Stalker

Chapter Eleven

‘I don’t want to piss on your parade,’ Matt Davis said, leaning forward so he could see Beth Mayes over the top of their computer screens. ‘But you really are wasting your time pursuing that line of enquiry.’

‘Thanks for your vote of confidence, arsehole,’ she returned.

‘Charming!’ Matt said with feigned indignation. ‘All I’m trying to do is save you the embarrassment of having to go back to boss lady with nothing but hours of wasted police time. Burglaries, muggings and assaults happen everywhere all the time. They aren’t all connected by some giant conspiracy theory or six degrees of separation.’ He grinned provocatively.

‘Sit down, shut up and get on with your own work,’ Beth said lightly. ‘You’ll eat your words when I find the connection, and then I’ll be first in line for promotion.’

They’d started together as DCs and often teased each other about who would get promoted first. Beth enjoyed their banter, although even she was close to admitting defeat in this investigation. There’d been no fresh leads for the nightclub stabbing despite the press release. And the five other cases she’d told the boss about, plus the twelve possibles she’d unearthed from the year before, all remained without any common linking factor other than they were premeditated, motiveless and unsolved. If she could find a motive then she’d be halfway to solving the crimes, but without one it was whistling in the wind. Yet despite trawling through megabytes of data including whether the victims had served time in prison, accrued any large debts, their work history, sexual orientation, any unusual hobbies, and so forth, there was nothing else linking them apart from the premeditated nature of the attacks. Yet she still felt there was something staring her in the face that she was missing.

‘Here’s one for you,’ Matt said a few minutes later, smiling as he dropped the printout over the top of her monitor. The paper floated to her desk and she picked it up.

‘It’s a routine break-in,’ she said. ‘This is a joke, right?’

‘Not at all. It’s the second time the shop has been broken into in under a month. The owners are claiming it’s racially motivated and that we haven’t bothered to investigate properly. Boss lady wants us to be seen to be doing the right thing. I would offer to go but you’re so good at PR and I’ve more important things to do – like solving crimes.’

Beth poked her tongue out at him and taking the printout, unhooked her jacket from the chair and left the office. She needed a break, a breath of fresh air; staring too long at the computer screen was fogging her brain so she couldn’t see the wood from the trees. Fifteen minutes to the newsagents, fifteen minutes pacifying Mr and Mrs Osman and she’d be back at her desk again in an hour. Sometimes just a change of scenery sparked the mind into making a connection, solving a puzzle that had otherwise eluded her.

Beth parked the unmarked police car in the layby outside the parade of shops. There were five shops in all, with the newsagents at the end. These small shops were easy targets for thieves and vandals. Usually family-owned, they ran on tight budgets and didn’t have the funds for decent security like the bigger shops did. Possibly it was the same lad who’d broken into the infant school down the road the weekend before. He hadn’t taken anything of value but had made a mess: spraying the floors, walls and windows with black gloss paint, destroying the children’s artwork, upending the tables and desks. It had been too easy for him to remove the slats from the old louvre window in the children’s toilets and get in that way. Like the shop owner leaving his door unlocked, it was an open invitation to an opportunist. Even so, she’d do her job to the best of her ability as she always did.

Inside the shop she went up to the counter. ‘DC Beth Mayes,’ she said, flashing her ID card. ‘Mr and Mrs Osman?’ They were both behind the counter although there was no one in the shop to be served.

‘Come through, would you like a drink?’ He seemed very pleased to see her.

‘That’s kind, but no thank you.’

She followed him into the back of the shop that was used as a stockroom and looked around. ‘You don’t live in the flat above the shop then?’ she asked. Each of the shops in the parade had a flat above it.

‘No. My cousin and his family live there. My wife and I have our own house a few miles away.’

‘And no one in your cousin’s family heard anything on the night of the break-in? I’m assuming one of our officers asked but I thought I’d check.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. But it’s break-ins. Plural. Twice in under a month. And the insurance company are wriggling.’

‘As they do,’ she said.

‘So I need a copy of your police report to give them.’

‘Certainly.’ She could have sent it in the post; it didn’t need a personal visit.

‘But you must mention in your report that after the first break-in I took extra precautions by having another camera fitted. It will help with my claim.’ She nodded. ‘Also, I’ve now found out that the security system was malfunctioning at the time of the break-in, which will help my case.’

She looked at him, puzzled. ‘What sort of malfunction? The tape was downloaded successfully. We have a copy of the relevant footage on file at the station.’

‘The company should have sent me an email alert at the time of the break-in so I could phone you and then you could catch him, but that didn’t happen.’

If only it were that simple, she thought. ‘And the problem with the security has been fixed now?’ she asked, glancing up at the camera bearing a Home Security logo.

‘I would think it has. So you will send the report I need for the insurance company?’

‘Yes. And rest assured we are doing all we can to catch the culprit.’

‘Culprits,’ he corrected.

She frowned. ‘Why do you say that? The CCTV footage shows one person.’

‘But a different one from the first time.’

She frowned again, puzzled.

‘Come on, DC Mayes, I haven’t got to do your job for you, have I? In the first break-in they stole my stock; in the second he just trashed the place. Different motives, so surely different intruders?’

She thought for a moment. ‘It’s possible,’ she conceded. Although she knew the investigation was working on the theory that it was the same intruder, which statistically was most likely: burgled once and they were likely to come back and burgle again unless good security was installed.

‘Either way it’s a big coincidence that the one night I forget to lock the back door, in he comes.’

Or perhaps it wasn’t just once you forgot to lock it, she thought but didn’t say.

An hour later Beth was back at her desk. ‘If it was the same intruder, why would he steal the first time and then just trash when he goes back?’ she said to Matt.

‘Pass. What’s the correct answer?’

‘No. I’m asking you. It’s not a trick question. It doesn’t make sense.’

He looked up from his screen. ‘You’re talking about the newsagent, right?’ She nodded. ‘Perhaps he didn’t like the crisps and sweets he sold?’

‘You are a dope. I’m serious. It’s been assumed it was the same person but why did he just trash the place second time around? Trashing is a different crime with a different motive and a different offender profile. And if it wasn’t the same guy then it’s even more of a coincidence if Mr Osman is right and he did usually lock up.’

‘Que?’ Matt asked puzzled.

‘Mr Osman is adamant that he always checks all the doors are locked before leaving the shop to go home, and the one night he didn’t, he was broken into. It seems there was a problem with the security system – it didn’t alert him to the break-in – but that’s neither here nor there. What I’m saying is that if it was the same intruder then it’s reasonable to suppose he went back, aware of the layout this time, and it was easy to get in. But if it was someone else then he was very lucky that he happened to go there on the night the door was unlocked.’

‘Or Mr Osman often forgets to lock up.’

‘Yes, I know. But I think I’ll spend a few minutes looking at the CCTV footage for the weeks before the break-in to see if it shows anyone loitering around the shop. The camera at the rear was only installed two weeks ago so it won’t take long to have a quick whizz through.’

Matt grinned broadly. ‘And who knows, you might be able to add yet another case to your conspiracy list so that before long every crime in the world will be linked by a giant string theory.’

She took a sheet of paper from her desk, rolled it into a ball and lobbed it over the top of her monitor.

‘Missed again!’