‘If anyone can find her you can, Sergeant.’ Lorna bit her lip.
Nasreen was taken aback; she’d hardly spoken to the girl before. It must be the Burgone effect: Jack the Lad strikes again. She was simply caught in his reflected glory. ‘We’re a good team.’ She thought of Chips and Saunders’s varying degrees of hostility towards her. Well, they could be. Had to be.
Back in the office, Burgone was at a desk in the corner, typing as if he could force answers from the rattling keyboard. She looked away before anyone caught her staring at him. Saunders was on the phone. DC Green had settled at a desk to the right and was shifting through files; she gave Nasreen a weak smile. Nasreen paused by Chips, who was pinning a smiling photo of Lottie to the incident board.
‘Dani, the other flatmate, confirmed Lottie was wearing this gym kit when she went out this morning.’ He tapped the picture.
Lottie was in a matching set of Aztec-patterned pink and purple leggings and bra top, with a coordinating hoodie over the top. On the right breast of the jumper were the initials LB. Nasreen recognised the costly brand as one she lusted after herself, waiting until items went into the sale before she could afford to buy them. ‘Was it a freebie?’
‘Yup. Hence the lass has a photo of it on her site. Handy for our door to door.’
You couldn’t ask for more than a recent photo of a missing person wearing what they’d last been seen in. Lottie documented her whole life online. It wouldn’t take much for someone to work out her routines.
Nasreen kept her voice low; she didn’t want Burgone to hear. ‘Do you think we’re looking at a suicide risk or foul play? The wording of the message – you have twenty-four hours to save the girl’s life – sounds like a threat.’
‘Aye, I wondered that.’ Both of them kept their eyes forward, as if they were in a covert investigation – undercover in their own office. ‘Us all being sent the message, it feels wrong.’
Nasreen girded herself to say the name of the first victim, not to let it carry any other significance. It was a sad coincidence she was Gemma’s younger sister. That’s all. ‘Are we sure the other girl – Chloe Strofton – took her own life?’
The investigating force couldn’t have known a second suicide note would be sent via Snapchat and that a second girl would soon be missing. Nasreen thought about the messages, the public nature of circulating the notes on the app. The infamy that was now spreading online.
‘The coroner declared she did,’ Chips said.
‘I’d like to take a look at the case notes anyway – see if anything jumps out?’ Chips nodded his agreement. Two wasn’t a pattern. They could simply be looking at a copycat suicide, in which case the priority would be to find Lottie before she harmed herself. Would Lottie also copy the method Chloe had used to take her life? She wasn’t looking forward to reading how Chloe had died, but she had to do it. The press was good about keeping details out of the public domain, especially when minors were involved, but if Chloe’s suicide note had ended up on social media, then what other information might also have been leaked?
Saunders hung up and grabbed a ringing phone before the DCI could, his movements strong and swift. ‘Saunders speaking.’ He pulled his pad close to write notes. News. She froze, as if taking another step might break the fragile safety net that protected you before you knew the truth. ‘Yes. I see,’ Saunders was saying. ‘And can you confirm where that was?’ That? A deliberately innocuous word. Her stomach contracted. Please don’t be a body. Burgone was gripping his desk with both hands. Green kept her eyes down.
‘Yes.’ Saunders’s tapping foot betrayed his anxiety. ‘Let me know when the lab have the results. Rush job. Orders from the top: this one’s priority. Any issues and they answer to me.’ His pen vibrated across the page. ‘Yes. Thanks.’ Laying his pen down, he carefully replaced the receiver on the cradle. He turned to face them slowly, resting the tips of his overlong fingers together. It felt like the room was holding its breath. His eyes met Burgone’s gaze. ‘A top matching the description of the one we believe Lottie was wearing when she left her flat this morning has been found on West Grove Lane.’
‘Does it have her initials on it – LB?’ Hope sounded in Burgone’s voice.
Say no.
‘Yes. It looks like it is her hoodie.’ Saunders flexed his fingers, giving them time to absorb the words. Nasreen caught Green’s eye. Her face had grown paler under her freckles. ‘There are also signs of a struggle where the top was found. The SOCOs are on their way to the scene now. We’ll confirm if it’s Lottie’s and see if we can lift any other DNA from it.’
‘A struggle?’ the DCI repeated.
Chips was leaning against the incident board, his thick arms folded over his chest, a troubled look rumpling his fleshy features.
‘There are scuff marks on the ground,’ Saunders said. ‘And the top has been partially torn.’
The words were out before Nasreen could stop them. ‘So she’s been abducted?’ Saunders shot her a look of disgust, and Nasreen didn’t dare look at Burgone.
‘We don’t have enough to assume that yet.’ Chips’s maturity lent his words a much-needed level of reassurance. ‘But we can’t rule it out either. Let’s find out if there’s any cameras on West Grove Lane. See what the door-to-door teams turn up.’
Saunders nodded; Nasreen did too. Having things to do, a structure, helped.
‘Cudmore, look at the other lass’s file: see if you can find any link between the two girls.’ He was authorising their earlier conversation, making it open. Chips’s tone softened to talk to Burgone. ‘Might Lottie know Chloe Strofton, guv?’
Burgone looked startled, as if he’d forgotten they could see him there. ‘Not that I know of. The girl was schooled locally in Hertfordshire. I can’t see how their paths would have crossed. But they could’ve met online?’
Social media had changed the way people socialised: your pool was no longer restricted to people you met in real life. The job had made Nasreen wary: she’d closed the scant accounts she’d had the day she started at the College of Policing. She couldn’t imagine meeting up with someone she’d met online, but she knew plenty of people did. Especially those her age and younger. Perhaps Lottie and Chloe had met?
‘If Lottie’s internet-famous, then we have other motives to consider,’ Saunders said. ‘Let’s check if there was anyone acting odd online, as well as looking for potential links to the Chloe Strofton case. Someone else may have borrowed her Snapchat idea.’
Burgone’s face was pained. Chips rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you get some air, lad? Keep you clear headed, hey?’ More than colleagues who’d worked together for a number of years, they were friends. This hurt Chips as much as it did the DCI. Nasreen turned her attention to the paperwork on her desk to give them privacy, not looking up as Burgone left the room, but feeling his every anguished step. It was just gone 10.30 a.m. Lottie had been taken against her will. They had twenty-three hours to find her: the clock was ticking.
Chapter 5
Wednesday 16 March
10:35
T – 22 hrs 55 mins
Opening the file, Nasreen sharply inhaled: there was Chloe Strofton. If there had been any doubt she was the younger sister of Nasreen’s old school friend, it was gone now. The smiling selfie, taken in happier times, showed that pretty Chloe had the same blue eyes and pinched chin of her older sibling. But instead of the curly, mousey hair that Gemma had, Chloe’s was long and wavy, streaked with blonde highlights. Now would be the time to mention she knew the family – or used to know the family. Nasreen should say she recognised the girl from the photo. Keeping quiet about a personal connection to a case was a bad idea. What would her colleagues think if they knew she’d bullied a young girl till she’d tried to kill herself? They questioned and arrested teens regularly enough that her young age wouldn’t matter. They’d see her as a bully. She’d be lumped in with the likes of Morris. Nasty, tainted. She could imagine Chips’s revulsion. If he
didn’t use the personal connection to the case to get her removed, Saunders would use her past, her failings, to get rid of her. He would drum her out of the team. And Burgone, the thought of him knowing what she’d done … Her skin prickled with the shame of it. It didn’t matter what she’d done since, or who she’d become: that one stupid, cruel mistake had tainted her. If she told them she knew the Stroftons, she’d be off the case. But if she kept quiet, she could find out who did this to their daughter. This was her chance to make it better.
Sleeping with Burgone had been an error of judgement. She’d let her own desires get in the way of the job and look what had happened. Burgone had acted rashly too. They were both to blame, but she couldn’t help feel it was she who’d jeopardised their careers. That she was responsible for threatening the Gremlin taskforce. What had happened with Gemma had taught her she couldn’t let her own selfish needs override another’s. This was her chance to atone for those mistakes. Nasreen looked at Burgone’s empty chair, his dark cashmere overcoat hanging lopsided from the back. More than anything she wanted to help him.
Chloe Strofton’s last forty-eight hours had been unremarkable. She’d spent the day at Romeland High School, after which she’d told her parents she was staying at her friend Melisha’s house. Instead she disappeared. She was picked up on CCTV boarding a bus from near her school in St Albans to Hatfield, getting off at the Galleria shopping centre just after half past four. A camera then picked her up once more inside the shopping centre. She wasn’t seen again until her body was found in Wildhill Wood, a number of miles away, at 8.30 p.m. the next day, following an anonymous tip-off from a male caller. The Snapchat of her suicide note had been sent at 8 p.m. the previous night. Did the wood hold personal significance to Chloe? Why had the caller not left his details? People used wooded areas for all kinds of insalubrious pursuits: drug taking, underage drinking, illicit rendezvous. She made a note to call the officer at Hertfordshire Constabulary who’d worked on the case, and ask his opinion.
Photos from the scene showed Chloe Strofton’s small body on the forest floor, curled into child’s pose. Her arms and face were a dark purple from hypostasis – where blood had pooled post mortem. Her veins made a blue marbling pattern in her skin: petechiae within hypostasis. Nasreen had seen bodies like this before: a drugs overdose. The pathologist had noted that the girl’s body showed no indicators of previous drug use. Chloe Matilda Strofton was fifteen years old, 5'4", and weighed 105 lbs. At her time of death the following substances had been found in her blood stream:
Morphine (free) of 370 ng/ml
6-monoacetylmorphine of 16 ng/ml
Codeine (free) of 15 ng/ml
Alprazolam of 34 ng/ml
Amphetamine of 22 ng/ml
Next to the body, along with her school bag, were a blue plastic wrap and a 1cc syringe. No spoon, no cotton wool, lighter or any of the other drug paraphernalia you might expect to find from cooked heroin. Chloe had prepared the syringe elsewhere. Or someone had prepared it for her. Over-the-counter drugs, or even prescription drugs, and alcohol, were easier to source. As were razor blades and the materials you could use to hang yourself with. Chloe hadn’t copied her older sister’s failed attempt.
The investigating team hadn’t requested to look at Chloe’s computer; Nasreen would have liked to know what her search history was. How had a fifteen-year-old girl from a middle-class area, with no known history of criminal activity or drug use, ended up forty-five minutes from where she lived, dead from a heroin overdose?
Nasreen had worked on the case of a twenty-three-year-old mother who’d overdosed and suffered pulmonary congestion like Chloe. She’d asked the pathologist at the time if it would have been quick – the woman’s toddler had been in the flat and she didn’t like to think of him seeing his mother in agony. The pathologist confirmed that in cases of pulmonary congestion, the victim would quickly enter a comatose state, dying relatively soon after from lack of oxygen. Chloe’s death would have been fast and painless. That was something. She didn’t like to think of the girl on her own in the woods, frightened, in pain, with no one to help. Perhaps the bright Chloe, predicted As and A*s in her GCSEs, had researched her options and chose this as an easy death? Chloe would never sit those exams now, never turn sixteen, never go on to have a job, or a family of her own. A life over, all too soon.
The rap of Saunders’s pen on his desk raised her and Chips’s attention. The DI pointed at the phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear, and mouthed, ‘Cell site hit.’ A signal from the phone had been picked up! Nasreen couldn’t suppress the flutter in her stomach: this could be good news.
DI Saunders was nodding, writing down what he was being told. ‘Okay. Yup. We’ll let the SOCOs and the tech lads see if they can find anything on it. Anything at all. Keep me updated.’
That didn’t sound so promising.
Saunders turned to face them. ‘The phone was ditched, not far from the spot where the hoodie was found. A young lad found it on the way to school, pocketed it, and apparently turned it on during his first break.’
Compromised DNA.
Chips threw his hands up in front of him. ‘Where were the parents? Did they not notice their kiddie picking up a bleeding phone?’
‘Apparently his eleven-year-old brother walks him in,’ Saunders shrugged. ‘Latchkey kids, I guess. What you gonna do?’
If only someone else had spotted it first – though most people would instinctively pick the phone up, regardless of whether they planned to turn it in or keep it. The boy had inadvertently disturbed the scene, delayed them finding the phone, and more than likely compromised any forensic traces on the device. And the discovery possibly had bleaker implications. ‘Are we sure it was ditched, rather than dropped during the struggle?’ Nasreen asked.
‘The kid says it was switched off when he found it. And it was further down the road. He thinks.’
Chips snorted.
‘So the perp sent the Snapchat message and then switched the phone off before dumping it?’ she asked.
‘Possible,’ said Saunders.
That implied they knew what they were doing. Whoever had taken Lottie was savvy enough to know not only that the phone was trackable, but that it’d be trickier to trace if it was switched off. It gave them a head start. ‘Whoever took her must have incapacitated her fairly fast,’ she said. ‘If she was screaming and drawing attention, you wouldn’t want to hang around to fiddle with the phone would you?’
‘No,’ Chips frowned. ‘The SOCOs said there were signs she’d put up a fight.’
‘We have to consider the possibility that whoever took her has already killed her,’ said Saunders. His jaw was set; he looked thoughtful rather than sad. Nausea rippled inside Nasreen.
Chips was sitting on the edge of his overcrowded desk. The papers he was holding in his right hand were creased under the strain of his fingers.
‘If they’ve already killed her, why send the message about us having twenty-four hours?’ said Nasreen. She couldn’t be dead.
‘I don’t know what their game is,’ Saunders replied. ‘But there’s been no ransom demand. And because they’ve ditched Lottie’s phone, we have no way of initiating conversation with the kidnapper.’
He was a sage investigator, and even though she knew what he was saying was right, she was glad Burgone wasn’t around to hear it. Even if Lottie’s parents were rich, and it sounded like they were, it took days to raise a large sum in cash, not twenty-four hours. No ransom delivery also meant they couldn’t mark notes, or hide a tracker in the money. And with no communication from the kidnapper, they didn’t have anything they could trace. Nothing that would give away where Lottie was being held. What was this about if it wasn’t about money?
‘We could be looking at a personal motivation: revenge for someone the guv put away? Maybe they have no intention of negotiating. Or returning her.’ Saunders seemed to read her thoughts.
‘That’s just a hypothesis.’
&n
bsp; ‘You know we have to consider all the scenarios, Chips,’ said Saunders, raising his eyebrows at his colleague.
‘She’s the guv’s sister, Pete. We’re bringing her home.’ No discussion. His line rang and he answered gruffly. ‘McCain.’
Nasreen tried to smile at Saunders, but she couldn’t muster it. Neither of them wanted to contradict Chips, but the implications were clear. They were all thinking it. Saunders pushed his hand back through his hair, pulling the skin on his face taut. She could see the grooves of his skull, a reminder of how little really stood between you and someone who wanted to do you harm. Though, with his fast movements and limber strength, she’d put money on Saunders in most fights.
What about Lottie? She’d kicked out, fought hard enough to rip her hoodie. She was in physically great shape, strong and lean in the photos, though Nasreen would have preferred to see a few more cheeseburgers on her Instagram feed. She looked like a fighter. Sometimes just that will to survive was enough. Nasreen had seen it in her colleagues. In victims of terrible crimes. In her friends. But even the strongest will could be extinguished by another. Someone had wanted to take Lottie, and they had. They’d also threatened to kill her. Would they execute that plan as well?
Chips ended his call and headed for the incident board. ‘Lottie went for a run every day at 6 a.m. She’s picked up on the campus CCTV camera about five past the hour, heading towards Greenwich Church Street.’ He was filling in the details on the timeline as he spoke.
‘Any cameras on West Grove Lane?’ asked Saunders.
‘No joy,’ said Chips. ‘It’s largely residential. But the university have cooperated fully. As they should: PR nightmare for them, a student going missing. Their in-house security are going through their recordings with the Greenwich lads. They’ve got a snazzy digital set-up, so they’ve been able to match Lottie’s expected movements on campus with the relevant footage.’ Chips was scribbling in black marker as he spoke.
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