She and Devon had started talking in more detail about making their family bigger. They both knew that they wanted children, but they weren’t yet sure they wanted one of their own. They’d talked about fostering, adoption or having a biological child. Each conversation brought them to the same place and the single most important question. Were they at the right point in their lives to do it?
Both of them had full-time jobs they loved and although both of them were close to hitting ‘the big 30’, the tick-tock of the biological clock was not yet deafening; however, Stacey knew it was growing louder. Any cases that involved children hit differently now that she’d realised that, at some stage, she wanted to be a mother.
And the murdered mother in their latest case didn’t appear to have done anything wrong.
Her first job had been to check out Daniel Reynolds, Ashley’s husband. He had no criminal record and apart from two parking tickets and a speeding fine didn’t appear to have crossed anyone’s radar. He wasn’t particularly present on social media and had worked for the same architect firm for almost five years. Stacey knew that his clean record wasn’t enough to rule him out at this stage, but so far she hadn’t found anything to support him being guilty.
Moving on, she’d been looking through Ashley’s phone for the hour since Mitch had dropped it off. One thing the couple seemed to have in common was that neither of them appeared to have many friends.
Ashley attended her weekly netball practice, and Daniel had a drink with colleagues every other Friday.
Was there a reason for keeping their family so insular, Stacey wondered, or was it just the way they’d chosen to live their life? The messages between them were loving, sometimes humorous, occasionally short, but all pretty normal.
After finding no evidence of current issues with Daniel, she’d started with Ashley’s call log. Scrolling back almost twelve months, there were no unaccounted-for numbers in or out. Every single call was attached to a contact in her list. It looked like Ashley added a new contact for everyone she spoke with immediately. Even the gas inspector was saved.
After Dan, the next person she called most often was Ron Pike who, after checking text messages, she had identified as Ashley’s boss. Then there was Nicola Netball, which kind of spoke for itself, and the next few numbers were for local takeaways and the hairdresser.
Stacey had scrolled back to Christmas Day, normally an easy way to identify family members. Ashley had made one call to ‘Warren’ and the call had lasted less than two minutes.
No other calls had been made or received that day indicating Warren, her brother, was her only family member. They hadn’t called or texted each other since. The duration of the conversation indicated it was perfunctory, without any real depth or detail.
Ashley’s WhatsApp contained four message groups. A chat with her husband, which consisted of lots of ‘grab this on your way home’, always with love hearts and kisses. A message stream with four colleagues and her boss, one with the netball team and one with the parents of the children in Ava’s class at school.
Stacey had scrolled back as far as the app would allow in all the groups and there wasn’t a cross word with anyone. She wasn’t an over-contributor, and she wasn’t an under-contributor. She posted when she had something to say. Everything about the woman was just so normal. Stacey could find nothing offensive in her conduct at all – quite the opposite.
Within the netball chat, one of the other players had called off practice sick, and Ashley had been the first to ask if she needed anything. In the work chat, a colleague had messaged to say her car wouldn’t start. Ashley was the first to offer a ride into the office.
Her social media brought up nothing suspicious. She’d opened an account on Instagram, followed a few people and made the occasional post. There’d been nothing in almost three months. Her X account hadn’t been touched in over a year. She had no presence on TikTok or Snapchat, which left only Facebook.
Stacey knew that while it had once been the trailblazer of social media, good old Facebook was now known as the living room of the older folks. Although Ashley wasn’t old, she did share more of her life on that site: photos, short videos and occasional memes.
Stacey scrolled through the posts, looking for anything that stood out or for any difficult interactions, but none of her 291 friends appeared to be hostile, aggressive or angry. As she scrolled, she noticed there was nothing negative. Ashley didn’t share political posts or unpleasant content or anything that wasn’t light or amusing.
Stacey knew people who lived their entire existence on the platform, registering not only every meal and every location but every emotion throughout the day. It was draining. Ashley didn’t do that. Stacey was sure that she had experienced bad days, but she chose not to share her misery with the people she knew online.
Stacey couldn’t help warming to a woman who appeared to have her shit together and was just living and enjoying her life.
She switched into Messages and saw some familiar names. She clicked into each one and found ones making arrangements to meet up for lunch. A couple were ongoing streams with what looked like old school friends about nothing in particular. The kind of message that just fed a friendship and kept the connection alive.
She continued to scroll down until she saw a chat Ashley had had with someone called ‘Facebook user’. Stacey knew that was a default name if Facebook had removed the user or if the person had deleted their account.
She clicked in and read a string of messages starting three weeks earlier.
The unknown user started innocently enough. Just asking about the local netball club and if it was any good.
Ashley replied in the positive, and a conversation ensued until eventually Ashley revealed that the club was close enough to home that she walked back alone most times. All innocent enough, except for the fact Stacey couldn’t check where the message had come from.
When she read back over the messages with a more suspicious eye, she realised that Ashley had given the killer all the information they’d need.
Hardly a smoking gun, but Stacey made a note anyway and then clicked on message requests. Not everyone checked the area where Facebook put messages from people you weren’t connected with, to prevent people clicking on harmful links. She found requests from three different users. Two were spam but the third got her attention immediately. She opened a number of requests from the same user. Her eyes widened as she read some of them.
You fucking bitch.
Rot in hell, slag.
Fucking die, whore.
Watch your back, slut.
