please? You might be able to help us out. Get details where everything has occurred, map it out and see what ideas you can come up with? Any help we can get we will be gratefully received.’
‘Of course, Catherine emailed early this morning about the case. Though I’m going to be at the opposite end of the room to Grey. Just in case he spontaneously combusts.’
39
The briefing room was heaving, even though it was only eight a.m. The airwave radio set, was on Aaron’s desk and tuned in to the local area. It was quiet. From experience I knew it would scream into life later and Aaron would hand it off to someone else to manage because he couldn’t stand the constant noise on his desk. It distracted him, made him grumpy and bad-tempered.
I was pleased to see Catherine had drafted in extra staff, though this much chatter in the room was going to stress Aaron out. He was already sitting at his desk with his earplugs in.
There were many familiar faces that I had seen in my years working over the force area, but there were also some unfamiliar ones. We had the full HOLMES 2 team setup, which included manager, receiver, reader, indexer and inputter, as well as our own intelligence unit and Evie as our analyst on a permanent basis for the length of the investigation. I imagined the new death had given Catherine cause to rise early and organise it all.
I thanked everyone for coming in early and at short notice. Aaron took out his earplugs as the noise died down. ‘As you may know, we’ve had several deaths that have been caused by digoxin toxicity.’
‘Lady Westholme, Ma’am?’
Catherine, who was standing at the side making sure her organisational skills had gone to plan, gave the interrupter at the back a glare. Whether she understood the Agatha Christie reference or not, she obviously didn’t care, though I imagined she didn’t get it. I saw her more as a literary fiction kind of reader.
I nodded my understanding and continued talking about Angela Evans and how this had exploded without warning.
‘We are working this under the operation name Veridical. We have no links between the victims so far, so I want a large part of the investigation team to work on that, to do the victim work. Find out if any of them link back to each other in any way. If they have mutual acquaintances between them. Check bank and credit card bills, locations of such, schools, jobs, subscriptions to clubs, magazines, online spaces. Speak to everyone they know and liaise with their FLOs so that you always have the support of the families as you do this. I don’t want it to look as though we are being intrusive on the victim when all we are doing is trying to hunt down a common denominator and find a killer before he finds himself any more victims to house FLOs with. If you’ve come over from another force area EMSOU, thank you. If you’re here from another division on temporary secondment, see DS Aaron Stone who will partner you up with someone and point you in the direction of Theresa, the HOLMES inputter, for actions.’
Aaron nodded as I pointed him out and a bunch of eager faces looked towards him. Ah, the uniform secondments. Usually a good bunch to have because they were always thrilled to be seconded to a homicide investigation and got on with their work really quickly and for some reason they loved to be wearing a suit to work. I think it was the novelty. Personally, I liked the days when I wore a uniform. You never had to think about what you were going to wear in a morning and never had to worry if your arse looked big in anything because it was known that it was going to look big in the awful uniform work trousers, but they were practical and robust for running about, throwing yourself about in and cleaning up in the washing machine.
‘As well as tying the victims to each other we need to progress the separate digoxin investigation. It looks as though we have a killer using digoxin as their weapon of choice and the
‘Of course, Catherine emailed early this morning about the case. Though I’m going to be at the opposite end of the room to Grey. Just in case he spontaneously combusts.’
39
The briefing room was heaving, even though it was only eight a.m. The airwave radio set, was on Aaron’s desk and tuned in to the local area. It was quiet. From experience I knew it would scream into life later and Aaron would hand it off to someone else to manage because he couldn’t stand the constant noise on his desk. It distracted him, made him grumpy and bad-tempered.
I was pleased to see Catherine had drafted in extra staff, though this much chatter in the room was going to stress Aaron out. He was already sitting at his desk with his earplugs in.
There were many familiar faces that I had seen in my years working over the force area, but there were also some unfamiliar ones. We had the full HOLMES 2 team setup, which included manager, receiver, reader, indexer and inputter, as well as our own intelligence unit and Evie as our analyst on a permanent basis for the length of the investigation. I imagined the new death had given Catherine cause to rise early and organise it all.
I thanked everyone for coming in early and at short notice. Aaron took out his earplugs as the noise died down. ‘As you may know, we’ve had several deaths that have been caused by digoxin toxicity.’
‘Lady Westholme, Ma’am?’
Catherine, who was standing at the side making sure her organisational skills had gone to plan, gave the interrupter at the back a glare. Whether she understood the Agatha Christie reference or not, she obviously didn’t care, though I imagined she didn’t get it. I saw her more as a literary fiction kind of reader.
I nodded my understanding and continued talking about Angela Evans and how this had exploded without warning.
‘We are working this under the operation name Veridical. We have no links between the victims so far, so I want a large part of the investigation team to work on that, to do the victim work. Find out if any of them link back to each other in any way. If they have mutual acquaintances between them. Check bank and credit card bills, locations of such, schools, jobs, subscriptions to clubs, magazines, online spaces. Speak to everyone they know and liaise with their FLOs so that you always have the support of the families as you do this. I don’t want it to look as though we are being intrusive on the victim when all we are doing is trying to hunt down a common denominator and find a killer before he finds himself any more victims to house FLOs with. If you’ve come over from another force area EMSOU, thank you. If you’re here from another division on temporary secondment, see DS Aaron Stone who will partner you up with someone and point you in the direction of Theresa, the HOLMES inputter, for actions.’
Aaron nodded as I pointed him out and a bunch of eager faces looked towards him. Ah, the uniform secondments. Usually a good bunch to have because they were always thrilled to be seconded to a homicide investigation and got on with their work really quickly and for some reason they loved to be wearing a suit to work. I think it was the novelty. Personally, I liked the days when I wore a uniform. You never had to think about what you were going to wear in a morning and never had to worry if your arse looked big in anything because it was known that it was going to look big in the awful uniform work trousers, but they were practical and robust for running about, throwing yourself about in and cleaning up in the washing machine.
‘As well as tying the victims to each other we need to progress the separate digoxin investigation. It looks as though we have a killer using digoxin as their weapon of choice and the
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