Dead if You Don’t

47

Saturday 12 August

21.30–22.30

It was almost dark now outside the windows of the Digital Forensics suite. But neither Jason Quigley, Dan Salter, Shaun Robbins nor Aiden Gilbert noticed. They were all focused on the image that the Acting Detective Sergeant had just sent through.

The image of a teenage boy with terror in his eyes and grey duct tape across his mouth. Surrounded by darkness.

The team dressed casually in here. Despite the endless shocks from the frequently grim and often brutal images of child pornography that they all had to look at regularly in this job, they did their best to keep the atmosphere as cheerful as they could. Quigley, in a polo shirt, jeans and sneakers, tapped his keyboard, starting the process of enhancing the image, whilst trying to stop it turning grainy. He was using a development of software created originally by NASA for the first moon landing in 1969.

The four men watched as the background slowly lightened. Mungo Brown was seated on the floor, leaning against a bare, flint wall. Quigley tapped more keys and suddenly the image zoomed in. First on the boy’s frightened eyes. Then the duct tape across his mouth. Down his torso, his hands out of sight behind his back. Restrained by something.

Then there was a close-up of a wall socket.

‘This could be of interest,’ Quigley said. ‘Anyone spot it?’

They all shook their heads.

He went in closer, and now the socket became very clearly visible. It looked old-fashioned, yellowed, with three round pinholes, one smaller than the other two. ‘Who’s the eldest here?’

‘Probably me,’ Aiden Gilbert said. ‘I’m fifty-two.’

‘When did you last plug anything into a round-pin socket, Aiden?’

‘Never.’

Jason Quigley nodded, with a self-satisfied grin. ‘My point exactly! You aren’t going to see one in any house in the UK that’s been modernized in the last forty years.’

‘So, this socket predates that, Jason?’ Dan Salter quizzed.

‘It sodding predates Noah’s Ark! There’s got to be a clue here.’

‘That we’re looking for a derelict property?’ Gilbert said.

‘Smack on the money, boss!’

Daniel Salter’s phone rang. It was his contact at the phone company EE.

‘Hi, Joe,’ he said. ‘You have? Brilliant!’ He wrote down the details. ‘Well done, mate!’