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“Hello?” she calls.
A face pops out from behind the monitor. The man smiles.
“How can I help?”
His appearance and friendly manner disarms her. He’s good-looking, with a trendy haircut and nice eyes behind his glasses.
“DCI Cara Elliott,” she repeats. “I was wondering how you were getting on with the laptop and phone.”
“So you came down here?” he says.
“You don’t get many visitors?”
“None.” He reaches across and pulls a chair over to his computer. “Come and join me, I’ll look. Charlie Mills,” he says, holding out his hand.
“You’re Charlie Mills?” she replies, shaking it. She can hardly reconcile this guy with the name she’s seen signing off any number of completely incomprehensible reports that have passed her desk over the years. She expected someone monosyllabic, maybe balding, slightly overweight.
He laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m used to it. Come back when it’s not curry day in the canteen and meet my team. They’ll conform to your expectations. What’s the case number?”
Cara reels it off and he types it into the computer. He pulls up a report, then glances across at her.
“Says here we sent you this yesterday.”
“Oh.” Cara feels stupid. “Who did you send it to?”
He says the name of the mailbox and Cara frowns. It’s the joint one, used for unimportant information rather than urgent reports of this kind.
“Okay, well,” she mutters. It’s a bit of a worry. “Can you tell me what it said? While I’m here?”
“Would love to,” Charlie replies with a grin. Cara wonders if he’s flirting with her, then dismisses it. He must be, what, early thirties? She’s sure he’s got better people to smile at than a married mother of two.
Charlie scrolls down the page, his eyes flicking over the text. “Says here the laptop didn’t come up with anything useful. Didn’t do much on it except social media, personal photographs, and emails.”
“Anything in the emails?”
“You can take it away and check for yourself if you like, but nothing my guy seemed to think was suspicious. Oh, but this—this is more important.”
Cara stares at him as he recites a long list of names that sound like gobbledygook. He laughs at her blank look.
“Illegally uploaded spyware and viruses,” he clarifies. “It means that if she was using her computer, someone could see what she was doing. And monitor her keystrokes.”
“So they would know her passwords?”
“Exactly.” Charlie’s face is suddenly serious. “Luckily, she never brought her work home, but everything else, well. This guy knew.”
“Any way of working out who?”
He shakes his head. “Afraid not. Looks like my techie did a bit of digging, but they were all dead ends. Plus here.” He points at the screen. “He was able to watch her through the webcam.”
Cara shudders. The thought of the guy watching Libby’s every move? It’s terrifying. No wonder he knew how to tailor the Tinder profile to appeal to her.
“What about her mobile?” Cara asks.
She watches as he reads the next report. “Nothing of note, I’m afraid. Although we did do a bit of work on that dating profile she was connected with.” He reads on. “There’s even a set of geographic coordinates for one of the messages he sent.”
“You have a location?” Cara’s excited. This could be the lead they need.
“Wait a sec, they forgot to run it back …” Charlie types for a bit, then frowns. “That can’t be right,” he mutters, typing again.
