‘Ah, well, that’s where the problem started. Because it’s an expensive, paid for app, it works in a bit of a different way. There’s none of this “swipe right if you fancy me” or anything. Each person who registers has to provide an email address, which is listed on his or her profile. Users are advised to set up a new email address specifically for the site, and not to use their personal address, but that’s up to them. Then you just search for people with traits you’re interested in – profession, body type, age, hobbies and so on, the usual – and if you find someone you like the look of, you just drop them an email, effectively taking the app out of the picture. It’s a feature of the site – it ensures much more privacy than most, because only the two people emailing each other know they’ve decided to take it further. In other words, the people who run the app have no knowledge of who contacts who. They just provide a private, discreet platform for people to find people they might be interested in meeting.’
Helena felt her heart sinking. Damn. Bugger it.
‘OK, well that’s a massive shame. But still, excellent work, Mike.’
She paused for a moment, thinking rapidly, her brow furrowed.
‘Look, what about their phone and email accounts? Mervin’s and Ryan’s, I mean? If these dates were arranged by email, initially anyway, can’t we just find the women they dated that way?’
Mike was nodding rapidly.
‘The IT guys are having another look. I mean, they looked at emails and phone records straight away, for both victims, but didn’t find anything that seemed significant, though I suppose they were looking for threats and stuff like that, not stuff about making dates. They’re looking again in the light of this app thing. And yes, I’ll get back to EHU, see if they can help any further. They might have some sort of search data that could at least help us narrow the field – like, I don’t know, say Mervin had a thing for tall redheads and searched for women fitting that description a lot, that might help us track down some of his dates. Or not. I mean, I could be totally wrong about this, it probably doesn’t mean anything at all.’
‘But it might, it just might. Thank you, Mike. You’ve done a great job. It’s finally something our two murder victims have in common, and it’s about the only lead we have at the moment, so it’s definitely worth following up. Send me anything else you can on this as soon as humanly possible, OK?’
That had been a few hours earlier, and there’d been no updates since. Helena stared at the board for another moment, then wandered back to her desk, thinking. Dating apps. It seemed to be the way everyone met their partners now. In her day, you met people on nights out, in bars, clubs; she’d met Charlotte in a gay bar in Bristol a decade ago. But times had changed, and as far as murder investigations were concerned, the fact that everything was online now was often a good thing, making the movements of victims and suspects so much more traceable. The fact that the two victims had been registered with the same dating site didn’t necessarily mean anything, she knew that. If it was as popular as Mike had said, thousands of people would be using it, which probably made the coincidence meaningless. And how likely was it, after all, that they’d both somehow had the enormous misfortune to fix a date with the same female psychopath, who’d then proceeded to batter them both to death? No, the deaths might not be linked at all, but at least it was something, a lead they could investigate, and that made a pleasant change after days with nothing at all to go on.
I wonder …?
Halfway to her desk Helena suddenly stopped dead as an idea struck her. Devon, who was coming the other way carrying a fresh tea, stopped too just in time to avoid walking straight into her, and groaned as the hot liquid slopped over the edge of his mug, splashing his pristine white shirt.
‘Ahhh, shit! What’s up, boss?’
He dabbed ineffectually at the spreading brown stain with a paper napkin he held in his other hand, looking quizzically at Helena.
‘Oh Devon, I’m so sorry. It’s just … I just had a thought. A random one, and