that. I mean, obviously this all might just be a coincidence and not get us anywhere, but I asked EHU if there was any way they could give us details of anyone either of our victims hooked up with via the app. Then we’d have a list of new people to talk to, seeing as none of their mates were much help. Neither Mervin nor Ryan had introduced a woman to their friends in months, none of their dates had got serious enough for that. So I just thought, maybe if we could find any of the women they were in contact with through the app, it might just give us a new angle, and you never know, one of them might have some information that might help us. Or they might not, of course, but …’

Helena, who’d been sitting in her chair and listening with increasing interest, stood up suddenly and clapped her hands.

‘Amazing work, Mike! So will they do that, then? The app people? Can we get that information?’

The DC shuffled his feet, looked down at them for a moment, then back at her, the smile fading from his face.

‘Ah, well, that’s where the problem started. Because it’s an expensive, paid for app, it works in a bit of a different way. There’s none of this “swipe right if you fancy me” or anything. Each person who registers has to provide an email address, which is listed on his or her profile. Users are advised to set up a new email address specifically for the site, and not to use their personal address, but that’s up to them. Then you just search for people with traits you’re interested in – profession, body type, age, hobbies and so on, the usual – and if you find someone you like the look of, you just drop them an email, effectively taking the app out of the picture. It’s a feature of the site – it ensures much more privacy than most, because only the two people emailing each other know they’ve decided to take it further. In other words, the people who run the app have no knowledge of who contacts who. They just provide a private, discreet platform for people to find people they might be interested in meeting.’

Helena felt her heart sinking. Damn. Bugger it.

‘OK, well that’s a massive shame. But still, excellent work, Mike.’

She paused for a moment, thinking rapidly, her brow furrowed.

‘Look, what about their phone and email accounts? Mervin’s and Ryan’s, I mean? If these dates were arranged by email, initially anyway, can’t we just find the women they dated that way?’

Mike was nodding rapidly.

‘The IT guys are having another look. I mean, they looked at emails and phone records straight away, for both victims, but didn’t find anything that seemed significant, though I suppose they were looking for threats and stuff like that, not stuff about making dates. They’re looking again in the light of this app thing. And yes, I’ll get back to EHU, see if they can help any further. They might have some sort of search data that could at least help us narrow the field – like, I don’t know, say Mervin had a thing for tall redheads and searched for women fitting that description a lot, that might help us track down some of his dates. Or not. I mean, I could be totally wrong about this, it probably doesn’t mean anything at all.’

‘But it might, it just might. Thank you, Mike. You’ve done a great job. It’s finally something our two murder victims have in common, and it’s about the only lead we have at the moment, so it’s definitely worth following up. Send me anything else you can on this as soon as humanly possible, OK?’

That had been a few hours earlier, and there’d been no updates since. Helena stared at the board for another moment, then wandered back to her desk, thinking. Dating apps. It seemed to be the way everyone met their partners now. In her day, you met people on nights out, in bars, clubs; she’d met Charlotte in a gay bar in Bristol a decade ago. But times had changed, and as far as murder investigations were concerned, the fact that everything was online now was often a good thing, making the movements of victims and suspects so much more traceable. The fact that the two victims had been registered with the same dating site didn’t necessarily mean anything, she knew that. If it was as popular as Mike had said, thousands of people would be using it, which probably made the coincidence meaningless. And how likely was it, after all, that they’d both somehow had the enormous misfortune to fix a date with the same female psychopath, who’d then proceeded to batter them both to death? No, the deaths might not be linked at all, but at least it was something, a lead they could investigate, and that made a pleasant change after days with nothing at all to go on.

I wonder …?

Halfway to her desk Helena suddenly stopped dead as an idea struck her. Devon, who was coming the other way carrying a fresh tea, stopped too just in time to avoid walking straight into her, and groaned as the hot liquid slopped over the edge of his mug, splashing his pristine white shirt.

‘Ahhh, shit! What’s up, boss?’

He dabbed ineffectually at the spreading brown stain with a paper napkin he held in his other hand, looking quizzically at Helena.

‘Oh Devon, I’m so sorry. It’s just … I just had a thought. A random one, and probably a stupid one, but …’

She turned on her heel, scanning the busy room.

‘Mike?’

At his desk near the window, DC Slater raised his head.

She gestured at him. ‘Can you come over here for a minute?’

She turned back to her DS.

‘And Devon, can you give Mike a copy of that new photo of Danny O’Connor, the one Gemma sent across earlier? It’s just an idea, but …’ she looked at the eager face of Mike Slater, who had joined them, ‘Mike, DS Clarke is going to give you a photograph. It’s of a man called Danny O’Connor, who seems to have gone missing in slightly strange circumstances. He’s very, very similar in physical appearance to our two murder victims which is just making us slightly nervous, and he’s not single, he’s fairly recently married, but it’s just a thought, something I’d like to rule out … could you just humour me and have a look to see if he’s on that EHU site too? I mean, I’m sure he won’t be, but can you access it to search it, without paying to join?’

Mike nodded.

‘Yes, the general public can’t, but they gave me a code so I could look at Mervin’s and Ryan’s profiles, and it gives me access to the search facility. I’ll give it a go.’

They didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later there was an elated yell from across the room. Helena and Devon stood simultaneously, and in seconds were peering over Mike’s shoulder, Helena aware her heart had started beating uncomfortably quickly.

‘Well … what have you found?’ she asked. On Mike’s screen was a search page, where he’d clearly been filling in details of Danny’s physical appearance, hair colour and so on.

‘OK, well I searched for his name and nothing that matched him came up, although that’s not unusual, lots of people use nicknames and so on, on sites like this. So I put in all the basic info from his missing person report instead. And when I hit search …’

He clicked on the red search button at the bottom of the screen. Immediately the screen changed, a dozen or so photographs of dark-haired young men flashing up. Helena scanned them, looking for a familiar face, and then gasped.

‘There! Middle of the second row. Is that …?’

Devon leaned closer to the screen, hand on Mike’s shoulder. Mike was grinning widely.

‘That’s him. That’s bloody him. Holy cow,’ Devon said slowly.

‘I think it is too. He’s on there under a different name, calling himself Sean, look. Not much personal info in the profile, but it does say he works in IT. I’m pretty sure it’s him too, from comparing the two photos. What do you think, boss?’

Mike looked up at Helena. Her eyes were glued to the image on the screen, her brain trying to process what she was seeing and what it could possibly mean. It had only been a stab in the dark, a wild hunch. She hadn’t expected to actually be right. She cleared her throat.

‘I think, Mike, that you’re bang on. I have no idea what’s going on here, or why on earth an apparently happily married man has a profile on a trendy dating site, but that’s definitely Danny O’Connor.’