She pushed herself up from the ground. “That’s as far as I can take things for you I’m afraid. I’ll put in a call to check how long the forensic anthropologist will be before he can get here. It’s a colleague of mine so I can speed things up for you. He’ll collect and examine the bones and tell you how long the body has been buried here and hopefully help identify her for you.”
As the Professor edged away from the site, Hunter saw over her shoulder that the forensic recovery team had just arrived and were taking out the Ground Penetrating Radar, which would determine if there were even more bodies buried in the vicinity.
* * * * *
Josh: Hi Kirsty.
Kirsty: Hi Josh, howa yoo?
Josh: yeah im gud thanx.
Kirsty: wot u doin?
Josh: listenin to sum artic monkeys, jus chillin.
Kirsty: that’s cool.
He had been trawling the social network sites on the Internet for weeks, tracking the profiles of a number of people, picking up the language and learning how to develop a character from a mixture of the various sites. It had been time consuming but all too easy.
He’d made copious notes at first in his attempt to create a believable character with substance. To step inside the head of a typical seventeen year old boy he had searched the music sites for hours on end, selecting the most popular bands and solo artists, and then he had followed up with a little research about each one to enable him to convince his audience. He had also done ‘dummy runs’ to ‘test drive’ Josh, developing convincingly his use of the teenage text language on the websites. It had been a worthwhile exercise and he had hooked several unsuspecting teenage girls in the three weeks he had been socialising across the networks. One thirteen year old had even exposed her cute little breasts to him, which he had captured on his web-cam.
By the time he had ‘hooked up’ on Kirsty’s site he was an accomplished player. She had been wary at first and tested him on several occasions, but his research had stood him in good stead and within a week he knew that she firmly believed she was conversing with seventeen year old ‘Josh’.
Josh: saw u at skwl the othr day. u lukd sad.
Kirsty: wot wer u doin nr my skwl.
Josh: jus passin lukin 4 a pretty face.
Kirsty: u r makin me blush. No serious wot wer u doin nr my skwl.
Josh: jus passin. Goin 2 the park for a game of footie. Why wer u sad.
Kirsty: I wantd 2 stay over at my friends wiv sum mates cos of skool brake up but mum wudnt let me cos of wat append to Rebecca. We ad a row she freakd out.
Josh: do u want me 2 cheer u up?
Kirsty: wat do u mean?
Josh: u r cute u kno. Do u want to meet up.
Kirsty: r u askin me out?
Josh: Of cors.
Kirsty: but I hardli kno u.
Josh: u do wev talkd for ages on this chat room. Uv seen my foto. Don’t u like me.
Selecting the right photograph and then altering it in his Adobe Photoshop programme had been another worthwhile project. He was quite proud of how physically good-looking he had made his character.
Kirsty: u luk nice. u sound nice.
Josh: well then lets meet.
Kirsty: ok but I can’t 4 a few days. ive been grounded. in fact im supposed 2 b doin mi bedroom now instead of chattin wiv u. mum wil freak again if she catchs me.
Josh: wen can u get out then?
Kirsty: next satrday evenin. mums out wiv dad wiv frends. Wot about the park?
Josh: souns gud. c u then pretty face.
As he exited the chat room site he leaned back on his swivel chair, clasped his hands behind his head and grinned widely.
Another lamb to the slaughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DAY TWENTY-FOUR: 30th July.
The ringing of Grace Marshall’s desk phone disturbed the unusual concentrated silence in the MIT office. She answered it without looking up from her paperwork, clamping the handset between her neck and shoulder. But the nature of the call changed her demeanour. She lifted her eyes as she listened intently to the voice on the other end of the line. Picking up a pen she scribbled notes in her own form of shorthand, only answering occasionally with a one word clipped response. Two minutes later she set down the receiver.
Solemn faced, her eyes swept across four desks that had been recently fixed together into a square format.
The two opposite were occupied. Hunter and Barry Newstead were picking through the piles of documents spread across their surfaces.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” she said.
Hunter looked up from his desk and pushed aside notes he had been making on the recent body find. For the last half hour he had been trying his best to make sense of it all. True he had worked on body count murders before, but it had been where members of the same family had been killed in one single event. He had never worked on multiple victim deaths, which were now being dubbed as the actions of a serial killer. His head felt woolly. A mixture of long hours of intense work, and a lack of sleep, from his lying awake night after night, mulling over the recent events, were taking their toll.
“Hit me with the good news first,” Hunter responded, placing an already well-chewed pen back into one corner of his mouth.
Barry Newstead dog-eared the page he had been perusing and peered over his reading spectacles at Grace. It was his first day with the Case Team, joining as a civilian investigator and he had been given the job of sending the profiles of the murdered girls, and the descriptions of how they had met their deaths, to Headquarters Public Protection Unit. In return they had faxed him the backgrounds and histories of the districts most violent and dangerous sex offenders. He had already said to Hunter ‘that he thought nothing could surprise him anymore, that was until he had ploughed through this lot’ and he had confessed ‘he was astonished at just how many paedophiles there were living in his area.’
“That was the forensics lab,” continued Grace. “They have found some traces on that grey cardigan belonging to Carol Siddons. But the bad news is none of it is human DNA. All they have found are lots of dog hairs, and some black woollen fibres which appear to have come from a duffel coat of some type.”
“Dog hairs?” interjected Barry. “Carol never had a dog, and neither Susan.”
“Sure about that Barry?” enquired Hunter, eyebrows raised, teeth clenching harder on the end of his pen.
“I’m positive. I can give Sue a quick ring, but all the time I was investigating Carol’s disappearance there was never any dog around. And I would have definitely known because I hate the bloody things, I’ve been bitten three times in my career, one of those times by a bloody police dog would you believe.”
Grace let out a chuckle, then clamped her lips firmly together, when she saw Barry’s not too impressed reaction.
“And she was living at a children’s home, where pets were not allowed. So more than likely those dog hairs will have come from her killer.” Barry paused, his eyes lighting up. “Just a minute,” he continued, “Steve Paynton used to have a couple of dogs; Staffordshire bull terriers if my memory serves me right. He used to keep them in the old outhouse at the bottom of his mum and dad’s garden. Rumours were that he trained them for fighting. That was a good few years’ back, they’ll more than likely be dead now. Knowing him though, they’ll probably be buried on his dad’s allotment, or somewhere like that. Can they tell the breed of dog if we find them?”