Invasion of Privacy: A Deep Web Thriller #1 (Deep Web Thriller Series) by Ian Sutherland Read Free Book Online

straightened his chair and ended his call.
    “Can you believe this? The press has arrived and want to be allowed in the building — our crime scene — so that they can get out of the rain.”
    “It is very wet out there,” she said absently. A barge powered slowly along Regents Canal, a barely perceptible wake behind it.
    “What’s with you, DI Price?”
    “Nothing, guv.” Jenny pulled herself together and took a seat on the other side of the desk. Da Silva pivoted round, placed his massive hands on the table and leaned forward. On the desk stood an improbably huge Starbucks takeaway cup.
     “Have we tracked down the other receptionist yet? Looks like she’s the last one to have seen the victim alive.”
    Jenny didn’t bother correcting him with the fact that surely the killer last saw Anna Parker alive.
    “Alan . . . I mean DS Coombs is picking her up now.” 
    She’d corrected herself because Da Silva didn’t like using first names. Being both newly promoted and newly transferred to lead Holborn’s MIT, addressing everyone by rank and surname was a technique he employed to reinforce his seniority. Hopefully, he’d one day figure out that facing adversity as a team, day after day, forged a natural closeness that necessitated the informality of forenames and nicknames. 
    “What about time of death?”
    “One of the tenants on the floor below recalled hearing music on Friday evening just as he was leaving for home. Even though it was faint, he remembered as it was out of the norm. He just assumed it was part of a computer presentation”
    “What time was this?”
    “About six-thirty. He knows because he made his usual train at Paddington.”
    “So she was alive at six-thirty.”
    “And dead not long after, according to Dr Gorski, the pathologist.”
    “What about CCTV?”
    “It only covers the reception area. Mr Evans, the building manager, says it’s stored and managed remotely at the Flexbase headquarters in Docklands.”
    “Next of kin?”
    “Trinity College gave us her home address. She’s originally from Torquay. Devon police have been informed and they’re informing the parents. She lives with some other students in Charlton, just round the corner from Greenwich. I’ll send DC Malik there in a minute. I’m going to head there too when I finish here.” 
    “That’s fine with me.” 
    She hadn’t asked his permission, but he acted as if he’d deigned to grant it. He took a sip of his coffee through the hole in the plastic lid. Jenny took the opportunity to jump in and ask her own question before he could hit her with another of his. 
    “Anything from the guy who found the body?”
    “Barry Pitman? He says he had the meeting room booked first thing this morning, showed up, discovered the body, reported it and then buggered off. I tracked him down to the Starbucks round the corner. He’d relocated his meeting to the coffee shop as if nothing serious had happened. Can you believe it? There were eleven of them huddled around his laptop. He didn’t like me taking him to one side in the middle of his sales pitch, that’s for sure. Wouldn’t stop moaning about some big deal he was trying to close.”
    “Anything to link him as a suspect?”
    “I doubt it, but let’s check him out fully.” Da Silva leaned forward and lowered his voice, conspiratorially. “Pitman was really insensitive about the murdered girl. Talk about self-obsessed. Know what I did? I dragged him back from Starbucks then and there on the pretext of getting his prints to eliminate him. It could easily have waited. He moaned all the way back about how I’d ruined the deal he was doing. Certainly made me feel much better!”
    Jenny was astonished. Not at Da Silva’s actions — she probably would have done much the same — but that he’d let his barrier slip a little in front of her. She couldn’t decide whether he was opening up a little or if he was just showing off. The fact that he’d somehow had time to