Chapter Nineteen
‘I reckon this tip-off is bullshit.’
Rachel and Brickall were still in the car. It had long since gone dark, and lights in windows were being extinguished one by one as people went to bed. A steady drizzle was falling, so they were forced to keep the ignition switched on to intermittently clear the windscreen.
‘If there’s any movement it’s going to be after dark.’ Rachel reminded him.
‘It went dark hours ago.’
Rachel checked her watch. ‘Let’s give it another hour and then head for bed.’
Brickall managed a faint grin. ‘Best suggestion I’ve heard all day.’
‘Don’t be a twat.’
As the wipers cleared the screen, Rachel caught sight of a figure walking purposefully towards the house in question. Florence Obatola.
‘That’s her.’
Brickall reached instinctively for his radio handset and it bleeped into life. A light went on and there were figures glimpsed moving around behind the makeshift curtains. Then the sound of an unmistakable female scream, high-pitched and distressed.
‘We should go in,’ Rachel said, her hand on the car door.
‘Don’t be an idiot, Prince; we don’t know who’s in there or if they’re armed. I’m calling for a PSU.’
Three minutes later an armed response vehicle roared into the street and four officers in full tactical gear jumped out, the letters NCA in large letters across the back of their jackets. Rachel and Brickall stood in the doorway as the door was broken down.
‘Armed police!’
They emerged a few minutes later with Obatola and two men in handcuffs. ‘There are five girls up there, three of them chained to the walls,’ one of the officers told them. ‘We’re going to need more backup.’
Rachel and Brickall ran into the building and up the stairs. Two terrified girls crouched on the floor of one room, the door of which had been broken down by the armed officers. The other three were in a larger room, their wrists chained to a metal rings on the wall. A bucket in each room acted as a makeshift toilet.
Rachel crouched down next to one of the girls. ‘My name’s Rachel? What’s yours?’
No response.
‘Do you speak English?’
They stared at her dumbly.
‘It’s okay,’ Rachel told them gently. ‘She pointed to the chains and mimicked a cutting action. ‘Someone’s coming to take this off. You’ll be okay now.’
An hour later, after the Nigerian girls had been taken to hospital and Obatola and her associates had been remanded in the cells in Wood Lane police station, Rachel was at home, under a hot shower. She stood there for a long time, trying to unknot her stiff joints and aching muscles. Nearly twelve hours sitting still in the front of a mid-sized saloon car would do that to you. She thought about going for a run through the deserted Bermondsey streets – along the Thames Path perhaps, but decided she was simply too tired.
And finally, there it was. A watched phone never rings was the adage, and the moment sheer exhaustion prevented her checking, there was an email from Rob. She made herself a cup of tea and climbed into bed with her laptop to read it.
From: Robert J. McConnell
To: Rachel Prince
Miss Tenacity,
Sorry not to have gotten back to you sooner: I’ve been waiting on various pieces of information to come in, and I figured feeding it to you piecemeal would get kind of annoying.
So, here goes…
First, the DNA evidence from the dress, shoes and the lipstick. The dress gave two different samples of female DNA. (You mentioned that someone else could have worn it before or after our mystery girl.) Only ONE of those samples matches material found on both the lipstick and the shoes, which narrows it down neatly to one suspect. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this DNA sample was not a match for anything held on any criminal databases here in the USA. I cross-matched it with every agency available. So we’re not looking for someone with a long rap sheet. Or any rap sheet.
We received images from the security cameras at Valley Plaza mall from 21–23 February. There is indeed a female wearing a Padres baseball cap but her face is mostly obscured by the peak of the cap and large sunglasses, so we don’t really know anything other than that this person purporting to be Ms Stiles is young and with slim build. I’ve attached a copy of the images.
The images of Tiffany Kovak’s Toyota SUV are similar – there appears to be a young, long-haired female at the wheel but she’s wearing sunglasses and the face shots are blurry. As you know, photos of a driver at the wheel are rarely distinct enough to stand up in court.
Last, there’s the match with the CasaMia profile picture used by both ‘Heather Kennedy’ and ‘Stacey Gunnarson’. This was identified by your co-worker at LAPD as belonging to Jennifer Van der Wieke, from the photo on a driver’s licence issued by the state of Pennsylvania. I arranged for Van der Wieke to be questioned but she claims that the photo was lifted from her Facebook account. Her story and background check out, and there is no discernible link with Tiffany Kovak or Phoebe Stiles. It seems to be a straightforward case of cyber catfishing.
Rachel already knew this much. Jennifer Van der Wieke had been named by Perez in his final debrief email. Once she had arrived home, she had googled Van der Wieke and trawled doggedly through the girl’s entire social media footprint, but this seemed to be no more than a pretty young blonde girl whose pouting selfie suited the suspect’s purposes. A face that fitted. And a girl who was away travelling in Europe for three months.
She admitted that she favoured lipstick in a shade similar to the one we tested, and readily provided a DNA sample, which was not a match. So that bit seems to be a case of life imitating art. (Or maybe it’s the other way around).
Of course it did occur that Van der Wieke herself could be a target, in addition to her image having been targeted, so her local police department have been informed and she’s been advised on extra security in her home. She does not currently list her home on CasaMia and has never done so.
That’s about all I have for now. Catch you later, Rob.
Rachel wanted to re-read the information and absorb it before replying, but was painfully aware that tomorrow would be a long, fractious day of dealing with Social Services and interpreters.
Rob, thanks for this – I’m very grateful for all your efforts. Please do contact me if you find out more. Rachel x
She deleted the kiss, then reinstated it. As she was about to close her laptop, it pinged at her. The alert she had set up for mentions of Phoebe Stiles had been updated with a fresh result.
It was an article from the Daily Mirror.
TRAGIC PHOEBE’S DARK SIDE
A former classmate of tragically murdered actress turned reality star Phoebe Stiles, Lauren Mitchell, 25, has revealed that she has a mean girl past. ‘Phoebe was a proper bully at school,’ she told the Mirror. She thought she was popular, but people didn’t like her, they were scared of her.
Some details about Phoebe’s death followed, including the fact that her boyfriend had been charged. There was a paparazzi shot of Phoebe in her spray-tanned glory next to a picture of Lauren with arms folded and an indignant expression on her face. She was a plain girl with stringy hair, hoop earrings and a jailhouse tattoo on her upper arm. A meagre anecdote about Phoebe cutting off someone’s ponytail and laughing about it was then padded to take up 200 words.
Rachel reached for her notebook and wrote ‘Lauren Mitchell?’ before switching off the light and falling instantly asleep.