Now She’s Gone: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

by Alison James

  And now at last, the love had come in. This was the strange expanding sensation in her chest as she reached up to place her hands on his broad, T-shirted back. He was her child, and she loved him.

  Twenty-Nine

  ‘I’m not going to call you Mum or anything.’

  Rachel and Joe were walking to Dundas Street in the New Town, where his friend rented a flat.

  ‘That’s absolutely fine,’ Rachel replied. In truth, she hadn’t earned the title. A mum was someone who packed lunchboxes and waited at the school gate. ‘Nick and Jane are your Mum and Dad.’

  ‘And Stuart will never be Dad either, even if I do get to meet him properly.’

  ‘That’s also fine,’ Rachel reassured him. ‘I’m going to give you his number and leave it to you to make an arrangement with him if you want. Best I stay out of it, I reckon.’

  Joe dropped his rucksack at his feet and turned to look at her. ‘It is good to see you though.’

  Rachel patted his arm. Keep it light, the voice in her head told her. ‘You too.’

  Joe pointed at the front door of a solid Georgian house, now converted to flats. ‘This is where Charlie lives, so…’

  ‘He’s the one who knows all about the dark web, right?’

  Joe grinned. ‘Well remembered. But I guess it’s your job to remember details and stuff.’

  ‘Maybe we could grab something to eat later?’ she added hastily. ‘But if you have plans with your friends, that’s fine.’

  Her phone rang, an Edinburgh number that she didn’t recognise. ‘I’d better get this…’

  Joe gave her an awkward squeeze and a salute, then turned and pressed one of the doorbells.

  ‘DI Prince, this is Fraser. Fraser Dewar.’

  Rachel’s brain performed a quick search. ‘Oh yes, at the pathology lab.’

  ‘That’s right… only I thought I’d better ring you. I went back to the lab results on the two deaths we discussed, and there’s something… unusual.’

  All of Rachel’s senses tingled. ‘I’m on my way over to you now.’

  * * *

  She found Fraser Dewar in his tiny office in the post-mortem suite. This time he was in cords and a checked shirt rather than scrubs and rubber apron. His plump face broke into a broad smile.

  ‘Lovely to see you again!’ he said, sounding as though he meant it. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  Rachel requested tea, and Fraser disappeared back into the lab, re-emerging with a grimy mug in his hand. She sipped it tentatively, hoping that given its provenance, it hadn’t been in contact with bodily fluids.

  Fraser clasped his hands over his knees with the gleam in his eyes that Rachel had often seen on the faces of people breaking important news.

  ‘So… I went back to the blood and urine samples from van Meijer and Martinez and re-tested them. I did some gas chromatography on the blood samples… and in both of them, I found calcium oxalate crystals in the urine, and abnormal acidosis in the blood.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Rachel, though she had a strong suspicion after attending many post-mortems and inquests during her career.

  ‘Ethylene glycol poisoning.’

  ‘As in… anti-freeze?’

  He nodded. ‘Exactly. That’s where it’s most commonly found anyway. It has a sweet taste, but it’s colourless and odourless, so makes a very effective poison. As a safety measure, most modern anti-freeze is made with propylene glycol, which has an unpleasant taste, but the other kind is still available. Mix that with alcohol – sweet-tasting alcohol particularly – and you won’t know it’s there.’

  ‘Like Southern Comfort.’

  ‘Like Southern Comfort. Exactly. You remember we talked about how neither of the deceased had drunk very much… not enough to cause them to pass out or completely lose their coordination?’

  ‘Yes – you said a blood–alcohol level of less than 0.1.’

  Dewar’s smile was admiring. ‘Well remembered.’

  Rachel gave a small nod of acknowledgement, using it to mask her reaching her right arm back to the desk and ditching the acrid mug of tea among the pile of papers. ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘The thing is, in the early stages of ethylene glycol poisoning, the symptoms are the same as extreme drunkenness. Dizziness, nausea, headache, lack of coordination.’

  ‘And these tests – they’re not done routinely? Only I’m wondering why this wasn’t spotted before.’

  Dewar shook his head. ‘It’s not something we’d normally look for unless there was active suspicion of foul play. And both these deaths were presented to us as death by misadventure. There was no Fatal Accident Inquiry ongoing, otherwise we would undoubtedly have run more blood analysis.’

  Rachel thought back to Caitlyn Anderson’s allegation that on the night she died, Bruno seemed more drugged than drunk

  ‘So is that what killed them? The ethylene glycol?’

  Dewar shook his head. ‘It will eventually be fatal, even after ingesting quite a small amount, but it takes at least twenty-four hours to reach that point. So Emily died from her fall, and Bruno drowned. That hasn’t changed.’

  ‘But…’ Rachel was trying to process this new information. ‘Help me out here – are you saying they both took the ethylene glycol as part of a suicide attempt?’

  Dewar shook his head vigorously. ‘No, that’s exactly the point. Of course people do kill themselves by drinking ethylene glycol; hundreds a year. But there’d be no point in mixing it with alcohol, given it has no taste – you’d drink it down straight and wait until you lost consciousness. In both these cases, the victims have had just enough of the stuff to make them appear drunk, and it’s been hidden in the alcohol. Not a great deal of alcohol, as we’ve already established.’

  Rachel was staring at him. ‘So someone else gave it to them?’

  ‘They had to have done. Because the effects kick in within thirty minutes, and there would be no way that the victims would then have set off to Salisbury Crags or Leith Docks alone. They wouldn’t have been able to get themselves that far. There had to be someone with them.’

  ‘So this someone else didn’t give them the anti-freeze to kill them?’

  Dewar shook his head. ‘That’s why this was so clever. A straightforward overdose of anti-freeze would have been picked up in a hospital, and by our initial post-mortem tests. It could still be a possible suicide, sure, but questions would have been asked about where it came from. So put yourself in the shoes of the perpetrator…’

  Rachel smiled. ‘Hold on; isn’t this bit my job?’

  ‘Go on then.’ Dewar held out a hand to indicate that she had the floor.

  ‘You need these teenagers to be incapacitated so that you can get them to these locations.’ Rachel spoke slowly. ‘So you want them to look and act as though they’re drunk, but they’re in an environment where they’re not allowed to drink… and in Emily van Meijer’s case, she didn’t much like alcohol. So you give them a modest amount of Southern Comfort – port for Bruno – with a slug of ethylene glycol in it. And that way they act like they’ve drunk a whole bottle. They’re pretty much out of it.’

  ‘And presumably could easily be persuaded or pushed into a car.’ Dewar suggested.

  ‘Oh God…’ Rachel tipped her head back and covered her face with her hands. ‘It all makes sense. But the idea of it is…’ She shuddered. ‘It’s too awful to contemplate.’

  Dewar nodded. ‘It is. And it looks like you’ve got a double murder on your hands.’

  Part Three

  Do you believe that evil and tragedy are always planned? You don’t think Fortune has anything to do with it?

  The Ferryman, Amy Neftzger

  Thirty

  On Saturday morning, Rachel allowed herself the luxury of a lie-in.

  She did this with absolute certainty that it would be interrupted. Sure enough, as she climbed back into bed with a cup of tea made using the in-room kettle, her phone rang.

  ‘Prince?’<
br />
  The word came out as a breathy croak, with exhaled smoke round the edges. Morag Sillars.

  ‘DI Sillars,’ said Rachel with a smoothness that belied the fact that she was reclining naked on four plump hotel pillows. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘That wee Latvian tart,’ Sillars rasped. ‘Picked up tricking in Coburg Street last night. She’s in one of our cells, if you want to take another crack at her.’

  ‘Great, thank you.’

  ‘Or maybe you can give yourself a day off, and send your DS,’ she said craftily.

  You’d like that, thought Rachel. Having Mark Brickall all to yourself.

  ‘No it’s fine, I want to be there,’ Rachel had already set down her tea and was struggling into a bathrobe. ‘And I need to talk to you about results of the repeat pathology tests on the two teenagers… But I’ll probably bring DS Brickall too.’

  ‘Aye, well, good.’ Sillars grunted, before cutting the call.

  * * *

  After Rachel had briefed Sillars about Fraser Dewar’s suspicions, and been promised more manpower, she went upstairs to join Brickall in the interview room.

  ‘It’s all kicking off now,’ she murmured to him as she slipped into her seat. ‘Operation Honeycomb is now suspected murder. I’ll fill you in later.’

  ‘Category A,’ said Brickall, rubbing his hands briskly. ‘Now you’re talking.’

  Iveta Kovals was huddled motionless in the corner of the room, a police-cell blanket round her shoulders, covering a skimpy top and mini-skirt that revealed too much blue-white flesh. Once the services of a solicitor had been refused and the interview had been formally started, Brickall wasted no time in playing Kovals the CCTV footage of her outside 21 Grange Loan Terrace with the unidentified man.

  ‘This is you, isn’t it?’ he asserted.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘And this man you’re talking to… what’s his name?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Look, Iveta… the more you help us, the quicker this will be over. You clearly know the guy, so who is he?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Rachel had sat through countless ‘no comment’ interviews in her time, but this was different. Usually the suspect was parroting the phrase on legal advice, or was too bored to engage, or was playing the system in the hope a future jury would not have the confidence to convict. But this was different. Iveta’s eyes flicked constantly around the room, and her body was taut with fear.

  After the interview was ended and police bail had been arranged, Rachel left Brickall to help Sillars organise an upgraded incident room for Operation Honeycomb and followed the Latvian girl out of the building.

  ‘Iveta – wait, please!’

  Iveta stopped in her tracks, arms folded across her chest, shivering in the chilly breeze.

  ‘Look, I know you’re scared to talk. I get it. But we can’t help you – we can’t protect you – if won’t tell us who’s behind these parties. Because you know, don’t you? Some of it, at least.’

  Iveta dropped her chin and stood there, mute.

  ‘Just a name. That’s all we need. Is it Maris’s contact Andrei?’

  Iveta shook her head vigorously, then turned and started walking away.

  Rachel followed her. ‘Here –’ she fished in her pocket for one of her cards – ‘if you change your mind, call my mobile number and we can talk, okay.’

  Iveta still did not speak, but she took the card and thrust it into the back pocket of her tiny denim skirt.

  * * *

  ‘We thought we’d get Chinese,’ Joe said. ‘That okay with you?’

  Rachel was at Charlie’s flat in the New Town, and feeling very honoured to be included in the boys’ Saturday evening plans. The place was a typically chaotic student share, with drying laundry and discarded dishes everywhere, but the flat itself was spacious and airy, with tall sash windows.

  ‘Fine,’ she agreed, pulling out two twenty-pound notes from her purse. ‘As long as you let me pay.’

  Charlie phoned in an order and they sat drinking bottles of beer while they waited for the food to arrive. The boys were eager to learn more about the case (‘Upgraded to a double homicide? Sick!’) and Rachel told them as much as she was allowed. Which was not much.

  ‘Charlie’s studying Informatics,’ Joe said proudly. ‘That’s how he knows all about the dark web.’

  ‘Can you actually get onto it yourself?’ Rachel asked him.

  ‘Sure,’ said Charlie. He was as short and square as Joe was rangy, with black hair worn in an undercut and the beginnings of a hipster beard. ‘We learned all about it on my course. I’ve got a Tor browser installed on my computer.’

  ‘A Tor browser?’

  ‘It has a search function that allows me to browse the dark web completely anonymously.’

  Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘And that’s legal?’

  ‘It’s perfectly legal to look, as long as you don’t do anything illegal when you’re on there. Like buying class A drugs or looking at child porn. I mean, you come across dodgy sites all the time, but I never click on the images. As long as you don’t open them, you’re okay.’

  Their food arrived, and they feasted on crispy Peking duck and chilli prawns, sitting around the coffee table with food on their laps. The boys chatted and joked as if Rachel wasn’t there, which she interpreted as a good thing. Then when the detritus had been bagged up and the dishes slung into the kitchen sink, Charlie sat on the sofa with his laptop with Rachel and Joe on either side of him.

  ‘So is there a lot of child porn on the dark web?’

  Charlie looked sideways at her, as though she’d just asked if water was wet. ‘There are something like one hundred million sexually explicit images of children,’ he told her sternly, ‘and about forty thousand chat rooms dedicated to exchanging child porn.’

  Rachel raised her eyebrows and sat back. ‘Wow. I had no idea.’

  ‘A lot of it is webcam stuff, from countries like the Philippines. And the most extreme content is… well, it’s really sick.’

  ‘And he doesn’t mean in the millennial sense of sick, as in “cool”,’ Joe interjected, fetching himself another beer. ‘He means fucked-up.’

  ‘Yes, I got that,’ said Rachel.

  ‘There are sites offering kids as young as one or two.’ Charlie went on. ‘Sites specialising in torturing children, or deflowering little girls. You imagine the most perverted thing ever, and it’s out there.’

  Charlie pulled up the browser and there it was, with a search box function, just like any other.

  ‘It looks kind of innocuous,’ Rachel observed.

  Charlie nodded. ‘It works in exactly the same way as a normal browser, but once it’s accepted the connection it then bounces the signal around the world through a chain of encrypted connections, so no one can tell who the original user is, or where they’re located.’

  ‘And how do people pay for the child porn? Do they use credit cards?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Charlie said. ‘What’s happening more and more is that it’s becoming a barter system – paedophiles have to trade content of their own to access other people’s content. That cuts out any potential entrapment, because if an undercover cop offered content for barter, he would be committing a crime himself.’

  Rachel though about this for a moment. ‘So if you had a video of a girl being raped but your interest was little boys, you could use the video to access stuff you were interested in. Without money changing hands.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Charlie grinned at Joe. ‘She’s clever, your mum.’

  Rachel felt herself turn pink with pleasure, not at the compliment but at the acknowledgement of her status as ‘Joe’s mum’. ‘Can we take a look?’ she asked hurriedly.

  ‘What do you want me to search for?’

  Rachel considered this. ‘Try combining “Edinburgh festival” and “party”.’

  Charlie typed the words into the search box and started scrolling through page
s of content, most of it in baffling beta format.

  ‘Here’s something… on this forum called “Edinburgh Extra”… “Ed Festival: staff wanted to help recruit and entertain YFs at exclusive gatherings catering to Minor-Attracted Adults. Fresh fruit included.”’

  ‘YFs?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Young Friends. It’s code for abuse victims.’

  ‘And “Minor-Attracted”…’

  ‘Code for paedophile.’

  ‘And why the hell is fresh fruit included?’

  Charlie grimaced. ‘That means some of them are guaranteed virgins.’

  Rachel winced, re-reading the ad. ‘Hold on, this could be…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She was wondering if this was the ad that Maris and Iveta had seen when they were hired to distribute the flyers. ‘Is there any way you can tell who posted this?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only if you have a very sophisticated forensic set-up, like the FBI or something.’

  ‘Okay, well… this was very interesting. Thanks Charlie.’

  ‘If you like I can bookmark this site and check back on it for you. See if there’s any more activity.’

  ‘Only if you have time: your studies need to be your priority.’

  ‘Spoken like a parent. Classic.’

  Joe’s words were uttered instinctively, without guile, and for the second time that evening Rachel felt the warm glow of acceptance.