Emails checked, Kate slipped her jacket back on and stood up. ‘Briefing in ten,’ she announced. ‘I’m off to get coffee.’ She didn’t bother asking what Cooper and O’Connor might want, she knew their preferences well enough after working with them both for so long and she often supplied the coffee for morning briefing, especially when she had very little to report. It seemed to help soften the blow when she had nothing else to offer.
She’d just started up the second flight of stairs to the canteen on the top floor of the building when her phone rang.
‘DI Fletcher.’
Silence.
‘DI Kate Fletcher speaking.’
‘Sorry,’ the person at the other end of the line said. ‘I dialled then wasn’t sure whether I’d done the right thing. It’s Sylvia Kerr, Liv Thornbury’s partner. I was going through Liv’s laptop and I found something that I think you might want to see.’
27
‘What am I looking at?’ Kate asked as Sylvia Kerr pushed the laptop across the table towards her. The woman had offered to come into Doncaster Central as she had an appointment in the town later that day and Kate had wanted to see the laptop not just the email. She’d commandeered an interview room where they wouldn’t be disturbed.
‘It’s Liv,’ Sylvia said.
Kate studied the grainy black-and-white image of two distinct groups of people in an apparent stand-off. The police officers were all standing while the women were lying or sitting down in front of them. Behind the police was a chain-link fence topped with two rows of barbed wire.
‘Which one? All the coppers look like men to me.’
‘Not the policemen. Look at the women.’
Kate put on her reading glasses and leaned in towards the screen. The women’s faces came into much sharper focus. Most were smiling or laughing – one had her mouth open wide and appeared to be yelling something – none looked angry or upset. They all wore coats and jumpers and at least a dozen were sporting woolly hats and fingerless gloves; others had headscarves tightly fastened beneath their chins.
‘Where is this? And when?’ Kate asked, unable to make out anybody resembling the image she had seen of Olivia Thornbury.
‘It’s Greenham Common. Early eighties I’d imagine. That’s Liv.’
Sylvia pointed to a young woman sprawled on the ground at the front of the picture. Her dark hair was sticking out from under a woollen hat and her hands were linked behind her head as though she was about to take a nap. She was grinning at somebody out of shot. There was nothing of the well-respected DCI in the face of this protester – not as far as Kate could see.
‘I wouldn’t have recognised her,’ Kate admitted. ‘How old would she have been?’
‘Twenty-three or four. It’s before I knew her. I could see straight away that it’s her. It’s her smile.’
‘What was she doing there? Did she ever talk about it?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘I had no idea she’d been there.’
‘Well, we all do things when we’re younger that we feel embarrassed about. It doesn’t really sit comfortably, being a police officer and a former protester. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t talk about it. Joining the force may have changed her perspective.’
Sylvia stared at Kate as though she’d just said something really stupid and Kate wondered what the hell she was missing.
‘Liv joined the police force after her A-levels. She’d have been a serving officer for over five years when this photograph was taken. She’d never expressed any sympathy with the Greenham women, at least not to me, so what the hell was she doing there?’
Kate looked at the photograph again. It had been sent as an attachment on a blank email. The title was ‘Remember this?’ The sender called themselves ‘titch_1983’ and he or she had used a web-based email service which would make the owner of the email address almost impossible to trace.
‘Are there any more messages from this sender?’
Liv leaned over and tapped the keyboard. ‘I found this in the ‘deleted folder’.’
The message was from the same sender and contained a series of numbers.
‘It’s a mobile number,’ Kate said.
‘I know,’ Sylvia said. ‘I rang it.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing. The number’s disconnected.’
Kate picked up her phone and rang the number. The recorded message told her that it was not in service, so she texted the digits to Cooper to check against Liv Thornbury’s phone records. This was their best lead so far. If Liv had been contacting this person, it was possible that they were connected with her death. But what was the link to Greenham Common? Kate had a suspicion, but it wasn’t going to be a comfortable conversation to have with Liv’s partner.
‘Have you heard of the SIS?’ she began.
Sylvia shook her head. ‘Nope.’
‘It was an undercover Met Police unit.’
‘Liv trained at Hendon. She started her career in the Met.’
Kate digested this information. It tied in with her suspicions and the timing made perfect sense.
‘The SIS was the Specialist Infiltration Squad. It was set up by Special Branch in the sixties to destabilise supposed left-wing groups, CND, anti-war protesters, that sort of thing.’
Sylvia’s eyes narrowed as she kept them fixed on Kate’s face.
‘It was disbanded about ten years ago.’ What Kate didn’t add was that some of the undercover officers were alleged to have engaged in illegal activities. ‘There were probably members of SIS at Greenham in the eighties. They would have blended in, lived and protested with the women.’
Sylvia Kerr shook her head. ‘No. Not Liv. She was a feminist. She wouldn’t have done anything like that. She hated deception.’
Inhaling deeply, Kate continued. ‘If she was young and ambitious it would have been a golden opportunity to make her mark. If she’d delivered anything useful to the squad she’d have been in line for promotion, may have even been able to pick her next job in any force that she fancied.’
‘She’d just moved to South Yorkshire when we met. She said she’d had enough of London and wanted somewhere she could go climbing at the weekends. It was towards the end of 1986 and she’d just been promoted to detective sergeant.’
‘In her mid-twenties? That’s quite a meteoric rise,’ Kate said. She’d not been made a DS until she was in her early forties and O’Connor, her own DS, had been at the same rank since his mid-thirties.
‘I just thought she was good at her job.’
It would probably be very difficult to find out if Liv Thornbury had been involved in the SIS. Since the unit had been disbanded there had been a lot of adverse publicity which had spilled over to other areas of undercover work and several high-profile convictions of former police officers. There seemed little point in dragging DCI Thornbury’s name through the mud based on Kate’s hunch, but it did suggest a motive for Liv’s murder. Her retirement had been covered in the local press, along with her photograph, and it was possible that somebody she knew at Greenham might have recognised her. Had she been instrumental in a previous arrest or conviction of the killer? Could it be somebody bearing a thirty-year grudge who’d finally enacted revenge on her betrayer? It was plausible except for one thing – what had Eleanor Houghton and Julia Sullivan done to piss off their murderer?
The photograph showed around fifty women. Were Eleanor and Julia among them? Kate tried to enlarge the image on the laptop screen, but it started to blur after a couple of key taps and the faces of the women melded into each other.
‘I’m going to need a copy of this,’ Kate said. ‘And I’d like to keep the laptop for a while if that’s okay? I want to get digital forensics onto it – see if there’s anything else there.’
What she didn’t include was that she’d give Cooper first bash at the hard drive.
‘That’s fine,’ Sylvia said, sitting back in her seat and smoothing down a few strands of unruly grey hair. ‘If it helps you find out what really happen
ed to Liv you can have it for as long as you want.’
‘I’d also like to give you a copy of Liv’s phone records – I’d like you to see if there are any unfamiliar numbers.’
Sylvia nodded. ‘I’ll have a look but without her mobile phone I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. Who remembers phone numbers these days?’
She was right. Most people could barely remember their own number and relied on their contacts folder in their phone to store information about others.
‘You’ve given us a lot of helpful information, Sylvia,’ Kate said, pushing her chair back from the desk and hoping to wind up the interview. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to…’
A knock on the door cut short her intentionally anodyne statement and Barratt burst into the room without waiting for permission to enter.
‘Matt, I said I wasn’t to be disturbed,’ Kate snapped but Barratt ignored her admonishment.
‘There’s been another one,’ he said. Kate shook her head and stared pointedly at Sylvia Kerr. She didn’t want the woman hearing anything inappropriate about the case. Barratt took the hint and backed away into the corridor, Kate following after quickly excusing herself.
‘What the hell, Matt? This had better be important.’
‘It is. There’s been another supposed suicide. Similar note and everything. This one looks like she was pushed from a motorway bridge in the early hours of this morning just south of Doncaster.’
‘Oh shit.’ Kate sighed. ‘He’s escalating.’
‘That’s not the big news,’ Barratt said. ‘This woman’s still alive.’
28
Looking down at the woman’s ruined face, Kate questioned her decision to come to the hospital. There was nothing to be gained from standing over the bed listening to the rush of the ventilator and the beep of the heart monitor. But she had to see. And, if the woman were to gain consciousness, Kate needed to know. The woman’s head was swathed in bandages and the small patches of uncovered flesh were angry shades of purple and blue. She was slim, her body almost lost under the white sheet that covered her legs and torso, only her arms were exposed – each one connected to a tube.
Anastasia Cohen.
She’d been followed in her plummet from the bridge by a plume of business cards which had scattered across the carriageway like oddly angular snowflakes.
A nurse came in, ignoring Kate, and checked the level of the fluid dripping into Anastasia’s right arm. She looked at the monitor above the bed, scribbled on the top sheet of the notes that were hanging on a hook at the foot of the bed and left without saying a word.
The SOCOs had found a note in her handbag which had been tied to the railings of the bridge. Two lines which, to anybody unfamiliar with the other cases, would have suggested suicide.
Life has been good.
It’s time to go.
It was chillingly similar to the other three, printed on A4 paper and folded once, and felt like a taunt, a challenge. Also in the handbag was a make-up bag which contained a lipstick, a dried-up tube of mascara, foundation and a small mirror – cracked across the middle. The killer was teasing them, daring them to catch him.
‘Any change?’ Hollis asked as Kate stepped into the corridor, gently closing the door to the ICU behind her. She shook her head.
‘It’s the same killer, isn’t it?’
‘I think so. The note’s the same.’ She didn’t know what else to say. Somehow it was easier to deal with a dead body; that was done, over. This felt like a state of limbo. The woman might live or she might die and, if she lived, she might be disabled or brain-damaged. There was nothing to be learned until the woman was woken from her induced coma and it felt ghoulish to be hanging around. Now she’d seen the wreckage of the person attached to the name Anastasia Cohen, Kate felt a deep sense of sadness and anger. She was going to catch the bastard who’d done this. There was no sign of Anastasia’s car at the scene and, so far, nobody had been able to locate the vehicle. It seemed likely that the killer had driven it away and that might be his biggest mistake to date. Kate texted Cooper to ask her to check CCTV.
‘Come on,’ she said to Hollis. ‘We need to put a stop to this. Text Matt, he needs to hear what I have to say. I’ve got some new information that I need to share.’
‘And Steve?’ Hollis asked, thumb poised over the send button on his phone.
‘No. Steve’s got other fish to fry.’
Hollis stopped walking. ‘What? You’ve kicked him off the case? I know he’s been a bit too focused on Houghton Haulage, but don’t you think…?’
Kate held up a hand, stopping him mid-flow. ‘Steve’s dug up something very interesting and I’m going to let him run with it.’
‘Care to share?’ Hollis asked.
‘It’s Steve’s thing. I’ll let him tell you. It’s going to keep him busy, so I need you and Sam and Matt even more focused.’
Hollis clicked his heels together and saluted. ‘Yes boss.’
Kate smiled and shook her head. If there was one thing she could rely on Hollis for, it was to keep the mood light.
Priya Das was waiting in the meeting room with Cooper and Barratt, her eyebrows raised in a question and her arms folded across her chest. ‘I thought I’d sit in,’ she said. ‘DC Cooper tells me that you’ve got a promising lead from Olivia Thornbury’s partner.’
Cooper shot Kate an apologetic look and then fixed her eyes on the screen of her laptop.
‘It’s hardly a promising lead,’ Kate said, taking off her suit jacket and resisting the urge to fan her armpits. The heat in the room was stifling, somebody had forgotten to switch on the air con. ‘Can we get some air in here,’ she said, stalking over to the controls on the wall next to the whiteboard. She tapped to increase the airflow and then saw that the temperature was already well below the outside temperature. Just what she needed. A bloody hot flush at the start of an important briefing. A friend had once gleefully recounted stripping to her vest top in a business meeting in response to an unexpected temperature surge, much to the bemusement of those present. Kate wondered what her colleagues would do if she slipped off her blouse and stood there in her bra. Probably pretend not to notice.
‘Okay,’ Kate said, pulling out a chair and plonking herself down. ‘Sylvia Kerr found an interesting email on Olivia Thornbury’s computer. It contained an image of a protest at Greenham Common probably in 1984 or 1985.’
She nodded at Cooper who projected the image onto the screen at the front of the room. Das studied it, frowning, then pulled out the chair next to Kate and sat down, eyes still fixed on the screen.
‘One of the women in this photograph is DCI Thornbury.’
Cooper tapped the trackpad and a yellow circle appeared round the face of one of the women towards the front of the crowd. ‘This is before she met her partner but, significantly, after she joined the Met.’
She heard Das inhale sharply. The woman was very quick on the uptake. ‘She was undercover?’ Das asked. ‘That was highly unusual for a female officer in the eighties.’
‘I think she might have been with the SIS.’
Blank looks from her three younger colleagues prompted Kate to explain about the secretive group of Special Branch officers despite Das’s obvious discomfort. Kate knew that a lot of senior coppers weren’t happy with the adverse publicity generated by the SIS over the years.
‘So, you think one of the women from Greenham Common recognised her and killed her as revenge for… for what?’ Das seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘I don’t know,’ Kate admitted. ‘Perhaps she just saw Thornbury as a traitor. Perhaps she was taken in by the DCI and felt cheated. Or it might be somebody who was a police officer there and Thornbury knew something incriminating, or vice versa. I’m not ruling anything out.’
Barratt looked sceptical. He was fiddling with the knot in his tie as though he wanted to say something but whatever he had to offer was making him nervous.
‘Out with it, Matt,’ Kate prompted. ‘I ca
n see you’ve got something to say.’
‘If Olivia Thornbury was killed by somebody who recognised her from thirty-odd years ago surely it must be for more than feeling cheated. That’s a bit of an extreme reaction to finding out that somebody you knew a long time ago wasn’t who she claimed to be. And what does it have to do with the other two women?’
‘Three,’ Cooper reminded him. ‘There’s Anastasia Cohen as well. I’ve done a social media trawl. None of these women were friends on any of the obvious platforms. In fact, Cohen and Sullivan are the only ones with any social media presence. Both have Twitter and Facebook. Cohen uses Anna rather than her full name.’
‘She’s the youngest,’ Das said. ‘The others were in their sixties and early seventies – the age group least likely to be computer literate. Julia Sullivan would have needed to use social media for her political work.’
‘Thornbury would have used tech in her job,’ Hollis said.
‘Yes. But she was a senior police officer. How many of you have Instagram accounts or anything similar?’ Das was right. Most police officers understood the dangers associated with social media all too well and tended to steer clear. Kate had set up a Facebook account in her maiden name for a recent case but had deleted it as soon as it wasn’t of any further use and she suspected that Cooper had more than one account but doubted that they were in her own name.
‘How old would each of our victims have been when Thornbury was at Greenham?’ Das asked. All heads turned to Cooper – the keeper of statistics.
‘Anastasia Cohen would have been around twenty, Eleanor Houghton would have been in her mid-to-late-thirties and Julia Sullivan would have been in her early-to-mid-thirties. They could have all been there at the same time and they could easily have known each other, but how do we prove it?’
‘We can ask Lincoln Sullivan about his wife,’ Hollis suggested. ‘He’d remember if she spent time there. Maybe Eleanor Houghton’s nephew might know something. Anastasia Cohen’s ex-husband? It’s got to be worth a try.’
Shattered: a gripping crime thriller Page 16
