Chapter 12 #2
‘No problem.’ Lauren switches her attention back to the wider audience.
‘I want us to think about this case as two separate, but connected, crimes. Firstly, the murder; secondly, the impersonation of police officers and staff. We don’t know at this stage whether the man purporting to be “DI Burton” is responsible for Golding’s death or merely for the cover-up, so let’s keep an open mind on that front.
Matt, I’d like you and Bahnaz to focus on the murder itself.
Nadeeka Prasanna believes all doorcam footage has already been handed over, but I want thorough house-to-house enquiries, please.
Find out what still exists on hard drives or in the cloud. ’
DS Draper nods. ‘Will do, boss.’
‘Locating Golding’s body is a priority. It’s possible he was genuinely collected by an undertaker, so check with funeral parlours within a forty-mile radius for any white adult males brought in on Monday afternoon.
Until and unless we get more intel on the direction of travel, we have nothing on which to base a search area. ’
They need a registration number, Lauren thinks, for at least one of the vehicles used by the phoney cops.
She’s listed them in her notes: the blue Corsa driven by ‘DI Burton’; the black private ambulance; the white van used by the paper-suited man Nadeeka Prasanna took to be a forensics officer; and a marked police car.
How the hell had they got a marked car there?
Lauren locates DC Marston. ‘Sonya, I’d like you and Kenric to focus on identifying the individuals claiming to be police.
According to Nadeeka Prasanna, we’re looking for the following people.
’ She brings up a slide with five silhouetted heads and reads out the captions as they appear.
‘“DI Burton”: white male, early sixties. A “crime scene investigator”: male, white, broad-shouldered, shaved head, indeterminate age. A third white male: mid-twenties with dark hair, wearing police uniform. Finally, two men potentially posing as undertakers.’
From somewhere in the room, there’s a sharp exhalation of disbelief.
‘Pretty ballsy, huh?’ Lauren says. A few of the team nod, but no one smiles.
There’s a shift in the atmosphere, the buzz that infused the room earlier morphing into a grim determination.
The sheer arrogance of these criminals .
. . Lauren has only once dealt with something similarly audacious: the removal of a painting from a museum during opening hours, where the thieves had joked openly with security guards as they lifted it off the wall.
She clicks on to the next slide, which bears a single stock image of a mobile phone, and invites the man sitting directly to her right to take over.
‘Morning, everyone.’ He adjusts his jacket as he stands, smoothing the lapels.
‘For those of you I’ve not met, I’m Hillary Kent, head of digital forensics.
We’ll be looking first at any smart tech in Nadeeka Prasanna’s house – wifi routers, Alexas and so on.
Unless the offenders’ phones were in airplane mode they’re likely to have automatically searched for nearby signals, and we may be able to retrieve that data. ’
‘Do we have the victim’s phone?’ The question comes from a detective drafted in from another team. Lauren’s team has swollen to four times its usual size.
‘No,’ Hillary says. ‘The so-called “DI Burton” seized Golding’s phone, laptop and iPad, and later Nadeeka Prasanna’s phone.’
The door at the back of the room opens, and Amber from the media team edges in, a full twenty minutes late. She seems nervy, one hand on the door, the other clutching two mobile phones. Lauren can’t read her expression, but it seems more apprehensive than apologetic. Has something happened?
‘Unfortunately, Ms Prasanna only had a limited free back-up service, so we don’t have full access to her messages,’ Hillary is saying.
‘She has nevertheless given us permission to access her account, and we have been able to retrieve some of the messages sent between her and Golding. They shared their respective locations on a few occasions, and we’re using these as entry points to try to access Golding’s own cloud data.
’ He holds up a qualifying hand. ‘No guarantees, of course.’
‘Thanks, Hillary.’ Lauren nods again and he sits back down.
‘Right, everyone, let’s get moving. Briefings will be daily at eight a.m. – I hope you appreciated the lie-in today – and four p.m., and I expect a full house.
’ Lauren’s gaze travels slowly around the room.
‘If you’re tied up with an enquiry, I want an email update before briefing. Understood?’
There’s a collective Yes, ma’am, and the room breaks up.
Lauren goes straight to Amber. ‘I asked for a representative from media to be here at nine.’
‘The story’s hit the papers,’ Amber says.
It’s explanation enough, and perhaps inevitable, Lauren supposes. ATP Construction had issued a company-wide announcement about Jamie Golding’s murder; of course someone was going to talk.
‘Then we need a press release out as soon as possible.’ She circles a hand in the air.
‘We believe there’s no risk to the public at large .
. . reassurance patrols in the area . . .
respect the privacy of the victim’s family.
’ She’s thinking out loud. ‘Stick to the facts. The murder took place on Monday, and we’re doing everything we can to bring the perpetrators to justice.
On no account do we mention the fake police.
’ This is what Lauren had intended to propose anyway, but it’s frustrating that they now find themselves on the back foot.
In police comms, there’s a fine line between responsive and defensive.
Amber holds up the larger of her two phones and taps the screen to wake it. It takes Lauren a while to tune in to what she’s seeing, but, when she does, her heart sinks. This is not what she’d intended.
Trending in the UK. The heading is followed by a list of hashtags. #fakepolice #jamiegolding #corruptcops #defundthepolice.
‘How has this happened?’ Lauren says, as much to herself as to Amber.
‘It only takes one person. The internet does the rest.’
Lauren’s carefully thought-out media strategy has gone up in smoke. The fake police story has gone viral.