The Autumn Tree (DI Bliss Book 8)

by Tony J. Forder

  Eighteen

  Having been told the Met contingent would make the journey in no less than two hours, Bliss had made excellent use of the time. He first questioned DC Ansari about EE and the apparent code written on the back of the black business card. She had spoken to three different people on the tech side of the company, each of whom was confident it had nothing to do with them.

  ‘John did have a good thought, though,’ Ansari said. She glanced across at DC Hunt and nodded for him to continue.

  Hunt cleared his throat first. ‘My brother was always showing me these games hidden away inside software. Microsoft Excel was a particular favourite. They were known as Easter eggs. I could be entirely wrong, but EE could stand for Easter egg. I say that because the rest of the letters and numbers on the card could easily relate to a spreadsheet. A1 is the first cell reference in every sheet. And I’m guessing if you type Enter into that cell, the Easter egg pops up in cell DP575.’

  He looked at Bliss expectantly.

  Bliss gave him a blank look in return. ‘John, you had me right up to the last bit. Are you saying DP575 could be one of these cell references? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more than a Y or Z column.’

  Hunt’s face broke out into a smile, clearly happy to be on solid ground. ‘Oh, yes. You can have over sixteen thousand columns, and more than a million rows. Sir, I could be completely wrong, but I’ve seen these Easter eggs in action for myself, and this could be one.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  ‘I have no idea. Usually they’re games, inserted by the developers. But in theory it could be anything. Excel ’97 had a basic flight simulator hidden away inside it.’

  Chandler was shaking her head, not appearing to follow the thread. ‘Hold on a minute,’ she said. ‘You said these Easter egg things were small programs built into the software. How could some code added by a developer – somewhere in America, presumably – possibly have any connection to our case?’

  ‘I was wondering that myself,’ Bliss said.

  Hunt shook his head. ‘Those are official Easter eggs – as you rightly say, built in during the development stage. But as a user you can also create your own Easter eggs using the language of the software itself. They can all be programmed to do certain tasks.’

  ‘So how do we go about finding it?’

  ‘Ah.’ His happy expression fell away. ‘We’d need to find the right sheet in the right file. Perhaps it’s one that has some connection to the escort agency on the card – Dark Desires. An agency which, by the way, we’ve yet to locate. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t even have a website.’

  Bliss blew out his cheeks. It was a bright idea, but one that ultimately left them no closer to discovering additional information. He clapped the DC on the arm. ‘It’s a good thought, John. Possibly inspired. I’m not sure how we tie any of it together, though. Or even if it’s associated with our victim. But we have to assume both cards are important somehow. One was clearly on her person so that she could get hold of me if she was in trouble; that didn’t work out too well for her. But she also has to have kept this other card tucked away for a reason.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay on it?’

  ‘As far as possible, John, yes. You and Gul are both good at running down this sort of thing. But let’s say you’re right about this Easter egg stuff. To find the spreadsheet, I think we first have to find a website for this Dark Desires place.’

  Ansari looked doubtful.

  ‘What is it, Gul?’ Bliss asked. You think otherwise?’

  ‘I can’t know for sure, sir – none of us can at the moment. But if there’s no obvious website to be found – and so far there isn’t – maybe it’s not findable using standard measures. Dark Desires might exist only on the dark web.’ She nodded excitedly. ‘That might be it, sir. And if that’s the case, it could work the exact opposite way to how you thought. It could be that the Easter egg leads to the website, not the other way around.’

  Bliss didn’t know enough about the dark and often lawless realms of the web to feel particularly confident, so he asked Ansari for a quick primer. She explained how sites on the dark web could not be reached using a standard search engine like Google. They were designed and configured specifically to work outside of the domain name system, and without DNS the search engines were unable to find these hidden addresses. If names existed at all, they were usually identifiable as a string of random letters and numbers. Otherwise the sites could be found only if you knew their precise IP address.

  Bliss stopped her there. ‘Bear with me, Gul. Believe it or not, I came into the job around the same time as computers did, but I’m strictly a user and not an enthusiast. I use the tool in front of me for the job in hand, and have no interest otherwise.’

  ‘I get that. I have no interest in koi fish.’ She smiled at him and he returned one. ‘Sir, all you need to understand is that these websites are hidden away. To get to them, you either need to know the exact address or use a specific piece of software. TOR is the most popular, but even that’s not adequate for the deepest, darkest web. For those sites you have to know the address in full, because you can’t search for it.’

  ‘TOR?’ Bliss spread his hands as if completely lost.

  ‘It’s a specially designed browser called The Onion Router that not only helps to conceal your IP address, and therefore your identity while browsing, but also provides access to the lower reaches of the dark web.’

  ‘And you think this Easter egg thing avoids all that and provides direct access to this Dark Desires site. Or, at least, there’s a chance it could do?’

  ‘It’s pure guesswork on my part. But if John is right about the Easter egg, then yes.’

  ‘But educated guesswork?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Bliss nodded, though he still did not fully appreciate the complexities. ‘That’ll do for me. Keep at it, you two. Meanwhile, I think Pen and I will pay the delightful Nicola yet another visit. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to see us again. Good work, Gul. You too, John.’

  His rank allowed him the freedom to ask, instruct, or order a constable, yet doing so with Ansari and Hunt while not being their overall boss felt strange. Two months into his probation, and it was starting to wear him down rather than improve matters. He left the pair to it and went to find Chandler.

  ***

  Bliss and Chandler visited Parkinson for a third time in as many days. To Bliss’s way of thinking, silences spoke volumes, while words were often telling, but for him there was nothing quite like staring into a person’s eyes when you mentioned something unexpected. Eyes never lie; they either say nothing or they tell the truth. Experience told Bliss this, and it had seldom failed him.

  Following their usual exchange of unpleasantries, Parkinson immediately went on the defensive. ‘This is harassment,’ she insisted. ‘Our solicitors will hear about it.’

  Bliss grinned. The accusation was becoming something of a theme. ‘Wind your scrawny neck in, Nicola. We’re here to ask a single question, that’s all.’

  ‘Just the one? You promise? Because I have legitimate business to attend to, and your presence here is starting to fuck me right off.’

  ‘I give you my word,’ Bliss said, hand raised as if swearing on the Bible.

  He took the ensuing silence as tacit agreement, and went straight for the jugular. ‘Tell me about Dark Desires, Nicola.’

  ‘You tell me!’ she snapped at him. ‘I bet you’ve got a few of your own.’

  Parkinson had immediately got to her feet when he and Chandler entered the room, and had remained standing. He stared directly into her eyes, and in them he saw the flicker he’d hoped for. His instincts had been right; if the website was lurking on the dark web, as Ansari had suggested, there was no doubt in his mind that it was owned by the Lewis Drake organisation. Even if Nicola herself had nothing to do with the site or what it offered, she was at the very least aware of its existence.

  ‘The Dark Desires we
bsite, Nicola. What’s your involvement?’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You can do better than that. A woman like you, with your reputation? I’d be surprised if you didn’t own a piece of the action, but even if it’s a rival outfit you must know all about it.’

  ‘And I just told you otherwise. Please don’t call me a liar.’

  Parkinson’s expression had completely altered, and her voice had turned low and threatening. Neither her son nor her daughter were anywhere to be seen on this occasion, but Igor was there and his massive presence seemed to fill the room. Bliss had made himself aware of the man’s position at all times, and he checked again after Parkinson’s attitude hardened. He saw through her as if she were transparent, but he also knew she would not budge. As for Igor, he seemed unmoved by anything he had heard so far.

  ‘Nicola, please don’t take me for a complete fool,’ Bliss said. ‘Maybe you don’t own or run the site – that’s fair enough, though I do think it has something to do with Drake – but I won’t call you a liar if you don’t mug me off. I know you’ve heard of Dark Desires. It’s obvious by your reaction. So why not tell me what you do know? That’s all I’m asking.’

  For the briefest of moments, he thought he might have won her over. But eventually she pointed towards the door. ‘See yourselves out, Detectives. And, fair warning: if you come back again, my associate here might not be so accommodating.’

  ***

  The Met sent two men. Detective Superintendent Cliff Hammersley and Detective Chief Inspector Shaun Attwood both wore navy suits, crisp white shirts and blue ties, though that was where any resemblance between them ended. Hammersley was of mixed race, average height with an upright stance, and Bliss put him somewhere in his fifties. His whiter shade of pale DCI had to stoop when he entered the meeting room, and had the clean-cut, round-cheeked face of a child, making it impossible to estimate his age.

  By the time they arrived at Thorpe Wood, DSI Fletcher had already gathered together Warburton, Bishop, Chandler, and Bliss around the table. Having driven over from Bedford, Glen Ashton sat with them. It gave the home team the advantage in terms of numbers, but it was more than that: these were the investigators currently running the show. It was important to let the Met officers see that for themselves.

  His fleeting visit into the heart of darkness played on Bliss’s mind as the meeting with the Met detectives began following a rapid exchange of greetings and introductions. In front of each person seated around the large table was a lever arch folder of information compiled over the past ninety minutes. It contained details obtained from the Met, as well as those provided by Thorpe Wood and Cambridge.

  It was only when DSI Hammersley pulled out a pair of reading glasses that Bliss remembered his own. He’d been carrying them around for a few weeks, forgetting they were in his jacket pocket. This was not a file he could take away with him and read at his leisure, so he quietly took out his own spectacles and slipped them on.

  ‘Operation Challenge has been running for two months,’ Hammersley began, his own folder still closed. ‘During that time we’ve investigated three murders so similar to your own that we must consider them to have been committed by the same hands. I confess we did not identify the pattern until victim number three, but I think the reasons for that will become apparent. In your pack you should have a full set of notes, photographs, witness accounts, pathology reports, and of course the case file as it stands. There’s also a map identifying the location of each body dump. Any questions before we start looking through this material?’

  Bliss had one. He removed his glasses before speaking. Nobody seemed to notice. ‘Sir, you mentioned the “body dump” with confidence. We’ve been uncertain about this specific element. Lividity patterns clearly tell us our victim was moved after she was killed, but we’ve not been able to rule out the possibility that she was strangled close to where she was found at the chalk pits.’

  Hammersley nodded. ‘DS Bliss, right? Yes, we have that confidence because we know something you do not – something it took us a while to bring into the puzzle. You see, we are reasonably confident that each of our three victims was held for between ten and fourteen days prior to being murdered.’

  The information came as a complete surprise, but Bliss was already seeing how their own case conformed to that pattern. Majidah Rassooli’s landlord had mentioned something about his tenant not being seen for a while. Nicola Parkinson had also confirmed that the young girl had not worked for them in many days.

  ‘That makes sense of some of the information we have,’ he said. ‘I suspect that’s exactly what happened in our case, too.’

  ‘And yet it leaves us with a considerable gap to fill,’ Hammersley continued. ‘We’d established that victims two and three both had to have been taken within twenty-four hours of the previous kill. But there’s a much longer gap between our last victim and your first: a good few weeks. The question is, did he kill in the meantime, and are there other victims’ bodies yet to be discovered?’

  ‘And if so, where?’ Bliss said.

  ‘What do you mean by that, Sergeant Bliss?’ DCI Attwood asked. Bliss was impressed at how easily his boyish face became stern. Narrowing his deep-set eyes gave the man a menacing appearance.

  ‘I mean we shouldn’t automatically assume that what we initially thought of as our first victim is actually our second, third or fourth. If there are other victims, they could be your fourth, fifth or sixth.’

  The two Met officers exchanged glances, and DSI Hammersley took up the conversation. ‘That’s actually something we’ve considered at length. In fact, we’ve thought of little else since our man appeared to go quiet. We were counting the days in the end, because we were getting nowhere finding him. Forensically he’s pretty clean, although we have fibres and soil samples and perhaps even shoeprint casts. Not a single witness, though. That alone tells us how careful he is, how much planning goes into what he does. So, yes, it’s entirely possible that we’ve missed other murders in London.’

  ‘Although it’s highly unlikely,’ Attwood added sharply. ‘Mainly because of the MO; he leaves the victims where they can be found. It’s unlikely that this could have happened again inside the Metropolitan area without us being aware of it. Cliff and I discussed this very point on the drive up, and we think it’s much more likely that he struck elsewhere. Until today you thought your own victim was a one-off, and it’s quite possible that another area thought the exact same thing. We’re having checks run in neighbouring counties first, before spreading the enquiry nationwide.’

  ‘Presumably they will have had about as much luck as we both have in finding evidence that might lead to our killer,’ Superintendent Fletcher said. ‘So while other murders would explain the void between the known victims, they’re unlikely to take our investigation any further.’

  ‘Will any of this pooled knowledge?’ Bishop asked. He looked around the table. ‘I think we can agree a connection has been established. But the Met’s nothing, added to our own nothing, surely still leaves us with nothing.’

  ‘And there’s always the possibility of the gap between victims being explained by something else entirely,’ Chandler said. ‘A short stay in hospital. Being held on remand. Even murderers take holidays. Or he might simply have been lying low.’

  ‘True. But at least we can check into remand prisoners between specific dates, which is something.’

  This elicited nods of agreement. But Bliss was keen to jump in. ‘I think the boss is right. At the moment we still have nothing to work with. However, my personal baseline in such investigations is to find the anomalies. We’re talking four murders that we know of, with the presumption of more. Even if he planned to the nth degree, it’s unlikely he could have executed all those plans to the same fine margins. Perhaps our answer lies somewhere in those minute differences.’

  ‘How about the clothes?’ Chandler said. ‘I’d like to know what the original investigators made
of the clothing that was left with the bodies.’

  Attwood responded to that. ‘At the first crime scene, we found a mixture of clothing belonging to the victim and clothing belonging to a woman or women unknown to us. Subsequently, items we believe to have been worn by previous victims were added to the mix.’

  ‘So the unidentified clothing might belong to a single woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had it been worn? Were you able to tell?’

  The Met DCI nodded. ‘Yes, it had been. And those unidentified items were all approximately the same size, which is why we believe they could have belonged to one woman. It’s all there in your folders. Right down to each individual item and their designations.’

  ‘But what you’re saying is we’re looking at one item from your first victim being left at the second crime scene. Another at the third, together with an item from victim number two.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘So if the unknown clothing did all belong to the same woman, she might well be one of the anomalies DS Bliss mentioned. She may even be the real first victim.’

  ‘That’s a nice idea,’ Hammersley said. ‘We had already considered the possibility of there being a first victim yet to be discovered. However, we’d not thought about it specifically in terms of identifying anomalies. It would be relatively easy to add a further heading to the existing case files.’

  ‘And we are ready and willing to offer you all the help you need,’ Superintendent Fletcher said. ‘DCI Warburton is our SIO on Phoenix, and her team are obviously already deeply involved, so they are primed to go.’

  Hammersley cleared his throat. Cheeks pinched, he leaned forward and said, ‘It’s been decided by those above my pay scale that this is to be your case. You have the most recent victim, while our own trail has grown cold. Plus, we’ve mostly moved on to new investigations and it was felt we’d be better off focussing fully on those. Ostensibly, we’re here to hand over, and of course anything you need to know that you can’t find in these files or on the digital versions being sent to you today, please give us a bell and we’ll gladly provide it for you.’