by M. J. Ford
‘Oh, y’know. About his time in the forces.’
It was a detail she hadn’t been expecting. ‘Alan Trent was in the army?’
‘No, RAF. So he told me. Went all over the world on aircraft carriers.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘Sure. Why not?’ Lucas tapped his forearm. ‘He had this flier’s ink. On his arm. A bird or something. Said he got it in Morocco. Through hard work we reach the stars.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘P.A.A.A. Per ardua ad astra. It’s Latin. Written under his tattoo.’
‘Oh … right.’
Lucas smiled. ‘I get it. You’re surprised a gardener knows Latin.’
‘A little.’
‘I don’t,’ said Lucas. ‘Just so happens it was my school motto. Sorry, what’s your name? I’m Lucas.’
‘Er … Jo. Jo Masters. Thanks for your help, Lucas.’ She fished out a card and handed it to him. ‘If there’s anything else you think might be important, or if you need to get in touch.’
He looked at his watch, smiled apologetically, eyes crinkling at the edges.
‘I’m stuck in town for a while. You fancy a drink, Jo? I know a Moroccan place that’s actually not full of idiots this time of night.’
Jo wasn’t at all prepared for that. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked her out.
‘Er … oh … no, I can’t.’
He blushed. ‘Of course not. Silly me. You’re probably married. Or you hate Moroccans. Joke, by the way.’
He made his way to the door, tried to open it, and bounced off.
‘You need to press the buzzer,’ said Jo, smiling to herself. ‘Here, let me.’
‘This is getting really embarrassing now,’ said Lucas.
She pressed the button to open the door. ‘Everyone does it,’ she said. ‘And I’m not married. It’s just bad timing,’ she said. ‘Middle of a case and all. If you need a ride home, we can arrange one.’
‘No need,’ said Lucas, as he pushed open the door. ‘My humiliation is complete.’
And with that, he was gone.
Jo, shaking her head, returned to the incident room alone. I should have taken him up on the offer. It wasn’t often she got asked out in the flesh, rather than a simple swipe on a smartphone. She couldn’t imagine Lucas Hardy using a dating app – he seemed a bit more old-fashioned. Her own brief attempts had been disastrous. The first guy seemed okay, for all of five minutes, but as soon as he heard what she did for a living the conversation had soured. Turned out he had a record. And the second had been great for three days – until his girlfriend had showed up while Jo was still in the shower.
She found herself flicking back through the Trent file. There was nothing in there about time in the forces, but then there was nothing listing his occupation at all. She wondered when he’d retired, and if it had been voluntary. There was one person who might know. It was close to one o’clock in the morning, but Laura Phelps probably wasn’t home yet. She found the parole officer’s card.
She didn’t answer, and Jo didn’t leave a message, because she couldn’t get her thoughts in order. She didn’t really know what she wanted to say.
Phelps rang back. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s Detective Masters. We spoke earlier.’
‘Sorry, I had to leave. My little girl – she likes to get in with us in the early hours.’
Jo smiled to herself. ‘No, of course. I was just wondering – is it true that Alan Trent was in the RAF?’
‘Yes, served twenty years. Retired in ’99. He was some sort of signalman. I think he was based at Brize Norton.’ She sighed. ‘He said it kept him on the straight and narrow. It was only after, when he was back on civvie street, that it went bad for him.’
Jo had no time for the wistfulness.
‘We found him by the way. Looks like suicide.’
‘Oh, no …’
‘No trace of his victim though.’
For a few seconds, Phelps didn’t speak.
‘Are you sure you can’t give us anything else about the support group he attended?’ asked Jo.
‘Look, I told you everything I know.’ A pause, then she sounded more reflective, maybe even as though she was fighting tears. ‘That poor, poor man.’
Jo ended the call.
Chapter 11
SUNDAY
At four in the morning, Jo caught forty winks on the sofa in the rec room, vaguely aware of the comings and goings during the morning shift change. She dreamt fitfully of her father, and cycling down the canal towpath in Oxford. It was a happy time – they’d headed all the way out to Wolvercote, where he’d sunk two pints at the Anchor, and she’d had a lemonade and black. There was an old stone packhorse bridge to cross, and Dad had always claimed a troll lived beneath it. She’d never dared to look, but this time, in this dream, she did. The water was still, opaque, but as she peered in, something floated to the surface and she knew it was a body. It rolled over, a white face, eyes gone, the skin of its lips distended and sloughing away …
‘Thought you might want this?’
Dimitriou was sitting on the table in front of the couch, holding a steaming cup of coffee. Jo prised herself up. Her neck felt locked in place, but a few flexes cranked it back to life. The clock read 06.15. Pale light behind the closed slats of the blinds.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘You could’ve gone home.’
‘Did you?’
‘No chance. Overseeing the work on the car.’
‘Find anything?’
‘There are hair fibres in the boot, and some blood. Loads of prints. We’re guessing there’ll be a match for Niall somewhere.’
‘Fuck. Where the hell did he take him?’
‘Drawing a blank at the moment. Trent had been staying in the house for four months. The Singhs were letting out the room to earn a bit of extra cash. Trent replied to an ad in the window of the local newsagent. They said he was a gentleman, no trouble, paid the rent in cash a week in advance.’
‘Visitors?’
‘None they knew of, and Mrs Singh doesn’t leave the house much.’
The dream of the floating corpse wouldn’t leave her alone.
‘Maybe we check the river?’ said Jo. ‘It runs through Port Meadow.’
‘You think he killed him straight away?’
‘I’m not really thinking clearly at all yet. Give me a minute.’ She sipped the coffee. ‘Anything from the phone?’
‘Pay as you go – no credit, and the call record wiped. We’re seeing what we can get from the network.’ He ran his hand over his stubble. ‘I don’t envy Stratton this morning. He’s going to update the parents at eight. There’s no pay rise you could give me to make that call.’
‘Tell me about it. Is there a place I can wash?’
‘Sure – shower in the basement. Ignore my Lycra hanging up. I like to give it an air down there.’
Jo took her overnight bag down, showered and brushed her teeth. She’d packed one more clean set of underwear, but she had a feeling that today would bring a conclusion one way or the other. Either they’d find Niall’s body, or the operation would scale back and she’d be returning to Bath.
And Ben.
Funny, in the last twelve hours she’d barely thought of him, or Dylan Jones.
She wiped the steam from the mirror and got the same moment of cognitive dissonance as always when she saw the reflection looking back. When did I get so fucking old? She started applying make-up, but overdid it, so washed it all off. Sod it – there was no one here she needed to impress.
As she reached the top of the stairs, opening the door into the corridor, her feet slowed, and a heartbeat later she knew why. The voice from the incident room was one she knew well.
What’s he doing here? It was like her ruminations downstairs had somehow summoned him.
Ben was leaning casually against a wall, drinking a mug of tea. He looked fresh as a daisy, in his best suit, chatting to George Dimitriou.
He smiled when he saw her.
‘Detective Masters.’
‘Sir,’ she replied.
The confusion must have been obvious on her face.
‘The DCIs have been sharing intelligence – looks like the links between our cases are becoming a little more than superficial.’
‘They are?’
‘Alan Trent, manual labourer, clown mask. He’d have been twenty-six when Dylan Jones went missing.’
‘It’s a long shot,’ said Jo. ‘He was at sea a lot. Aircraft carriers, I think.’
‘It’s currently our only shot,’ said Ben, shortly. ‘And don’t worry, we’ll look into his service record.’
The sudden development had taken her by surprise, and her head was filled with doubts.
‘The suspect in the Dylan Jones kidnap was tall,’ she said.
‘According to the one witness,’ said Ben. ‘Who was, if I remember, an eight-year-old girl.’
Jo knew more than most how dodgy a person’s memory could be, especially with stress added to the equation. In her remembering, the clown who’d walked off with Dylan had been practically a giant.
‘Point taken,’ said Jo, ‘but I’m not sure Trent’s right for Jones. His MO was more cautious – the kids he molested …’
‘I read the file, detective,’ said Ben. ‘But he didn’t look right for Niall either. Maybe something went wrong with Dylan. Maybe he fought back or made the wrong noise. There are a hundred variables we’ll never know.’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Jo. She was struggling to put her objections into words, because they were coming from instinct rather than logic.
‘A shame the bastard grew a conscience and killed himself,’ said Ben.
Dimitriou nodded in agreement, and Jo felt herself shrivel up. He can’t just walk in here and take over.
‘My money is that we find he was on shore leave. Maybe took a part-time job for the contractor who dug the pool at Bradford and used the opportunity to bury the body.’
‘That would be pretty conclusive,’ said Jo. ‘But we don’t even know the exact date the pool went in, do we?’
‘We’re getting there,’ said Ben.
‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ said Dimitriou. He turned to Jo. ‘I’m going to head home and get some rest. Maybe you should do the same?’
‘I might,’ said Jo, knowing that she wouldn’t.
Dimitriou left the room, leaving Ben and Jo alone.
‘You look tired,’ he said. ‘Paul said you were staying at theirs.’
His use of her brother’s Christian name riled her for some reason. Maybe that wasn’t fair though. She couldn’t expect him to return to a more formal address, just because they’d split. And asking him to delete her brother’s number from his phone would look completely heavy-handed.
‘I kipped there one night,’ she said.
Ben edged closer and she backed away.
‘Wow!’ he said, holding up both hands defensively. ‘Do you hate me that much?’
‘I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘I just want to know why you’re here.’
‘I’ve told you. We’re looking into the possibility that the two missing kids are linked.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ said Jo. ‘And even it were true, you didn’t have to drive thirty miles to find out. We have these things called phones now.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Be professional, for God’s sake.’
‘Professional! Are you kidding me? What would you know about—’
The phone rang on Heidi Tan’s desk and Jo snatched it up, sliding into the chair, glad of the distraction.
‘I’m trying to get hold of Detective Tan,’ said the man. ‘I know it’s early, but …’
‘This is Detective Masters,’ said Jo. ‘Can I help?’
‘I’m phoning from the morgue at John Radcliffe,’ said the man. ‘We’re processing a deceased male. Name’s Alan Trent.’
‘Go ahead – I’m working that case.’
‘It might be nothing, but we’re bagging the clothes, and we found a receipt in his back pocket. The files said personal possessions had been removed at scene of death, so I thought I’d better flag it. It relates to a purchase made only two nights ago. For fuel at a petrol station outside the city.’
‘Can you photograph it and send it over?’ said Jo. She gave the man her email address and hung up.
‘Lead?’ asked Ben.
‘I doubt it,’ she said, trying not to show any flicker of excitement. The last thing she wanted was Ben tagging along. She remained at Heidi’s desk, with her back to him. ‘Listen, I’ll be asking for a transfer as soon as this case is over.’
‘You don’t have to do that. I’ll move.’
‘I don’t want anything from you,’ she said. ‘You have to understand that.’
Ben hitched up his chin, so he was looking at her with a hurt pride. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You’re a good detective, Jo. I don’t want to stand in the way of your career.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, ignoring the implication in his words that he was doing her some sort of favour.
Jo slid her laptop out of her bag and logged on to her force ID. When the receipt came through, she quickly brought it up on screen: £5.14 for fuel, purchased from the Shell garage on the A40, near Witney. Either he was broke, or he knew he wasn’t going far. But it was the time that set her heart racing: 01.26 on July 28th, about four hours after Niall was taken. She searched the location quickly and saw it was only a mile from one of the ANPR cameras that had picked up his vehicle twelve days earlier. Somehow he’d avoided them on the night of the kidnap, or he’d been in a different car.
‘I’m going to go to my brother’s for a bit,’ she said, gathering her coat and heading for the door. ‘Call me with any developments.’
‘Sure,’ said Ben. He was looking through the parole board papers for Trent, sent over by the prison service.
As soon as she was in her car, Jo called the service station, and said she’d be over in half an hour to look at the CCTV. She thought about ringing Stratton, but he was probably with the parents already, so she decided against it. Plus, she didn’t want her whereabouts getting back to Ben.
She drove quickly out of the city, taking the Northern Bypass westwards – a lonely straight road shielded from the surrounding countryside by trees on both sides. She passed the odd lorry stop or layby, and a few turn-offs to small towns, but mostly it was empty black tarmac. It wouldn’t have been busy the previous Friday night, but there would have been some traffic. It was hard to imagine Trent stopping anywhere and doing anything with Niall’s body on this stretch.
The Shell garage was on the opposite side of the road, the eastbound carriageway, and she pulled in. There were two staff on duty, a portly thirty-something manager and a young female assistant. The former seemed relatively excited, but Jo had been vague on the phone. He took her through a back office that reeked of body odour, to a small desk. He began to show her how to use the equipment.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m familiar with the set-up.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything?’
Jo found the right section of the digital recording. ‘No, thanks. Were you working two nights ago? Early hours of Saturday morning.’
‘No – that would have been Brie,’ he said, with a backwards toss of his head, indicating the girl he’d left on the till. ‘She does most of the night shifts.’
‘I need to speak with her then,’ said Jo.
The man – his name tag read Ronnie – looked put out.
‘She’s not the sharpest tool in the box,’ he said, shielding his mouth mock-theatrically.
‘You can shut the door behind you,’ said Jo.
The CCTV was a twin-feed showing the forecourt with a small section of the road beyond, and another angle from behind the counter, pointing through the service window. The time in the receipt narrowed it down precisely and she found the point in question in less than a minute. Trent�
��s Cavalier pulled off the main road, entering the middle lane of pumps. She squinted at the jumpy footage as he got out. There was no sign of anyone in the passenger or rear seats, but the angle made it impossible to be sure. Trent filled the car for less than fifteen seconds, then dropped out of sight, reappearing as he limped up to the counter. He paid in cash, looking around as he did so, then climbed back into his car. All in all, maybe a minute and half had passed. He looked a little agitated, Jo thought, but maybe she was projecting. She rewound again – the car was coming off the nearside, heading back towards Oxford. He’d been somewhere else with Niall, now he was returning. Her sixth sense told her the boy wasn’t in the boot any more.
Where did you take him, you sick fuck?
The door opened and the girl entered. ‘Hi, Ron said you wanted me?’
Jo rewound the footage until she paused it on the man. ‘You were working the night shift on Friday?’
‘Yeah.’ The girl looked at the screen. ‘It’s boring as shit and you get all the freaks. But hey – it’s double time.’
‘And do you remember this man?’
‘Yeah, proper weirdo. At least he wasn’t jerking off though. That happens, believe me.’
Jo made a ‘yuck’ face. She liked Brie a lot more than Ronnie. ‘Why was he a freak?’
‘He was crying,’ she said. ‘Like, proper sobbing.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘Er … what do you think? No way. I’ve got a panic button, in case anyone, y’know, gets aggressive. But he was just crying.’
‘Thanks Brie,’ said Jo. ‘You can get back to work.’
Brie paused with her hand on the door. ‘Is this about that missing kid?’
‘You know about that?’ said Jo. ‘Let me guess, Facebook?’
Brie frowned. ‘Nope. It was on the radio just now. Ronnie only lets us listen to …’
Oh shit. No. Jo interrupted. ‘What did they say?’
‘Some woman was talking about the Killer Clown.’
* * *
Back at the station, Heidi Tan met her at the back door.
‘I’d vest up before you go in there,’ she said. ‘Stratton is not a happy bunny.’
Thankfully the DCI was in his office, though the blinds were only partially drawn, and she saw him through the glass wall on the phone. He caught Jo’s glance with a look of unadulterated contempt as she walked in. Ben was sitting with Carrick, looking at a computer monitor. Both looked a little grim.
