‘He’s a thieving little con artist.’
Those were the words Rhimes had used when Pellacia had told him of his bright idea to give Ezra Williams a job at the SCU, two weeks after Ezra had been released from Coldingly prison.
Ezra had replied, ‘It takes one to know one,’ as he peeled back the plastic film from the container of sweet curry sauce.
Rhimes had muttered something unintelligible as he bit into his quarter pounder and Ezra had said, ‘This is a breach of my human rights, bruv.’
Ezra had reluctantly turned up at the SCU with his laptop in his bag, an electronic tag on his ankle and to Rhimes’ unspoken delight, two bacon and Egg McMuffin breakfasts. He had spent two days sitting with a laptop in the corner of the incident room before demanding that he was moved to a room where he didn’t have to look at photos of dead bodies all day.
Ramouter walked into Ezra’s office.
‘Give me one sec,’ Ezra said as he tapped away at his keyboard. ‘Right, I’m done.’ He spun around dramatically on a large leather chair that wouldn’t look out of place on the Mastermind set. ‘So, the phone?’
‘Yeah, Kennedy’s phone and his tag. Henley said that you were done with it.’
‘They will never know that I’ve even been in it,’ Ezra said proudly as he stood up, stretched and walked over to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He opened a drawer and pulled out two sealed evidence bags.
‘So, did you find anything?’ Ramouter asked, taking the phones from Ezra’s hand.
Ezra folded his arms and cocked his head. ‘Are you seriously asking me if I found something?’
‘Well, I don’t know how good you are, so I have to ask.’
‘No, you don’t. I know that you’ve googled me. Probably tried to get into the system and dig up the case files about me. You probably did it at the same time as you were trying to retrieve the Olivier case files from Archives.’
‘How do you—’
‘Think of me as SCU’s gatekeeper.’
‘So, how can I get access to the case files?’
‘Mate, you need to learn a bit of patience. Have you tried meditation?’
‘What?’
‘A little bit of mindfulness will help you before you blow a fuse. I’ve already sorted out your access to the files. It connects to a secure server. Don’t like all this cloud business.’
‘You’ve got the actual files here?’
Ezra nodded. ‘In the basement. Anyway, Kennedy’s mobile phone. Brand new. Only three months old. The SIM in it is new too. Pay-as-you-go. Only a few numbers saved. His brother, probation officer and someone called Rinse. Sounds like a dealer, if you ask me.’
‘What about text messages? WhatsApp? Messenger?’
‘Nothing. The phone was wiped clean. Texts messages empty. WhatsApp chat cleared but that’s nothing. People are idiots. They think that just because you hit delete you’re in the clear.’
‘So, you found stuff?’
Ezra walked over to a small fridge and took out a bottle of luminescent green juice. ‘The WhatsApp account number wasn’t linked to that phone, or to be more accurate the SIM that you’ve got in your hand.’
‘What was it linked to?’
‘Bruv, another SIM, phone number and handset obviously.’
Ramouter was struggling to connect the dots. He was tired. He pulled up a chair and sat down.
‘Do you want some green juice?’ Ezra extended the bottle. ‘Spinach, kale, apple, a bit of lime and ginger. Perk you right up.’
‘Nah, I’m good. So, there’s another phone?’
‘OK. Don’t get offended, but I’m going to talk to you as if you’re my grandad who spends eighty per cent of our Skype conversations showing me the bloody ceiling.’
Ramouter laughed.
‘When you register for WhatsApp you have to enter a phone number. You’re then sent a verification code by text; you enter that and then you’re up and running. Got it?’
‘Aye, got it.’
‘Right, so imagine that you need a new phone. You get the new phone and a new SIM, but for some dodgy reason you still want people to contact you on WhatsApp, but you don’t want them to have your new number.’
Ramouter nodded. So far it was all making sense.
‘So, you download WhatsApp and they ask if you want to use an existing account. Got that?’
‘Yes. Do you have details for the old number?’
‘Of course. I retrieved the number and then I did my thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘That is something that you don’t need to know the details about. All I can tell you is that I found the phone provider and that phone was full and still active up until Tuesday morning.’
‘Tuesday? But Kennedy’s body was found on Monday morning.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser. Well, it’s one of two things. Someone nicked it and was still using it until it ran out of credit. Or whoever took him still has it.’
‘Shit. What about the tag?’ asked Ramouter.
‘Now the tag was even more interesting. He was given one of those fancy tags with GPS. Not the crappy, useless one that I had. Bad for him. Good for us. It tracks everything and he was always out. Solicitors in London Bridge, Camden, Upton Park? Couldn’t pay me enough to watch West Ham but anyway.’ Ezra paused and squinted his eyes. ‘Oh yeah, Blackfriars Crown Court, Lewisham Hospital and the local library. He was a busy man, but once the curfew kicked in, he stayed put. But that’s not to say that he was such a good boy before the tag was fitted.’
‘When did they fit it?’
‘The tag was activated on 29 August.’
‘Kennedy was granted bail on the 26th. When did the signal go dead?’
‘Sixth of September at 11.47 p.m. but he wasn’t at the hostel when it went dead.’
Ezra’s eyes flicked away from Ramouter’s to where Henley was standing in the doorway, holding a coffee cup with her name spelt incorrectly on the side.
‘All right, boss. Sorry to drag you back up here.’
‘Hey, Ezra. That’s all right. What do you mean he wasn’t at the hostel?’ asked Henley.
‘Like I said,’ Ezra continued. One of the mobile phones on the desk started to ring. ‘Kennedy wasn’t at the hostel when his tag went dead. He was in Ladywell Fields.’