Chapter 11
Eleven
Gina
Given that it was the middle of the night and most of the country were tucked up in their beds, there was a hustle and bustle in the incident room. There was no way Gina could sleep even if that was an option, not with Mindy being out there still.
O’Connor stood beside Gina as she headed up the briefing.
Given the blood at the scene, they were against the clock.
She was out there somewhere and she was injured.
Jacob slumped into a seat and began rubbing his eyes.
Wyre and Kapoor sat at one side of the table.
Even Wyre’s usually pristine hair had made its way out of her tight bun.
Briggs entered and stood to the side of the boards that he’d started marking up with all the information they had so far.
A pin in a local map pointed to where Mindy had been taken.
Gina passed O’Connor a board marker so he could continue noting down what they knew so far. ‘Quick catch up. Jacob, did you have any luck contacting the council with regard to the CCTV near Chez Ursula’s?’
‘Yes, I called out-of-hours and there isn’t any working CCTV near to the shops or around the estate.
There is one camera at the far end of the shops but it doesn’t work.
It was vandalised several months ago and hasn’t been fixed.
The PCs who conducted the door to doors recovered a lot of doorbell footage but nothing relevant has come from that yet. ’
‘Typical. In the age of technology, we don’t even have any CCTV. Wyre? Jhanvi?’
‘Yes, guv,’ Wyre replied.
‘You found her brother’s address so thank you for that.’ Gina updated them on everything Lonnie had said while O’Connor wrote on the board. ‘Did you get a chance to look at her online presence and social media?’
‘That was quite straightforward, however, she doesn’t appear much online.’
‘That figures. We know she left a relationship abruptly and in her brother’s words, Mindy was told by Carmen that if she ever found her, Carmen would kill her.
Mindy was more than likely trying to keep a low profile.
But she does post on Instagram and she has a TikTok account.
Did you see any threats on her profile?’
‘No, guv. She doesn’t use her TikTok and on Instagram, she only has forty followers and all interactions coming from them were positive.
The accounts seem genuine. We also checked the dating sites but unless she’s using another name, we found nothing.
However, on Instagram, we did find a photo posted about a year ago.
In the background, if you zoom in, you can see her address on an envelope. ’
‘That happens a lot, sadly. People get caught up in what they’re posting and they don’t think. Was that the address she shared previously with Carmen Spelling?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, the whole world could have found out where she lived before. We don’t know how many people followed her profile a year ago.’
‘Her profile is currently set to private. We don’t know if it was back then.’
‘Did a witness called Mr Hammond come in to give a statement?’
Wyre nodded. ‘Yes, I interviewed him.’
‘He heard the youths calling out the word bitch at the time Mindy left but did he have anything else to add?’
‘Yes. He said he saw the youth, Abel Holloway, holding a lighter up several times when Mindy or Ursula came and went. He said he’d also reported this. I checked and we do have reports of threats and antisocial behaviour on file but due to lack of evidence, we weren’t able to make any arrests.’
‘Has anyone heard back from Bernard regarding the crime scene?’ Gina asked.
A hum of noes filled the air. Gina knew that was wishful thinking.
She waited for O’Connor to list the scene details.
Blood on Mindy’s windscreen – the dent in her car – the keyring – details of the youth – Abel Holloway and the craft knife.
Then there was the video. Gina continued, ignoring the shiver at the back of her neck. The video had got to her.
‘The man in the video with Mindy has an eagle tattoo on his thigh. On the surface, it looked like they were engaging in consensual sex.’ She went into detail about all the strange visitors that Mindy’s neighbour had spoken about.
‘And at the end of the video, a text pops up.’ Gina nodded to O’Connor to share the message.
O’Connor opened his notebook, stood at the front and read it out loud. ‘Delete this message. Leave the salon now. Say nothing. If I see you touch your phone, I’ll send this to all your contacts. That birthmark is so unique.’
Gina cleared her throat and waited for O’Connor to write that up on the board.
‘Mindy’s birthmark is large and clearly visible on her hand.
She would have been scared of the perp releasing the video.
Tonight was well planned. Someone has been watching Mindy.
There are spy cameras set up in her home, the type of covert gadgets you can buy cheaply off the internet and connect to Wi-Fi.
They don’t have a hard drive so that is making things harder for us.
We can’t just replay whatever they caught in the hope of getting a close-up of the perp.
The data would be accessible from wherever the perp resides.
As for the video that was sent to Mindy at work, I suspect that was filmed through her laptop camera or another device located on her chest of drawers, opposite her bed – perfectly in position for that video to be taken.
She either had to give the perpetrator access, maybe through an email link, or it’s possible that the perp got into her laptop when the spy cams were planted.
Given that we found her laptop smashed up in her bedroom and a burner phone downstairs, we know she doesn’t trust her tech. ’
Gina felt her stomach turning. The thought of someone breaching her privacy in that way made her feel sick to the stomach.
The video of Mindy having sex was one thing but it was all the other things a person does when no one’s looking.
She might have been reading a book, crying, having sweet conversations with the man she was sleeping with, snoring…
anything. Every element of her personal life would have been on show.
‘Have digital forensics come back with anything yet?’
Wyre shook her head. ‘Nothing you haven’t just mentioned.
I checked with Garth not long ago. He has Mindy’s computer from home and he thinks it might be salvageable.
The only damage is to the screen but it’s not going to be a fast process.
He said not to hold your breath just in case.
As suspected, the pay-as-you-go phone was new, so there’s nothing on it.
It looks like Mindy had started setting it up earlier.
The smashed-up phone found at the scene wasn’t a contract phone either.
Garth was able to get into it but it was also quite new.
All it had in it was her brother’s and Ursula’s phone number.
It was also connected to her Instagram but there were no relevant personal messages on it, and no trolling of any kind.
We’re looking a little deeper into her small follower list but no one stands out.
I’ve listed all the names so we can cross reference them with any suspects that crop up. ’
‘How about the computer taken from Chez Ursula’s?’
‘Garth is going through all that as we speak. He hadn’t found anything else before the briefing.’
Gina stared out of the window through the open blinds.
Police cars came and went from the car park, their lights glistening on the frosty road.
She shivered. ‘Mindy has tried everything possible to contain all this. She’s done such a good job, we barely have anything.
’ She paused. ‘Do we have Carmen Spelling here yet?’
Jacob stifled a yawn. ‘She got home just before the briefing. She’s apparently a bit merry but they’re bringing her in so they should arrive soon.’
‘Any news on Abel Holloway?’
Wyre piped up. ‘The PCs who took him to the hospital said that he’d swallowed a few MDMA pills. He was trying to hide them when you chased him. Hospital staff are currently treating him but the fact that he got immediate medical attention is a good sign. They said to call back in the morning.’
‘Who took Ursula’s statement when she came in?’
‘I did,’ Wyre said.
‘Anything stand out?’
Wyre shook her head.
PC Smith cleared his throat. Gina hadn’t noticed him come into the room. ‘She’s still standing outside cursing her husband for not collecting her,’ he said.
Gina furrowed her brows. ‘I thought she had her own car?’
‘I asked her about that. She said she drove home to drop the dog off. The dog had got distressed and peed in the car so her husband dropped her off at the station in his car and said he’d clean up the pee while she was being interviewed, then he didn’t come back for her.’
‘Bring her back in,’ Gina said. Wyre was definitely missing some information when she interviewed Ursula. ‘There’s something I need to ask her.’
Once again, Ursula was sitting in a chair with the recorder rolling and Gina was waiting for her answer.
Ursula mumbled something under her breath as she scrutinised the photo taken from the video that Gina held out in front of her.
‘Ursula, can you repeat what you just said a little louder, for the recorder.’
‘Sorry. My husband has an eagle tattoo on his thigh. It’s a winking eagle, just like that one.’