Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller) (28 page)

‘What have you got?’ asked Templeton.

‘Four pictures and a bunch of text documents, and that’s about it. What do you want first?’

‘It’s got to be the pictures,’ said Templeton.

‘While we look at the pictures can you print out the text files?’ I said to Alex.

‘Of course I can.’

Alex gave me a look like he couldn’t believe he’d been asked to do something so menial, then sighed. He held out his hand and made
come on, come on
gestures to hurry Sumati along. She quickly downloaded the pictures and gave him the flash drive. Alex pushed himself away from Sumati’s desk and scooted back across the room. I could hear his heavy fingers thrashing the keyboard, the heavy click of the mouse, the long sighs. The laser printer in the corner of the room made a rhythmic
whirr-click
sound as it spat out a steady stream of paper.

‘Okay, what have we got?’ asked Templeton.

The excitement in her voice was infectious. All three of us crowded in closer to the screens. Sumati clicked the mouse and the first photograph appeared on her left-hand screen. The picture showed Rachel Morris going into Springers. She was in profile, so we only got half her face, but we could see enough to be certain it was her. Templeton muttered a quiet ‘Jesus’ at my shoulder, one word that spoke volumes. I pictured the street Springers was on and worked through the angles in my head.

‘This wasn’t taken from Mulberry’s,’ said Templeton.

‘It wasn’t,’ I agreed. ‘There was a restaurant further up the street. A little Thai place called, funnily enough, The Little Thai Place. I’m betting he was there, because, one, the unsub had beat him to the best seat at Mulberry’s. Except at that point in time Stephens wouldn’t have known he was the unsub. Two, Stephens was multitasking and had decided to grab a bite to eat while he was watching Rachel Morris.’

‘And the third reason?’

‘He could charge the meal to Jamie Morris. Okay, what’s interesting about this photograph? And I’m talking really interesting.’

Templeton shrugged.

‘Let me put it another way. How did Stephens know that Rachel Morris was going to be at Springers? He’s not following her. He’s got himself settled in all nice and comfortable in The Little Thai Place, and he’s waiting for her to show up.’

Templeton’s big blue eyes lit up a shade bluer. ‘Because he’s got a spyware program fitted to her computer.’

‘Alex,’ I called out, ‘I’m going to need those printouts ASAP.’

‘Working on it,’ he called back, prickly and annoyed.

The next photograph showed Rachel Morris leaving Springers. She was standing in the entrance, looking left up the street for her date. Even now she was still clinging to the hope that there was a good reason he hadn’t shown up. Stuck at work, stuck in traffic, struck down with amnesia following a nasty bang to the head. She was looking in the direction of The Little Thai Place and I could see her whole face. The definition wasn’t good enough to read her mood from her expression, but it was good enough to read her body language. She was experiencing a real mix of emotions. Wound up, angry, pissed off, not to mention feeling stupid.

The third photograph was just plain frustrating. It showed Rachel with the unsub, but they were walking away from the camera and all we could see were their backs. Stephens had obviously seen Rachel leave alone and thought he was done for the night. He’d paid his bill and reached the street in time to see Rachel wasn’t alone. The problem was that he was at the wrong end of the street to get a picture of their faces.

‘This is useless,’ said Templeton.

‘Not completely useless,’ I said. ‘Rachel is five-seven and the unsub is taller. I’d estimate five-ten. We can see that he’s medium build. So there’s two things we now know for definite.’

‘Give me a moment and I’ll give you a third thing,’ said Sumati. She clicked and typed and the photo slowly changed. Everything sharpened and got clearer. The colours became more defined. A final point with the mouse, a final click. ‘There you go. He’s got brown hair.’

The fourth picture was almost as frustrating as the third. It showed the back of a Porsche as it headed away from the camera, and the fact that Stephens had included this picture meant the car belonged to the unsub. It looked black, but it could have been dark red or dark green, any dark colour. It was definitely a Porsche, though. Porsches have their engines in the trunk, which gives them a very recognisable shape. This was good news since it tallied with what was on the parking ticket.

‘I can zoom in on the number plate,’ said Sumati.

‘No point,’ said Templeton. ‘We already ran it and it’s a false one. Are you able to do anything with the picture so we can find out what colour the car is?’

‘No problem.’ Sumati ran the photo through an enhancement program. She pointed and clicked and zoomed and had an answer in thirty seconds. ‘It’s black,’ she said.

Alex rolled over to join us. He handed me the printouts.

‘Nice wheels,’ said Alex.

‘I need you to narrow down the model and year of manufacture as best you can,’ I told him. ‘I want a list of everyone north of the Thames who owns one.’ I paused and thought about that red pin in St Albans. The anomaly. ‘Let’s go a little further. Expand the list so it takes in a ten-mile band around the outside of the M25.’

‘No problem.’ Alex rolled back across the room and went to work.

The first printout was a transcript of an IM conversation Rachel Morris had had with the unsub. It was dated three weeks ago and came from her work computer. Stephens had installed a program that monitored keystrokes so we only got Rachel’s side of the conversation. I could fill in the blanks, but what I filled them with were my own words and that didn’t give a true picture of the unsub. I moved on to the next sheet, then the next. It took less than a minute to go through all of them.

‘So what have we got?’ Templeton asked.

‘He’s good,’ I said. ‘He had Rachel Morris sharing all sorts of stuff with him, things she probably wouldn’t even tell her best friend. He knew how to push her buttons, when to dig deeper and when to hold back. He took his time and was careful, and only when the time was right did he reel her in. It’s a masterclass in grooming. The first mention of Springers was two days before he abducted her. He chose the venue. No surprises there. He would have checked the bar out. If we had a face shot, we could have run that against the footage from the security cameras and found out when. It would have been recent, so chances are one of the bar staff could have remembered him. Of course, the problem with that is we don’t have a face shot.’

‘He got lucky there, Winter. Admit it.’

‘Luck doesn’t come into it. This unsub is careful, organised and meticulous. Everything he does is done with two goals in mind. He wants to keep on doing what he’s doing, and he doesn’t want to get caught.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. This one’s for Sumati.’ The computer wizard’s ears pricked up and she turned to look at me. ‘The website they were using was cheatinghusband.com. Cheatinghusband is all one word. A lot of these sites keep copies of their users’ conversations. See if this one does and if it does get hold of copies of Rachel Morris’s chats with the unsub. I’d really like to see his side of these conversations.’

Templeton shook her head. ‘It’s just so bloody frustrating. If Stephens had got a face shot we’d have Cutting Jack and his girlfriend in custody by morning.’

‘Why not just contact Stephens and ask him for a description?’ said Sumati.

‘Do you want to field this one?’ I asked Templeton.

‘Chances are he never saw his face because of the angles,’ said Templeton. ‘He followed Rachel Morris from the bar. At some point Cutting Jack fell in behind her. But Stephens would have been behind him, so he wouldn’t have seen his face.’

‘And even if he had seen his face,’ I added, ‘it probably wouldn’t have done any good. Eyewitnesses are completely unreliable. Ask a dozen witnesses to describe someone and they’ll tell you he’s short and tall, white and black, skinny and fat with blond hair that might have been black or brown or even grey. Hell, half of them will tell you that your he was a she.’

‘Ask a stupid question,’ Sumati said.

‘It wasn’t a stupid question. At this stage in the game there’s no such thing as a stupid question.’

‘On the bright side,’ said Templeton, ‘I guess we’re further ahead than we were.’

‘Not far enough for my liking.’ I turned back to Sumati and Alex. ‘As soon as you guys have got anything, anything at all, call me. I don’t care what time of the day or night it is.’

‘No problem,’ they said, almost in unison. Neither looked up. Their eyes were glued to their screens, their heads lost in cyberworld.

We left the computer room and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. My cellphone buzzed and Hatcher’s name lit up on the screen.

‘What have you got for me, Hatcher?’

‘You were right about the first victim. We drew a blank with the coroners so I got someone to pull the files on any unsolved murders that happened over the last couple of years. One stood out. Charles Brenner was a seventeen-year-old rent boy who worked out of the King’s Cross area. He was snatched eighteen months ago and killed with a hammer. Whoever did it really went to town. They smashed his head and face to a pulp.’

‘And the reason it stood out was because there were no obvious injuries to any other part of his body. At least none that could be tied to his murder.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘That’s what you’re paying me those big bucks for,’ I said. ‘Let me guess. Because of his profession it was written off as a sex attack. After all, there was plenty of evidence of sexual abuse to back that up. The police went through the motions but they didn’t try too hard. They had a body and they had a story that made sense. There was nobody who missed Brenner enough to push for the killer to be found. If there was he wouldn’t have been turning tricks in King’s Cross. Where was his body dumped?’

‘Barking.’

‘Is that north of the river?’

‘It’s north of the river,’ said Hatcher. ‘I can’t say for sure if this is our guy, but it feels right.’

‘This is our guy, Hatcher. The timing works, and the geography works. What else have you got?’

‘Who says I’ve got anything else?’

‘You’ve still got that smile in your voice.’

‘Screw you, Winter.’

‘You’re still smiling.’

Hatcher laughed then said, ‘An orbitoclast was stolen from Glenside Museum in Bristol. It happened just before Sarah Flight was kidnapped. The bad news is that the police didn’t take the theft seriously. Nothing else was taken. They thought it was a student prank.’

‘How long would it take to get to Bristol?’

‘This time of day, you’re looking at a couple of hours, an hour and a half if you use the blue lights and put your foot down.’

That meant losing a total of five hours, and four hours of that would be spent in a car. We’d be lucky to get back by midnight. There were better things to do with our time. ‘I’m going to need a helicopter,’ I said.

‘And I need a McLaren F1.’

‘I’m serious, Hatcher.’

‘I can’t get you a helicopter, Winter.’

‘I only need to borrow it for a couple of hours. I promise I’ll give it back. Cross my heart et cetera, et cetera.’

‘I can’t get you a helicopter.’

‘Of course you can. You’re the boss. You’re the next-best thing we’ve got to God, remember. You can do whatever you want.’

‘For the third and final time, Winter, I can’t get you a helicopter.’

‘The signal’s breaking up. I can’t hear you.’ I ended the call and pushed my cell back into my pocket. ‘We’re going to Bristol,’ I said to Templeton. ‘By helicopter.’

‘Cool.’

54

The roar of the Eurocopter EC145’s engines filled my head. Even with the headphones on they were still deafening. My body was vibrating in time with the beat of the blades, a deep, dull throb that went right through me. The clouds were dark and low, and the helicopter skirted the bottoms of them, bumping and pitching through pockets of turbulence.

The guy at the stick was a working pilot so passenger comfort was way down on his list of priorities. He’d been told to get from A to B as quickly as possible, and that’s exactly what he was doing. He flew hard and fast, like he was headed into a war zone to pick up the wounded. It was like being on a rollercoaster, only way more fun. We hit another patch of turbulence and Templeton rolled her eyes. Her knuckles were shining white from gripping her safety harness.

We came in slow and low over the hospital, nose down, tail up. The pilot levelled out and we hovered suspended in the air for a couple of seconds, then landed gently on the grass. The engines whined down to nothing and the blades slowed to a stop, but it still took a moment to register that what I was now hearing was silence. Bristol was a hundred miles from London as the crow flies. From takeoff to touchdown the journey had taken forty-five minutes, half the time it would have taken in a fast car in good traffic with the blue lights flashing.

Glenside Hospital had started life as a lunatic asylum. During the war it was used as a military hospital, and these days it was part of the University of the West of England. The old asylum buildings could still be seen interspersed amongst the newer buildings. Glimpses of the Gothic, shadows of the manic and the mad.

The museum was housed in the church. It was past closing time, but Hatcher had got someone to call ahead to say we were coming. Templeton knocked on the heavy oak door. It was dark and cold, and I wanted to be in California more than ever. I stamped my feet to get my circulation going, flapped my arms against my jacket in a vain attempt to find some warmth. Templeton didn’t notice the cold, or, if she did, she wasn’t letting it show.

A key rattled in the lock and the door swung open. Elizabeth Dryden introduced herself and waved us inside. Dryden was well past retirement age, seventy plus, maybe even eighty. She was thin and birdlike and moved in slow motion like she was suffering from arthritis. Her white hair was tied up in a severe bun and she wore a tweed suit. A pair of spectacles hung from the chain around her neck and she spoke with a plummy BBC accent that was straight out of the fifties.