Ghost in the Machine (Scott Cullen)

by Ed James

  "Okay, I get that."

  "I'm just glad that somebody does, ken?" said Kidd.

  "So, this IP address you got off the audit record, then."

  "Every update to Martin Webb uses the same IP address, which you'd kind of expect," said Kidd. "Some Internet Service Providers cycle them around live users, but this seems to be a stable IP that's been used over time. So I traced the IP address, tried to find out who was using it."

  "And?"

  "It's a dummy IP address," said Kidd.

  "Eh?"

  "Aye, exactly," said Kidd in a slow drawl. "A dummy IP address has been logging changes to the Schoolbook database. Doesnae make sense, ken? That's what that call was about. I was speaking to a mate who works for a private security firm. I tried some boys in the Met and in Strathclyde, but they've just not got the capacity to deal with it, ken? So we've got some private firms we can bring in. Turnbull has used them in the past on other cases. Just need to get approval from him and Bain."

  "Aye, well, good luck with that," said Cullen, in an undertone. "So what will they give us?"

  "We don't know if it's access using a dummy IP or some sort of masking or what. Hopefully these guys can come in and audit the database and work out how it's happening."

  "Have you spoken to Schoolbook about it?"

  Kidd laughed. "Aye. They were useless. We should be able to charge them for the cost of having to get these boys in. Lazy bastards."

  "Are you not getting any help from them?" asked Cullen.

  "This Duncan guy is doing my head in. He's the most obstructive twat I've ever met."

  Kidd obviously hadn't met Campbell McLintock, thought Cullen. "In what way?"

  "There's always stuff missing, things that the extracts should have included but don't."

  "And do you get them in the end?" asked Cullen.

  "Aye, but it's a pain in the arse and it's bloody slow."

  "Do you think it's malicious?"

  Kidd shrugged. "That or incompetence."

  "Do you want me to give him another call?" asked Cullen. "I could call his boss."

  Kidd played with his ponytail. "Already been down that road, ken? Got nowhere fast."

  Cullen folded his arms and leaned back slightly on the desk. "Is there anything else that could help?" he asked.

  "The laptop that Caroline or Debi used to access Schoolbook would be good," said Kidd. "If they've been chatting, then there might be some logs created on their PCs that could be useful. That's my strength, ken, forensic analysis of computers and that, not data mining like I'm having to do here."

  Cullen nodded. "I'll see what I can dig up."

  The Scene of Crime unit was based on the ground floor of Leith Walk station. The floor was split in two by a long corridor through the length of the building: the community policing section on the side fronting Leith Walk was a mixture of windowed rooms for victims and enclosed interview rooms for suspects; the Scene of Crime team occupied the other half, facing into the lane on the rear of the station.

  Due to the nature of the work, the SOC section was protected by a locked security door. Cullen had to wait almost a minute before being let in by a thin, weasely man. "Hey, Jimmy," he shouted across to a colleague. "It's the boaker!"

  The colleague looked up; the same goateed SOCO who had been examining the bathroom in the Jackson Hotel when Cullen had projectile vomited into the pan. James Anderson. He laughed at Cullen as he approached.

  "Puked all over any other crime scenes lately?"

  Cullen smiled, trying to humour him. "Not yet, anyway."

  "Aye well, lucky for you, you didnae bugger up my search too badly."

  "I take it there was nothing?" asked Cullen. He'd only been fed scraps by Bain, didn't know the full results of the investigation.

  "Clean as a bloody whistle."

  Cullen rubbed his neck. "Did you do Caroline's flat as well?"

  "Aye, fat lot of good that was," said Anderson. "Got some of your prints from the bedroom. What were you up to?"

  "Having a look around," said Cullen.

  "Aye, having a good look in her knicker drawer, you dirty bastard."

  "I was checking to see if she'd done a runner." Cullen's face had reddened. "Look, can we not get into this? I'm just here to take a look at her laptop."

  Anderson frowned. "Laptop?"

  "Aye, a MacBook. It was in the bedroom."

  Anderson picked up a pile of paper from his desk, leafed through. "No laptop, pal."

  "There was a laptop in her flat, on the bed."

  Anderson looked up. "Nope, no laptop."

  "I saw it," said Cullen. "Are you sure it's not listed?"

  "If there was one, it would have been upstairs with Dave Watson or Charlie Kidd, one of those boys. They deal with all the computers we get in."

  "Could someone have nicked it?" asked Cullen.

  "It was just me and Dave that went round. I did the bedroom."

  "And you didn't nick it?"

  Anderson scowled at Cullen. "No, I didn't," he said slowly.

  Anderson put the papers down on the table. The top sheet looked like an inventory of Caroline's flat. Cullen picked up the list, scanned through it as Anderson huffed.

  "There's a BT Wi-Fi box on this," said Cullen, "don't you think that's enough of a clue that there would be a laptop there?"

  Anderson stared at him for a few seconds then grabbed the sheet off him.

  "Aw, shite."

  "Big wow," said Bain.

  Cullen was showing him the printout. They were at the meeting table in the Incident Room, McNeill sitting opposite Cullen. "Why is he stealing laptops?" he asked.

  "I don't bloody know, do I?" said Bain. "Maybe he's a thief."

  "Caroline's laptop was on her bed when I went round there on Friday," said Cullen. "Someone's been in the flat between me going round there and Caroline's body being found."

  "You serious?" asked Bain.

  McNeill looked up.

  "Yes. I saw that laptop with my own eyes. A MacBook. Not a particularly new one, mind. It's not on the SOC manifest. I checked Debi's manifest too, hers is gone as well."

  "For Christ sake."

  Just then, DCI Turnbull appeared, making a beeline for Bain. "Here's trouble," muttered Bain, moving over to his own desk.

  McNeill wheeled her chair over to Cullen's desk.

  Cullen flicked through his notebook. "I looked at Caroline's laptop just after 12.30pm on Friday." He went to the latest page. "I asked the SOCOs, they got to her flat at half eleven on Saturday morning."

  "So there's a twenty-three hour window where someone got into Caroline's flat and stole her laptop," she said. "It's got to be the killer."

  "The other thing the SOCOs told me," said Cullen, "Caroline's keys were missing from her possessions at the hotel."

  "So we can link the two, then," she said. "He took her keys to get into the flat, so no break-in. Why did he take her laptop?"

  "Well," said Cullen, "the reason I found out that the laptops were missing, was that Charlie Kidd reckoned he might be able to track the other user from the chats if he had them." McNeill looked mystified. "He found an IP address for Martin Webb, but it was fake. He reckoned there might be some useful data on Caroline's or Debi's laptops from when they'd chatted with Martin Webb. That's why I was trying to get one or other back from the SOCOs."

  "So he had the same thoughts and he's covering his tracks?"

  "Aye. It's another dead end."

  He stroked the back of his neck, thinking.

  "There might be another way," he eventually said, looking at her. "They could have been chatting from their work computers."

  She nodded. "Good idea. I'll get Charlie or Dave on to it. We'll need a RIPSA."

  She returned to her machine and found the form. They were now experts at filling in the forms and it took them only a couple of minutes before they printed it out.

  "Let's see if we can get it approved," said McNeill.

  They
looked over at Bain and Turnbull. Bain's body language was defensive.

  "Right, Jim, I'll get someone onto that," said Bain, loud enough for their benefit.

  "Please do, Brian," said Turnbull, "I'm sure there are synergies we can leverage here."

  Turnbull nodded at them and walked off at pace.

  "Leveraging bloody synergies," muttered Bain. He looked up at Cullen and McNeill. "Right, where were we?" he asked, getting to his feet.

  McNeill explained the situation.

  "Right, Butch, I want you and a few big ugly bastards in uniforms going round the doors in Caroline's street, see if anybody saw anything when he was swiping her laptop. I'll get Miller to do the usual checks for stolen goods and go through some CCTV."

  "We've got another lead," said McNeill, "Kidd can do some searches on the victims' work PCs."

  "Get him on it," he said.

  She handed him the RIPSA form. "Sign this."

  Bain didn't even look at the content. He just scrawled his signature on the form.

  "Right, Sundance," he said as he handed the form back to McNeill, "what's happened to this stem cell search?"

  "Cell site," corrected Cullen. "Got the results back. The call was made from the area around where the body turned up. It was just before she left the bar in the hotel and went to the room."

  "Like I said earlier, big wow," spat Bain. "Do you know how much this has cost?"

  Cullen shrugged. "No idea."

  "Three fuckin' grand," said Bain.

  "You know how much the PF loves a clear timeline," said McNeill.

  Bain took a kick at the bin beside him, sending it flying. "Don't fuckin' talk to me like that," he shouted. "For Christ sake. Cullen's just spunked a few grand on a waste of fuckin' time here."

  "If you'd let us get on with our jobs, we might-"

  Bain's glare stopped her in her tracks. "Sergeant," he hissed. "You do as I say on this case, all right? If I say wash my car, you wash my bloody car, okay?"

  McNeill's head bowed.

  "I want you to head over to Smith's Place," said Bain, "get those officers going round doors. I want to find out how he got this laptop."

  "Fine," she muttered.

  "What about me?" asked Cullen.

  "Well, Sundance, seeing as how you did such a good job in finding Caroline Adamson before she was killed, I've got another missing person for you to look into."

  twenty-six

  Cullen's Golf crawled towards the traffic lights in Portobello, the ageing engine rattling slightly. All the squad cars were out, presumably on this particular case, so he'd had to take his own. Conveniently, he had left it in the station car park before the previous night's drinking.

  He was sure Bain had assigned this investigation to him out of spite. Cullen honestly thought that he had been doing his best, by the book, finding leads left, right and centre, and yet he was being sidelined. Shunting him out to Musselburgh sent the message that he wasn't even fit to phone through Caroline Adamson's friends list any more.

  The City Council had finally done something about the King's Road roundabout, but he wasn't sure that a series of badly timed traffic lights had improved the situation any. It certainly wasn't helping him get any closer to Musselburgh. Eventually, the lights changed long enough to let him through.

  He headed along Harry Lauder Road, the Portobello bypass that only very rarely eliminated congestion on the High Street. He powered past the train yards and the low-rent Industrial units. He struck lucky at the other end, and managed to get on to the A1 with only a single cycle of the new lights. He pulled off Old Craighall and headed into Musselburgh from the South - heading from the Northwest would have been a nightmare of stop-start.

  The address was near the railway station, to the rear of the 'Honest Toun', across from the new Queen Margaret's University campus. He drove down streets of post-war terraces. followed by more modern developments, until he came eventually to the train station and turned into a modern brick built estate. He found the house by the panda car parked outside.

  A stern-faced female PC answered the door.

  "DC Cullen," he said, showing his warrant card.

  "PC Campbell," she replied.

  "I've been asked to take over the case for CID," he said. "Can you bring me up to speed?"

  "We got the call frae the station," she said. Her accent was local, East Lothian's bastardisation of the Edinburgh dialect, more "kens" and a harsher tone. "The lassie's a Gail McBride - her husband called in to report her missing, was supposed to be back last night, just out for a few drinks with her pal up the town."

  "And when did he call it in?"

  "Couple of hours ago," replied Campbell.

  "And she's been missing since last night?"

  "Aye."

  "MisPer report filed?" asked Cullen.

  "Aye." She handed him a copy. The photo was good; she was an intense-looking redhead, reasonably attractive. He flicked through the report. It didn't add much to what she'd just told him and Bain's briefing.

  "Any other officers here?"

  "Just Jimmy McKay," she said. "He's making some tea the now, if you want some."

  "I'm fine."

  "They've not wasted much time in getting CID in," she muttered. "Must be that Caroline Adamson case that's all over the papers."

  "And Debi Curtis."

  "Are they linked?" she asked.

  "Definitely the same killer." He nodded slowly, then exhaled. "Let's go inside."

  She led through to the living room. The house was decorated in vibrant colours, strong yellows, oranges, lime greens. The sitting room was a light purple; a pair of orange settees sat to either side of a large LCD TV, mounted on the wall.

  "Mr McBride," said Campbell in a patronising tone. "This is DC Cullen from CID. He'll help us search for your wife."

  Simon McBride sat on one of the sofas, his eyes red. He was a big man, his head shaved, ginger stubble showing through. He was sharply dressed.

  Cullen smiled politely as he sat down. "Mr McBride, do you have any idea where your wife might have gone?" he asked.

  McBride just shrugged.

  "Could she maybe have gone to her parents, or visited any friends?"

  McBride shrugged again. "Dinnae think so."

  "Who have you tried contacting?" asked Cullen.

  "Well, her parents are both deid, her brother's in London, but he hasnae heard frae her in months, ken?"

  "Any friends?"

  "Not really, no," said McBride. "Just Sian, I suppose. That's who Gail was meeting last night. They often go out on a Friday, usually to one of the pubs in town, but Sian couldnae make it this week, so they went out last night instead."

  "By town, do you mean Edinburgh or Musselburgh?"

  "Edinburgh."

  "Okay," said Cullen, jotting it all down. "What's Sian's surname?"

  "Saunders," said McBride. "They work thegither. As I say, they were going out in town. They work out at the Gyle, so it's halfway home, they just get off the train at the Waverley. She was in work yesterday on over-time, supposed to be off the day."

  "So what time did they arrange to meet?" asked Cullen.

  "I cannae mind, think it was the back of six."

  "And what time did you start to get concerned?"

  "I don't know, really," he said. "I was watching the game last night, had a couple of cans. When I turned the telly off, it was about half ten, so I just went to bed."

  "Does your wife often come back after you've gone to bed?" asked Cullen.

  McBride looked away. "She does, aye."

  "So it was only this morning that you first noticed that she hadn't come home?"

  McBride shrugged again. "Aye. About seven. I started calling her mates fae work, starting with Sian."

  "Have any of her clothes gone?" asked Cullen.

  "Not that I've noticed, no."

  "So what did Sian say happened?"

  "She said they got the train back thegither. Sian stays in the Pan
s, so she saw her off the train at Musselburgh."

  "And that's the last she saw of her?" asked Cullen.

  "Aye. I spoke to her this morning. She hadnae seen Gail on the train to work, so she was a bit worried, ken? She's managed to swing a half day, see if she could help me find Gail."

  Cullen jotted a few more notes. "How have you tried contacting your wife?" he asked.

  "I sent her a text," he said with a frown.

  "A text?" spat Cullen. "Did you not try to phone her?"

  "Well, aye, efter." McBride looked away. "No answer, eh?"

  Jesus Christ, thought Cullen; this guy is a tube. "So did you go out to look for your wife?"

  "Well, I had a wee look out on the street, ken, but I didn't want to venture too far, in case she came back."

  Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose. "So you haven't bothered to look for her?"

  A tear appeared on McBride's cheek. "Things haven't been that great between us, eh? She... She might have left us."

  "Okay," said Cullen. "Do you have an address for Sian Saunders?"

  Sian Saunders lived in part of an ex-Council block just off the top road in Prestonpans. It was a short walk to the railway station, two stops down the line from Musselburgh. Cullen had parked in the station car park and walked over.

  Cullen rang the buzzer and waited.

  "Hello?" The voice through the intercom system was heavily distorted.

  "Ms Saunders? It's DC Cullen of Lothian and Borders police. Can you let me in?"

  The door clunked open. The dark hallway was painted red on the lower half, then cream above; Cullen could never understand why they did that. As he passed one of the flats on the ground floor, Cullen was subjected to a horrific stench - a potent mix of body odour, cigarettes and animals, most probably cats. In West Lothian he'd become an expert on all forms of animal waste, seeing how often it was smeared on letterboxes. He went up the stairs, passing a large window, and was astonished by the change. There were plants on the balcony, and the walls had been painted a fresh cream shade. Cullen figured that the downstairs flats were probably still council-owned, but the upstairs were private.