Page 5

FOUR

After following Jacob in her car to the library, Gina pulled up behind him. Her phone beeped. It was a message from another weird account, and there was an image attached. Her fingers began to tremble as she read the message.

To: GinaH

From: The punisher

Subject: Sexy MOFO needs choking.

She wants to pay for hurting our brother. His brother is our brother. Hurt a brother, you hurt us all.

I’ll choke you. Horny bitch! Address???? You know you want me to.

She clicked on the attached photo. She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t ignore it. Her eyes had been superimposed onto a younger-looking face, and the body trussed up in black leather with breasts that were definitely not hers. She stared into the eyes again. The dark shading underneath along with the slight creasing that was more prominent on her left eye was a match. The black-walled bedroom and the shiny red silk sheets weren’t hers either, neither were the chains holding the woman captive.

She closed the message. She hoped the body was AI generated and not a real woman. It had to be. It looked too fake.

Bile began to rise in her throat as she thought about the freaks who were targeting her.

It was all starting up again.

Right now, she hated Stephen more than anyone in the world, and finding him would be near impossible.

As Jacob tapped on her car window, she cried out. With a banging heart, she opened the car door and forced a smile.

‘Have you just had some bad news? You looked a bit jumpy just then.’ He raised his brows.

‘Er, no. Just tired. Library’s opening.’ She inhaled and exhaled slowly a couple of times as she got out of the car and followed him towards the library.

A woman in a mini dress and huge round glasses began unlocking the glass doors. They automatically slid open and she smiled.

‘I love to see eager readers,’ she said, as she turned her back to them and retreated into the huge room filled with desks, computers and racks upon racks of books. She took her position behind the main desk and began typing.

Gina stood at the counter and held her identification up. ‘I’m DI Harte and this is DS Driscoll. We need to speak about one of your users.’ She scrolled through the photos on her work phone and opened the photo of the library card.

‘I don’t know how much I can say because of data protection,’ the woman replied with a smile.

‘A man was found dead this morning and this card and books from this library were found in his vehicle. Someone took three books out on Saturday using this card. We’re trying to identify him and you are our only hope. As you can see, the details on this card are smudged, but there is a reference number on it.’ Gina held her phone in front of the woman’s face to show her the photo of the card. ‘You will be helping us to identify him.’

She swallowed and sighed. ‘Oh no, that’s horrible news. I guess I can take a look, then. I hope it isn’t one of our regulars.’ Gina really hoped it was though.

The woman pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Let me check our system.’ She tapped a few keys on her computer while gently biting her bottom lip. ‘It appears to belong to Calvin Harris. Address, 17 Bolton Avenue.’

‘Did he come in on Saturday and check out some books? Can I see his details?’

The woman turned her screen around and Gina scrolled to his personal details at the top. Calvin Harris was in his late seventies, so he couldn’t be their John Doe.

‘Do you want me to print out everything from his account?’

Gina nodded. ‘That would be really helpful, thank you. What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Selma Allcock.’ She pointed to her name badge. ‘Might take a while to print this lot out. Looks like it goes back twenty years. That’s not to say the account isn’t older, we just had a different system then.’ The librarian paused.

‘What is it?’ Gina asked.

‘It seems he comes in for books aimed at children and teens. I guess people like reading what they like reading. I love the Goosebumps series.’ She shrugged.

‘Do you have CCTV?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Can we see your CCTV for Saturday?’

‘You want to see Calvin Harris?’ She glanced back at the screen. ‘I can see that he took those books out using our manual system over there at twelve minutes past eleven in the morning.’ She nodded towards the counter containing a computer and a drop-off box for returns. ‘Bear with me.’ Selma hurried over to another computer and began clicking away. ‘Here he is.’

Gina and Jacob walked around and leaned over the screen to take a look. She could see it was their dead man – he was even wearing the same shirt – but one thing was for sure, he was not Calvin Harris.

Another woman walked in and placed her bag down before staring at Gina. ‘Selma, what’s going on?’

Selma looked up. ‘One of our users has been found dead. Rona, you were working on Saturday, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, and I recognise that creep.’