Girls on Film: (DI Angus Henderson 7)

by Iain Cameron

  Henderson paused for a moment or two to let them digest the information, but not long enough for them to believe his stint was over and they could now bombard him with questions.

  ‘Forensic tests have been carried out on the body and ballistics are examining the bullet which killed her. Enquiries are continuing.’ Henderson re-took his seat.

  ‘We have time for a short question and answer session,’ Andy Youngman said. ‘Before asking your question, please state your name and the organisation you represent.’

  Before Youngman finished speaking, the clamour to ask a question was the most animated Henderson had seen.

  Youngman pointed at a woman in the first row, blonde with crimson highlights and red lipstick designed to dazzle.

  ‘Shirley Fairbrother, Sky News. Can I ask Detective Inspector Henderson, does he see any similarity between this murder and the abduction and murder of photographer, Cindy Longhurst, at Hurstpierpoint in late January?’

  ‘The similarities,’ Henderson said, ‘between the two victims are this: both are women, both were found bruised, and both had been shot in the head. There’s not enough information to say if they both have been killed by the same person or not, and I would ask you not to speculate.’

  ‘Can’t you tell from the bullets recovered from both bodies? Sorry, Bill Crowley, Independent.’

  ‘You’re quite right, we can,’ Henderson said. ‘Two bullets fired from the same gun will display uniquely identifiable properties. We are in the process of analysing the bullet which killed the current victim. We will have more information when this analysis is complete.’

  ‘Steve King, The Times. Is it right for members of the tabloid press such as the Daily Mail and the Sun to ask the women of Sussex to stay indoors?’

  ‘Newspapers are free to print what they want, I can’t stop them. However, I believe there is no need to panic. People, as always, should be careful when going out and report to the police anything they think looks suspicious.’

  ‘Rob Tremain, The Argus. Are you any closer to finding out who killed Cindy Longhurst?’

  ‘If I can answer this question,’ the ACC said. ‘DI Henderson’s team have spent significant time and resources tracking back through Ms Longhurst’s life, her considerable photography career, and interviewing most of her friends and associates. Enquiries are continuing and we are confident of apprehending the offender soon.’

  Youngman called a halt a few minutes later. For high profile cases like this, calling for a Q&A could turn into a bruising and counter-productive mistake, but it offered those present a snapshot of what journalists were thinking and what might be appearing on tonight’s news bulletins or in tomorrow’s newspapers.

  Clare Park, the Sussex force’s Media Coordinator stood. ‘All the photographs presented today are included in your media pack. If you require proofs, I can supply them. My number is also in the pack. Thank you all for attending.’

  Henderson and the ACC filed out, the officers to the right, the journalists to the back of the hall. Intermingling was asking for trouble and the police forces that tried it often found themselves with a brawl on their hands and, of course, photographers and camera crews were already primed and ready to record every last detail.

  ‘You did some good work in there, Angus,’ Youngman said in his clipped, military delivery as they walked together. ‘You sounded decisive but didn’t let slip too many details.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  They headed out the back door of the building where they would part, Henderson to his office, Youngman to his.

  The ACC turned to face him, the eagle-stare much in evidence. ‘You saw them in there, Angus, they’re like a pack of wolves. If we don’t get a result soon, they’ll eat us alive. I’m counting on you but listen: if you don’t feel you’re up for it, tell me and I’ll appoint someone else.’ He poked a finger at Henderson’s chest. ‘This has got to be sorted ASAP for all our sakes. Understood?’

  **

  Henderson returned to his office after the press conference, the Assistant Chief Constable’s voice still ringing in his ears. His bosses wanted results, the press wanted results, his team wanted results and so did he. They were all aiming at the same target but what the media didn’t know and his bosses didn’t care to consider, was some cases were more difficult to solve than others. If anyone harboured any doubts, he could point to the large pile of ‘cold cases’ which any police force could produce.

  He pushed the paperwork he intended doing to one side and stood leaning on the front of his desk and stared at the whiteboard. There, he’d marked up the names of the main men in Cindy Longhurst’s life: Ted Mathieson, Greg Jackson, and Mike Harrison. He needed to get Youngman’s voice out of his head and focus on this. He took a deep breath and walked closer to the whiteboard, looking closely at the small pictures tacked up there.

  Ted Mathieson, the rich transport company owner who’d burned a candle for Cindy and who wanted to marry her but she had turned him down. His reason for killing her would be what? If he couldn’t have her, no one else would? It sounded plausible and was a motive cited in several killings he knew about, but Mathieson didn’t strike him as the overwrought, part-unhinged, impetuous type, characteristics of the murderers in those sorts of cases. He appeared cool and calculating and was more likely to say, ‘If she doesn’t want me, fuck it, I’ll find someone who does.’ A former Miss Lithuania didn’t sound like a bad second-choice.

  Greg Jackson, Cindy’s former husband, a man whose life was passing him by as Cindy’s went from strength to strength. A man in a poorly paid job with a boorish boss and a teenage boy to bring up, it wasn’t a surprise when he talked about money; or rather the lack of it. However, Cindy’s demise wouldn’t make him any richer. Her estate wouldn’t go to her ex-husband, who said himself he had cut all ties with her, but more than likely to her two children. If not about money, Jackson might have been jealous of her success, or did he do it to get his own back on Ted Mathieson, a man who loved Cindy and the one responsible for firing him?

  It had a ring of truth about it, but having met the man, he didn’t think him capable of killing anyone. In any case, where would he find two heavies to drag her from her studio and bundle her into a car? In the engineering business where he worked? Getting two people to do your bidding required either a powerful and persuasive personality and plenty of money. Greg Jackson had neither of those.

  Mike Harrison looked more promising, not because he was an interesting character, but because he needed to understand what attracted Cindy to him. Some tradesmen he knew couldn’t wait to get out of their work gear and were smart, snappy dressers who could impersonate a banker or a lawyer if they put their minds to it. Others fell into the ‘scruffy’ class with traces of paint and plaster in their hair, their clothes stained and their fingernails permanently dirty.

  Harrison belonged in the latter category, a guy whose trade could be determined on a first meeting. Why did Cindy, a woman with taste in fine art and a strong moral conscience, feel the need to date a man never happier than when reeking of paint and holding a pint of beer in his hand?

  His thoughts were interrupted when his desk phone rang. He leaned over, grabbed the handset and tensed, half-expecting it to be Andy Youngman with round-two of his Find the Murderer pep-talk.

  ‘Henderson.’

  ‘Hello sir, it’s Sally Graham.’

  ‘Hi, Sally. How’s it going over at the studio?’

  ‘Shurrup you lot in there!’ she hollered, ‘I’m on the phone to the boss. Sorry sir, I didn’t mean you. With so many people in this small room, if anyone makes a noise–’

  ‘Or farts,’ he heard someone say.

  ‘We all hear it,’ Graham said. ‘I’m moving outside.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Henderson asked when the background noise subsided. ‘We held a press conference for the second murder victim this morning and I’m keen to make some progress at the studio and free up some members of the team.’<
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  ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen soon.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I think the murders are connected. You know the picture we’ve all got a copy of?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The second victim. Castle Hill Girl.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve found a picture in Cindy’s photos of a woman who I think is her double.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Henderson walked to the car, the photographs and scant information about the girl they were calling Castle Hill Girl in a folder under his arm.

  It was a couple of hours after the press conference, but he wouldn’t be surprised to find a few journalists still hanging around, hoping to thrust a digital recorder under his nose and pick up an exclusive scoop. Instead, he reached the car without being molested, perhaps the biting wind overruling the needs of a demanding editor.

  He wondered if Rachel had been in attendance at the press conference, she being a news hound now, away from the backwater of environmental and horticultural reporting. He’d seen and heard The Argus’s chief crime reporter, Rob Tremain, but she wasn’t beside him. With such a large crowd in the conference room, Lord Lucan could have been there no one would have noticed.

  He hadn’t seen much of Rachel over the weekend as he had been working and when he wasn’t, she didn’t have much to say. He wasn’t sure if she was still sore about him leaving the dinner party early or annoyed at her own show of petulance now the real reason for his absence had revealed itself.

  He could understand the reasons as everyone was entitled to a decent social life, uninterrupted by phone calls and the demands of others. Unfortunately, anyone working for the emergency services was in the same boat: doctors, ambulance drivers, fire fighters. Due to the demands of a twenty-four-hour economy, this also applied to security guards, computer operators, television news reporters and a host of other seemingly unrelated jobs, such as those who maintained retail websites or manned important government installations.

  The journey to Hurstpierpoint sailed by in a blur. One moment he was driving out of the Malling House car park, the next, coasting through the village. This was perhaps a symptom that Rachel was getting to him or he’d been to Hurstpierpoint too many times. Whatever the reason, he had to concentrate now as a delivery van was blocking the road and he had to wait several minutes before it was safe to overtake.

  He turned into Longhurst Studios, this time not to gaze admiringly at the architectural style but to be shocked at the number of cars. He shouldn’t have been surprised as, despite having so many officers working in the office here, not one of them would think of calling one of their colleagues and offering them a lift.

  He walked into the studio, looking neat and tidy with most loose items stowed away, but with a closed-down feel. No photographs had been taken lately and he doubted if they ever would be. There was no sign of Annie, no doubt sitting in hospital wishing her own personal ordeal would soon be over.

  He pushed open the door and almost backed out as the stale smell hit his nostrils.

  ‘Afternoon sir,’ a few of them said.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Henderson said.

  It was post-lunch and many looked to be off-duty with ties askew and buttons undone, lounging in chairs or leaning against walls as if having just devoured a large feast. He couldn’t blame them, it was hard work looking through thousands of photographs with no aim in sight.

  ‘Sally,’ he said to DC Graham, ‘bring your laptop and anything else you need into the waiting room. I don’t think there’s room enough for me in here.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  She lifted the laptop up in one hand and carried the portable hard disk drive attached to it with the other.

  They walked through the studio towards the waiting room.

  ‘I don’t suppose you fancied the hum in there,’ the DC said. ‘A few of the guys went out on the piss last night and we’re all suffering for it today.’

  ‘It’s a consideration, but as well as the lack of space I don’t want to create a false hope by finding whatever we discuss on the front cover of tomorrow’s newspapers.’

  ‘I know what you mean. There’s only me and Lisa in there but the guys are worse than us for gossiping. Oh, I meant to tell you, Annie gave birth.’

  ‘That’s great news. What did she have?’

  ‘Twin boys.’

  ‘Oh my, she’ll have her work cut out. Mother and babies doing well?’

  ‘Yes, no problems.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

  When they reached the waiting room, Sally put her things on the table while Henderson walked to the coffee machine.

  ‘I need a coffee before we start,’ he said. ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘No thank you, sir, all I’ve done today is drink coffee. I’ll be lucky to sleep tonight.’

  With his drink on the table but pushed to one side, and the laptop and portable hard disk drive in front of him, he sat down. Sally took the seat beside him. She clicked the mouse on the laptop and opened a file, before selecting one of the pictures from the press conference, a facial of the Castle Hill victim.

  ‘Right, that’s the picture we all have. Now if I open this file on the portable hard disk.’

  ‘What’s on the disks?’

  ‘The SD cards in the filing cabinet are backed-up here. Now, if she wanted to hide something that she didn’t want anyone else to find, myself and Sergeant Walters think she would have hidden it in here.’

  ‘Why? What makes you say that?’

  ‘Every Friday, Cindy backed-up all the work she did in the week onto these disks, and stored them in the house. If she took a series of controversial photographs, she could load them onto the disk from the SD card as normal, but destroy or reformat the card, leaving no trace of the photographs in the studio. If someone broke in, or like the kidnappers who came here to retrieve them, they wouldn’t find any trace of them.’

  ‘So, if we’re trying to find this mysterious series of photographs, we could pick up a box of SD cards and compare the names of them with the names on the hard disk. If any files don’t have a corresponding SD card, bingo.’

  ‘It’s exactly what we’ve been doing, with the added complication of having to take a look at all the files to confirm what they contain.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Now take a look at this.’

  She pushed the laptop towards him.

  He looked intently at the pretty young woman before him. She had brown, wavy hair touching her shoulders, brown eyes, dark eyebrows, small nose and an engaging smile with a row of perfect teeth. The deep blue sky and fly-away wisps in her hair suggested the picture had been taken outside.

  Now, he compared it to the photograph of their latest victim, as she had been laid out on the mortuary slab. This girl also had wavy brown hair and brown eyes but the thick eyebrows sold it. ‘You’re right Sally, it’s the same girl. What a great spot, well done. Who is she? What do we know about her?’

  Henderson’s mind started racing. A picture of the Castle Hill murder victim had been taken by Cindy, therefore the two women were connected, but how? Had she been a customer of the studio? Did this mean someone was picking off Cindy’s customers one-by-one, a list running into thousands? It was a crazy notion which he dismissed; it didn’t bear thinking about or make much sense.

  ‘The file doesn’t contain many photos and only a few of her. Look at this one.’

  She was standing outside a house but her frame obscured the house number. The newness of the patio slabs around her feet and the colour of the brickwork behind her suggested a new development, but he couldn’t discern much else.

  ‘The others of her are simply variations on this one. Different poses standing beside the same house. There are four in all which include her.’

  ‘Only four? You were bloody lucky to find her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s her name? Do we know it?’
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  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No indications on the file or the photo?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘What about analysing the data included on the photo file? Don’t digital cameras stamp some information on a photo? Like, where it was taken, the date, the camera used and so on?’

  ‘They do and you can normally see something by right-clicking the photograph, but don’t forget, Cindy’s a professional photographer. If she didn’t want anyone seeing information about this woman or anyone else, she’d have the skills to hide it.’

  ‘Makes sense, but I want you to send a copy to the tech boys at Haywards Heath and see if they can find something. We need to find out as much as we can about this woman. What about the other pictures on the same file? What’s the connection there?’

  ‘I’m not sure there is any. Take a look for yourself.’

  She’d reduced the pictures to thumbnails and he could see from the count at the bottom of the screen the file contained twenty-seven photographs.

  ‘Double-click any you want to enlarge.’

  He scanned the thumbnails at first and counted seven different young women.

  He double-clicked one. Same as before, a charming full body shot but nothing to indicate where the model and photographer were located. He did the same to a few more.

  ‘I don’t think it’s by accident, but do you notice how none of the images give any indication as to where the photographs were taken or which house they’re standing outside? It’s almost as if Cindy wanted a picture of the women but was conscious of someone in the future finding them and locating the girls if she gave away too much.’

  ‘I see what you mean. Perhaps it’s a secret family she didn’t want anyone to know about.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I think Cindy’s too young for it to be her grown-up daughters. It could be nieces or friends.’