Chapter 8
Lovelyn
The cold, glass-fronted building towered over me, my reflection broken apart by different panes, neatly reflecting how I felt today.
Nearly shattered. Barely whole.
My calendar was closing in on an anniversary, and sadness dogged my steps.
The closer that date came, the harder it was getting, and I didn’t want to fall to pieces again.
Staying in bed all day had been appealing, but I’d taken the choice to double down on how I felt and complete all the crappy tasks I’d been avoiding, hence why I was at the police headquarters.
Of all the buildings in the city of Deadwater, I liked this one the least.
It worked in my favour by distracting me from the dark cloud of emotion I was battling. If anyone pushed me too hard today, I’d probably burst into tears, but this still beat sitting at home and moping.
I hadn’t felt safe under my own roof in at least a couple of days. That needed to change.
I crossed the path, weaving through people on the busy pavement, and with a glance spared for the grey, towering building next door. It was Mila’s solicitor’s office, the people who had been calling her when we’d met at the skeleton crew’s warehouse. I owed her some answers.
Obtaining those, and another I needed, meant spending the afternoon here.
I stepped into the glassed-in lobby and waited for a lift to take me up. Tapping my foot, I wrote out a quick message to our Skeleton Girls Detective Agency group.
Lovelyn: I’m at police HQ this morning. Should have some answers for us soon.
Hopefully “answers” would outweigh the nervous breakdown I was flirting with. A reply came from Mila almost immediately.
Mila: I’ll be right next door to you! Solicitor appointment.
Nothing came from the other members of the group.
It was too early for Cassie to be awake, and Genevieve, wife of the leader of the skeleton crew, would be studying.
The final member, Everly, was pregnant, and the last time we’d talked about the topic I had in mind, she couldn’t stomach the details.
We still had a murder to solve, separate from the bodies on the boat. Esther had been a school acquaintance of Mila’s who’d become involved in women trafficking. She’d been found floating in Deadwater’s harbour, drowned. Another woman silenced and unable to give evidence.
The lift arrived, and I travelled up to the ninth floor.
When I exited, heads popped up from booths, people I knew through my father and from working in the building.
I wasn’t employed by the police directly, but was contracted in to handle pieces of data intelligence work as and when needed.
In addition to that, in an attempt to be close to my father, I’d interned for him, and continued to take boring admin off his hands so he could focus on casework.
Partially, that had been a ploy. I wanted access to the information he, as chief constable, had.
My corrupt, career officer father enjoyed the easy life, and whether he trusted me or not, he didn’t care enough to refuse the free help, so long as I kept my meddling low-key and off the radar of internal audit.
Yet I couldn’t always rely on systems being updated in a timely fashion.
The data on Esther’s post-mortem hadn’t been completed, though I was certain it had been carried out.
As she’d been a sex worker, her death hadn’t made the headlines, but it was suspicious enough for me and the skeleton girls to know there was more to it than an accidental drowning.
That was task number one on my list of getting out of my own head.
The wall to the right side of the open-plan space was made up of individual offices, all with glass fronts.
My father had the corner office, but I headed in the opposite direction to the small team of data entry clerks.
It was their job to manage the main database the officers used, pulling in and integrating data from other sources. Including the pathologist.
I stopped at the desk of the oldest member of the team, a peevish woman named Soames. Like me, she was a civilian rather than a sworn officer, and also the kind of woman who treated database fields with religious reverence and colleagues with mild contempt and a side of superiority.
Soames peered up at me over rimless glasses. “Can I help you, Miss Wells?”
I glanced around then stooped to speak quietly to her. “I don’t want to cause any problems with your team, but I heard there might be an issue.”
She set down her pen. “What kind of issue? Whose fault is it?”
Straight to the blame. A woman after my own dark little heart.
I faked unease. “There’s a meeting happening later which needs intel from the pathologist’s reports, but apparently it hasn’t been updated in a while.
You know how poor data management can get heads rolling.
I just overheard someone mid-rant, and it’s unfortunate that this is happening right as they’re considering a team review.
I knew you’d be the person to tell because you’re discreet. Have you any idea what’s going on?”
Soames gulped. Her gaze darted to the other members of the team then back to me. A team review meant numbers would be cut. It was fictional, but if she wanted to secure her job, having an example of her excellence would be irresistible.
She leaned in. “If I get it done now, can you drop a hint that the systems were slow and they should try again?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re not too busy? I can pass on the message, say in twenty minutes?”
She pushed her glasses back up her nose, fingers already flying over the keyboard. “Consider it done. I can’t tell you how much I loathe sloppy task management. If only they knew how hard I worked.”
I left her to her hustle, the first part of my plan underway.
The second was more delicate. I approached my father’s office where his PA was setting a stack of papers on his desk.
The man raised his head at my approach. “Miss Wells. I’m afraid the chief constable is currently in a meeting and has another directly after. He might not have time to speak with you.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
It wasn’t. I’d checked his diary before I came. I’d also checked the diary of Lyle, the guy I’d been dating who worked for him. Also in back-to-back appointments. It had been part of the draw of coming in today.
“I’m just returning a file I was working on,” I said.
“Need me to take that for you?”
I tapped my lip, considering how to get what I wanted from the PA. I didn’t know him all that well so hadn’t learned what buttons to push or how much my father had him under his thumb. He appeared punctual and efficient, so I took that path of pride in his work.
“Actually, there’s something else you can help me with. I’m sure my dad will be happy you lent a hand.”
I’d never called him ‘dad’ in my life. This was a reach.
“Lovelyn.”
I spun around at the voice. My father approached, his gaze leaving me to leap to his PA. “Catch.” He tossed him a folder.
The PA caught it with a short laugh that was part embarrassment. “The man himself. You don’t need me after all.” He sounded relieved.
Damn. It would’ve been easier to get what I needed without my father here, but never mind. I’d wanted to test the waters after the jailbreak I’d pulled, so I’d take the side benefit. I faked a thin smile and followed him into his office.
“Julian.”
“What do you need?” He opened a cabinet and rooted inside.
There was a kind of comfort in how he flicked his gaze over me in his typical fast and dismissive way, same as he’d done ever since he’d discovered I’d existed half a dozen years ago.
Having a kid was a burden he didn’t want.
To his credit, he hadn’t immediately ditched me, but we weren’t the chat-over-dinner kind of family.
He’d supported me at university, gifted me a police driving course, and then gave me access to the data I’d craved in the job I’d carved out for myself.
Part-time intelligence analyst and part-time dealer in information to Deadwater’s underworld. One paid a lot better than the other.
If my father knew, he didn’t care. I’d long suspected he had unsavoury elements in his past that awarded Arran Daniels leverage over him, or that made him willing to overlook certain gang activities when it suited him.
I thought of him as being an artful dodger.
Not interested in hard work and ready to take a backhander. I’d seen him do it many times.
An excuse was ready at my lips. “It’s bugging me that the bodies found on the Eden haven’t been announced to the press. Why?”
I’d waited for it for days. Nothing had happened.
My father raised a shoulder, his suit jacket a little askew. “Political.”
“How?”
His scowl deepened. “Why are you interested? It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Are you kidding? It’s the most fascinating thing to happen in Deadwater in years. The Marchant business stalling and the family in disarray. The ship sinking.”
He didn’t need to know I was friends with Mila or deeply involved in the mysteries circling her family.
I took a risk. “Besides, I need the distraction.”
He lifted his focus, narrowed his eyes, then checked the date on his screen. A wince of recognition followed. He was hungover. I could see it now in his reddened eyes. All of which worked in my favour as he wouldn’t want to accidentally talk emotions with me.
“Yeah, yeah. All right. Sounds like you don’t have enough work to do. Here. Use up your energy on this.”
He unzipped his leather case and pulled out a sheaf of papers then a data stick. My father was old school and either scribbled out his case reports or voice recorded them for me to write up.
I accepted them with a smile that was cautious but genuine.
It was a tiny amount of trust given from a man who had never cared much about me.
Despite the complete lack of a relationship in every other way, and even though my mother had done all she could for the opposite to be the case, I couldn’t help the glimmer of happiness at that connection.
Julian didn’t love me, a fact that didn’t trouble me. I didn’t have any deep feelings for him either. Sad, but maybe inevitable. He didn’t need to care. He just had to be there.
If he wasn’t, I was even more alone.
That weight of emotion pushed at my chest. Nope. I was not succumbing.
“No problem. I’ll get it done this week. That reminds me, you mentioned a threat against me. I need more information.”
He sat heavily in his leather seat, a hulking shape of a man who had once been thick with muscle. Desk work didn’t suit him.
“Male, crass, I didn’t really take it seriously.”
“It was a voice message?”
He nodded once, his gaze on his screen now. “Called in to the general line.”
“What did he say? Exactly.”
My father sighed then fished in a wire inbox, pulling out a sheet. “The transcript.”
I scanned the words.
Kenney needs to watch out for his bitch daughter before she takes a fall.
Oddly general. It felt almost as much a threat to him as me. “Can I hear it?”
“He used a digital voice in them.”
I paused. “What do you mean ‘them’?”
He huffed and found another page. I read it.
Kenney’s girl shouldn’t be left alone at night.
I raised my gaze to him. “Why didn’t you tell me there had been another?”
“I said not to go out at night, didn’t I? It’s just empty words. No heat behind it. I had one of the techs look at it, no intel gathered.”
I read them again and blew out a breath, no closer to working out if the threats were real or not. But another opportunity had presented itself.
My father had mentioned his tech team. I’d kept thinking about them for help with my Dixie problem, my final task of the day.
Assuming she hadn’t carried out a secure erase, small traces like cached files or metadata could still exist, but this usually took forensic recovery software to find. Software I didn’t have access to.
But sneaking around with my father’s access was one thing. Utilising police resources like that was far less reasonable, or realistic. I was pushing my luck.
I clutched my bag closer to my shoulder. “On the subject of your tech team, I have a tablet I think was accidentally wiped. Is it okay to go to them for help?”
He tilted his head. “Why would you need to do that?”
My heart thumped, but I held his gaze. Whatever we were to each other, neither of us was above manipulation. “You know what date’s coming up?”
His thick, greying eyebrows dove together, the panic real.
“Fuck, I mean, I have somewhere I need to be. Go talk to the team if you need to.” He clambered to his feet and circled his desk.
“I had a case hanging on that once, and they nailed it. Something to do with calendar notifications. Put a fucker down for ten based on what he thought he’d got rid of. ”
Through his babbling and obvious panic over being a parent, I stared.
I hadn’t tried that. Of all the attempts I’d made at hunting for a backup and delving deeper, there had been an obvious solution I’d somehow blanked on.
I blamed Kane. His presence had unnerved me, then his proposition had distracted me so badly I’d missed this. I felt like such a fool.
I leapt up. “Thank you.”
Out of the office, I moved back through the floor, giving Soames a subtle thumbs-up that had her sitting higher in her seat and returning a nod that she’d done the work. Then I headed back down in the lift.
I had a lead, a threat with my name on it, and a gangster in my rearview.
For once, the data might actually be on my side.