Page 16 of Watching You
Salter climbed out of the car and put on a fresh pair of gloves. ‘A caravan is a house. We still need a warrant. And what database are you talking about? Does he have previous?’
‘No convictions, but we have intelligence from an undercover online unit.’
‘Sir,’ a uniformed officer, who looked like they should still have been on the school football team Dale Abnay had avoided, called to them. ‘I’ve knocked on a few doors. The other residents say Abnay lived here alone. The site manager hasn’t seen him for a few months but his rent was paid by standing order so as long as no money was owed, no one was chasing him.’
‘Good work. Now find me a flathead screwdriver,’ Lively said.
‘Sarge …’ Salter broke off then sighed. ‘Fine, whatever. I’m not going to talk you out of it, am I?’
‘You’ve as much chance of stopping me as getting a drunk man to stop pissing halfway through his leak. Shall we?’ He mock bowed and let Salter go first up to the caravan door.
Blackout blinds prevented them from seeing inside, and the young constable who was now on top of the caravan confirmed that even the roof window had been covered up.
‘What was the database flag that Abnay’s name came up on?’ Salter asked.
Lively took hold of the screwdriver and wedged it into the crack between the door and the lock.
‘He was a regular user of a website called WATFOR,’ Lively said, putting his weight behind the screwdriver. ‘Pull the handle.’
‘You damage it, you’ll have to make sure it gets fixed,’ Salter said, getting a grip and making sure she was standing out of Lively’s way. ‘What’s the website? I haven’t heard of it.’
There was a metallic screech and complaining plastic, then Lively flew backwards and Salter took the full force of the door opening at her. She landed on her backside, with Lively laughing as he extended a hand to help her up.
‘WATFOR stands for Women Are There For Our Recreation. Works in more than one sense, I guess.’
‘Gross,’ Salter said, brushing herself off.
Lively had already walked inside the caravan. ‘Gross doesn’t even start to describe it,’ he replied.
Inside, the caravan was plastered in images of women, as if every edition of every adult magazine had been crammed into the tiny space and layered over one another. The only surface not covered in breasts or female genitals was the floor, and that was strewn with rubbish. At one end of the caravan was a smallbedroom and at the other was a bathroom. The middle featured a kitchen unit to one side and a put-up table opposite with a computer. The only other furniture was a set of metal shelves crammed with old videos, DVDs and magazines.
‘I don’t even want to look,’ Salter said.
‘It ain’t gonna be Shakespeare, that’s for sure,’ Lively muttered. ‘This boy must have destroyed half the Amazon rainforest with all the tissues he was getting through.’
‘Please shut up,’ Salter said. ‘Look, his computer’s here. Let’s see what we can find.’
‘Good luck with that. We’ll need a password. It’ll have to go to the nerds.’
‘Is it any wonder the tech department hates you?’ Salter asked. ‘And actually, we might not. Look at this.’ She peeled a grubby Post-it note off the top of the computer screen and waved it at Lively. ‘Apparently Mr Abnay struggled to remember his many passwords.’
‘That’ll be the only thing he and I have in common,’ Lively said. ‘Let’s see then.’
Twelve different passwords with a variety of numbers and special keys in different places had been scrawled next to web addresses, but at the core of them was always the word Thailand.
On the home screen, Lively began typing a variation of the word with different digits. ‘Thailand01!’ released the holding image and revealed a page with quick links to a jumble of different sites.
‘Girls Being Bad, Girls Being Punished, Girls Taking a Beating, Girls Getting What They Deserve, Girl Slaves …’
‘It’s incel central,’ Salter said. ‘I suddenly feel a lot less sorry about him being shoved face down into a shallow grave.’
‘And we suddenly have several million suspects. I’m not sure there’s a woman in the UK who wouldn’t have wanted to putthis dickless wee bastard into the ground. Hold on, I’m into his email. He was a food delivery driver. Probably left him free most days, working evenings and weekends.’
‘With access to lots of women’s addresses,’ Salter said. ‘What do you know about the undercover operation? They can’t compile intelligence for website use alone. He must have been suspected of committing a criminal offence.’
‘They were planning a party,’ Connie said as she entered. ‘You got into his computer already? I didn’t have you pegged as that technologically knowledgeable, DS Lively.’
Both Salter and Lively automatically stood. Connie exuded something undefinable that made people respond that way.
