Blood & Guts by Ed James (best books to read now TXT) 📕

girl’s list.’

Vicky laughed. ‘You’re not seeing your family?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you—’

‘No.’

Vicky sat there for a few seconds. As close as she felt to Jenny sometimes, at others she felt like a distant stranger. And she knew not to press her buttons. ‘I’m not going to ask, okay?’ She left a gap. ‘How’s it going with that phone.’

Jenny picked it up and, yep, it was a gold Samsung A8, slightly battered and with a spiderweb of cracks at the top left of the screen. ‘Don’t even know if it’s the victim’s.’

‘You should know that you’ve got to eliminate it, regardless. Could be the killer’s, could be a witness.’

Jenny sat back, arms folded. ‘Why am I thinking that you know whose it is?’

‘It’s the victim’s. And the code is 2868.’

Jenny smirked as she tapped it into the machine. ‘Right.’ She pressed a button on the screen, then set it down, and went to her laptop. ‘Bingo.’

‘You’re in?’

‘I’m in like Flynn.’ Jenny typed on her laptop keyboard and the screen filled with a mirror of the phone, some app icons running top to bottom. ‘Usual suspects. WhatsApp, Chrome, Facebook, Instagram. Let me see…’ More typing. ‘And she’s a careful wee lassie. Deletes all her messages.’

‘Can you get them back?’

‘Nope. Recovery is bad enough on emails, but it’s impossible here.’

‘Well, that tallies with her dad’s story.’

Jenny’s eyes bulged. ‘He’s been spying on her?’

‘Mother has.’

‘Lordy. Thank God I’m never going to breed.’ Jenny looked around at Vicky. ‘How’s Bella?’

‘She’s good. With her granny tonight. I was supposed to have a girl’s night in with Karen, but—’

‘And you didn’t invite me?’

‘Would you have come?’

‘No, I’m supposed to be sacrificing a goat up Carrot Hill with my Satanist friends.’

‘I’m not even going to ask if that’s a lie.’

‘Ooooooh.’ Jenny lurched closer to the laptop.

Vicky couldn’t see what had interested her so much. ‘What is it?’

‘The wee minx has been using Poggr.’

‘Remember she’s dead, Jenny.’

‘Doesn’t stop her being a naughty wee rascal when she was alive.’

‘Okay, so what the hell is Poggr when it’s at home?’

‘Don’t be coy with me, Victoria Dodds. Single girl like you?’

‘Jen…’

‘Okay, okay. Poggr is a dating app. More like a hook-up app. Kids use it for no-strings sex these days. Log in, find a girl, find a boy, meet up for a bit of rumpy pumpy.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Sometimes I think you’ve just beamed in from Roman times.’

‘You mean this Poggr is all about swiping right to like, that kind of thing?’

‘See, you do know what I mean. You know all the—’

‘I’m not into that kind of stuff, Jenny.’

‘O-kay. And Poggr is about starring them, not swiping.’

‘Can you see who she’s starred?’

‘I need to use the phone itself.’ Jenny picked it up and eased it out of the bag, then touched it with her gloved fingers. Vicky hadn’t even seen her put them on. ‘Never, ever use Poggr, Vicks.’

‘Wasn’t planning on it.’

‘Well, I’ve been working with the Met to shut it down. Turns out teens have been using it illicitly, reversing their ages so 15 would be 51, but it would have a photo of a young kid.’

Vicky felt a lurch in her gut. ‘So paedos are on it?’

‘No, hebephiles. Different age group.’

‘Ever the pedant.’ Vicky sighed. ‘But they find young girls on it?’

‘Right. And the platform are denying all knowledge.’

‘Sickening.’

‘Ain’t it just.’

‘You getting anywhere?’

Jenny nodded over to the door. ‘Your boyfriend is here.’

Considine stood in the doorway, sniffing and snorting like he had a deep cold. ‘Erm, Sarge?’

Vicky hauled herself up to standing, and everything ached like she was in her nineties. She walked over to the door, stooped over. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just wondering where DI Forrester is.’

‘Well, he’s not down here.’

‘Aye, but DS Ennis is in the incident room and he keeps pressurising me. It’s inappropriate.’

Considine was someone who had inappropriate down as an art form.

‘What’s he asking about?’

‘Well, Sarge, I’ve been out searching for Ennis’s daughter, Teresa.’

It hit Vicky in the gut. She’d been so focused on Carly Johnson that she’d almost forgotten that another girl was missing, and the daughter of a colleague. ‘Any progress?’

‘A smidgen, likes. Got sidelined with bringing that daft wee laddie’s old man in.’ He snuffled. ‘Kid sang for it yet?’

‘Not yet. He’s not really fit for interview.’

‘Right, well, I’ve just spoken to Teresa’s boyfriend.’

‘She had a boyfriend?’

‘Aye. He works at Ashworth’s. Supposed to meet her after his work. Never showed.’

‘You believe him?’

‘We’ve got the internal CCTV. He was working in there. Got him swiping from the pick ’n’ mix too, but aye. He wasn’t there when she got taken. Or when her mate got killed.’

‘He ever meet Carly?’

‘Nope.’ Considine held out some prints. ‘Got Teresa’s car driving into the Ashworth’s car park, but obviously the car didn’t return. Carly was definitely in the passenger seat.’

‘So Teresa’s definitely been taken?’

‘Looks that way, aye.’

‘Vicks?’

She looked over at Jenny and caught red-nailed fingers beckoning her over. ‘Hold that thought.’ She paced back over to Jenny’s workbench. ‘What’s up?’

Jenny had a profile up on the screen, showing Carly’s face and looking young. ‘Well, Carly has been using Poggr since she was sweet fifteen. See her age is 21?’

‘So she’s one of the girls you’ve been looking at?’

‘Not in scope, but it’s a similar pattern. Trying to appear over the age of consent, anyway.’

‘And have you got anything?’

‘A few messages with a few daft buggers. No meetings until one of said daft sods exchanged thirty with her.’

‘She hasn’t deleted these?’

‘Nope. Can’t. And the app was hidden in a folder, presumably away from her parents’ prying eyes for that very reason.’

‘So who is this daft sod?

‘Name of Dougie McLean.’

‘Can you—’

‘Already on it.’ Jenny switched windows to the Police National Computer. ‘By the looks of things, he’s a Dundee taxi driver. Drives a silver Skoda Octavia.’

7

‘Bingo.’ Karen slid the pool car into the space almost before the previous occupant had left it. Close enough to get a worried look from the driver, not that he’d bothered to put his seatbelt on before driving off, instead wrapping it around him like he was a bank robbery getaway