Splinter the Silence (37 page)

‘I understand you have reported the abuse to your local police?’ That was, after all, how Stacey had found Maxine.

‘Yes, and they were very sympathetic. But to be honest, I don’t have any confidence that they knew what to do about it. It’s one thing if you’re a household name, then they get off their backsides because of the publicity, but if you’re not an A-list celebrity, it’s not such a high priority. The likes of me, we don’t get the VIP treatment.’

‘I’m sorry you feel like that. In this unit, we don’t care what your status is, we want to do what we can to put a stop to this sort of harassment.’ Not strictly true, but not a lie either. ‘Can you tell me when you started to get these hate messages?’

‘It was about three weeks ago… Let me check… Yes, the first one was three weeks tomorrow. Right after I had my little rant about why men’s football is so scared of acknowledging they have gay men in the game. The women are coming to terms with it, but the men seem to be running scared. That’s pretty much what I said. And within minutes of it being reported, the trolls started. I can send you a copy of what I’ve been getting.’

‘That would be helpful. Can I ask, what was your reaction?’

‘Well, to be honest, I was shocked. Shocked and a bit shaken. I knew that kind of abuse was out there, but I really didn’t think I’d said anything particularly new. There’s a whole campaign against homophobia in football, for heaven’s sake. The problem seems to be that, as a woman, I have no place in the conversation.’

‘Did you take any action? Close down your Twitter account or your Facebook page or anything like that?’

Maxine laughed. ‘God, no. My whole bloody life is online these days. No, once I was over the initial shock, I set about blocking the little bastards. You only get one pop at me, then you’re gone, out of my life forever.’

‘You weren’t frightened by them?’ Paula scribbled
Not scared off
on her pad.

She tutted. ‘They weren’t on my doorstep. The kind of people who resort to name-calling online, they’re not the ones to worry about. They’re stupid little boys shouting names in the playground. If I went round their houses and called them on it, they’d wet themselves.’

‘And yet you reported it to the police?’

‘It’s against the law, isn’t it? Threatening people? It’s nasty. I hoped that they’d get a fright like the fright they gave me. Some big bad policeman – or policewoman, I suppose – turning up on their doorstep and ruining their day like they’d tried to ruin mine. Didn’t get me anywhere, though, did it?’ Maxine sounded more disappointed than angry.

‘The main thing is that you don’t feel threatened.’

‘Not threatened, love. Just pissed off. It puts other people off speaking out when they see the kind of crap that the likes of me get when we say what we think. And that’s not a good thing, believe me.’

‘Have you had any indication at all that any of the people making threats against you might put them into action?’

‘Not a one. No bricks through the windows or scratches on my car.’ She laughed, a throaty sound redolent of cigarettes. ‘Well, except for the ones I put there.’

‘No signs of anyone following you? No strangers hanging around at home or at work?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed. Should I be looking?’

‘There’s no reason to think so, no. But I have to ask.’

‘Fair enough. So what are you going to do about these morons?’

Good question.
‘I wish I could tell you something concrete. We’re trying to develop a joined-up strategy so we can deal with them. But I’ll be honest. The problem we keep running into is the companies who run the social media sites hiding behind data protection legislation.’

Maxine grunted. ‘Tell me about it. Well, good luck with that. If there’s anything else I can help you with, call me. But I’m not losing any sleep over these bastards, let me tell you.’

Paula hung up and leaned back in her chair. She wasn’t sure what the point of these interviews was. As far as she could tell, there was little in common between the responses of the three dead women. Kate Rawlins had been uncomfortable but dismissive, Jasmine Burton had been frightened and upset, and Daisy Morton had given them the metaphorical finger. Paula had a hunch that it wasn’t their responses that counted. It was what they’d said. And on that basis, Maxine Silvers didn’t fit.

She sighed. That didn’t mean she shouldn’t focus on the task she’d been given. For all she knew, her hunch was wide of the mark. There might yet be something lurking in the shadows. And as far as her colleagues were concerned, if there was anything to be got, she was the one to get it.

Three hours and five more interviews later, she was ready to concede defeat. Of the six possibles Stacey had identified, Paula reckoned only two fitted the pattern – Ursula Foreman, a Bradfield blogger and journalist, and a Norwich novelist called Zoe Brewster. They’d both expressed opinions that were similar to the dead women and they both had moderately high profiles.

The question was, what were they going to do about it? They didn’t have any solid evidence to back up their theory and even if they did, and they had the resources to put surveillance on the women, it was doubtful whether they would know what they were looking for.

This case was like wrestling fog. Although she despised herself for it, Paula couldn’t help longing for some twisted killer doing the kind of tangible things you could put your finger on and go, ‘There. That’s what he does. That’s who he is. And here’s how we find him.’

Had they lost their way? Had something gone horribly wrong? Had Carol been out of the game for too long? Had Tony and Carol finally gone off the rails and sent them all flying through the air on a wild goose chase? Paula put her head in her hands and groaned softly. Her head was spinning; she had no idea what to do next. Was this what it was like when the wheels came off?

48

N
othing was ever as straightforward as you thought it was going to be, Stacey chided herself. She ought to know by now. Armed with the access codes for Valhalla.co.uk, she’d let herself into the retail giant’s site by the back door. On the basis that there would be traps for the unwary, she’d moved cautiously through the opening levels of security, doing the digital equivalent of peering round corners before she turned them. Eventually, after a few heart-stopping moments where screens froze on her or raced past at breakneck speed, she reached a place where she felt fairly confident she could move around with a degree of safety.

Her first attempt was a hopeful one, wondering whether she could enter all three titles in one search. Clearly it was possible but equally clearly it would take time for the system to spit out a result. Aware of the clock ticking, Stacey drummed her fingers along the edge of the keyboard, feeling the tension in her back and neck. After a few minutes, she actually got to her feet and did some shoulder stretches against the wall.

When she got back to her screen, she was faced with a moment of crushing disappointment. According to the search, not one single customer had bought all three titles together. Ever. She slumped in her seat. It had been a great idea of Tony’s but it looked as if he’d been dancing in the dark once too often.

Because she was still in the system and she had some time left, she set up searches for all the possible pairings of the three titles. Almost immediately, the system spewed out 1,279 results for Woolf and Plath together. Stacey copied the list and printed it out, belt and braces as ever. Were they set texts, or something? Stacey had a vague memory of girls she’d been at school with fetishising Plath. What was it about suicide that was so appealing to adolescents? It had never crossed her mind, even at her lowest points. There was always the promise of better days over the horizon. New programs, new possibilities, new tricks to learn.

Given that result, it was all the more surprising that there were no results at all for the other pairings. Nobody who had bought
Ariel
and
A Room of One’s Own
had bought
The Death Notebooks
with it, either at the same time or on a separate occasion. It looked as if the killer had gone elsewhere for a copy of the Anne Sexton. Unless of course he’d already owned it. That and the other titles too.

Stacey sighed. She hated to admit defeat but maybe this time the defeat had come at the hands of circumstance rather than her lack of competence. But she wasn’t going to give in until she’d tried everything. She decided to do one last search, for the Anne Sexton on its own. And up it popped. Valhalla had sold eleven second-hand copies of the out-of-print title in the past year, which seemed amazing to Stacey. Eleven people who cared that much about a dead American poet she’d never heard of. She scrutinised the records, noticing that being second-hand seemed to put the book in a separate category to the new books. Could that be the answer?

Again, she copied the list then turned to one of her other screens, where she set up a comparison between the names on the Plath and Woolf list and those who’d bought the Sexton. Three names were highlighted by the computer. All women.

‘Damn,’ Stacey muttered. Because she couldn’t help herself, she looked them up in Valhalla’s customer database. One had an address at the English department in a Scottish university; the second apparently lived in France and the third had bought dozens of books of poetry, some of it by men. A further search revealed that the third was herself a published poet. Even if they hadn’t agreed with Tony and Alvin that the killer they sought was a man, none of these seemed a viable suspect. It looked as if Tony’s inspired suggestion had been a dead end.

Unless… perhaps there was a way of widening out the comparison? She’d asked only for exact matches. What if there were variations? Sometimes people set up new accounts when they changed their email address or the credit card they wanted their purchases billed to. She had some time left on the clock. Surely it was worth having another crack at it?

This time, she downloaded and printed the buyers of each of the three titles separately. Let her systems make the comparisons rather than Valhalla’s. There were pages of names now. It would be an almost impossible task for a human brain to sort them out. But for a programmer like Stacey, it was a minor challenge to set up a routine to weed out close variations.

She ran the comparison again, this time factoring in variations and using all three full lists. And this time, another match showed up. This time, one was definitely a man. Matthew Martin had bought both Woolf and Sexton. And MJ Martin had purchased Plath. How sweet it was when the machines delivered what no human could possibly manage.

Finding the personal accounts of both Martins was the work of moments. A few keystrokes, a few deft movements of fingers over trackpad and there it was. The credit card details were different. But the billing addresses were identical, and conveniently the same as the delivery address. The same instruction that if he wasn’t home, his parcels could be left safely in the garden shed round the back. And a list of all the other purchases from both accounts.

He’d bought all sorts from Valhalla. Computer accessories. Pay-as-you-go phones. Vitamin supplements. Jeans. SIM cards. A hacksaw. MP3 downloads. And books. The three Stacey had gone looking for plus four others. Books of poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva, May Ayim and Alejandra Pizarnik. And a novel by Penelope Delta. Stacey had heard of none of them, but five minutes’ googling revealed that all four were writers who had killed themselves. Hanging, jumping from a high building, poison and an overdose. It looked as if Matthew Martin was planning a major campaign.

For most people that would have been enough to take into the next morning’s briefing. But Stacey considered that a mere baseline which she was obliged to rise above. With a name and an address she had the raw materials for a biography. First there was LinkUp, the site where people could post their beefed-up CVs and connect with everyone they’d ever wanted to impress. And there was Matthew Martin, civil engineer. A specialist in bridges. If you wanted to build a bridge or renovate or repair one, he was apparently your man. He’d worked on a wide range of projects overseas and in the UK. His most recent job seemed to have been in the Scottish highlands. Stacey followed the links for the project and discovered that the lead engineer on the project had been a woman. She captured the information and highlighted it. Not that she was particularly interested; but she knew it was the sort of thing Tony would latch on to.

His Facebook page wasn’t very helpful. He had less than two dozen friends, almost all of them engineers. He owned up to no interests or relationships, even resisting listing his favourite albums, movies or TV shows. The last posting on the page was just over three months old and was a moody photograph of the Humber Bridge at dawn.

According to DVLA, he had a clean driving licence and owned a five-year-old 4WD Toyota Navarra pickup as well as a two-year-old Volkswagen Passat. Both were registered to the same address as his credit card.

Stacey wondered if she could get inside the ANPR system, the network of cameras that recorded in real time the number plates of the majority of vehicles on the road as they moved around the country. The last time she’d tried, she’d timed out before she got where she wanted to be. Since then she’d refined her security-busting software, tailoring it more precisely to the idiosyncrasies of the site, but she hadn’t had a chance to try it out yet.

Tentatively she launched herself at the site. To her delight, she slipped inside as cleanly as if she had a set of master keys. If she could get what she needed, she wouldn’t waste time trying to analyse it, just print it out and look at it offline. First she tried the Toyota pickup, typing in the registration. If he’d been moving his victims around, it would be a lot easier to get them in and out of the cab or the bed of the truck. She didn’t know how much data was going to come up, so she set the search window for two days before Jasmine Burton had walked into the Exe. But nothing came up at all. Either she wasn’t doing it right or he hadn’t driven his Toyota anywhere the ANPR cameras were operating, which seemed unlikely, given they covered all the key trunk routes in the country these days. The other possibility was that he’d obscured part of his number plate with mud or reflective spray. Sometimes it was possible to hoodwink the cameras like that. And Tony had emphasised that they were dealing with a careful planner.