Harriet picked her phone up from the floor and set it on the table, switching it to loudspeaker. She could hear movement at the other end.
"What... What do you mean I've been messaging the murderer?" Harriet spoke slowly, annunciating every word.
"We searched for other accounts that have been in contact with the killer's one and your name came up. We traced the conversation and profile... it's definitely you." Andy replied, being careful to say nothing to annoy Harriet, he assumed she was in a state of shock.
"Can you send us a copy of that conversation Andy?" Zara spoke up, clearly understanding that Harriet was in no mood to talk.
"Yeah no problem Detective Sheed. It should be with you shortly." As he bid his farewell and hung up the phone, Zara's inbox binged to notify her of an email. She printed off the conversation and handed it to Harriet.
Harriet looked over it, dreading it to be the conversation with P.H. He didn't seem that way inclined, plus he was very open about his life, just not his name, which Harriet didn't mind at all because she knew pretty much everything else. However, this wasn't her conversation with P.H. It was the first account to contact her – the anonymous one.
How did she not click?! Anger bubbled up inside Harriet as she slammed the paper down on her desk.
"I take it you recognise it then?" Zara stated, sounding slightly disappointed. "I was hoping he was mistaken."
"I recognise it yeah. I thought it was just some dumb prankster. A teenager or someone who wanted to see me get worked up. I didn't bother replying to it, I just let it be. Now I wish I had done something sooner, then maybe there wouldn't be such a high body count."
Zara wandered over to a physically shaking Harriet and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Harriet let out a pathetic sob and buried herself into Zara's shoulder. They stayed that way for a few minutes before she let out a breath of air and stood back up.
"It wasn't your fault Harriet; anyone else would have thought the same." Zara comforted her and strangely her words did ease the anger in Harriet's stomach. Suddenly, Harriet realised.
"He knew I was looking for him. He knew we were on to him!" She grappled with her phone and pulled the conversation up. "The messages started the night that Jason was murdered." She shoved her phone to her panic-stricken Zara.
"Detective Murray was murdered?" Zara shot back and Harriet winced as she realised she had let go of information not yet made public. She held a finger to her lips and Zara nodded in understanding before taking a look at Harriet's phone. The dates did indeed match.
"He knew the police were after him, so he decided to distract us both by attempted murder that went wrong!" Harriet could've nearly smiled that they were figuring it out so quickly now. The devil himself couldn't hide the killer from them now that they were so close. Of course, she didn't smile.
"How can you be so sure it was him?"
"What other officers knew or worked on the case? None, besides the clean up team – but they knew nothing about evidence or theories..." Harriet trailed off, suddenly remembering Officer Smith's rude interrupted the other day about the CCTV footage. Harriet jumped into her office chair and clicked back onto the programme. She wound the footage until she found the evidence of a man looking in. Harriet beckoned Zara over.
"Look." She pointed to the screen and Zara's face went white as a sheet, even though she had a fairly dark complexion. "Do you think... that it could – "
"That isn't Jason, Harriet." She spoke firmly. "But it does look an awful lot like him."
Harriet zoomed in on the face, the features now distorted.
YOU ARE READING
Anonymous
Mystery / Thriller"Get off me!" She screamed, hot tears running tracks on her cheeks again. Her make-up had, without a doubt, smudged and her hair was probably a tangled mess on her head but she didn't care. All she wanted was to get out of this. More importantly, sh...
