It was quiet when they returned, most of the team out on enquiries. A message on Clare’s desk confirmed Diane had downloaded Ingrid’s laptop data and put it on the network for Clare to access. ‘Let’s do these boxes first,’ Clare said, and they carried Ingrid’s paperwork into the incident room.
‘What are we looking for?’ Chris said, tipping the contents of his box onto a desk.
‘Anything that might indicate money worries, red bills, bank statements showing she’s overdrawn, credit cards not paid off – oh, and anything that involves another person.’
They worked systematically for the next hour. Ingrid had been methodical and her papers were in a logical order.
‘Nothing here,’ Chris said, putting his hands up to massage his neck. ‘You?’
‘Not much. Looks like she was solvent, paid her bills, wasn’t extravagant. A couple of old photos in an envelope. Might be useful.’ She held them out for Chris to see. ‘Any in your pile?’
Chris shook his head. ‘Probably all digital now.’
Clare nodded. ‘I suppose so. Speaking of digital…’ she pulled a laptop across the desk and pressed the button to bring it to life. ‘Let’s have a look at her emails and social networking.’ Clare moved the laptop to the centre of the table so they could both see the screen and she called up the files Diane had downloaded. Ingrid’s emails ran into the thousands and Clare groaned as she saw how much data there was to trawl through. ‘Let’s limit it to the past six months,’ she said. ‘If that doesn’t show up anything we can go further back.’
She sorted the emails by sender and began scrolling. A good few hundred of them were from online shops and she scrolled quickly through these. The Tradgear emails were mostly from the company’s head office, relating to the usual employment matters. ‘Nothing there,’ she muttered, scrolling further down.
‘Stop,’ Chris said suddenly. ‘Go back up – yep, there.’
He jabbed the screen. ‘Isn’t that a dating site?’
Clare looked and she felt her face redden. He was right. It was a dating site.
It was Attracto.
She searched for further emails from the site and found around twenty. There were some concerning Ingrid’s registration, others with advice about staying safe and there were a few informing Ingrid that someone had Liked her profile.
‘We need to follow these up,’ Clare said, noting down the names.
‘Might not be so easy,’ Chris said. ‘I mean, what if they’ve not given contact details? They could be using a disposable email address.’
Clare thought back to the registration process she had gone through. She hadn’t been asked for her home address, only email and a mobile number. Anyone not wanting to be traced could even have had a pay-as-you-go mobile. She wondered if members received an email if they Liked someone else’s profile. If not, how would they know who Ingrid herself had Liked. ‘It would help if we had her login,’ she said.
‘Tell you what,’ Chris said, pulling the laptop towards himself and opening up the Google search page. ‘We might see more if one of us was a member.’ He typed Attracto into the search box and clicked when the sign-up page appeared.
‘Oh,’ Clare said, wondering how to stop him. ‘I wouldn’t, Chris. I mean, Sara – she’d go mad if she…’
‘Don’t be daft. I’m only going to register for a look. I’ll delete it after.’
‘No,’ Clare said. ‘Leave it. We can get Diane onto cracking Ingrid’s password.’
‘Too late, I’m in. Ooh, look – it shows who’s joined in the past twenty-four hours.’ He began scrolling down then he stopped and stared at Clare.
She glanced at him quickly then looked away again. ‘Think I’ll just get us some coffee.’
‘That’s your Benjy, isn’t it?’ he said.
Clare scraped back her chair and walked from the room. Chris followed her into the staff kitchen and watched while she busied herself at the kettle, spooning coffee into mugs, all with her back towards him.
‘Clare…’
‘Just forget it, Chris. I’d had too much wine last night and it seemed like a good idea at the time. And anyway,’ she added, making an effort to sound bright, ‘I thought it might help us find out more about Alison.’
Chris was silent for a moment then said, ‘But Geoff…’
She turned to face him, her hands on the sink behind her. ‘What about him?’
‘I thought…’
‘Then you thought wrong.’
‘Did he…’
‘No. It was me. I decided it had gone on long enough. Him over there, thousands of miles away, me here – it’s stupid. It was stopping both of us getting on with our lives.’
Chris stood for a minute, processing this while Clare poured boiling water into mugs. Then he said, ‘Was he upset?’
She put down the kettle. ‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ She stirred milk into the mugs and handed one to Chris. ‘More surprised than anything else.’
‘He didn’t ask you to reconsider?’
‘Nope. And that – that dating site, well it was part curiosity after Zoe going on about it and part…’ she broke off, sipping her coffee as she thought, ‘…partly a feeling that life is passing me by, Chris. I’m not getting any younger and I don’t think I want to be alone.’
‘Think?’
She shrugged. ‘Who knows. I like my house, my life – maybe things not working out with Geoff is down to me not wanting to compromise. Maybe I’m not marriage material.’
‘And you’d like to be married?’
She shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ She met his eye and forced a smile.
‘But… Attracto, Clare? I mean – with this investigation – you’re not seriously going to…’
‘No of course not,’ she bit back. ‘I just wanted to see who was on the site. And I really did think it might help with this case,’ she added.
He didn’t look convinced but said nothing further.
Clare smiled. ‘So, enough introspection. Let’s get back to Ingrid. Can you check through her social media accounts while I try to get hold of Diane?’
Chris headed back to the incident room while Clare called Diane’s number. It went straight to voicemail so she left a message asking if Diane could find Ingrid’s Attracto password. Then she joined Chris who was scanning Ingrid’s Facebook data. ‘Just over a hundred friends,’ he said. ‘Not too many.’
‘Can you see Messenger?’
He scrolled again. ‘Here you go.’
They read through the messages. ‘Lots of photos,’ Chris muttered. ‘Mostly holiday snaps and friends with babies.’
‘Okay. Let’s try WhatsApp.’
Chris navigated to the WhatsApp data. ‘Looks like she’s in a few groups.’
‘We’ll have to go through them all. Ooh, look at this one…’ Clare indicated a group which was called Schoolies. ‘School pals, probably,’ she said. ‘See if Alison Reid’s in the group.’
Chris scrolled through the names. ‘Nope. Unless she’s using a pseudonym.’
‘Dammit. I was hoping there would be something linking them. Keep looking.’
There was a family group with Ingrid’s parents and a Tradgear group for staff which seemed to be mainly about shift swaps and climbing trips. They scrolled through the other messages looking for possible connections with Alison Reid.
‘What’s this one?’ Clare said, spotting a group called LPS.
Chris scrolled through the group data. There seemed to be a lot of members with different conversations going on. And then they saw a photo. It was of a school class in three rows, the first sitting cross-legged on the floor, the middle row sitting on a long bench and the back row standing. ‘Looks like a school group,’ Chris said. ‘LPS…’
‘Lamond Primary School,’ Clare said. ‘Check for Alison Reid.’
‘She’s there!’
‘Great. Now we’re getting somewhere.’
‘Are we though?’ Chris frowned. ‘I’m not sure how this helps us. The McKinnies already told us Ingrid and Alison were at school together.’
Clare’s face fell. ‘Yes, of course. But it does look like they were in the same class. And it’s pretty unusual for two murder victims to have been at school together. Even in a small town.’ She sat forward in her seat. ‘Let’s look for conversations they both took part in.’
It took twenty minutes to sift through all the threads in the group but there seemed to be no direct interaction between Alison and Ingrid. There were suggestions of a school reunion in the spring but it didn’t look as if it had gone beyond a discussion.
‘Dammit,’ Clare said. ‘I was hoping for something there.’
‘If it’s not a link, Clare, we’re as well finding out now.’
‘Suppose. They were both on Attracto, though. That’s quite a coincidence.’ She sat back, thinking, then said, ‘We need to compare any men – or women – both Alison and Ingrid had in common.’
‘Want me to call Diane back? See if she can save us some time on that?’
Clare was about to answer when Janey and Robbie came into the room.
‘Robbie thinks he has something,’ Janey said. Her expression said otherwise but Robbie ignored this.
‘It’s in the kitchen, boss,’ he said. ‘Alison’s.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, everything’s really tidy. Like the neighbour said. All the dishes and mugs neatly stacked. Even the mug handles turned the same way.’
‘And?’
‘The wine glasses. There’s two missing.’
Clare looked at him. ‘How can you tell?’
‘She’s got six of everything. Six dinner plates, six bowls, six matching mugs, even the cutlery. Six beer glasses, six champagne flutes… but only four wine glasses.’
‘Maybe she only had four,’ Chris said.
‘That’s what I told him,’ Janey said, but Robbie shook his head.
‘The cupboard where she keeps the glasses – there’s space for six. You can see how she’s arranged them.’ He held out his phone. ‘Flick through the photos.’
Clare took the phone and began swiping through photos of Alison Reid’s kitchen cupboards. ‘Mm. See what you mean, Robbie. I think if she’d only had four she’d have spaced them out more.’
‘She could have broken them,’ Chris said. ‘Not had time to get replacements.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Robbie went on, ‘but remember that cork we never found a bottle for…’
‘Checked the bin again?’
‘Yep. Nothing there.’
‘Bedroom?’ Clare asked, although she doubted someone as tidy as Alison Reid would have left dirty wine glasses lying around.
‘Nope.’
Clare motioned to them to sit down. ‘So why would two wine glasses be missing? Let’s think what we know.’
‘She was at home,’ Chris began. ‘Drank some wine…’
‘Must have had a visitor,’ Janey said, ‘for two glasses to be missing. And that food in the oven, remember. You don’t eat a dozen sausage rolls yourself.’
Clare nodded. ‘Go on, Janey.’
‘Whoever it is comes in – maybe brings wine, they share a glass, visitor slips Rohypnol into Alison’s glass then kills her.’
‘But why take the bottle and glasses away?’ Chris said.
‘DNA, probably,’ Clare said. ‘Fingerprints too.’
Chris frowned. ‘Seems a bit OTT, unless it’s someone whose prints and DNA are already on the system.’
‘Yeah, could be.’ Clare sat, considering this. Then she glanced at her watch. ‘Can you get everyone back here for two please, Chris?’ She rose from her seat. ‘I’m going to try Diane again. We need to get into these Attracto accounts. If there is someone on the dating site who’s picking off women, we’d better find him – and quickly.’