Ridley asked whether Laura had located Jessica Chi’s family yet.
‘Not yet, sir, no. Her flat just off the King’s Road gives us nothing useful. The modelling agency she was registered with had her next of kin down as her mum, but the phone number in China doesn’t exist. The college gave us a previous address for Jessica in the Netherlands, which we’re looking in to now. Both Avril and Jessica have only got sketchy backgrounds, sir. We’re moving as fast as the evidence will let us.’ Laura sounded like she was defending herself against an accusation of tardiness that Ridley hadn’t even made, but she felt it had been insinuated.
Ridley moved the briefing on. ‘We’ve been given a report from Josh Logan on the pilot who works out of Farnham. He’s one of several under observation, but he’s the most potentially relevant to us due to geography. This file is for information only, he’s not to be approached. If he crops up as pertinent to our side of the investigation, tell me before you do anything. Archie Calder-Blythe is an ex-British Airways pilot. No criminal record. He used to work privately for a music producer out in Henley, ferrying his wife and two kids back and forth to the South of France. Archie was loaned out to various friends and family over the years, and we’ve got details of all his known journeys — short jaunts to Eastern Europe mainly. Also Belgium and the Netherlands. Morgan will filter information on him through to us, as it comes in from Josh’s end.’
Ridley put his hands on his hips and, although he tried to hide it, inhaled sharply. Laura gave a slight shake of her head as it was clear to her that Ridley was fighting off a sudden wave of nausea. She thought it served him right for boozing on a worknight. He exhaled, relaxed his shoulders and brought the briefing to an abrupt end.
Mal and Mike sat silently listening to everything Jack had to relay about Avril Jenkins, from his meetings with her and from the personal documents he’d found in the filing cabinet in her cellar. The only thing he didn’t tell them was that he’d found the red notebook: he still wanted to take a little more time to get to grips with its contents first. Mal and Mike were giving him their undivided attention, whereas Steve never looked up from his iPad. Once Jack had finished speaking, Mal flicked off the tape recorder, smiled and thanked him for his time.
‘Steve and Mike are going to leave us now, and I’m going to talk you through some footage from the hidden cameras in Avril’s home. You OK for time?’ Jack said that he was, then, whilst Steve was still in the room, clarified that he’d be able to take a copy of whatever he was about to watch. Steve confirmed that Mal would sort all of that out, then he and Mike left. Mal stood up. ‘Come with me, Jack. We’ll get a refill on the coffee, then head to a viewing room.’
Back in the main squad room, Mal grabbed a laptop from his desk and handed it to Jack. He then went to make two coffees just as Anik finally noticed that Jack was there. ‘Hey, Jack, this is Moley. He’s a genius. I don’t just mean he’s a smart guy, I mean he’s an actual genius.’
Moley let out a short and rather gormless-sounding laugh. He sat at least six inches out from his desk due to the length of his arms and legs, while next to him, Anik bounced around on his seat like an excited child. Jack felt a smile spread across his face: he didn’t like Anik, but he liked that Anik was finally excited about the job in front of him. He normally spent his days looking into space, waiting for inspiration. But here he was with Moley, the tallest kid in the world, riveted by his ability to manipulate any technology and get it to reveal all of its secrets.
Jack heard a ‘ready?’ from over his shoulder. He told Anik to keep up the good work, then headed off towards the private viewing room with Mal.
‘So...’ Mal started, ‘Moley went over the hidden CCTV system inside the Jenkins home. He knows it’s not being monitored live from outside the property, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be logged into from a remote hub or even turned on and off. He’s put all the cameras on a loop now, so if anyone does turn it on and log in, they’ll see an empty house. We know the system hasn’t been on since the fire.’
‘Really?’ Jack questioned the probability of this. ‘If I’d just murdered one person and then set fire to a second inside a cannabis farm, I’d want to watch the house to see what we did when we turned up.’ Mal speculated that perhaps the gang had bigger things on their minds. ‘This case, Mal,’ Jack continued. ‘Should me and you keep in touch? Your boss seems to have a lot distracting him and, to be honest, so does mine right now. I’d hate for any key information to get lost.’
Mal grinned. ‘Subtle as ever, eh, Jack. We can talk whenever you like, for sure. And no one else needs to know. As my grandfather would say, Nie wywołuj wilka z lasu.’
‘Oh, I’ve been waiting for some impromptu Polish wisdom! Go on then. What does it mean?’
‘It means, Don’t call the wolf from the forest.’
‘Ah. Don’t invite trouble, right?’
‘You are my brother from another mother, Jack Warr. You sure you’re not Polish? You’re too smart to be English.’
This friendship didn’t go back far, but it was strong. Jack and Mal had met on a self-defence refresher course and spent seven days being thrown about on blue rubber mats whilst learning how to take a knife or a gun off an attacker. During lessons, they’d often paired up as they were roughly the same height and build. And during lunch breaks, they’d talked.
Mal stopped halfway down the corridor, opened the nearest door and slid the sign from VACANT to OCCUPIED. ‘What was I saying, Jack, before you changed the subject to wolves?’ Jack reminded Mal that he said the cameras have now been put on a loop. ‘Yeah, that’s right. So, if anyone from the outside turns the system on, they see a recording of no activity. Today, the house will be handed from your uniformed officers to our undercover officers. If the gang sees the house empty on their cameras, they could decide to come back. But you want to hear the exciting part? We’re not watching the loop. We’re watching live.’
The viewing room was small with two bare white walls, one wall of closed window blinds and one wall of windows facing the corridor they’d just walked down. Mal set the two coffees down on a low table in front of two small sofas positioned side by side. Then he flicked on the strip lights and closed the blinds on the corridor windows. Jack sat on one of sofas and opened the laptop. As he looked at the locked log-in page waiting for its password, Jack sipped his coffee and wondered what horrors he was about to be shown.
Mal sat down next to Jack, took the laptop from his knee and placed it on the low table. Jack listened to Mal tapping the keys before leaning back to reveal a screen filled with three videos ready to play. Each video was labelled with the name of the room it was taken from.
‘What we’ve got, Jack, is a recording from the night Avril died. But we’ve only got the kitchen. No other cameras were recording. It’s like this throughout. Some cameras record, some don’t. And none record all the time. There’s plenty for us to play with — hundreds of hours, in fact — but there are huge gaps. And, before you ask, there’s no footage of your mystery man, Border, breaking in and stealing random stuff. But Edgar’s ploughing through it and we’ll show you anything we do find that relates to your murder investigation. The main problem we have to sort out is the timeframe. There is no timeline or date, so again Edgar will be attempting to put what we’ve got in some kind of order, so we can only presume that this was on the day of the murder.’