by Jack Probyn
Rebecca shook her head. ‘Not really. I think she was a member of Match.com but she never openly told me about any of it. She was quite private like that.’
‘So you can’t think of anyone that would want to hurt her?’
‘Sorry. No. Jessica was a loving, caring person. The only person she ever hurt in her life was herself – she was renowned for putting other people first. I suppose that’s why she became a nurse.’
Jake slid the folder off the desk, placed it under his arm and said, ‘Interview terminated at 11:07.’ He switched off the video recording and then explained to her what would happen next. ‘You’ve been a great help, Rebecca. Thank you. Someone will be through shortly to escort you out, and these are my contact details if you remember anything else.’
Jake slid a business card across the desk, got up and moved to the door. As he pulled it open, one final thought occurred to him.
‘Oh, one last thing – the coffee shop. Do you know which one she’s talking about?’
‘The same one she always goes to. Alinka’s. On the edge of Tomlin’s Grove.’
CHAPTER 25
ARTICLE
Jake returned to his desk filled with excitement and optimism. He was one step closer to finding the killer. He had a clue. He had a lead. And he had a chance to prove to the rest of the team that he was capable of carrying out the investigation while they weren’t there. He unlocked his computer and logged in. As he was about to research the coffee shop on the edge of Tomlin’s Grove, a notification appeared on his phone. It was from the BBC News app. He tapped the notification and loaded the article.
It was about Danny and Michael Cipriano. Their faces – images taken from their mugshots when they were arrested – were plastered at the top of the page.
Career criminals Danny and Michael Cipriano, formerly known as leading members of the organised crime group The Crimsons, are being released from jail where they were previously held on remand. The brothers were originally charged with manslaughter, several counts of armed robbery, possession of firearms and murder. After much deliberation, the Crown Prosecution Service are expected to offer no evidence at their forthcoming plea and case management hearing this Friday, which would mean they will be released.
Jake’s body turned cold. It was official. They were getting out. Friday. Two days away. That meant he had little time to act, little time to do anything. And what made it worse was that it was now headline news. But why? Why had it taken so long for the news to report it given that they’d been following the trial from the beginning? It was one of the biggest cases the country had ever seen, and they were only reporting it now. It didn’t make sense. He checked the author’s name – Tanya Smile – and made a mental note of it for future reference. He would have to follow up with her soon.
Before he was able to dwell on it any further, Liam, Drew and Garrison returned from Jessica Mann’s crime scene. Drew opened the door so hard that it bounced off the adjacent wall. The sound of continuous typing and mouse-clicking stopped abruptly.
Liam pointed at Jake and called from across the room. ‘Tanner – debriefing room. Pronto.’
The three men turned and wandered into the debriefing room in the far corner of the office. Jake rushed in behind them, grabbing a pen and paper before he went. There was something serious and worrying in Liam’s voice. And his suspicions were confirmed as he sat down. He was greeted with silence and muted stares. Jake’s mind raced with paralysing and nauseating thoughts. What had he done? Had they found out about his interaction with Danika regarding The Crimsons? Was there a conflict of interest? Were they going to remove him from the case?
The door shut, and Liam walked into the centre of the room. His face was placid, and, in his arms, he carried a laptop. He set it down on an empty table and opened it up. A few moments later, he spun it round and displayed the screen to Jake and the team.
‘We’re up shit creek here, guys. And I don’t see any of us with a fucking paddle.’
On the screen was a news article from the BBC. A thumbnail of a video was at the top of the page, and Liam was in the shot. Jake squinted to read the article.
‘Three dead in suspicious Stratford murders,’ Jake repeated, leaning forward.
Liam scrolled down the page.
Jake peered at the monitor. ‘Three bodies have turned up dead in the East London area of Stratford. The police are treating the murders as connected. They send out their thoughts and condolences to the families of those affected and are doing everything in their power to catch the individual – or individuals – responsible. The senior investigating officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Liam Greene, said, “At this moment in time, we are no closer to finding the person responsible for this attack, and it does not look likely we will be able to either. Perhaps we’ll have to wait… until another arrives.” The message here is clear: can we trust the police to keep us safe? Or will we have to do it all ourselves?’
A deafening silence echoed around the room. Fortunately, Drew broke it by swearing and giving the computer screen the middle finger.
‘Exactly,’ Liam retorted, slamming the laptop shut. ‘No paddle. And things are only going to get worse if we don’t do anything about it. We’ve got pressure coming in from all sides, guys. And it won’t be long until the Assistant Commissioner’s filling the boat from the inside. If we let too much water get in, we’ll sink.’
Jake raised his hand and spoke before anyone gave him the opportunity. ‘Sorry, guv. I don’t mean to play Devil’s Advocate here, but why did you tell the press that we’re nowhere near finding the person and that we’re going to have to wait until another dead body comes up?’
Liam placed his hands on his hips, sighed and looked to the floor. ‘You’ve still got a lot to learn, Jake. You can’t believe everything you read in the papers. They took those words from other responses I had and put them like that to make us look bad. They’re a bunch of fucking wolves, just looking for the next pay check.’
‘Surprising from the BBC, that,’ Garrison added.
Liam hesitated before responding. ‘I’ve had to call a press conference this evening, so they can all get what they need in time for the ten o’clock news. There’ll be a lot more than just the BBC there, trust me. And I need to be able to give them something concrete.’
Liam paused as he scanned the room. Jake’s skin went cold as he waited anxiously for Liam’s gaze to fall on him. Eventually, it did.
‘What are you working on at the moment, Tanner? How was the interview with Jessica Mann’s flatmate?’
Jake shuffled on his chair. ‘Productive. She didn’t know anything about Jessica meeting up with anyone, but—’
‘How was that a productive interview?’ Liam snapped.
Jake twisted his neck left and then right, ebbing the tension away, before responding. ‘Rebecca said that Jessica bumped into someone randomly. Someone that she thought she’d met before but couldn’t quite work out where.’ Another pause. ‘Then she remembered she’d seen the guy online. On a dating website. That’s what connects this all up. Steven’s agent said that Steven and Jessica were part of an online community where they met up and did stuff with one another. It’s the same with Jessica Mann. Whoever’s behind this is targeting women with the same name, who look a lot like one another. If we can find the dating website, we can find the killer. We just need to do that before he kills again… or runs out of Jessicas to murder. Whichever comes first.’
Liam nodded and called the meeting to a close, ordering everyone to get back to work. Drew and Garrison were the first to leave, followed by Jake. As he returned to his desk, his phone vibrated against his leg. It was another email from Danika.
In the past twenty-four hours he’d tried his best to force any notion of The Crimsons and Bridger from his mind. Steven Arnholt, Jessica Arnholt, Jessica Mann – they were his priority right now. But as he read the contents of the email, Jake knew that that would have to change.
Without having a chance to sit down, Jake grabbed his blazer and his car keys and headed out of the office.
‘Where are you going?’ Liam asked from the doorway of his office.
Jake had hoped nobody would notice his disappearance, although he knew it unlikely.
‘Out,’ he said. He didn’t know what to say, and he was beginning to feel like a defiant teenager who had just tried to leave the house without his parents knowing. ‘I’m going to follow up a lead quickly.’
‘What lead?’
Jake stuttered.
‘Arch – I mean the coffee shop where Jessica Mann bumped into the killer. I want to speak with the manager. See if he saw anything. And then I’m going to speak with Archie Arnold again. Something about him doesn’t seem right.’
Liam shot a sideways glance to Garrison, who was only a few feet away from Jake.
‘I’ll be as quick as I possibly can,’ Jake added.
‘Fine,’ Liam said, nodding slowly. ‘Go.’
CHAPTER 26
FOLLOW HIM
Liam turned his back on Garrison, closed his office door behind him and lowered the blinds halfway, put them back up to the top again, and then down a quarter, leaving them there. He moved to his desk, opened up his computer and loaded Gmail. The three of them used a covert account to communicate when they didn’t want any of it to be traced or monitored by the IT department. Each had the login details, and each were able to access the inbox via a secure browser.
Liam clicked on the plus in the top left of the screen and opened a draft email. He waited until the blank email saved itself in the Drafts folder.
He gave it a few more seconds and waited for the others to sign in. There was no notification letting him know that they were viewing the same screen as him, so he had to use his intuition and experience.
Staring at the keyboard, breathing heavily, Liam sighed. Then he typed.
Follow him.
CHAPTER 27
ANGEL
Jake headed west on the M25 and then south on the A3. His foot stayed glued to the accelerator, swerving in and out of traffic, bullying other drivers out of the fast lane. He was in a rush, and he was up against time. According to Danika’s email, Bridger was leaving the country in the evening and wouldn’t be returning for a few months. It was too much of a coincidence that he was escaping at the same time as Danny and Michael. There was still so much he needed to confront him about, questions he needed answered, suspicions he needed confirming that he didn’t care if he dropped everything to do with the serial killer. There was no knowing when Bridger would return. If he would return. And Jake couldn’t afford to wait till then. By that point it would be too late. There was too much at stake.
It took him thirty minutes shy of the hour and fifty that his satnav said it would take to make it into Surrey; it was just after lunchtime and the roads were surprisingly empty.
As Jake passed the BP services on the A3, a few miles outside of Guildford, he called Danika via the Bluetooth on the dashboard. He had done the journey enough times to know he was only fifteen minutes away.
‘Where is he?’ he asked as the speedometer reached 80mph.
‘Jake, I wasn’t expecting you to get here right away,’ she whispered. ‘He’s still here, but he’s finishing early so he can get his things ready.’
‘When’s he leaving the office?’
‘I have no idea. I’m not a mind-reader.’
‘Can you stall him?’
‘I can try, but—’
‘Please, Dan. If I miss him, it’s over. All of our hard work will have been for nothing. We can’t let him get away with this. I just want to speak to him. That’s it.’
There was a long pause on the line. Jake checked the signal level to make sure he hadn’t lost her.
‘All right,’ she finally said, ‘leave it with me.’
‘You’re an angel.’
CHAPTER 28
COMING CLEAN
Surrey Police Headquarters at Mount Browne had been Jake’s second home for a brief time during the beginning of his spell as a trainee detective constable. The building was grand, made from Victorian stone, and the grounds surrounding it were velveted with luscious green grass and oak trees that sparkled in the sun. It was the complete antithesis to Bow Green in Stratford: grey, dreary, derelict, unkempt.
A part of Jake wished he was still a member of the Surrey team. But now he was finally settling into the Major Investigation Team, he didn’t want anything to jeopardise that.
Jake killed the engine on the outskirts of the car park that ran across the north ring of Surrey Police HQ. He had made it in just under the fifteen minutes, his journey assisted mercifully by empty roads and obedient drivers pulling over as soon as they saw him roaring behind them in their mirrors.
He opened the car door and exited, and as he did so, something in the distance caught his eye. It was a figure, just leaving the building. Jake was fifty metres away from the entrance, but that didn’t matter – he knew the walk.
Dani, you fucking hero, he thought as he locked the car and started towards Bridger.
The seasoned sergeant carried a laptop satchel over his shoulder and a carrier bag in his right hand.
Forty metres separated them. Jake prepared himself to launch his attack on Bridger. But then something alerted him, and he suddenly changed his mind. Confronting him here was wrong. It was too public, too out in the open. It needed to be more private, somewhere Bridger would be more prone to telling him the truth.
Jake watched as Bridger headed to his car, slung the bags into the boot and started the ignition. There was no time to dawdle, so he rushed back to his own car and followed, keeping a covert distance between them.
As he pulled out of the station car park, he was frightfully aware that he couldn’t afford to lose Bridger. Under any circumstances.
Jake checked the time on the dash. It was nearing 1 p.m.
Bridger headed east, out of town and out of Guildford. They drove through country lanes, winding left and right, swerving in and out, peaking up and troughing down. Throughout, Jake kept his distance, his mind working overtime as he tried to figure out the right time and place to pull Bridger over.
And then the decision was made for him.
As they entered the outskirts of Farnham, Bridger turned left down a narrow, unmade road that was sheltered by leaves and overhanging shrubbery. The brake lights flashed and then stopped. The car bounced up and then down again as Bridger depressed the handbrake and killed the engine.
This was it. It was on.
Before stepping out of the vehicle, Jake unlocked his iPhone and opened the built-in Dictaphone app to record their conversation. As Jake alighted the car, Bridger froze at the sight of his former colleague.
‘You?’ Bridger said, his face contorted.
‘Were you expecting someone else?’ Jake replied, carefully placing the phone in his pocket.
‘No. Nobody. Just surprised to see you, that’s all.’ Bridger’s Adam’s apple convulsed as he swallowed. ‘You look… good. MIT looking after you?’
The sides of Jake’s lips flickered into a smile. ‘You’ve not changed. Good to see. Although I think you’ve gone a bit greyer around the edges.’
‘And you wider.’ Bridger nodded at Jake’s waist.
In recent months – since Elizabeth had become pregnant again – Jake had put on some weight. Perhaps it was stress eating. Perhaps it was comfort eating. Maybe a combination of the two. But he was always too tired to cook anything when he got home, so they usually settled on frozen food instead. Their finances weren’t complaining either, as the meals were often Jake’s favourite Cs: cheap and cheerful.
‘Why are you here, Jake?’ Bridger asked. ‘I assume it’s not for a catch-up, otherwise you would have done that back at Mount Browne.’
Jake paused to look around him. They were standing in a wider stretch of the road that allowed drivers to pull over so other cars could pass. Grav
el lined the side of the tarmac and a patch of nettles sat inches away from his hand, swaying in the light breeze. ‘Is this where you used to meet up with The Crimsons? Organise your little activities together?’
Bridger’s smile disappeared and his face dropped. ‘You heard the news then?’
‘I think it would be better if Danny and Michael Cipriano remained where they are. They’re a threat to society. We can’t allow them to get out. Who knows what they might do next?’
‘There won’t be a next time.’
‘How do you know?’ Jake readjusted the phone in his pocket so that the microphone was pointed outwards. He hoped it would improve the audio quality.
‘Because I know these things. They’re not a danger to anyone. They don’t want to hurt you anymore, Jake. They never did. It was all in your head. It was all business.’
‘Is that what it’s called now? Business.’
Bridger smirked and continued to stare at Jake. A long moment passed between the two of them, and the only noticeable sign of movement was a twenty-four-wheeler lorry that ripped past behind them.
‘Why are you really here, Jake?’ This time there was a tense edge to Bridger’s voice. Jake hadn’t heard it before, but it didn’t sound welcoming.
‘I want to know how you’ve done it.’
‘You still pissed I’m on the payroll? Still angry that no one believed I was a bent copper?’
‘Enough people did,’ Jake replied.
‘But not the right people to do anything about it.’
‘I know what you’ve done, Bridger. I know you were the one responsible for everything that happened that day. Stalling until the forensic and bomb squad arrived with that bullshit story about the car crash on the motorway. Leading us away from finding the keys that killed Candice. Lying to me about getting that interview with Michael approved by a chief super. I know about it all. And I know that you had Mark Murphy helping you along the way too. But nobody listened to me. And now I want to know how you’re helping them get out of prison – how you’ve managed to convince the CPS to drop everything. Who did you have to pay? Or is it the other way round?’
