‘I’ll buy you two if you can get the phone to work,’ Larry said.
‘Five minutes while I log in, check a couple of emails and grab a coffee. One for you?’ Blaxland said, not willing to forego the early morning ritual.
‘One sugar.’
‘Cutting down?’
‘I’m trying to, but you know how it is.’
Blaxland was another man who struggled with his weight, not helped by five pints of beer every night at his local pub, a predilection for McDonald’s hamburgers, the biggest they had, every lunchtime.
‘The wife?’ Blaxland said.
‘She’s complaining, and I’m waiting for my DCI to have another go at me.’
‘Tough.’
‘Sometimes we see things that no man should see.’
‘Not in here,’ Blaxland said. Larry looked around the laboratory, could see what the man meant. The area was sterile, with hardly anything to show for what passed through the doors: blood-stained clothing, guns and knives, some still bloodied, some that had killed, and sometimes body parts, heavily decayed and writhing with maggots. Yet, each day, the fear of contamination and disputed evidence ensured that the place was left spotless. A faint smell of chemicals pervaded the air.
‘We’ve had the phone on low heat for twenty-three hours,’ Blaxland said. ‘If it’s going to work, it’ll be now or never.’
‘The memory, any chance of finding out contacts from it, images?’
‘Do you remember back in 2016 when the FBI tried to unlock an iPhone belonging to a suspected terrorist and Apple wouldn’t help?’
‘Vaguely,’ Larry replied, not sure of the relevance.
‘The FBI managed to unlock it in the end. We may have a password on this phone as well.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Fifty-fifty. It’s a prepaid card, so if someone stole it and made a long-distance call to a relative in Australia, the money would have run out soon enough. Depends though.’
‘On what?’
‘Whether whoever this phone belonged to was neurotic, or he used it to phone a girlfriend while his wife sat at home with the kids.’
‘Assume the best. Just switch it on.’
Blaxland set the phone on one of the benches in the lab. He then connected the charging cable – nothing.
‘It’s dead,’ Larry said.
‘You’ve got a phone. What happens when the battery goes flat?’
‘It switches off.’
‘And when you connect it to the charger, it thinks about it for a short while before anything happens. I’m only applying a trickle charge, the lowest setting that I can. It’ll take a few minutes. Time enough for another coffee.’
‘I’d rather stay with the phone.’
‘A watched kettle never boils. You must have heard that saying?’
‘My mother, all the time.’
‘Your mother had more sense than you. A coffee and then it’ll be ready to try.’
The two men retreated to the coffee machine, Larry not keen to go, but complying with Blaxland. The man was good, Larry knew that, and if anyone was going to have success, it would be him.
Five minutes later, the two men were back at the phone. The screen was illuminated, a charge of eight per cent indicated.
‘It’s a bit low, but it’s promising,’ Blaxland said.
Larry wanted to pick up the phone and scroll through it, find out the phone’s number, instigate a search on the calls made. ‘Can’t you try it now?’ he said.
‘It cost the FBI a fortune to break the password on that phone in America,’ Blaxland said.
‘The most I can manage is a couple of pints of beer if that’s what you’re hinting at.’
‘That’ll do. There’s no password.’
‘What’s the phone’s number?’
Blaxland scrolled through to the settings to show the number. Larry messaged Bridget; she’d know what to do.’
‘A list of phone numbers called, received?’
‘You’ve got the phone’s number. It’s easy from here on.’
‘Humour me. Give me the last ten with times, also any messages. Are there images?’
‘No images, two messages. “See you soon, can’t wait”, “Ready and waiting, lover”.’
‘Phone numbers for the messages?’
Blaxland typed the information on his laptop. Not long after, Larry left Forensics with a printed sheet of paper containing the details of the two messages complete with their phone numbers and eight phone numbers dialled, but no emails, as the phone had not been fully set up.
***
Wendy had to admit relief in that the focus had turned from the clothing the dead jogger was wearing to the phone calls, especially the two messages. Of the eight phone numbers dialled, four of them were the same as the messages.
‘A wife?’ Isaac said in the office.
‘You’ve a trusting nature, DCI,’ Wendy said. ‘The man had a fancy woman, a bit on the side. That’s why the prepaid phone, the coy messages, the short phone calls.’
Isaac knew that Wendy was probably right.
He had had a troublesome night, with Jenny wanting to talk for hours on end, and just as he was dropping off to sleep, she’d nudge him in the ribs and start on again about the need for commitment, the time to prioritise what was important in his life.
She was right, he knew that, but what could he say? There was a murder enquiry. He had had no words, and it had been the first time that she had complained. He hoped it would blow over, but he wasn’t confident that it would.
She was only exercising her right as the person who shared his life. In the end, she had left the bed and had gone to sleep in the other room. When he had left early in the morning, he had tiptoed past
