Pop Goes the Weasel

54

Charlie was in full flow when Helen entered the incident room. The team had broken from their tasks to hear the latest developments.

‘We’ve had a trawl through Gareth Hill’s hard drive. His computer seems to have been his one and only window on the world – he used it a lot. And one of his favourite sites was the Bitchfest web forum.’

She had everyone’s attention now.

‘This prostitute rating site was also visited by Alan Matthews and Christopher Reid – they used the pseudonyms “BadBoy” and “BigMan”. Gareth Hill’s moniker was “Blade”. They entered into extremely graphic conversations with other men about the girls in Southampton. They were particularly interested in girls up for denigration and rough sex and received various pointers from other users, specifically from “Dangerman”, “HappyGoLucky”, “Hammer”, “PussyKing”, “fillyerboots” and “BlackArrow”. Several girls were discussed but the one who came up time and again was a prostitute who calls herself “Angel”.’

Helen felt a shiver inside. Could this be their killer?

‘Interestingly,’ Charlie continued, ‘Angel doesn’t advertise, doesn’t have a website, she’s totally offline. She gets her punters by word of mouth alone, current clients tipping off other men about where to find her. She’s elusive and it should be said expensive, but she’s clearly willing to do anything if the money is right.’

‘So she’s hard to find and a closely guarded secret?’ Helen interjected.

‘Exactly.’

‘Good work, Charlie. So top priority is to find these other forum users. Lets focus on those who’ve used Angel’s services and who might have chatted with Matthews, Reid and Hill. These men can lead us to Angel, so let’s find them fast. I’m going down to the surveillance points, but want to be kept up to speed with developments. DS Brooks will run things in my absence.’

As Helen departed, Charlie set about organizing the team. It had cost her a lot to come back to work, but perhaps it had been the right choice after all. ‘DS Brooks’, she liked the way that sounded, and knew there and then that she wanted back in.