Evil in Return by Elena Forbes

He’s on holiday from Seattle with his parents and younger brother and claims to have found it in the gents at a Pizza Hut near Leicester Square at around eleven-thirty. He was using it to text his girlfriend back home.’
    ‘They were up late,’ Downes said.
    ‘Jetlag, apparently, and they’d been to see a show. The little bugger got the fright of his life when we burst in, which serves him right for not turning it in. The long and short of it is he seems to be telling the truth, which means the killer must have deliberately left it there to play silly buggers with us. The place was full. No cameras in the gents, of course. We’ll appeal for witnesses but it’s unlikely anyone noticed the phone being left.’
    ‘It’s gone off for testing,’ Tartaglia added. ‘But I expect it will have been wiped clean before it was dumped. Let’s go back to Logan’s calls.’
    ‘OK. We now have a log of everything going back over the last six months, including transcripts of any voicemails still on the service provider’s server. The call volume is pretty low. Doesn’t seem like he had many friends, or at least didn’t like talking to them. But in the days just before he died, three numbers come up more than once, both incoming and outgoing, and all three callers left voicemails. The first is a woman called Jana Ryan.’
    ‘Logan’s publisher, judging from the transcript,’ Tartaglia added.
    ‘She called twice and left a message each time, asking Logan to call. There’s no record of his returning the call. Next is a man named Alex. In the week Logan died, he called four times and left two voicemails, one three days before Logan died, another on the day of Logan’s death asking Logan to return the call, which he did. Each time they talked for several minutes. The last call was timed at four thirty-three in the afternoon. Judging from the cell site analysis, Logan was calling from on or near the boat, which corroborates what we’ve been told about his movements that day. Alex was somewhere close to the main mast in Kentish Town. We’re trying to trace him through his mobile, but so far no luck. It’s a pay-as-you-go and it appears to be switched off. The last caller is a woman named Anna. She rang and left a message two days before Logan’s death, saying she had some further questions. Logan called her back. They talked for a couple of minutes and it seems they arranged to meet. The evening of Logan’s death, she leaves two voice-mails, one at seven forty-five saying she’s in the bar waiting for him, and another at eight-twenty, saying she’s going home and asking him to call. She thought he’d stood her up and she sounded quite pissed off. Both calls were made within a half-mile radius of the mast at Earl’s Court.’
    ‘We think she’s a journalist called Anna Paget,’ Tartaglia said. ‘According to one witness, she was interviewing Logan for some newspaper. We’re trying to trace her now.’
    ‘We’ll be checking every number on the phone list, but these three callers are a priority.’
    ‘Any news on the laptop, Dave?’ Tartaglia asked, looking over at Wightman, who was sitting opposite and was the youngest member of the team. He was short and stocky, with thick blond hair and glasses. He had a degree in computer science and was usually tasked with anything related.
    ‘They’re sending over a copy of the hard drive within the hour,’ Wightman said.
    ‘Good. What about you, Jane?’ he said, turning to Downes. ‘How are you doing with Logan’s papers?’
    ‘I’ve been through his files and what was in his in-tray. It’s mainly bills, bank statements, that sort of thing, plus some fan mail that had been forwarded from his previous address. Nothing particularly interesting. There was also a whole load of stuff printed off the internet about Thailand and Malaysia. Looks like he may have been planning a trip, although I couldn’t find a booking confirmation or an e-ticket or anything. But I