Sycamore Gap: A DCI Ryan Mystery(77)

“Thirteen hours would certainly still be a realistic timescale,” Pinter added.

“Anything else we need to know?”

Pinter scratched one bony finger against the side of his ear.

“Nothing that isn’t immediately obvious to a layperson,” he gestured with the same bony hand, with the complacent manner of someone expert in his field. “She was clearly massively overweight, with all of the health problems associated with that. You can see the cocktail of medications labelled to her in the fridge downstairs, including vials of Lorazepam.”

Ryan nodded thoughtfully. Claire Burns was also drugged with a large quantity of Lorazepam, which had been injected into the side of her neck before she was abducted.

“Phillips, we need to check the quantities prescribed by Geraldine Hart’s doctor. In fact, let’s take a look at her medical notes, if we can.”

“Already on it,” Phillips nodded, making a short, scribbled note on the miniature notepad with its worn leather cover. “Might get lucky and find some of her medical info in the house, so we don’t have to get a separate warrant.”

At that moment, one of the technical support staff jogged out of the front door, making a beeline for Ryan.

“Jasmine? What have you got for me?”

“A bit of a goldmine,” she said, with a touch of excitement mingled with nerves. She didn’t have too much interaction with DCI Ryan but, when she did, she wished she wasn’t wearing baggy overalls.

“Oh?”

“We started with his computer, sir, thinking that would be the most protected item and might take longer to crack. Actually, it had barely any safeguards and the entry password was pretty easy – it was ‘CLAIRE’.”

Ryan exchanged a look with Phillips.

“What did you find?”

“Well, it’s clear that the suspect has tried to delete some of the files, but unfortunately he didn’t make it past the desktop ‘trash’. No effort had been made to delete the files permanently, which is pretty amateurish, considering their content, sir.”

“What are we talking about, here?”

“A lot of images,” she replied. “There are some historic files on one or two women who aren’t either of our recent victims and we’ve already confirmed they are both still alive and well. Then, there’s a massive file dedicated solely to Claire Burns.”

“Nudity? BDSM?”

“No, sir, these images are opportunistic in nature. Photographs taken of Claire out and about, some of her while she was in her own home, at work, on the street. I would say that the victim was not aware of her picture having been taken.”

“Standard,” Phillips grunted. It wasn’t the first time they had dealt with a stalker, or a sexual predator.

“When was the last image taken?”

“Most recent was Sunday night,” Jasmine responded, causing both men to wake up and lean forward. “Just a shot of her at work, in her uniform. It looks like an image taken from his smartphone, transferred onto the computer afterwards.”

“Does it record a time?”

“Yes, sir. The original image was taken at nine-seventeen p.m. on Sunday evening, then uploaded onto his home computer at six-thirty-two the following morning.”

“Unluckily for Colin, the electronic file doesn’t rule out the possibility of him being up at Sycamore Gap with Claire’s dismembered body.”

“Yes, thank you, Frank,” Ryan noticed that the technician was turning a bit pasty at the thought of dismemberment. That was why she was an electronics technician and not a CSI.

“Anything else you’ve found?”

Ryan pinned her with a stare, forcing her eyes to focus on him rather than thinking about body parts.

Jasmine collected herself.

“Yes, sir. There may not have been any sexualised content in the files he holds on real women, but we found a mountain of sexual content in separate files saved directly from the web.”

“What kind?”

Jasmine blushed a bit.

“Just – ah – normal stuff sir, nothing too kinky. No extreme violence like we’ve seen with some others.”

It didn’t fit, Ryan thought. Usually, where a man or woman had committed extreme violence, there was wider evidence of their fondness for it.

“There’s quite an online history of him logging onto three sex chat-rooms in particular,” Jasmine listed their names. “And he goes by the same username in each one.”

“What’s that?”

“DoctorKeir37,” she said.

“He’s not exactly the most subtle man in the world, is he?” Phillips muttered.

“It ties in with his obsession,” Ryan said, turning back to Jasmine. “What was his activity like under that username?”