by David Carter
‘Are you busy, Jen?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Fancy a trawl through the Mirror man’s phone.’
‘Sure, glad to,’ and Jenny came over to Karen’s desk and collected the latest model mobile. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘Anything at all that links him with Ellie Wright, or better still, Belinda Cooper, or anything that looks weird, calls and messages to women, and dating sites, and anything that looks like financing or organising cyber crime.’
‘Cyber crime?’
‘Yeah, the local Uni’s have all been hit, coming from Eastern Europe, played havoc with their systems, apparently, costs them a load of money in downtime and stuff.’
‘Okey-doke,’ and she took the phone away.
Karen plugged in the laptop and booted it up. The tech guys had set it up so that it overrode any existing passwords. Well done them. All the stuff about the number 5 was now redundant.
Walter came back in the office and walked past her and grunted.
‘Bel’s laptop?’
‘Sure is.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Just opened it now.’
‘Crack on, I’m going to have a word with the boss,’ and he ambled across the office and tapped on Mrs West’s open door.
Karen went straight to the emails. Sure, people texted a lot, but for the real meaty stuff, that was still to be found in the emails every time. Love letters, juicy gossip, hopes and aspirations, secrets and lies, diaries, stuff like that, that’s where you’d find it.
And they were all there too, going back over the previous three years. Firstly, the semi-gay Marcus Royce, for that was his name, and his wacky sense of humour and bawdy jokes, some of which Karen understood, and some she didn’t, moving on as their relationship developed, until the final phase when Bel finished with him after his gay revelations, and his subsequent pleadings to be given another chance, all to no avail. Begging rarely worked, didn’t everyone know that?
Ronny Speight, writing masculine filth, something he clearly thought exciting, and imagined that she would too, though it was obvious to Karen’s eye that it made Belinda most uncomfortable, as she tried to gently steer him away from such things, though he apparently didn’t see the advice tactfully written between Bel’s lines, and in the end he paid for it. And there was something else there too that caught her eye, within Ronny’s increasingly furious writings, as their relationship crashed and burned. How could it not? One Saturday night/Sunday morning at 1.28am precisely he’d written: “I could strangle you!” Maybe something there. She printed it off and circled it in red ink and set it on Walter’s desk.
And then Iain Donaldson followed, and his gentler more cerebral caring line, and maybe that came as something of a relief after Ronny’s queer pitch and violent tongue, though by the cringe, he could come across as an awful bore, could our Iain, writing overlong emails about how he’d like to go to Chile and explore the Atacama Desert, to further his knowledge of South American geography, so he said, and would she like to go along with him on the trip of a lifetime? Something she evidently did not wish to do.
And somewhere around then she began seeing Gareth Williams at the same time, and somehow Iain found out, or maybe she told Iain, or left some hints around that he was meant to find, and Iain promptly mounted his high horse and issued her with an ultimatum: It’s him or me, never a good move, as Karen’s former boyfriend Rodney once found out, and of course Belinda chose to be with him, Gareth, much to Iain’s chagrin.
And onto and into Gareth’s feisty stuff, kind of somewhere in between Iain and Ronny, definitely more exciting than Iain’s truly dull style, but not as bad as Ronny’s over the top rantings that some men seem to imagine attracts women. There were even some attachments there, on Ronny’s emails, photo attachments for God’s sake of close-ups of excited male body parts, presumably big Ron’s, as he liked to refer to himself, though he wasn’t immediately identifiable, or that big. Karen laughed aloud. No one noticed. Did men really think that such things turned women on enough to win them over? It didn’t attract Karen, not one tiny bit, and by the look of Bel’s replies it hadn’t worked on her either.
But back to Gareth, and his gentler more supporting style, but all the while including little digs along the lines of how she was far better off with him than with that loser, Iain, or as he described him, the Jogman - geography teacher, and daily jogger to boot. The Jogman could jog off into the sunset, and eventually he was forced to do precisely that. And still it came. Details of frequent secret weekends away they’d enjoyed together, Gareth and Bel, in five star hotels, in Hereford, Lytham, Buxton, Ludlow, and others too, quite a list, and exciting as well, judging by the detailed descriptions written after the events, equally enjoyed by Bel and Gareth alike, if the emails were to be believed, and then of course the electronic letters took a serious downward turn, when he finally admitted that he had been married all along, though in his words: It shouldn’t make any difference to us, we’re strong, for what we have is so very special. Yeah, right. Yuck!
Karen tut-tutted aloud, and thought about bouffant man. He’s a solicitor for Christ’s sake, and yet clearly he didn’t understand a thing about Belinda Cooper, and how she ticked, and how she felt, and what she really wanted and needed and desired.
Karen felt truly sorry for Belinda. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t just Iain Donaldson who was a loser here, or Ronny Speight, they all were. The whole damned lot of them. But someone had murdered her, poor Bel, that was certain, but who had committed the filthy crime? And was the evidence, the pointer to the culprit, hidden amongst all these hundreds of pages, and thousands of words, that displayed themselves before Karen’s sharp blue eyes.
There was something vaguely wicked about reading other people’s emails, even if that person was dead, even if you had the full authority of the British government, and hence the British people, to do so. It was a little like taking a quick sneak at someone else’s diary. Karen did that once, way back when, back at school, when she and her best friend, Kayleigh Mortimer, as thirteen-year-olds, had first discovered boys.
Karen knew that Kayleigh and herself had both taken a liking to the clean cut and white shirted Colin Hart, and she knew that Kayleigh kept a vivid diary, recounting all her hopes and dreams and fears, and no doubt juicy titbits about Colin too, and Karen so wanted to see it and read it, and when Kayleigh was away for a matter of minutes, she had weakened and taken a quick peek.
Kayleigh came back and saw Karen’s eye’s rushing over the pages in that old red diary and she ran up and snatched it back and yelled, calling her an “Utter Shit!” And that was undeniably fair comment in the circumstances. Karen apologised countless times after that, but the damage had been done, and Kayleigh never spoke a civil word to Karen ever again. Karen never told a soul about that sorry episode, and banished the event from her mind.
She turned her thoughts back to Belinda and whispered an apology for going through Bel’s most private communications, emails and texts and messages that were never meant for anyone else but Bel and the receiver, or Bel and the sender, including a huge amount of detail of Belinda Cooper’s intimate life, and Karen hoped and prayed that Belinda wouldn’t appear at that very moment and snatch back her laptop and scream: “You Utter Shit!” That wasn’t going to happen of course, or at least if it ever did, it could only be in Karen’s darkest dreams.
There were hundreds of pages in the directory of emails, as she yawned and turned over the page on the screen. Another huge list of messages and letters, another full day’s work, but a fresh email address immediately hit her in the eye. It was not one she had seen there before. She shivered, and a cold tingle crept up her spine and across her shoulders. Her heart raced, and she felt sudden sweat in her armpits. She blinked and looked at it hard, her racing brain ordering her eyes to zoom in on the handle. No, she wasn’t mistaken; she’d read it correctly.
There it was, black letters on a beige background.
Dozens and dozens, nay hundreds of times.
[email protected].
[email protected] just happened to be David Baker’s unforgettable, if faintly ridiculous, email address.
‘Fuck,’ she said, breathing out hard, while rushing to open the first communiqué.
‘Did you say something, sarge?’ asked Nicky, glancing across the office, never one to waste an opportunity to check out his sexy sergeant.
‘Nothing, Nicky, get on with your work.’
After knocking, Walter had been invited into Mrs West’s office. She was correcting some kind of long report, pen poised, plenty of crossings out and suggestions in red ink, testament to her zealousness in all things administrative.
‘Sit down, my man. What is it?’
Walter collapsed in the visitor’s chair and blew out hard.
She took off her pink specs and adopted a strangely sympathetic face and said, ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were getting stuck.’
‘Not stuck exactly, ma’am.’
‘What then?’
Walter sighed. ‘We have yet another suspect ma’am, and just to complicate matters, this time it’s a woman.’
‘Well that is different. Is she capable of breaking Belinda Cooper’s neck?’
‘She is, ma’am. Karen knows her. She shares the same gym. She goes every day. Weights apparently, is her forte. Very strong, so Karen says.’
‘And she’s known to us?’
Walter nodded.
‘When I was on holiday she was done for GBH and affray. Got off lightly too.’
‘I remember. Andrea somebody, Donohue, or something.’
‘Dennehey.’
‘That’s the one. Where does she fit into this?’
‘She’s Iain Donaldson’s fiancé, can you believe?’
‘So she’d have some kind of twisted motive, coming to the moral aid and defence of her spurned partner, etcetera.’
‘Something like that, though I am not sure it stacks up.’
‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘Not yet, but she’s got an alibi.’
‘Don’t tell me, she was with Iain, and he was with her, so they think they are both off the hook.’
‘That’s about the size of it, ma’am, in fact that’s what bugs me most about this whole case. If you take out mother’s and lover’s alibis I don’t think any of them are really in the clear.’
‘So what’s the roll call now?’
‘Nine, maybe ten.’
‘Namely?’
‘Speight, Gareth Williams, the gay Marcus, the Mirror man Rekatic, Iain, and now Andrea, Flanagan, Nesbitt, and Crocker. And the tenth possible is a sighting of a drug dealing guy who also fits the profile of the kind of man Belinda was attracted to.’
‘You can forget Flanagan, I trust in tags.’
‘Hector and Darren think....’
‘I don’t care what they think. Tags work.’
Walter nodded and said, ‘We know that Speight, Williams and Iain Donaldson have all been in Bel’s house, and in Bel’s bedroom, so any DNA we find there can immediately be explained away. What bugs me is that all these guys, even the unidentified drug dealer, vaguely look alike, six foot or above, slim and fit, (how annoying!) dark hair and eyes, and smart, I’ve never known anything quite like it.’
‘What about the missing fifth lover? Any progress there?’
‘Not yet, ma’am. It could of course be that drug dealer. We are into Bel’s tech now, Karen’s going through her laptop as we speak.’
‘That’s good. That’s where the answers usually lie.’
Walter nodded and sniffed and wished he hadn’t, and said, ‘I hope so. We need a break.’
‘So the prime suspect is?’
Walter gave her a quizzical look and his forehead creased.
‘At this moment it’s simply throw a bunch of balls in the air.’
‘Wish I hadn’t asked. Go and see this Andrea woman. Find out if she ever met Bel. You might get lucky there.’
‘Pencilled in for the morning.’
Mrs West nodded and said, ‘Good. I am getting a bit of flak on this case.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know how it is, Walter, if the case isn’t solved within three days flak begins to fall, and the longer it goes, the heavier the flak.’
Walter bobbed his head and said, ‘And the trail can go cold.’
‘Too true. Are you confident the killer is one of the nine.’
‘As confident as I can be.’
‘You know the drill, Mr D, keep asking them questions, until one of them trips themselves up. We all know they will, sooner or later.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Was Eleanor Wright murdered?’
‘I think so ma’am. Just can’t prove it, yet.’
‘If she was, I’d bet my new caravan on there being one killer here and not two.’
‘I’m with you on that, ma’am.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Not right now, and thanks.’
‘No problem, Walter, you know my door is always open.’
Karen now knew that David Baker was Belinda Cooper’s fifth lover, and she also knew that it put her in a very difficult situation. If she revealed that fact to Walter and the team, she would immediately be removed totally from the enquiry for being personally involved, and that was the last thing she wanted. She also knew that he was taking her out to dinner that very night to some swanky place.
She hated not being totally straight with Walter about anything, but surely it was better to have her there at the centre of things, pushing the inquiry forward, rather than have her totally excluded, especially as she was as close to David Baker as anyone currently alive, to the best of her knowledge.
There was another small matter too. If it came out later that she deliberately kept information to herself she could be for the high jump, and that spelt big danger, yet sooner or later that info would come to the fore, nothing was more certain, so the best thing she could do, for now at least, was delay it for a day or two, and see what David had to say for himself.
And there was yet another thing.
To her knowledge, David Baker didn’t have an alibi for Belinda Cooper’s TOD. Could he possibly be Belinda’s killer, and maybe Ellie’s killer too? She couldn’t yet prove he wasn’t, and that was a thought to make her think long and hard about being alone with the guy, but right there, that was the thing she wanted most, to be alone with him, in order to find out.
She was reading more of his old lovey-dovey emails to Bel, and that was a strange thing too. Seeing the evidence before her eyes of how her potential partner-to-be had wooed and won a slightly older woman, a pretty lady with a succession of tall and dark lovers, just like David. It was unsettling, to say the least.
The one thing that Karen took comfort from was that Bel and David had stopped going out together a while before she had met him online. That was something. Maybe Karen got him on the rebound, she imagined, and that was another thing that was odd. They just seemed to stop, the emails between the pair of them, and their meetings, just came to an abrupt end, with no hint of a fall out or the strife to come, like an airliner suddenly blown out of the sky, no time even for a mayday call, no time for anything, just total silence, a complete break, and not even a black box to look for to garner any clues.
She’d have to ask him about that, but of course she couldn’t outright. She’d have to be clever and canny, more clever and cannier than she had ever been before, and that was going to be challenging and tricky. Her train of thought was interrupted by Walter’s voice booming across the room. She hadn’t even noticed he’d come back.
‘Well that’s a bloody thing, isn’t it!’
‘What?’ said Karen, turning to look at him.
‘This!’ he said, waving Karen’s printout, and the red-circled words. ‘I could strangle you! I could strangle you! If that’s not a threat to murder someon
e, I don’t know what is.’
Karen brought him back to earth.
‘People always say things like that, Guv, as you well know. I could kill you. All the time, and she wasn’t strangled either. She had her neck broken.’
‘Yes, they might say that in the heat of the moment, but they don’t write it down in bloody black and white, not like he has.’
Maybe Walter had a point there.
Darren and Hector came in, grinning and playing about, as they so often did.
‘Well?’ said Walter. ‘How did you get on?’
‘The drug dealer’s name is Marty,’ said Gibbons.
‘Is that all you’ve got? Marty what?’
‘No one seems to know any more.’
‘He must have used a surname to someone sometime, maybe used a credit card to pay for a meal, or something.’
‘That’s one thing drug dealers never do,’ said Gibbons. ‘It’s cash only with that crew, always cash.’
He had a point there, and Walter knew it. The money laundering laws and rules and regs and systems had been tightened hard and were working pretty well. Drug dealers always had too much cash and nowhere to spend it, and would constantly face the major problem of working it back legally into the system. Of course he would have bought all meals with cash. Went without saying, drip, drip, drip it away. There was no doubt about that.
‘You’re right, Darren, thank you for reminding me. How did you get on with Flanagan?’
‘The guy’s taken the day off, so he was at home, and get this, he is something of a computer whiz, even liked to brag about it, until he saw it was something we were taking an interest in.’
‘A computer expert, eh? That’s convenient.’
‘He sure is. But he would not let us see his computer.’
‘What do you think? Can he somehow bypass the tag?’
‘I can’t see it myself, but Hector is convinced that’s what he is doing.’
