Whacked in Whitechapel (A Cozy Mystery) (Cassie Coburn Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  “How far back would you like it set?” Grant asked.

  “Five o’clock this morning. Anita Turner was killed around six, so it should be after that.”

  A few taps later the screen began to play. Grant pressed another button and the video began to fast forward. For about thirty seconds there was nothing, but suddenly, movement.

  “There!” DCI Williams said, and Grant pressed the play button. “Move it back about two minutes.”

  Grant began to play the video again from where DCI Williams instructed him. The timestamp at the bottom of the screen showed it was five thirty-eight in the morning. For a few seconds, there was nothing. Then, suddenly, two people appeared on the screen. One was blonde, looking nervously around, her eyes darting from side to side. Anita Turner was obviously nervous.

  The man next to her, in contrast, was as cool as a cucumber. He was wearing a Manchester United cap, hiding his face, and he never once looked up at the camera, despite Anita Turner doing so multiple times. They walked down the hall and Anita pointed toward the door to the pathology lab. The two of them walked toward it, so that their backs were now to the camera. The man typed something into the keypad and a minute later, the door opened.

  I looked back at Violet. She was shaking her head slowly, visibly annoyed. I imagined she didn’t like that the man never showed his face. Anita Turner and the man walked into the pathology lab, and closed the door behind them. Grant fast forwarded the video once more. According to the time stamp, it took twenty-seven minutes to kill Anita Turner and steal the vials of Ebola. The man came out by himself, and once again, avoided the security cameras. He returned with a cart about five minutes after that, went back into the room, and another five minutes later left with the cart, presumably carrying Anita Turner’s body inside of it.

  When he left for the final time, Grant turned off the video and DCI Williams let out a loud sigh.

  “If we’re lucky he may have shown his face on one of the other cameras.”

  Violet shook her head. “No. He will not have done that. This was not the man’s first crime; he knew very well where all the cameras were and how to avoid them.”

  DCI Williams ran his hand down his face. “Well then, we have nothing. We know he’s a man, and that’s about it.”

  “You know nothing,” Violet replied. “I, on the other hand, have learned a lot about this man.”

  “What did you figure out?” DCI Williams asked. Every eye in the room was on Violet.

  “We are looking for a white man, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters tall.”

  ‘’How tall is that in feet and inches?” DCI Williams asked, taking out a notepad.

  “Six feet exactly,” Violet replied. “You should use the metric system, it is far superior. The man is wearing size ten shoes; however his feet are only a size nine. This is most definitely not his first crime; he is an established thief. He spent the night prior to this one at the 100 Club in Fitzrovia, and he is a smoker of cigarettes. He was in the United States military, as his father was before him. He was raised in Japan, most likely in Okinawa, and at least one of his parents is still alive.”

  “You’re having a laugh,” Grant said finally after about a full minute of silence. “Surely you’re having a laugh.”

  I knew Violet well enough to know that she wasn’t making any jokes. Nor was she making any of this up. As amazing as it all sounded, I knew that while I could only tell you the man was white with brown hair, Violet actually had deduced the occupation of the man’s father.

  “I assure you, Mister Woods, that I do not find murder to be a laughing matter.”

  “How could you possibly know all that? The man barely did anything in the video; he didn’t even show his face. No one could possibly figure all that out from the video we just watched.”

  Violet smiled. She enjoyed showing off, and I had a feeling that was what was about to happen.

  “It is obvious from the angle of the camera and where the man is standing next to the door that he is one hundred and eighty-three centimeters tall. I made sure when we were in the lab to look carefully at the height of the door frame, as I knew we would likely be seeing the man on the video. I say that he is an established thief because of how easily he broke into the room.”

  “Well you’re not a thief, and you broke into it even faster than he did,” DCI Williams said.

  “Yes, and if I was a thief, your rate of successful case closure would drop dramatically,” Violet replied. “I do not count myself as an average person, because I am not an average person. But Cassie, for example, would you be able to unlock that keypad?”

  I felt a small tinge of annoyance at being indirectly referred to as ‘average’, but I put it out of my head. It was more important to catch the person who had stolen the Ebola virus. “No, I wouldn’t be able to,” I replied. “I mean, Violet’s showed me how, so maybe with a bit of practice.”

  “Well that doesn’t mean he’s a good thief,” Grant Woods said. “After all, he could have stolen the entry code from someone who had it.”

  “Ah, but he did not,” Violet said. “There are only eight people who are authorized to work in that laboratory, and who have the access code. But this man did not use it. No, when I entered using the code, I typed in 7,8,5,4. Which is, quite frankly, a terrible code that is nowhere near secure. But this man, he typed in *, *, * to begin, which is the code to access the administrative panel for this brand of security keypad. He then entered the numbers one to four, which are the original factory default password, and then 0, 0, # to open the door. No, the man who knows the instructions to enter the administrative panel of a certain brand of security keypad is not an amateur at theft. He is very experienced.”

  “Well when you put it that way, it does seem quite obvious,” Grant Woods said pensively, and Violet shot him a dark look.

  “And yet you did not think of it yourself, what does that say about you?” Violet retorted, and Grant’s face reddened.

  “What about the rest of it?” DCI Williams asked. “How did you figure it out?”

  “From the manner in which he walks it is obvious his shoes are a size too big. He moves slightly awkwardly, and if you look carefully you can see his foot moving inside the shoe, indicating the extra size. His hand has a stamp on it, I recognize it as the stamp used at Club 100. However, it has been scrubbed somewhat, meaning that he did not come straight from the club to here. Therefore, he was not at the club this past night, but rather the one before. The fact that he had to leave the club and re-enter, combined with the slightly visible stains on his fingers, indicate his regular use of cigarettes.”

  “And the Japan stuff?” I asked.

  “He has obviously spent a lot of time in Japan. I would venture to say, in fact, that it was his childhood he spent there. When he walks past the morgue door, you notice that he puts his thumb inside a closed fist every time. That is a Japanese custom normally done whenever one walks in front of a cemetery, or if a hearse drives past. Walking in front of a morgue would be considered similar. In the Japanese language, the word for thumb translates literally into ‘parent-finger’. By protecting the thumb in a fist, it is said that the person is protecting their parents from death.”

  “So that’s how you know he’s spent so long there,” I said, nodding.

  “Yes, exactement. His demeanor tells me that he is a military man; however England does not have a military presence in Japan at the moment. That kind of superstition is the sort of thing one develops as a child and continues as an adult. Therefore, someone who was in the military, and spent time in Japan as a child, means that in all likelihood his father was stationed in Japan, making him American.”

  “Well that should narrow it down somewhat,” DCI Williams said. “Thank you, Violet, as always.”

  “You are welcome,” Violet replied. “You should focus your search on men named ‘Ed’ or ‘Edward’, on the off chance that he used his real name. That was the name of Anita Turner’s boyfr
iend.”

  “Will do,” DCI Williams said, jotting this new information down in his book.

  Violet stood up from her chair and made her way over to the main station. She looked over the footage once more, taking photos with her phone in a few spots.

  “Next time, ensure that the default password to access the administrative panel is changed as well as the main access password,” Violet told Grant Woods. “It is sloppy security, that. And when security is sloppy, people far more intelligent than you take advantage.”

  Grant Woods’ mouth bobbed up and down like a fish, not saying anything, as Violet turned on her heel and left the room, with me following after her.

  “What are we doing next?” I asked. “Visiting Anita Turner’s apartment? Maybe there are more hints there as to who Ed was, assuming the man in the video was Ed.”

  Cassie nodded. “Yes, that seems to me to be the most reasonable next step. We go to see where the victim lived.”

  Chapter 5

  Anita Turner definitely wasn’t living the high life. Her studio apartment was in a town called Brentwood, almost an hour’s drive outside of London. Her apartment was just a couple blocks away from the train station, in an old brick building that had been painted white and very badly rendered, making the whole front of the façade look like it was peeling away. We took a cab, with Violet texting madly the entire time. She didn’t say a single word the whole trip; whenever her fingers weren’t typing at a blistering pace on her iPhone, she stared out the window, obviously lost in thought. Violet and I made our way to the front door of Anita Turner’s apartment after being dropped off there, and it took Violet less than ten seconds to pick the lock. I hoped for Anita Turner’s sake that this wasn’t a high crime area. The interior of the apartment wasn’t much better.

  Anita Turner’s kitchen looked as though it had come straight out of the seventies, although it was also obvious she made an effort to make it look as nice as possible. All the dishes were cleaned and put away; a gorgeous spice rack with everything labeled alphabetically sat in one corner, and her dishes and cutlery were of decent quality. The living room featured a small television, maybe twenty-seven inches, a small desk with an empty space where a laptop would go, and a bookcase filled from floor to ceiling with various volumes; mainly Shakespeare plays, Jane Austen novels, some Robert Ludlum paperbacks and books about nursing. In one corner was a daybed that evidently folded out into Anita’s bed at night.

  The whole place was dark; almost no natural light came through the tiny windows. However, Anita had multiple lamps set up around the place, which when turned on, gave the place a nice, warm feel. The walls were an awful off-white color that gave more of an impression of dirt than class, but Anita covered the walls with classy photos. It was obvious she didn’t have a lot of money, but she made the best of what she had.

  If I was completely honest, there wasn’t very much here that I thought was going to help us find Ed, or whoever the man who had killed Anita Turner was. Wherever Anita Turner’s computer was, it certainly wasn’t here. There were only a few letters on the desk. I picked up the pile and began to read, Violet standing next to me and reading over my shoulder.

  The first few letters weren’t interesting at all, just bills. Anita Turner, it seemed, always paid everything on time. I wasn’t surprised; going by the look of her meager possessions while earning a decent salary as a nurse, I couldn’t really see her being the living-above-her-means type.

  The third letter, however, was from the University College London. My heart skipped a beat as I read the words on the page.

  At this time, we are unfortunately not able to accept you as a student at the University College London Medical School. We receive an enormous number of applicants from around the world each year, and are only able to accept a small fraction. We encourage you to re-apply next year…

  I stopped reading at that point and looked at Violet.

  “Did you notice the date on the letter?” Violet asked me, and I shook my head, looking back down at the paper. It was dated from July ninth, just a couple of days before Brianne had seen Anita Turner secretly crying.

  “And yet Jasmin told us that Anita hadn’t heard back yet.”

  “It seems that Miss Turner did not want her best friend to know she had not been accepted to do her medical studies.”

  I shrugged. “I can understand that. There’s so much pressure involved in the process, she was probably ashamed of not having been accepted. My bet is she was too embarrassed to tell Jasmin that she’d been rejected.”

  “Yes,” Violet mused. “Perhaps you are correct. Well, it is too bad there is not much information here. I suspect the murderer has been here before us.”

  “Because of the missing laptop?”

  “Yes, that is the most telling. Anita Turner did not have her laptop with her when she was killed; we saw that from the video. And her mobile phone was not on her body when she was found. Her handbag has also disappeared.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “So there’s basically no way to find out anything about who Ed might have been.”

  For the first time since I’d known her, Violet was at a loss. She shrugged. “I do not see anything here that might give us any immediate indication as to his identity, although I would not say we learned nothing. It seems that Anita Turner was a very private person.”

  “Too private,” I replied. “There are vials of freaking Ebola virus out there, and who knows what this Ed guy wants to do with them!”

  Violet nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, that certainly is a good question. However, we have learned a little bit more. For example, I can now say with near certainty that the man in the video, who murdered Anita Turner, is the boyfriend she was seeing.”

  “Wait, how could you possibly get that from anything in here?”

  “Look at the bookshelf,” Violet replied simply. I let my eyes glance toward it.

  “There are… books on it?” Violet gave me a look of frustration. “Ok, ok,” I replied, putting my hands up and looking closer. “There are a whole bunch of Shakespeare plays, Jane Austen novels, nursing school books that probably cost more than all the furniture in this apartment and some stuff by Robert Ludlum.”

  “Yes, and do one of these things not fit in with the others?”

  “The Robert Ludlum books. They would have probably belonged to, or been for her boyfriend, Ed. But how do you know that he’s the one who killed her? Jason Bourne tries to stop terrorist attacks.”

  Violet smiled. “Yes, but the man in the video had a tattoo of Icarus on his forearm.”

  “So?”

  “So one of Ludlum’s books was titled ‘The Icarus Agenda’.”

  “I really didn’t pick you as the type to be able to list off Robert Ludlum’s bibliography.”

  “You can never know what is useful information and what is not. For example, if I had not known of Ludlum’s works, we would still not know that Ed and the murderer were the same person. We can now reasonably assume that they are. It is information, although it does not help us to find the man’s current location.”

  Just as I let out a sigh of frustration the front door to the apartment began to open. Suddenly, a tall blond police officer entered the room.

  “You! Stop right there!” he said, his hand going to the nightstick on his hip–most police officers in England weren’t armed, which was really quite the change for me coming from America–and Violet laughed.

  “It is all right, it is simply Violet Despuis and Cassie Coburn.”

  “You’re both under arrest.”

  “Oh we are, are we?” Violet asked. “I recommend that you call DCI Williams and confirm with him whether that is a good idea.”

  I had to admire her confidence; I was half ready to break down in tears, half willing to see if I could jump out the window and make a break for it.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, madam. I’m taking you into custody.” Violet rolled her eyes.

  “Do you know why
the woman who lived in this flat was murdered?” she asked the man. He looked cautiously at Violet for a moment.

  “Are you admitting to the commission of a crime? Because I must inform you of your rights. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  “I am not admitting to this crime, as I did not commit it. I must know, do you have to put effort into being this phenomenally stupid, or does it simply come naturally to you? The woman who lived in this flat was murdered after stealing vials of Ebola virus from a hospital in London. I am investigating on behalf of DCI Williams because the rest of the Metropolitan Police, much like you, have an IQ in the single digits, and I am the best hope this country has of preventing an Ebola epidemic.”

  The man simply stared at Violet for about ten seconds while he processed what she had just told him.

  “Stay here, and don’t touch anything,” he said finally, pulling out his phone and dialing a number. When he came back into the room, he looked more apologetic.

  “You can look at whatever you want,” he said. “DCI Williams will be here shortly, he wanted me to tell you he’s having a chat with MI5 as they discuss who is going to take lead on the case.”

  “Well, Cassie and I are done here. Tell DCI Williams when he arrives that we will be in touch,” Violet said, and the two of us left the apartment.

  “Please tell me you managed to see something that totally escaped my mortal eyes and you know exactly where the murderer is,” I told Violet as we headed back toward the cab that was to drive us back to London. Violet shook her head sadly.

  “No. I know perhaps more about both Anita Turner and the man she was seeing now than I did before, but I do not know where they are.”

  “Great. So we’re nowhere.”