Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (23 page)

He pressed the link on the Twitter site that helped him find friends. He ran through the import wizard and allowed it to import all of the contacts stored against the temporary Gmail address he had just set up. It only had one contact: Hilary Saxton’s. He waited for the screen to refresh . . . and there was her Twitter username: ‘@floristhilary’.

He browsed through her Twitter profile. He immediately found what he was looking for.

Links to photos she’d tweeted. 

This might actually work.

Most of the photos Hilary had tweeted were of Izzy. He opened up one of them. Izzy looked cute, sitting on Derek’s lap in their living room. He recognised the room and furniture from the webcam feed displayed in front of him now.

Perfect.

He downloaded the photo and passed the file into a geotag viewer program. 

Brody had observed that Hilary was an avid iPhone user. Like most modern smartphones, the iPhone includes the capability to determine its approximate real-world location, triangulated using information from cellular, Wi-Fi and Global Positioning System networks. Handy for a multitude of innocuous uses, like finding the nearest coffee shop or car park. When photos are taken, this same location data is hidden inside the image file, a process known as geotagging, enabling the photographer to plot on a map the locations of where all their pictures were taken, another innocuous feature to make life better. But when these same images are uploaded to public locations accessed by the likes of Twitter, and if the geotag data is not stripped out, then anyone in the know can reverse engineer where the photo was taken. 

He’d heard about celebrity stalkers and paparazzi looking out for famous people tweeting photos from their smartphone and then using this geotracking technique to show up at the celebrity’s location minutes later, much to their surprise. Until now, he’d never thought of a reason to use the same technique himself. 

Brody allowed himself a self-satisfied smile. Displayed on the screen in front of him was a pointer on a map, highlighting a location in a street just outside Bushey. He switched to satellite view and saw that it was an expensive residential street with huge detached homes. He dropped into Street View and zoomed into the front door of the house pinpointed by the geotag coordinates. Number 85.

Now he had the house number as well as the street name. For completeness, he fed the details into the Post Office’s reverse postcode look-up program and was presented with the full postal address.

Brody looked at the large screen in the centre of the room. Hilary was still feeding the baby. 

He spoke out loud, aptly adapting Davina McCall’s catchphrase back from when she used to host the
Big Brother
TV show:

“Hilary Saxton, I’m coming to get you!”

CHAPTER 8

DCI Jeffries disconnected his mobile and shrugged. He looked across the board table to DCI Da Silva and said, “This is now officially a linked series murder and you’re lead SIO. You’ll have the full support of me and my team.”

Jeffries and Da Silva stood. They shook hands across the table, as if they’d sealed a major deal. Da Silva even thanked him for his professionalism.

Jeffries turned to Jenny. “I’ll leave DS Hamid and DC Selby here with you for any local knowledge they can share.”

“Thanks, sir,” she said.

He bored into her eyes and said, with a smirk, “Remember, DI Price, you’ve got my attention.” 

Jenny couldn’t decide if she had just been come on to by the suave-looking DCI, right in front of her boss and her whole team. Or if she had just been politely threatened. He turned and left the meeting room.

Following Fiona’s timely entrance three hours ago, Alan, Karim and Edmonds had also arrived. Edmonds took over processing the crime scene, leading the local SOCO officers until his own team arrived and assumed responsibility. Jenny had phoned Dr Gorski and he had shown up just a few minutes before the local pathologist, who happily turned around and returned to his office; one less case to deal with. Half an hour before, Da Silva had finally turned up having, he explained, been on the phone to the Met executives all morning, making sure his MIT team were given full control of the crime scene.

Now they all sat in a boardroom two doors along from the crime scene, ready to review what they had learned so far. The building manager had kindly sent up tea, coffee and a plate of biscuits, as if they were valued Flexbase customers. 

On the table before them were two documents in sealed, transparent evidence bags. The first was the envelope DC Selby had originally spotted under the table on which the dead girl lay. ‘AUDRI’ was handwritten on the front in black ballpoint capitals. The second was the letter it had contained. 

Jenny picked it up and shook her head at its audacity.

“He got her to do all of the work!” First reading the list of instructions the letter contained to herself, she then summarised for the room: “Arrive virtually naked. Take off your coat. Trap yourself in the chair. Put on a blindfold. And wait to be murdered.” 

“She must have known her killer to play that kind of sex game,” said DC Jones. Some nods.

“Why the blindfold, then?” asked Karim, munching a custard cream.

“Part of the game?”

“Or,” Jenny mused, “to hide the fact that the killer wasn’t who she thought it was.”

“But that doesn’t really make sense,” said Alan. “If he was going to kill her anyway, why hide his face?”

“So that she was compliant while he tied her hands with the wire?” suggested Fiona.

“I don’t think so,” said Dr Gorski. “She was knocked to the floor while her legs were trapped in the arms of the chair. See all the blood there.” He pointed at a dark puddle by a fallen office chair in the centre of the room. “She broke her nose from the fall. That’s probably when she broke her arm as well, from the weight of her body and the chair landing on it, with no ability to break the fall. If her hands had been tied before she fell, she couldn’t have broken her arm in that way. That’s when he tied her up and dragged her to where she is now.” He nodded unnecessarily at her body lying on the meeting room table in a massive pool of blood. 

“Was she sexually assaulted, Doctor?” asked Jenny, resigned to the answer she already knew.

“I believe so. I’ll confirm for sure at the post-mortem.”

“Time of death?”

“Taking into account room temperature, internal body temperature, rigor mortis and so on, I’d estimate between twelve and sixteen hours ago.”

“And I take it the cause was the cut throat.”

“Yes, I would think so, very similar to yesterday. But it’s clear she suffered a lot of other trauma before that.”

Jenny shook her head.

She turned to Alan. “What about the security guard from last night?”

“Just got off the phone to him. He was expecting the girl as someone had phoned down ahead of time to let him know.”

“Let me guess,” said Jenny. “He was told to phone directly through to the meeting room rather than the regular company phone number in the building.”

“Exactly. He didn’t remember the name of the person, but said he’d written it down in the signing-in book.”

“Derek Saxton.”

“Yes.”

“Which tenant was he supposed to be with?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Surely the guard would have needed to know which company she was here to visit?”

“Yes, I asked that. But, because he phoned from the meeting room, he didn’t think to ask.”

“Did Audri not state the company name when she asked for this Derek Saxton?”

“No. The guard said she just asked for Derek Saxton.”

“Did he send her up?”

“No, apparently Saxton sent someone down to pick her up.”

“What did he look like?”

“The guard doesn’t remember. He said he was more focused on his crossword. I’m going to go see him after this to see if I can get more details face-to-face.”

Karim jumped in. “So this guard is so into his crossword he doesn’t even realise that she’s arrived naked under that red mac.”

“Not everyone spends all their life trying to picture what’s under women’s clothes, Karim,” quipped Fiona, lightening the mood.

“Not all women are worth the effort,” retorted Karim. “I haven’t thought about you—“

“Focus on the case,” ordered Da Silva, his only contribution so far. 

Inwardly Jenny sighed. She loved the banter within her team. It was healthy. Karim’s response had been pretty good for him, partly because he’d omitted the usual swear words but mostly because Fiona Jones was absolutely stunning. Jenny was convinced her angular cheekbones, huge hazel eyes and tall hourglass figure could easily get her on the front cover of
Vogue
. 

“Anything else, Alan?” asked Jenny.

“Only that the guard noticed that she arrived in a taxi.”

Hamid spoke up. “I’ll take that if you like. I know all the cab companies round here.”

“Thank you, DI Hamid,” said Da Silva.

“Yes, that’s great. Obviously, we want the pick-up address.”

“I’ll get straight on it.” He downed the contents of his cup and left the room.

Jenny turned to Fiona.

“Anything on this Derek Saxton?”

“As far as I can tell so far, there’s no one who works here with that name. I’ve talked to all the tenants based in this building. But, just as in the Paddington building, hundreds of non-tenant companies use it as nothing more than a postal address and for hosting the odd business meeting. I’ve still got to get through to all of them.”

A mobile phone trilled. Fiona looked at the number. “I need to take this.” Jenny nodded and she stepped out of the room.

“So it’s nothing to do with
the
Derek Saxton,” offered Alan. Seeing confused looks from those around the table, he explained himself. “Used to play professional rugby for Saracens about ten or twelve years ago. Until he broke his knee.”

“Is that really relevant, DS Coombs?” asked Da Silva.

“Saracens used to be a local team to Watford until they moved to their new stadium down the road in Hendon. It could be him.”

“Well, check it out anyway, Alan. Just in case,” said Jenny.

“CCTV?” Jenny asked Karim.

“Same as in Paddington. Just for reception, but all stored remotely at their head office in Canary Wharf.”

Jenny had planned to review the Paddington footage that morning, but Audri Sahlberg’s murder had taken precedence.

“Right, we need to prioritise this. With two crime scenes, we can search the footage for the same person showing up in both receptions.”

The door opened and Fiona returned. Taking her seat, she said, “That was about the meeting room booking. It’s the same system as in Paddington. They take bookings over the phone or via their Internet site, as long as you’ve got a valid account number.”

“Do we know in whose name it was booked?”

“I do now. It was booked by a Derek Saxton using the account number of Colnbrook Services Ltd, which is one of the tenants in this building. I talked to them earlier, but I’ll go see them again now they’ve been dropped into this. And guess what . . .”

Jenny said, “The room was booked four days previously along with all the other meeting rooms on this floor.”

Fiona’s face fell. “How’d you know that?”

“It fits the pattern.”

“I guess.”

Realising that she had ruined her subordinate’s moment in the spotlight, Jenny said, “Good work, Fiona. Anything else, anyone?”

She looked around the room. Da Silva sat at the head of the table; observing the team at work, his hands clasped together. Alan and Karim shook their heads. Selby, who had remained quiet throughout, said nothing. Fiona said, “Nothing from me.” Dr Gorski shook his head. 

 “Let’s summarise then. Our killer is someone who knows the Flexbase systems really well. He books these meeting rooms in false names well in advance. He knows his victims and is able to lure them there under false pretences. He knocks them unconscious, ties them up and sexually assaults them from behind. And then he slices their throats with a sharp double-bladed knife.”

“Assuming the results of this post-mortem match the previous victim,” said Dr Gorski.

“Understood.”

“You do realise that,” DC Selby spoke up, “if your timings are right he already planned this murder before carrying out first one?”

Jenny hadn’t thought of that. 

Selby continued. “And if he’s done two already, he might have more lined up.”

“Agreed. We need to move quickly. Let’s summarise who’s doing what,” said Da Silva.

Jenny look at him, surprised, but then realised he was doing again what he’d done yesterday in the incident room in front of the whole murder investigation team. He was allowing her to do all the work and then taking control at the end during wrap-up and action-setting. He was reasserting his control.

Jenny formed the actions in her mind and was about to speak when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” said Jenny and Da Silva in unison.

Jason Edmonds, the crime scene manager, entered. He held up three evidence bags and said, “Thought you might want to see these straight away. We found them both in the pockets of the red coat on the table.”

“What are they?”

“This one’s just the badge she would have been given by security when she arrived last night.” He threw it on the table. Karim picked it up to examine it. “This one’s her iPhone. It’s locked; we’ll need to break the code.” He placed it on the table and then continued, “But this one’s far more interesting.”

Jenny stood up and held her hand out before he placed the bag on the desk with the others. He dropped it in her hand and waited, expectantly.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No. Read it.”

It was a typewritten note, printed on a plain white sheet of A4. Jenny read it to herself.

Audri,

I can’t keep you out of my mind. I want you all the time. I want you tonight. I can’t wait until Friday when she’s next out. I hate sleeping in the room next to yours with her, thinking of you. It won’t be for much longer, that I promise you.