“I know and I’m sorry, ma’am,” replied the young officer, blushing. “But I was working on the techno angle with the boys... and I think I might have found something.”
The team settled back down, expectant.
“We were trying to see if we could wriggle a way to the IP addresses of the other contributors on Bitchfest. See if we could locate any of the other men who’d had contact with Angel. We weren’t having much joy but, looking over the posts, I noticed something. Certain recurring phrases and spellings.”
He had Helen’s interest now. She had an inkling where this was going, and if she was right, it changed everything.
“There were several men who used the forum a lot—anonymous contributors like ‘PussyKing,’ ‘fillyerboots,’ ‘Blade,’ ‘BlackArrow,’ who blogged their sexual encounters and encouraged other posters like Simon Booker, Alan Matthews and Christopher Reid to seek out Angel. They told them where they could find her and what she would do for them. I was rereading their posts while the techie boys were doing their thing and I noticed that on more than one occasion ‘PussyKing’ had used the phrase ‘splitting that bitch.’ And I remembered that ‘Blade’ had used that phrase too. I noticed also that they both hyphenated ‘blow-job,’ as did ‘fillyerboots.’ Also, all three of them constantly misspelled the word ‘Ecstasy’ as ‘Ecstacy.’ So I pulled up all their posts and... the spellings, the punctuation, the typos are identical.”
“So all this time we’ve been hunting down these three guys when actually—”
“They are all the same person,” DC Fortune interjected.
“They are all Angel.”
Even as she said it, Helen’s head spun.
“She’s been guiding her victims to her.”
The team looked stunned. It was clear now why they had been unable to trace Angel’s punters—because they didn’t exist. How could they have got it so badly wrong?
“Right. We need to change tack immediately,” Helen continued, rallying her shell-shocked troops. “We can assume the misspellings on the courier boxes were a deliberate attempt to make the killer appear ill-educated, even dyslexic. In fact she is educated and sophisticated. Her vocabulary is extensive, she is adept at using and manipulating IT and she has a phenomenally ordered brain, capable of planning and executing these murders with minimal risk to herself. She is not stupid. She is cunning, intelligent and bold.”
The team was hanging on her every word as their first detailed image of their killer took shape before them.
“She is a heavy drinker and drug user and brought a baby to term recently. She probably has a history of prostitution, yet has never been arrested—her DNA is not in the national database. So she may be relatively new to the scene. She is presumably heavily bruised and perhaps injured following her latest attack. We have a lot to work with—we have the e-fit—but we have to be smart. Let’s target the upper end of the market first—escorts, students—and think about the geography of these attacks. I’ll bet she’s hiding out somewhere in the central or northern parts of the city, so let’s go find her.”
The team hurried over to grab their e-fits, suddenly fired with a determination to bring this investigation to a close. The only one who didn’t race over straightaway was Charlie. And Helen wanted to know why.
98
Charlie was heading away from the station fast—but not fast enough. Helen caught up with her before she made it across the road. She got straight to the point.
“What’s going on, Charlie?”
“Sorry?”
“Normally you’d be right on this, but something’s the matter.”
Charlie looked at her boss. There was no point in lying to her; they were beyond that.
“It’s Steve. He wants me to leave the force.”
“I see,” Helen replied. She wasn’t surprised. “I’m sorry if I’ve made things worse for you. I could have handled Steve better.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s been coming. Ever since...”
She didn’t need to say it out loud.
“I understand. We need you. You know we need you, but ultimately you have to do what’s right for you. I won’t stand in your way and I’ll back you whatever you decide, okay?”
Helen put a comforting hand on Charlie’s arm.
“Thank you.”
“And if you need to talk...”
“Sure.”
