The Twisted Web (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series book 4)

by Rebecca Bradley

  Baxter introduced us. Told the expectant crowd he would give a prepared statement and then take a few questions.

  Then he waited for the room to quiet.

  Gradually the noise eased. The flashing of cameras lessened and everyone stilled for what came next.

  Baxter read from his sheet.

  He told them that there had been a murder and identified Sebastian Wade. He expressed his deepest sympathy to the family of Sebastian Wade and I wondered if Nick would be watching or if he would avoid this. I imagined he would be glued to it. Attempting to prise any single piece of information out of it that we may have withheld from him.

  The shutter swish of cameras could be heard through Baxter’s monologue and the flashes were bright in the tightly packed room.

  Baxter went on to say that Wade had been left in Market Square and that the police tape had not been left by Nottinghamshire police but was tape you could buy from a shop or online. He then went on to say that, yes, there had been another murder and at this time we were treating them as separate incidents but it was an evolving situation and we would provide more information as and when we had it. He identified Lacey as her family had been informed and her image was all over the internet. Again, he offered his condolences and asked that both families be given peace at this time as they grieved for the loss of their loved ones.

  He stated that the public could expect to see a high police presence at the site of both scenes and in general to reassure members of the public that their safety was of the utmost importance.

  The inquiry was at a very early stage, he informed the recording crowd, and at this time we were not in a position to discuss any leads that we were following or any possible motive for the attacks.

  Baxter finished by asking the public that no more images be shared online as it perpetuated the crime, it gave the killer what he wanted and hurt those left behind. He also asked that if anyone had any information they should come forward or contact the help line that had been set up.

  He closed.

  The room exploded. More lights, and voices all at the same time. Hands in the air. Microphones pushed ever more forward. You could feel the pressure of the people as they tried to get closer without jumping on the table in front of us.

  ‘Okay, okay, one at a time,’ Baxter bellowed.

  I was lucky. I was here for support. This was his show. I stayed still and watched.

  The room subsided into an awkward hum as the journalists continued to vie for attention.

  Baxter pointed to a woman on the front row. Her dark hair tied away from her face.

  ‘Gillian Reaves, BBC,’ she said.

  I wondered if she was from the local station or if they had sent someone up to cover this.

  Baxter gave a brief nod of his head.

  ‘Sebastian Wade was left out in a crime scene. He was a true-crime blogger. What do you take from that, Detective Inspector Baxter?’ Her notebook was poised on her lap, pen hovering over it. She peered at him, ready to take in every word he said.

  I was so glad this was his event.

  He cleared his throat. I wondered how much he had prepared for this or if he was just winging it. It was a rough one to wing. It was complicated and difficult.

  ‘Obviously I can’t talk about specifics to do with the investigation, Gillian.’ He smiled. His whitened teeth glinted in the darkened room. ‘Of course it’s something we’re aware of and have as a line of inquiry.’

  He pointed to a male further back, dark black hair slicked across a bald pate.

  ‘Glen Davids,’ he mumble, the rest and I didn’t hear it. That or the hum of his colleagues around him drowned him out. ‘There is talk that the killer wants these victims to be found and photographed. What do you make of that?’

  Baxter paused. Steepled his fingers, then spoke. ‘As I said previously, we haven’t linked the two murders, so we can’t say that the killer intends anything. What I can say is that it looks as though he was trying to make a point with Sebastian Wade, definitely. But Lacey wasn’t left out in a public place, so I’m not sure that hypothesis stands up.’

  He was feeling more relaxed and in his stride, I could tell, as he leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Okay, one more question.’ He leaned forward again. ‘At the back I think this time. The gentleman standing in the corner.’

  I peered through the gloom and the lights to see who he was pointing at, it was an older guy I didn’t recognise. He gave his name and paper then the question came. He lifted his chin to be heard better over the heads of his colleagues. ‘There’s a lot of furore online about these murders,’ he started, on the most difficult part of the investigation. ‘Is the public sentiment having any bearing on the investigation at all? And do you think the public sentiment, the outrage, will have any impact on the killer, either singular killer or both?’

  He’d managed to ask two questions, which was more than anyone else. They were good questions. The whole of the room turned and looked at Baxter, including me.

  ‘As this is DI Robbins’ investigation, I will allow her to field this question.’ He in turn looked at me.

  For a minute I was stumped, his words not quite penetrating my mind. Baxter was fobbing his questions off onto me.

  I stared out into the field of faces, saw them all staring back at me, all focused, ready for what was about to come.

  Shit, again.

  I shifted in my seat. Tried to kick-start my brain into gear.

  The online activity. The investigation. The killer’s reaction.

  My thoughts?

  ‘DI Robbins?’ Baxter prompted.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I had this. I would answer. I had nowhere else to go. I looked out to the room. ‘It’s true that there has been a huge interest in these murders, and not just from yourselves, but in today’s world, we do have to be aware of social media and how news is picked up and reported, but as far as social media having an impact on our investigation, we can’t allow that. We will follow the evidence where it takes us. Nothing more, nothing less. As for the killer or killers, I can’t speak for their state of mind or how they will perceive the reaction to their crimes. It’s very possible they knew they would get a reaction when they left Sebastian Wade on the steps of the council building, but what reaction he expected, I can’t comment. I do reiterate what DCI Baxter stated earlier though, and that is to request that anyone using social media should not share any of the images as it is detrimental to the investigation and to the memory of both victims and their families.’

  I had nothing further to say and relaxed my shoulders, realising they had gradually crept up so they were around my ears. I heard Baxter whisper, ‘Good work.’ Easy for him to say when he had shirked the question.

  I looked to the reporter who had asked the questions and he gave a single nod and a slight smile.

  Baxter and I stood to a chorus of, ‘Sir, Sir, Sir,’ as the crowd vied for more time and for more questions. He’d done what he wanted and we were out of the room.

  49

  I pushed some files to the side and made a space for the fresh mug of green tea I had made. I had a heap of paper work to catch up on. It had barely been five minutes and one email cleared from my inbox when Evie knocked on my door and strolled in.

  ‘I’m always glad of a distraction,’ I said, ‘but I’m never going to get to this elusive inbox zero if you come in and sit down, you know.’

  Evie dropped into the chair opposite me, notebook in her hand, so I knew this visit was work related.

  ‘You don’t have chocolate biscuits I see,’ I said.

  ‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten. Want me to go back and get them?’ She was deadpan.

  ‘Whatever you’re holding in your hands must be pretty compelling if you forgot the biscuits, Evie.’ I picked up my tea and sipped.

  ‘Ah, this, you noticed.’ She lifted the notebook and waggled it about in the air.

  ‘It’s not biscuits, of course I noticed.’
She had a habit of fetching biscuits with her if she came to see me – as well as keeping them in a drawer in her own office.

  ‘I might have something of interest for you,’ she said.

  ‘The biscuits gave that away,’ I reminded her. Still aggrieved I didn’t have any with my tea.

  She gave me another smile, opened her notepad and pulled a pen from out of her hair. ‘You know you asked me to look at Sebastian Wade’s true-crime blog?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t take long for the service provider to come back to me when they heard it was a murder investigation. There was a contact form on his website. And the hosting company provided his website email address when we requested it. I got access to his messages.’

  ‘Okay, following so far. But,’ I warned her, ‘if this gets too technical, remember to speak in English.’

  She tapped her pen on the pad. ‘Most of the messages were from people wanting him to look into specific crimes that interested them but that they were too lazy to do it themselves.’ She looked up at me. ‘One even asked him to investigate a live crime because they didn’t trust the police to do a proper job.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I was shocked. Yes, I understood that people didn’t trust us, but to go to a blogger and ask him for help? What kind of person would do that? ‘Was that one of ours?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It was a Met job.’

  ‘They get a bad rap.’ I put my mug back down on the desk.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So, nothing in his messages?’

  ‘As I was saying, there was nothing of interest–’

  ‘I’d say it was pretty interesting that people try to circumvent the police by going to a true-crime blogger,’ I said.

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She screwed up her face at me in a show of absurdity.

  ‘Okay, you were saying,’ I waved my hand for her to continue.

  She inclined her head. ‘There was nothing of interest until recently.’ She had my attention now. She knew she would have and she continued. ‘Someone contacted Sebastian and told him that he was wrong to publish his blogs, that he shouldn’t bring the crime stuff up so publicly.’ She looked up from her notebook. ‘It was a lot more rambly,’ she said.

  ‘It’s okay, I get the gist, carry on.’

  ‘They said that it wasn’t right or fair on the people involved. On the victims and their families for this stuff to be dragged out in the open. He even said it could be unfair on the families of those who had committed the crimes. They have to live with the terrible consequences as much as the victims. In fact, you could class them as victims too, he said in his messages.’

  ‘I don’t entirely disagree,’ I said. ‘It has to be hard to find out your husband or son is a deranged killer. Just look at Mrs Knight from earlier this year. She was a lovely woman who had already been dealt a difficult hand in life and then she had to find that out.’ I picked up my mug again. ‘Do they say anything else?’

  Evie looked down at her pad again. ‘That Sebastian was in the wrong and something bad would happen to him if he continued to cause untold damage to others in this way.’

  I raised my eyebrows. This was a promising lead. ‘Do we have an email address of this person? A name? Any other details?’

  ‘We have an email address and a name.’

  ‘Perfect. I think we have someone of interest. Email me the details please. And email them to Martin and he can get the paperwork completed for SPoC so we can ID them. Thanks, Evie.’ SPoC was the single point of contact team who dealt with the phone and electronic identification work.

  We would be onto this guy very soon.

  I pushed the incident room doors and was met by a wall of sound. The sound of everyone hard at work. A full and busy incident room. I sought out Martin’s desk and made a beeline for him.

  ‘Did you get the email from Evie?’ I asked.

  He looked up. ‘Yep. All sorted. SPoC just came back to me. I’m doing some intel work on the address now.’

  It didn’t take SPoC long to obtain details if the job was urgent. After all, the information was held on a database and all it took was a few keystrokes to access it.

  ‘What do we have so far?’ I asked.

  Martin rummaged around on his desk and found some bits of paper he needed. ‘As you know, he signed off with the name David Cooper, and that’s correct according to who the internet is registered to.’

  ‘Good start. Stupid mistake on his part, to sign off to Sebastian with his real name. Especially as Sebastian was capable of doing his own investigative work.’

  ‘Yeah. You don’t antagonise someone like Sebastian who puts everything out there on the internet and is fascinated by crimes. Harassing him would have been potential fodder for his blog. In fact, I wonder if he was considering writing this up.’

  ‘So we have a potential motive for the first murder.’

  Martin leaned back in his chair and looked at me. ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘If Sebastian had indicated that he was indeed going to write this guy up for harassing him. Do we know if he did mention it to him, or not?’

  Martin turned to his screen, switched to his emails and flicked to the one from Evie. ‘Evie doesn’t say anything about that, but it’s not to say it didn’t happen. We have two good reasons to talk to him now. He’s already angry with Sebastian for posting in the first place and if he was worried about being the subject of his blog, that could have tipped him over the edge.’

  ‘I’ll check with Evie. Okay, what do we have on Mr David Cooper?’

  ‘He lives in Arnold and has no criminal record.’

  ‘It’s a big jump from no record to murder.’

  Martin agreed.

  ‘Though, as we saw previously with Knight, it’s not impossible if there’s a big enough trigger.’

  ‘It’s the scene thing about this that’s pertinent though, isn’t it?’ Martin said.

  ‘It is and this guy fits the bill. Do some more work on him, Martin, and then we’ll make a decision on what we are going to do from there.’

  Two hours later Martin and I were standing on David Cooper’s doorstep. The sky was leaden and the pressure heavy.

  Martin had not been able to find anything else about Cooper other than he had a traffic offence and not a lot else. That and he was a regular complainer. We had records of him on our command and control system because he called in to report his neighbours for too much noise, for their dogs, for their children, for the vehicles and for any behaviour he considered suspicious.

  Martin knocked on his door and we waited for a response.

  ‘Maybe he’s at work?’ Martin said as we stood staring at the closed door.

  I looked at my watch. ‘It’s five-thirty. I would have thought he might have been home by now if he did have employment.

  ‘Hello, can I help you?’ a female voice called from next door.

  ‘We’re looking for Mr Cooper. Have you seen him?’ I asked.

  The woman stepped out of her home, eager to see what this was about, no doubt. Tired looking rabbit slippers flapped on her feet. ‘He should be in. Not sure what he does, but you can usually catch him. Seems to work funny hours, that one. You need to knock harder. He doesn’t like answering the door.’

  She peered at us, squinting through the dark. The street lights casting a dim glow by which she could see us. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ She wanted to know who we were.

  ‘We’re good, thanks,’ Martin answered with one of his lazy charming smiles.

  ‘Okay. Well, if you need anything, you know where I am.’ She waved an arm back to where she had come from.

  ‘That’s really helpful. Thank you.’ Martin waited for her to leave.

  She stood her ground. ‘You need to knock harder for him to hear,’ she prompted again.

  ‘Yes, we get that, thank you for your help. We appreciate it.’ I used my more cold harsh tone now. I knew some people found me cold, but it was more a fact
that I was engrossed in the job than not having feelings. It came in useful at certain times though, and this was one of them.

  ‘Ah, okay then, I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’

  Martin couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘That would be great, Mrs?’

  She warmed up again and took a step closer to him. I glared at him and he shrugged.

  ‘Mrs Kowalski, but you can call me Alek. And you are?’

  ‘Busy,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ She turned away, back to where she had come from. ‘Just keeping an eye out for my neighbours, you understand,’ she threw over her shoulder as she stepped through her door. Then with a click she was gone.

  Martin laughed again.

  ‘Really, did you have to encourage her?’ I asked as I rapped hard on the door in front of us.

  ‘She’s probably lonely,’ he said with a trace of humour still in his voice.

  ‘Or she has a house full of people in there and is just bloody nosey.’

  Martin gave a full-throated laugh just as the door in front of us was yanked open and a tall slim male was standing before us, looking disgusted.

  ‘I don’t want whatever you’re selling,’ he said, a poisonous look on his face.

  I pulled my warrant card out of my pocket, held it in my palm. ‘Mr Cooper?’

  ‘I told you. I’m not interested.’ The door started to close.

  I pushed very gently against the door. We had no grounds for entry, but we did at least need him to know who we were before he sent us away.

  ‘What the hell?’ He spat the words out.

  ‘DI Robbins and DC Thacker.’ I raised my ID so he could see it. ‘We’d like a word with you if that would be okay? Preferably not on your doorstep.’ I looked to next door where the woman had appeared from not a couple of minutes previously.