‘Sure, give me a minute.’
The keyboard clattered in the background and Enders said he had the documents open.
‘We’ve been concentrating on trades people and looking for the invoices the nurseries have received requiring payment. The accounts have been our way of linking the nurseries to people from outside of their direct employment, right?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Look on the other side of the sheet. The incomings.’
‘OK. I am on Little Angels, Kelly Donal’s nursery.’ A pause. ‘A whole load of entries, ma’am. All the monies received from the parents.’
‘Yes, of course. But scroll through. I am looking for a payment from somebody other than a parent. The name might appear only once in a year’s worth of accounts.’
Nothing but static for a few moments and Savage could visualise Enders running his finger down the screen. He wasn’t the most competent or the fastest with computers, but he was meticulous.
‘What have you got?’
‘I’ve got parents. Parents. Parents. Parents. More parents. Bloody hundreds of them. Interest from the bank. More parents.’
‘Keep looking.’
‘Parents. Interest. Parents… Hang on.’
‘What?’
‘Oliver Photographic?’
‘Bingo! You understand what I am talking about?’
‘Photograph commission the note says. That’s Rod Oliver isn’t it? The CSI photographer we use?’
‘Yes. Now check out the other two sets of accounts. Do a search for an Oliver.’
Some faint noise from the keyboard reached Savage’s ear before Enders grunted with frustration.
‘Control F,’ Savage said.
‘Oh yes. Thanks, ma’am.’ There was a further period of silence until Enders spoke again. ‘Got the results, ma’am. Yes, all three nurseries used the same company.’
‘Patrick, can you get Oliver’s number for me?’
She heard Enders tapping away at the keyboard and then he gave her the number.
‘Thanks. I’ll call you back in five.’
Savage hung up and punched in the number. Oliver answered in a couple of rings and Savage introduced herself.
‘Oh hello, Charlotte, not another body I hope?’
‘No, Rod. Are you out on a shoot?’
‘No, at home. About to clear up the dinner before the wife starts giving me earache over the mess.’
‘Just a question about your assistant, Matthew, is it?’
‘Yes, why, what’s up?’
‘Has he been with you long?’
‘Ever since I went independent. He is not the sharpest tool in the box, but he is good with the equipment and takes cracking pictures.’
‘Ever had any problems with him?’
‘He is not always reliable, but he only works for me part-time so I can’t expect him to drop everything and come running. Other than that I’ve no complaints. He’s got a great eye for a picture. Some people have a way of seeing things which enables them to simply point the camera at something, click, and get a brilliant photograph. Matt is a natural, but that’s really all there is to him. He doesn’t say much, just gets on with the job. That’s not a crime, is it?’
‘No, of course not.’ Savage paused for a moment. ‘Rod, you introduced him to me back at the Malstead Down crime scene. I want to confirm his surname in case I misheard.’
‘Is it important?’
‘It might be. Can you give me his address too?’
Oliver reminded Savage of the name and gave her an address and she thanked him and hung up.
She dialled the number for the incident room and within seconds Enders answered.
‘Ma’am? You got something?’
‘Riley said Julie Meadows encountered a guy with a camera. He got into a fight with David Forrester, I believe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Done That Danny discovered the camera used in the attack on Simone Ashton’s boyfriend. He saw the flash of the camera and we found those awful images of Simone Ashton.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we know Mitchell and Forester were both into photography, and a neighbour of Mitchell’s reported the flashes coming from a window.’
‘You mean Rod Oliver is the killer?’
‘No, not Oliver. Everett Mitchell mentioned somebody called Harry, remember? The killer’s name is Harry. Oliver’s assistant is called Matthew Harrison.’
‘Harrison… Harry?’
‘Yes. He was over at the Kelly Donal crime scene gloating over the body he had just dumped.’
‘Bloody hell, ma’am. That’s sick.’
‘Gather some bodies together. We are going to need a TAG team in on this as well so I’ll get on to Hardin and fill him in on the details. And don’t leave without me. I am on my way in.’
Chapter 31
Harry sat in the dark in the living room at the cottage examining the pictures on the screen on the back of one of his cameras. The images scrolled by and Harry studied the faces looking out. Lovely, all of them, but none resembled any of the girls from his past. No Deborah, no Katya. Perhaps he was going to have to widen his search. He chewed his tongue and began to feel uncomfortable with the thought. Other types of girls wouldn’t have the exquisite qualities that he wanted, the inner qualities he remembered from long ago.
He switched the camera off and the room slid into darkness. He liked that. Safe. Then there was a noise from the ceiling, a creak of a floorboard. Emma. She must be moving around up there. Poor girl. He felt sorry for her now. The final test had taken place and the result disappointed him. Chasing her naked through the house had made him suspect that the girl was no different from Trinny or Lucy, despite the cleansing regime he had carried out. And so it proved. All that fresh fruit and bottled water had made no difference. He would have to deal with her. Tonight. Of course he would keep her for a while after she had been preserved and have some fun, but in the end that wasn’t very edifying. Eventually he would have to dispose of her like the other two.
Harry felt the weight of the camera in his hands. Funny how all those girls were in there, somehow captured on the chip. He had hundreds of pictures of girls, thousands even, and it was comforting to know that they would remain living for ever.
He put the camera down and moved across the room in the dark. He walked to the fireplace and groped for some matches on the mantelpiece. Finding them he lit a candle and began to lay a fire in the grate. As he crumpled sheets of newspaper and laid the kindling on top he noticed the headlines and the pictures of the dead girls, his dead girls. The pictures of Carmel showed how lovely she had been, but Harry knew that she didn’t look that way now. Not after having been in the sea for all those months. Trinny had looked better when she was dead, he knew, but even she would be rotting soon.
He struck a match and lit the paper, watching the girls die a second time. Things were better kept alive, like Emma, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible. If they didn’t behave as they were supposed to, if they didn’t get clean, then he had no other option. Once they were dead he knew that he should get rid of them, but then they would just rot away and he would have nobody to talk to. Which was why he kept them. At least until they lost their
