I See You by Clare Mackintosh Page B

investigating? A robbery?’
    There had been no violence, which meant the theft of Cathy’s keys was a theft, not a robbery, but Kelly decided to gloss over that fact, in case the severity of the crime was directly proportionate to Tamir’s level of cooperation. Besides, if Cathy was right and the offender had followed her home, and had since been using her key to gain access to her house, there was something far more serious going on. A shudder ran through Kelly at the thought of someone creeping around Cathy’s house. What had he been doing? Touching her make-up? Taking her underwear? Cathy had said she thought someone had been in her house when she was at work, but what if that wasn’t the only time? Kelly imagined an intruder moving quietly around Cathy’s kitchen in the dead of night; creeping upstairs to stand by her bed and watch her sleep.
    ‘The victim was on the Central line at the time,’ Kelly told Tamir. ‘The offender made off with her house keys, and we believe he has since used them to gain access to her property. The victim’s photograph appeared in the classifieds section of your newspaper two days prior to the incident.’ She hoped Cathy had now changed the lock on her back door. Would that be enough to make her feel safe? Kelly wasn’t so sure.
    ‘I see. There’s just a small issue.’ Tamir was still smiling, but her eyes flicked down at her desk and she shifted slightly in her chair. ‘There’s a certain amount of protocol that needs to be followed in the case of chatlines: companies have to be licensed, and when they advertise they have to provide the advertiser – us, in this case – with their licence number. To be perfectlyfrank we don’t go after chatline advertisers. You’ll have seen the section is quite small. They’re what I’d call a necessary evil.’
    ‘Why necessary?’ Kelly said.
    Tamir looked at her as though the answer was obvious. ‘They pay well. Most of that sort of advertising – sex lines, escorts, dating agencies and so on – is all online nowadays, but our print readership is still high, and advertising is what pays for it all. As you can imagine, the sex industry is open to all kinds of abuse, so our measures make sure any chatline operators are properly licensed and therefore regulated.’ She looked down at her desk again.
    ‘But these protocols weren’t followed in this case?’
    ‘I’m afraid not. The client first approached us at the end of September, with adverts to run daily throughout October. Shortly before the end of the month they submitted a second batch of adverts, and they did the same for November. The account was handled by a new member of staff, a man called Ben Clarke, and he processed the order without a licence number.’
    ‘That’s not allowed?’
    ‘Absolutely not.’
    ‘Can I speak to Ben?’
    ‘I’ll get his details from HR. He left a couple of weeks ago – I’m afraid we have a rather high turnover of staff here.’
    ‘How did the client pay?’ Kelly said.
    Tamir consulted the notes written on her pad. ‘By credit card. We can let you have those details, and the address of the client too, of course, but I’ll need a data protection waiver from your side.’
    ‘Of course.’ Damn. Tamir Barron had agreed to see Kelly so readily, she had been holding out hope that the other woman would simply hand over the file. A data protection waiver would need an inspector’s signature, which Kelly wouldn’t be able to get without coming clean about her extra-curricular investigations. ‘In the meantime, perhaps you could let me have copiesof the adverts; both those you’ve run, and those waiting to run?’ She held Tamir’s gaze as confidently as she could.
    ‘A data protection waiver—’ she started.
    ‘Is necessary for personal details such as addresses and credit cards. I quite understand. But there are no personal details in those adverts, are there? And we are talking about a potential crime series.’ Kelly’s