‘Three to five days on urgent. Twenty-four hours if you can find the budget.’
‘I’ll find it. I want his search history for the last six months, with every visit to the website documented. I want to know which profiles he’s viewed, what he’s downloaded, and if he’s Google Earthed their locations. And trawl the hard drive for porn – he’s bound to have some, and if any of it is within an inch of being illegal, we’ll have him for it. Arrogant arsehole.’
‘You didn’t take to Tillman, then?’ Kelly said, after Andrew had disappeared off to his cubbyhole. ‘But he was so charming.’ She grimaced. ‘How much do you think he knows?’
‘Hard to tell. Enough to clam up when he realised we knew about the website, certainly, but whether he knows who’s behind it, I’m not sure. If his brief’s got any sense he’ll advise him to go no comment, so it’ll come down to forensics. Have we had the report from the medical examiner?’
‘I spoke to Kent’s sexual offences team before we went into interview, and they’ve faxed through the full report. There’s clear evidence of sexual intercourse, but of course that’s not in dispute.’
She handed the fax to Nick, who scanned its contents.
‘No defensive injuries, and no obvious signs of force?’
‘That doesn’t mean anything.’
Lexi hadn’t been injured. She’d frozen, she told Kelly; it was what she blamed herself for more than anything else. Not fighting.
‘No, but it makes it a damn sight harder for us to prove a lack of consent. It’s critical we prove a link between Gordon Tillman and the victim’s profile on the website. If we can do that, his story about randomly meeting her on the street comes instantly undone.’
‘And if we can’t?’ Kelly said.
‘We will. Where’s Lucinda?’
‘In a tasking meeting.’
‘I want her to identify the outstanding victims on the website. We don’t have their names but we have their photos and we know exactly where they’ll be between home and work. I want them identified, brought in, and warned.’
‘Consider it done.’
Nick paused. ‘That was a tough interview. You did a good job. I’m impressed.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Let’s get him back in. I can’t imagine it will take long.’
*
The DI’s prediction was correct. On the advice of his solicitor, a thin, anxious-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses, Gordon Tillman answered no comment to every question asked of him.
‘I trust you’ll be bailing my client,’ the solicitor said, when Tillman had been taken down to his cell.
‘That’s not what we had in mind, I’m afraid,’ Kelly said. ‘This is a serious investigation and we have extensive forensic enquiries to carry out. Your client will need to make himself comfortable for quite a while.’ Nick’s positive feedback had given her confidence, and she had felt more like her old self during the second half of the interview. The DC she used to be, before she messed up.
They could hold Tillman for up to twenty-four hours, but Nick had been in touch with the duty superintendent for an extension. Given the time frame from Andrew, even the additional twelve hours the superintendent could authorise was unlikely to be enough; they would need a magistrate’s authority to keep Tillman behind bars for any longer.
Kelly flicked through the case papers while she waited to update the custody sergeant. The victim statement made grim reading. The black Lexus had pulled up alongside her; the man inside asking for directions, pushing open the passenger door because ‘the window doesn’t open’.
‘I thought it was odd,’ her statement read, ‘given how new the car looked, but it didn’t occur to me to be suspicious.’ Kathryn had leaned into the car to give directions – the driver said he was looking for the M20 – and described a man who seemed friendly and unthreatening.
‘He apologised for taking up my time,’ she said, ‘and thanked me for being so helpful.’
Kathryn had been going over the directions a second time (‘he said his memory was terrible’) when Gordon Tillman’s true intention had become clear.
‘He suddenly reached out and grabbed me. He took a huge handful of the grey wrap I was wearing, gripping it somewhere behind my right shoulder, and hauled me into the car. It happened so fast I don’t think I even managed to scream. He drove off, my feet still out of the car, and my face pushed into his lap. I could feel the steering wheel on the back of my head, and he used his free hand to push my head against his crotch.’
At some point the car had stopped for long enough for Tillman to reach across the victim and slam the passenger door shut, but he kept her head pressed into his groin; the car in a low gear he didn’t once change.