‘Fuck it,’ Winkler said, swinging out into the traffic, gambling that the oncoming car, a red Mini, would see him and brake.
The Mini did brake, but as Winkler attempted to cross the lane he stalled the car. He hurriedly turned the ignition, flushing pink, mortified that Gareth had seen him stall – the shame! – and as he fumbled to get going the Mini driver and all the cars behind beeped their horns. Hammond’s car was still stuck at the red light, and Winkler stalled the car again, at the same time that the driver of the Mini jumped out of his car and strode over, banging on the window of the Audi.
Winkler pushed the button to lower the window, flashing his badge at the irate driver. ‘Police. Piss off.’ The red-faced man retreated to his car.
He finally managed to get into gear, but now the traffic in the far lane was moving, and he had to wait for someone to flash him and let him across. Hammond had gone.
Chapter 36
Day 11 – Patrick
Patrick found Carmella in the canteen, staring into a mug of coffee, a half-eaten Kit Kat beside it, chocolate crumbs scattered across the Formica. There was an old stain on the table that made Patrick visualise the shape of a stricken body. He closed his eyes to clear his head of the image. His ears whistled, his stress tinnitus drilling into his brain. He plonked himself down in the seat opposite Carmella.
‘We need to find out exactly who Wendy was talking to before she went to the Rotunda.’
‘I’m fine, Patrick, thanks for asking. How are you doing?’
He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just . . .’
‘I know. Me too. What did the boss say?’
Patrick pointed at the remaining half of the chocolate bar. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead. I’ve lost my appetite. Jenny would go nuts if she knew I’d had half a Kit Kat for breakfast. Anyway . . .’
The chocolate made him feel a tiny bit better. ‘Suzanne said that we need to leave the investigation into Wendy’s murder up to DCI Strong and her team.’
‘But we’re not going to do that, are we?’
Their eyes met.
‘I don’t want to get you into any trouble, Carmella. This is down to me. Wendy called me just as you and Jenny were arriving at my place. I cut her off. So this is down to me. My bad, as Wendy would have said.’
Except ‘my bad’ wasn’t a strong enough expression, was it?
‘Pat, Wendy was my colleague too. Whatever you think we need to do to find her killer, I’m in. Besides, we find her murderer and we almost certainly solve our case too, right? It makes sense.’
He nodded, finishing the Kit Kat. The whistling in his ear had dropped to five or six. ‘All right. The first thing we need to do is find out exactly who Wendy had communicated with over the last few days, follow the posts she made on the OnTarget forum, Twitter, et cetera. The problem is, Strong’s team have her computer, and her phone was, presumably, taken by her murderer.’
‘We don’t need her computer to track her online activity. We only need her log-ins – her usernames and passwords. Did she give those to you?’
‘Shit. No.’
‘All right. Well, maybe we can figure it out.’ She looked around and Patrick followed her gaze. The canteen was busy, dozens of potential witnesses, flapping ears and beady eyes. ‘I’ll meet you in the car park in five minutes. We’ll go to mine.’
Carmella’s flat was as immaculate and homely as Patrick had always imagined – the home of a couple who obviously had no children. Patrick took a seat at the small table in the living room where, he imagined, Carmella and Jenny ate dinner together while listening to tasteful music. He didn’t imagine them as the types to scoff dinner in front of the TV with plates on their laps, and certainly not at a table with toddler-flung spaghetti shapes and sausages around their feet, CBeebies blaring in the background.
Carmella grabbed her laptop and sat down beside him. ‘Jenny’s at work. She just texted me to tell me she’s got a raging hangover. Apparently, she, Gill and Suzanne’s husband had a good chat after we left your party.’
‘Oh God.’
Carmella chuckled. ‘Don’t worry. Nobody discussed how you’ve got the hots for the guv.’
‘Carmella! I don’t—’
She held up a hand. ‘It’s all right, Pat. I’m only teasing you. But you’ve gone very pink.’
He fixed his attention on the laptop screen. ‘Can we concentrate on this?’
‘Sure.’ The smile slipped from her face and he felt yet another prick of guilt – a sensation he shook off as he watched Carmella type in the URL of the official OnTarget forum. Wendy had told Patrick she had spent most of her time on this site because, although there were plenty of others, this was the most active. Immediately, Patrick realised this was going to be like searching for the proverbial needle. There were thousands of posts, most of them seemingly nonsensical – a sea of acronyms and bouncing smileys.
‘We need to know what her username was,’ Carmella said. ‘Otherwise we’ve got no chance of figuring out who she was chatting to.’
‘I should have got her to tell me.’
‘What about Strong’s team? They must have figured it out already. Can’t we ask them? We are meant to be working together, after all.’
Patrick shook his head. He knew that would be the sensible thing to do, but he was paranoid about Strong trying to take over the entire investigation, especially if he admitted to any weakness. That weakness being that, so far, they didn’t have a bloody clue who had murdered Rose and Jess, despite having worked on this investigation for a week and a half.
‘No. Let’s try to figure it out ourselves first.’
She looked at him, then nodded. ‘OK. We know Wendy went to the book signing at Waterstones – I saw her there – so maybe she was involved in one of the chats about that.’
Carmella typed ‘waterstones’ into the search box and two dozen forum topics appeared on screen. She sighed and began to click on each one in turn, skimming through the discussions about the event, from the build-up, with all the fizzing excitement about being in the same room as the OnT boys, through to the aftermath, with loads of links to photos of the signing, dozens of selfies with the pop stars behind a desk in the background. Patrick glanced over the photos to see if he could spot Wendy – he couldn’t – but that wouldn’t be helpful anyway.
‘Look,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s a number beneath each name stating how many posts they’ve made.’
Most of them numbered in the hundreds or thousands. Blake7 – 2,356 posts; CroydonChick – 1,398 posts; Jade – 18,467 posts.
‘Good grief!’ Patrick exclaimed. ‘I wonder if I’d have used these forums if they’d been around when I was a teenager.’
‘Yeah, in those days you had to use smoke signals, didn’t you?’
Patrick smiled but wasn’t in the mood for banter. ‘Look, this one, ShawnsCupcake, has only posted seventy-four times.’ He tapped the screen, indicating a message about the book signing: ShawnsCupcake asking who else was going to be there.
‘Let’s have a look at her profile,’ Carmella said.
Clicking on the username took them to a new screen showing the profile of ShawnsCupcake. The profile picture was, like many of those on the forum, a photo of Shawn, giving nothing away about the real identity of the user. Again, Patrick wished dearly that he’d got more detail from Wendy about what she was doing. He hadn’t realised there would be a time limit. But he still blamed himself, knew he wouldn’t stop beating himself up about it until he’d found her murderer. And even then, he didn’t know if he’d feel better. Because whatever happened, poor Wendy wasn’t coming back. She would never achieve the potential he knew she’d had.