Darryl went through the kitchen and up to his bedroom, where he turned on the light and shut the door, and burst out laughing. It went on for a few minutes, until he wiped his eyes and got himself under control.
He went to the window by his desk and drew the curtains. He jiggled the mouse to wake up his computer and sat down, typing in his password. His home screen appeared with a huge image of Grendel. He fired up the VPN, which masked his internet location, then logged into the new profile he had created on Facebook. A small chime indicated he had a new message, and he was pleased to see it was from the girl he’d been flirting with. She said how much she liked his photo, how cute he looked.
Darryl had decided after Lacey and Janelle that he would stop using the profile he had created with the name Nico. Twice had been risky enough, and he didn’t want to risk a hat-trick. He wasn’t sure if the police were on to it; so far they seemed to be clueless, and besides, he realised now that the picture looked a little like Morris. Not enough for people to make the link, but he’d had a scare earlier when he’d seen Morris in the back of the police car.
Poor stupid Morris. He thought back to the mental image of Morris in the prison cell, and this time added another two blokes queuing up to bugger his skinny writhing little arse.
Darryl sat back in his chair, and started to write a reply to the girl’s message. Her name was Ella, and he needed to lay some groundwork before he asked her to meet him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Erika woke on the sofa, disorientated. Instinctively she sat up and made for the bathroom to have her morning shower, then saw the television was showing the BBC News channel, and it was 2.16 a.m. She went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, then checked her phone. Since she’d called Commander Marsh earlier in the evening, leaving him a message, he still hadn’t answered. It was unusual for him not to get back to her.
She went back to the sofa, and picked up her laptop from the coffee table. The e-fit picture of Nico had been uploaded to the Met website for the Lewisham and Croydon boroughs, asking for any information from the public. It had also been tweeted out by their Twitter accounts. She checked to see if there had been any responses, or retweets. There was one, on the Lewisham account, from a young woman who’d tweeted in reply:
@MPSCroydonTC I wouldn’t kick him out of bed!!
‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Erika.
She clicked on the e-fit image again so it filled the screen. It was a chilling face. Determined. Ruthless. A bit of rough. His face had mixed heritage, British or French with a little South America perhaps. Would he blend into all the other e-fits? All faces were unique, but e-fits seemed to all have a slightly blank and sinister expression. She often wondered if having a smiling face alongside the neutral expression would work, particularly with sex attackers. After all, they often started out attempting to charm their victims. It was only when that failed that the mask slipped.
She stared at him for a moment longer then slammed her laptop shut and shuffled off to the bedroom to get some sleep.
* * *
Later that morning, her team regrouped at West End Central. Crane had managed to track down some CCTV footage from the ATM opposite the Blue Boar pub in Southgate. The lights in their section were off, and they were watching back the grainy black-and-white footage projected onto a section of the whiteboard.
‘The problem we have is that the built-in camera in the ATM is positioned at a high angle looking down,’ said Crane. ‘The people on the other side of the road, where the pub is, can only be seen fully in their approach, before the top half of their bodies is out of shot.’ They watched as a man with a dog walked past, the top of his body vanishing when he reached the pub, so that his black Labrador trotted along beside a pair of moving legs.
‘So, in other words, it’s useless,’ said Erika.
‘Not completely useless,’ said Crane. ‘We’ve got the timestamped footage from Wednesday the fourth of January. Lacey Greene was due to meet this Nico at 8 p.m…’ He fast forwarded the footage through the afternoon and then slowed it down. The timestamp sped through 6 p.m. ‘Okay, we’re running through the footage at twelve times the speed from 7 p.m. onwards. There’s no one around. Only a smattering of cars passing. It’s just coming off rush hour. However, this car goes past three times in the space of five minutes…’ He paused on a small car moving from right to left. ‘See. First time is 7.55 p.m.’ He sped the footage again. ‘Then a minute later, look, it comes back into shot in the other direction… Here it comes again; it goes past a third time at 7.58 p.m., goes out of shot past the pub…’
On the screen a blurred image of a young woman walked along the road, towards the pub, her dark hair catching in the breeze. Crane paused the image. She wore dark knee-high boots and a dark jacket.
‘And here we have Lacey Greene.’
It took Erika’s breath away for a moment to see Lacey alive and well. Here in the incident room they all knew what was going to happen, but the girl on screen was clueless what awaited her. Most probably she was excited at the prospect of a date. Crane pressed play and Lacey started to walk, but as she reached the pub, the top half of her was cut out of shot.
‘Are we sure that’s Lacey?’ asked Erika.
‘It’s the only young woman matching her height and appearance who passed the pub all evening,’ said Crane.
On screen Lacey’s legs had moved out of shot.
‘We can’t see the bloody entrance to the pub, so we don’t know if she went in?’ asked Erika.
‘She didn’t,’ said Jennifer. ‘I spoke to a lad who was working on the bar on Wednesday the fourth of January. He said it was very quiet, being just after New Year, and only a handful of regulars came in all night. Lacey wasn’t one of them. Another girl he was working with backs this up.’
‘So she vanishes out of shot, just past or by the pub, at 7.59 p.m.,’ said Erika. ‘What about that car? The bloody footage is blurry as hell, and it’s black and white. Can we get a number plate?’
‘No. I’ve already asked the boys at Digital Forensics. They can enhance an image but it needs to be clear in the first place. All we’ll get is a mush of pixels. We also can’t tell what colour the car is,’ said Crane.
‘What about the model?’ Erika looked around the incident room.
‘It looks like a Fiat or a Renault,’ said John.
‘Or one of those Ford Kas, perhaps a Citro?n,’ added Crane.
‘We need to do better than that,’ snapped Erika. ‘How far along are you getting CCTV footage from the surrounding area to follow the car?’
‘We got this footage late last night,’ said Crane. ‘There’s no other CCTV cameras until you hit the area around Southgate tube; of course, I’ve requested and we’re keeping our eyes peeled.’