The incident room purred around her.
‘Drugs squad are sending someone over, guv.’ Tibbsy had his hand over his phone to talk to Moast. Maps were being unfurled and Blu-Tacked to the wall, red pins and highlighters used to mark known drug dealers located in and around the E14 area.
‘Sir.’ A bald plain-clothes policeman with glasses and a tie that came up short of his waistband was stood with Moast in front of the maps. ‘The Bow Boys are known to operate in this vicinity. Blackbird Road borders onto the area belonging to the Lewisham Snake Gang who import and distribute drugs. We could be looking at a turf war. Your first vic was in banking, right?’
‘Yes, manager of a retail bank in Canary Wharf,’ Moast said.
‘He could have been a money launderer, or perhaps someone who said no to laundering,’ the bald man said.
Freddie shook her head. They were looking in the wrong place. Nasreen perched on the edge of the table in front of the incident board, studying the crime scene photos: dotted with yellow markers to denote removed evidence. ‘Nas,’ Freddie edged up to her.
‘I’m busy.’ Nasreen’s gaze flicked from the photos to a file in her hand.
‘Nas, listen.’ Freddie glanced over her shoulder at Moast and the bald guy who were drawing dotted lines onto one of the maps. She felt her elbow bump Nas’s arm.
‘Careful.’ Nas held tighter to her papers.
We used to hold hands and spin each other round till we fell over laughing by the swings on the common, and now you freak out if I accidentally touch you? Freddie swallowed her anger: this was more important. ‘This is urgent.’
‘Speak to DCI Moast if you have a problem, but wait until the investigation’s finished. We’re all busy on this at the moment.’ Nas spoke in the voice she used to disparage her younger sisters with.
You know all too well he won’t listen to me. Freddie scanned the file in Nas’s hand, catching the words Pathology Report. ‘What’s that? What are you looking at?’
Nasreen closed the file. ‘If you must know, I was looking to see if the vic had any tattoos.’
‘That would link him to the gangs?’
Nasreen raised her eyebrows and turned to look at her. ‘Yes, actually.’
‘There aren’t any are there?’ Freddie spoke quietly so Moast couldn’t hear her.
‘No, but that doesn’t mean anything for sure.’
‘Nas, it’s like the Ecover and the Greenpeace sticker: you and I notice stuff,’ she said. ‘Remember that time we both clocked Richard Jenkins nicked those sweets from the newsagent?’ Freddie had been in favour of forcing Richard to share his loot, but Nas, ever the goody two shoes, even at ten, had forced them all to return it.
The inkling of a smile appeared on Nasreen’s lips, before she spoke: her voice cold and dismissive. ‘That was years ago. It’s hardly relevant. I’ve had specialised training now to spot discrepancies, I look at things differently. There are procedures to follow.’
‘Will you shut up for one minute about training and procedure and listen to your gut. I know you still see this stuff. It’s the Sherbet Dib Dabs all over again. I know you still see people for what they are.’ Freddie glanced at Moast. Nas’s face was colouring, her chin jutted out, she was losing her.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Nas said.
‘It’s not drugs, Nas. And I don’t think this Meow post is to do with gangs. You know that, you know it doesn’t feel right. That’s why you’re trying to prove it with tattoos and shit,’ she stabbed at the file.
‘It’s standard practice to methodically work through all known leads.’
Freddie felt panic mix with her anger. ‘It’s about cats.’
‘Cats?’ Nasreen’s chin dropped and a loose strand of hair fell over her face.
‘Meow you doing? It’s about cats. First a troll and now a cat lover – it’s like all those mad cat people on the Internet: videos, memes.’ Freddie held her phone out to show her. ‘It’s an Internet stereotype: first he went after a troll and now he is going after a cat lover. Sophie is a cat lover. Or maybe Sophie is the cat.’
‘You aren’t making any sense. These messages are clearly ambiguous. Besides, it’s just talk online.’ Nas tucked the loose strand of hair back behind her ear and opened her file again.
She used to be able to persuade Nas to do loads of things – jump into the river that ran behind her house, lick a snail for a bet, wear her school blazer backwards in the playground. She remembered the screams of laughter, the snorts of lemonade coming out their noses, the hands gripped tightly together, but once you lost her, once Nas decided she didn’t want to be part of whatever it was, you couldn’t budge her. Freddie saw that stubbornness again now. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’
‘Listen to what,’ Moast said. The bald guy was gone. Moast and Tibbsy stood directly behind her.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Nasreen stood from the table.
‘Nothing? You clearly doubt this is gang-related,’ Freddie snapped.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Nasreen said.
‘Then why are you looking for tattoos?’ Freddie gripped her phone. Why wouldn’t they listen to her?
‘It’s called police work, Venton.’ Moast looked tired. ‘Something you wouldn’t understand.’
Someone’s…Sophie’s life was in danger. She had to make them realise. ‘I don’t think this tweet is about gangs or drugs.’
Moast snorted. Tibbsy closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘And where’s your evidence?’ Moast said.
‘On Twitter! Look, they also think it’s about a cat. It could be Internet stereotypes: a troll and now a cat lady?’
‘Ha! Great, now I don’t just have to deal with one amateur detective, I have to put up with a whole Internet of them! Enough! You’ve wasted enough time, Venton. I’ve given you those email printouts: take them home and get out the way of my investigation.’
Freddie planted both feet firmly on the ground, facing him. ‘The Superintendent hired me for social media advice – I would listen if I were you.’
Moast leant in so close she could smell the stale coffee on his breath. ‘Don’t kid yourself, darling, he only wants you on board because of that stunt you pulled with The Post.’
‘What?’ Freddie said.
‘It’s like you say: you’re one of them. Those people. It’s all a distraction, innit?’ Moast said. ‘We shove you out there in front of the cameras and reassure the masses, the keyboard warriors, that we’re taking the Twitter angle seriously. Keep all that nonsense at bay while we do the real police work. You’re a jumped-up media stooge. Nothing more.’
Freddie stood with her mouth open. Moast turned back to Tibbsy and took a folder from his hands. Tibbsy gave her a shrug as if to say ‘tough break’. She looked at Nas who was intently studying the ground next to her shoe. Why the hell hadn’t she spoken up? ‘I…’
‘Out!’ Moast flicked his hand toward the door. ‘I don’t want to hear another word. Leave the police work to those of us who know what we’re doing.’
Her cheeks burning, Freddie retrieved her bag from under a desk, where two uniformed coppers were going through bank statements.
‘Hey, watch it, love, if you want to cop a feel you just have to ask!’ A red puffy face grinned at her. The one next to him, with small rat features and big lips, laughed. She pulled at the bag. Tears pricked her eyes. She had to get out of here. Tugging, the bag came free.
‘Meoooow!’ someone mimicked a cat. More laughter.
Freddie swallowed, grabbed the box files of emails from the desk by Moast, and held her head up. She made it to the empty corridor before the tears fell. Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, she heard Moast as the door closed behind her. ‘Quit it with the animal noises, PC Stringer, this is a police station, not a zoo!’
How could Nas not have stuck up for her? She let that tosser speak to her like that. Freddie took a steadying breath: she didn’t know Nasreen at all anymore. There was nothing she recognised. The fact
they’d both noticed the Ecover products was coincidence. They didn’t think the same way. They didn’t silently communicate like when they were kids. Maybe they never had. This Nasreen was a stranger. Freddie wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
Apollyon’s tweet, the clue, whatever it was, was too ambiguous. Maybe Moast was right: it was about gangs and drugs. What did she know? She hadn’t had any of their precious training. She was just a wannabe journalist who’d found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Freddie admonished herself for using tired clichés. She was just knackered. She was as smart as any of them. She thought of the juvenile, mewing PCs: smarter than a lot of them. And she knew she could hold her own with Nas. Nasreen Cudmore may be great at swotting up, but it was always Freddie who’d had the quick-fire quips. Who could get a reaction from people: good or bad. She could tie verbal rings round this lot. More clichés. Arrrgh. Freddie clenched her fists and squashed the box files into her chest. This whole experience was warping her mind. Despite her pathetic attempts at self-reassurance that the police knew what they were doing, doubt gnawed at her. Freddie couldn’t help but ask questions. To challenge. It was her job. And this wasn’t just a pitch that may or may not get commissioned. What if the police were wrong?
‘Er, Ms Venton?’
Freddie wiped under her eyes and turned to Jamie who was stood behind her, his pale eyes concerned, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘DCI Moast said I had to escort you home.’ Jamie looked at the floor.
‘Did he now?’ He really didn’t want her anywhere near them. Was this Nas’s idea?
‘Just to make sure you get home safe, and like,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I’m sure. Come on then, let’s get this over with.’ Freddie shifted the weight of the box files and pulled her bag over her shoulder. It’d be better than getting the Tube.
‘The car’s out the back.’ Jamie extended one of his skinny arms and fell in alongside her as they walked through the echoing white hallway, his hands clasped behind his back.
Freddie’s ears pricked each time they passed a blue-painted door. Were they looking into Apollyon in there? Had anyone drawn the same conclusions as her? Was anybody fighting to stop it?
‘You’ve known Sergeant Cudmore a long time then?’ Jamie asked.
Freddie kept her head cocked toward the doors, straining to hear as they passed. ‘Yeah, haven’t seen her for a while though. Drifted apart.’ She won’t even look at me now. She swallowed.
‘How’d you meet?’
‘School. Usual, you know. Nas was real quiet as a kid, she needed someone who’d stick up for her.’ Freddie thought of fat Ryan Crouch pulling Nas’s red and white polka dot rucksack from her chair and waving it above his head like a trophy. The other kids were whooping and laughing as he jumped from desk to desk out of her reach. It was funny at first, but then she’d seen how upset Nasreen was getting. As Ryan cantered toward her, she’d jumped up onto her desk and blocked his path. She didn’t remember hitting Ryan, but she did remember him concertinaing onto the chairs below. Back to the headmaster’s office that overlooked the leafy road the school was on. Looking back on it, Ryan probably fancied Nasreen: hair pulling, etc. Basic school psychology 101.
Freddie looked up at Jamie. He was staring off into the distance, a soppy smile on his face. ‘You got a soft spot for Nasreen then, Jamie?’ Another one. Just like at school.
‘Oh no,’ Jamie’s cheeks flamed red and he dipped his chin as if he wanted to curl into his chest. ‘I’d never…I mean, not that she isn’t very attractive…I…’
Freddie laughed despite herself. Typical. ‘It’s all right, mate, I won’t tell anyone.’
He looked grateful.
Nasreen had a way of appealing to people that Freddie had always lacked. Her mum described her as a ‘gentle soul’. Freddie wondered what her churchgoing mum, with her knitting, charity fundraisers and her belief that everyone is good at heart, would make of this new tougher, cold Nasreen. Freddie wasn’t the only one who stood up to the Ryans of this world now. Jamie pushed open the opaque glass door into the car park. The ivory sun did nothing to heat the cold, crisp air. A sheet of newspaper blew across the potholed ground, dodging the puddles and wrapping itself around the wheels of an unmarked car. Jamie was still burbling away as they walked toward a squad car: ‘I learned round the lanes of Brighton. If you can drive there, you can drive anywhere.’
‘Hmmm,’ she nodded. Podgy Ryan and his ilk were no match for the young Nasreen and her, but they were no longer children. Now the bullies were bigger – she thought of an innocent faceless woman called Sophie – and the stakes were much higher.
Chapter 18
EOT – End Of Thread
12:46
Monday 2 November
1 FOLLOWING 69,987 FOLLOWERS
Freddie slammed into her flat and flung her bag and the box files onto her bed. She wanted to help. Wrenching her phone from her pocket, she tapped onto Twitter. Maybe someone had worked out who Sophie was and warned her?
BuzzFeed were running an article: 23 Reasons You Might Be The Next #Murder Victim. Last week she might have read the piece and laughed at the absurd suggestion. Heck, she might even have written it: a wry take on the news. But clickbait now carried a much darker meaning for Freddie. Things didn’t work out well for bait. She’d seen and smelt a dead body. A metallic taste pricked across her tongue and she swallowed. She didn’t want anyone else to die. What if the intended victim was reading the BuzzFeed piece, unaware this was no joke? Freddie tapped it open:
23 Reasons You Might Be the Next #Murder Victim:
1. Your name is Sophie.
A gif of one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, all stretched perma-tanned skin and industrial hair, repeatedly screamed, Edvard Munch style. Her plastic surgery features comically grotesque. Freddie had seen this episode on YouTube – wasn’t she wailing because one of the other women was wearing polyester? Or was it reacting to a broken nail? What did it matter anyway? All this was trivial. Over in America the reality star was safe from the murderer. Probably. Surely this wouldn’t go international? A world wide web of danger. A jet-set murderer using up their air miles. How many roads were called Baker Street in the world? How many people were called Sophie? It was impossible. They needed more. She read on:
2. You have a Twitter account.
(Gif of Beyoncé, hair blowing in wind machine, hand on chest singing ‘me!’)
3. You post cat videos.
(Gif of startled cat falling off a sofa).
She knew it: meow you doing? She wasn’t the only one who thought this might be about cat obsessives. BuzzFeed agreed with her! But why was Apollyon doing this? Why would someone want to kill Internet stereotypes? It didn’t make sense. Was it a twisted form of terrorism? No. Some group would have claimed it if that was the case. Freddie thought of Apollyon’s growing number of followers – there were over 69,000 now – would someone do all this for fame? She shuddered at the thought. She opened Google to search ‘online killers’. If the person behind the Apollyon account had killed Mardling, photographed it and posted it online, was he the first person to announce a crime in this way?
The first search result was a Wikipedia article on Internet Homicide, which the article described as referring to ‘a killing in which victim and perpetrator met online, in some cases having known each other previously only through the Internet’. As they didn’t know who Apollyon was, they didn’t know if he’d met Mardling online, though if Mardling was selected for being a troll, then he was sourced online, Freddie reasoned. She read on: ‘Also Internet Killer is an appellation found in media reports for a person who broadcasts the crime of murder online or who murders a victim met through the Internet.’ Again, assuming Apollyon was responsible for Mardling’s murder then he was definitely an Internet Killer. She scrolled and clicked through examples of Internet Homicides: the cannibal who advertised for a victim online be
fore fricasseeing and eating him; several militant extremist groups who’d planned murders in encrypted chat rooms; a guy who sent a pipe bomb through the post to a Craigslist con artist. Nothing suggested there’d ever been an Internet serial killer before. Freddie wasn’t surprised. That was the kind of thing you’d notice: a killer posting photos of murder victims, a killer posting threats and clues to who his next victim would be. That was what everyone was noticing now. Apollyon was sick.
She closed the article and continued to scroll through her timeline. Outraged tweeters were circulating a link to a Family Paper online op-ed piece: Is the Troll Hunter a Working Mother? Good old Sandra, thought Freddie of her Typical Student column editor, this had all the hallmarks of her usual style: incendiary statements wrapped in the cloak of moral concern. She skim-read the article, which was liberally sprinkled with stock images of exasperated women in 90s suits holding a baby in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. The first commenter on the story had written, in terrible English:
woudn’t Be surprised if the Hashtag Murderer was a Feminazi!!!!
The comment had been liked 567 times. Freddie had to write her own Family Paper column in a few days. How was she going to concentrate on writing when she should be trying to prevent a murder? How could she write a deliberately provocative piece about binge drinking or some other student stereotype at a time like this? Freddie wondered if she’d ever stop thinking about Mardling’s dead body. Then, like all good pitches, an idea crystallised in her mind. Swiping between screens, she scrolled through recents on her phone and pressed dial. Neil answered.
Freddie could hear the whir of the newsroom in the background. It sounded alien. She’d forgotten life was still normal for other people. ‘Neil, it’s Freddie. I’ve got a story for you.’ Why I’m Convinced the Hashtag Murderer Will Kill Again. First-person. Insider info. The personal story behind the murder investigation. One reporter’s battle to save a life. She could get her warning direct to the public: Called Sophie? Own a cat? Then you could be in danger. They’d bite. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing while Moast and the others were off chasing drug barons. If she hurried, they’d make the evening editions.
Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel Page 14
