vehicle. And third, that Warren Davy isn’t just off having a jolly with his mistress.’
‘Good points, all of them. But I still think Davy’s a strong possible. If Stacey can identify the next victim, that’s likely to be a more definite way to go. Do we know anything about Davy yet?’
Carol brought her monitor to life and clicked on her message queue. There was a brief from Stacey. ‘He’s got no form. He’s got one credit card which he seems to use for business only. No store cards. No loyalty cards. She says it’s a typical profile for someone in his field. He knows how easy it is to breach security so he keeps his presence to a minimum. His phone hasn’t been switched on for days. The last time it was on was when Seth disappeared on Central Station. And it pinged the nearest tower to . . . Care to guess?’
‘Central Station,’ Tony said.
‘Got it in one. So he’s definitely elusive.’
‘Has anyone spoken to the girlfriend about him?’
Carol shook her head. ‘I don’t want to spook her into warning him off. He’s perfectly placed to fake or steal an identity. If he chose to run now, we’d struggle to find him. He could go to ground anywhere. Here or abroad.’
Tony shook his head. ‘He’s not going to disappear. He’s got a mission and he’s not going to stop until he’s finished. Unless we stop him, that is.’
‘So what’s his mission?’
Tony jumped out of the chair and began to pace in the confines of the office. ‘He thinks he’s the bad seed. Something’s happened to fill him with fear and self-hatred. Something that he thinks is passed on through the blood. I don’t think it’s as straightforward as a medical condition, although that is possible. But he’s determined to weed out the bad seed. To be the end of the line. He’s going to kill all his biological children. And then he’s going to kill himself.’
Carol stared at him, horrified. ‘How many?’
‘I don’t know. Can we find out?’
‘Apparently not. According to the extremely unhelpful consultant at Bradfield Cross, all information about anonymous donors is totally off limits. So bloody off limits that, frankly, you wonder why they keep it. If they’re never going to use it, why not just destroy it? Then nobody could ever abuse it.’ Carol took the vodka from her desk drawer again. She also took out a small can of tonic water. She poured them both into the empty water glass on her desk. ‘You want a drink?’ she said defiantly.
‘Oh no, not me. I’m high enough with all that’s buzzing in my brain right now. Because there’s something not quite right with this picture,’ he said.
‘But it makes sense of everything we know. I can’t think of another theory that fits the facts.’ She sipped her drink and felt some of the tension in her neck start to ease.
‘Neither can I. But that doesn’t mean I’m right.’ He turned sharply and stopped by her desk. ‘If this information’s so hard to get hold of, how did he find it out? And what happened to set him off on this crusade? He’s spent ages grooming his victims. How has he kept it all together?’
‘Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe his girlfriend’s been covering his back at work.’ She knocked back the rest of her drink and sighed in satisfaction. ‘God, that’s better.’
‘I wish I could talk to her,’ he muttered.
‘I know. But we have to hang fire till we see what Stacey can do.’
‘I appreciate that. But I’ve almost never come across a serial offender who’s had a sustained emotional relationship. If we’re right about Warren Davy, there are so many questions she could answer. So many insights she could give us.’ He sighed.
‘You’ll get your chance.’
Tony grinned. ‘I’ll be like a kid in a sweet shop.’
Carol shook her head, amused. ‘You’re weird.’
‘I don’t know how you can say that when there are people like Warren Davy out there. Compared to him, I’m normality itself.’
She laughed out loud. ‘I wouldn’t bank on it, Tony.’
CHAPTER 38
Alvin Ambrose felt at home in the MIT squad room right from the start. These were the kind of cops he understood. Paula McIntyre had sorted him out with a desk, a phone, a computer and a coffee. Everyone who had passed through had stopped to introduce themselves, even the little Chinese woman in the corner who seemed to be hard-wired to her computer system.
He also relished the sense of being at the heart of the operation. The only problem was that there wasn’t really much for him to do there. Everyone was working their way through piles of paper or screens of data, but he knew they were only keeping busy. Everyone was on pins, waiting for Stacey to emerge from behind her barricade of screens with the motherlode.
With nothing else to occupy him, he thought he might as well check his email. Humming under his breath, he waited for the screen to load. The music stopped halfway through a bar as he realised what he was looking at. The second item in his inbox was: [email protected]: how can i help?
Ambrose swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to open the email, but Stacey and her ilk had warned him so thoroughly about the destructive potential of email that he didn’t want to take any chances. Still, he had an expert on the spot. He walked over to Stacey’s corner and waited while her fingers flew and clicked. After a minute or so, she looked up. ‘Did you want something?’
‘I think I’ve got an email from Warren Davy,’ he said. ‘It’s on my computer.’
Stacey looked at him as if he was a little slow. ‘Which account?’
