Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (36)

‘When?’

McGorry handed her another CCTV image printout, this time of Shawn. He was standing in the same place as Vicky and looking up at the camera.

‘He looks like he’s seen a ghost,’ said Erika, peering in at the haunted look on his grey face. His long hair hung limply around his shoulders and he was wearing denim jeans and a thin denim jacket. ‘What time was this taken?’

‘The time stamp is 4.25pm,’ said McGorry. Erika looked back at the other printouts.

‘That’s half an hour after Vicky was in the same spot,’ she said. ‘If they were both heading towards the station, they must have met. Does he get on the bus?’

‘No, but hopefully the train station CCTV, when it arrives, will tell us more,’ said Crane.

‘Where do trains from Blackheath station go? Apart from London Bridge?’

‘All over the place: Beckenham, Crystal Palace, Bexley Heath, Stratford, Trafalgar Square, Erith in Kent.’

‘And presumably if she travelled down to Kent, then Vicky could have accessed the Channel Tunnel trains. Have we checked her passport data?’ asked Erika.

‘Yes, she hasn’t left the country using her passport,’ said McGorry.

‘If we don’t see her or Shawn at Blackheath train station, I’ll need to request more eyes on a wider pool of CCTV footage,’ said Crane.

Erika nodded. ‘Of course. And guys, this is really good work. Bloody fast work. Well done.’

‘Erika, I’ve just got the deets back on Vicky’s hard drive from cyber crime,’ said Peterson, who was working in the far corner of the incident room. She moved through the busy desks to where Peterson was sitting at the back. She realised that she’d left Bed World last night without updating him on why she was leaving so abruptly. In other times she had always kept her close team members up to date. She shook the thought away.

‘What did they find?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. She’d wiped it.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Peterson shook his head.

‘I thought that even if you did wipe a hard drive something could be recovered?’ said Erika, her heart sinking.

‘Vicky had an iMac computer, and, apparently, it’s possible to do a deep erase of an iOS operating system computer.’

‘What does that mean in luddite language?’ asked Erika.

‘When you erase something from a regular computer hard drive, you aren’t really erasing it, you’re just making it invisible, and it can be recovered. What Vicky did was erase the data and overwrite it repeatedly with random letters and numbers.’

‘And can anyone do that?’

‘With an iMac or MacBook, yes.’

‘Did they find anything else? Did she have anything in the cloud?’

‘There was nothing else in her office or flat, no USB keys or data drives. They’re working on her cloud account, but they don’t have a password, and that’s the problem.’

‘Shit. How easy will it be to get into her stuff stored in the cloud…? I can see by your face that the answer is not very easy,’ she said.

‘We’d need to get a court order. It can be a long process and then there is always some pushback. This isn’t an international or domestic terrorism case.’

Erika stared at the email from the cyber unit on Peterson’s screen.

‘What data would she have that she didn’t want us to see? I presume that she had her bank details, photos, she also used the computer to produce her podcasts. Why would she delete all of that?’

‘What do you want to do next?’ asked Peterson.

‘Shawn Macavity lied to us about being near Vicky’s flat on Monday afternoon. He said he was at home all day before he went to work. Let’s bring him in for a little chat.’





24





Shawn Macavity agreed to attend an informal chat with Erika and Peterson at the station, and he came in just before lunchtime. He looked surprised when they took him to one of the small interview rooms.

‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked. He looked a little like Erika felt – exhausted, with huge bags under his eyes. His long hair hung in greasy hanks around his face.

‘You are free to go at any time,’ said Peterson. ‘But it would be advantageous to you if you tell us the truth.’

‘Yeah, of course,’ said Shawn. He seemed a little wired. His pupils were dilated, and he was drumming his fingers on the table. He saw Erika notice this, and sat back.

‘Let’s take things back to last Monday,’ she said. ‘You told us that you were at home in Forest Hill all afternoon, and you went to work at the Golden Lamb pub at 6pm?’

‘Yeah. Did my boss confirm that?’

‘He confirmed that you arrived at work around ten to six.’

‘Good, good,’ he said, blowing out his cheeks. ‘Yep, that’s what happened.’

‘And you were at home all day? In your flat, in Forest Hill.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How much did your acting course cost you?’ asked Erika.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, looking over at Peterson, who remained impassive.

‘I just think you should ask for your money back.’ Erika pulled out the CCTV image of Shawn at the bus stop. She slid it across the desk. ‘This is you, at four twenty-five pm on Monday 22nd at the bus stop on Morrison Road. Two hundred yards from Vicky’s flat. Quite a long way from Forest Hill.’