that he wasn’t a real man. I bet he’s not even sorry.’
Sam nodded, trying to look sympathetic. He’d got what he came for. Confirmation that Niall Quantick was a donor baby and that the sperm had come from Bradfield Cross Hospital. He couldn’t see what else Lara Quantick might have that would be any use to him. Now he just had to get out of here before he got sucked into a complete rerun of her fucked-up marriage. He almost felt sorry for her ex. He wouldn’t mind betting that every time they had a row, Lara threw his lack of manhood in his face. He stood up. He was a copper, not a counsellor, and while he was stuck in this crappy flat with her, the real action was elsewhere.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said, already halfway to somewhere else in his head.
Ambrose had felt ambivalent about the government’s anti-terrorist measures ever since they’d been introduced. The policeman applauded anything that gave them the powers to make the streets safer. But the black man was made uneasy by anything that made it easier to isolate and target minorities. This lot were supposed to be the left, but they were capable of some pretty repressive stuff. Who knew how the new rules might be applied under a regime that really didn’t care much for civil liberties. Look how much damage had been done to the US in the Bush years. And they had way more checks and balances than the UK.
But he had to admit there were some aspects of the legislation that made his job a lot easier. OK, sometimes you had to stretch a point and make somebody out to be a lot more dangerous than they were, but you could get all sorts of information these days that used to take a lot of time and more evidence than was often readily available. Take air passenger lists. It used to be a nightmare getting airlines to give you access to the names of the people who had flown on any individual plane. Warrants had to be obtained from magistrates who didn’t always agree that your need to know was stronger than the airline’s right to customer confidentiality. Then you had to hope the passenger list still existed.
But now, it was easy. You flew, you were in the security services computer system. And the likes of Ambrose could generally find a friendly officer who totally understood that catching killers was a lot more important than some notional idea of personal privacy. Especially if you were the kind of copper who made a point of making friends rather than enemies.
So it was that Monday morning that Ambrose received a text from an unidentified caller which simply said, Ur pal misd his plane. Didn’t make another flite.
Ambrose congratulated himself on his instincts. He’d covered a lot of ground the day before. There had been a couple of possibles on his list by the end of play. But he’d had a gut feeling about the computer security geek, especially when his girlfriend had shown them the extent of their equipment. If anyone could have performed the cyber stalking evident in this case, it was Warren Davy. And whatever his girlfriend believed, Warren Davy wasn’t in Malta. He was out there somewhere, a serial killer on a roll.
Wherever he was, Ambrose bet he was grooming his next victim.
After the frustration of the past few days, Carol felt almost exhilarated at the way information was coming at her. Connections were starting to emerge, and she felt the thrill of the hunter who is finally getting the scent of their prey. The DNA breakthrough had turned everything on its head, confirming Tony’s earlier conclusion that these were not sexual homicides.
Now they knew for certain that all four victims had been born as a result of artificial insemination. Three of the mothers had been treated at Bradfield Cross Hospital’s sub-fertility unit, the fourth at a private clinic in Birmingham. Her next stop should be the clinic here in Bradfield. She had no idea what they could tell her. Her knowledge of the law around donor sperm was scant, but she did know that back when these babies had been made, the donations had been anonymous.
She was about to call Paula to get her coat on and join her when the phone rang. ‘Stuart Patterson here,’ he said before she could even identify herself. ‘I think Alvin’s come up with a suspect.’
‘That’s your sergeant, right? The one that’s over in Manchester?’
‘That’s right. He was on the knocker yesterday, trying to make something out of the car registrations we got. He had a couple of possibles, but one of them, his girlfriend, who is also his business partner, she said he’s in Malta, but he’s not. And he’s perfect for it. They’ve got a company, DPS, that deals in computer security and data storage—’
‘Slow down, Stuart.’ Carol’s head was spinning as she tried to process his garbled sentences. ‘What’s Malta got to do with it?’
‘Sorry, sorry. I’m just . . . this feels like the first proper break, you know? Everything coming together - the profiling, the back-to-basics door-knocking coppering and the technology - and giving us what we need.’ She could hear him take a deep breath. ‘Right. One of the cars that came into Worcester the day Jennifer was killed was a Toyota Verso registered to a guy called Warren Davy. He’s a partner in a computer security company, DPS. When Alvin went to his place, it turned out he’s not been at home for over a week. According to his girlfriend, he flew out to Malta to set up a security system for a client. But when Alvin checked the passenger manifests, he found that Davy hadn’t flown on the flight he was ticketed for. And he didn’t take another flight instead. Davy went off the map after Jennifer was killed but before the three boys. He told his girlfriend the lie about Malta to buy himself freedom to commit the other murders.’
‘What about the girlfriend? Does Alvin think she knows what’s going on?’
‘Clueless, he reckons. She’s supposed to get Davy to call Alvin next time he checks in. But so far, he’s not been in touch.’
‘You think he will be?’
‘Depends how clever he thinks he is. He might reckon he’s smart enough to bluff us.’ Patterson still sounded excited. She knew how he felt but was better at hiding it. A shadow fell across her doorway and she saw Stacey hovering. She held up two fingers, indicating she was almost done.
‘You think we should go public with this?’ Patterson was saying. ‘Put out his photo, tell people to call him in? Should we hit the farm where he lives with the girlfriend? See what we can find there?’
That was one she wanted to run past Tony. Her instincts were to hold back, but without any clue as to when he planned to strike next, it was a high-risk strategy. ‘Can I get back to you on that, Stuart? I don’t want us to make a snap decision. I’ll call you later. Tell Alvin that’s brilliant work.’
Carol ran a hand through her hair and summoned Stacey in. ‘Nothing for days, then it’s mayhem on steroids,’ she said. ‘I need you to pull everything you can off the grid about a man called Warren Davy who runs a computer security firm called DPS. I want everything. Credit details, mobile phone records.’
Stacey’s eyebrows rose. ‘I know Warren Davy.’
Shocked, Carol said, ‘You know him? How?’
