CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Miss Millward, before anything else, I’m sorry for your loss. And I’m sorry about the way you found out. Nobody should learn something like this the way you did.’
‘I wasn’t even watching it live,’ Kate Millward cried. ‘That’s the stupid part. I never watch the Monday streams live. I clip them the next morning. I woke up, and my phone had two hundred notifications, and I thought, oh good, something’s gone viral.’
Ella and Ripley were in a kitchen in a ground-floor apartment in Petworth.
Ella had never met a Kate that wasn’t, at the least, conventionally attractive, and Kate Millward was no exception.
She was thirty-one, blonde, taller than average, and had the frame of an Olympic runner.
Even though she’d drowned herself in a grey sweater, the physical attributes were obvious.
Her eyes were dry. They were also about a millimeter away from not being.
‘Can we ask you some questions about Curtis? I promise we won’t keep you long,’ Ella said.
‘Yes. Ask your questions. I want to be useful.’
‘Then let’s start simple,’ Ella said. ‘Tell us about your relationship. How long were you and Curtis together?’
‘Almost two years. We met at a convention in Baltimore. I was doing social media for a cooking channel at the time, which I realise sounds like a joke. Curtis was there too. We got talking and one thing led to another. He hired me a week later.’
‘You worked for him too?’
‘I ran everything except the camera. I’m his social media manager on paper, but really I was his producer.
I cut the clips, ran the accounts, scheduled the uploads, handled the emails, moderated the community.
Curtis sat in the chair and talked. Everything else was me.
It wasn’t highly paid, but it was paid. And I liked it. ’
Ripley spoke for the first time, gently, which was not a register she used often. ‘What was Curtis like? Off camera, I mean.’
‘He’s nothing like people think. Everyone assumes the shouting was the real him and the rest was an act, and it was the other way round.
Off camera he was… considerate. He read everything.
Court documents, transcripts, appeals. People think he just ranted, but he’d spend three days reading before he ranted.
He was very proud of that. He was tight with money.
He treated people right. He paid one of his subscribers’ medical bills last year. ’
Ella didn’t doubt that Curtis Brennan was an affable man. Just because he held one strong belief didn’t mean that he assigned that same mercilessness to every other facet of his life. Ella let a respectful beat pass then moved along. ‘You weren’t at the house last night. Was that usual?’
‘Yes. I stay over Fridays and Saturdays, usually. He streams in the week. He doesn’t like other people in the house when he’s doing that.’
‘Did he mention anything unusual recently?’ Ripley asked. ‘Anyone hanging around, strange calls, somebody at the door? Did he seem worried about anything at all?’
‘No. And I’d know, because we talked every day even when I wasn’t there. He was excited, if anything. The channel was growing, the second book was half done. The only thing bothering him lately was the algorithm, and the algorithm bothers everyone.’
Ella came at the next part from the side, because the front way was a closed door. ‘Curtis was purposely controversial, wasn’t he?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Did anyone ever threaten him?’
Kate laughed, like Ella had asked her if the sea was wet.
‘God, yes. Constantly. Agent Dark, he had a million people listening to him say the most inflammatory things he could legally say, four nights a week, for six years. People disagreed with him all the time, and a percentage of the people who disagreed with him were unwell, and a percentage of those wrote to him about it. I moderated the inboxes. I could show you ten threats from this month alone.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘Mostly nothing,’ Kate breathed, then pinched her nose to keep the tears at bay. ‘Just stuff telling Curtis he should die, he should shut up, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and so on. It arrives by the dozen after every upload and you stop seeing it.’
Ripley asked, ‘Any regulars?’
‘Yes. About four or five people who always messaged him. We’d block them but they just get new email addresses. Once in a while you get one that’s specific, though.’
Ella asked, ‘How specific?’
Kate pulled the cardigan sleeves down over her hands.
‘Like it mentions his street, or the make of his car. We reported two of those to the platform last year. The platform sent us a form response about community guidelines. We talked about going to the police and Curtis said no, because it would become content whether he wanted it to or not, and he didn’t want to be the guy whose channel was about his own stalkers.
’ She looked from Ella to Ripley and back.
‘I keep thinking about that. Since six o’clock this morning I have thought about almost nothing else. ’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Ella said. ‘Neither could he.’
‘You don’t know that. It could absolutely be one of his haters.’
It was the most useful thing anyone had said all day, Ella thought, because Kate was right.
‘You’re correct, it could be, which is why we need to read all of those messages.
We have Curtis’s phone, but it’ll be in the forensics lab for a while, and then the paperwork to get access to it could take weeks. Would you be able to help us out?’
Accessing a dead person’s electronic footprint took longer by the week. Accessing an alive person’s electronic footprint was instant, providing they did it with consent.
‘You want my laptop?’
‘Yes.’
Kate pushed her chair back and was gone from the kitchen in four strides, and whatever sport had built those legs, it hadn’t been jogging.
Ella heard a drawer open in the next room, then another, then the rip of a charger coming out of a wall socket.
Kate came back carrying a silver laptop under her arm.
‘Take it. I’ll note down the passcode and logins and stuff.’
‘Thank you,’ Ella said. ‘This saves us weeks. We’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.’
‘Keep it as long as you need. I don’t think I want it back yet anyway.’
Ella pulled the laptop towards her. There was one more door to try while the woman was still willing to open them. ‘Kate, I’m sorry for the awful question, but did you see the video?’
‘No,’ Kate said, and finally the tears came. She wiped them away before the dam broke. ‘I can’t. I won’t.’
‘Fair. We don’t know much about the perpetrator, but we know he’s very large. Six-eight, perhaps bigger. Does that sound like anyone you know?’
Kate looked over Ella’s head, as if trying to visualize how tall six-eight might be. ‘No. Nobody.’
‘Okay, no problem.’
Ripley chimed in, ‘Kate, before we go, does the name Billy Hayes mean anything to you?’
Kate frowned at the table while she ran the name through whatever filing system grief had left her with. ‘No. Should it?’
‘Curtis never mentioned him? Never covered him on the channel, never had any contact with him that you know of?’
‘No. I’ve cut every video he’s ever made and I’ve never heard that name in my life. Who is he?’
‘Probably nobody,’ Ella said. ‘It’s just a name that’s come up. Thank you for your time, and once we have your passwords, we’ll leave you be. If you need anything, we can send a family liaison officer to stay with you.’
‘Not necessary, but thank you.’ Kate found a notepad in her kitchen drawer and began jotting her credentials. ‘Just take this and find whoever killed Curtis.’