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“What?”
Charlie turns to her, a shocked expression on his face. “The location,” he starts. “It comes back to here.”
“What do you mean?”
“It comes back to the nick. This message was sent from within the walls of this police station.”
CHAPTER
60
CARA WALKS BACK to the incident room, her head spinning. The room is busy, detectives working behind their desks, some chatting, others silent. There’s Deakin, head down, reviewing reports, Griffin with one of the DCs. She looks at them all and she wonders: Is it you?
She sits down at her computer and clicks on the group mailbox. There are a few messages in there, and she scrolls down, looking for the email from the digital team. She can’t see it, so she runs a search through all the folders. Still nothing.
Has someone deleted it, wanting to hide the evidence of what they’d done? Has the killer realized he’d made a mistake?
Deakin comes over and she quickly clicks away.
“Listen, we had a thought, about the letter,” he says, and she looks up at him. “Are you okay?” he adds. “You look pale?”
“I’m fine,” she mutters. But she needs to tell someone. “Sit down,” she whispers, and he does, his face puzzled. “I’ve just been with the digital lab. They said there was spyware on Libby’s computer.”
“Someone was watching her?” Deakin says, and she nods.
“But that’s not all. They said that one of the messages on the man’s profile on Tinder was sent from here.”
“Here?” Deakin looks up, glancing around. “You mean, from the incident room?”
“Not necessarily. From the police station.”
“What? So our guy is a cop?”
Cara sees Deakin’s expression. It’s astonishment, disbelief. The same feelings she knows she has on her own face.
“Could be. Like Toby said. Or a civilian—someone from Control or admin. Or any number of people working out of this building.”
“But they couldn’t narrow it down any more than that?”
“No. They just needed to be here when they sent that message. And this stays between us, right?” Deakin nods quickly. She sighs. “What were you going to ask me?”
“Oh. So we want to get someone to have a closer look at the paper the note is written on. There are no fingerprints, but I read that specialized machines can detect if there are tiny indentations we can’t see with the naked eye. If this page came from a notebook, we might be able to make out things he had written down before.”
Cara nods. “ESDA. Electrostatic detection, yes. They can find secondary impressions on the paper,” she adds, annoyed she hadn’t thought of it herself.
“But it’s expensive. We need you to ask Marsh for the budget.”
“No problem, okay,” Cara replies. He’ll have to say yes after yesterday’s conversation, surely. “How’s the face?” Deakin’s hand goes up to the bruise. She reaches over and he allows her to gently push the corner of one of the bits of tape back down with the tip of her finger. He cringes slightly. “Does it hurt?”
“Not really. Just worried it’s going to damage my rugged good looks,” he adds with a lopsided smile.
“Will you put in a formal complaint?”
Noah sighs. “I can’t be bothered, Cara. I probably deserved it. And besides, he seems to be looking worse than me.”
Cara looks across the office to where Griffin is sitting. He’s straight in his seat, his face tense. They all look shit right now, but Noah’s right: he’s not well.
“He seems ill,” Deakin adds. “I think he needs to go home.”
