Hurt (DS Lucy Black) Read Online Free PDF Page A

access her voicemail. As she did, she glanced up to where the picture of Mary Quigg remained pinned to her noticeboard. Lucy had sworn to herself that it would remain there until she had found Mary’s killer, Alan Cunningham.
    The message was from a man who introduced himself as David Cooper. He was with the Information and Communication Services Branch, a team specially developed to support operations that involved analysis of computer equipment. Lucy guessed that he’d been tasked with examining Karen Hughes’s phone. Karen had been reported missing from the residential unit on Thursday night. Lucy had called at the unit to find that Karen’s phone had been left in her room. When she still hadn’t turned up on Friday, she’d released the first press appeal and sent the phone to ICS to be examined.
    Lucy dialled the number he had left on the message and, when he answered, introduced herself.
    ‘DS Black. Thanks for getting back to me. I’ve taken a look at this phone and I’m pretty sure I’ve found something. I’m over here in Block 10. Can you come across?’

Chapter Seven
    Designed during the North’s Troubles, the various blocks in Maydown Station had not been geographically placed in sequential order; Lucy suspected that, as with the small, high windows, it was an attempt to reduce the likelihood of an attack from outside. If someone wanted to target Block 3, for instance, they couldn’t be sure that the third block from the entrance was indeed Block 3. Of course, those attacking the compound probably wouldn’t have realized that, so rather than preventing an attack, it would simply mean that the wrong block would be targeted. Someone would still get hurt – just not the intended victim. This thought offered her scant comfort.
    Block 10 was at the opposite end of the compound from the PPU, so it took Lucy a few minutes to get across. The man who buzzed her in was tall, carrying a little extra weight around the gut, but not much. His hair was wavy brown, his features even. He wore a black suit over a white cotton shirt.
    ‘DS Black? I’m Dave Cooper. Come in.’
    She followed him into an office which sat to the left of the main corridor. Once inside, she realized that, in fact, the room spanned the entire left-hand side of the corridor. His desk, which had been visible from the doorway, sat at the top of a huge room. Along one wall, on a worktop, over a dozen computers and laptops hummed quietly as lists of operating system information ran up the screens.
    ‘I’m afraid I’ve only started a few weeks ago here, so I don’t really know anyone yet,’ Cooper said as he led her across to his desk on which sat a large iMac.
    ‘I’m here over a year and I still feel that way,’ Lucy said, gaining his smile in reciprocation.
    ‘I’m not sure if that’s comforting or not,’ he said. ‘I’ve hacked into this phone. Look at this.’
    Lucy moved in closer as Cooper leaned in towards the screen, bringing up on the iMac an image of what was showing on the phone’s screen. She felt the pressure of him beside her, but didn’t move.
    When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, quieter, as if in accommodation of her proximity. ‘Up until about eight weeks ago, she was using this phone for everything. Texting, calls, the lot. Then she stopped. The only calls she made to and from there are to four different numbers. Here.’
    He pointed on screen to the listed numbers. Lucy immediately recognized one as the number for the residential unit in the Waterside run by Social Services where Karen had been resident, and the second as Robbie’s work mobile number. Robbie had been Karen Hughes’s key worker. He was also Lucy’s former boyfriend. Lucy told Cooper the first of these pieces of information.
    ‘The other two numbers are also to mobiles registered with Social Services,’ he said.
    ‘But she didn’t make
any
other calls?’
    Cooper shook his head.
    ‘She must have got a new phone and didn’t tell