How you feline @SophieCat111?
‘He followed her. Her account. Almost immediately after we received the tip-off about the body,’ she said. Sophie Phillips’ Twitter account was littered with cat gifs, videos of cats, even her own profile picture was a cat on – presumably – her lap. Freddie tried not to think of those legs. The pale white feet with red-painted toenails on the sofa. What did those legs look like now?
‘Apollyon was following only Alun Mardling’s account and now Sophie Phillips’ account,’ said Nasreen.
‘Surely Twitter must shut it down now? Apollyon. No one can condone this,’ Freddie said.
‘At this moment in time, it’s the only solid link we have between Alun Mardling and Sophie Phillips,’ Tibbsy said.
‘Have there been any more photos posted? Of the victim’s body or the scene?’ Moast slid his pad and pen into his back pocket.
‘Not yet, sir,’ Nasreen said.
Not yet, Freddie thought.
‘Venton, make yourself useful: find out what you can about this Sophie Phillips online,’ Moast said. ‘How long has she been using Twitter for? Has she ever interacted with Mardling? Are there any patterns to her online behaviour? You got that?’
She nodded. Anything to help.
‘How long before you can build me a basic picture of her online habits?’ Moast grabbed his body warmer from the back of his chair.
‘Erm,’ Freddie stuttered. ‘I can see how long she’s been on Twitter for, see if she’s on Facebook, stuff like that, and, er, have a basic overview in ten to fifteen minutes.’
‘Good. You can do it on the way.’ Moast slipped his body warmer on. ‘Right. Let’s take a look then. Dorant, keep me updated. I want to know as soon as forensics are done. Tibbsy, Cudmore, Venton, Thomas: road trip.’ Moast and the team filed out. Freddie, gripping her phone, followed.
Freddie sat in the back of the unmarked police car, squashed against the window as they drove along the North Circular. The promised bright winter sun of this morning had failed to materialise. Heavy grey clouds closed in, and Freddie watched as lights blinked on in the windows of tower blocks, houses, offices, like thousands of tweet alerts flickering on a phone. Then they gave way to the surrounding fields of the motorway. They were hurtling toward Sophie Phillips. Or what was left of her. Her phone rested on her lap.
Nasreen was in the middle, Tibbsy the other side of her – his knees folded up toward his chest to fit his long legs in. Moast was in the front passenger seat, talking on his phone intermittently as updates came through from the station. Freddie could see Jamie’s sandy hair bordering the headrest. His eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror – snatching glances at Nasreen, who had her eyes closed from motion sickness. She shouldn’t really ride in the back, Freddie thought. She remembered the time her mum had had to pull over on the way to her ninth birthday party at Chessington World of Adventures so Nas could be sick at the side of the road. She could hear Nas rhythmically breathing: fighting it. Inhale, one, two, three, exhale, one, two, three. It was making Freddie feel sleepy. She looked at her phone, her 3G reception was patchy. News of Apollyon following Sophie on Twitter had travelled quickly. Someone must have leaked it to the press, because ‘breaking news’ of ‘unconfirmed’ reports of a woman called Sophie Phillips being found dead in Leighton Buzzard were circulating. Freddie was relieved she hadn’t stopped to use the bathroom on the way out. She hadn’t once been alone. There was no way they could think this one was on her.
‘What can you tell me, Venton?’ Moast didn’t turn round to face her.
‘Sophie Phillips, or @SophieCat111 as she’s known on Twitter, has had an account for a few months,’ Freddie’s mouth was dry. ‘It was activated in June. She doesn’t post much. Cat gifs. Cat memes. A few photos of what I guess could be her tabby cat. She posts about once a month.’
‘Any photos of the suspected victim?’ asked Moast.
‘No, no selfies. She hasn’t liked or retweeted any other Twitter users, and there’s no visible interaction between her and Mardling. Or with Apollyon,’ Freddie tried to stay clinical. Sophie must be an observer on Twitter, mostly watching others. She followed a few cat-themed tweeters, Stephen Fry and the BBC news. Only 19 people followed her, most were spambots, and of course Apollyon. ‘There are loads of Sophie Phillips coming up on Facebook, but without a photo I can’t really tell if any are her. It’s the same with Instagram. I’ve searched for blogs by Sophie Phillips, using cats and Leighton Buzzard in the search, but nothing’s cropped up.’ Freddie sighed. ‘I’m not sure that’s much help.’ Once she knew what Sophie Phillips looked like she might be able to get somewhere.
‘Least the traffic’s not bad.’ Jamie sounded like he was trying to cheer everyone up. ‘The motorway can be a nightmare. We’ve all been there, right? Stuck at the wrong moment. My gran used to say it was sod’s law. When I joined up she called me the law’s sod. As a joke, like,’ he laughed. ‘She was so proud when I told her I was working with the best in the force.’
‘Can’t you get there any quicker, Thomas?’ Moast interrupted.
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll try the back route,’ Jamie squeaked. The car lurched to the left as they abruptly changed lane. Nas steadied herself with her hand against Freddie’s arm. Instinctively Freddie placed her hand on hers to comfort her.
Moast, almost to himself, said, ‘Everyone makes mistakes. Sooner or later he’ll trip up. And then we’ll get him.’
Freddie wasn’t convinced. With no further tweets from @Apollyon they had nothing. She looked at Nasreen: inhale one, two, three. They may as well all have their eyes closed, they were as good as blind.
Off the motorway, over roundabouts, the roads led to houses. Estates of red 1960s and 1970s squat brick homes. Indiscriminate. Ugly. Handkerchiefs of grass etched between them. It reminded Freddie of her childhood home: three-bed, link attached, her room over the driveway. Before they’d had to move to somewhere more remote, her mum tired of facing the constant snipes from the neighbours about Dad’s drinking. About what had happened at Pendrick High. Did these houses remind Nas of then too? She often dreamt she was back there, desperately late for exams she’d inexplicably not studied for. In reality, their old house had been sold to a man and his mother. She’d heard the man had grown so obese that when he had a heart attack in bed, they had to crane him out the top window. She’d written an op-ed piece about it. £70: thank you.
The car slowed, pulling into a concrete bay alongside some anaemic yellow-bricked 1970s flats. White wooden slat fronts made a sad attempt at what once must have been thought of as Scandinavian. Or cheap. Nas started, as if she’d been asleep, pulling her hand away from Freddie. Freddie swallowed; she would have liked to have held on for this bit. A clutch of officers in yellow high-vis jackets, their breath coming out like slow smoke as the evening set in, signalled they’d arrived. Jamie cut the engine. Moast and Tibbsy opened their doors. Freddie stepped out, pulling her duffel coat tight around her. She took in the ‘no ball games’ sign screwed to the wall. A group of kids in hoodies loitered on the corner, a volley of shouts and laughter erupting from them.
‘Clear off or I’ll have you arrested!’ Moast shouted in their direction. Strutting, marking his territory, Freddie thought.
‘Bit nippy isn’t it? No clouds. Nothing to insulate us. You cold?’ Jamie asked, his own nose pink from the chill air.
‘Bit.’
‘Might be shock. Took me ages to get used to…well, this.’ He pointed at the police incident tape. ‘I’ve got a fleece in the car if you want it?’
She nodded gratefully. Shock already? She hadn’t seen the body yet. Yet. She thought about Gray’s assurances. Looking up at the darkening sky, the empty space, where the towers and constant light of London hung, stretched on forever here. Jubilee station felt a long way away. The car boot slammed. Jamie walked toward her, his skinny frame barely filling his uniform, a dark black fleece in his hand. ‘Here,’ he held it out. ‘Want me to see i
f I can rustle up a cup of tea? Perhaps the guv’ll let me do a coffee run or something? We passed a petrol station not too far back. They might have a machine. Might make you feel a bit better?’
‘Thanks, mate. But don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’ Freddie slipped her duffel off, holding it between her knees, pulling the jumper on, holding the ends of the soft fabric between her fingers and palm as she pulled her coat back over the top. Her arms felt restricted, but she felt warmer; a barrier had been erected between her and the night. ‘Cheers though, Jamie.’ He gave her one of his watery smiles and looked at the ground while he scuffed a stone with his shoe.
Nas and Moast were talking to some men she assumed were local cops, as they pulled on the same forensic suits Freddie had worn that first day at Alun Mardling’s house. She felt sick at the memory. She stepped closer to listen to their conversation.
‘Lived alone. Went to work. Came home. Fifteen minutes on the bus. Worked in the finance department at the local council. Kept herself to herself. Not one for socialising. Moved to the area a couple of years ago. No apparent family. No real friends,’ one of them said.
A loner, then. Like Mardling. Was the Hashtag Murderer a loner too? Picking off his kind to – what? To make himself feel better? Did Mardling and Sophie represent something about himself that the Hashtag Murderer needed to snub out? Or did he get a kick from it? Freddie’s mind fizzed with awful possibilities, but nothing seemed to click into place. She looked up at the blank face of the flats. Poor Sophie. She wondered if she was lonely. Perhaps there was a wealth of friends away from work her colleagues didn’t know about. It made it easier to think Sophie’s life had been happy.
‘Venton,’ Moast turned. ‘DCI Bradbury says the crime scene is largely contained to the bedroom.’ He means the body, she thought. ‘Are you up to looking at the rest of the flat?’
She nodded. Either Moast had taken Superintendent Gray’s order on board, or he was less cocky about just how much this was, or wasn’t, to do with the Internet.
‘You sure you’re up to this?’ Nas handed her a jumpsuit. Freddie struggled to pull it over her layers. The smell of the plastic transported her back to Mardling’s bedroom. To the sight of his mangled body. Nas’s eyes were straight ahead. This wasn’t friendly concern, thought Freddie: this was business. She nodded, pulled her hood up, positioned the face mask Nas had given her over her nose and mouth and followed Nas toward the flats. Nas lifted the police incident tape with her gloved hands for Freddie to pass under.
‘What was it like the first time you saw a body?’ This’d make a good feature, she thought. Then reminded herself she was banned from writing. For now. It was comforting to think of a time after this. Of things being normal again. Perhaps she could get a book out of it? A Civilian In The Line Of Fire. Civilians: jeez, now she was thinking like them.
‘It wasn’t on the job. It was before that,’ Nas said. ‘Jogging at university. There was a tramp in the bushes. Don’t quote me on that,’ she added coldly.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Freddie was stung. ‘Not without your permission, anyway.’
Nas nodded to the uniformed PC on the door, his face enfolded in a black scarf to keep the cold out. The white PVC door was heavy. Inside, the hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and disinfectant. Council accommodation.
‘I heard you went to York uni,’ said Freddie. ‘I was at Loughborough. Lots of sports nuts, but it gave me a break from dad’s antics, you know?’
‘It’s the next floor up.’ Nas headed to the stairs.
Freddie bunched her fists into her sleeves. She could see the white powder used to dust for fingerprints along the painted banister. ‘Did you know he was dead – the tramp in the bushes?’ Freddie asked.
‘Yes.’ Nasreen was a step ahead of her.
‘How?’ Freddie’s plastic shoe covers suctioned to the sticky floor.
‘You just know.’
Freddie felt a flash of irritation. Was she patronising her?
A policeman with clipped red hair, his high-vis vest clashing with the green front door he was guarding, held it open for them. ‘Ma’am,’ he nodded at Nasreen.
Freddie soon forgot her anger at him ignoring her when she stepped into the flat. She’d let Nasreen lead. She tried to prepare for the smell this time. But it wasn’t meaty like before. It was sickly, syrupy: vanilla. ‘It’s cold,’ Freddie said.
‘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.
Chapter 22
IRL – In Real Life
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.’
Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel Page 17
