Tuesday 1 February, 23:55
Loxton needed to talk to Kowalski about Szyman´ski, but she couldn’t find him anywhere in the police station and he wasn’t answering his mobile. He’d probably gone over to McDonald’s, knowing him.
She returned to the office and found Lena was back, poring over the reports of potential suspects that she’d compiled. ‘He’s got to be here somewhere,’ Lena said.
The CID office phone rang and Loxton answered it.
‘This is DI Whitcombe, night duty inspector.’
‘Evening, sir. DC Loxton here, how can I help?’
‘I’m trying to get hold of a DC Kowalski. He’s actually just accessed his and your HR personal files on his laptop and it looks like he checked your home addresses. DCs normally don’t have authority to do that, so I need to speak to him. Do you know why he’s done that?’
Loxton’s chest tightened. ‘I’ve no idea, but are you sure? I’ve just looked for him and he’s not in the building.’ Loxton thought of Anson, who had left five minutes earlier, then dismissed the idea. He didn’t need to check their personal records; somehow he’d already discovered where she lived.
‘The alarm that’s come through says the access was from the Walworth station secure Wi-Fi from the laptop registered to him. Someone could have hacked the system remotely or done it from his laptop. He’s not answering his mobile. Get him to call me back when you get hold of him and his laptop. I’ll call digital security now.’ He hung up on her.
‘Shit,’ Loxton said, and then fear gripped her. ‘Have you seen Dominik?’
Lena shook her head. ‘Is he okay?’
Loxton checked Kowalski’s desk and saw his laptop. She pressed a button on the laptop and, sure enough, Kowalski’s locked screen came up.
‘Someone’s hacked into Dominik’s laptop. I left the office empty for five minutes when I was looking for him. How long have you been back?’
‘Just a couple of minutes before you walked in. I didn’t see anyone on my way back into the building.’
‘Shit, where the hell is he?’ Someone else could be in the building and have accessed the files. She needed to know Kowalski was okay.
She ran up to the canteen, Lena following her. The door was open and she could hear someone inside. The smell of fries hit her, and Kowalski turned to look at her as she rushed in. He frowned when he saw her and Lena’s faces.
‘What’s happened?’ He stood up, looking around in alarm.
‘Someone in this building has just accessed yours and my personal records,’ Loxton said. ‘They hacked into the system using your laptop and looked up our home addresses.’
‘What the fuck?’ Kowalski threw a furtive glance into the dark corners of the canteen. ‘How have they done that? I left my laptop in the main office.’
‘The office was empty for a few minutes,’ Loxton said. ‘It’s meant to be impossible to hack into the HR system anyway.’
‘Are they still in the building?’ Kowalski asked.
Lena shook her head. ‘We don’t know.’
‘Let’s check the CCTV,’ Loxton said. It was kept in a small office behind reception and they headed down the stairs together, all of them straining their ears for any sound of an intruder nearby.
Lena checked the security system. She frowned in confusion. ‘The only people to have swiped in this evening are us and a DS Anson.’
‘I saw Anson,’ Loxton said. ‘Did he swipe out?’
‘Yeah, about seven minutes ago,’ Lena said checking her watch. ‘Looks like he didn’t come back in.’
Kowalski had logged onto the CCTV and scrolled through the screens covering the entrances and car park, rewinding at speed. Nothing except the three of them and Anson. There was no CCTV in the main office or any of the other offices. If they’d managed to get in without getting picked up, they could be moving freely through the building without being detected.
‘Could someone have gained access in the day and hidden themselves until the evening?’ Lena asked.
‘It’s possible,’ Loxton admitted. ‘This place is big enough to hide a football team in it if you wanted to.’
‘Or you could scale the wall around the car park at a CCTV blind spot and climb through an open window,’ Kowalski said. ‘But you’d have to know the station well to do that.’
Security was always poor in police stations. People were expected to try to break out of custody, not try to gain unauthorized access. There was nothing of real value for anyone to steal, only out-of-date computer equipment and tired-looking office furniture. Not a burglar’s idea of heaven. And it was normally filled with police officers, although in recent years it was becoming more like a ghost ship what with all the cuts to staffing levels.
‘Call it in, Lena,’ Kowalski said. ‘They’re probably well gone, if they were ever here, and this isn’t some online cyber hack, but we’ll search the building just in case the bastard is still hiding somewhere. Loxton and I will start at the bottom floor in the middle and work our way down the corridors. When we hit the stairwells, we’ll go up to the next floor and so on. Hopefully we’ll force them onto the top floor, and they’ll be stuck. Lena, I want you to watch the live CCTV feed, keep us updated if you see any movement. And lock the door behind you when we leave.’
‘I will,’ Lena said.
‘The stairwells won’t be covered when we’re going down the corridors,’ Loxton said. ‘They might get past us.’
‘It’s the best we can do with the three of us, and the uniform will be on their way. They’ll stop them at the outer perimeter,’ Kowalski said.
Loxton sighed. She didn’t like this.
‘Once I call this in, this place will be crawling with police officers in less than two minutes,’ Lena said, trying to reassure her, but Loxton knew just how long two minutes could be.
‘Come on, Alana.’ Kowalski was on his feet moving to the stairwell.
Lena gave Loxton a worried glance.
‘We’ll be fine, just make sure you lock this door.’ Loxton followed Kowalski into the corridor.
Kowalski pushed the double doors open and they climbed the deserted stairs. It was eerily quiet, the only noise their footsteps and her own ragged breathing. She pulled out her baton and flicked it open. The cold metal gave her comfort. Kowalski drew his baton too.
She craned her neck so she could look up the entire stairwell, but she didn’t see anyone. At the first floor she pushed open the doors as quietly as she could and checked each room on the left while Kowalski searched the offices on the right.
The robbery and burglary office normally held twenty officers and she systematically checked under the bank of desks, but there was no one there.
As she came out of the office, she heard the noise of a door closing quietly ahead of her and her heart rate sped up. The lights there were flickering on and she tried not to panic. She crept forward towards the noise, baton raised high.
The door in front of her opened a creak and she stopped as a large figure came out of the doorway.
‘Gówno!’ Kowalski said and stumbled backwards. ‘God, you’re quiet.’
‘Sorry, I thought…’ She lowered her baton, relieved that it was him. ‘Let’s try the next floor.’
At the end of the corridor she gently pushed open the double doors and Kowalski carefully closed them behind him. They waited and listened at the stairs but there was nothing. She looked down the stairwell and above her, straining her ears for the tiniest sound, but she was met with silence. If the person had ever been here, they’d either already left the building or had gone to ground, hiding in one of the offices upstairs.
On the second floor they repeated the same routine, finding no one in the canteen or offices. They climbed the final stairwell.
The top floor had smaller offices, not wide-open spaces like the first and second floors. She rushed through her side, sure the perpetrator would be hiding behind a door waiting to attack her, but again there was no one. She closed her eyes for a brief second, relieved. She’d been convinced someone was still in the station.
Her heart stopped as a crash sounded behind her, down the corridor, and then she rushed towards the noise. She saw an upturned table in one of the offices Kowalski had searched and ran to the stairwell. Kowalski was clattering down it two steps at a time. She chased after him, her lungs bursting with the effort of trying to catch up. He smashed through the fire exit and out into the walled car park, Loxton a few seconds behind him.
‘Which way?’ she shouted as she caught up.
‘I’ll go left, you go right,’ Kowalski shouted back. Before she could speak, he rushed to the car park’s security door, pushing it open and running left. She ran out of the station car park and turned the other way, sprinting down the side street that led her onto the main road. Even past midnight the high street wasn’t deserted. The few people walking along the pavements took no notice of her. She ran towards a nearby homeless person, slumped underneath a cash machine.
‘Ted, has anyone come this way in the last few seconds?’
‘Nah, love.’ He shook his head. ‘No one.’
‘Are you sure?’ Her voice was urgent and Ted sat up straighter. ‘This is important.’
‘I promise, love. I wouldn’t lie to you, you’re one of the nice ones.’ His rheumy eyes locked onto hers.
She nodded. ‘Thanks, Ted.’
She turned and ran back the way she’d come, pulling out her radio and calling up on the main Southwark channel. ‘Anything, Kowalski?’ she asked.
Kowalski’s heavy breathing was the only response and she felt her stomach tighten in concern.
‘No one,’ he managed to reply. ‘All units, they’ve left the police station. Search the nearby roads.’
‘Any description?’ A police operator asked.
‘Dark clothing, athletic build, male. That’s all I’ve got.’ The disappointment in Kowalski’s voice was palpable.
Loxton watched a police car sail past her with its headlights off. She met up with Kowalski outside the rear entrance. He shook his head at her, clearly annoyed with himself. ‘They gave me the slip. You?’
‘Ted says he didn’t see anyone and I believe him. I didn’t see them either so I can’t help with a description.’
‘They bolted from one of the offices. Nearly knocked me over with a table. They flew down the stairs and out the fire exit. They were so fast. It’s like they knew the layout of the building. Maybe Lena’s right; it must be someone who’s got knowledge of police stations. I’ll get forensics to have a look at the fire exit in case there are any prints on it.’ They both knew the chances of getting anything off a door that was used by hundreds of people a week was beyond remote, but it was worth a try.
‘Let’s re-check the CCTV.’ She shivered as she checked left and right before swiping her warrant card to get back into the car park, which was already being searched by uniform, officers shining torches under each car systematically.
Someone had managed to break into the police station. They’d looked at her and Kowalski’s personal records. The thought made her feel sick with anger.
Lena was rewinding the CCTV footage as they came into the office.
‘Are they on it?’ Loxton asked.
Lena nodded, a grim expression on her face that Loxton couldn’t read. ‘Just when he runs out of the fire exit, we get an image of his back. It won’t help with identification.’
‘Play it anyway,’ Kowalski said.
Lena hit play but she was staring at Kowalski.
Loxton watched the footage. A dark figure shot out of the fire exit, running full pelt. Kowalski right behind them, so close he could reach out and grab them, but he stumbled and lost ground. The suspect ran to the left, jumping onto a car bonnet and launching himself over the 6ft wall.
‘How the hell?’ Loxton gasped.
On the screen, Kowalski rushed to the back door and was out of it, Loxton right behind him.
‘Why didn’t you tell me he’d gone left?’ Loxton asked.
‘I wanted to cover both ways and there was no time to explain,’ Kowalski said. ‘He could have hidden behind a car until I’d run past him and then doubled back and gone right. I wanted to make sure both routes were covered.’
‘You should have caught him,’ Lena said, her voice irritated.
‘I know I fucked up, Lena,’ Kowalski said. ‘You don’t need to tell me.’ He turned away from them and walked out of the office. Loxton wanted to go after him, but she decided to let him go.