The Falcon Tattoo (The National Crime Agency Series Book 2)

by Bill Rogers

  Andy put his spectacles back on, picked up his flask and beaker, and came to sit beside them. Jo thought he looked exhausted, as though emotionally drained.

  Ram turned to Jo. ‘Now that you’ve seen both of our reports, what do you want us to do next?’ he asked.

  ‘I have a meeting scheduled in an hour in the Major Incident Room,’ she said, ‘to share your reports with the team from Operation Talon, and to agree next actions. Ram is already using HOLMES2 to filter the data they sent over of all known sexual offenders held in the Police National Computer using our unsub’s specific behavioural markers. Since the first attack on Sareen Lomax, officers have already carried out over three hundred interviews across Lancashire, Greater Manchester, and parts of Cheshire and Merseyside. The geographical analysis and your behavioural crime profiles will help them to review some of those interviews, and target future ones.’

  She turned to Andy.

  ‘Do you think it would make sense for you to take a look at the list Ram comes up with, and see if it’s possible to identify those that most closely match your profiles?’

  ‘It would make perfect sense,’ he said. ‘And I’ll see if I can fine-tune those profiles while I’m about it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘As for me, based on what you’ve just shared with us, I’m going to ask for a list to be drawn up of any males known to travel regularly between the universities that have been targeted so far. I assume that will include academic staff, suppliers of equipment, books and services, including things like materials, chemicals, security systems and software. And I assume there’ll be some students too, such as Student Union officials?’

  Ram looked sceptical. ‘That could take forever,’ he said, ‘and involve a hell of a lot of people.’

  ‘Jo’s right,’ said Andy. ‘You have to start somewhere, and it’ll focus people’s minds, both in the universities and in the team itself.’

  Jo pushed her chair back.

  ‘I’ll have to go and prepare,’ she said. ‘I’ve arranged to interview victim number four in Salford this evening.’

  She stood and picked up the two reports.

  ‘Thanks for all your hard work. I have a feeling that it could make all the difference. Not straight away perhaps, but soon.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Andy. ‘I sense that time is not on our side.’

  Chapter 7

  Jo and DI Sarsfield left the Major Incident Room in Central Park, and made their way to the CCTV- and video-viewing room.

  ‘Congratulations on your promotion, Gerry,’ said Jo. ‘I heard you made Inspector within a year of joining the Serious Sexual Offences Unit.’

  He grinned.

  ‘You’ve done alright for yourself, Jo. You don’t mind if I call you that?’

  She smiled back.

  ‘Not at all.’

  He laughed, and brushed a hand through his curly black hair.

  ‘I bet you were hoping you’d be working with DCI Caton?’ he said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  The truth was that she would give anything to have the support right now of her former boss. And not just professionally.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I get the feeling I’m going to enjoy working with you.’

  Jo frowned.

  ‘I’m impressed with the team you’ve put together,’ she said, ‘and how hard they’re working, but it’s not as though we’ve made much progress, is it?’

  Sarsfield shrugged. ‘It’s early days, but I know what you mean. All those interviews with so-called witnesses? None of them seem to have witnessed anything worth pursuing.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Unless they happen to be looking to pull, young people out on the town only have eyes and ears for their friends, and their focus is on consuming as much alcohol as possible in the shortest period of time. Our unsub was never going to draw attention to himself. He’ll have been “Mr Normal” right there in plain sight, head bowed, avoiding eye contact, or lurking in the shadows.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ he said. ‘Because that’s why I brought you in here.’

  He put his hand on the shoulder of a middle-aged man in shirtsleeves sitting in front of the nearest of the monitors.

  ‘This is DC Jack Withers. Jack has been going over the only useful footage we managed to garner from over a hundred hours of CCTV retrieved from the pubs and clubs the victims were known to have visited.’

  Withers shrugged.

  ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Ma’am,’ he said. ‘It’s the usual story. There were too many pubs whose CCTV was down at the time, and those that weren’t had most of their cameras aimed at the top of people’s heads rather than their faces. Surprise, surprise, the best coverage was of the tills and the stock.’ He shook his head. ‘Profits first, customer safety second.’

  He pulled out a chair for Jo and the two of them sat down in front of the bank of screens.

  ‘Just show SI Stuart what you do have, Jack,’ said Sarsfield.

  The man pressed play, and the first of the sequences appeared on the monitor screen.

  ‘This is from the fifth of the pubs visited by the first victim,’ he said.

  Jo leaned closer. The images were in black and white, and nowhere near as sharp as she had hoped. There was no sound. She guessed that the camera was sited above the door, and trained in such a way as to capture those customers at the bar. The pub was packed solid, with people four and five deep vying with each other to be served. It looked like a scene from a Tube train at rush hour, only worse.

  ‘This is her,’ said Withers, touching the screen with a tablet stylus.

  Sareen Lomax was only just in view. She was standing towards the back of the crowd with four other young women, none of whom seemed particularly steady on their feet. They swayed in unison as they were jostled from every direction. Two of them had open bottles in their hands. Because she was so small, the camera frequently lost sight of her as the bodies surged and shifted.

  ‘Here we go.’ Withers touched the screen with his stylus.

  A tall girl at the bar, hair down to her shoulders, half-turned with a bottle held high in her left hand. She appeared to be shouting something to the girls behind her.

  ‘Can you tell what’s she saying?’ asked Jo.

  Withers paused the footage.

  ‘It was difficult to tell because she’s almost in profile, but our speech analyst reckoned she was saying something like “Sreens”.’

  Jo nodded.

  ‘Sareen’s.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Withers, ‘given she’s had a few. It also fits with what happens next.’

  He pressed play.

  The bottle was passed from hand to hand over the top of the heads of the crowd, until it reached one of the girls beside Sareen Lomax, who then handed it to her.

  ‘This is the one we’re interested in,’ said Gerry Sarsfield.

  He had paused the footage again, and was pointing to a figure with his back to the camera, standing halfway between the counter and Sareen Lomax. Jo leaned even closer. There was very little to see. Just the hair on top of a head, and an impression of size and build that could only be gauged by the amount of space he appeared to be taking up. Even that was difficult, given the tightly packed crowd.

  Withers ran the footage back a few frames, and pressed play again. At the point at which the bottle reached the figure he had highlighted, he paused the action.

  ‘He’s wearing leather gloves,’ said Jo. ‘If it is our unsub, he doesn’t want us managing to get a close-up of his hands.’

  ‘He’s not wearing a watch either,’ said Sarsfield. ‘But there’s something else, even more interesting.’

  ‘He’s holding the bottle with both hands,’ said Jo. ‘He’s the only one so far who has. He’s trying to make it look as though he’s steadying it, but I’m prepared to bet he’s actually spiking her drink.’ She was trying hard not to show her excitement. ‘Can you get a close-up of that left hand?’

&nbs
p; ‘We’ve tried over and over again,’ the detective constable told her. ‘But there’s nothing conclusive.’

  He found the relevant frames anyway, and zoomed in and out several times. Jo could see what he meant.

  ‘Does he appear in the other clips too?’ she asked.

  ‘See what you think,’ said Withers.

  He played the remaining clips of footage, one relating to victim three, and the other to victim four. The positions of the cameras varied only slightly, and the pubs were as crowded and chaotic as the first had been. The scenarios that played out on the screen were more or less identical, with one exception. Jo sat back down in her chair, her excitement waning.

  ‘None of them have the same man’s hairstyle, height or build,’ she said. ‘Even their gloves aren’t the same.’

  ‘But they’re all wearing gloves,’ Sarsfield pointed out. ‘And all those other things can be changed. Okay, his build seems to go up, but that’s easy to fake with fat suits and shoulder pads, though it never reaches the point where he’s so large he stands out. As for the hair, all that would take is a change of parting, a bit of styling gel, a blow-dry.’

  ‘I see that,’ said Jo. ‘And there was a piece on one of the breakfast TV programmes about the use of cork and jelly shoe inserts that can boost your height by up to two and a bit inches. Celebrities use them a lot apparently.’

  She pointed to the picture frozen on the screen.

  ‘Can you print a still of that, Jack? I’m just about to interview the victim. I’d like to show it to her. See if it might jog her memory.’

  ‘Despite interviewing the victim’s friends, and all of the witnesses that have come forward, we haven’t been able to identify any of these three men so far,’ Sarsfield told her. ‘But then we haven’t identified fifty per cent of the males in each of those frames.’

  Withers handed her the printout.

  ‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said.

  Jo followed Sarsfield out into the corridor. They walked towards the lifts.

  ‘It must be him, modifying his appearance each time,’ Jo said. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence that all three of those men are wearing gloves. And nobody is that careful to avoid appearing on CCTV. He’d probably checked those pubs out in advance.’

  ‘He’d be stupid not to,’ Sarsfield agreed. ‘And whatever else our man is, he’s not that.’

  Jo stopped short of the lift doors.

  ‘I’ve just realised,’ she said, ‘that the one thing that seemed to be constant about him was the size and shape of his head. Is it worth someone having a look at that? Then we’d have something to go on, regardless of the hairstyle he chooses?’

  ‘Good idea,’ he said, as he pressed the call button.

  The doors opened and Jo entered the lift.

  ‘I’ll see you later at the press conference,’ she said. ‘My Boss is coming.’

  ‘Mine too,’ he said. ‘It should be interesting.’

  Chapter 8

  Hope Bellman was twenty years of age, five feet two inches tall, with ash-blonde hair, and grey eyes set in an oval face. Had she been smiling, she would have been exceptionally attractive.

  She was not smiling. Her face was devoid of make-up, and the studio bed along one wall remained unmade. Her lips were pursed into a thin slash. She was sitting on a sofa wearing a pink onesie buttoned to her neck. When she inclined her head to look up at Jo, a tattoo in the shape of a feather was visible beneath her right ear.

  The young woman who had introduced herself as Veronique Akubilo at the door to the student flat pulled a chair out from under a desk.

  ‘I’m sorry, but this is all we have.’

  ‘This will do fine,’ said Jo. ‘Thank you,’

  When the young woman sat down next to Hope, the contrast between the two of them could hardly have been greater. Veronique stood head and shoulders above Jo, and sitting down she towered above her friend. Where Hope’s skin was waxy pale, hers was the colour of burnt umber. Her lips and nose were full, while thin arching eyebrows set off oval eyes with dark-chocolate centres. Her hair was an unruly halo of wiry black curls. When Veronique spoke, Jo’s attention was irresistibly drawn to two rows of perfect white teeth.

  ‘Well. Have you caught him yet?’ she demanded.

  Jo already knew from the case notes that Veronique had accompanied Hope on the ill-fated night out. She guessed that her anger was guilt displacement. Jo had encountered it many times before from friends and relatives who believed that they had let their loved ones down – that there were things they could and should have done. Invariably, they were wrong.

  ‘Not yet,’ Jo replied. ‘That’s why I’m here – to see if there’s anything else you or Hope may have remembered.’

  She looked at Hope, inviting her to reply. Veronique raised her eyebrows. Her response was scornful.

  ‘Remember?’

  She placed a long graceful arm around her friend’s shoulders, and pulled her close.

  ‘Hope is trying to forget. Every time a police officer turns up asking if she’s remembered anything yet, it sets her back. Can’t you understand that?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Jo. ‘And as I explained when I rang you, Hope, I’ll do everything I can to minimise any upset that my questions may cause. But we have to catch this man. Not only because of what he did to you and to other students, but also on behalf of all those young women he’s going to abduct and assault if we don’t stop him.’

  Veronique was about to respond again, but Hope pushed her delicate arms up through those that enveloped her and prised them apart. Her friend stared at her with surprise as she edged away, took a cushion from behind her back, and placed it on the sofa in between them. The message was clear.

  ‘That’s why I agreed to see you, officer,’ she said. ‘But I don’t see how it’s going to help, because I don’t remember anything I haven’t already told your colleagues.’

  ‘Of course you can’t remember anything,’ muttered Veronique, folding her arms. ‘You were drunk, and drugged.’

  ‘Veronique,’ said Jo, ‘I appreciate that you’re here to support Hope. And I’m sure that you’re a tremendous source of comfort and reassurance, but this isn’t going to work if you keep answering for her. Either I’m going to have to ask you to go into another room while I speak with Hope, or you’re going to have to promise not to interrupt.’

  Hope placed a hand on her friend’s knee.

  ‘She’s right, Veronique,’ she said, ‘and I’d prefer it if you stayed.’

  Veronique placed a hand over Hope’s.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t help myself. You know that. Of course I’ll stay. And I promise to shut up.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do that,’ said Jo. ‘If you could just confine your comments to when I ask you a direct question?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. And it’s Jo, by the way. “Officer” makes it sound like I’m in the army.’

  That managed to drag a smile from both of them.

  ‘So,’ she continued, ‘Hope, can you start by telling me what you were wearing when you embarked on the pub crawl?’

  She saw the expression of surprise on Veronique’s face, and hastily added, ‘The only reason I’m asking is that this may help us to jog the memory of some of the people who were in the pubs or the vicinity at the same time as you. At the moment, it isn’t clear from the notes I have, and the CCTV images are indistinct and in black and white.’

  ‘I deliberately dressed sensibly,’ Hope replied. ‘I had on a pair of jeans.’ She looked down at her legs and frowned. ‘Not these – the police kept the ones I was wearing. I had a plain white blouse tucked into them, and a black cagoule over the top. The advice from the Student Union was to wear sensible shoes, so I wore a pair of trainers. White, with green frogs on.’

  ‘When did you decide to go on the pub crawl?’ said Jo.

  ‘It was a last-minute thing. Veronique knocked on my door just before lunchtime. Sh
e said that she and a couple of other people we’d got to know in this block were going, and did I want to come along?’

  Jo nodded. It reinforced her deductions about the reason why Veronique felt so responsible for Hope, and it also suggested that the unsub had singled Hope out on the night, rather than stalking her in advance. It supported Andy’s view that he was a collector. She looked down at the notes on her tablet.

  ‘You had quite an early start?’ she said. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because there were fourteen different pubs in all. The idea was to take our time, and have something to eat while we were going round. That way we wouldn’t feel that we had to drink fast, and end up drunk halfway round.’

  A hot pink blush brought her cheeks to life. She bowed her head and stared at the floor. Veronique squeezed her hand. When she looked up again, there was a hint of shame in her eyes.

  ‘You did nothing wrong,’ said Jo. ‘Nothing that hundreds of thousands of students haven’t done before you. And in any case, as Veronique pointed out, he managed to spike one of your drinks.’

  Hope’s eyes widened.

  ‘I know, but how? We were so careful. We followed all the advice we were given at the start. We only drank out of bottles and we never let anyone else buy us a drink.’

  ‘I think we may know the answer to that,’ Jo told her. ‘But I’m hoping that your story of that night will confirm it for us.’

  Hope looked up at her friend.

  ‘Could you get me some water, Roni?’

  Veronique stood up. ‘Would you like a drink of some kind, Jo?’ she asked. ‘I should have asked when I let you in.’

  ‘Water would be great.’

  Veronique went into the kitchenette and returned with three half-pint beer glasses. Jo smiled. She’d been a student herself, and had a pretty good idea where those had come from. When they had all taken a sip, Hope began.

  ‘We arrived at Atmosphere, that’s the bar at the Students’ Union, at two in the afternoon. We had our first drink in there while we waited for everyone who’d booked on the tour to turn up. It was about three o’clock when we set off.’