‘What kind of illicit pictures?’ Adrian asked.

‘Revenge porn mainly, colleges are rife with it,’ Gary said. ‘Boy and girl have sex or send each other nudies. They break up, then one of them turns into a raging dickhead.’

‘That’s depressing,’ Imogen said.

‘The college has free, unlimited Wi-Fi and everyone can access it; it’s a good service. But certain sites are blocked. It’s a shit-hot firewall and would take some skill to bypass. Not that it matters, people share shit on Snapchat and WhatsApp these days,’ Gary said. ‘The university can’t control what people do with their mobiles.’

‘So if the emails have been deleted, can they be recovered?’

‘Possibly, depends how it’s been done. Who do you think might have done it?’

‘A mutual friend,’ Imogen said.

‘How good is he with a computer?’ Gary said.

‘I don’t know, but he seems to be very adept at covering his tracks, so I would assume he is good. Not as good as you though, mate,’ Adrian said.

‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’ Gary grinned.

‘Is there any way to find out if any emails were sent? Through the metadata or something?’ Adrian asked.

Both Imogen and Gary turned and looked at him as though he had just sprouted flowers out of his nostrils.

‘Maybe,’ Gary said.

Imogen turned to Adrian. ‘Metadata, Adrian? Do you even know what that means?’

‘It means data about data, or something, I don’t know, this is not my area,’ Adrian said, shrugging.

‘No shit,’ Imogen said.

‘I’ll keep digging through, but for now that’s all I have,’ Gary said.

‘OK, we’re going to see if Sex Crimes have anything on Caitlin, maybe her face popped up somewhere. We need to find out how she is being manipulated, and why,’ Imogen said.

‘My money would be on Grandad,’ Gary said.

‘What do you mean? You think he’s controlling her?’ Imogen said.

Gary continued, ‘No. If you want to control someone it’s much easier if you blackmail or threaten someone they love. From what I understand, Caitlin Watts doesn’t have many people in her life that would fit into that category, so I bet whoever is doing it is using the grandad to control her. He’s a rev or something, isn’t he? So many ways to go with that. A gay scandal, an inappropriate relationship with a parishioner, or maybe the most terrifying of all – pictures of kids on his hard drive.’

‘That would explain a lot of her behaviour. She doesn’t seem to care about herself much and yet she won’t say anything about who attacked her,’ Adrian said.

‘And when DI Walsh and I pushed her for more information she freaked out and said she couldn’t say any more, which means there are definitely other people involved. Or at the very least she thinks there are,’ Imogen said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Two months earlier

Parker waited for Professor Robert Coley to leave the office before he broke in. The hallways were clear of students and other personnel. This wasn’t the first time Parker had broken into an office, or anywhere in fact. He pulled his kit out of his pocket and pushed the pins inside until he felt the mechanism click. He was in.