Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) (20 page)

Audri sobbed.

What had she done wrong? All those times with Derek had given no indication of this. For the first time she questioned her liberal, free-as-a-bird, risk-seeking attitude to life. She thought forlornly of Mamma crying on the pier as she’d left on the ferry towards Denmark. Audri realised she wanted to go home. She would stop running away. Stop punishing her. Live a normal life. Be with her sisters. Finish school. Meet boys her own age. Get a real job. Grow up.

Most of all she wanted to say sorry. 

A boot came rushing towards her face. It was as if she was the rugby ball lined up for a penalty. She knew then that no apology would ever reach her Mamma.

The last thing she heard, before blessed unconsciousness took hold, was Derek’s voice quietly saying, “Sshhh, Audri.”

TUESDAY

CHAPTER 7

The microwave binged. Jenny removed the bowl of porridge and stirred in a generous helping of honey. She felt she’d earned it, having pushed herself hard this morning during her regular morning jog around Marble Hill Park, which formed the grounds of the nearby Georgian villa, now a tourist attraction. She’d vowed years ago to visit the grand eighteenth-century house but had somehow never found the time. According to the leaflet pinned to the corkboard in her kitchen it had been built by King George II, when he had been the Prince of Wales, for his mistress. 

She’d enjoyed the route through the park, especially the riverside stretch with glimpses through the ash trees of boats moored peacefully on dark water and parkland on the opposite bank of the Thames. With so much nature around her, she always found it hard to imagine she was running within the heart of the country’s capital. The rain had finally eased off during the night, which had made this morning’s run more pleasant than of late, but she had still returned soaked through from a combination of mist and dew, persistent puddles and a well worked up sweat.

The radio on the breakfast bar was tuned to Capital Radio. The DJ handed over to the newsroom for the 7:30 a.m. bulletin. As Jenny ate her sweetened oatmeal, she heard talk of the failing economy and the Prime Minister’s visit to India. As she spooned in the final mouthful, she heard reference to her case. 

Police have launched a murder enquiry after finding the body of Anna Parker, a twenty-year-old music student, in an eighteenth floor meeting room of an office building in Paddington. Speaking now is Detective Chief Inspector Da Silva of the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command… 

The voice changed to a recording of her boss. 

We have carried out initial enquiries and are in the process of forensically examining the scene. There have been no arrests at this stage and enquiries continue. We are keeping an open mind as to the motive. Next of kin have been informed.
 

The newsreader’s grave voice returned.

An incident room has been set up at Holborn Police Station and anyone with information is asked to call in.
They gave out the phone number and switched topics.
And now on to the sport . . .

Jenny zoned out of the radio and picked up her notepad. It was covered in her scrawl and had a series of tasks she needed to do this morning. She’d written the list in the middle of the night, after waking up from a restless sleep. Her dreams had been full of images of Anna Parker’s lifeless body, pools of blood, Disney princesses and being stuck in a lift. All to the accompaniment of frenzied cello music. When the lift in her dream had started to free fall she’d sat bolt upright, completely awake.

She knew from experience that if she just laid her head straight back down sleep would escape her. This type of lucid dreaming was her brain’s subconscious attempt to make sense of the day’s events and organise outstanding issues on the case. Over the years, she’d learned to embrace it. She turned the light on, grabbed the pen and notepad she kept on the bedside table and wrote down all of the actions she could think of relating to the case. It was her way of letting her brain know that it had done its work, everything was written down, delegated safely to paper. It would be there in the morning when she awoke.

She turned the light off and lay back down.

But half an hour later, sleep had remained elusive. She was still wound up from the case and needed to take her mind off it all. 

She had just the answer.

A few minutes later, wrapped in her thick, comfy dressing gown, Jenny lay sideways in her living room armchair, her legs draped over the arm. She wore a headset with a protruding microphone. A wire connected it to an Xbox One controller cradled in her hands, her thumbs and fingers a blur of activity, as she controlled what she saw on the television in front of her.

“Hank, he’s behind that building,” she said into the headset. “I’ll draw his fire and then you come up behind him. Ready . . .”

In the headset, she heard an American accent in reply. “Roger that.”

On the screen, she jumped out from behind a wall and ran across the warzone. Zombies suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but she took them out with three well-aimed shots right between their eyes. She heard bullets ricochet behind her as she jumped for safety through a broken window. 

“Nice work, Jen,” said the voice. “It worked. I got him.”

“Brilliant,” she replied. “Okay, Jackal, where are you?”

“I’ve got your six,” said a female voice, also American. “Turn around and you’ll see me.”

“Oh right, there you are. Okay, let’s clear this building. Last time I fought against Arctic Dragons, one of their team holed out at the top of this building. He stayed silent for ages and then took me out in the open with his sniper rifle. I reckon he’s trying the same trick again.”

“Okay, let’s go for it. Cover me.”

Four years prior, in a rare fit of familial support during some leave from work, Jenny had babysat her twelve-year old nephew, Damien. She had not been able to get much more than the odd grunt out of him, as he was engrossed in playing a violent war game on his games console. In an effort to connect with him, she asked if she could have a go. He laughed patronisingly but obliged her. He showed her how to use the controller to move around and shoot everything that moved. The graphics were amazing and she found herself drawn in completely. At the end of the evening, Damien even commented, minus the condescending tone, “Not bad for a girl.” It had become a new foundation for their relationship.

That weekend, she borrowed Damien from April, her sister. Together they went shopping for her own Xbox. Back at her flat, Damien set it all up for her and showed her how to use it. A month later, she had completed
Call of Duty
’s single player campaign on the hardest level. Playing against the computer turned out to be straightforward as the enemy soldier’s movements were predictable. She offered to babysit her nephew more frequently and together they played split-screen mode, sometimes as a team against the computer and occasionally heads-up against each other. Around that time, Damien explained about online play, where you could compete against other gamers from all over the world in real time, either one-against-all or in teams of four. That weekend, she borrowed her nephew again and he helped her order a broadband connection for her flat. When it was installed he’d connected the Xbox to it and set up her own online username. Two months later, Jenny won her first victory over Damien in head-to-head combat, he at his home in Kent and she in her flat in Richmond, both continuously taunting each other via their microphone headsets. Within six months, Jenny had risen above Damien in the worldwide rankings, much to his embarrassment. 

Nowadays, Jenny was an ardent online gamer, a hobby she kept entirely secret from all her friends and especially her colleagues on the force. Only April and Damien knew. Well, plus a few thousand online gamers, but they only knew her as Jennifer3000. Whenever a visitor pointed at the Xbox sitting under her television, she explained that she’d bought it for her nephew for when he came round to stay. Damien now thought Jenny was, “Well cool!” –something her straight-laced sister found highly amusing. 

She had upgraded each time the makers released a new version of
Call of Duty
, or
COD
as gamers referred to it. She had also become competent on other first person shooters such as
Halo
and
Far Cry
. She knew a thirty-two-year-old single female police detective like herself didn’t fit the typical demographic, but she didn’t care. She enjoyed the escapism and the connectedness of being part of a group, even if most of the group’s members were spotty teenage boys or grown-up social incompetents.

Jenny wondered if perhaps it was
she
who was the social incompetent. It wasn’t like she lived a normal life. The few friends she had stayed in touch with from her distant schooldays were all starting to marry and have kids in their two-up, two-downs. Even most of the female officers in the force managed to hold down long-term relationships, although mostly with other coppers. After being the focus of station gossip during one three-month relationship with her immediate superior some years ago, back when she was in uniform, Jenny had vowed never to date another colleague again. This rule, however, turned out to be a real problem. It was hard to meet decent men in her line of work. The few civilians she had risked dating seemed to be far more interested in the bragging rights going out with a policewoman gave them in front of their mates. One, a good looking advertising executive introduced to her by her sister, had, after a month of romantic meals and nights out, finally showed his true colours by asking her, in the middle of ripping each other’s clothes off, to fish out her uniform and handcuffs. Instead, she applied her police training and viciously bent his arms up behind his back and launched him, just in his underwear, out the front door, down the stone steps and onto his arse in a huge puddle that had conveniently formed by the kerb. The rest of his clothes landed next to him a couple of minutes later. 

Jenny had spent another hour playing
COD
before she caught herself yawning. She’d finished the game, pleased at the win, logged off and went back to bed. This time, when her head hit the pillow, she had drifted off into an uninterrupted, dreamless sleep.

The sport news on the radio gave way to music. She didn’t recognise the song. Jenny reviewed the list of actions in her notebook and picked up her phone. She dialled Alan Coombs, who answered immediately. He was already at Holborn.

“Do you ever sleep?” she asked. 

“When you’re my age, sleep’s less important. Anyway, I only live round the corner.”

Alan's wife had died from cancer two years ago. Since then, he had allowed the job to fill the void in his home life. He often came in on weekends, without claiming overtime, to process the never-ending backlog of paperwork. And he was always the first into the station each day, active case or not. Occasionally, she worried he would burn himself out, but he always remained upbeat and cheerful. 

After a few minutes of catching up, she placed her finger under the first point on her notepad and asked, “Where have we got to on the CCTV footage?”

“Fiona went up to Flexbase HQ in Docklands yesterday. She got there fairly late, so they said they’d email the video files to her this morning. They may already be in her inbox.”

“Did she see what was on them?”

“Don’t think so. They just asked for the timeframe and told her they’d send it over.”

“Hmmm, sounds strange.”

“It’s some big computer system that centrally manages the CCTV for all their offices around the UK. It’s not like the good old days where you’d have a VHS video recorder out the back of a shop.”

“Okay.” Jenny moved her finger down to the second point. “What about the other flatmates?”

“Yeah, I finally got hold of them yesterday evening. They’re all on study leave since last week. Guess where?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but she already knew from her conversation with Kim last night. “Egypt, on holiday. They’re flying back in tomorrow, but their alibi looks solid. I’ll check them out anyway.”

He didn’t need to add the last part. Jenny knew Alan Coombs followed up every lead diligently. 

“How’d they take it?” Jenny recalled what Kim had said about the dynamics in their house.

“They seemed upset. Shocked. They were on speakerphone their end. One of them was uncontrollable. Broke down crying. It was a difficult call.”

“I bet. Anything else, Al?”

“Just one thing. I talked to Jake Symmonds, the lecturer who supposedly made the recommendation to the Royal Opera House.”

“And?”

“He claims he did no such thing.”

“Well, I think we knew that anyway.”

“Yeah. He said there is a partnership between the college and the ROH, but it’s more about their professionals coming in to teach at the college.”

She thought out loud. “The killer must have known that, to make it more believable to Anna on the email . . .”

“I agree. I’m going up to the Royal Opera House later. Just to check things out. You never know.”

“Good thinking. What about the college itself?”

“I’m heading there after.”

“Great. Okay, I’m just about to jump in the car. Should be at Holborn by about 8:30. I want to look through the CCTV footage as a priority.”

“Right. See you then.”

Jenny washed up her bowl, turned off the radio, and looked around for her maroon suit jacket. She grabbed her car keys and black leather handbag and exited the flat. 

By the time she was driving over Twickenham Bridge, the car’s heating system had begun to take the edge off the cold. Her phone rang. It was a central London number, but not one she recognised. She accepted the call and spoke into the hands-free system.

“DI Price.” 

“Ah, DI Price, it’s Clive Evans here.”

Jenny racked her brains to place the name.

He continued, “The building manager from Flexbase in Paddington.”