Shattered: a gripping crime thriller

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Denholm?’

  ‘Probably. And half the CCTV cameras there have been smashed or taken down.’

  Hollis stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and sighed. ‘I thought we might finally have something on one of the Sullivans. It seemed like far too much of a coincidence for Anna’s car to turn up so close to Lincoln’s studio.’

  Kate nodded, feeling as despondent as Hollis looked. ‘And yet that’s what I think it is. Just a stupid bloody coincidence.’

  ‘Worth having another word with Sullivan? See if he knows where Sadie is?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Kate sighed. ‘It might look like harassment. We’ve got no legitimate reason for a visit and only one question to ask.’

  She was about to open the car door when her attention was caught by a shout from the direction of the abandoned Audi. She turned to see the bulky shape of Martin Davies jogging towards her like an out-of-season snowman. He was holding up an evidence bag and waving it at her. ‘DI Fletcher!’

  Panting, Davies thrust the bag towards her. ‘Just found this trapped in the headrest of the driver’s seat.’

  Kate held the bag up to the light and could just make out a strand of hair. It was impossible to be sure, but it looked quite long. Anastasia Cohen’s hair was short and greying.

  ‘Root?’ she asked – the root of a hair being crucial to obtaining a full DNA profile of the owner.

  Davies smiled and nodded.

  Kate grinned back. This was a huge piece of evidence. Lincoln and Sadie Sullivan had both given a DNA sample after the discovery of Julia’s body.

  36

  Sam Cooper was smiling as she pushed open the door to the briefing room and deposited her laptop and a tray of coffees on the desk.

  ‘Please tell me you’ve found something,’ Kate said. It had been two days since she’d seen Anastasia Cohen’s ruined car and one day since she’d received by email the contents of the USB stick found in that car. At first glance it had contained dozens of music files but Cooper had asked for the chance to see if she could find anything else and Kate had turned over all the information. An alert had gone out across South Yorkshire Police for officers to be on the lookout for Sadie Sullivan and Kate was considering extending it to neighbouring forces; possibly even going national before the end of the week. The woman seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. There was no sign of her at her house and her agent claimed not to have heard from her for nearly two weeks. He was especially annoyed because they were about to launch Sadie’s new book and he needed her to sign off on some of the publicity. He’d never known her to be late for anything so to disappear was completely out of character.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ Cooper said. ‘In fact, I’ve found a couple of somethings.’

  Barratt and Hollis grabbed two of the coffee mugs and Sam passed one to Kate before using the remote to turn on the whiteboard.

  ‘Before we start,’ Kate said. ‘I need to give you all an update on Steve.’ She’d spoken to his consultant the night before and some of the news was positive. O’Connor had been revived from his induced coma, he was aware of his surroundings and could remember details from the night he was assaulted. The bad news was that he hadn’t regained feeling in his lower extremities and the consultant didn’t sound very hopeful.

  The three remaining members of the team took in the news in silence.

  ‘Okay Sam,’ Kate prompted when the DC made no attempt to start her report. ‘Kick us off.’

  Cooper nodded. ‘Firstly, I’ve been doing some digging into the death threats on Julia Sullivan’s Twitter feed. Especially the one threatening to cut her throat. I wasn’t optimistic but a friend of a friend helped me out and I’ve found out who the account belongs to.’

  Kate kept quiet, knowing that Cooper preferred to reveal information in her own time. She also knew better than to ask about the ‘friend of a friend’. Sam had a lot of friends who were good at finding things out.

  ‘The email connected to the account is registered to a company in the United States. It’s a publisher – small press, mainly religious stuff – but the registered managing director is Manning Johns. Mr Johns is also head of the Church of the Right Hand in the US.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ Barratt said. ‘Why would somebody from her own church be harassing Julia Sullivan?’

  Kate remembered what she’d discovered on the forum a few days ago. ‘To make her afraid,’ she said. ‘Then Cora and Alistair Greaves could swoop in and comfort her. It’s the way they operate. They isolate members from other means of support, friends, family, and then suck them further in. An up-and-coming politician could have been very useful to their cause in the UK.’

  The information was interesting, but it didn’t help with the murder investigation. It seemed that Julia Sullivan had been a victim even before she’d died and, had she lived, it was impossible to say how far the exploitation might have gone.

  ‘Nice work, Sam,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll flag it up as a hate crime and pass it on.’

  Cooper nodded but Kate could see she was disappointed. She probably wanted to take it further herself, but cybercrime wasn’t in their remit and focusing on this would only distract from the murder investigation.

  ‘You said you had “a couple of somethings”. What’s next?’

  ‘I had a look at the files from the USB stick and you were right,’ she said to Kate. ‘All the files are music albums. It seems Anna’s taste is varied rather than niche. There’s some eighties stuff – Duran Duran and the Thompson Twins – and a lot of recent artists. She seems to like Ed Sheeran, Adele and – no judgement – One Direction.’

  Kate smiled as Barratt snorted a mouthful of coffee through his nose. ‘Christ, she’s in her fifties! Not really the target audience for boy bands.’ He glanced at her, his face reddening. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being in your fifties, it’s just…’

  ‘Leave it, Matt, you’ll only dig yourself in deeper,’ Hollis said.

  Cooper tapped on the desk as she watched their interaction – an impatient teacher waiting for the naughtiest boys in the class to settle down. ‘But,’ she said loudly, bringing their focus back to what she was trying to say. ‘In two of the folders I found jpegs mixed in with the MP3 files. At first glance I thought they were cover art for the albums but they’re not.’

  She displayed a document on the screen. ‘This is a screen grab of an email dated a few days ago. It’s from somebody calling themselves “Titch” and the address is “titch_1983”. Familiar?’

  ‘Same email address as the one used to contact Liv Thornbury,’ Kate said.

  ‘This appears to be the second email, look.’ She zoomed in on the text.

  Hi again, Taz. I wonder if my last email got to you – perhaps you don’t remember me so I thought another photo might bring back more memories. I loved my time at Greenham Common and remember you very fondly. You taught me so much and I often think of your stories and explanations. You were my hero. Good times, eh? It would be great to catch up sometime.

  Love, Titch

  ‘It says “last email” so there was at least one before this. After a bit of digging, I found it in Adele’s 25 album. It had an image with it.’ The photograph was shockingly familiar. ‘It’s similar to the one on Thornbury’s laptop.’

  ‘Is Anna Cohen in the picture?’

  Cooper highlighted three of the faces of younger women. ‘She could be one of these but the photograph’s grainy when I blow it up so it’s hard to tell. There isn’t a child in the image so no sign of Sadie Sullivan.’

  Kate looked at the black-and-white photograph. Were all these women in danger or was it only a select few? Was there another victim out there already, waiting to be found and identified? ‘I take it you’ve not found any replies to these emails?’

  Cooper shook her head. ‘No. I don’t know why she kept these jpegs unless she wasn’t convinced titch_1983 was above board. Which then suggests to me that she intended to meet this pe
rson and saved the emails as insurance.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Kate asked. They could spend hours speculating but it wouldn’t get them any closer to finding Sadie Sullivan.

  ‘There’s this.’ Cooper projected a still from a CCTV camera onto the whiteboard. ‘It’s the nearest working traffic cam to Denholm flats.’ The footage played in slow motion and Sam stopped it after a few seconds.

  ‘This is Anna Cohen’s Audi. Heading towards the flats. And this…’ she fast-forwarded, ‘is the same car two hours later heading in the opposite direction. Look at the difference.’

  The car was moving much faster as it left the Denholm flats area and swerved slightly before almost over-correcting as it approached the camera.

  ‘It was stolen. We can’t see the driver in either shot.’

  She loaded another snippet of CCTV footage. ‘This is from much earlier in the evening.’

  It showed a section of road with a sign in the distance. A white Audi drove away from the camera, slowed down and turned left just after the sign.

  ‘Where’s this?’ Hollis asked, leaning forwards.

  ‘The car’s just turned into the car park of the Dog and Gun. Twelve miles from where Anna was found but only a fifteen-minute walk from Denholm flats. If Sadie drove Anna’s car from the motorway bridge and dumped it, she wouldn’t have had far to go to pick up her own car from the pub.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a car,’ Kate said. ‘At least, that’s what she told us. And it’s a hell of a walk from Denholm flats to Sadie’s house. It’s on the other side of town, an hour at least.’

  ‘Maybe she took her bike,’ Hollis suggested. ‘Left it at the pub and then went back for it. It would have been dark when she cycled home but she might have kept to lit roads. She might show up on a traffic cam somewhere if we can trace the most direct route from the pub to her house.’

  It was a good idea. In the absence of Sadie Sullivan, the best they could do was to build the case against her.

  ‘Good thinking. Have a look, Sam. Hollis and I will see if the landlord of the Dog and Gun remembers anything. Matt, I want you to find out who Sadie’s friends are. Ask her father, ask her agent. Has she got a holiday home somewhere? Might she be holed up with an ex?’

  Barratt sighed, obviously sharing her frustrations. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Anything else, Sam?’

  Cooper grinned. She’d obviously been saving the best until last. ‘I spoke to Sadie’s agent,’ she began. ‘He’s really pissed off with her because she’s got a new book out and he needs her to do some promo stuff. He wouldn’t tell me much about it, but he did send me this.’

  She tapped the keyboard of her laptop and showed them a picture of a book cover. It was bright and colourful like the framed ones Kate had seen in Sadie’s kitchen, but it wasn’t the images that caught Kate’s attention – it was the title.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ she breathed as Hollis read it out.

  ‘The Monster in the Mirror.’

  37

  The Dog and Gun was part of a national chain of carveries advertising cheap meals and cheaper drinks. Built from red brick, it sat in a large car park like a blood splatter on concrete – its various extensions and wings reaching out towards the road and the hedge which separated it from a housing estate.

  ‘Bet it’s a bloody maze inside,’ Hollis said, his top lip curling with distaste. Kate knew he wasn’t a fan of what he called ‘plastic pubs’, preferring smaller, older establishments preferably with underground bars or industrial history.

  ‘Not up to your exacting standards?’ she teased. Hollis ignored her and marched towards the only door visible from where he’d parked the car. She followed him into a cavernous area with islands of tables and chairs dotted around on a scuffed, deep-green carpet. In one corner she could see the manic flashing lights of an array of slot machines and ahead was a long, dark-wood bar which ran the width of the room.

  ‘Come on, I’m buying,’ she said, nudging Dan to one side. She ordered a Coke for herself while Dan chose an orange juice and lemonade. Both asked for plenty of ice to combat the heat, which was stifling, despite the openness and space of the room.

  ‘Is the bar manager around?’ Kate asked as the glasses were placed on a brass tray in front of her.

  ‘That would be me,’ said the woman serving her. Kate had assumed she was a student doing a summer job or even a sixth former on a year out. The woman barely looked old enough to be serving drinks legally. Dressed in a lilac tie-dyed vest and baggy natural linen trousers, she looked more festival-ready than work-ready and the image was completed with the addition of vivid blue streaks in her blonde hair and a silver sleeper in her left nostril.

  ‘I’m Lou,’ she said as Kate and Hollis showed her their warrant cards. ‘I’m the weekday bar manager.’

  ‘Do you work evenings during the week?’ Kate asked.

  Lou snorted. ‘I start at ten, have a couple of hours break in the afternoon and then work six until closing. The pay’s shit but it’s not a career choice. I finished my degree last year and I’m working out what to do next. This pays the bills and I get every weekend off.’

  There was something a little over-earnest in her tone which suggested that she was trying to convince herself rather than Kate and Dan.

  ‘So you’d have been here last Tuesday evening?’ Kate asked

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Was it busy? I’d have thought Tuesdays would be fairly quiet.’

  The woman smiled. ‘That’s obviously what the bods at head office thought so they have a Tuesday Treat. Two meals for the price of one and a half-price drink. We were rammed, same as every Tuesday night.’

  Kate wondered if Sadie had realised this, made it part of her plan. It would have been easy to pass unnoticed in a large crowd of people. There were alcoves and annexes off the main room where she and Anna could have sat away from the families and couples enjoying the discounted meals and drinks on offer. Scrolling to a picture of Sadie, Kate passed her phone over the bar. ‘Do you remember seeing this woman in the past few days?’

  Lou looked at it closely, giving the photograph serious consideration. ‘Nope. Sorry.’

  Kate took the phone back. ‘How about this one?’ She showed the woman a picture of Anna Cohen taken from her company’s website.

  ‘Hmm. Well dressed, looked like she was here for a business meeting rather than a cheap meal.’

  ‘You remember her?’

  ‘Think so. She stood out a bit. Asked for a wine list. We had a bit of a laugh about it because we don’t do much beyond a basic red and a paint-stripper white.’ She looked at the screen again. ‘I’m sure it was her. Come to think of it, she was with somebody – another woman. Dark hair. The other one didn’t come to the bar. The first one got her a soft drink. I remember thinking how sensible that was. This one switched to soft drinks after a glass of wine.’

  ‘Sensible?’

  ‘There was a bike helmet on the table. I assumed one of them had cycled here and the other one was driving. You’d be surprised how many people think they can have about four pints and still be under the limit.’

  ‘Trust me, I wouldn’t,’ Kate said. She’d attended more than her share of road-traffic accidents while working as a uniformed officer in Cumbria and knew how people tended to overestimate their capacity for alcohol.

  ‘Did they stay long? Have a meal?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just remember the first drinks order and the bike helmet. They were sitting over there.’ She pointed to a table in a corner near the door. ‘They weren’t in my eyeline and it was a busy shift.’

  ‘So you don’t know when they left?’

  ‘Sorry. But we have CCTV in the car park. I can call the company and get them to release the footage from Tuesday night.’

  Kate nodded. ‘That would be a great help.’ She took a sip of her Coke and smiled at Lou.

  ‘Oh, you mean now?’ The woman looked surprised. ‘I hadn’t realised it was urgent. I’l
l have to find their details.’ She disappeared through a doorway behind the bar.

  ‘Looks like we’re right about Sadie,’ Hollis said, leaning on the bar. ‘I just hope we can prove it.’

  ‘We’ve possibly got DNA from the car,’ Kate reminded him.

  ‘She might say Anna allowed her to drive the car because she was incapacitated,’ Hollis said, his tone morose. ‘Or it came from Anna’s clothing after they hugged goodnight and she was never in the car.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re Mr Negative today,’ Kate said. ‘Come on, everything’s stacking up against her. Once we find her, we can check her email and phone records and link her conclusively to Liv and Eleanor.’

  Hollis sighed and shook his head. ‘She’s clever, Kate. I don’t think it’ll be that easy.’

  Lou breezed back with her phone in her hand. ‘I just need an email address and they’ll send the files today,’ she said, reaching down to grab a pen and a pad of Post-it notes from under the bar. She slid them across to Kate and she scribbled Cooper’s email address. ‘Ask them to send it there,’ she said. ‘She’s a colleague working on this case.’

  Lou read out the address twice to whoever she was speaking to at the security company and then hung up. ‘Anything else?’

  Kate thanked her for her time, drained her drink and led Hollis back to the car. They’d just set off back to Doncaster Central when her phone rang.

  ‘Cooper. That was quick. Have you got the files?’

  ‘What files?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be getting some CCTV files from the security company that covers the Dog and Gun.’

  ‘Er… not yet. That’s not why I’m ringing. I’ve had an idea about where Sadie might be.’

  1984

  I don’t know how to face a week here without Taz. When we arrived, I ran round to where her bender had been last time and she’d gone. Just disappeared. It was like there was a Taz-shaped hole in the world and nothing else could ever fit into it. Mum says I’m being daft, that I knew Taz was leaving to go to university, but she doesn’t understand. This place isn’t right without her and I thought she wasn’t really going to go. I thought university was just an idea, a story. This place needs her. I need her.