On top of that, she had day-to-day access to police records, reports and living breathing officers whom she could use as sounding boards to ensure she had covered all the bases. And that was exactly what she had done. Collins herself had played right into her hands. She wondered how many other officers she had pretended to give a helping hand to, knowing it would make them far more willing to spill the beans about future cases.
Late in the afternoon there was a flurry of excitement from within the house when one of the search team found a laptop computer tucked away behind the bed in Matthews’s spare bedroom. Collins knew better than to attach any importance to the item. If it had been left behind, it was either completely worthless or it was a deliberate red herring, a ploy to send them off on yet another wild-goose chase.
An excited Rajid arrived at the house half an hour later and was set up in a corner of the kitchen to see if the laptop contained any useful information. It took only a few minutes for him to uncover logs showing that Matthews was indeed shygirl351, but Collins couldn’t help but feel that they had already known that anyway.
Rajid found little else of interest – certainly nothing pointing to an alternative address or a place where Matthews might have been taking her victims to slaughter them. They were all still in the dark.
By ten in the evening Collins was fighting a losing battle against exhaustion and Anderson could tell.
‘I think we can call off the search for the day. There’s nothing useful to be gained here and I don’t think there’s any point in being too exhausted for work tomorrow. I want you to head off home and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll get the team to tag and bag everything they find here and get it over to forensics. We can start going through it all tomorrow from the comfort of the office.
‘There are two questions we need to answer. Who the hell is Jessica Matthews? And where the hell is Jessica Matthews? If you can have both the answers on my desk tomorrow, you’ll make me a very happy man.’
Collins managed a weak smile. She felt certain that if she told Anderson that it was her fault Matthews had gone on the run, he would be forgiving and understanding. But she was too exhausted to take the chance.
‘What about Rajid?’
They looked down the hallway and into the kitchen, where Rajid’s face was illuminated by the light from the computer screen. He was staring intently and typing furiously as a stream of letters and symbols whizzed past his eyes.
‘He’s young,’ said Anderson. ‘When I was that age I didn’t even wake up until it was dark. If anyone can work through the night without suffering any ill effects, he can. There will be someone to take him home when he’s done. Go on, you get off, otherwise you won’t make it home at all.’
Thirty seconds later a thoroughly exhausted Stacey Collins finally climbed into the back of the unmarked patrol car that had brought her to the house that morning. She collapsed across the seat, curling up like a baby.
‘Wake me up when we get to my house.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The big Vauxhall pulled away from the kerb and off into the night. A few seconds later a second car pulled away from the kerb five hundred yards along the road.
With her hair dyed a different colour and cut into a different style, Jessica Matthews was totally unrecognizable. She smiled as she eased her foot off the accelerator to keep an even distance between herself and the car she was following.
Collins should not have gone to her house but she had done so anyway. The least she could do now would be to return the favour.
21
The full details of Jessica Matthews’s true background and traumatic childhood emerged slowly as the result of painstaking research by every member of the murder team.
At an emergency morning prayers session in the hours that followed her disappearance, assignments had been handed out to ensure every aspect of her life was uncovered and explored.
All were shocked by what they found but few more so than Collins herself, who felt like a fool for allowing herself to be thoroughly manipulated by a dangerous and psychopathic woman who had clearly had an agenda right from the start.
Although she tried her best to stay focused on the task at hand, it was impossible to stop her thoughts from returning time and again to the lunches and dinners and coffees that she and Jessica Matthews had shared over the years. She was beating herself up about having failed to spot any of the clues about the woman’s behaviour and actions that now, with the benefit of hindsight, seemed oh so obvious. Woods, Anderson and the rest of her colleagues did their best to be supportive and told her not to be too hard on herself – after all Matthews had managed to fool many others besides – but Stacey couldn’t help but feel she had let them all down.
Interviews with friends and colleagues shed little light on Matthews’s character – no one had a bad word to say about her, professionally at least. It was only when Collins and Woods met up with the pathologist’s parents that they truly began to understand just what a troubled individual they were dealing with.
As they travelled to Matthews’s home town Collins and Woods hoped they might finally gain some kind of insight into the making of the monster.
The house where Jessica Matthews had grown up was a nondescript semi-detached in the heart of suburban Enfield. It was only a few doors away from a large, partly forested park that had a sizeable play area complete with swings, slides and roundabouts as well as a paddling pool that operated during the summer months.
With dozens of other families living nearby, shops and other amenities all within easy reach, the area seemed to provide the perfect setting for an idyllic middle-class childhood.
Each house on the street had an immaculately kept front garden – to allow even a single blade of grass to be out of place was to risk being accused of lowering the tone by the head of the residents’ committee. Rear gardens, though hidden from public view, were a matter of equal pride, with the local MP – a Tory of course – being chief judge of the annual contest in which prizes were awarded for the best-kept plot.
For those who had chosen to make this part of North London their home, the only cause for concern came in the form of three enormous tower blocks from a local housing estate that rose up over the horizon like angry weeds. Much to the dismay of the parents outside the estate, it was here that many of their children found most of their fun and recreation, travelling up to the top floors in the lifts, running in and out of the underground garages and hanging out with gangs of kids hell bent on vandalism and mischief. These were exactly the kinds of children the parents had warned their offspring to avoid at all costs, and fear that their influence might spread had resulted in constant vigilance throughout the area.
This was the reason that, although the car that Collins and Woods arrived in was unmarked, curtains twitched on both sides of the road as they emerged and made their way up the front path towards Number 230.
‘You think they already know?’ asked Woods, glancing around.
‘Doubt it,’ said Collins. ‘I think it’s just that kind of area. Everyone is into everyone else’s business. Try to make a mental note of where the biggest busybodies are – the houses where the most noses are poking through the curtains. Might be worth having a word with them later on. We’ll get a different take on the home life of young Miss Matthews.’
The door was opened by WPC Louise Mitchell, who, earlier that morning, had been appointed family liaison officer to Jessica’s parents. It was her job to fend off the unwanted attention of the press, remain with the family at all times and provide a direct link to the highest levels of the investigation. It was a service performed not just for victims but also for families of the accused, who, in many cases, became victims in their own right. Although some parts of the press were likely to end up calling Matthews a hero for killing off paedophiles, they could never be sure exactly how people would react.