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‘The windows?’ said Nas to the policeman holding the door behind them.

‘They were all open when we got here, ma’am,’ he said.

Nasreen nodded.
What did that mean?

‘It’s colder in here than it is on the staircase.’ Freddie shivered. The saccharine smell wafted around them. She tried to breathe through her mouth only. They stood in a short hallway, with a mottled dark grey carpet and a coarse doormat. Silver square markers had been left by the forensics team. Freddie tried to remember if she’d seen them at Mardling’s house, but this just reminded her of his blood dripping from his body.

To the left was a bathroom. Window open. A handheld chrome shower tap attachment and a net sponge looped over the taps. Ahead looked like the lounge. She followed Nasreen into it. There was a small kitchen to the left, a blue and white striped mug on the draining board – a sad reminder of domesticity. Another open window. The grey-carpeted living room contained a small table and chairs, pushed against the radiator, a couple of high-backed chairs in front of a small television. A bowl of fruit going mouldy on the side. Brown curtains twitched in front of another open window. She thought of the bright red toenails. ‘How old is Sophie? Was Sophie.’

‘Twenty-seven.’ Nas took in the brown, carved, varnish-coated furniture.

Only four years older than me
, thought Freddie. ‘Funny stuff for a twenty-something. Old-fashioned.’ Perhaps it came with the flat? No photos or pictures hung on the wall. Like Mardling’s room. As if she’d only moved in the week before. Or wasn’t planning on staying long. Least she had a whole flat, Freddie thought of her own lounge bedroom. Then felt guilty.

Moast was standing in the doorway. ‘Body’s in here, Cudmore.’ Freddie’s hood clung to her forehead. Nas left the lounge.

‘It isn’t that bad, this one.’ Moast’s top button of his white shirt was undone and his blue tie loosened under his forensic suit. A look of what – resignation? – on his square face. His forehead puckered. ‘The body, I mean. Nothing like the last. No blood.’

Freddie looked at him, ‘Do you want me to…to look at it?’

‘Well, not
it
as such, but her room. It’s more personal than this.’ He shrugged at the lounge. ‘It’s got her computer in as well.’

Freddie nodded. ‘Do you think it would help?’ She owed it to the dead girl for begrudging her all this space. She deserved justice.

‘You might recognise something from those cat pictures you saw on Twitter. Something that concretely links the @SophieCat111 account with the victim.’ Moast snapped one glove off and adjusted his hood.

The door opened behind them and Tibbsy came in, almost having to duck under the door frame. His protective suit was stretched over his long body, his face half obscured under his mask. He took in the lounge and leant into the kitchen area. ‘Where’s the body, guv?’

‘Bedroom.’ Moast’s hooded eyes held Freddie’s gaze.

Freddie gave herself a pep talk.
God she hated that word: a baloney Americanism she must have picked up from teen films.
She looked round the bare room:
did Sophie watch Mean Girls here?
Phone in hand, talking to the world. She
had
to see the computer. That’s what she was here for. For poor quiet lonely Sophie. ‘Okay,’ she said.

Freddie’s throat felt as if it were corrugated, the very air she was breathing tripping down it. Moast’s plastic back – material pulled tight across the shoulders – disappeared into the bedroom. Tibbsy pulled his mask down and mouthed ‘Okay?’ at her. She nodded. But she didn’t mean it. Inside her own head Freddie was screaming:
Run! Get out! Don’t go in there!
Fighting her growing panic, Freddie followed Moast.
For Sophie.

15:37

Tuesday 3 November

2 FOLLOWING 102,005 FOLLOWERS

The walls of Sophie Phillips’ bedroom were painted lavender. A dressing table, with a mirror and a small wicker basket of cosmetics on it, had a plastic purple stool tucked underneath. Stencilled dark purple butterflies flew round the headboard of the double bed. Resting on top of the lilac duvet, her hands in the lap of her white dress, her blonde hair splayed out on the matching lilac pillow, her delicate pixie face almost smiling, her ginger eyelashes dusting her cheeks, was Sophie Phillips; she looked like she could be sleeping. The white arrow of her chin jutted slightly up, as if a lover had tilted her head to kiss her. Freddie took in the tinge to the girl’s skin, spreading up as if from the duvet, wrapping round her neck, like an amethyst necklace of bruises. Instinctively Freddie put her hand to her own throat.

‘The pathologist says it’s likely she was drugged first. Then strangled. No sign of a struggle,’ Tibbsy was saying. Freddie thought of the mug on the draining board.

‘Is this how she was found?’ Nas crouched next to the bed. Her chocolate eyes peering over her mask at the body.

‘Yes.’ Moast crouched the other side of the bed. The knees of his suit pulling tight. Had he been comfort eating?

‘Very summery dress, for November,’ Nas said. ‘Purple-painted toenails. Matching fingernails. It was obviously a favourite colour. What do you think, Freddie, would you wear a dress like this at this time of year?’ She looked up at her, her face almost absurdly beautiful given the setting.

Freddie swallowed, tried to tear her eyes away from the bruises on Sophie’s neck. Her suit rustled. ‘It’s cold in here, especially with all these windows open, so, no.’ She looked round the room, forcing herself to concentrate. ‘Purple dressing gown on the back of the door. Slipper socks under the bed. Is that a hot-water bottle propped against the wardrobe? It’s cold.’

‘Are you thinking he could have dressed her in it after?’ Moast said, resting a gloved hand on the floor to peer under the bed.

‘Possible. It does feel very ritualistic,’ Nas said.

Freddie shuddered. Closing her eyes, she could already see the body of Sophie Phillips floating there before her.

‘Do we have a time of death, guv?’ Tibbsy was poking the end of his biro into the basket of Sophie’s make-up on the dresser.

‘They’ll confirm after the post-mortem, but the pathologist reckons somewhere in the last 24-48 hours based on rigor,’ Moast said. ‘If it’d been any warmer, she would have started to decompose.’

Freddie felt the floor buckle.
Oh, Sophie.

‘Okay, Venton?’ Moast looked at her, his stance steadfast.

‘Yes. Sorry. It’s just…’

‘Need a minute?’ He stepped toward her, hands by his side.

She wouldn’t pass out.
‘No.’ Freddie concentrated on slowing her breath. If they could all stand there then so could she. She
would
show Moast she really cared. She would help. ‘If it was yesterday morning, I mean if that’s when it happened, then it can’t have been long after the first few tweets. He tweeted Hope is rearranging her name at 10:17am.’

‘Interesting point, that’d rule out a killing inspired by the tweets and the fuss around them, sir?’ Nas said. ‘Unless of course someone knew of a Sophie who happened to live on Baker Street. Bit of a gamble though. She didn’t show up to work. Someone could have come looking for her. They would have had a small window of time, say two or three hours max, until her work called her. And then, if they were worried, they might have come over. The council offices aren’t far from here, one of her mates could’ve popped over on their lunch break. The perpetrator’s been so meticulous with everything else – like the planning at Mardling’s, how they got in the house, the bleach, knowing he’d be awake and online then. Presumably.’ She stood up. ‘It’s the same again here. It feels like planning’s gone into this. Someone that’s this specific isn’t going to want to take any chances, they’d want to get in and out before there was any risk of being discovered.’

‘Okay,’ Moast said. ‘Confirm with the pathology lab when the girl was killed. If we can narrow that time window then we can start to work out just who would have known where and when Sophie would normally have been expected to be. Anything to add, Venton? There’s the computer. You can take a look at what the IT guys find on it when they get it back to the station.’

To the right of Freddie, backed into a corner next to a white Ikea wardrobe, was a small grey metal computer stand. On it rested a cream plastic hulk of a monitor. ‘Christ, I haven’t seen one of these since school. Remember, Nas?’ Computer Sciences in the tech block of Pendrick High, or Computasaurus Studies as they’d called it. The processor column was shunted underneath the desk with barely any room for the user’s legs. Something tugged at Freddie’s mind, but she couldn’t quite get to it. ‘Where’s her phone? She can’t just use this?’

Nasreen walked round the bed. ‘I’ve not seen one. Let me check with the local DCI if they’ve taken it in as evidence.’

Freddie stood aside for her to pass, turning back she tried not to look at the soles of Sophie’s feet, which danced in the corner of her vision. She stood next to Tibbsy at the dressing table. Three neat towers of shiny fifty pence pieces and pound coins were stacked next to the make-up.

‘There’s something behind here, guv.’ Tibbsy crouched and peered round the back of the unit.

‘Where?’ Freddie leant forward.

‘Don’t touch!’ Moast said. ‘Stand back, Venton. I don’t want your DNA turning up in my forensic reports.’

‘I wasn’t going to, I’m not an idiot.’
Bloody hell, he blew hot and cold.
She shivered at her accidental pun. ‘You’ve all got your gloves on,’ she nodded at Tibbsy’s ones. ‘Least you could do is give me some?’

Moast snorted. ‘Fine.’ He fished a spare pair of disposable gloves from his pocket and passed them to her. ‘Tibbsy,’ he said, handing him a pair of plastic tweezers.

She stretched the latex over her cold fingers as Tibbsy stuck the tweezers down the back of the unit and pulled out a photo.

‘Who have we here then?’ A smiling lady with tightly curled grey hair beamed out at them.

‘Turn it over.’ Freddie’s hand hovered near the photo, impatient.

‘I said don’t touch, Venton,’ Moast growled.

‘I’ve got gloves on now, I’m fine!’
Idiot
.

Tibbsy turned the photo over. Written on the back was: Auntie Em, Brighton Pier, 2003.

‘Family,’ said Moast. ‘See if the boys can trace her, Tibbsy.’

‘Yes, guv.’ Tibbsy produced a role of plastic baggies from his back pocket and tore one off, dropping the photo into it.

Someone’s niece. Someone’s loved one. The sobbing in Mardling’s kitchen. The smiling face from the photo. Freddie couldn’t bear to think of it. Of this woman, this girl, being ripped from life. Imagine if someone knocked on the door while her mum was having a cup of tea in front of Coronation Street, before Dad got back from the pub, to tell her Freddie had been killed? Pain tore through her heart. Her vision misted with tears.

‘That’s enough now, Venton. Take a break. Go outside. Wait in the car.’ Moast’s tone was perfunctory.

She nodded, relieved. She was glad Nas was out of the room. Genuine concern would have tipped her over the edge. She sniffed. Walking back through the lounge, past the kitchen, the tiny bathroom. This was someone’s world. A purple-painted inner sanctum for Sophie. The Internet wasn’t fazed by that, it trespassed everywhere. Through wires, through walls, permeating our machines, our fingers, our thoughts.

‘You okay?’ Nas was stood in the doorway of the flat.

‘Yes,’ Freddie croaked. Pleaded with her eyes for Nas not to say anything else.

‘Okay.’ Nas opted to play along.
Or perhaps she just missed it.
She held up a small baggy. ‘Got the phone – it was in her handbag.’

Freddie nodded at the brick of a Nokia. ‘Good.’ For a second she thought Nas might reach out and touch her. She couldn’t cope with that. ‘I’m going to wait in the car.’ Nas nodded. Freddie passed the cop on the door, took the stairs at speed. She pushed the heavy door to the block, it opened like a seal: as if she were being spat out by the building. Taking in the clear night sky, she looked up and away from all this. The stars were bright. It wasn’t until she was halfway to the car that it hit her. That nagging thought that had played round the edges of her mind. She saw it clearly. She ran back, ducking under the tape.

‘Hey, all right there?’ The uniform on the door tried to steady her.

Freddie shook him off, wrenched the door, took the stairs two at a time. ‘Nas! Moast!’ The words screamed out of her. The red-haired cop raised his eyebrows but held the door for her. ‘Nas!’

Moast and Nas appeared at the entrance to the lounge. ‘What’s wrong?’ Worry dripped from Nas’s mouth. Tibbsy appeared in the kitchen doorway.

The words tumbled out: ‘No lead. There’s no modem lead.’

‘Slow down. What?’ Moast said.

‘Shit.’ Nas pulled Sophie’s phone from her pocket.

‘Show me?’ Freddie held out her hand, closed it around the bag, felt the sturdiness of the bulky plastic, looked at the small screen. ‘Analogue. Not a smartphone.’

The colour drained from Moast’s face. He shot into the bedroom, they hurried behind him. Freddie still fighting for her breath. Moast was down on his hands and knees.

‘What are we looking for?’ Tibbsy was behind them.

Freddie dropped down, squinted behind the wardrobe. There wasn’t enough room: it was too close to the wall.

‘Nothing,’ Moast said, still crouching.

Freddie leant against the cool wall, Sophie’s toes at her eye level. ‘There’s no modem. No way this is wireless.’

‘Am I missing something?’ Tibbsy asked.

Nasreen held up the phone.

‘That’s not on the Internet.’ Freddie pointed at it. ‘This isn’t on the Internet.’ She gestured at the ancient PC.

‘So how the hell does she tweet?’ asked Moast. Nasreen turned and walked out of the room. ‘Cudmore?’ Moast called.

‘Hang on, sir, just checking…’

Freddie stood up, taking in the length of Sophie.
As if she were sleeping.

Tibbsy’s steadying hand had her by the shoulder. ‘Okay, I think you need some air.’

She let herself be steered into the lounge. Nasreen appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘There aren’t any. No server. No hub,’ Nasreen said. ‘And there’s something else, sir.’ Freddie was aware of the bulk of Moast behind her, she was gliding, leaving, over the grey carpet, the red-haired cop held the door, Tibbsy at her side. ‘Where’s the cat?’ Nas said.

‘It’s not her then,’ Moast said. ‘This SophieCat111 or whatever it is. Her name, the street name: that’s all circumstantial. Just another distraction. Let’s focus on the victim’s life, the facts, what we do know about her: known associates, work colleagues, did she have a boyfriend?’ As the door to the flat closed behind them, Freddie caught the last of Moast’s words: ‘Until we have proof to the contrary, let’s assume this has nothing to do with this Apollyon character.’

Gasping to get enough air, to stay lucid, Freddie wanted to object. This didn’t feel right. Why would Apollyon follow only Alun Mardling and now @SophieCat111? It had to be the same person. There couldn’t be another Sophie who lived on Baker Street who’d been murdered. There had to be a link. But why would Sophie, Apollyon’s selected online cat-lover stereotype, not have Internet access or a cat at home? Something wasn’t adding up.