please, don’t think I’m trying to tell you how to do your job, but I don’t think this is something that should wait until the report. You should inform DCI Winters. Now.’
Danika looked back at her hands and shut her eyes tight. After a long pause, she nodded.
The incident room was large, busy and noisy. Phones were ringing and people were rushing around. There was a flat-screen monitor on a podium, and an image of Nola Grant flickered across the LCD screen.
There were several workstations in the four corners of the room, divided up into areas for detective constables, sergeants and inspectors. In the centre was another workstation, lined with computers and with staff trawling through CCTV footage.
There were more pictures of Nola Grant on the boards along the main wall, together with ‘before’ shots that Rachel Larson had given Stefan the day before and shots from when Nola’s body was found. There was a list of known associates written beside the board and a pile of statements ready to be typed up, read and cross-referenced.
Claire wasted no time pulling everyone together for a briefing to give them the information they had so far from the post mortem and the details of the voicemail message left on Rachel Larson’s phone. After she’d finished, she opened the briefing up for contribution.
‘I want to start putting together a rough character profile on the killer,’ she said, her eyes sweeping the room. ‘I know profiles can hinder a case if we don’t think outside the box, but I think we need to start with some basics.
‘The killer is almost certainly a man. If the motive was sexual in nature, perhaps the killer has had a bad relationship with women all his life. Nola was a prostitute, so maybe a client asked for something she wasn’t willing to give.’
Detective Constable Gabriel Harper stepped in. ‘Do we think it could’ve been an accident and the killer panicked?’
Claire shook her head. ‘It wasn’t an accident. The effort was made to dump her body and weight her down. There’s an amount of foresight and planning.’
‘Textbook stuff then?’ said Matthews.
‘If it were a crime committed in the heat of the moment then the killer would most likely have left her where she fell, whether it be sexually orientated or otherwise,’ Claire said. ‘But this appears to be cold, calculated.’ She paused. ‘It’s significant that she was naked. She was a target.’
‘And that makes you restless?’ Stefan said.
Claire stared at him. ‘Everything about it makes me restless. Aren’t you?’
Stefan shook his head and placed his coffee on a table in front of him. ‘No. I think it may be a one-off. We’ve had prostitutes turn up dead before.’
‘But not like this… Dead in an alley, yes. Dead in some crack den, or dead at the hands of a pimp, yes, but not dumped in a lake. Not the way she was found.’
The room fell silent. Outside it was snowing again, white flakes hitting the window in the strong wind.
‘The warden at the parkland said the lake started to freeze on the first and was completely frozen over by the morning of the fifth. He’s going to provide us with the CCTV footage from his Portakabin,’ Claire said.
Matthews then jumped in, standing up to address the team. He scratched the back of his head as he read from a sheet of paper in his other hand.
‘Uniform has conducted a house-to-house in the area where Nola was believed to have been seen last and from the houses around the lake. DC Harper will be leading another round of interviews, with DC Roberts.’ He looked up at Claire, who was leaning up against a table opposite him, arms folded. She nodded for him to continue.
‘I’ve got more CCTV footage to start trawling through from the town centre and from the shops below Grant’s flat. The chippy and newsagent both have cameras inside and outside their premises, but I also found this an hour ago,’ he said.
He held up a grainy black-and-white 10x8 shot of part of the town centre. A date and time were stamped across the bottom and judging by the angle and neon sign, it was taken from a CCTV camera opposite a McDonald’s.
The last time Nola Grant was seen alive.
The street was virtually empty with only four people, grainy shadows almost, in the frame. There were more people in the McDonald’s itself, but all Claire could see at that angle was the bottom of their legs through the glass window.
There was a car parked outside but the number plate was obscured and the picture was of such bad quality, she couldn’t correctly identify the make and colour, or anything else.
‘What am I meant to be looking at, Matthews?’
He grinned. She’d studied the photo briefly and missed what had caught his eye instantly.
‘This guy here,’ he said. She followed his finger across the photograph and squinted. Matthews then circled a few copies amongst the team. They stared at the photograph.
Leaning up against the wall of the McDonald’s, which led down a side alley, was a black smudge, which, after closer inspection, they all recognised as a man.
‘Can you tell me who he is?’ Claire said.
Matthews shook his head.
‘No name, but he was noticed by two witnesses, employees at that McDonald’s. They say they saw him hanging around Nola in the week leading up to her disappearance. Nola was a regular in there, the two guys knew her. They said the last time they saw her was when she got into a car the night she went missing, and this guy,’ he said, pointing at the figure again, ‘ran after the vehicle, before giving up and getting in his car… Which happens to be this one here.’
He pointed to the parked car in the photo, the one with the obscured plate.
‘Here are their statements,’ he added, handing them across to Claire. ‘I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is no.’ He leaned back against his desk. ‘They can’t remember the make, model, colour or even a partial plate number of the man’s car… or a decent description of the man, except that he wore a black-and-red checked hooded jacket with a baseball cap. Usually with the jacket hood pulled up over the cap, obscuring his face.’
Claire eyed him carefully then looked back at the man in the photo.
‘Let me get this straight… Two people both notice a man tailing Nola. Notice enough to know a man chased after a car she got into on the last night she’s seen alive, but neither of them have any real description of this man’s face, height, colour? Nothing on his vehicle?’
Matthews shrugged. ‘They serve a lot of customers, and they said they didn’t think it relevant. Apparently it’s not the first time Nola’s had admirers. Maccy D’s is very busy, Claire, sea of faces and all that. Fast food, fast paced. Their story sounds credible.’
‘What about the other car, the one she got into?’
‘We picked it up on CCTV on the first of November, same spot.’
