Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
“Chelsea Bainbridge, Brooke O’Hara, Morgan Skelton.
Three women in their late twenties, all dead, their bodies found in water after being stabbed to death.
Missing – Evelyn Smith, boyfriend Kristian Chambers, a winger for United.
We suspected that Evelyn and Morgan knew each other as teenagers; Brooke and Evelyn followed each other on social media and would comment on each other’s posts.
” Wrigley was still pointed to the screen where photos of all five women were displayed.
“All women had comments left on their posts on social media that were misogynistic in tone. All women could’ve been considered as ‘Staceys’, a derogatory term used by incels to describe a woman who’s only interested in ‘Brads’ – the Brads are the men who apparently get all the attractive women.
Best case scenario now is that Evelyn’s snuck off somewhere to create a big drama about her return, one that’ll have her interviewed in glossy magazines and get her on I’m a Celebrity, get me out of Made in Chelsea.
Worse case, Jenna’s getting the waders out again. ” He relaxed. Paused. Scanned the room.
The office was packed. The response from the brass about the possible abduction of Evelyn Smith was to throw resources at it, ensure we stayed at least one step ahead of the media.
For the first time in days, it felt like we had a hook on a lead, a possible break-through.
We’d wanted something fresh, and while it was a week since she’d last been seen, so it was hardly fresh, it was another piece of the picture.
“The media don’t know about Evelyn. When they find out – and they will – the profile of this case is going to hit the stratosphere.
Quite how someone who’s prolific on social media, has thousands of friends and appears to be Miss Extrovert can be missing for an entire week without anyone noticing beggars belief.
However, our competence is going to be questioned here, so we do things by the book, we act efficiently, and we keep our noses clean.
Watch what you say and where you say it, because the media will be listening whenever they can.
Any leaks and you’ll become part of the gutter.
Do we understand?” His look was now a glare.
“Right. Vinny, what’s the update on our rats’ nest of misogynistic stale turds? ”
It was probably an accurate description.
Vinny slid off my desk on which he’d been sitting. It seemed to be one of his favourite places to think, which was disconcerting.
“We’re looking into three active posters on a sub-forum called The Reckoning Room.
The main forum is called The Fall, a reference to Eve’s betrayal of Adam in the Old Testament.
The Reckoning is full of plots against women or rather fantasies about women meeting what our lovely examples of society deem appropriate fates.
One thread discusses the murders of Chelsea, Brooke and Morgan in some detail.
We’ve had a chat so far with one of the local members, Jordan Calvert, who posts as DreadMaidenHunter.
He’s a teacher at Moorbridge High in Didsbury, and has recently joined a private incel Telegram group, which is like a more secure WhatsApp group.
The group’s name The Dead Stacey Club – no prizes for guesses there.
We have two more members who appear in both and live in Manchester: Dean Hobson, twenty-eight, from Salford, known as Awakened_TrueMale69,” Vinny’s tone was droll.
“And Kieran Bell, twenty-four and known as ShadowRisen2. He graces the streets of Bury. We spoke to Calvert yesterday, who denied anything about posting anywhere, and told us how much he loved women. We also spoke to his head teacher who disclosed that there had been a recent low-level concern to her about a boys’ club he’d set up at lunch times and some of the material he was showing them.
When he goes back in on Monday he’s going to find himself suspended pending investigation.
You’ll all have some of the threads from these transcripts in your emails – look at the language, note the vocabulary and phrasing, things like ‘world order’, ‘red pill’ – you have a list of key terminology.
We’re dividing up into groups, one team looking at each of these men and we want to find where they’re hiding online, phone their employers, nosey about.
We’re working on the theory that it maybe two or three killers working together. Boss.”
Wrigley gave him a nod. “And we have another team, led by Mac, looking at our missing WAG.”
I stood up, leaning against my desk, side by side with Vinny.
I ran through what I knew so far about Evelyn.
We had no solid time of disappearance, or which day it was.
Her parents hadn’t heard from her, but they weren’t the sort to use their mobiles abroad, so they weren’t surprised she hadn’t messaged them.
We’d had to phone the hotel where they were staying to get in touch with them.
I pointed up to the screen where Nick had displayed various photos we had of her already.
“Her phone had been switched off on Good Friday, a few hours after we had footage of her leaving Kristian Chambers’ mansion and being picked up by an Uber.
The driver had dropped her off at a café, Le Petite Pain, which is in Sale and has a path directly from it that leads to Grindle Bridge amongst other places.
We have her on camera here thanks to the café, walking along that path.
That’s the last time her phone pinged. My team, we’re looking for camera footage from after two pm Friday to see if we catch her coming off that footpath.
Jenna Osei is already down there now, looking for the phone and anything else, along with a couple of police dogs.
One thing to note is that Morgan and Evelyn may have known each other.
There’s a photo belonging to Evelyn that shows her on a beach as a teenager.
There are two other girls with her; one is her sister; I think the other one is Morgan.
Evelyn’s parents don’t recognise the other girl but have said that the picture would’ve been from a holiday in Aberwyn, on the North-Wales coast, where they had a caravan.
They spent summers there from when Evelyn was nine to fifteen.
We are combing back through what we have already for any links between the four that we might’ve missed. ”
The room hummed, theories, comments, ideas – a collective of people who had a purpose. I lived for these moments, the adrenaline, the fragile hope that we might be able to right a wrong.
“Wrigley’s right,” Vinny passed me a protein bar off my desk, which meant he was about to eat the other one we had there. “How does someone like Evelyn Smith go missing for a week with no one noticing?”
“She had no real friends.” I’d given this a lot of thought already.
“Her job at Harvey Nicks was one shift a month when she was doing make overs for members of the public who booked in; she had a few jobs for friends diaried but didn’t turn up - they sent messages but she didn’t respond.
They assumed she was having a bit of a crisis but didn’t bother to check because their lives were busy with other stuff.
Her parents and boyfriend were away, and her and her boyfriend weren’t speaking.
A couple of friends tried to arrange meet ups but she didn’t respond and apparently – she was like that.
Fairly flaky, not reliable. If you were abducted, Vinny, how would we find out? ”
He glanced rapidly at me a couple of times, as if he was working out what the answer should be in order to avoid the piss being taken.
“My mum. She demands proof of life every day. If I don’t respond to her seven am text when I’m on shift, she’d send out a search party.
And if I didn’t show up here, Wrigley would send you round to put a window through or something.
But what about you? Who do you speak to every day who’d miss your call?
” He eyed me with something of triumph in his eyes.
“My housemate.”
“What if she was on holiday? Or she’d gone away for the weekend?
You and Lucy are hardly best mates.” Vinny folded his arms. “You speak to your foster parents a couple of times a week, and Heidi every other day. You never post on social media because you’ve got the sense not to have it.
Go on, who do you message every day? Who’d find it weird if you didn’t contact them? ”
“Wrigley.”
“Aside from Wrigley. I’ve got my mum who doesn’t leave me alone and refuses to stop buying me underwear until I have a steady girlfriend, and I've got a sister who’s just as annoying as she was from when she exploded out of the womb, and is more high maintenance than the wife of a prince and I’ve got no chance of going missing, even if I tried. ”
I’d heard his sister nag him on many occasions and figured he was probably right. “Maybe not the day I went missing, but Heidi would raise an alarm after a couple of days.”
He glared at me. “You’re missing someone.”
“Who?” I frowned.
“Fucking hell, Mia. Me. We text every day. Even when I was in Tenerife last summer you were sending me abuse.”
I thought about it for a moment and realised he was right.
A link to a website, usually something to do with someone being arrested, or someone we’d once helped send down who was back out or causing more trouble, or doctored photos of someone on the team for a laugh.
Then there were the requests for advice, or unsolicited advice from him.
“True. I’ll take that. So I’d know if you were missing though, although it wouldn’t happen.”
“I’m a prize for someone, Mac. There are plenty of people who’d like to have their way with me.”
I burst out laughing, which I hoped was his intention.