M. Arlidge - Pop Goes the Weasel

Helen was about to interject, but Tony wasn’t finished.

‘If it’s ok with you, I won’t go back to the station again. I’d prefer that they remember me in a good light. As I was.’

‘Of course. I’ll square it with HR and I guess your rep will be in touch. I’ll try and get the best deal for you, Tony.’

‘You’ve done enough already. I’m just sorry that ultimately I did so little.’

With that he stood up, emotion suddenly ambushing him. He clearly wanted to be gone and Helen didn’t stop him.

‘Take care of yourself, Tony.’

He raised his hand as he left, but didn’t turn round. He had been one of her most promising officers, her sounding board, and now he was gone. Angel was still out there and Helen was more alone than ever.

‘What I’m about to tell you stays in this room. We can’t afford any unnecessary distractions – this cannot leak out. So don’t discuss it, don’t tell your friends or partners. I want a total lockdown.’

The team had assembled in the incident room at short notice, all except DC Fortune, who couldn’t be found. Helen was loath to do this without everybody present, but she had no choice. She had to nip this in the bud.

‘You’ve no doubt heard the rumours and I’m sorry to say that they are true. Tony Bridges had a sexual relationship with Melissa Owen and compromised the investigation.’

The team clearly had heard the rumours but it was still a hammer blow to have it confirmed.

‘Lyra Campbell is a dead end, an attempt by Melissa to shift the blame for Anton Gardiner’s murder onto someone else. She thought she could use Tony to get her off the hook. The only good thing to come out of this sorry mess is that she will do time for what she’s done. Tony… Tony won’t be coming back. He resigned this afternoon. Charlie will take over his duties.’

Helen shot a look at Charlie, who for once wouldn’t meet her eye. Helen hesitated, unnerved, then carried on.

‘So we start over.’

A couple of heads sank, so Helen carried on briskly.

‘We have some new information that might be helpful. Forensics have done their analysis on the blood found at the cargo yard. There was plenty of blood on the crates and the ground that belongs to a female, blood type O, who is a heavy user of alcohol, sedatives and cocaine. More interestingly, there are raised levels of prolactin in her blood. Which strongly suggests that she’s breastfeeding.’

An audible gasp from the team. A surprising development and one which significantly raised the stakes.

‘So maybe Angel has a baby, or recently gave one away, but either way someone somewhere will have come into contact with her. Could be a GP, an ante-natal clinic, a drop-in centre, social services, an A&E department or just the local branch of Boots. Thanks to Jason Robins, we now have a new e-fit of Angel which is strong on facial detail – DC McAndrew will distribute them – so I want everyone, and I mean everyone, out there asking the right questions in the right places.’

The team was about to disperse, but was brought to a halt by DC Fortune’s sudden appearance.

‘The call was for the whole team, DC Fortune,’ Helen chided him.

‘I know and I’m sorry, Ma’am,’ replied the young officer, blushing. ‘But I was working on the techno angle with the boys… and I think I might have found something.’

The team settled back down, expectant.

‘We were trying to see if we could wriggle a way to the IP addresses of the other contributors on Bitchfest. See if we could locate any of the other men who’d had contact with Angel. We weren’t having much joy but, looking over the posts, I noticed something. Certain recurring phrases and spellings.’

He had Helen’s interest now. She had an inkling where this was going and if she was right it changed everything.

‘There were several men who used the forum a lot – anonymous contributors like “PussyKing”, “fillyerboots”, “Blade”, “BlackArrow” who blogged their sexual encounters and encouraged other posters like Simon Booker, Alan Matthews and Christopher Reid to seek out Angel. They told them where they could find her and what she would do for them. I was re-reading their posts whilst the techie boys were doing their thing and I noticed that on more than one occasion “PussyKing” had used the phrase “splitting that bitch”. And I remembered that “Blade” had used that phrase too. I noticed also that they both hyphenated “blow-job”, as did “fillyerboots”. Also all three of them constantly misspelt the world “Ecstasy” as “Ecstacy”. So I pulled up all their posts and… the spellings, the punctuation, the typos are identical.’

‘So all this time we’ve been hunting down these three guys when actually -’

‘They are all the same person,’ DC Fortune interjected.

‘They are all Angel.’

Even as she said it, Helen’s head spun.

‘She’s been guiding her victims to her.’

The team looked stunned. It was clear now why they had been unable to trace Angel’s punters – because they didn’t exist. How could they have got it so badly wrong?

‘Right. We need to change tack immediately,’ Helen continued, rallying her shell-shocked troops. ‘We can assume the misspellings on the courier boxes were a deliberate attempt to make the killer appear ill-educated, even dyslexic. In fact she is educated and sophisticated. Her vocabulary is extensive, she is adept at using and manipulating IT and she has a phenomenally ordered brain, capable of planning and executing these murders with minimal risk to herself. She is not stupid. She is cunning, intelligent and bold.’

The team were hanging on her every word as their first detailed image of their killer took shape before them.

‘She is a heavy drinker and drug user and brought a baby to term recently. She probably has a history of prostitution, yet has never been arrested – her DNA is not on the national database. So she may be relatively new to the scene. She is presumably heavily bruised and perhaps injured following her latest attack. We have a lot to work with, we have the e-fit but we have to be smart. Let’s target the upper end of the market first – escorts, students – and think about the geography of these attacks. I’ll bet she’s hiding out somewhere in the central or northern parts of the city, so let’s go find her.’

The team hurried over to grab their e-fits, suddenly fired with a determination to bring this investigation to a close. The only one who didn’t race over straight away was Charlie. And Helen wanted to know why.

Charlie was heading away from the station fast – but not fast enough. Helen caught up with her before she made it across the road. She got straight to the point.

‘What’s going on, Charlie?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Normally you’d be right on this, but something’s the matter.’

Charlie looked at her boss. There was no point lying to her, they were beyond that.

‘It’s Steve. He wants me to leave the Force.’

‘I see,’ Helen replied. She wasn’t surprised. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve made things worse for you. I could have handled Steve better.’

‘It’s not your fault. It’s been coming. Ever since…’

She didn’t need to say it out loud.

‘I understand. We need you. You know we need you, but ultimately you have to do what’s right for you. I won’t stand in your way and I’ll back you whatever you decide, ok?’