I find myself looking at Neva’s photofit picture as I compare her to Sinead and Lizzie. The two women are similar but not really like her. Even so, the strawberry-blonde hair is striking in its resemblance to Neva’s natural colour – rarely seen in her case as she often disguises it. While I look at the pictures, I try to be analytical. The two dead women seem to have their appearance as their link to each other, though they were at different stages of their lives. Sinead was an 18-year-old and single, whereas Lizzie was 20 years her senior and a divorcee. I’m sure this is not a coincidence. We have a serial killer on our hands.
But how are they somehow associated with Neva?
I close my eyes and try to push thoughts of her away but find I can’t. The betrayal and lies sit inside my stomach like a stale lunch badly digested. It hurts sometimes and make me furious at others. Sometimes I yearn for the days of forgetfulness granted by Beech’s conditioning. Maybe then I could spare myself thoughts of her. Haunted as I am by her memory in every detail of my life. Not least in my working days. No matter how much I tell myself to forget her though, I can’t.
I open my eyes again and look at the dead women once more. I’m sure I’m designing Neva connections with Lizzie and Sinead that aren’t there. Only time and the autopsies will tell. But two deaths within weeks of Neva’s escape doesn’t feel like a coincidence.
But who is doing it, and why?
It’s probably nothing to do with her, I think. A fluke! But deep down my gut says otherwise. Not that I feel I can trust my instincts that much right now. I had thought I was right about Neva, and how wrong I was.
I rifle through the lives of Sinead and Lizzie. So different from each other, but there must be something that draws them together, or brings them into the sightline of our killer.
I open my notepad and read again the interview I’d done with Lizzie’s friend, Vicky. There. The dating site. Yin and Yang. I open the browser on my laptop and search the name. I come up with Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary entries for the meaning of the phrase. Then I find the website: Yin and Yang: Opposites Attract!
The site is closed unless you open an account and so I can’t just browse the member profiles. I weigh up what to do for a moment, before I send Ray an email, explaining that I’m setting up an account on the site in order to look at Lizzie Seacroft’s profile, hoping to find a lead. I don’t want him to think I’m using the work computer for anything other than official research. Though we are generally trusted, such things would be frowned upon and I’m still wary that any of my actions might be misconstrued. Even so, none of this will be necessary if we find Lizzie’s phone – assuming she has the app on there, it would hopefully link us to her account, any messages received, and an opportunity to browse to see if Sinead was on the same site.
Before I continue on the site, I look up Lizzie’s number and find out who her service provider is. Then I set in motion the requests required for information on who Lizzie spoke to last. It is just a matter of formality to get warrants for a murder victim’s phone records but it can take time. I also send the information to Beth to see if she can trace the location of the phone when she’s back in the office. Though, if it’s switched off, this will prove difficult.
I receive an email response from Ray about the dating site.
Good plan! Let me know what you find out.
Happy that my boss knows what I’m doing, I open an account under a pseudonym, using one of our ‘safe’ credit cards to pay the subscription, and then I search through the female profiles until I find Lizzie’s. She calls herself ‘Wild-Haired Lizzie’, but her photos show her with salon-groomed locks. She boasts of her newly coloured and coiffured hair on one of her statuses and there is a swarm of men responding to her, chatting her up, and suggesting they have a ‘private’ chat. This, I learn, is done in the form of ‘rooms’ rather than a private message and both parties have to agree to enter the said room. The site’s terms and conditions boast of this as a feature to stop unsolicited private messages being sent to another person – it helps to keep things ‘above board’.
Looking at Lizzie’s public posts and the comments below, I make a note of all of the men’s names, placing a star against each name every time I see a comment from them on Lizzie’s page because the frequency of their communication may flag something or someone.
Then I look for Sinead O’Brierley. It takes another forty minutes wading through female profiles before finding Sinead. She’s using the name ‘Nadie O’Brierley’ and this is why my specific search didn’t find her right away. I look through her selfies and then wade through the comments looking for matches with those remarking on Lizzie’s pictures, but there aren’t any. The age divide is obvious on the site, and only men around Sinead’s age are leaving comments for her. I wonder if this is another rule on Yin and Yang as often it’s a given that some older men will be looking for younger girls.
Even so, I hope to find one or two of the same names to narrow down the search but nothing shows up. Then I notice something. A photograph that looks familiar. I flick back to Lizzie’s page and study the profiles of her admirers again. There. A man called Werner, he says he lives in Europe, but is no more specific than that. I check his entry, looking at the other photographs he has there. I open another browser window and lift up Sinead’s profile. There is someone there called Stacey. A girl. But she has posted an identical picture of the same Bengal cat that Werner has.
This is not evidence in itself, it could be a coincidence that both people had found and shared the same photo, but in each case, ‘Werner’ and ‘Stacey’ claim that the animal is theirs. That is suspicious. Could there be two different people pretending they owned an animal that they didn’t? Or had one of them taken it from the other’s profile?
I’m not that familiar with catfishing but something is awry on Yin and Yang, despite the rules and regulations they impose on members. And I’m going to find out what.
A few hours after sending the warrant, I receive the information from Lizzie’s phone company. There are several phone numbers listed on her account, but one shows up over and over again. I check it against Vicky’s number and see this isn’t hers. Neither is it Lizzie’s ex’s number. When I search for the owner of the phone, I find that this number isn’t registered to anyone. That means that the number has been obtained, but never registered to top up with funds. It’s probably a burner, or a temporary number that someone has been using. But assuming it is our killer, it confirms that they are no ordinary or random murderer. Lizzie was specifically reeled in and this person made a conscious effort to go after her.
I look up at the photos on the wall again. My eyes fall on Neva’s photofit. Every gut instinct in my body is telling me that she and Lizzie and Sinead are connected. I just don’t know how or why yet or even if I dare listen to it.