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‘What time is it?’
‘Time to go, Miley, get dressed.’ She looked down at his trousers, pulled up but not done up, socks and shirt in his hand.
‘How’s my car?’ Adrian had given Imogen his car after crashing in her own at the end of the last case they’d worked on together. The sort of thing Sam would never have done. Adrian was a better partner in so many ways.
‘Hideous, Miley, but I do appreciate it. I need to get something a little less middle-aged-travelling-salesman though.’
‘You leave her alone.’ He pulled his shirt over his head, still buttoned up from the day before.
‘I’m going car shopping this weekend; you’re welcome to help me out.’ Imogen heard the toilet flush upstairs and Miles looked away sheepishly. Imogen raised an eyebrow. She knew exactly what had made him sleep in late this morning. He pulled on his boots and grabbed his keys.
‘I think I’ve got Tom this weekend.’
‘Bring him along, he probably knows more about cars than you.’
‘Hey! I’ve taught my son everything he knows.’
‘If you say so.’ She walked over to his car and got in.
‘Didn’t you lock it?’ Miles asked.
‘Trust me, I could leave the engine running and the door open and no one would steal this piece of crap, Miley. No offence.’
Adrian and Imogen walked into the station to find DCI Fraser trying to catch their attention without anyone else noticing, raising his eyebrows at them across the room. He looked so shifty that they couldn’t help smirking at each other. Fraser was one of the few people that Adrian trusted, as much as he trusted anyone. Not quite unconditionally, but there was an innocence about him, with his constantly raised eyebrows as if he had just been told something very surprising indeed and he just couldn’t wait to tell the next person he bumped into, confidentiality be damned. Upon entering his office they closed the door.
‘Forensics are down by the river at the moment scouring the place. There’s a lot of pressure from above to find this Bridget girl in one piece. Apart from anything else, we have a lot of questions for her.’
‘What’s with all the subterfuge?’
‘I know your ex-partner has a vested interest in this, Imogen … I mean, Grey … and I know he thinks he’s heading the investigation, but he isn’t. For starters, her being his girlfriend means that he’s way too close to this, and secondly, we don’t know his involvement at this point. The fact is, we have to treat him as a suspect in her disappearance.’
‘I think that’s wise, sir,’ Imogen snorted.
‘I don’t know exactly what happened at your old station, Grey …’ He looked at Adrian.
‘It’s OK. You can talk in front of him.’
‘I know you claimed that DS Brown was instrumental in an attack you sustained and I know about the restraining order. If you don’t want him in this office, I can arrange for him to come for briefings when you’re out. I wish I could keep him away altogether but we need to keep him close, at least for the time being. We need to find DS Reid.’
‘No, it’s fine. I can deal with it.’ She looked embarrassed at this concession. ‘But thank you.’
‘So what’s the plan then, Fraser?’ Adrian asked, trying to divert the attention away from Imogen.
‘The plan is we find her. They’ve gone over the riverbank near the pub where she was supposed to meet Brown, but they can’t see anything. A car was reported stolen near her place and found near the river – we’re just confirming the forensics but it looks as though it was definitely her. We’re looking a bit nearer to the bank now as she was most likely on foot the rest of the way.’
‘What about us? What do we do?’
‘The usual. Go over her phone records. Request any private CCTV footage from the area. Sam said she had a camera set up in her room to record stuff going on, in case she had a run in with anyone important. I will liaise with Brown, so any information you get comes to me first, OK?’
‘I thought all her Johns were fake? Informants and plants.’
‘We’re a bit blind at the moment. All we have are second-hand accounts of what went on. The tech guys have her laptop, so you can go see Gary Tunney if you want.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Oh, and just to let you know, Tunney’s transfer is official as of next week. He will be our very own computer forensic nerd. With us full time.’ He gave them a thumbs up.
‘Good to know,’ Adrian said as they left, heading straight for the laptop.
Chapter 11: The Boat (#ulink_124c90b8-3d88-5a07-8ec6-1f67115d17c1)
The present
‘What have you found?’ Adrian asked Tunney, who was fiddling around with Bridget Reid’s computer.
‘Well, she had a motion-activated camera in the brothel, so every time she, or anyone else, came into the room the camera switched on, recorded what happened, and sent the info straight back to this hard drive, which is time and date stamped. It’s more sophisticated than a lot of surveillance equipment, and from looking around on her laptop I can see that she knew her way around technology. Which obviously helps us out.’
‘Did you know her?’ Imogen asked.
‘She came to my lab once, yeah, she was a smart cookie.’
‘Let’s not use past tense just yet,’ Adrian interjected.
‘So did you watch any of the footage?’
‘I did, and it’s a lot of her on her own in her room; when a guy visits she locks the door and they just sit around with loud music on.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Well the girl from upstairs comes in and takes clothes, goes through her stuff when she’s out, bit of a magpie, I think. Don’t see much of her actual flatmate except when they’re in there together.’
‘What about Sam?’ Imogen asked.
‘Friday night regular. Under the covers stuff. Obviously they both know the camera’s there and so …’
‘So they’re in bed together?’
‘Yeah, a lot of whispering and stuff. I don’t know about anything else. Seemed kinda wrong to watch any of the sexy stuff. So I just forwarded through it, nothing of much interest there. I mean … well you know what I mean.’
‘Someone’s going to have to watch it.’ Imogen pulled a face.
‘I’ll watch it. I don’t know him so I can be more objective,’ Adrian offered.
‘So she doesn’t talk about any information she might have gained in these Friday night meetings?’
‘Nope, all her communications are via encrypted email, like seriously encrypted. She had some skills. I mean has,’ Tunney corrected himself as Adrian shot him a look.
‘Anything else on the drive we should know about? Footage of the murders’d be a hell of a bonus.’
‘Well, there is an anomaly in the metadata; I think there are some videos missing from the file.’
‘Can you find those videos?’
‘Short answer is yes.’
‘What’s the long answer?’
‘It’s going to take me some time. Like I said, she has skills.’
‘And it’s not possible these videos are just clips of her and Sam?’ Imogen asked, a slight grimace on her face.
‘Well, she left those in, so it seems unlikely it’s just that.’
‘But she’s the one who will have deleted the files?’
‘Yeah, but this isn’t as simple as just clicking delete, she’ll have had to work to get rid of that data. After a point the information gets sent to whichever tech is dealing with her stuff, my guess is she didn’t want them seeing it.’
‘You’d better find that data then.’
Adrian’s phone beeped and he looked at the message. Fraser.
‘Fraser has the CCTV from all the cameras at the riverbank, all the ones that are working at least. He says they’ve found something.’
Thanking Tunney, Imogen and Adrian set off back to Fraser’s office. On the way up, Imogen looked around the corridor to make sure they were alone. She put a hand on Adrian’s arm, clearly agitated.
‘I know what Sam’s been saying, Miley, but I don’t trust him. There are a lot of things he isn’t telling us. Believe me, he was my partner, I know. He isn’t – he isn’t a good person. He’s hiding things.’
‘Well, it’s a classified operation. There must be things he can’t tell us.’
‘I worked with him, Miley, and I know when he’s lying. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him who deleted those files, whatever they are.’
‘Does he have those kinds of computer skills?’ Adrian asked her, surprised.
‘He could have had help.’
‘Well, Tunney is on the case.’
‘I’m just letting you know that you can’t believe a word that comes out of Sam’s mouth.’
‘Are you OK, Grey?’
‘Really?’ She looked as though he had just spat on her face.
‘I mean … you seem really upset. I don’t know this guy as well as you do, but look – he’s still working, he can’t be as bent as you’re thinking. Are you sure this isn’t paranoia getting the better of you?’
‘Fuck you!’ She pushed him hard and he slammed against the wall. It didn’t take a detective to realise she was upset.
Adrian knew that feeling and made a deal with himself not to be such a prick in the future. He remembered how people called him paranoid at times when he started spiralling out of control, and it did nothing but make him worse. He wouldn’t do that to Imogen. She had just got back to work; he should give her a break.
In Fraser’s office, the three of them gathered around the CCTV. They saw Bridget running terrified into the park and hiding inside a children’s adventure castle. They saw a man coming down to the river and looking for her, getting close and then going the wrong way.
‘Why doesn’t she go to one of the flats or something?’ Imogen asked, leaning in to look closer at the screen. Adrian had already tried that and it was no use, the faces were a blur. As they watched, a car pulled into the shot and the fuzzy figure of Bridget slipped into the water, clinging to the side of the river and moving along the bank.
‘She must be fucking freezing.’ Adrian felt cold just watching it.
‘Yeah but she’s alive, that’s something,’ Fraser offered.
‘What’s that?’ Imogen pointed to the screen.
‘What?’
‘Look, the boat, that one there, it’s moving.’
They watched as Bridget disappeared down the river, a few moments later the boat Imogen was pointing to started to follow her, moving in the same direction.
‘Can you read the name on that boat?’ Fraser asked hopefully. ‘It would be great if I can tell the press something.’
‘No, but it’s got those distinctive stripes on it. We’ll go down and have a look, see what’s what.’
‘What do you think they’re doing? Do you think this is an opportunistic attack?’
‘I don’t know, maybe it’s a coincidence that this boat is travelling in the same direction as she is.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Adrian said, moving towards the door.
‘Well, whatever’s going on here, there’s a good chance the guy in the boat saw something.’
‘I know how much you like the water, Grey. Let’s go,’ Adrian said, trying to crack the frosty atmosphere. He knew Imogen didn’t have any sea legs.
‘I’ll get on to the company that handles the boats down there, see if I can get a list of the owners,’ Fraser said.
The boat was surprisingly easy to find. Glitterbug was a small blue ship with two stripes of different thicknesses; Imogen and Adrian found it moored near the spot where it had been in the video footage. Adrian watched as Imogen approached the boat first, peering inside.
‘I think there’s someone in there,’ she said finally. ‘I think I hear a radio or something.’
Adrian stepped aboard and offered his hand to Imogen. He banged on the cabin door and heard shuffling coming from inside. The door opened and a man peered out. Adrian held his badge up.
‘I’m DS Miles and this is my partner, DS Grey of the Exeter Police Force. We’re making inquiries about something that may have happened here on Friday night. CCTV in the area saw that you were on your boat. A police officer went missing.’
‘Oh, do you mean the girl in the water?’ The man stepped out on to the deck.
‘You saw her?’ Imogen asked.
‘Yeah, I did, I dunno what she was doing. I thought she was hammered. I was going to call someone but I didn’t want to get involved, you know?’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, I followed her a bit in the boat, but it got too dark to see and I didn’t want to hit her. I called out a few times but no one answered. It’s not very well lit the further down you go.’
