Erika Foster 04 - Last Breath Read online

  She stared at him for a moment longer then slammed her laptop shut and shuffled off to the bedroom to get some sleep.

  * * *

  Later that morning, her team regrouped at West End Central. Crane had managed to track down some CCTV footage from the ATM opposite the Blue Boar pub in Southgate. The lights in their section were off, and they were watching back the grainy black-and-white footage projected onto a section of the whiteboard.

  ‘The problem we have is that the built-in camera in the ATM is positioned at a high angle looking down,’ said Crane. ‘The people on the other side of the road, where the pub is, can only be seen fully in their approach, before the top half of their bodies is out of shot.’ They watched as a man with a dog walked past, the top of his body vanishing when he reached the pub, so that his black Labrador trotted along beside a pair of moving legs.

  ‘So, in other words, it’s useless,’ said Erika.

  ‘Not completely useless,’ said Crane. ‘We’ve got the timestamped footage from Wednesday the fourth of January. Lacey Greene was due to meet this Nico at 8 p.m…’ He fast forwarded the footage through the afternoon and then slowed it down. The timestamp sped through 6 p.m. ‘Okay, we’re running through the footage at twelve times the speed from 7 p.m. onwards. There’s no one around. Only a smattering of cars passing. It’s just coming off rush hour. However, this car goes past three times in the space of five minutes…’ He paused on a small car moving from right to left. ‘See. First time is 7.55 p.m.’ He sped the footage again. ‘Then a minute later, look, it comes back into shot in the other direction… Here it comes again; it goes past a third time at 7.58 p.m., goes out of shot past the pub…’

  On the screen a blurred image of a young woman walked along the road, towards the pub, her dark hair catching in the breeze. Crane paused the image. She wore dark knee-high boots and a dark jacket.

  ‘And here we have Lacey Greene.’

  It took Erika’s breath away for a moment to see Lacey alive and well. Here in the incident room they all knew what was going to happen, but the girl on screen was clueless what awaited her. Most probably she was excited at the prospect of a date. Crane pressed play and Lacey started to walk, but as she reached the pub, the top half of her was cut out of shot.

  ‘Are we sure that’s Lacey?’ asked Erika.

  ‘It’s the only young woman matching her height and appearance who passed the pub all evening,’ said Crane.

  On screen Lacey’s legs had moved out of shot.

  ‘We can’t see the bloody entrance to the pub, so we don’t know if she went in?’ asked Erika.

  ‘She didn’t,’ said Jennifer. ‘I spoke to a lad who was working on the bar on Wednesday the fourth of January. He said it was very quiet, being just after New Year, and only a handful of regulars came in all night. Lacey wasn’t one of them. Another girl he was working with backs this up.’

  ‘So she vanishes out of shot, just past or by the pub, at 7.59 p.m.,’ said Erika. ‘What about that car? The bloody footage is blurry as hell, and it’s black and white. Can we get a number plate?’

  ‘No. I’ve already asked the boys at Digital Forensics. They can enhance an image but it needs to be clear in the first place. All we’ll get is a mush of pixels. We also can’t tell what colour the car is,’ said Crane.

  ‘What about the model?’ Erika looked around the incident room.

  ‘It looks like a Fiat or a Renault,’ said John.

  ‘Or one of those Ford Kas, perhaps a Citroën,’ added Crane.

  ‘We need to do better than that,’ snapped Erika. ‘How far along are you getting CCTV footage from the surrounding area to follow the car?’

  ‘We got this footage late last night,’ said Crane. ‘There’s no other CCTV cameras until you hit the area around Southgate tube; of course, I’ve requested and we’re keeping our eyes peeled.’

  ‘What about Lacey’s phone?’

  ‘We’ve had mast data back,’ said Moss. She flicked the lights back on and went to her desk and picked up a printout. ‘There are three mobile phone masts in the area of the Blue Boar pub, and we triangulated the last signal from Lacey’s phone, which was at 8.21 p.m. on the fourth of January. After that there’s nothing.’

  ‘How far apart are these masts?’ asked Erika.

  ‘All within a mile of the pub.’

  ‘Okay. I want another door-to door in the area. I want to know if anyone saw anything. There’s houses, shops.’

  ‘There’s a big car park at the side of the Blue Boar. It backs onto a bus depot and it’s badly lit,’ said Crane, fiddling with his laptop and projecting another image on the whiteboards. This time it was a Google Street View image of the car park next to the pub. It had been taken on a summer’s day. The road was busy and the surrounding trees green.

  ‘He could have grabbed her there,’ said Peterson. ‘It was dark.’

  ‘And switched her phone off so her movements couldn’t be tracked,’ said Erika. She looked at the Google Street View image as Crane shifted the view along Widmore Road. A bus was passing in one photo. ‘Buses have CCTV. Find out what buses go on that route, and pull bus footage from TfL. It’s a long shot, but one of those cameras might have got something. What about Lacey’s laptop?’

  ‘It’s a priority case, but I’ve been told another twenty-four hours,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘I’ll have a word with them…’ Erika could see the team looked disheartened. ‘We have to keep asking questions, however stupid they may be: answers solve the case. This devil, whoever he may be, is in the detail. I’m going to talk to the Acting Superintendent to see if we can get some increased manpower for the door-to-door. And if we can get this e-fit image out to the public. It’s on the borough websites but it’s not enough. I’d also like to release the CCTV footage of Lacey, and appeal for any witnesses to her and the car… What about Janelle Robinson, any CCTV where her body was found in Croydon?’

  ‘Sorry, boss. It’s a CCTV black spot. Residential, no shops, and no buses pass down the street.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s keep on it. We’ll close in on this guy, I’m sure of it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was lunchtime in the large communal office where Darryl worked, which meant that between 11.30 a.m. and 2 p.m. the lifeless atmosphere took on a little excitement as packed lunches were opened and admired, and the best places to eat were discussed.

  The anticipation of food and what was on television were the main topics of conversation during the day. The work was often an afterthought.

  Darryl worked on a data entry team with four others: Terri, an anaemic blonde woman in her late thirties who was permanently cold; Derek, a dull, balding man in his late fifties, and Bryony, their Team Leader. She was a large woman in her mid-thirties, who, come rain or shine, wore black leggings and thick patterned acrylic jumpers. Her love of synthetic fabrics wasn’t matched in her personal hygiene. A beefy tang of body odour permanently hung over their section, a grid of cubicles in the centre of the office.

  Darryl had worked with this firm for almost three years, and mostly kept to himself. He’d started as a temp, and laziness and the ease of regular money had meant the time had flown by. He hadn’t been to university, and after several disastrous attempts at working for his father on the farm, this job was an escape and an act of defiance. Since his brother, Joe, had died, Darryl was the only heir to the farm, and he was determined never to be a farmer.

  Darryl had spent the morning inputting the results of a customer survey and, seeing it was seven minutes to one, he minimised the screen. He always took lunch at one, neatly halving the working day. Across the low partition, Bryony was sitting at her desk, chewing rhythmically like a cow, with a Big Mac in one hand, and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. She was reading something on her computer.

  A tall, attractive girl came up to the cubicle next to her and took off her coat, shaking out her long dark hair. She placed a paper bag from a local deli on her desk. Her name was
Katrina, and she was the new temp who’d started the week before.

  ‘Is this about that poor girl who they found in the rubbish bin?’ asked Katrina, indicating the screen.

  Bryony swallowed. ‘Yes. They’ve released an artist’s impression of the bloke they’re looking for,’ she said and pushed the last of the burger into her mouth.

  ‘Where do you see this?’ asked Darryl, trying to keep his voice even.

  Bryony flapped around, her mouth full.

  ‘On the BBC homepage, halfway down,’ said Katrina.

  Darryl logged onto the website. It was a shock to see the e-fit, and details of the case. It had seemed like for so long the police hadn’t cared. Now he saw it on the screen it made him scared, scared and a little thrilled. Who led them to Nico? he thought. He’d been careful, using a VPN to mask his footprints online. There was nothing they could trace back to him. Had they found Lacey’s phone? Or got into her laptop? He took a deep breath. It was Okay. If that was all they’d done, then he was Okay. He scanned the rest of the article.

  ‘They did arrest a man, but they let him go…’ Bryony was saying, brushing crumbs from her jumper. ‘I live quite close to New Cross.’

  ‘You do? Where?’ said Katrina, tilting her head in mock sympathy.

  ‘Well, a few miles. I’m just down the road, near Bermondsey.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think he’ll come after you,’ Katrina replied, patting her shoulder. Bryony gave her a look of pathetic gratefulness.

  As far as Darryl could see from the article, a friend of Lacey’s had helped the police with the e-fit. It would figure that Lacey had shown her Nico’s profile.

  ‘Where do you live, Katrina?’ asked Bryony.

  ‘West London,’ she said, sitting and taking out a boxed salad and a bottle of water.

  ‘You’re making me look bad,’ said Bryony, glancing at her grease-spotted McDonald’s bag.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I pig out all the time,’ said Katrina with a flick of her immaculate hair.

  What a liar, thought Darryl.

  ‘I’ve heard West London is really nice?’ said Bryony.

  Katrina nodded.

  ‘You must take the District line to work then?’ said Darryl. Katrina looked across the partition, as if noticing him for the first time.

  ‘Erm. Sometimes,’ she said, tucking a long glossy strand of hair behind her ear and opening her salad. He kept eye contact with her and smiled.

  ‘Darryl, I make it one o’clock. Aren’t you on lunch now?’ said Bryony, tapping her watch.

  ‘Ah yes, McDonald’s or salad… McDonald’s or salad?’ he said. ‘You are what you eat.’

  He flicked off his computer, and stood up, pulling on his jacket. He had a photo of Grendel tacked to the bottom of the monitor. He straightened it, and picked up his wallet and phone, studying Katrina from the corner of his eye. He knew exactly where she lived: in a small flat just off Chiswick High Road. She had a Facebook profile which she hadn’t bothered to secure; she also used Instagram and Foursquare. He knew she was single, and she’d been on two disastrous dates in the past month, the first to see a movie with a bloke ‘with hands like an octopus’, the second with a rich city worker, to a bar at Canary Wharf. She’d drunk Long Island Iced Teas, one at 7.30 p.m., and the second at 7.53 p.m. – if the timings on her Instagram photos were accurate – and she’d posted that she was debating a third drink, but she didn’t want the bloke she was with to think she was easy. However, judging by the hundreds of photos Darryl had copied from her Facebook page to the hard drive on his computer at home, Katrina was easy.

  He’d spent a couple of hours the previous evening masturbating over pictures of her dressed in a schoolgirl outfit for Halloween, and a bikini shot taken on a beach in Ibiza.

  Katrina caught him looking at her and smiled awkwardly. He grinned back at her and left.

  ‘It’s 1.02 p.m. Don’t forget to put that in your time sheet,’ called Bryony after him.

  * * *

  Darryl stepped out of the office and joined the lunchtime crowds near Borough Market. Wearing a decent suit and black jacket he blended in with scores of office workers on the lunch run. He wasn’t interested in Katrina. Well, he was, but as a colleague she was too close. It could be traced back to him.

  The girl he’d set his sights on was called Ella. He’d found her a few months back, working in the Bay Organic Café further down the road from Borough Market. The first time he’d seen her, he’d genuinely gone in to buy lunch. She was beautiful, in an earthy way, with long dark hair, olive skin and a gorgeous figure.

  He’d started going there regularly for lunch, to see how often she worked. He’d had a breakthrough on his sixth visit, when he’d gone to pay for his salad. It was a quiet day and Ella had been working on the checkout and engrossed in her phone. She’d given him a broad smile, and placed her phone face up on the counter whilst she put his lunch through. Her Facebook profile was open, and with one glance he knew her name was Ella Wilkinson.

  He’d paid in cash, and she’d smiled at him again, but it was the kind of smile you gave a little brother and he’d hated her for that. Later that evening, back at the farm, he’d shut himself in his bedroom and found Ella on Facebook, dragging her profile picture onto his desktop. Then he’d opened Social Catfish’s Reverse Image Search. It was a remarkable piece of software, and within a few minutes he had her email address, a list of all the social networks she belonged to, and where she lived.

  She was a part-time art student at St Martins, and she lived in North London. She also had a profile on Match.com, which made him think that things couldn’t be better.

  He spent the next couple of months building up a brand new Facebook profile, adding friends, posts, and a legitimate history. He also created a profile on Match.com, aligning his likes to hers. It had been a difficult choice: how to choose someone’s identity to steal, and after much research he had realised that profiles of dead people were the way forward. This new profile was for Harry Gordon, a handsome blond who had just returned from travelling. In reality, the photo was of a person named Jason Wynne, from South Africa, who had died a year ago, while base jumping.

  After several weeks spent building up the fake Harry Gordon profile, he started to work his way into Ella Wilkinson’s world. She had 650 Facebook friends, so he went through them all to find which of them he could friend without looking suspicious. Two of them friended him back, giving him and Ella mutual friends.

  Just after Christmas, Darryl, as Harry Gordon, sent Ella a message on Match.com. She took the bait, and then he started to reel her in, slowly, at first, chatting to her within the Match.com messenger system, never trying too hard, and leaving gaps between responses. He knew he had her when she friended Harry Gordon on Facebook. The flirting had intensified, and now he just had to make the final crucial step. Harry Gordon needed to talk to Ella on the phone.

  * * *

  Darryl reached the Bay Organic Café, and saw it was crowded in the lunchtime rush. Ella was on the checkout and had a huge queue of people waiting. He watched her for a moment and then carried on walking, thinking, today, he’d get a sandwich from Sainsbury’s. Yes, cheese and salad would be nice. He didn’t mind that the café was busy. He’d be talking to Ella later, and then he’d have her all to himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  On Thursday morning, Erika and her team were back in the incident room. Crane had just wearily informed her that despite an exhaustive search through hours of CCTV, from several locations, they hadn’t been able to track the movements of the car after it had left the Blue Boar pub.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Erika. ‘He’s a lucky bastard. Twice I’ve been given points on my licence when CCTV cameras managed to produce pin precision images of me straying into a bus lane.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Peterson. ‘My mum got caught in a bus lane with her hand in a tube of Pringles. She got three points and a hundred and twenty pound fine. And the c
amera picked up that they were salt and vinegar flavour.’

  Despite this, Erika smiled. ‘That’s not true?’

  ‘It is! If you ever meet my mother, you’ll believe it,’ he said, sitting back in his chair and rubbing his tired eyes. There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Thank you for putting in the time, Crane, but we still have nothing on the killer’s car,’ said Erika. ‘Can anyone give me some good news?’

  John got up and went to the whiteboard carrying some printouts. ‘We’ve had a response to the e-fit from a Geovanni Manrique, an Ecuadorian national living in Ealing…’ He pinned up a photo of a young man, almost identical to the e-fit. In the photo he was grinning against a backdrop of a beach. ‘This is Sonny Sarmiento. Nineteen years old, an extreme sports fanatic from Ambato, a city in central Ecuador. Sonny was killed in a climbing accident two years ago. Geovanni is a friend of the family, and often goes back home. He recognised the e-fit.

  ‘We’ve also had word back from the Cyber Team. They’ve been through Lacey Greene’s laptop and her Facebook history.’ He pinned up a screenshot of the same photo taken from a Facebook profile: the name underneath it was ‘Nico Brownley’. ‘As you can see, our killer has been using Sonny Sarmiento’s profile picture. He also lifted off another sixteen photos, mainly of Sonny with friends on a trip to London. The Nico Brownley profile was created on the twenty-fourth of September last year. It looks like a lot of time was spent building up friends and a history to give the profile legitimacy.’