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07:30

Wednesday 4 November

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Freddie stood at the front of the Jubilee station’s incident room with Nas, Tibbsy and Moast. She’d been unable to sleep last night: images of Sophie Phillips’ dead body seemed to levitate in her bedroom. She’d given up around 2am and got up to research syntax similarities and if you could identify two seemingly different writers as the same person through semantics and dialectical quirks. She compared Paige Klinger and Apollyon’s tweets but found nothing analogous between their spelling, cadence, tone or sentence structure. It wasn’t until around 6am, when the sound of one of her flatmates, Anton, stirring, and commuters could be heard bustling outside, that she let go and slept. Less than an hour later and her alarm had gone off. Now 7.30am, she was attending the pre-meeting arranged by Moast. He looked like he’d shaved in the dark. Tibbsy’s eyes were barely visible in hollowed-out sockets. Even Nas seemed edgy. All three were pulled into suits that were comically at odds with their knackered faces. Freddie hugged a coffee and her phone. She was in her jeans and a purple hoodie.

She’d gone back over the clues from Apollyon – was it possible they’d got the wrong answers? ‘I’ve tried looking at it from every different angle, and I still think Sophie Phillips must be @SophieCat111,’ she said.

‘But then where did she tweet from?’ Tibbsy’s tiny eyes blinked.

‘We don’t know that there’s a link between the victim and the person tweeting as Apollyon,’ said Moast. ‘There’s nothing conclusive to link the two. Have the IT bods been able to link the victim with the Twitter address @SophieCat111?’ Freddie saw a grey smudge on his white shirt cuff, the kind you got from walking down the Tube station escalator resting your hand on the moving rail.

‘No.’ Nas looked taut, as if her skin was stretched so tightly she might split. ‘Nothing’s shown on either the phone or the home computer, but the IP address for the device sending messages from @SophieCat111 has been traced to the Leighton Buzzard area. We’re speaking to her work colleagues this morning to request access to her computer there.’

‘Fine,’ said Moast. ‘Then as of yet we’ve no confirmation that @SophieCat111 and Sophie Phillips are the same person. I don’t want to waste valuable time on this. We need to focus our resources on identifying possible suspects, starting with those known to the victim.’

‘But what if it is Apollyon?’ Freddie couldn’t drop it.

Moast sighed. ‘Okay. Venton, you can look again at everything this @SophieCat111 posted: look for any identifying details that would link it concretely to Sophie Phillips. Have you gone to see the IT lads yet?’

‘No,’ she shook her head guiltily. There hadn’t been time. Everything had happened so quickly.

‘Okay, get down there today and see what else they’ve got on the SophieCat Twitter account.’

She nodded dumbly.

‘I want the rest of us to stay focused on the facts. There were similarities between the Mardling crime scene and this one. As with the scene at Blackbird Road, Sophie Phillips’ bedroom was clean; forensics have only found traces of the victim’s DNA in the flat. In addition to this, there was evidence of bleach found in the victim’s bedroom and on her computer. The SOCO team have confirmed it was the same brand of supermarket bleach that had been used at Mardling’s, albeit more liberally.’

Freddie remembered the overwhelming sickly smell at Sophie’s flat. ‘Was it vanilla-scented?’

‘Yes,’ said Moast.

Why would the killer use more at Sophie’s flat?
‘Were Alun Mardling’s computer and keyboard bleached?’ Freddie thought of the blood splatters.

‘No, there were traces of bleach on the door handles, on the back of the chair – presumably where he braced the victim before cutting him – and at other points in the room and leading to it,’ said Moast.

‘So why did he bleach Sophie’s computer?’ Freddie said.

‘It implies he touched it, sir,’ said Nas.

‘Possibly, or he had more time to clear up after himself. Sophie’s flat is discretely located,’ said Moast. ‘Perhaps the perp didn’t fear being seen. As such, we can assume our killer wore gloves and is very meticulous. Time of death has been narrowed to sometime between 4am and 9am on Monday 2nd November. Dr Fisher has yet to complete Sophie Phillips’ autopsy report, but traces of Temazepam and Flunitrazepam –’ he looked at Freddie – ‘what you might know as roofies, the date rape drug that’s used to render victims unconscious – were found in her bloodstream and also in the sugar bowl in the kitchen. Whoever did this knew Sophie Phillips took sugar with her tea. That indicates this was someone who knew the victim and her habits and perhaps not someone who was selected because they watched cat videos.’

‘Was she interfered with?’ Freddie tailed off.
Rape
? This was too horrific.

‘There’s no evidence she was sexually assaulted before or after she was strangled,’ said Nas.

Freddie thought of the blue and white striped mug.
Did Sophie unwittingly feed herself the drugs that sedated her while she was killed? Awful.

Moast continued: ‘Her colleagues indicated she didn’t have much of a social life, but perhaps she just didn’t share it with them. If someone new came into her life, someone who knew how she drank her tea, someone with potential access to her flat, I want to know about it. Go back over it with the neighbours. Do they remember anyone visiting her in the last few months: a new friend, a lover, had she started acting out of character? Look at her bank balance, where’s she been?’

‘Yes, guv,’ said Nas.

‘Have the local team canvas cafes, bars, restaurants and shops in the area. Does anyone remember seeing Sophie with anyone? Have we found any recent photos of her we can use to jog people’s memories?’

Tibbsy dropped his blue eyes from Freddie. ‘No, sir. Nothing in the house so far, and Freddie found none on the @SophieCat111 account, which as you say, may not be hers anyway.’ Freddie tried to piece all the information together; she had a nagging feeling she was missing something obvious.

‘I can ask the employers, sir, when I speak to them this morning,’ Nas added.

‘Good. Do that. I want a copy of all the door-to-door enquiries from the Bedford force. The local team have gone in to speak to the vic’s manager and colleagues in person. Cudmore, you and I will follow it up.’ Moast was flicking through his notepad. ‘See if anything pops. Keep me up to date with any developments, and we’ll reconvene after lunch to run through where we are. This concludes this morning’s briefing. I just want to say I’m sure I speak for you all when I say the sooner we catch this creep the better.’

Nas and Tibbsy nodded and gathered up their notes.

‘So you’re just going to ignore @Apollyon?’ In the corner of her eye, Freddie saw a message alert flash across her locked phone. And another. And another.

‘It’s not a question of ignoring,’ Moast said.

There was another, flickering across her screen: what the hell was going on?

‘It’s a question of process,’ Nas was saying.

‘Hang on,’ Freddie held her palm up. ‘Something’s happening.’ She heard Nasreen’s hands close round the file she was holding.

‘What?’ asked Tibbsy. ‘Is it another clue?’

Freddie slid her thumb across her phone and clicked onto Twitter. She had 57 messages.
What the hell?
Clicking into her notifications, her screen scrolled with mentions.

What the hell was going on? She was being tagged into a
Family Paper
link. She clicked. The screen widened into the newspaper article. Freddie’s mouth hung open. There, on the homepage of
The Family Paper
, was a photo of her in a bikini, taken when she was fifteen at a friend’s barbecue birthday party. She was straddling a bottle of Cider White and pulling what she’d thought then was her best sexy duck face. They’d pixelated her right breast to make it look like the original image flashed a nipple. It didn’t. Emblazoned across it was the headline:
The Truth About The #Murder Journalist.
‘Son of a bitch!’

‘What’s he said?’ Tibbsy asked.

‘Is it another tweet, Freddie, I can’t see it.’ Nasreen had her own mobile out now.

‘They’ve outed me!’ Furiously, Freddie skimmed the article:

‘What are you talking about?’ Moast snatched the phone from her hand.

‘No!’ Freddie watched as his eyebrows travelled up his forehead.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Moast turned the phone toward them all, revealing a photo of Freddie in a police jacket and suspenders and the word ‘pigs’ on a sticky label on the fancy dress helmet.

‘Whoa! Nice pins, Venton,’ Tibbsy whistled.

‘It was a joke. Fancy dress party. Uni. Years ago. They’ve been on my site. They must have pulled it from there.’ Rage and embarrassment burned through Freddie.

‘Oh, this is just perfect.’ Moast was scrolling through the article. ‘
DCI Moast, who appeared flummoxed by the presence of Miss Venton in a recent press conference…
’

‘Sir, I’m sure it’s not that bad.’ Nas’s eyebrows threatened to meet.

‘You’re in here too, Cudmore.’ Moast tapped at the phone.

‘What?’ Nasreen’s hand flew to her mouth.

‘There, see? They’ve even got a photo of you.’ Moast waved the phone around.
‘Sergeant Nasreen Cudmore, who poured her curves into a fetching two-piece suit for the press conference, is known to have attended a well-respected school with the unlikely consultant, Miss Venton
.’

‘Hey! Why haven’t I got a mention?’ Tibbsy asked, peering over Moast’s shoulder. ‘You look good though, Cudmore. They’ve even told people where you can buy that suit. Karen Millen. Very nice.’

‘Shut up, Tibbsy!’ Nasreen smacked his arm with the back of her hand. ‘Are they allowed to do this?’

‘Christ.’ Freddie sat back on the table behind her and let her face fall into her hands. No wonder the troll army were out for her this morning. How could Sandra do a number on her? How could she expose her like this? She’d written for them for free for years. She’d never seen her as an equal, had she? Never considered her to be a colleague. Just a bloody content driver.

‘What the hell did you say to them?’ Moast was still waving the phone in front of her. His cheeks inflamed, his eyes bulging.

‘Nothing. I swear. Why the hell would I give them photos like that?’ Freddie’s anger at Sandra seethed round every word she spoke.

‘You were told: no more talking to the press.’ Moast slammed her phone face first down onto the table to his side.

‘Hey! Watch it!’ Freddie grabbed the phone, checking the screen wasn’t damaged. ‘This is not my fault. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Venton.’

Freddie’s phone vibrated in her hand. ‘It’s him.’

‘I said shut it.’ Moast swiped at his hair. ‘Cudmore go get me a fucking coffee, I can’t think with all this going on.’

‘Don’t pour your curves in the cup, hey Sarg?’ Tibbsy said.

‘Put a lid on it, Tibbsy,’ Moast snapped.

Freddie stared at her phone. At the link to the photo she’d opened. ‘Will someone please listen to me! @Apollyon has tweeted.’

‘Shit,’ Tibbsy said.

‘Show me.’ Moast’s voice was calm.

Nas held out her own phone, like an offering. ‘It’s Sophie Phillips’ room.’ Moast put the phone down on the table and they all looked.

‘Lilac walls, purple duvet, butterfly stencils above the bed. Sophie Phillips’ room,’ Freddie said. There was no hiding it.

‘But no body?’ said Nasreen.

Tibbsy whistled through his teeth. ‘I wonder when he took it?’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Freddie. There were no words with the tweet, just the photo.

Moast rubbed at the uneven stubble on his chin. ‘It means whoever is tweeting from that account is
either the killer or has one hell of a coincidental access to both crime scenes before and after the murders.’

‘It’s a message,’ said Nas. ‘Only those close to Sophie Phillips and us would know that’s the crime scene, sir.’

Moast blew air through his teeth. ‘He’s taunting us.’

‘Freddie’s right: @Apollyon is our killer,’ Nas said. ‘And the tweets, these clues, they’re from him. He’s toying with us.’

Moast looked grim. ‘It would seem so.’

Finally they were agreeing with her, but Freddie felt no satisfaction. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. ‘Apollyon’s conducting the whole thing online. All in front of an audience.’

‘Yes,’ said Moast. He gathered himself. ‘We need to double back over what we’ve done and align it with what Venton has compiled on the online usage of Apollyon, Mardling and Sophie Phillips. Get the IT bods up to speed with this latest development, and have everything they’ve found compared with the results of our door-to-door enquiries and canvassing of friends and family. I want two timelines: one of the victims’ movements in reality, and one of their, and Apollyon’s, activity online.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Nas.

‘Sir,’ Tibbsy nodded.

Freddie felt the air compress around her as she watched the team realise what they were up against. This was a sick, gruesome performance, and the anonymous Apollyon was calling the shots.