The Perfect Couple (ARC)

by Jackie Kabler

  something like this. But this is such an unusual case, and we thought that maybe, if you knew,

  you might be able to shed some light …’ He sighed. ‘I’m so sorry. Don’t dwell on it, please.

  There’s every chance your husband will still turn up. And until we can find anything that says

  otherwise, we have to assume he hasn’t come to any harm, OK? But, just to confirm …’ he

  pointed a finger at DC Stevens’s tablet, now closed and resting on his knee, ‘you didn’t know,

  then? That he had a profile on that site?’

  He had the good grace to look a little sheepish as he asked the question, not quite meeting

  my eye. DC Stevens was staring at his own shoes.

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  I took a breath.

  ‘No, I did not know that my husband had a profile on a dating website,’ I said, with as

  much dignity as I could muster. Of course I didn’t bloody know. What’s going on, Danny?

  What the hell is going on? ‘And I don’t understand it, any of it. Danny wasn’t … wasn’t

  shagging around, I’m sure he wasn’t.’

  Even as I said the words, I felt new doubts creeping in. Were you, Danny? Were you? But

  I couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t let myself.

  ‘Look, maybe somebody else put his profile on there. One of his mates? For some sort of

  silly joke? Danny probably doesn’t even know his picture is on there,’ I said.

  The two police officers exchanged looks again, and both nodded.

  ‘That’s true, it certainly could have happened like that,’ DC Stevens said.

  ‘I suppose so, yes. Certainly a possibility. This case gets curiouser and curiouser,’ DS

  Clarke replied unexpectedly, then stood up abruptly.

  ‘Right, we’ll get out of your way. I’m sorry, again, that we’ve had to land all this on you.

  But we’re a little bit stuck on this one, Gemma, I don’t mind telling you. We simply can’t work

  out what’s happened to Danny, and what was going on in his life in the weeks before he

  vanished. The job, his bank account, this app … look, if you can think of anything, anything at

  all, that might explain some of it, please call, OK? Any time. And maybe, can I suggest, get

  someone to come and stay with you for a few days? A friend, a relative? It’s a lot to cope with

  on your own.’

  Still a little stunned by his Alice in Wonderland reference, I gaped up at him. DC Stevens

  was on his feet now too, shuffling towards the door, seemingly anxious to leave now that he’d

  thrown a live grenade into my living room and let it explode, leaving me to deal with the

  agonizing aftermath. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I might do that.’

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  8

  ‘This is just getting more and more bizarre.’

  Helena was standing in front of the incident board, cradling her second cup of tea of the

  morning and frowning. Next to her, Devon popped the final sliver of his pain au chocolat into

  his mouth and turned to put his plate down on the desk behind them.

  ‘And where did you get that anyway? Surely not downstairs? It actually looked edible.

  Although you eat far too much sugar, Devon. It’s not good for you, you know. Your diet’s gone

  to pot since Jasmine left you.’

  He shrugged, swallowing.

  ‘Don’t care. Needed something to cheer me up. Picked it up on my way in. That little

  bakery round the corner? It opens at six. You should try it, instead of eating all those boring

  salads. Might help.’

  Helena grimaced.

  ‘Charlotte makes them for me. I don’t like to say no. But even I might have to turn to

  comfort food one of these days, the way this is going.’

  She rubbed the small of her back as she spoke, and winced.

  ‘And sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned Jasmine. I’m an idiot. Are you OK?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back on the horse soon. And when are you going

  to see someone about that back?’

  ‘Soon. When this is all over.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. And I just saw a cute little piggy flying past that window over there.’

  He turned away and began picking up the sheaf of papers he’d dumped on the desk earlier,

  shuffling them into some sort of order, and Helena watched him, her heart twisting suddenly.

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  For all his bravado, he was definitely hurting. He’d fallen hard for Jasmine, a bright, ambitious

  medical registrar he’d met while interviewing a stabbing victim at Southmead Hospital, and

  who he’d been dating for the past year or so; he’d even, when Helena had joined him and some

  of the other detectives for a rare night in the pub a few months back, confided in her after

  several vodkas that he was considering proposing, once Jasmine had completed her training.

  ‘Maybe on the day she qualifies, something like that. What do you think, guv? Think

  she’d say yes?’

  Helena had smiled.

  ‘She’d be mad not to. Catch like you? Course she’ll say yes.’

  What had actually happened was what so often happened in relationships between two

  people with such demanding jobs; the long hours, the constant weariness and the repeated

  enforced cancellation of plans to meet up that came as standard with both police and big city

  hospital work had taken their toll. Devon and Jasmine, it seemed, had simply drifted apart, until

  she had finally called time on the relationship.

  ‘Ready, guv?’

  Devon had finished organizing his paperwork and was looking at her expectantly.

  ‘Ready, yes. Let’s take stock.’

  She gestured at the board.

  ‘And we all need to get our thinking caps on, because this lot is doing my head in. Do we

  have a potential serial killer, or just two separate murders? Is someone targeting men who look

  alike and finding them by using a particular dating app, although I can’t for the life of me think

  why, or is that app irrelevant, just a coincidence? Why was the app not on either of our victims’

  phones, even though they were both users of it? And is Danny O’Connor just a missing person,

  or a third victim? Frankly, I have no clue.’

  Devon shrugged.

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  ‘Me neither guv. Let’s do this.’

  He turned to the room.

  ‘Guys! Gather round. Meeting.’

  When everyone was settled, Helena nodded at the DS.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘OK, let’s run through what we have so far,’ he said. ‘First – our two murders. No new

  leads in the past couple of days, on either Mervin Elliott or Ryan Jones, other than the intriguing

  discovery that both of them used the same dating app, EHU. Great work on that, Mike.’

  Perched on the edge of a desk towards the back of the room, DC Mike Slater flushed and

  nodded.

  ‘Any progress on getting the EHU people to provide us with any more details on women

  our victims might have dated?’

  Mike shook his head. ‘I’ve asked, and they’re being very helpful, but they said they’ve

  had a few system crashes recently, probably due to the site getting more and more popular.

  They’re not sure all the search data has been saved. But they’ve also said they’ll have to check

  it all out with their legal people, even if this is a major double murder investigation. You know,

  the new data protections laws and all that? Sh
ould know in the next day or so though. I’ll keep

  chasing. And our tech guys are still going through the victims’ emails and texts again to see if

  they can trace any of the women they dated through the site. I’ll let you know if they find

  anything.’

  ‘Cheers, Mike.’

  Helena, who was standing to the side of the board, leaning against the wall, smiled at the

  DC and said: ‘Yes, well done again, Mike. And we’re keeping this EHU app thing from the

  press for now, guys, OK? I mean, we still don’t know if the two murders are linked, as we need

  to keep reminding ourselves. Anyone have any theories on that, by the way? Shoot, if you do.’

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  She paused, as a low murmur ran around the room.

  ‘I might have one. I mean, it’s probably bollocks, but hey …’

  DC Tara Lemming, a tall woman with striking coal-black hair pulled back into a bouncy

  ponytail, and deep green eyes, had raised a hand.

  ‘OK Tara, let’s hear it.’

  Tara stood up.

  ‘Well, it’s just with both of our victims, and now this missing guy as well, Danny, all

  using the EHU app, and all looking so alike, well … we all have a type, don’t we? A type we

  go for? Mine, for example, is tall and blond.’

  She turned to look at DC Matthew Shawcross, who was sitting beside her and who also

  happened to be six foot five inches tall with cropped, white blond hair, and winked. There was

  a ripple of laughter, and Matthew blushed.

  ‘OK, OK, let’s stick to the topic at hand. Go on, Tara.’

  Helena waved a hand, and the room fell silent again.

  ‘Sorry. But my point is, our victims, plus Danny O’Connor, well, they’re all a definite

  type, aren’t they? I mean, if someone was on a dating site searching for dark-haired, dark eyed,

  fit, slim but sporty men in their thirties, they’d all pop up, wouldn’t they? So what if our killer

  is a woman, who for some reason has a violent dislike of men who fit that description? Maybe

  she was a victim of domestic abuse or just badly treated in a relationship by someone who

  looked like that or something, I dunno. What if she’s a member of that dating site too, and she’s

  hunting them down and killing them, one by one? I mean, that’s just me wildly speculating,

  and I know most serial killers are men, that is if we are dealing with a serial killer of course,

  but, well … it was just a thought,’ she finished lamely.

  There was silence for a moment.

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  ‘It’s certainly a theory. And one that would mean our killer also has a profile on the EHU

  app,’ said DC Slater from the back of the room.

  ‘How many people are registered, Mike?’ Devon asked.

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me. Data protection again blah blah blah. But tens of thousands, I’d

  say. It’s growing by the day. And if we can’t access any of their data to narrow it down …’

  There was silence again.

  ‘Yeah. Impossible. Probably a bollocks theory anyway, as I said,’ said Tara.

  She sat down again, and Helena stood in silence for a moment, thinking. Her gut feeling

  was still that this was a male killer, despite telling herself firmly not to rule anything out. But

  women did kill too. She wondered if she should consider the possibility a little more closely.

  ‘Possibly bollocks, but maybe not. We can’t discount anything at the moment. Thank you,

  Tara,’ Helena said. ‘We have to keep an open mind about this entire investigation, until hard

  evidence takes us in a particular direction. Anyone else?’

  She glanced around the room, at a sea of blank faces.

  ‘OK. Carry on, Devon.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Devon turned back to the board and pointed at the photograph of Danny O’Connor, which

  had been pinned to the far right-hand side.

  ‘So – Danny O’Connor. Sounded like a straightforward misper at first, despite his strong

  physical resemblance to our two murder victims. But now that we’ve discovered he also had a

  profile on EHU, despite apparently being happily and fairly recently married, we’re looking

  into his disappearance a little more closely ourselves, instead of handing it over to Missing

  Persons.’

  He picked up a piece of paper from the desk in front of him.

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  ‘Obviously, we have no evidence he’s come to any harm, not at the moment. He does

  seem to have pretty much vanished into thin air though, and our efforts to trace him so far have

  drawn a blank. He doesn’t have a mobile phone currently, according to his wife, so that stops

  us being able to find him via that, and there are definitely a few oddities here. With regard to

  the EHU app, Gemma was pretty horrified when we told her about it yesterday. She flatly

  denied any possibility that he could have been, as she put it, “shagging around”. She suggested

  that somebody, one of his mates, might have put his profile on the site as some sort of joke.

  And she’s right, that could be what happened. We don’t really have any way of knowing how

  it got on there – did Danny register himself, or did someone else do it for some sort of stupid

  wind up? We need to talk to his friends, ask them if they know anything about it, and try to

  find out if Danny has been up to anything his wife might not know about. Mike, can you take

  care of that too? Be discreet though, don’t mention the app. We don’t want anything about that

  discovery getting out at the moment. Just ask them if they think there’s any possibility he might

  have been playing around. And also check out the email address he used on his profile on the

  site, see what we can get from that?’

  From the back of the room, DC Slater gave him the thumbs up sign.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Great, thanks. We’ll continue to leave his family in Ireland out of it for now, don’t want

  to panic them unnecessarily. We’ll obviously need to speak to them at some point fairly soon

  though if he doesn’t turn up. OK, a couple of other strange things. The fake job – where did

  Danny go every weekday between Monday, the eleventh of February when he said he was

  starting his new job, and Thursday, the twenty-eighth of February, which was the last day his

  wife saw him? He didn’t drive, so wherever he went he was using his bike. Gemma O’Connor

  says she has absolutely no idea. But the guy couldn’t make himself invisible. Somebody,

  somewhere must know where he was spending all those hours every day.’

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  He pointed to two new photos on the board, under the image of Danny.

  ‘We took these yesterday afternoon when we visited Gemma. They live in a very nice

  house in Clifton, and this is the back courtyard, where O’Connor kept his bike. And this is the

  alleyway that runs behind the row of houses, so he would have gone out through that back gate

  and cycled along there every day to access the main road. Our problem is that there aren’t any

  CCTV cameras in the immediate vicinity, so we’re trying to pick him up on private cameras,

  those used by homes and businesses in the area. Not knowing which direction he was going is

  problematic of course, because we’re going to have to cast the net wide, which will take time.’

  Helena spoke again.

  ‘And again, where he was going every day might well be irrelevant to our enquiry. It

  could be anything, and if he was just having a
n affair or whatever, taking some time out from

  work, having some sort of breakdown, well, all very sad but none of our business. Tough thing

  to say, but it’s really only if he’s dead too that he’s any concern of ours, otherwise we can hand

  him back to Missing Persons. But with the dating app connection, we do need to pursue it for

  now, see if it can throw up any leads. Was he meeting someone? He’s now vanished, so did

  that person hurt him in some way? Kill him? And maybe kill the others too? We need to find

  out … yes, what is it?’

  Another hand had been raised, that of a short, ginger-haired officer whose name escaped

  Helena.

  ‘I was just thinking – I mean, we don’t want to panic anyone, obviously. But just assuming

  for now that the two murders are connected, and Danny O’Connor is a third victim, well …

  there were what, another nine, ten men on that EHU site who all came up in the same search,

  weren’t there? Isn’t it possible that they’re all at risk too, if someone really is bumping them

  off one by one for some weird reason? Should we be warning them?’

  Helena ran a hand across her forehead. She could feel a headache starting.

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  ‘It’s far too early for anything like that. We still don’t know what’s going on here, and if

  the dating app really has any link to the murders. So, no. If we made an announcement like

  that, there’d be mass hysteria … every man in Bristol with dark hair and dark eyes would be

  after police protection.’

  There was silence in the room, and Helena sighed.

  ‘Look, I hope I’m not making the wrong call here. But there may be something else that

  connects our victims that we haven’t discovered yet, and of course we still don’t know if Danny

  is dead or alive. We could be barking up the wrong tree entirely, and until the picture becomes

  clearer I don’t think it would benefit anyone to start warning people about a potential serial

  killer who’s using a dating app to pick his, or her, victims. Everyone OK with that, for now?’

  There was a murmur of assent, heads nodding. Helena turned to Devon again.

  ‘Go on, finish what we have so far on Danny.’

  ‘Right. So, there’s the non-job and the mystery about where he was spending his days,

  and his appearance on the EHU app. The other strange aspect is the financial one. No money’s