Harum Scarum (21 page)
In reply he handed her back the tube and stooped to rearrange the items in the basket. Izzy returned with her washed shells and insisted they both examine her latest find, a shell with legs.
‘It’s a hermit crab Izz, you can’t take it home, it’ll die and stink the place out,’ Monty said.
Izzy protested and Monty gave in with an unusual lack of conviction. Stevie caught his eye and signalled her concern to him.
‘Just a touch of the sun,’ he said, putting the crab in the bucket.
Stevie ignored the breakfast dishes in the sink and settled onto her sofa with the emails, chat transcripts and printed stories. She’d also left copies with Tash, so they could meet at Central in the morning to discuss them.
Tempted as she was to get started on them straightaway she forced herself to pause, leaned her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes, trying to conjure up a portrait of Bianca Webster. Criminal profilers stressed the importance of getting into the mind of the killer, but Stevie knew it was just as important to get into the mind of the victim. Soon the image of the child became so clear in her mind’s eye she could have been watching her from a web cam.
She visualised Bianca dipping a greasy hand into a packet of chips split open upon her desk. She could almost smell salt and vinegar in the air, see the crumbs dropping on to the keyboard, salt sprinkling the strewn papers. With much sighing and brow furrowing, the girl struggled to write coherently, typing with two lead-heavy fingers. She could see her lose concentration and pause to doodle on a piece of scrap paper, or scratch the name Daniel with a compass into the veneer of her desk. When a new email appeared, she’d give it a quick skim and impatiently type back words before they had even formed properly in her brain. Sometimes she got angry, sometimes she cried, sometimes she swore and stabbed at the desk with the point of her compass.
Stevie shook her head to rid it of the images—imagination was a powerful thing and as a cop she should use it with extreme caution: evidence, that’s what she was after. She picked up a bunch of printouts and started to read.
Then read it again.
She should have guessed. Daniel, the name she’d seen carved into Bianca’s desk, was Miro Kusak, not some rock or movie star as she’d earlier assumed.
None of ‘Daniel’s’ earlier emails had been saved to the iPod. Stevie could only guess that Kusak had made the first move, getting Bianca’s email address and photo from the Dream Team webmaster, Lolita. With her email address and the necessary computer skills, it would have been no problem for Kusak to cyber stalk Bianca wherever she chose to travel on the web. She needed to confirm this with Clarissa, but she suspected Kusak had probably infected Bianca’s computer with a Trojan virus disguised as some innocent-looking email attachment addressed from a friend. Once installed on her computer it would forward to Kusak the log files of all her Internet activities.
Stella had told Stevie that her daughter was a loner, often seen sitting in the school playground fiddling with her iPod. Bianca had probably been reading Daniel’s messages over and over again, trying to boost her fragile self-esteem. Stevie closed her eyes and took a breath and waited a moment for the ache of sadness to become manageable again.
The contents of Daniel’s saved emails were sickeningly predictable, flattery and talk about their common interests mostly.
‘I only have one parent too, we have so much in common; we’re soul mates...’
It was what she told the school kids at her talks: the cyber predator closely examines the profile of his victim and makes himself into what they want him to be. Unlike the inexperienced Robert Mason, Kusak seemed to have been able to hold back on the dirty talk—though Stevie had a feeling the needy Bianca Webster would’ve played along regardless.
Shuffling through the papers on the coffee table she picked one up at random, surprised to discover that this correspondence was not from Miro Kusak at all.
> From: B. Webster
[[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2007 7:35AM
> To:
[email protected]
> Subject: hi
>
> I hat my life, sometimes I wanna die. He was round the
> otha da & giv mum a blak i . i had to go next door cos
> Mrs smith the naybor thumpd on the wall then took
> mum to the hopital. Her arms broke 2. I hate him. hop
> things r o k with u.
> rite S.O.O.N
>
> lots of Luv bettybo xxxxxxxxxx
This message posed more questions than it answered. Stevie recognised Bianca’s email address and assumed Bettybo to be her Internet nickname. But who was this man who terrified her so and had broken her mother’s arm? The man on the stairwell and by the lake? ‘Bob’ of the mysterious phone call?—or were these men one and the same? Stella had told her she hadn’t seen Bianca’s father since the conception. Was this a stepfather Bianca was referring to, or a boyfriend, and why hadn’t he been mentioned before?
If it hadn’t been so late, Stevie would have been pounding on Stella’s door now, demanding answers.
The email from Bianca was addressed to someone at a Katy Enigma website. At least that was something she could check out now. She moved over to her PC tucked into a workstation in the corner of her lounge room, pushing Izzy’s collection of ‘My Little Ponies’ from the seat before she could sit down.
When the computer was booted up she typed Katy Enigma into the search engine. A Katy Enigma fan site came up at the top of the list, the only complete entry for the name. This meant that Katy Enigma wasn’t the commercial fad she’d first assumed it to be. And since Emma had been telling Izzy Katy Enigma stories, Emma must be a member of this fan site too.
She clicked on the website link and waited for the page to load.
A cartoon figure of Katy Enigma appeared on the screen. The manga style animation had exaggerated eyes, a dark bob and scarlet hotpants with the letters KE emblazoned in fire on the bib.
‘Welcome to the Katy Enigma fan site,’ the large script at the top of the page said. ‘Here you will find original stories featuring super-girl hero, Katy Enigma. Follow the links to read other stories written by fans, the chat room, message board, writing competitions, prizes and lots more!’
The cursor drifted over the web page and she found a link to a message board, then to a form a potential member had to fill out before joining. She filled in the form, gave herself the screen name of
bizzylizzy
and clicked to submit it. Within a few minutes she was a member of the Katy Enigma site. As her eyes ran down the list of member names she wondered which, if any, belonged to Emma—
poshgirl, squeaky, oddmouse, katyfan!
She checked out her own new profile, which she discovered was accessible to all the board members. Her email address wasn’t displayed because she’d ticked the box asking for it not to be. Members could still contact each other through an internal private mailing box without revealing their email addresses. Soon she found Bettybo’s profile and saw her private email address displayed for the world to see. Kusak had already known Bianca’s email address, but even if he hadn’t, she might just as well have knocked on his door and presented herself to him.
‘If that’s how Kusak did it, it’s too easy,’ Stevie mumbled to herself. He must have cyber stalked her via the Trojan Virus to the KE site, joined up as Daniel, pretended to be a Katy Enigma fan and then befriended her through the message board and chat room.
She rubbed her eyes, yawned, scrolled down pages filled with stories by members. Some of the stories were quite long, too long for her to read now. She’d see if she could persuade Clarissa to give up her Sunday morning to look through them, while she questioned Emma about the site.
Stevie made herself a mug of strong coffee and returned to the email printouts on the table.
> FROM
[email protected]
> SENT 12 January 2007 8:48AM
> TO
[email protected]
> SUBJECT hi
>
> Don’t say things like that Bettybo, life is good. U just
> have 2 think of ways of giving yourself powa. Think of
> Katy Enigma, she wouldn’t kill herself, would she? U cn
> b like KE, clever and fast and cute if u wanna b. luv HS
[[email protected]]
6 Febuary 2007 7:35 wrote:
Danel thinks Im cool and sexy. Im gonna meet him.
[email protected]
8 Febuary 2007 7:52 wrote:
Idiot. He could be any1.
> HS
On 9/2/07 8:49AM, “Bianca Webster”
< [email protected] >
wrote:
> well Up yors2!? ur
jelos!
As far as Stevie knew, this was one of Bianca’s last notes. She was abducted on 12 February from the Shenton Park Lake and her body found on 14 February at a building site in Midland.
Stevie retrieved her notebook from under the piles of paper and scribbled down what she’d learned from the emails. Someone who called themselves Harum Scarum corresponded privately with Bianca via the Katy Enigma website. ‘HS’ seemed to be doing his or her best to boost Bianca’s brittle self-esteem, playing at pop psychology and attempting to ‘empower’ Bianca through stories featuring Katy Enigma. The printed versions of these stories were now strewn before Stevie on the coffee table. She glanced through them; they ranged from missing puppy scenarios and magic castle hideaways, to princesses, evil counts, anger, blood and vengeance.
Unfortunately this empowerment strategy hadn’t worked. Bianca had needed or wanted further affirmation and she’d found it in the form of Miro Kusak posing as a boy called Daniel. Harum Scarum had tried to warn Bianca off the meeting, an email fight had followed which left Bianca still determined to go ahead.
Stevie didn’t need to replay the remaining events in her head; the picture of the abduction, the abuse, the pump house and the duct tape were still livid in her mind.
She looked back at a chat transcript she’d noticed earlier. In it they were talking about running away:
betta 2 get even than run,
Harum Scarum had said.
Weariness began to creep in. Stevie yawned and swallowed her last gulp of coffee. Just one final look at the website then she’d call it a night and hand the problems over to the experts in the morning.
Back at her PC she clicked on the stories page and found something short, a poem with no title and no author listed.
Living nightmare, darkest fears, he comes at night.
His gain, my pain, I cry in vain and no one hears.
He is the monster from under my bed.
She thought for a moment, pondering the lines. As realisation dawned she covered her mouth with her hand. Oh God, is this what the site was really all about?
Sunday Morning
EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 151206
BETTYBO: he did it again 2me 2day
HARUM SCARUM: u ok?
BETTYBO: I wanna run away
HARUM SCARUM: me2 but we can’t
BETTYBO: ynot?
HARUM SCARUM: betta 2 get even than run
BETTYBO: lik u?
Aidan Stoppard’s Porsche was parked in the Breightlings’ driveway. Stevie laid her hand flat on the bonnet as she hurried past it. Cold.
The black lacquer door opened before she had a chance to knock. Miranda stood before her with panda eyes, pillow hair and pale blotchy skin. When she saw Stevie standing there, she pulled her silk robe tight over her generous breasts, strikingly out of proportion with the rest of her small frame. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said in puzzled recognition. ‘That was very quick.’
‘I only live around the corner from you Mrs Breightling. Central contacted me at home and I came right away.’
‘Who is it?’ Stevie heard a deep male voice from somewhere down the sepulchred hallway.
‘The police, Aidan,’ Miranda called over a porcelain shoulder.
From the distant family area Stevie recognised Aidan Stoppard. ‘Already?’ he queried.
‘They told me you’d reported Emma missing,’ Stevie said. Miranda took a deep breath, the ribs in her chest visibly straining. ‘Yes, yes, you’d better come in. I think she’s been kidnapped!’
With ballerina grace she turned on her bare heels and fled down the passageway into the waiting arms of Aidan Stoppard.
He looked gravely at Stevie as she approached, pushed Miranda gently to the side and handed her his business card. Stevie barely glanced at it, put it in her jeans pocket.
He cleared his throat and explained, ‘I’m a friend of the family, popped in for breakfast. Miranda’s just told me the news.’ He spoke with a slightly flat intonation, the residue of some kind of faded London accent Stevie suspected.
The Bill
flashed briefly to mind.
She cut him no slack. ‘No you didn’t just pop in for breakfast, you stayed here overnight.’
The tight expression and the straightening of his shoulders told Stevie this was a man not used to being challenged.
‘Emma and I get nervous when Christopher’s away,’ Miranda cut in, as if anticipating an unfavourable reaction from Stoppard. ‘And Emma’s prone to nightmares. She feels more secure with her Uncle Aidan around.’
Stoppard relaxed, spoke with a flash of white teeth, ‘There you go then, sorry about the white lie, officer. People will talk and Miranda has a reputation to maintain. Christopher knows I stay here—the spare room’s a home away from home for me.’
‘Of course it is.’ Stevie didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm. Emma had told Stevie the other night that she
didn’t
have problems with nightmares, that she was usually able to control her bad dreams. So which one of them was lying and why?