Watch Me

She clicked the first image: Lottie in the park, balancing on one leg, the other stretched back and up, like an arabesque. She was laughing, her hair falling forwards in soft waves around her face. It had 340 likes. ‘She has fans,’ she scrolled through the seventy-seven comments:

@Boinggirl Beautiful hair!

@Reasontolive Lottie I love you. I don’t know how you do it! <3 <3 <3 Please follow me back!!!

@CarlyAngel86 You’re such an inspiration. Thank you for sharing the real you.

Why would a girl with a seemingly perfect life kill herself? And why send the suicide note via Snapchat? And why to them? Tell us where you are, Lottie. Tell us how to help you.

Nasreen looked from the sunshine of Lottie’s Instagram account to Burgone. He didn’t meet any of their eyes. She longed to tell him everything was going to be all right. But she didn’t. Training and experience taught you not to make promises you couldn’t keep – not to a victim’s family. And that’s what he was now. No longer the guv. No longer in control. Jack Burgone was on the wrong side of the investigation.

Chapter 4

Wednesday 16 March

10:15

T – 23 hrs 15 mins

Burgone had gone for some fresh air after calling his parents; they’d heard nothing from their daughter since they’d last spoken to her two days ago. She’d seemed fine. Normal. That word you always watched for. The thought of anything happening to either of Nasreen’s younger sisters physically hurt her. What had it been like to make that call? Chips or Saunders should have spoken to the family, listened for the telltale signs of tension, lies swimming under the surface, but it didn’t seem right. This was the DCI. It was his family. His missing sister.

Superintendent Lewis had told Burgone he was to take a back seat now. Chips and Saunders were managing the investigation.

Nasreen looked at her watch. She had been ignoring her bladder for the last thirty minutes. She didn’t want to leave her desk until they’d located Lottie, but she couldn’t hang on any longer. The hoped-for phone call that stated this was all a terrible mix-up hadn’t come. Grabbing her phone and her handbag she stood up.

‘Where you going, Sergeant?’ Saunders’s voice rang out over the room.

Nasreen stared at him. Are you really doing this? ‘Just popping to the ladies’. If that’s all right?’

He turned his chair so his knees pointed at her, the navy fabric of his suit pulled taut. He nodded his angular face at the empty cups of water and coffee on her desk. ‘You better not be too hungover to do your job properly, Cudmore.’

Nasreen felt her face colour. Was he testing her? So much for trying to rehydrate. Chips didn’t look up. ‘I’m fine. Sir.’

‘Fine isn’t good enough,’ Saunders snapped, whirling his chair round to face his desk. ‘We have a reputation of being the best of the force, and I’m not having you dent that on my watch, Cudmore. Pick it up.’

A wave of disbelief passed over her – did he expect her to ask for permission to go to the bathroom?

Without turning around, Saunders barked. ‘Get on with it then!’

Nasreen let the door swing shut behind her. How dare he talk to her like that? They’d all hit the ground running on this one. The superintendent had authorised ten floaters: four here at the office, six out in Greenwich. No questions asked when it was one of your own. Officers from Greenwich West were questioning Bea and Lottie’s other flatmates. Tracking down her other friends, shaking students from their beds, from others’ beds. The thought she wasn’t doing everything she could to help Burgone made her feel sick. Burgone wouldn’t think that, would he? That was just Saunders posturing, surely?

There were two floaters ahead of her in the hallway, and with a sinking feeling she recognised the hunched shape of DC Morris. She’d met him on her first day here and found him to be odious. Rather than doing his actual job, he preferred to use his time collecting leverage, real or fabricated, on nominals and colleagues. He was a terrible choice for this investigation, but needs must and one more person, even one as insidious as Morris, was better than none. Walking beside him, her ginger hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, was DC Jan Green. Nasreen knew little about Green, except that she was sorry the pale, freckled woman had got landed with Morris.

‘I bet you it’s a wind up.’ Morris’s voice was a low rumble that threatened to break into a laugh. ‘A spoilt brat who’s not getting enough attention – you know the family’s minted, right?’

‘I hope the guv doesn’t overhear you discussing his sister,’ Nasreen said. They jumped and turned to face her.

DC Green’s eyes were wide, and up close Nasreen could see they were a pretty almond shape. The constable recovered quickly, tucking her hands behind her, standing to attention. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

Morris, a good ten years older than Nasreen, remained slouched. ‘It’s no secret Little Lord Fauntleroy was born with a silver spoon.’

Nasreen glared at him. ‘I wouldn’t keep DI Saunders waiting. You don’t want to get landed with the CCTV tapes.’ This was everyone’s least favourite job, and Nasreen knew Saunders disliked Morris’s whiney demeanour.

‘Must be nice to just open your legs when you want to skip all the work, hey, Cudmore?’ Morris opened and closed two fingers in front of her, his face a mix of lechery and disgust.

Nasreen knew she wasn’t unreasonable to look at. It was why she tied her long hair back at work. Glancing at DC Green’s boxy tan trouser suit, she wondered if she too opted to dress androgynously for efficacy. Could Morris have seen her and Burgone last night? No, he would have been more graphic. She kept her voice quiet, edging it with threat. She’d learned that from Saunders. ‘We have a missing eighteen-year-old girl. Get your mind out of the gutter, your finger out your arse and get on with your job, Constable.’ DC Green dipped her chin, but Nasreen caught the smirk. Morris’s eyes were full of hate. ‘Get on with it!’

It wasn’t like Nasreen to pull rank, but Saunders had got to her. If she needed to prove her commitment to this case then she would. The nearest ladies’ was two floors below, so she chose the stairs over the lift to get her thoughts straight.

In the bathroom she looked in the mirror for signs she’d given anything away. Apart from the shadows of the late night under her eyes, she looked normal. Alone for the first time since she’d arrived at work, she let her face fall, and the strain of holding it up hit her. The Morrises of the world didn’t normally rile her. There’d be time to get her head straight later – possibly a lot of time, if Burgone let her go from Gremlin – but for now she had a job to do.

The door to the ladies’ opened behind her. She straightened, brushing at a stray hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Lorna, the younger of the two receptionists, walked in. Her brunette hair was curled back into a sophisticated chignon and held in place with a lavender butterfly grip that somehow managed to look both naive and winsome. A new hire, and at the tender age of nineteen, Lorna’s recent arrival on the staff had caused mass hysteria among Nasreen’s male colleagues. There’d almost been a fight over who would get to buy her a pink Prosecco first when she’d come to the pub. The girl dipped her delicate pointed chin to her pastel V-neck sweater. Nasreen couldn’t imagine wearing such girly clothes to work. But then she couldn’t imagine mouse-like Lorna being trained in hand-to-hand combat. They may work in the same building, but they had very different jobs.

‘I didn’t realise anyone was in here.’ Lorna sounded petrified.

She smiled hello, feeling guilty for her ungenerous thoughts. The girl was hovering, fiddling with an ornate ring, as if she were plucking up the courage to say something.

‘You okay?’ Nasreen asked.

A pale pink blush rose on her cheeks. ‘I just wondered if there was any news on DCI Burgone’s sister?’ Bad news travelled fast. ‘He’s such a lovely man.’

Nasreen felt a stab of jealousy, though she knew she was being ridiculous. Burgone had been nothing but his usual charming self to the receptionist. And, to give them their due, neither Saunders nor Chips had said anything inappropriate about her, or to her, as far as she knew either. They may have their reservations about Nasreen’s suitability for the team, but they weren’t based on her gender. Which was some comfort, she supposed. The girl was still twisting her ring. She didn’t want to worry her. ‘We’re pursuing a number of enquiries, Lorna.’

‘If anyone can find her you can, Sergeant.’ Lorna bit her lip.

Nasreen was taken aback; she’d hardly spoken to the girl before. It must be the Burgone effect: Jack the Lad strikes again. She was simply caught in his reflected glory. ‘We’re a good team.’ She thought of Chips and Saunders’s varying degrees of hostility towards her. Well, they could be. Had to be.

Back in the office, Burgone was at a desk in the corner, typing as if he could force answers from the rattling keyboard. She looked away before anyone caught her staring at him. Saunders was on the phone. DC Green had settled at a desk to the right and was shifting through files; she gave Nasreen a weak smile. Nasreen paused by Chips, who was pinning a smiling photo of Lottie to the incident board.

‘Dani, the other flatmate, confirmed Lottie was wearing this gym kit when she went out this morning.’ He tapped the picture.

Lottie was in a matching set of Aztec-patterned pink and purple leggings and bra top, with a coordinating hoodie over the top. On the right breast of the jumper were the initials LB. Nasreen recognised the costly brand as one she lusted after herself, waiting until items went into the sale before she could afford to buy them. ‘Was it a freebie?’

‘Yup. Hence the lass has a photo of it on her site. Handy for our door to door.’

You couldn’t ask for more than a recent photo of a missing person wearing what they’d last been seen in. Lottie documented her whole life online. It wouldn’t take much for someone to work out her routines.

Nasreen kept her voice low; she didn’t want Burgone to hear. ‘Do you think we’re looking at a suicide risk or foul play? The wording of the message – you have twenty-four hours to save the girl’s life – sounds like a threat.’

‘Aye, I wondered that.’ Both of them kept their eyes forward, as if they were in a covert investigation – undercover in their own office. ‘Us all being sent the message, it feels wrong.’

Nasreen girded herself to say the name of the first victim, not to let it carry any other significance. It was a sad coincidence she was Gemma’s younger sister. That’s all. ‘Are we sure the other girl – Chloe Strofton – took her own life?’

The investigating force couldn’t have known a second suicide note would be sent via Snapchat and that a second girl would soon be missing. Nasreen thought about the messages, the public nature of circulating the notes on the app. The infamy that was now spreading online.

‘The coroner declared she did,’ Chips said.

‘I’d like to take a look at the case notes anyway – see if anything jumps out?’ Chips nodded his agreement. Two wasn’t a pattern. They could simply be looking at a copycat suicide, in which case the priority would be to find Lottie before she harmed herself. Would Lottie also copy the method Chloe had used to take her life? She wasn’t looking forward to reading how Chloe had died, but she had to do it. The press was good about keeping details out of the public domain, especially when minors were involved, but if Chloe’s suicide note had ended up on social media, then what other information might also have been leaked?

Saunders hung up and grabbed a ringing phone before the DCI could, his movements strong and swift. ‘Saunders speaking.’ He pulled his pad close to write notes. News. She froze, as if taking another step might break the fragile safety net that protected you before you knew the truth. ‘Yes. I see,’ Saunders was saying. ‘And can you confirm where that was?’ That? A deliberately innocuous word. Her stomach contracted. Please don’t be a body. Burgone was gripping his desk with both hands. Green kept her eyes down.

‘Yes.’ Saunders’s tapping foot betrayed his anxiety. ‘Let me know when the lab have the results. Rush job. Orders from the top: this one’s priority. Any issues and they answer to me.’ His pen vibrated across the page. ‘Yes. Thanks.’ Laying his pen down, he carefully replaced the receiver on the cradle. He turned to face them slowly, resting the tips of his overlong fingers together. It felt like the room was holding its breath. His eyes met Burgone’s gaze. ‘A top matching the description of the one we believe Lottie was wearing when she left her flat this morning has been found on West Grove Lane.’

‘Does it have her initials on it – LB?’ Hope sounded in Burgone’s voice.

Say no.

‘Yes. It looks like it is her hoodie.’ Saunders flexed his fingers, giving them time to absorb the words. Nasreen caught Green’s eye. Her face had grown paler under her freckles. ‘There are also signs of a struggle where the top was found. The SOCOs are on their way to the scene now. We’ll confirm if it’s Lottie’s and see if we can lift any other DNA from it.’

‘A struggle?’ the DCI repeated.

Chips was leaning against the incident board, his thick arms folded over his chest, a troubled look rumpling his fleshy features.

‘There are scuff marks on the ground,’ Saunders said. ‘And the top has been partially torn.’

The words were out before Nasreen could stop them. ‘So she’s been abducted?’ Saunders shot her a look of disgust, and Nasreen didn’t dare look at Burgone.

‘We don’t have enough to assume that yet.’ Chips’s maturity lent his words a much-needed level of reassurance. ‘But we can’t rule it out either. Let’s find out if there’s any cameras on West Grove Lane. See what the door-to-door teams turn up.’

Saunders nodded; Nasreen did too. Having things to do, a structure, helped.

‘Cudmore, look at the other lass’s file: see if you can find any link between the two girls.’ He was authorising their earlier conversation, making it open. Chips’s tone softened to talk to Burgone. ‘Might Lottie know Chloe Strofton, guv?’

Burgone looked startled, as if he’d forgotten they could see him there. ‘Not that I know of. The girl was schooled locally in Hertfordshire. I can’t see how their paths would have crossed. But they could’ve met online?’

Social media had changed the way people socialised: your pool was no longer restricted to people you met in real life. The job had made Nasreen wary: she’d closed the scant accounts she’d had the day she started at the College of Policing. She couldn’t imagine meeting up with someone she’d met online, but she knew plenty of people did. Especially those her age and younger. Perhaps Lottie and Chloe had met?

‘If Lottie’s internet-famous, then we have other motives to consider,’ Saunders said. ‘Let’s check if there was anyone acting odd online, as well as looking for potential links to the Chloe Strofton case. Someone else may have borrowed her Snapchat idea.’

Burgone’s face was pained. Chips rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you get some air, lad? Keep you clear headed, hey?’ More than colleagues who’d worked together for a number of years, they were friends. This hurt Chips as much as it did the DCI. Nasreen turned her attention to the paperwork on her desk to give them privacy, not looking up as Burgone left the room, but feeling his every anguished step. It was just gone 10.30 a.m. Lottie had been taken against her will. They had twenty-three hours to find her: the clock was ticking.

Chapter 5

Wednesday 16 March

10:35

T – 22 hrs 55 mins

Opening the file, Nasreen sharply inhaled: there was Chloe Strofton. If there had been any doubt she was the younger sister of Nasreen’s old school friend, it was gone now. The smiling selfie, taken in happier times, showed that pretty Chloe had the same blue eyes and pinched chin of her older sibling. But instead of the curly, mousey hair that Gemma had, Chloe’s was long and wavy, streaked with blonde highlights. Now would be the time to mention she knew the family – or used to know the family. Nasreen should say she recognised the girl from the photo. Keeping quiet about a personal connection to a case was a bad idea. What would her colleagues think if they knew she’d bullied a young girl till she’d tried to kill herself? They questioned and arrested teens regularly enough that her young age wouldn’t matter. They’d see her as a bully. She’d be lumped in with the likes of Morris. Nasty, tainted. She could imagine Chips’s revulsion. If he didn’t use the personal connection to the case to get her removed, Saunders would use her past, her failings, to get rid of her. He would drum her out of the team. And Burgone, the thought of him knowing what she’d done … Her skin prickled with the shame of it. It didn’t matter what she’d done since, or who she’d become: that one stupid, cruel mistake had tainted her. If she told them she knew the Stroftons, she’d be off the case. But if she kept quiet, she could find out who did this to their daughter. This was her chance to make it better.

Sleeping with Burgone had been an error of judgement. She’d let her own desires get in the way of the job and look what had happened. Burgone had acted rashly too. They were both to blame, but she couldn’t help feel it was she who’d jeopardised their careers. That she was responsible for threatening the Gremlin taskforce. What had happened with Gemma had taught her she couldn’t let her own selfish needs override another’s. This was her chance to atone for those mistakes. Nasreen looked at Burgone’s empty chair, his dark cashmere overcoat hanging lopsided from the back. More than anything she wanted to help him.

Chloe Strofton’s last forty-eight hours had been unremarkable. She’d spent the day at Romeland High School, after which she’d told her parents she was staying at her friend Melisha’s house. Instead she disappeared. She was picked up on CCTV boarding a bus from near her school in St Albans to Hatfield, getting off at the Galleria shopping centre just after half past four. A camera then picked her up once more inside the shopping centre. She wasn’t seen again until her body was found in Wildhill Wood, a number of miles away, at 8.30 p.m. the next day, following an anonymous tip-off from a male caller. The Snapchat of her suicide note had been sent at 8 p.m. the previous night. Did the wood hold personal significance to Chloe? Why had the caller not left his details? People used wooded areas for all kinds of insalubrious pursuits: drug taking, underage drinking, illicit rendezvous. She made a note to call the officer at Hertfordshire Constabulary who’d worked on the case, and ask his opinion.

Photos from the scene showed Chloe Strofton’s small body on the forest floor, curled into child’s pose. Her arms and face were a dark purple from hypostasis – where blood had pooled post mortem. Her veins made a blue marbling pattern in her skin: petechiae within hypostasis. Nasreen had seen bodies like this before: a drugs overdose. The pathologist had noted that the girl’s body showed no indicators of previous drug use. Chloe Matilda Strofton was fifteen years old, 5'4", and weighed 105 lbs. At her time of death the following substances had been found in her blood stream:

 Morphine (free) of 370 ng/ml

 6-monoacetylmorphine of 16 ng/ml

 Codeine (free) of 15 ng/ml

 Alprazolam of 34 ng/ml

 Amphetamine of 22 ng/ml

Next to the body, along with her school bag, were a blue plastic wrap and a 1cc syringe. No spoon, no cotton wool, lighter or any of the other drug paraphernalia you might expect to find from cooked heroin. Chloe had prepared the syringe elsewhere. Or someone had prepared it for her. Over-the-counter drugs, or even prescription drugs, and alcohol, were easier to source. As were razor blades and the materials you could use to hang yourself with. Chloe hadn’t copied her older sister’s failed attempt.

The investigating team hadn’t requested to look at Chloe’s computer; Nasreen would have liked to know what her search history was. How had a fifteen-year-old girl from a middle-class area, with no known history of criminal activity or drug use, ended up forty-five minutes from where she lived, dead from a heroin overdose?

Nasreen had worked on the case of a twenty-three-year-old mother who’d overdosed and suffered pulmonary congestion like Chloe. She’d asked the pathologist at the time if it would have been quick – the woman’s toddler had been in the flat and she didn’t like to think of him seeing his mother in agony. The pathologist confirmed that in cases of pulmonary congestion, the victim would quickly enter a comatose state, dying relatively soon after from lack of oxygen. Chloe’s death would have been fast and painless. That was something. She didn’t like to think of the girl on her own in the woods, frightened, in pain, with no one to help. Perhaps the bright Chloe, predicted As and A*s in her GCSEs, had researched her options and chose this as an easy death? Chloe would never sit those exams now, never turn sixteen, never go on to have a job, or a family of her own. A life over, all too soon.

The rap of Saunders’s pen on his desk raised her and Chips’s attention. The DI pointed at the phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear, and mouthed, ‘Cell site hit.’ A signal from the phone had been picked up! Nasreen couldn’t suppress the flutter in her stomach: this could be good news.

DI Saunders was nodding, writing down what he was being told. ‘Okay. Yup. We’ll let the SOCOs and the tech lads see if they can find anything on it. Anything at all. Keep me updated.’

That didn’t sound so promising.

Saunders turned to face them. ‘The phone was ditched, not far from the spot where the hoodie was found. A young lad found it on the way to school, pocketed it, and apparently turned it on during his first break.’

Compromised DNA.

Chips threw his hands up in front of him. ‘Where were the parents? Did they not notice their kiddie picking up a bleeding phone?’

‘Apparently his eleven-year-old brother walks him in,’ Saunders shrugged. ‘Latchkey kids, I guess. What you gonna do?’

If only someone else had spotted it first – though most people would instinctively pick the phone up, regardless of whether they planned to turn it in or keep it. The boy had inadvertently disturbed the scene, delayed them finding the phone, and more than likely compromised any forensic traces on the device. And the discovery possibly had bleaker implications. ‘Are we sure it was ditched, rather than dropped during the struggle?’ Nasreen asked.

‘The kid says it was switched off when he found it. And it was further down the road. He thinks.’

Chips snorted.

‘So the perp sent the Snapchat message and then switched the phone off before dumping it?’ she asked.

‘Possible,’ said Saunders.

That implied they knew what they were doing. Whoever had taken Lottie was savvy enough to know not only that the phone was trackable, but that it’d be trickier to trace if it was switched off. It gave them a head start. ‘Whoever took her must have incapacitated her fairly fast,’ she said. ‘If she was screaming and drawing attention, you wouldn’t want to hang around to fiddle with the phone would you?’

‘No,’ Chips frowned. ‘The SOCOs said there were signs she’d put up a fight.’

‘We have to consider the possibility that whoever took her has already killed her,’ said Saunders. His jaw was set; he looked thoughtful rather than sad. Nausea rippled inside Nasreen.