AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Hang on, there’s more. Mavis the cleaning lady witnessed him pushing her forcefully out the door.’
He’d actually put his hands on her. That altered things as far as she was concerned.
‘Okay, Stace, we’re on our way,’ she said as Bryant pulled away from the kerb. ‘Oh, and while I’ve got you, do me a favour when you get a minute – pull the files on Bradley Foster, fifteen-year-old abducted and killed ten years ago.’
Bryant groaned beside her.
‘Will do, boss,’ Stacey said, then ended the call.
‘What?’ she said to her colleague, who was shaking his head.
‘I thought you said I was right.’
‘You are. Still doesn’t mean I’m gonna listen.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Penn had searched Sandy’s laptop with a fine-tooth comb.
In the deleted file of her emails he’d found a few rude and insulting messages that went back a year or so.
Most were complaints about her stage show and not having been chosen for a reading. A few called her a fraud for not having picked up on their dead relative, or for not doing a longer show to give them a chance to come through, as though it were a supermarket and the spirits were just waiting in line to be served.
None of the messages, while rude, were threatening or aggressive. None were repeated and none were responded to. They were just ordinary complaints from dissatisfied customers, which were far outweighed by the messages of support and gratitude.
So would she have filed more sinister messages in the same place? he wondered.
He had done a keyword search of her whole computer hard drive using words like ‘kill’, ‘murder’, ‘stab’, ‘death’ and even ‘hate’, but he’d found nothing.
Her email system was broken down into many sub categories from the inbox, and then further sub categories from those. He had no choice but to examine every one. In the absence of a file marked ‘death threats’, he had very little choice.
He’d followed a line of sub folders originating from household bills through all utilities until he came to a folder marked ‘misc’. From what he’d seen, there was nothing left to be filed under a cover-all category.
He clicked in and a list of more than twenty emails filled the screen.
‘Got it,’ he said.
‘Got what?’ Stacey repeated.
‘Emails, threats,’ he said, scrolling to the bottom of the list. ‘First one was sent almost two years ago, all from the same email address.’
He opened the first one and read it out loud.
‘“You are disgusting. You are a manipulator and a liar. Stop taking people’s money and get a real job.”’
‘Okay, not nice,’ Stacey said. ‘But probably not uncommon in her line of work.’
Penn agreed, so why had she kept them all?
He worked his way up the timeline and noticed something as he went.
First of all, this person hadn’t just sent a nasty email and then forgotten about it. They had made a concerted effort to share their thoughts regularly over a couple of years. Sandra had ignored the messages, but the sender hadn’t got bored and gone away. If anything, the lack of response had fuelled their fire.
The final message received just ten days earlier was a little different.
‘Stace, listen to this one,’ Penn said. ‘“You are a repulsive creature still taking money and defrauding people. You are a user and a repugnant slug that should never have been born. You have no ability so that makes you a thief. You are targeting people at their most vulnerable times and making money out of it. I hate you and you need to just die a long and painful death so you can feel the suffering you inflict on other people. Enjoy your time, Mrs Deakin, because you don’t have much of it left.”’
Stacey frowned. ‘Same person?’
