Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
There could’ve been an atmosphere of irritation in the office, but instead the room was filled with anticipation, the sort of rush of adrenaline that only new information capable of hammering the chinks into a case could bring.
It was early, just past seven am, and some of those who were meant to be off today had been called in.
“Looks like I’m missing church this morning.” Vinny looked around the room, arms folded.
“Like you’ve been in a church any time recently,” I had the importunacy to be standing next to him, leaning back against a desk near the front. Wrigley was having a hushed conversation with Cattrick, pointing to something on a piece of paper that was probably the email I’d been sent.
I’d met him here forty-five minutes after calling him, Pam thankfully still asleep. Nick had met us half an hour later, already up with a colicky baby. He seemed grateful for the escape, especially when Wrigley told him to grab an hour’s sleep in one of the meeting rooms where there was a couch.
“I’m very holy, me.” Vinny straightened his collar. “Or that’s what you need to tell my mother, if you ever meet her.”
“Noted. But I imagine if you ever step foot in a church, you’ll burst into flame.” I nodded at Nick as he entered the office, carrying his laptop. He’d been trying to find out where the email I’d received had been sent from, specialising in techy stuff, which explained the limit of my interest.
There were teams now dedicated to cybercrime and security; during my degree the psychology behind internet crimes became a full-on strand, and I’d found that fascinating. How things actually worked technically was another matter.
“I’m more likely to burst into flame from Saira putting a curse on me,” Vinny muttered, watching the door like she was about to enter.
“Personally, I wouldn’t waste my energy.”
Wrigley called to order before Vinny could respond.
“Right, my twenty-four-hour party people, we have a name. No formal identification yet, but we’re seeking to resolve that in the next two or three hours.
Our Jane Doe is Chelsea Bainbridge, twenty-eight years old, living on the Windfield Estate in Kirkdale, Liverpool, but she was brought up in Moston, Manchester.
She was the mother to a nine-year-old girl, and seven-year-old boy who are currently with their father on holiday at some holiday park near the New Forest. There’s enough photographic evidence on his social media to make him an unlikely suspect, although I don’t think he’ll be too upset she’s dead.
We don’t know why she was in Manchester, and no one has reported her missing.
Today’s job, apart from hopefully catching her killer and then I don’t have to cancel the trip me and Pam have booked to London to see some play, is to find out as much about Chelsea Bainbridge as possible.
I want to know what sort of toilet roll she bought, who she’d pissed off, who she was shagging – if she did something in the last two weeks, I want to know what it was.
” He stopped for breath, his voice replaced with murmurings from the room.
“How did we identify her?” Lachy was sat on a desk looking slightly worse for wear.
“Mac, want to explain?” Wrigley said, looking at me.
I stepped forward, aware everyone’s attention was on me.
“I picked up an email at four this morning from an anonymous, now deleted account. It contained two attachments; one was a screen shot of one of her social media profiles. The second was a still from a CCTV image caught from a camera near the Jolly Sailor. The sender said we wouldn’t be able to trace the camera, which has been true so far.
The sender’s also messed with the metadata so we can’t identify anything from the screenshot, and the timestamp on the CCTV is exactly when the CCTV in the Jolly Sailor’s carpark was down. ”
“Which is too much of a coincidence,” Nick clicked a button on the remote, switching on the screen.
The email I’d received was there, but the subject had been removed.
I doubted what it’d said had been seen by Nick.
Wrigley was well aware of the players in my birth family, he had to be, and he had the skills, however well he hid them, to tweak the email before Nick saw it.
“If you want the technical genius info, the sender scrubbed the camera model or device number, and the hash has been altered so it doesn’t match anything in our database.
The sender was Atlas7384, and it was sent from a protonmail address, a small, hard to get hold of server.
The image metadata is completely clean – no EXIFs, no GPS, and the intel’s been edited with Redline Suite, which isn’t something your average hat knows about.
I’d like to take credit for this, but this is down to Caroline.
” He gestured towards a woman who looked like a seventeen-year-old who’d just wandered in from a ComiCon.
She blushed and tried to hide behind a couple of the other analysts who supported the team.
I gave her a smile, making eye contact and she smiled back, then glanced at Vinny and went even redder.
For the love of god, please, no.
“How come you’ve got a special pen pal, Mac?” Vinny turned on me.
I shrugged, wondering the same thing myself. “Probably someone who knows I check my emails regularly.” Vinny was allergic to his.
“Something to consider,” Wrigley carried on.
“While we start pulling Chelsea’s life apart.
” He pointed over to the boards that’d been set up, displaying print outs of information we had so far, which hadn’t been much until now.
A digital board was also made, which we could access on our phones, viewing new information as it came in, but most cops liked to stare at the physical board instead, usually standing far back from it.
There was a reason behind it; the physical board activated spatial memory and motor planning; touching and moving the representation of the case turned abstract ideas into something felt and manipulated, making it easier to see patterns.
It promoted visual synthesis, seeing the whole and not just the parts.
Plus, it was easier to read and take in, given that we were all suffering from digital overload, and as Vinny had once said, when he gave his explanation, it was what cops did.
“We want to know about Chelsea’s digital life – Lachy, I don’t want you public facing while looking like you spent the night swimming in a vat of bitter.
You, Nick and Verity start sleuthing online.
Mac and Vinny, you’re off to Liverpool. Start with her neighbours and get a positive ID.
The southern arses are on their way to speak to the ex-husband and asking a few questions on our behalf.
He’s back in Manchester on Tuesday so we’ll get him then – it looks unlikely he’s involved unless he ordered a hit.
” Wrigley carried on issuing directives.
I didn’t bother to listen to who else was doing what, elbowing Vinny in the ribs again instead.
“At least you won’t bump into Dr Miz while we’re in Liverpool.”
He managed to laugh. “Yeah. Wouldn’t surprise me if I turn around and she’s there. I’ll read you the texts while you drive.”
“You don’t want to drive?”
“You can have this one. Enjoy it. It won’t happen for another seven years.”