The Doll's House

27

DC Sanderson sat across the desk in Helen’s office, files spread out in front of her. The door was firmly shut, the blinds down – this was not a conversation for public consumption. In some ways Helen’s desire for privacy was pointless – several officers in the team knew that Nathan Price was a person of interest in the Ruby Sprackling case and had no doubt made the connection themselves, but Helen didn’t want anyone speculating about a possible link between the two investigations until they were sure there was a connection. The lowered blinds and closed door made this point eloquently.

‘I need exact times,’ Helen said, as Sanderson skimmed Ruby Sprackling’s phone records.

‘Ruby sent her first goodbye tweet yesterday at around one p.m.,’ Sanderson replied.

‘Where was it sent from?’

‘Still trying to pin the exact location down, but it’s somewhere on the eastern fringes of the New Forest.’

Helen kept her expression neutral, despite the fear rising inside her.

‘And the second?’

‘Sent this morning at around ten a.m., Southampton city centre.’

There it was. An exact match to the times and locations when Pippa Briers had texted and tweeted her latest offerings. The relative briefness of the messages and the generalized, anodyne contact were concerning, as was the fact that both phone signals were on only briefly before vanishing again, presumably having been switched off. It looked very much like a third party was keeping the girls’ digital presence alive. The killer obviously didn’t know that Pippa’s body had been found and identified. Helen was glad that this discovery had been kept away from the press, as it now gave the lie to these fake tweets and texts.

‘I want this link kept quiet for now,’ Helen continued, after she’d filled Sanderson in on her thinking. ‘But Nathan Price is now our number one suspect in both cases and I want him found. Give his photo to uniform, get people back to his house, circulate his van registration details to traffic – and get Stevens down to Pippa Briers’ flat in Merry Oak. There may still be tenants in the building who remember Pippa and Nathan. We need as much info as we can, as fast as we can.’

Sanderson nodded and hurried off to do Helen’s bidding. Helen watched her go, her emotions churning. They were making progress and Helen could already see Sanderson’s orders energizing the team – the latest developments could herald the safe return of Ruby Sprackling if they moved with speed and purpose. On the other hand, their latest breakthrough had confirmed Helen’s very worst fears. They were dealing with a serial offender. A skilled and experienced predator. Helen had caught two serial killers already in her short career. But would her luck hold a third time?