Katerina Diamond - The Promise

Connor put his clothes on, his hair still wet, the collar of his shirt cold and damp against his neck. He gathered his things and threw his backpack over his shoulder, both eager to get out of here and anxious to get home. He hoped his father would be out at work today, he couldn’t handle the pretence and he hadn’t seen him all weekend, not since the beating.

Walking home, he saw the girl from the house next door on the opposite side of the street to him. She kept her head down as she walked. He hadn’t noticed her at all at school during the course of the day. She obviously hung in different circles. He could tell she knew he was there, she must have seen him and she didn’t want him to speak to her. She walked a little faster and then disappeared into her house. He found himself walking faster to get home, to get to his tree house, to watch her.

‘Nothing,’ Adrian said flatly.

‘What do you mean, nothing?’ Imogen put two cups of coffee on the desk and sat down next to Adrian, looking at the clock – it was a little after ten in the morning. He picked his up immediately and started drinking. She wondered how long he had been sitting here.

‘Absolutely nothing on the CCTV, not even her. I’ve watched everything from around the cathedral and the circle outwards to her house. I even got hold of the surrounding shops. Everything that was working, anyway. It’s taken forever and there’s not one single image as far as I can see.’

‘What about the drawing? The one Tanya Maslin instructed on?’

‘Here. Take a look at that and tell me what you see.’ He handed her a photocopy of the picture Tanya Maslin had come in to create with the sketch artist that morning before she started work. There was something very familiar about him.

‘Isn’t that Kurt Cobain?’

‘She must have her wires crossed or something. We know it wasn’t him at least, he’s dead.’

‘Well, if you believe the theories, then he’s living on a desert island somewhere. Or at least I like to think so.’ Imogen had cried when she’d heard that Kurt Cobain had shot himself; she had idolised him as a teen. Now just reduced to being another member of the twenty-seven club, an ever-expanding group of celebrities who’d died at that age – Cobain, Winehouse, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison. Strangely, all musicians that Imogen had listened to growing up. Twenty-seven, the same age as Imogen.

‘According to Tanya Maslin, he was in The Bay Tree with Erica Lawson,’ Adrian said.

‘She didn’t seem like a liar, maybe he really did look like this.’

‘Seen anyone like that wandering around town?’

‘Maybe he wasn’t local.’ Imogen shrugged. ‘What did the DCI say?’

‘She didn’t think he was that hot.’ Adrian let out a cheeky smile.

‘I mean about what she wants us to do with it.’

‘Hit the neighbours again, see if they saw him come or go. Maybe the pic will jog their memory,’ Adrian said.

‘Fair enough. Anything else?’

‘Gary has some news on the social media front, but Erica was conspicuously absent from all the usual haunts. He wants us to go see him.’

Adrian stood up and rubbed his eyes. She guessed he had been here all night watching all those tapes, and probably slept at his desk. Worrying about Adrian was definitely a good way to distract her from her own problems. They made their way to Gary’s office.

‘How are you holding up? You look tired,’ Imogen said.

‘Home is crazy. It’s hard. Andrea is acting like the wife I never had and it’s just so overwhelming, I never get any time to …’ he trailed off.

‘Is she looking for her own place?’

‘No, she’s in major denial about what’s going on. We’re headed for a big conversation. I don’t want to, but I just need some space.’

‘You can’t have your ex living with you, especially with you guys’ history.’

‘I can’t kick her out, Grey.’

‘Well if you ever need a break, you’re welcome at mine,’ she offered.

As they arrived at the tech lab, Gary shot Imogen a look, a question in his eyes: is Adrian OK?

She shrugged almost imperceptibly in response. As good as can be expected.

‘Welcome! Can I get you some coffee?’ Gary asked. ‘I bought my own machine, one of the ones with the little capsules. Don’t tell everyone though.’

‘Just had one thanks. But you’ll be getting a lot more visits from me in the future,’ Imogen said.

‘Why do you think I got the machine?’ he said, grinning.

‘So, what do you have? Did you find out anything new about her? Was her relationship with her sister as solid as it seemed?’ Adrian asked, skipping past the small talk.

‘Sarah Lawson gave me access to their personal emails and texts and as far as I can see the sisters were very close. No big arguments, just the occasional passive-aggressive advice. As far as Sarah Lawson goes, she wasn’t aware of any social media accounts Erica had and it’s definitely trickier without her laptop to see what websites she was using, but we contacted her ISP and got a full history.’

‘And?’ Imogen said impatiently.

‘She had a Facebook account under a different name. All her own pictures, but the name is Nina Lawless. I searched Nina Lawless and found several profiles on various free social messenger and dating sites. She wasn’t stupid though, there was no indication of where she lived from her online photos. You would be surprised how many people post pictures that show their house, street name, all sorts.’

‘She was hooking up with people?’ Imogen said.

‘I don’t know how many she actually hooked up with, but she was most active on one of the apps connected to Facebook. It’s a social game where you trade on your avatars, your profile photos, buy and raise each other’s value, like commodities. It’s all done online, like a stock exchange type thing. People from all over the world take part. Everyone owns someone and everyone is owned by some else. You can see her profile here.’ He pulled up a profile and some music started to play: ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone’. It was a hazy romantic visual of Erica, photos of her sitting on her bed, a little cleavage showing, a little pout, then a picture of her hugging her cat, the camera angled to make her eyes look bigger. The next photo was her holding her hands in a heart shape. Further down the screen was a little bio. Erica was looking for love, or at least some affection.

‘So how do we see who she was talking to on this thing?’ Imogen said.

‘Well it’s tricky because it’s not a UK-based organisation, but I have requested access to the other accounts that we know of. We should get access to Facebook within a couple of days. This one might take a bit longer, if they even decide to comply. But take a look here.’

Gary scrolled further down the screen and they could see messages posted on the page, her wall; some were obviously first messages from people she had not interacted with before. There were other messages though, fragments of conversations between ‘Nina’ and various people. Men from all over the country, all over the world. Gary clicked on some of the thumbnails that linked back to their walls; some had pictures of male models that had been adopted as their personas, some had candid pictures of lesser known actors that they were pretending were pictures of themselves. There were greetings from ‘Nina’ on their walls, too, all friendly, all very generic.

‘All these messages seem pretty innocuous though, would he be this obvious? Can you private message in this app?’ Imogen asked.

‘Yeah, once we gain access we will be able to see the personal messages, they’ll be on this wall here but in red. We can’t see them at the moment, they’re hidden. I’m working on it.’