Pete sits a little more upright on the desk. The telltale symptoms of excitement are kicking in. Elevated heartbeat? Check. Damp underarms? Check. Tight feeling in his chest? All present and correct. ‘If that’s true, it points to Wolfe being the tenant.’
Her voice hardens. ‘No, it points to someone making it look as though Hamish was the tenant. Are you coming down?’
He fakes a sigh. ‘I suppose so.’
It takes nearly two hours to assemble a team, but Maggie is waiting in her car when he pulls up outside Unit 14 on the Wynchwood Estate. Two hours in the cold have taken their toll on her appearance. Her face is pinched, and almost seems to be reflecting the blue of her hair. She gets out and stands by her car, expecting him to approach her. He doesn’t. He concentrates on the building. Everything he’s looking at, she’ll already have checked out. He can’t afford to miss anything.
Unit 14 is in a block of red-brick offices. There is just one door, on the front of the building; 14a is on the ground floor, with an identical room, 14b, above it. There are windows at ground level, but blinds cover them.
From somewhere nearby, a thin, dark-haired man appears. Maggie joins him and they approach.
‘This is Hector,’ Maggie says. ‘He manages the estate.’
Pete stretches out his hand, shows his warrant card with the other. ‘Good to meet you, Hector. Do you have an office where we can talk?’ He turns around to see the crime scene investigators have arrived and are unloading equipment from their van. ‘Maggie, I’d like you to stay in your car, please. Guys, no one goes in there but you.’
Turning his back on Maggie, Pete follows Hector to a nearby building, where the manager has made a small, windowless room his home. He examines the visitors’ log and double-checks what Maggie has already told him about CCTV footage.
‘What about bills? Electricity? Internet connection?’
Hector has a foreign accent, but his grasp of English suggests a better education than his job requires. ‘Electricity is included in the rent, up to a certain amount. Phone lines, internet, all that sort of thing is the tenant’s responsibility.’
That means there could be bills. A paper trace. Although someone going to this amount of trouble will probably have planned for that. ‘Did you ever see anyone going in there?’
Hector thinks for a moment. ‘A lot of people come and go. You could ask security, but the lady already did and the guard wasn’t with us this time last year.’
‘Have you been in the room in question? Recently?’
Hector shakes his head. ‘I’ve never been in it. I offered to show it to the lady, but she said we should wait for you. What do you think is in there?’
The look on the manager’s face suggests he’s hoping for a body, a stash of stolen goods at the very least.
‘Probably nothing.’ His radio crackles into life. ‘Weston.’
‘You need to get down here, Pete.’ It is the head of the investigation team. ‘I think your colourful friend could be on to something.’
Hector’s ears are visibly flapping. Pete steps outside. ‘What?’
‘First up, no fingerprints anywhere in the room. Not a one that we’ve found so far, which is suspicious in itself. More than that, though, we fired up the computer. Maggie suggested we use the password Daisy.’
Pete swears under his breath. ‘She’s there? Why is she in there?’
‘She isn’t. She’s hovering in the doorway. Anyway, it worked. This is it, Pete. The computer that was used to stalk those women. There’s a Facebook account, email, the lot. We’re packing it up.’
Pete sits in his car, facing the building where a one-room industrial unit has become a crime scene. He is on the phone.
‘They’re taking the computer out now.’ He watches it being carried out to a waiting van on its way to a facility where geniuses who look like teenagers will strip it bare. Back inside the building, the investigators continue to comb the small, square room and the smaller kitchen and lavatory.
Several yards down the road, Maggie sits in her car. She is taking photographs, occasionally making notes on a laptop.
‘We’re going to have to tell Latimer,’ says Liz.
‘Soon as we know anything for sure.’ The last thing he needs is Latimer poncing up here like some bloody great drama queen, demanding answers that nobody can give him. ‘It still points to Wolfe, Liz. It’s in the right location. The password. And anyone else would have closed it down by now.’
Liz doesn’t argue.
Pete looks over at Maggie’s car. For a second, they seem to make eye contact. Then the investigators appear in the doorway once more, this time carrying the office desk, wrapped in a protective covering. It goes into the van, as does the chair. The carpet will come next, anything moveable from the kitchen and toilet, even the light fittings and blinds.
‘We have to talk to Latimer,’ Liz says again. ‘As soon as you get back.’