It spanned 217 pages, almost nine years, taking Andrea from a fresh-faced fourteen-year-old to a sultry siren of twenty-three. In her early posts she was quite a conservative young woman, but once boys had come on the scene, she had started to dress more provocatively.
Andrea’s seven years of Facebook posts were an endless blur of party photos and selfies. Hundreds of photos with handsome men and beautiful girls, rarely the same people more than a few times. It seemed that she was a party animal, and one who partied at the expensive end of the spectrum. The clubs she frequented were the type where you needed to book a table, and there never seemed to be a shortage of champagne bottles littering those tables in the photos.
Throughout the years, there was little interaction on Facebook with her siblings. Her older sister Linda seemed to ‘like’ a few of the family-related posts, as did her younger brother David, but these tended to be only the posts associated with the annual holidays the Douglas-Brown family took to Greece, and in later years, to a villa in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
The holidays interested Erika the most. Taken every August for three weeks, they followed a similar pattern. At the start of each, Andrea would post some family-friendly pictures – a group photo during a meal in a nice restaurant, or the family gathered round a cabana having a casual lunch in their swimming costumes. At these lunches, Andrea always wore a bikini, and was striking a pose, her dark hair tumbling over one shoulder as she artfully picked at her food. In contrast, Linda would be hunched down, plate piled high, looking a little annoyed that she was being distracted from tucking in. Linda seemed to grow in girth as each holiday passed, and she always covered up in long T-shirts and leggings. David, in contrast, started out as an extremely skinny thirteen-year-old wearing glasses, huddled under his mother’s thin arm, and slowly morphed into a handsome young man.
Andrea seemed closer to David; in many of the photos she had drawn him into a reluctant bear hug, his glasses askew. There were barely any photos of Linda and David together. Sir Simon and Lady Diana seemed to give nothing away in photographs, pulling the same faces year in, year out: broad, yet vacant smiles. Here was Lady Diana in a swimming suit and sarong combo. There was Sir Simon in baggy board shorts, pulled a little too high over his hairy belly.
As each holiday progressed, Andrea would quickly lose interest in family time and start to post pictures she’d taken of local boys. At first they’d be a bit stalker-ish, the groups of boys unaware they were being photographed as they stood around smoking, or played football on the beach with their shirts off. Then Andrea would zone in on one boy in particular, spending the last week of the holidays seemingly obsessed, taking endless photos. She apparently liked the bad boys: older and darker with muscly torsos, tattoos and piercings. In one picture, taken in the summer of 2009, Andrea was pictured posing on the back of a giant Harley Davidson, wearing the tiniest bikini and miming driving, whilst a dark haired lad, who presumably owned the bike, was relegated to riding pillion. He had one hand on her bikini bottoms, and was holding a cigarette, its tip glowing close to Andrea’s tanned skin. She fixed the camera with a look that said, I’m in control.
Erika wrote in the margin: Who took this picture?
She barely noticed when the shutters went up on the canteen serving-hatch, and bleary-eyed officers began to file in for breakfast. She read on, fascinated by Andrea’s life.
In 2012, a new friend appeared on the scene, a girl called Barbora Kardosova.
Slovak name?? wrote Erika, in the margin.
Barbora was dark and beautiful like Andrea, and rapidly seemed to become a close friend, even joining the family holiday in 2012 and 2013. In Barbora, Andrea seemed to have found a boy-hunting partner in crime. Although they now sought boys in a more sophisticated way, pictured together with a string of dark-haired hunks in expensive nightclubs, or around equally expensive sun loungers.
Andrea seemed to have made Barbora a genuine friend, posting pictures where they shared downtime, in which Andrea wore no make-up and was much less conscious of the camera. In many ways, Andrea was prettier without her war paint, larking about with a genuine smile on her face. In one picture, the girls posed side-by-side in front of a mirror, wearing oversized pullovers that hung down to their knees. The huge pullovers were old lady-ish. Barbora’s was embroidered with cats chasing balls of wool, while Andrea’s was embroidered with a giant ginger cat reclining in its basket. The phone camera flash was reflected in the top corner of the mirror. Andrea’s sister Linda had commented, ‘Get out of my bedroom you fucking cow!’
Andrea had liked the comment and posted :).
Then, in late 2013, Barbora abruptly vanished without explanation, defriending Andrea. Erika flicked back through the pages to check nothing was missing. Barbora didn’t appear once in a photo after this point. She didn’t so much as ‘like’ a post. Around six months later, in June 2014, Andrea’s Facebook profile was deactivated. There was no explanation, or message to her friends saying she intended to leave Facebook.
Erika shifted her attention to the phone records. In comparison, they were bland and sparse. Crane had annotated the numbers, which consisted of regular calls to Andrea’s fiancé, Giles Osborne; to a local Chinese takeaway on a Saturday; and on the same seven Saturdays leading up to Christmas, phone votes for The X Factor. The rest of the phone calls were to her family, to the florist her mother ran in Kensington, and to her father’s secretary. There were no calls the night she vanished, even though the phone was found with her at the murder scene. The phone records covered eight months, only going back to June 2014.
There was a clattering as a cup was dropped and shattered on the stone floor. Erika looked up, realising that it was now light and the canteen was filling up. She checked her watch and saw that it was ten to nine. Not wanting to be late for the briefing, she gathered up her papers and left. She ran into Superintendent Marsh in the corridor.
‘I read last night’s log,’ he said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Yes, sir. All will be explained. I have a strong lead.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’ll tell you in the briefing,’ she said, as they reached the incident room. When they entered, Erika could see that the whole team had assembled at their desks. They fell silent.
‘Okay. Morning everyone. I’ll start by saying that Sergeant Crane managed to pull a full Facebook history for Andrea, and phone records, which is great, fast work. Andrea was very active on the site, and then last June she deactivated the profile. Also, her phone records only go back to June 2014. Why? Did she change her number?’
‘She met Giles Osborne last June,’ said DCI Sparks.
‘Yes. Now, why would she change her number and deactivate her profile around the same time?’
‘Maybe she was turning over a new leaf. Some guys get jealous if a woman has exes and a history,’ said Singh.
‘She obviously used Facebook to meet blokes, and then she got engaged and didn’t need it any more,’ said Sparks.
‘But her phone records are – well they’re almost too robotic. Are you telling me she met the man of her dreams and her life was complete; she needed no other interactions?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Sparks.
‘No, but there’s something fishy about it. She made no calls the night she vanished. Let’s dig around. Find her old phone and pull the records, and see if she had a second phone we don’t know about? Also, find out everything you can about a girl called Barbora Kardosova, pronounced “kardosh-ova”. She was a very close friend of Andrea between 2012 and 2013 and then she vanished. Did they fall out? Where is she now? Can we talk to her? Check her out. Find her. And also, any old boyfriends. Andrea wasn’t short of male attention; see what you can dig up.’