The Dark Web Murders

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Monday, 20th August. Morning 

Sheehan was in his office, poring through the case files and notes, searching for some clue, some inspiration, that would help him find some order, or shape, or even some kind of pointer to what had transpired so far. But it was a frustrating search. So many suspects, so many disconnections, so many possible motives without any clue as to the real one. There was nothing that led to any form of continuity, nothing that could enable him to formulate any kind of pattern. True there were the truncheons,but what did they mean? And why their brutal placement in the victim's rectums?Another round of interviews with the judge's group had produced little information except to show that a number of them had passable alibis for the evening of Stevens' murder, although these still had to be checked out.Five of them had not—Judge Adams, Professor Gallagher, Oliver Kane,Jaclyn Kennedy, and Robert Bryant. Each had claimed to be at home that evening. Adams expressed considerable resentment that he should even have been an object of suspicion and could barely bring himself to say that he was at home. When asked if he could prove he was at home, Kane, in his cold, calculating way had answered flatly, 'Can you prove I wasn't?' 

There was a brief frantic knock on his door and Stewart rushed  in without waiting for his usual invitation. "Sir." She was almost gasping. Her left arm was raised and pointing erratically back towards her station. "You really need to see this." 

He raised a calm hand. "Slow down, Stewart. Explain." 

Stewart inhaled a deep breath and standing on the opposite side of his desk, she calmed herself enough to say, "You've heard of the Dark Web,sir?" 

Sheehan nodded. "Just enough to know that it's not a place for ordinary people to be poking around in." 

"You're right about that, sir. It's very dangerous for people who are not computer savvy. I would normally never go near it myself, but that remark my friend passed about Kane's dark and voracious appetites made me wonder." 

"You've found something about Kane on the Dark Web?" Sheehan was suddenly very interested.

 "No, sir. Nothing about Kane." She hesitated, frustrated, searching for words. "Sir, it's all a bit complicated. You're right. The Dark Web is one scary place. I had to disguise my IP address and my identity just to even browse there, but eventually I felt safe enough to initiate a search." Shewaved her hands in front of her making vague diagrams in the air. "You know how when you're searching for something on the net, you throw in a few connected words or phrases and all sorts of stuff comes up? You might get a sentence on a page from a book with a couple of the words you have been searching for highlighted in it, or an advert, or a page from a blog. It could be anything."She backed towards the office door, urging Sheehan to follow. "Come on, sir. You need to see this." 

Sheehan was now on his feet, interest piqued, as he followed her to her desk.

"I was getting nowhere for a while," Stewart went on, rushing in front of him to pull her chair out from her desk, "but I put 'judge', 'murder', and 'truncheon' together in the search box, and what came up has taken my breath away."She ushered Sheehan into her chair and leaned forward to touch the keyboard of her laptop, scrolling back to the beginning of the post she had been reading. "It's a blog, sir. Read it." 

She stood back, watching the chief as he read, her hands moving endlessly together in a washing motion.  As Sheehan read, his expression became bleak. Consumed by what he was reading, his eyes never left the screen, nor did he utter a sound. Stewart eventually sat on a chair at one of the nearby desks, waiting for her superior to finish. Sheehan's ability to focus on an issue to the exclusion of everything around him rendered him unaware of the signs of strained impatience exhibited by his sergeant until he was finished studying the strange blogs.After a prolonged period of scrutiny, Sheehan finally said, still studying the screen, "Good grief! This guy's deranged." He looked at Stewart, almost stunned. "You've found our killer, Stewart." 

"Not on the Dark Net, sir," she said. "Just his blog. There's no way I could trace his IP address from here." 

Sheehan was blowing heavily from both cheeks, clearly distracted."This is huge, Stewart. Copy it out to the team's smartphones immediately.They all need to see this stuff. Message them to get up to speed with it during lunch and to get in here for a debrief at two o'clock Get me a print of the blogs as well. I need to study them." He stared back at the screen and shook his head. "The guy is clearly a mental case but, jeez, he's seriously well-read and intelligent. My God! There is so much stuff here. I've never seen anything like it." 

"Me, neither, sir. It's strange, terrible. I don't know what to make of it.To tell the truth, I have trouble understanding the half of it." She pointed to the screen. "But you can see there's been a third murder, Chief. I take nothing has been reported in?" 

"No," he said, staring at nothing across the room as his brain worked at speed. 

"Saturday evening according to the date," Stewart said. "Monday morning and some poor individual is lying dead in his bedroom. If he lives alone, and the indications are that he does, it could be ages before we find the body." She stared at her superior, daunted. "Where can we even start,Chief? How many drinking establishments in the city have snugs and cocktail bars?"

Sheehan shook his head. "Somebody is not going to turn up for work this morning and he won't have phoned in. Hopefully one of his colleagues will be concerned enough to try to contact him. That might lead to the body's discovery." 

"That could take a while, sir."  

Even as she was speaking, the phone in Sheehan's office rang. He almost ran to answer it, casting a questioning glance at his sergeant. Grabbing the phone, he said sharply, "Sheehan."

 "Boss." It was Miller, and he sounded excited. "We weren't able to get hold of Michael Stevens on Friday afternoon, so we tried again this morning. The caretaker of the apartment block he lives in said that he hadn't seen him all weekend, and that he found that unusual and worrying. So we got him to open the door to the apartment. You'll never guess what we found there, Chief." 

Sheehan paused a beat before saying neutrally, "You didn't happen to find a naked man in a room full of sexual paraphernalia lying in bed on his stomach, head bashed in, and a police truncheon rammed up his backside?" 

There was a blank silence at the other end of the phone. Then a whispered, "What the f—?" followed by an astounded, "How in the name of— How did you know, sir?" 

"Miller, I'm the chief," Sheehan explained patiently. "It's my job to know these things." He grinned over at Stewart who was standing in the office doorway, listening. "Is Doctor Campbell there?" 

There was some background noise on the phone, then Miller came back on. "He's just arrived, Chief." 

"Okay, hang about a wee while and see what you can glean from him.If you get a chat with him, suggest that the time of death might have occurred between ten p.m. and one a.m. on Saturday night. Don't tell him how you know." He winked over at Stewart as he added, "That'll keep him up all night." 

"Just that, sir?" 

"Just that. And try to look intelligent when you tell him. More importantly, the two of you will be receiving an email from Stewart in a few minutes. It's a shocker. Read the stuff during lunch. Chat with  Connors about it and get in here for a debrief at two o'clock." 

He replaced the phone and turned to Stewart. "No need for us to go traipsing over there. We already have a full and detailed description of the killing. But we'll pay Dick a visit at the mortuary after the debrief. Okay.Get those emails out and bring me that print-out." 

"What about lunch, sir?" 

"Oh, crap! I don't have time." He rooted around in his hip pocket and pulled out his wallet. "After you send out that stuff, is there any chance you could get us a couple of sandwiches and some coffee from the canteen?" he asked her, with a disarming grimace. "I'll pay," he added, handing her a ten pound note. 

Stewart smiled, not in the least offended. "Done, Chief. Always up for a free lunch."