‘I wasn’t completely accurate when I said he used a different machine every time,’ Gary said. ‘When I went back and analysed all the messages we’ve still got, I found some of them were double or triple use. The ones he went back to twice are Worcester, Bradfield and Stoke. He used Manchester Airport three times. But they’re all public-access machines.’
‘It’s the motorway network,’ Ambrose said, seeing the roads unfurl in his mind’s eye like veins on a forearm. ‘M5, M42, M6, M60, M62. These are all easy access off the motorway. If he was stalking Jennifer, Worcester was one end of his journey. ‘ He looked up, eyes bright with a fresh idea. ‘And Leeds was the other end. Maybe that’s where he lives.’
‘Or maybe that’s where his next target lives,’ Patterson said. ‘He used Manchester Airport three times. Maybe that’s the one that’s nearest to where he actually lives. You need to run this past our profiler, see what he thinks. Don’t they have some kind of computer program for figuring out where the killer lives? I’m sure I heard about that when they had that pair of random snipers in America.’
Gary looked dubious. ‘I don’t know if geographic profiling would work on something like this. Plus, it’s a pretty specialist field.’
Suddenly animated, Patterson sat up straight and waved a hand at the papers. ‘Get him in, let him have a look. That’s what we’re paying him for.’
Ambrose almost said something, then realised it wasn’t the moment to raise Hill’s demands to see the material on his ground. He’d have to wait till Gary had left. ‘What’s the other stuff, Gary?’ he asked.
‘Not quite so good,’ Gary said, placing the other file on the desk. It looked pretty thin. ‘But before I get to that, I wanted to tell you one other thing I did try. I thought that since ZZ was using Rig to contact Jennifer, he must have a page of his own. It turns out that he did, but the page was deactivated around four o’clock on the afternoon Jennifer disappeared. He was burning his bridges behind him.’
‘Is there any way of getting at what was on the page?’
Gary shrugged. ‘You’d need to get Rig on board. I don’t think they’d give you anything without a warrant. And you’ve got a whole issue around data protection. They don’t actually own the personal data people put up there. After the trouble Facebook got into over ownership of what’s on the member pages, all the networking sites have been very careful to put up Chinese walls between their customers and themselves. So if there is some residual information on Rig’s servers, you might not be able to get at it even with a warrant. Not without fighting their lawyers.’
‘That’s insane,’ Patterson protested.
‘That’s the way it goes. These companies, they don’t want to be seen as a pushover when the cops come calling. There’s all sorts of stuff going on in their private sidebars. If you guys can just walk in and take what you want, they’re going to have no clients in about five minutes flat.’
‘God help us,’ Patterson muttered. ‘You’d think they wanted to encourage murderers and paedophiles to use their sites.’
‘Only if they’re got valid credit cards and like to shop online,’ Ambrose said. ‘Thanks anyway, Gary. I’ll talk to the people at Rig and see what they have to say. So, how did you get on with the fragments you found on the hard disk?’
‘I’ve managed to pull out some of the last conversation between Jennifer and ZZ. The one she erased. It’s only partial, but it’s something. There’s two copies in there,’ he added.
Thin divided by two, then. Ambrose took the two sheets of paper Patterson offered him.
ZZ: . . . 4 . . . king 2 me . . . priv8 here &no . . .
Jeni: Y u want 2 be . . .
ZZ: . . . ke I sd . . . BIG secr . . .
Jeni: no i don’t
ZZ: u don’t no wo . . .
Jeni: . . . noth . . .
ZZ: . . . i no truth . . .
Jeni: . . . ow . . . my biz
ZZ: cuz i no wh . . . 2 find stuf . . . idd . . . aces t look 4
inf . . . u don . . .
Jeni: . . . makin it up?
ZZ: cuz when i . . . no its tr . . . ul c . . .
Jeni: . . . so spill
ZZ: take a deep breth
Jeni: u mak . . . nd big deal
ZZ: ur . . . ur real . . .
Jeni: . . . fkd in t hed
ZZ: i can prove . . .
Jeni: LIAR
ZZ: . . . et me 2moro . . . @ ca . . . el u, show . . .
Jeni: . . . lieve u?
ZZ: cuz we need 2 . . . 30 @ c . . . nt tel . . .
Jeni: . . . b ther. U btr not b ly . . .
Patterson frowned. ‘It’s not exactly easy to read,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly bloody English. It’s like a different language.’
‘It is. It’s called textspeak. Your Lily would be able to read that like it was a newspaper,’ Ambrose said. ‘Basically, ZZ is saying he knows Jeni’s big secret. He says something that Jennifer is totally pissed off about. She says he’s fucked in the head and then she shouts that he’s a liar. That’s what the capital letters mean, she’s shouting.’
‘Mental,’ Patterson muttered.
‘Then I think he’s saying they should meet tomorrow. He gives her a time and place and tells her not to tell. And she says she will be there and he better not be lying,’ Gary said.
‘So where’s he telling her to meet?’ Patterson said, pink with frustration.
Gary shrugged. ‘Who knows? Somewhere beginning with “ca”. Café? Car park? Castle Street? The cathedral?’
‘You can’t narrow it down any more than that?’
Gary looked hurt. ‘You’ve got no idea, have you? It’s taken me more than a week to get this much. I had to beg a mate for some software that’s still in development to get this far. Given what there was on that computer, it’s a miracle we’ve got this much. At least now you can rule out a lot of places where she didn’t go.’
Patterson chewed the skin by his thumbnail in an act of suppressed rage. ‘I’m sorry, Gary,’ he grunted. ‘I know you’ve done your best. Thank you. Send us your bill.’
Gary extracted himself from the chair with an attempt at dignity, grabbed his backpack and marched to the door. ‘Good luck,’ was his parting shot.
‘He’s an annoying little twat, isn’t he?’ Patterson said as the door closed.
‘But he does deliver.’
‘Why else do you think I give him houseroom? So, we need to narrow down everywhere in the city that begins with “ca” and check what CCTV cover there is from nine days ago. Plenty there for the team to get stuck into.’ Patterson was vibrant with energy now. He’d turned the corner from despair to optimism. It was, Ambrose thought, the perfect moment to pitch him on Tony Hill’s behalf.
‘Since we’re going to be flat out on this,’ he began, ‘we’re not going to want any extra bodies cluttering the place up. Are we?’
CHAPTER 15
Carol had lost count of the number of times she’d stood in a pathology suite watching a pathologist performing their precise and grisly duty. But she’d never grown inured to the pitiful nature of the procedure. Seeing a human being reduced to their component parts still filled her with sadness, but it was always tempered with the desire to deliver justice to whoever was responsible for bringing the cadaver to this place. If anything reinforced Carol’s need for justice, it was the morgue rather than the crime scene.