She opted for the emergency escape hatch in the way of humour. ‘It’s why they pay me such an enormous salary, Trisha.’
A smile, like a tiny fluttering bird, flickered at the edges of Trisha’s mouth and the moment faded. Anna could have used the opportunity, if she’d had any sense, to ask Trisha’s opinion of Woakes. An off-the-record chat that would not have gone any further, but Khosa chose that moment to bring over a report.
‘I found the FLO who looked after Rosie Dawson’s family. She’s retired, ma’am. At the time of the abduction, Rosie’s mother and father were together and there was a sister. The father worked in a local engineering works. There was an uncle who was close but he was thirty miles away that afternoon with a dozen witnesses.’
‘We’ll need a new FLO,’ Anna said.
Any involvement with the family of a victim required the support of a family liaison officer. Someone who provided support when the harsh and difficult questions had been answered and the detectives had all gone. And sometimes, the families would open up and reveal information to the FLO away from the formal interviews. Information which might prove vital.
‘I’ll sort it, ma’am,’ Khosa replied and hesitated.
‘What is it, Ryia?’
‘I know Sergeant Woakes didn’t want us to involve the family yet, but if I ask for a new FLO…’
‘Don’t worry about upsetting Sergeant Woakes. This is my call. Just do it, Ryia.’
Khosa nodded and turned away, but it left Anna with more of the feeling that Woakes’ influence was having a negative effect on her team. A feeling she did not like.
Anna turned back to Trisha but the analyst was absorbed by her screen as usual and the moment evaporated. She went back to her office and busied herself with referring back to Shaw’s interview and making notes.
She’d need to brief Rainsford and liaise with Sussex police, chase up whatever they found on Krastev and relay it all to North Wales police. If they got a positive ID for Krastev it might mean they’d want to charge Shaw. Anna pondered how she felt about that. He was already serving an indefinite term. The CPS might not consider it in the public interest given the costs. It could mean Shaw getting away with another murder.
Did it bother her? She didn’t think it would bother Shaw. She found herself hoping the CPS might not consider it trial-worthy. Perhaps if they got a formal confession they would avoid trial… It was a nice thought, but even as it occurred to her, the hairs on her arms all stood to attention.
Shaw, for some bizarre reason, had made it clear how he would only talk to Anna about any and all of his crimes. Listening to the details of what he’d done to Krastev was a thought that did not fill her with joyful anticipation. Not if the autopsy report on his injuries was anything to go by.
And she didn’t want to be used by Shaw either. But by the same token, what choice did she have? What had happened to his daughter was horrific, but the murders he’d committed in her name were brutal. She thought about how she’d explained her visit to Trisha. The snake analogy.
She felt Shaw’s coils tightening around her.
Five o’clock came and went with no sign of Woakes. She phoned him. It went straight to his voicemail again.
‘What are you up to, Dave?’ she muttered, then grabbed her bag and went home.
Thirteen
Inside the shed he used as a workshop, he had a laptop. One that he did not use for work. He fired it up now, having already configured his browser for a proxy server through TOR, The Onion Router, the free software beloved by everyone who believed in online privacy. Whenever he logged on he’d be using an IP address that wasn’t his. He’d tried explaining this to someone at work once. The importance of anonymity online so that people didn’t know your business. The bloke made a token effort to try and understand, but he knew he couldn’t care less. So long as he could WhatsApp his fishing mates and stick a bet on the footie he was happy.
It didn’t matter anyway. Other people didn’t need to know. In fact, the less other people knew the better. He opened his Chrome browser. From a drawer, he took a small, black plastic oblong and a USB cable. He connected it up to the laptop and opened the SafePocket Chrome app, punched in his PIN and opened his cryptocurrency vault. He had three bitcoins, some Ethereum and Dash. Not enough, but their performance over the last year had been gratifying. He was now convinced, after gambling a few hundred pounds over the last couple of years, investing in this alternative to cash and seeing his profits soar, that this was the way forward.
To the average person, this was all nonsense. Yet the beauty of cryptocurrency was the way it all happened – without regulation and supervision and with no central authority controlling the transactions. A safe and invisible way to move money.
But what he also knew, what he cared about most, was that since cryptocurrency had a value, you could send any amount of money, in cyber form, to anyone in the world at any time as easily as sending an email and without being tracked, without the need for a middle man. For the sort of transactions that interested him, cryptocurrency became a game changer.
On the wall behind him, pinned to a wooden rail, hung a collection of odd and arcane pieces of ‘art’. The most recent result of his other preoccupation. Too slow for sport, while his contemporaries were all off playing football or rugby, his mother enrolled him in the church choir. There he’d learned how to sing under the tutelage of the verger, a red-faced frotteur who took every opportunity to be as hands-on as possible. He spent a lot of time helping the younger boys, did the verger.
But amongst his more innocent hobbies was grave rubbing. Using nothing but soap and water, the verger taught him how to wash down the old gravestones, stick butcher paper on their surfaces and use a charcoal block to bring out the carvings. He’d found it instantly calming and fascinating. Especially when some of the younger boys were crying, he would lose himself and try not to think about what was going on a few feet away in the vestry. The younger boys never complained. He had the feeling the verger had coerced them in some way, making them the guilty parties. At least that’s what emerged when the authorities had finally investigated. Mercifully, the verger was not attracted to the bigger children, and he’d been big for his age. As a result, the verger left him to his own devices.