Page 15 of Watching You

‘No one home,’ Lively told Salter as she pulled up at the unit in the caravan park near Buckstone. ‘Looks like you might have found our man.’

‘We should let the superintendent know and ask her to expedite the entry warrant.’

‘It’s a caravan, not a house, and the man who lives there appears to be dead. Plus, he’s on a database.’

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 small bedroom 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 put this 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.

‘He left us his passwords,’ Salter explained. ‘Dr Woolwine, about the entry, we were concerned that vital evidence was in danger of being lost if we didn’t enter immediately so there wasn’t time—’

‘Hey, you’re not answerable to me. I’m only here to deal with the offender side of things.

But warrants don’t matter if there’s no risk of defence counsel striking out a charge, and given that Mr Abnay is never going to be arrested for anything, even though he clearly should have been, I really don’t care how you got in.

’ Connie gave a low, appreciative whistle as she looked up at the crudely decorated ceiling.

‘This man was never breast fed, and he never got past first base with a girl. It’s like an Oedipal crisis centre in here.

Such a shame that insects destroyed his penis before he ever got a chance to use it. ’

‘I take back everything I said about her,’ Lively muttered to Salter.

‘Don’t do that,’ Connie said, slapping him on the back as she moved past him to get into the bedroom area, snapping on gloves as she went.

‘I much prefer my male underlings to dislike me. Keeps everything that little bit more edgy.’ She gave Salter a wide grin as she began pulling out Abnay’s bedside drawers.

‘Man, for a guy with no chance whatsoever of getting laid, this guy was holding onto a lifetime supply of condoms. It’s good to know he didn’t die without hope. ’

‘What was the party he was planning, ma’am?’ Salter asked.

‘It’s Christie, right?’ Connie asked. Salter nodded. ‘You don’t have to call me ma’am. We’re equals here. In my hometown, if you get called ma’am you’re either past your eightieth birthday, you teach at the high school, or you’ve really pissed off law enforcement.’

‘The latter might well apply to you to be fair,’ Lively smirked.

‘And that’s why you get to call me ma’am every time you speak to me,’ Connie countered.

‘The WATFOR group have spent the last six months contemplating how to kidnap multiple prostitutes at the same time on the same evening, delivering them to rural woodland and engaging in what they call a rape-chase.’

‘Holy shit, it never ends,’ Salter said.

‘Aren’t those women’s lives hard enough without people planning to do that to them?

’ She pulled the kickboard away from below the oven and took out a package wrapped in brown parcel paper, peeling the layers away carefully.

‘He’s got a Taser and a flick knife here.

He was either expecting something or preparing for something. ’

‘And we have a ball gag, cable ties and a blindfold in the bedside table, although they look unused which isn’t surprising in the circumstances.

There’s not a woman alive who would come in here and not realise immediately that she was dealing with a man who would be as capable of giving her pleasure as a snake is capable of juggling.

God, these bedcovers smell disgusting. Lively, see if there’s any clue on his email as to his mobile number, and get the tech squad to examine his computer in situ.

I don’t want to risk turning it off and on again.

The hard drive has to be copied as a priority. ’

‘Actually, ma’am, we shouldn’t move the computer at all. If he’s accessing those incel sites through a specific network here, we don’t want to change his IP address. He might get shut out and we probably won’t get back in,’ Lively said.

Connie stood, put her hands on her hips, and gave a low whistle. ‘Nice, sergeant. Not just a pretty face then.’

‘It’s called police work, in fact. It’s my speciality.’ He folded his arms and stared at her.

‘Ooh, I’m sensing a challenge. What’s your first name, sergeant? I don’t think I ever heard anyone use it.’

‘Lively,’ he said.

‘Okay, Lively Lively it is. You’re a sceptic, that’s fine. I actually think that’s a healthy starting point.’

Salter stopped what she was doing and turned to watch. Connie Woolwine sat in the middle of the caravan, cross-legged on the floor, and closed her eyes for a moment.

‘Shut the door would you please, Christie?’ Connie asked.

When the place was dark, Connie took out her mobile and shone the torchlight at the ceiling.

‘Dale Abnay isn’t whole. He’s not a whole man.

Look at the layering of images here. He’s plastered over other women, leaving only their sex organs on display in many cases.

These are pieces of women. He was craving the idea of a woman, the one part of them he’d never had access to.

But it’s also a reflection of him not being a whole man.

The only piece of himself he could focus on was his penis because there was this huge element of himself that wasn’t being used as it was intended.

And he knew with absolute certainty that he was never going to get a woman back here willingly, because there’s no way the place would look like this if he thought that might happen. ’

She switched off the torch and sat quietly in the darkness for half a minute. Neither Salter nor Lively disturbed her.

‘Do you smell that, beneath the odour of soiled sheets and the food that’s burned onto the bottom of the oven?’ She breathed in deeply. Lively and Salter did the same. ‘There’s musk and sandalwood. Something with a hint of spice to it and warmth, like cedar and cinnamon. Know what that is?’

‘Aftershave?’ Salter offered quietly.

‘Yes and no,’ Connie said. ‘It’s actually something much more toxic. It’s hope.’

‘The wee fucker still thought he might get some,’ Lively said. ‘Even with all this shit over his walls.’

‘Exactly. It was a delusion, and a dangerous one, because he was still hopeful, and every time that hope was unfulfilled and his attentions went unrequited, Abnay grew more angry and more lonely and more desperate. He turned to his incel groups online to find men like himself because misery loves company.’

‘Was he dangerous? I mean, given the opportunity, would he have been a threat to a woman on her own?’

Connie stood and moved across the caravan to open the door. Fresh air flowed in with the daylight and as one they drew in a new breath.

‘It’s possible that’s what he was trying to figure out,’ Connie said. ‘Given what we know about Dale Abnay now, I’m not sure he strikes me as the hiking and art appreciation hobbyist that Jupiter Artland normally attracts.’

‘So what was he doing there?’ Lively asked.

‘That’s my question too,’ Connie murmured. ‘Maybe fantasising about how it would feel to chase women through woodland? The question is, did he go there with someone, or did someone follow him, or did something happen while he was there that enraged someone enough to kill him?’

A uniformed officer entered at a run. ‘Something’s happening in the centre of the city,’ she blurted.