‘Off the books as well?’
‘Most likely, yes. Though I’m not quite sure how that works.’
Burton had Bliss shift over so that she could sit in front of the widescreen monitor and keyboard. After logging on, she opened up a browser and navigated to Google. ‘You can search for escorts here and it will give you a whole range of options. The most common results come back for Vivastreet, Adultwork, UKescorts, Ukadultzone, and Friday-ad. More sites are springing up all the time, but these few usually cover all the main agencies and independents. All of them will include adverts for agency escorts. Do you have a name?’
‘Honey.’
‘How sweet. If your victim is known as Honey on her agency website, chances are she won’t be using the same name as an independent. Let’s find her first, after which we can expand and dig into her a bit more.’
Burton’s fingers flashed over the keyboard. On the first site she quickly navigated her way to the Cambridgeshire area. ‘What colour hair does your victim have?’ she asked.
‘Dark brown, maybe even black.’
‘Okay. On here she’ll be classified as brunette. Slender frame?’
‘Yes. She was petite.’
‘Okay. I can include that as a sub-category. Let’s search there first. Do you have her photo on you? Only there’s a possibility we’ll encounter more than one girl using that same name on different sites.’
Bliss dug out his phone and accessed his crime scene photos. Burton looked through them, then back up at him. ‘This is what you call playing by the rules, is it?’
He waved the rebuke away as she tapped at the keys once more. ‘It doesn’t go against policy. It’s not the taking of photos we have problems with – it’s how they’re used afterwards.’
Her first search threw up twenty-three results. She glanced at him. ‘If she’s multi-agency she may go by a different name again, so stop me scrolling if you spot her.’
Twice he asked her to pause. Two of the girls looked a lot like his victim, but they were both far more busty.
‘You got twenty-three hits for slim brunettes?’ he said. ‘That’s depressing.’
Burton nodded. ‘It’s big business. A lot of money to be made. Even the independents charge around eighty per hour. Imagine what the agency rate is.’
The fourth site they visited gave up Bliss’s victim. Burton clicked on the young woman’s photo, which took them to her profile page. On the wide screen the images were sharp and detailed. Bliss held his phone close to the largest of them, comparing the two.
‘It’s her,’ Burton said.
Bliss agreed.
A more revealing array of photographs was available, but Bliss noticed none of them showed her fully naked. He asked Burton about that.
‘These agencies are allowed to exist because they claim to be selling escort-only services. Nothing illegal about that. They’re careful not to include any shots we might be able to use to argue against that claim. So a woman in lingerie is fine, because for some reason a businessman visiting the city and wanting a date for the night needs to know what she looks like in her underwear. But one nip-slip and we could be all over them. It’s the indies who reveal all.’
Bliss was about to ask more when the unit door opened and Chandler entered the room. She was closely followed by Glen Ashton, and the NCA man did not look at all happy. He zoned in on Bliss and stood with both hands on his hips, legs spread wide.
‘Is this what you call inter-agency cooperation?’ Ashton said. He jabbed out a finger. ‘You struck a deal. That deal is the only reason you have this case, and I’m part of that deal, whether you like it or not. Am I making myself clear, Sergeant?’
Bliss took the steam out of it by pausing before he responded. ‘As it happens, you’re in danger of making a bit of a berk of yourself, Glen,’ he said in a neutral tone. ‘When you enter someone else’s squad room and you’ve never met them before, it’s customary to introduce yourself first before you start barking at people.’
He let it go there, allowing a chagrined Ashton to shake hands with Burton. The two exchanged names and greetings.
When things were just awkward enough, Bliss continued. ‘Before you so rudely interrupted, we were making some progress in identifying our victim. If you want to play nice, drop the Superman pose, pull out a chair and watch in admiration along with me and Pen as DI Burton here weaves her magic spell over the internet.’
Ashton remained on his feet, but narrowed his stance and allowed his hands to fall by his sides. Chandler pulled out a nearby chair for herself. Burton was busy with something, but Bliss was lost trying to follow her.
‘What are you doing now?’ he asked.
‘I’ve copied Honey’s photos, which I’m feeding into a little piece of software we have. What this will do is send out a request across the net, searching for exact matches of the same image. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some hits for sites on which she appears as an independent.’
Burton knew her stuff. Less than five minutes later, she had produced an extensive list of links to other websites. ‘Many of these will be doubled or even tripled up, because the site may feature the same image two or three times. But I mentioned both Vivastreet and Friday-ad, and she appears on both. Let’s check them out first.’
The first proved to be the most useful. On Vivastreet their victim called herself Bunny and the profile listed her as an independent. In addition to an array of more explicit photographs and video clips requiring a paid subscription, the details given revealed two things of note: the area in which she lived, and a mobile phone number. This arrangement, Burton revealed, was standard. If you were a potential client, you’d select the service you wanted, and for how long.