by Jack Slater
The forensics team arrived, in white bodysuits and overshoes, hoods up and masks hanging around their necks for now, carrying two shiny aluminium equipment cases each. Harold Pointer also held a stack of metal stepping squares. ‘Evening, Sergeant. Doctor. Constable. What are we looking for here?’
‘Apparent suicide, so evidence to corroborate or deny that,’ Chambers told him, then bent to set his leather case on the ground at his feet. It would be a few minutes before he could gain access.
‘You’ll find my prints on the back door, the front door and I touched the deceased to confirm death,’ Pete told Harold. ‘I haven’t been anywhere else in the house. Left that to you lot. Back door was unlocked, front wasn’t.’
‘So, you opened the front door.’
‘Yes.’
‘Righto. In we go.’ He pulled his mask up over his nose and mouth and stepped forward, setting the first of his square metal steps down just inside the threshold.
‘Suspect in your case?’ asked the pathologist, tucking his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket.
‘Yes.’
‘Mm. You’ll need full access to this place as soon as possible, then, to search for evidence.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good luck with that, with Harry on the case,’ said Carter. ‘He won’t miss anything, but he doesn’t rush.’
‘I’ll have a word, see if he can expedite things as much as possible,’ the doctor offered. ‘Perhaps he can clear a room at a time and allow you access to it.’
Pete nodded. ‘That would be helpful. Where the hell have my uniforms got to?’ He pulled out his mobile phone and dialled. ‘Jane, chase up the bloody uniforms, would you? Then get round here as quick as you can.’
‘We were just leaving, boss.’
‘OK.’ He cancelled the call and put the phone away.
‘Was he a good suspect?’ Carter asked.
‘Not until a few minutes ago, when I found out where he worked. We just had to eliminate him, that was all.’
‘So, how did the press get on to him?’
‘Don’t know,’ Pete shrugged. ‘Not from my team, that’s for sure. I suppose they must have checked the sex offenders register.’
‘Can they do that?’
‘Legally? No. Practically? Of course they can.’
‘So, anyone else on that register is at risk of the same treatment.’
‘Yes, if they haven’t already had it.’
Harold Pointer stuck his head out the front door. ‘Ready when you are, Doctor.’
‘Thanks, Harold.’ He picked up his bag and went inside.
Pete glanced up at the distant flash of blue lights. A patrol car was coming up the street. ‘At last.’
‘Reinforcements?’ Carter suggested.
‘The bloody uniforms, I hope. Then I can at least get back do doing some detective work.’
‘And what does Louise think about that? You getting back to work, I mean.’
Pete drew in a deep breath. ‘She’s not overly happy about it, but one of us has to earn a crust.’
The car pulled up a short way down the street and Pete stepped down from the porch and went to meet the three uniformed constables who climbed out. ‘Right, I need crime scene tape around the property, front and back, then I need a man on the front gate and one on the back door until forensics have finished. No one but myself and my team, when they arrive, in or out without my permission until the doc and the forensics guys are finished, OK?’
‘Right, Sarge.’
Another car was pulling up behind theirs. Pete recognised Jane’s bright green Vauxhall. As she stepped out, the tall, boyish figure of Ben Myers unfolded from the other side. Pete joined them on the pavement.
‘This is getting to be a right traffic jam, isn’t it, boss?’ Jane observed.
Pete glanced back at the vehicles filling the street. ‘Best get some more uniforms at either end of the street, I suppose; get it cordoned off until we can clear it. Why the hell didn’t we know before that he worked at the Old Mill?’
‘Didn’t come up, I suppose. Dave interviewed him at home, didn’t he? And then we were concentrating on his alibi, which was his girlfriend.’
‘Yeah, I need to go and talk to her. Doc Chambers is inside with the forensics team. He said he’d get them to clear a room at a time so we could search it. I want everything examined, down to the fluff under the wardrobes. If there’s anything to find here, I want it found, OK? I’ll see what Karen Upton has to say for herself, then I’ll be back to help.’
‘OK.’
Pete walked with them as far as the gate, then waved to John Carter and went on to his car while Jane and Ben headed up the path.
Using the back streets, it took him just a few minutes to reach the address that Dave had texted him. He pulled up outside a neat 1960s semi, one of a row of similar houses, each with its own drive and garage. Most had at least one car outside. This one had a nearly new Fiat 500 on the drive.
There was no doorbell so Pete knocked sharply on the frosted glass. Moments later, a shadow moved beyond it and the door was opened just a few inches by a small, pretty woman in her late thirties, her blonde hair cut in a neat bob.
‘Yes?’
Pete showed her his warrant card. ‘Sorry to bother you. DS Gayle, CID. Miss Upton?’
She seemed to relax slightly. ‘Yes.’
‘Can I have a word, please? It won’t take long.’
‘What about? Barry?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve said all I want to say about him, thank you.’ She went to shut the door.
Pete raised a hand quickly. ‘It’s not entirely about that, I’m afraid.’
She paused. ‘Then what is it?’
He gave a small gesture. ‘Do you mind? As I say, it won’t take long.’
She pursed her lips briefly. ‘All right.’ She stepped back and allowed him to enter.
The wide, square hallway was tastefully decorated. Four doors led off, three of them closed. The fourth, in front of him, opened into the lounge. A dark leather sofa stood against the wall that he could see and, beyond it, a small bookcase. She led him through and waved him to a seat at right angles to the sofa, which she perched on, hands between her knees.
‘So, what’s this about?’
‘I’m investigating the death of a young girl and the disappearance of another. You may have read about it or seen it on the news.’
She grimaced. ‘Yes. I never imagined Barry would be involved in anything like that.’ She shivered. ‘It’s creepy.’
‘Yes. I know you’ve spoken to my colleagues, but before we go any further, I need to confirm your whereabouts on the mornings of yesterday and the day before, around eight o’clock to nine.’
‘I’ve already told your DCI Silverstone, I was at Barry’s place. With him. I’ve stayed there every night this week.’ She shivered again. ‘To think . . .’
‘Then, I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just come from Barry Enstone’s house. I’m afraid he’s dead, Miss Upton. He died this evening.’
‘Oh God. How?’
‘At this stage, it looks like an overdose, but that’s to be confirmed.’
‘My God, that’s awful.’
‘Miss Upton, you seem to have spent a reasonable amount of time at his house. Was there anywhere in the property that you were . . . discouraged from going into? An office, a workroom, spare bedroom, anything like that?’
She frowned. ‘No.’
‘There was nowhere you didn’t go?’
‘No . . . Well, the loft, I suppose. But you wouldn’t, would you?’
Pete inclined his head. ‘And did Barry spend much time up there, that you know of?’
‘A bit. He was looking for something. A document he wanted to show me from amongst his mother’s things.’
‘But he didn’t find it?’
‘No, not . . . No, he didn’t. Why?’
>
‘And you didn’t ever hear anything unusual from up there?’
‘Only him moving boxes around. Why? What are you thinking – that he was holding one of these girls up there all the time we were . . . God, no. He couldn’t have.’ She stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘Could he?’
Pete shrugged. ‘At this stage, I really don’t know. Do you know if he had a computer?’
‘Yes. In the spare room. He didn’t use it much. Emails and eBay, I think that was about all. It’s quite old.’
‘Did he have a password on it?’
‘Yes. He changed it recently to my name and birthday. Karen253. Twenty-fifth of March.’
‘OK. And was he in any clubs or associations that you know of? Maybe a supporters’ club, a darts team – anything like that.’
She shook her head. ‘Not that I’m aware of, no.’
‘So his emails were . . . ?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘Mostly junk, like most people’s, I suppose.’
‘You say you stayed there all this week. As the house is now a crime scene, we’ll need you to pop into the station at some point and provide DNA and fingerprints for elimination.’
‘OK.’
He nodded. ‘And one last thing. I’m not trying to be offensive, but . . . I take it you were having sex with Mr Enstone? How . . . how was he as a lover?’
She shifted awkwardly on the sofa, clearly embarrassed. ‘He was . . . not skilled, but he was kind, considerate, gentle . . . He wanted to please me. You can’t really think he was doing these things, attacking these young girls, while we were . . .’ She shivered. ‘God! I can’t believe that. I just can’t.’
He stood up. ‘Thank you, Miss Upton. Sorry to have troubled you and for your loss.’ He stepped into the hall, turned back with his hand on the door handle. ‘If there’s anything else you think of, don’t hesitate to call us, OK?’
‘Of course.’
Pete nodded and let himself out. Glancing back from the end of her drive, he saw that she was still standing in the doorway. He waved briefly, but her only response was a brief grimace that he guessed was meant to be a smile.
*
‘Found anything?’
Pete stepped into the spare bedroom. The forensic team were working in the kitchen and the main bedroom, white-suited figures going quietly about their business, just the rustle of their thin overalls to show that they were actually real, not some weird type of spectral apparition. Jane was sitting in front of a cheap, wood-effect workstation with an old tower-style desktop computer. The screen in front of her flickered and shifted, showing a photograph of a golden autumn lane overlaid with a variety of icons.
‘Just got in here,’ she said. ‘Harry’s next door. Reckons this room’s clean. Like, very clean.’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘Yeah. So, now we’ve got access to the computer, let’s see what’s on it.’ She clicked a couple of keys and a small screen came up with a series of little brown folder icons. She clicked on the first one. Several Word documents showed up, along with a sub-folder. She opened that, to reveal yet more Word documents and a few saved web pages. She tried one of these. It appeared to be a news item, downloaded from a newspaper website. She closed it and tried another. A similar article opened up. She navigated to another folder and opened it. More Word files. Another folder gave the same result.
‘Hang on,’ Pete said. ‘You can save pictures in Word documents.’
‘True.’ Jane clicked back and opened one of the files. A letter appeared, addressed to a judge at the county appeal court. ‘OK. Don’t see the point of that, but still . . .’ She closed it, scanned down the page and tried another one. Another letter opened up, this one to his solicitor. ‘Has Harry finished in the sitting room, do you know?’ Pete asked.
‘No idea, boss. I daren’t ask.’
Pete turned to the door. ‘Harold,’ he called.
‘In here, Sergeant.’
Pete stepped out on to the narrow landing. ‘Have you finished in the sitting room?’
‘Yes. We did that first, to allow Doctor Chambers access to the body.’
Pete stepped up to the doorway of the main bedroom, in which Harold was working. ‘Did you find anything of interest in there?’
‘Forensically, no. A few books that probably wouldn’t get published nowadays, but nothing too untoward.’
‘OK. Thanks.’ He headed downstairs, leaving Jane to the computer and Ben Myers to search the loft, the ladder of which was pulled down just a few feet from the doorway into the spare room.
He was less than a third of the way down the stairs when Ben called out. ‘Hey, boss. I’ve got something up here.’
Pete turned on the stairs. ‘What?’
‘You’d better come up and have a look.’
‘Really?’
‘When you’ve done that, you’ll want to come and have a look at this, too, boss,’ Jane said from the spare room.
‘Jeez! One at a time, folks.’ He grabbed the side of the metal ladder and started up into the roof-space. As his head emerged into the loft, he saw that it was fully lined, floored and carpeted, with a Velux window looking out to the rear. Ben was standing over an old-fashioned trunk, its lid thrown back to reveal a stack of papers and magazines.
‘What you got, Ben?’ He stepped up into the sloping-roofed space.
‘These.’ He handed over a sheaf of papers and Pete glanced down at them. Not papers, he saw. Photographs. The thin, cheap paper had fooled him from a distance.
He began to flick through. ‘Christ. So much for not being into this kind of thing anymore.’ The photographs were of girls ranging in age from around eight or nine upwards. None of them were family snaps. He flicked through several then looked up at Ben, who was watching him carefully. ‘How many have we got here?’
‘Dunno. Hundreds, by the look of it. There’s a few magazines and books in between, to stabilise the stacks, I suppose. But mostly, it’s pictures in here.’
Pete looked into the trunk. About three feet by one and a half, it was roughly half full of stacks of papers and books. Hundreds? More like thousands. He sighed. ‘This whole lot’s going to need taking back to the station, cataloguing and putting into evidence.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah. Not going to be light, is it? We’ll have to use evidence boxes. Come down and see if you can lay your hands on some while I see what Jane’s got.’
‘I haven’t finished searching this place yet.’
‘OK. Do that, then see about the evidence boxes.’ He stepped down onto the ladder and began to descend. ‘Nice work, Ben.’
Ben grunted. ‘Thanks.’
Pete grinned and continued down the ladder. ‘What you got, Jane?’ he asked as he went back into the spare room.
‘Found what we’re looking for,’ she said. ‘Filed under “Journey planners”.’
She looked up at him as she clicked an icon and an image opened up. Disgust mingled with horror as Pete looked at the image on the screen.
‘Yeah, all right,’ he said. ‘That’ll do. What else?’
‘A whole folder full. Here you go.’ She ran the caster-footed chair to one side, leaving him room to stand at the computer. Pete reached for the mouse and reluctantly lined it up and double-clicked. Another image came up, almost as sick as the first one. The girl must have been no more than nine, the man with her probably in his late fifties or more – his face was blurred out, but you could tell by his hair colour, and not just that on his head. He was as naked as she was and evidently far happier to be there. He clicked on the Next button and went rapidly through several pictures until he stopped at one. ‘This is one of those that Ben’s got upstairs, in print form.’
‘Maybe he prints them out, but keeps them on here too,’ Jane suggested.
‘Mm.’ Pete moved on, flicking through several more pictures. He saw another that he recognised from the prints upstairs. Then another. ‘Looks like you’re right. There’s more here. But,
do these files have any data on them as to where they came from?’
‘They’re just picture files, rather than web pages, so I don’t know, boss. I know they would if he’d taken them, but, as downloads off the Internet, they’d just have the file size and download date, as far as I know. Dave would probably know if there’s more, but I’m not as up on this stuff as he is.’
‘Another little something to take away with us then.’
‘Yeah. And London didn’t have anything on file from down here.’
Pete grunted. ‘Lot of use they are, then, eh?’
‘And what’s “journey planners” got to do with anything? Does that suggest he goes somewhere to be involved in this kind of stuff, do you think?’
‘Or it’s just a title to put off a casual searcher. Shut it off and get it ready to take away,’ Pete told her and turned away. ‘Harold! How you doing?’
Harold stepped out of the main bedroom. ‘Almost done. Lots of forensic material, but I was expecting that in here, of course. What I wasn’t expecting was this.’
‘What?’ Pete stuck his head into the room to see Harold holding up a small suitcase, filled with neatly folded clothes. But not male clothes, he saw. And not adult sizes either.
‘Jesus! Swab them for DNA, Harold. And compare it to every unsolved case in the database that involves a young girl. Including, and especially, Lauren Carter and Amanda Kernick.’
CHAPTER 23
Jane adjusted the position of the small trolley that Barry Enstone’s computer was standing on at the side of her desk. ‘Right. I don’t know if this is the kind of stuff I need to be looking at before I go home to my bed, but here goes.’ She pressed the power button. The fan began to whir and the screen lit up. The bright gold colours of the sunlit autumn scene that he used as his home page seemed completely incongruous, knowing what was concealed behind it.
‘We’re going to have to go through all the pictures on there, see who’s on the missing persons database or the national crime database and look for anything recognisable in the backgrounds,’ Pete said.
