A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (5 page)

He
came out of a doze, shivering.  It was almost five a.m.  Beth was on his mind.  He closed his mind to the case for a while.  It was midnight across the pond. Maybe she was asleep.  He went into the kitchen and stared at the wall-mounted phone.  He needed to hear her voice.  If he woke her up, then he would apologise.  He had written the number of the Wellington Hotel on the calendar that hung on a nail next to the phone.

“
Wellington Hotel.  How may I help you?”  A strong New York accent.

“
I’d like to speak to a guest.  Ms. Elizabeth Holder.  She’s in room 519.”

“
May I have your name, sir?”

“Barnes
.  Matt Barnes.”

“
Just one moment, sir.”

Matt
held for over thirty seconds.

“
Sorry, sir.  There’s no reply.  You want to leave a message?”

“
Uh, no thanks,” he said and hung up.

His spirits
fell.  Where the hell would she be at this time of night?  Was she okay?  She was a light sleeper, so would have been woken by the phone ringing.  There were lots of reasons for her being out.  Maybe she had taken in a show on Broadway, then gone for a meal.  Could have even been in the shower and not heard the phone. He shrugged.  He would try again the following evening.  Regretted not having left a message, but didn’t ring back.

There was little point in going back to bed.  His mind was too busy to entertain sleep.
  He reviewed the previous day.  Once the team had been given their assignments, he and Pete had driven over to the address in Pimlico that had been on Marsha’s driving licence and other documents found in her bag.  They also had a bunch of keys, but searched out the duty manager of the building.

At this stage in the investigation
, everyone who had known Marsha was a suspect. But Matt had looked down at the man who introduced himself as Graham Sumner and as good as ruled him out of the running there and then.  He lowered his arm so that the dwarf could get a proper look at the warrant card he held.  The little guy looked very much like Kenny Baker, the actor who had found fame stuck in a tin can and presumably sweating his bollocks off playing the universally known role as the robot, R2-D2.

“
What brings the police here?” Graham asked in a deep baritone voice that belied his physical stature.

“
Murder, Mr Sumner,” Matt replied.  “One of your residents got herself strangled during the night.  We need to take a look around her apartment.”

“
M...Murder!  Someone was killed here?” Graham stammered.

“
Not here, sir,” Pete said.  “But this is where we believe she lived.”

Graham licked his lips and blinked repeatedly. 
“Who are we talking about?”

“
Marsha Freeman,” Matt said.  “When did you last see her, Mr. Sumner?”

“
Er, maybe three or four days ago.  I’m not sure.  The residents keep to themselves for the most part.”

“
Did Marsha have many visitors?” Pete asked.

“
You mean, men?”

“
That’s not what I said.  Why would I mean men?”

“
She was famous at one time, you know.  A top model.  And she has...had a lot of well-to-do admirers.”

“
You’re saying that she had a lot of male callers?”

“
I’m not saying anything.  I don’t make judgements.  I mind my own business.”

“
So take us to her apartment, Mr. Sumner,” Matt said, turning and walking over to the nearest of the two lift doors.

“
Do you want me to show you around?” Graham said when they reached the sixth floor and he had led them to the door of Marsha’s apartment and stood on tiptoe to unlock the Yale.

“
Thanks, but that won’t be necessary,” Pete said.  “You can get back to minding your own business, sir.”

Pete watched the manager retrace his steps, stretch to hit the call button, then board the lift.  When he heard
it start its descent, he nodded to Matt and they pulled cellophane gloves on before entering the well-appointed and luxuriously furnished apartment.

“
I’ll start in here,” Matt said, looking around the expansive lounge.  “You find the master bedroom.”

There was no sign of a male presence, other than a large stock of condoms in a bedside cabinet.  The only real point of interest was the personal computer in the guest bedroom-come-study, and
a couple of dozen memory sticks and some disks were in a locked storage unit in a drawer of the desk.

“
We need to do this by the book, Pete,” Matt said.  “I want a warrant to cover seizure of this lot.  If she knew her killer, which I very much doubt, then the last thing we need is evidence on her pc or USB flash drives that some smart defence lawyer would try to have ruled inadmissible when we got to court.”

It had been several hours later that Kenny Ruskin from CCS
– Computer Crime Section – had dropped by on his own time and booted up Marsha’s pc, that was now in Matt’s office.  Pete had linked up with Errol Chambers and gone out to Winchmore Hill to interview Marsha’s mother.  The rest of the team were still on the street.

“
You’re a dinosaur, Barnes,” Kenny said with a smug smile as he cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers.  “It’s time you took a course and joined the twenty-first century.”

Matt
gripped the young computer expert’s shoulder and squeezed it hard enough to make him grunt.  “I appreciate you helping us out, Kenny.  But don’t take the piss.  I’m too busy catching bad guys to become multi-skilled.  Just take your pick of the memory sticks in that box and put whatever’s on it up on the screen for me.”

Kenny rolled his shoulder when
Matt let go of it.  Went to work.  His fingers moved in a blur over the keyboard.

“
I’m locked out,” he said to Matt.  “I need a password.”

“
So bypass it or whatever it is you hotshots do to get into these gizmos,” Matt came back.

“
It’s not that easy.  When a machine is password protected, you might get three chances to enter the right word.  Then anything can happen.”

“
Meaning?”

Kenny snorted with amusement at
Matt’s ignorance.  “That until I work it out, we use one of the terminals in the squad room.  In this case, I suspect the user was an amateur and has the machine protected with a simple password, but you’ll be able to see what’s on the flash drives on any pc.”

“
So I didn’t need your...expertise.”

“
Of course you did.  Just to switch it on would probably be beyond your―”

“
Don’t push it, Kenny.  For old times sake I’m refraining from taking my gun out and shooting you in your big mouth.”

“
You watch too many cop shows, Barnes.  I bet you were weaned on
Starsky and Hutch
and
The Sweeney
as a kid.”

“
You’re damn right I was.  Now let’s go next door and see what we’ve got here,” Matt said, lifting up the storage unit and leading the way.  “And the victim’s pc is evidence.  I’d appreciate you taking it back to CCS and pulling anything you can off the hard drive.”

Once up and going,
Matt took over.  He could manage opening the files on the sticks, and Kenny showed him which keys to press to print out anything he might have a need to.

“
Thanks, I owe you one,” Matt said as Kenny made to leave.

“
No problemo, Barnes.  I’ll give you a bell when we retrieve what’s on the pc.”

Matt
entered the world of Marsha Freeman via the screen in front of him.  She had not only alphabetically listed the names, addresses and contact telephone numbers of her clients, but had also entered details of their marital status, and made notes of what sexual practices they enjoyed performing with her.  She had even made a note of all physical peculiarities and habits that individualised them.  It was as if she was compiling research.  For what?  Blackmail?  To write a book?  As a form of protection?  Matt mulled it over.  If this information had been compiled as a personal insurance plan against some hypothetical future threat, then surely the sticks and disks would have been well hidden, or kept in a safe deposit box, not in an unlocked drawer in the desk that her computer was set up on.  This was a record of events that would give any editor at Canary Wharf a serious hard-on.

Matt
picked another stick at random, selected a file marked J-K-L and scrolled through it, stopping when he recognised the name of an executive who worked for a music company, and who was a celebrity in his own right, having appeared on TV more than Ant and Dec of late; a Simon Cowell clone.

Matt
read through what Marsha had written under the heading of Oliver Kerwin.  What Matt supposed was the guy’s two addresses and telephone numbers were followed by a scathing critique
:  Olly is an arrogant and selfish lover.  Truly believes that he is God’s gift to women, but has difficulty getting it up without sniffing poppers.  He likes it from behind, talks dirty while performing poorly, and never stays longer than an hour.  He has a large, port wine coloured, crescent-shaped naevus on his right buttock, and a cluster of moles on the underside of his uncircumcised and small penis
...

Matt
grinned.  This was dynamite.  And he would never look at Kerwin in the same light again.  Marsha knew more about the man than his doctor or mother.  She had filled two pages with intimate details, and had listed all dates over a six month period when ‘Olly’ had visited the apartment, and other dates when she had been at his Kensington-based love nest, which was not his main residence.

It was the footnote that wiped the smile from
Matt’s face:  See Vid #7.

Sweet Jesus!  It implied that there w
ere videos.  That she had taped her activities.  It was a big if, but if there was a visual record of all her clients, then just maybe one of them would be wearing a wolf head ring, which would be the case-breaker.

Standing up, h
e went over to the ever-gurgling coffeemaker and filled a mug with the stale but hot brew.  His heart was beating double-time.  His instinct still told him that it was a stranger to Marsha who had murdered her, but he couldn’t quite suppress the optimism that made him feel jumpy and impatient to act.  He sipped at the bitter coffee, pulled a face and put the mug down.  Starbucks it wasn’t.  He pulled a diary from the inside pocket of his blouson and looked up Pete’s mobile number.

Pete and Errol were the second set of police officers to knock at the door of the mock-Tudor detached house in Winchmore Hill that day.

Sylvia Freeman opened it and stared at them stony-faced.  Pete could see the strong resemblance to her late daughter.  She had flame red hair drawn back from a high-cheeked and attractive face.  Although trying to keep a stiff upper lip, the puffiness around her eyes was not lost on Pete.  He held out his
warrant card for her to inspect.

She nodded. 
“What can I do for you, Detectives?  You do realise that this is a bad time.”

Pete was glad that other officers had already performed the
unpleasant task of informing the bereaved woman of her loss.  He had done it several times during his career, but would rather have a tooth pulled.  There was no easy way to announce that a loved one was dead, and worse, that they had been murdered.  It more than often generated a look of total disbelief, confusion and mind-numbing shock.  It was not information that the brain could easily assimilate and neatly file away.  It was a life-changing experience that put all day-to-day and mundane priorities into perspective; the ultimate attention-grabber.

“
We need to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Freeman,” Pete said.  “The sooner we follow up on what happened, the more chance we have of finding out who murdered your daughter.”

Sylvia closed her eyes for a second, then stepped back into the hallway and inclined her head to invite Pete and Errol inside.  Her mouth was a paper-cut line, and muscles in her cheeks corrugated as she gritted her teeth and fought the emotions that raged within and threatened to overwhelm her.

Sylvia ushered them into a light and airy lounge, took a seat on a large cream, leather chair and waited until they sat opposite her on a matching three-seater settee. A long, glass-topped coffee table filled the space between them.

“
I really do not think I can be of any further help,” Sylvia said before Pete spoke.  “Marsha only telephones me once a week, and visits me very infrequently.  She is a very busy young woman.”

It was not lost on Pete or Errol that the woman was speaking in the present tense.  It was too soon for her adapt to speaking about her daughter as someone who no longer existed.