Ghost in the Machine (12 page)

"No, you don't." McNeill grabbed the phone out of his hands. "You're giving us headings and anything else Mr Kidd here needs to unpick this."

Aitchison slumped back in his chair. "Fine. Duncan will note the relevant fields and tables."

"And I need primary keys, joins and all that," said Kidd.

Cullen thought it sounded good but he had no idea what Kidd was talking about - he hoped Wilson and Aitchison did.

"Fine, fine," said Aitchison.

Kidd reached into his pocket, retrieving a Lothian & Borders branded memory stick. "Put it on here." He looked at McNeill. "We're going to have to set up an extranet socket to get the full database though."

"That's for the lawyers to agree," said Aitchison. "As I've said, we're a law-abiding company."

Kidd pointed at Aitchison's screen. "If you're so law abiding, how come you've got ten torrents running?"
 

Aitchison blushed. "They're all legal."

McAllister got up and kicked the chair back under the desk. He glared at Cullen, a look of fury in his eyes, then marched off towards the exit without saying anything.

Cullen called after him. "Get back here."

McAllister stood in the doorway and laughed at Cullen. "No way, pal. I'll see you the morn's morn." He turned around and left the Incident Room.

The room was half empty, with most officers either on phone calls or out of the station on one of the many investigations Bain was running. Cullen breathed a sigh of relief - hardly anyone had witnessed the exchange, only Caldwell had really been paying attention. He sat in his chair and leaned back, his heart thudding from the confrontation.

"McAllister's an arse," said Caldwell from across the desk.

Cullen rubbed the back of his neck. "I know that, but I'm the one who'll look bad."

"No, you won't. Just speak to Bain, get him reallocated."

"Yeah, I would if I thought it would do any good." Cullen put his pen on the desk and rubbed his eyes. "What time are you in till tonight?"

"I'm on the back shift. Ten."

Cullen picked up McAllister's sheet and scanned it. "Jesus Christ. It's worse than I thought. He's only done
two
. What the fuck's he been doing all day?"

Caldwell sighed. "Smoking and drinking coffee. I worked with him on the beat a few years ago. He's the laziest person I've ever met."

"How do these people not get found out?"

"Here." She took the sheet off him. "We'll split the remainder. I've finished mine."

"Already?"

"Aye, but I must have had the easy list, and I didn't have to go over to Schoolbook. Not that it got us anywhere, mind." She pointed to her laptop. "Six of them had emailed Caroline about films from the discussion boards, three of them hadn't seen her since school and the other five were acquaintances from university who hadn't seen her since 2002. I've just been typing the notes up. How are you getting on?"

Cullen looked through his own list. "I've done nine."

"Well, I'll take eight off Willie's list. You take the other four."

"Make it nine and five," said Cullen. "I don't trust he's done the first two correctly."

She smiled. "Race you."

"What does the winner get?"

"Not to write the report up?"

Cullen laughed. "You're on."

"Enough flirting, you pair."

Bain stood behind them, hands on his hips.

"We weren't-"

"Leave it, Cullen." Bain crossed the Incident Room to his desk and sat down, cracking open a can of energy drink.
 

Cullen followed him over, pulling up the chair next to him. "There's something I need to speak to you about."

Bain huffed. "Cullen, if you love me, I've told you - when we're off duty."

"This is serious."

Bain put his feet up on the desk and took a long look at Cullen. "Right, go on then. Fire away."

"It's McAllister. His attitude's bad. He's only completed two calls all day, which we reckon we'll have to redo. Caldwell's finished her list already. He's dead weight."

Bain yawned. "He's resource, unfortunately." He took another sip. "You struggling to manage him?"

Cullen paused, realising he shouldn't have taken this to Bain. Any problem would inevitably be seen as a result of Cullen's inadequacies. "He's unmanageable."

Bain eyed him, seemed to make a judgment. "I'll see what I can do. The door-to-door might be more his thing." He winked at Cullen. "This managing people thing is a learning curve, Sundance."

Cullen was fed up with being patronised. "I suppose it must be."

Bain drained the can then crushed it. "How did it go with that RIPSA form? Am I going to get a doing for it?"

"We sort of got what we wanted."

"Sort of doesn't sound good," said Bain.

"We were after the full data set, but they just gave us the Martin Webb stuff."

"Do we need the rest of it?"

"It could prove useful," said Cullen.

"Could and useful aren't good enough," said Bain. "We're trying to get personal data about members of the public. We've got to have a very good reason for that."

"Well, I'll leave it for you to arrange getting the rest of it," said Cullen.

Bain smiled broadly, a twinkle in his eye. "Sneaky little bastard, aren't you?"

Cullen tried to laugh along, to see if that made him stop.

"Speaking of sneaky wee bastards," said Bain, "where the fuck's Miller?"

"Thought you had him looking through the CCTV footage from the hotel after the HOLMES stuff?"

"Aye, but he can't be taking that long, can he?" said Bain.

"Why do you need him?" said Cullen. "Surely if there's anything on there, he'll find you."

"Aye, maybe." Bain smacked his hand on a brown envelope lying on his desk. "Got Caroline Adamson's mobile records from the Forensic Investigation boys. I wanted Miller to look through it. Maybe that way he'll keep out of Turnbull's way."

"How's it going up at the hotel?"

"Wilko's making an arse of it as usual." Bain shook his head. "Chantal and Irvine have interviewed everyone who was there that night and they've turned up absolutely nothing. Now they're trying to find everyone who's stayed there over the last week. Needle in a bloody haystack." He exhaled. "Have to wait and see what happens when the press release goes out."

"Well, if you don't need me," said Cullen, "I'll go back to flirting with PC Caldwell."

Cullen walked through the Technical Support Unit office on the fifth floor of the station. While the building had only been open a matter of months, the tech guys had already made the place look like a pigsty, their desks covered in junk - soft drink bottles, bags of crisps and tortilla chips, fast food containers, nothing natural or nutritious in sight, not that coppers were much better. The window blinds were all closed despite it being the middle of summer, making Cullen feel like he was in the mortuary.

Kidd's desk was an IT paradise - two big flat panel displays, four desktop units and a wealth of dark grey boxes, all with various unobvious interfaces tangled together by a nest of cables covering the entire top. He was ploughing through a screen of data, which looked like gibberish.

Cullen gave up waiting for Kidd to notice him. "Have you finished extracting the data yet?"
 

Kidd jumped off his seat. "Christ, Cullen, you gave us a fright."

"Sorry."

Kidd started playing with his ponytail. "What was it you wanted?"

"How are you getting on with the extract?" said Cullen.

Kidd pointed at the screen of gibberish on the right-hand panel. "Here's the raw data."

Cullen could make out certain text fields and dates, things like that, but it was mostly full of odd characters.

Kidd pointed to the screen on the left. "And here it is all tidied up."

A big table showed information on Martin Webb. Kidd scrolled down the page, showing messages between Webb and Caroline Adamson.

"This looks great," said Cullen. "Can you print it out?"

"It's already spooling," said Kidd.

"Cheers," said Cullen. "Did you get an IP address or anything out of it?"

"That's my next task," said Kidd. "Shouldn't take too long, really."

"Good. Is there anything else we can do?"

"Aye." Kidd pointed to the image of Martin Webb on his profile. "I was thinking earlier, you can see why she'd go on a date with this punter."

"How?"

"Well, I'm not gay," said Kidd, "but he looks like a model."

Cullen looked at the image and saw his point. "Aye, he does."

"Want me to run a search for him?" said Kidd. "That's something I can actually do. We've got access to image banks all the law enforcement agencies pay for. They mostly use it for anti-terrorist stuff, but I think this would be a good excuse as any. Google are going to introduce a public one soon."

"What does it do?"

"Searches every image on the internet, looking for a match," said Kidd.

"So we can see where else Martin Webb has used this image?" said Cullen. "And maybe who he actually is?"

"Aye," said Kidd. "Are you with me?"

Cullen thought about it for a moment. "Right, do it." He collected the printout and headed back downstairs.

*
*
*

Cullen's eyes were stinging - he'd had his contacts in for over thirty-six hours. The words on the pages were starting to dance before him. He either needed sleep or more coffee.

The bulk of the messages he'd read were between Caroline Adamson and Martin Webb. They mostly tallied with the story Cullen had collated so far, as vague as it was. He found some potentially useful nuggets, though they were mostly about Caroline. There were messages between her and a few of her other friends, such as Steve Allen. Cullen realised the extract they'd received was obviously not fully secure, as it contained other users' messages, but he wasn't in a hurry to tell Schoolbook.

He scribbled a note in the margin to follow up on Martin being in town on business at the time and therefore wasn't an Edinburgh resident. It was likely another tale he had spun Caroline, but it was something that should be checked out - if they became really desperate, every business in Edinburgh could be trawled for employees visiting the city.

Cullen checked the next message, between Caroline and Debi Curtis. Caroline said she had to slam the phone down on Rob Thomson, going into detail about the number of times he had failed to show up to take his son as agreed. She complained about how much it cost her. Cullen initially thought she meant having Jack, but it quickly became apparent she didn't resent her son. She did resent her ex-husband not meeting his responsibilities, stopping her from going out and having a social life.

The next alarmed him - it was from Debi Curtis. He checked his notebook - she'd said she hadn't replied to the message from Caroline. He read it again and almost fell off his seat - the message was between Debi Curtis and Martin Webb.

His pulse started racing as he scanned through it.

"Hey Martin! That was really funny what you said on Caroline's message board. I think exactly the same thing about that film - really tedious. I can't believe she likes it. Have you seen
Superbad
? It's much better. Debi x"

Cullen realised Debi was introducing herself to Martin, similar to the way Martin had introduced himself to Caroline - using a conversation on a forum.

Cullen flicked through the remaining sheets - in amongst the messages between Caroline and Martin was a rich seam between Debi and Martin. He turned to the last few sheets and check the final one - it was from Martin to Debi, sent that morning.

"Hey Debi. See you there. x"

He looked at the previous message. Debi gave Martin Webb her home address. They were meeting at half six.

Cullen's hand shook as he checked his watch - it was just before seven.

Debi

Saturday 30th July, 6.30pm

Debi Curtis sat waiting in her living room. Where was he?

Fifteen minutes late and he hadn't phoned. If he'd warned her, she could have done something useful like getting stuck into the MBA work or cleaning the house again.

She was so nervous. She didn't need this.

The buzzer sounded.

She shot over to it and answered. "Hello?"
 

"Hi, Debi, it's Martin."

She buzzed him up and opened the flat door, listening to him trudge up the stairs, slow and steady. She looked at the wall opposite, nervous of making eye contact too early.

A fist slammed into her face.

Bain acted quickly, resisting bringing an Armed Response Unit in, telling Cullen he preferred to take those around him, those he could trust. Or as near to trust as Bain got, Cullen thought.
 

Those he trusted include Cullen and McNeill alongside Caldwell and two other uniforms. They stood outside Debi Curtis' flat on Bryson Road, a low-end street in the west side of Edinburgh between Gorgie and Fountain Park. The flats on this stretch were all brick, unusual for the city.

"Remember, we're to be subtle here, okay?" Bain looked around the officers. "Cullen, Caldwell, I want you in the flat with me. The rest of you cover the exits - two at the back, two on the street. Let's go."

The stairwell door was propped open with a flower pot. Debi Curtis' flat was on the first floor. The carpeted stairs were straight with a landing at each half turn, not the curving stairwells Cullen was used to. There were a few neglected pot plants in the space between the two flat doors.

Bain marched up to Debi's door and knocked. "Ms Curtis, this is the police. Please open the door."

He waited a few seconds. Nothing.

"Right, Cullen," said Bain. "Break it down."

Cullen had done this a few times before in his uniform days in Livingston. The trick was to lead with the shoulder. It took him three clear attempts before it gave way, the lock splintering open, the door still on the hinges.

Bain burst past as Cullen clutched his shoulder.

A scream came from the room immediately to the right.