House-to-house enquiries would continue near both sites, and known offenders would be brought in for questioning – a long and laborious process which might yield precisely nothing, but which would nevertheless have to be done.
‘I have every faith in your abilities, and I would be delighted to see these two unfortunate matters cleared up as quickly as possible,’ he told them, while at the same time realising that it was very unlikely to happen.
INTERLUDE
‘Good job so far, lads. I think we’ve earned ourselves a takeaway, don’t you?’
There was a rowdy cheer at this suggestion, and they all headed for one of the pubs down near the river, where there was usually dance music playing, live or piped. The rounds were simple – four pints of lager and four whisky chasers – and there were three rounds.
As the last one was put on the table, the main man said, ‘I think we’ll have that one over there in the pink glitter. What do you think, eh?’
‘Looks absolutely delicious. Can we all have the same?’
‘I don’t see why not?’
‘Will we put the container in the bin afterwards? I think so. There’s a big black one just at the back of the pub. We should be able to put it in that when all the punters have gone and the landlord’s safely tucked up in bed for the night. I’ll go and place our order, shall I, and meet you outside. Same as always, except we’ll clear up after ourselves this time.’
The man who had spoken rose and approached a girl at the bar sipping cider through a straw, braving out any lusty glances towards her through her thick covering of make-up.
‘Hello there, love. Would you like another drink? Only I’m going to have one, and I want to play a trick on my mates, if you wouldn’t mind coming outside with me for a minute. There’s a score in it for you. Easy money, and I’ll order when we get back in.’
The young, over-painted face turned up to him and smiled, and she went with him without a murmur, at the promise of twenty quid and a free drink.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Kenneth wasn’t due to go back to the Middle East for another three days, Lauren was at her desk by 7.30 the next morning. She didn’t really want to be in the kitchen when those two started larking around in the annexe right next door – something she suspected they might do purely to get at her. She had to catch up with rapidly developing events in the murder case anyway. The case would obviously go to Olivia now, and she needed to get a grip on what she’d missed, as she had been acting SIO when the most recent murder victim had been discovered. She needed to hand over to her boss with as much detail as she could.
There had been a lot of interview and door-to-door enquiries reports left on her desk, and she set to going through them all, making her own notes. She felt Olivia would be in good spirits when she arrived. Lauren had been relieved when the DI had phoned her, just after six in the hope that she’d be up, to inform her that the hospital had just called. Ben had had a comfortable night after they’d left the previous evening, and was in no further need of the ventilator. His heart also seemed to be behaving itself too.
The DI intended to go into the hospital on the way to work, and would leave Hal with him, on guard. She would be in at her normal time, and she didn’t want news of what was going on getting round the station grapevine; they’d twist it all sorts of ways and she’d never live it down. Rumour seemed to be believed more avidly than truth.
When the DI did arrive, she breezed into the office trying to look as normal as possible, as if she’d just spent her two days off at her leisure, and greeted everyone as she made for her desk. Her desk was positioned opposite Lauren’s, with her back to the DCs, and, just for a few seconds after she had sat down she let her face relax into an expression more akin to what she really felt like inside.
Lauren had the good luck to be looking her way at that moment, and cast her a questioning glance. Discreetly and out of sight of the others, Olivia gave her the thumbs-up to indicate that Ben’s condition had not worsened, then began trying to sort through the paperwork that had appeared on her desk in the previous two days. Much of it was superfluous to current enquiries, a lot of it general internal stuff that she could ignore for now. When she had sorted the wheat from the chaff, she summoned her sergeant to the other side of her desk with a nod of the head, and asked her to go through everything they had so far.
As many officers as could be spared had been engaged in enquiries, trying to identify individuals and locations involved in drugs, and several known faces had been brought in for questioning. Indeed, the cells were fully occupied at the moment with a few who had been picked up very early this morning, before they could be up and about.
The last four still to be interviewed were Teddy Edwards, aka Woggle-Eye; Steve Stoner, aka Flinty; Mervyn Lord, aka The Knife; and Dennis Trussler, aka Scabby. Lauren looked at her superior, expecting information on these peculiarly named characters. Being fairly new to the town, she hadn’t come across these individuals before.
‘They’re a right bad lot,’ Hardy explained. ‘Drugs, mugging; aggravated burglary; shoplifting; ABH – GBH for Trussler; illegal dog fighting; D&D; driving while under the influence; assaulting a police officer; resisting arrest; and TWOCing.
‘They’ve done just about everything except being nailed for a long stint in jail, and they’ve escaped CPS charges on several occasions because of lack of physical evidence or witnesses suddenly changing their stories. I suppose we’d better include intimidating witnesses in that list as well, because that wouldn’t surprise me at all. And that’s just what we know about. God knows what else they’ve got up to undetected.
‘All four of them have been known to the police since they were pre-teens, and none of them seems to understand the concept of going straight. I don’t think any of them have ever worked a day in their lives.’ ‘They sound a right bunch. Are they fairly young?’ asked Lauren, innocently.
‘A bit of a mix really. Trussler is in his forties, Lord isn’t far behind, but the other two are only in their twenties and look up to the other two as sort of godfather characters.’
‘But they’ve all been in prison?’
‘Yes, but not for nearly long enough, and not for anywhere near enough of their crimes.’
‘Can we interview them together, or would you rather one of the men went in with you?’ asked the sergeant, hoping to get the chance to have a peek at these local villains.
‘What, go in with one of those pussies? You’ve got to be kidding. No, I’d rather have you by my side.’
‘Shall we start now?’
‘No time like the present, Groves.’
The first detainee brought in was Woggle-Eye Edwards, who had suffered an overdose of some unknown substance years ago, and had been left with a wandering eye. He was twenty-nine years old, and as vicious as an American pitbull. He had insisted that his ‘brief’ was present when he was interviewed, and a solicitor sat in with him on the other side of the table.
Edwards had a shaven head covered in tattoos, and some disturbingly large holes in the lobes of his ears. His nose also sported several gold rings. Compounded by his grey and irregular teeth, he was a most unprepossessing character, someone who was regularly avoided in the street by less exotic members of the public.
Lauren had the times of death estimated by the pathologist in her notebook and, after Hardy had started the tape, took heed of her nod and asked their ‘guest’ where he had been at the times of both of the killings.
‘No comment,’ he stated with a smirk and what could have been a sideways glance at his brief, but which could just have been a spasm in his mismatched eyes.
Olivia immediately interrupted. ‘Don’t start with the “no comment” routine. I’ve had my fill of that off you over the years, Edwards. Give us some answers that we can check out, or I’ll keep you in custody until the awful tea in here loosens your tongue for you.’
‘Are you going to beat me, Inspector? Ooh, I’m so frightened,’ he concluded in a falsetto v
oice.
‘Only at chess, you muppet. Now, be a good boy and tell us where you were at the times given to you by DS Groves here.’
Edwards assumed what was, for him, a thoughtful expression, but which appeared more like a threatening grimace. Eventually he reluctantly said, ‘I was wiv me mates. They’ll tell you that’s where I was.’
‘And which mates would these be?’
‘Flinty, The Knife, and Scabby. We was all together. They’ll back me on that.’
‘I bet they will. And just where were you all four together so conveniently?’
‘Dunno.’
‘You don’t know where you were, or you were somewhere you didn’t recognise.’
‘Can’t remember. I was off me face.’
Hardy sighed before continuing, ‘Was it just the four of you, or were there other people who could have seen you?’
‘Can’t remember. I told ya, I was off me face.’
‘What on?’
‘The floor, I fink.’
‘Very funny. Did you have anything to do with the deaths of Richard Dunbar or Douglas Green?’
‘Never ’eard of ’em.’
‘Please look at these photographs and tell me if you recognise the men in them. For the benefit of the tape I am handing Mr Edwards photographs of the two murder victims.’
Edwards tossed the photos on to the table with a sneer. ‘Never seen either of them before in me life,’ he replied.
As the photographs hit the top of the desk the door opened soundlessly to let in DC Colin Redwood, a grim expression on his face. He approached Hardy and whispered in her ear before leaving the room. ‘Interview terminated at …’ Hardy wound up the proceedings and asked that Mr Edwards be returned to his quarters. Edwards looked stunned and said in disbelief, ‘Aren’t you letting me go, then?’
‘Not on your life, sunshine. You’re as guilty as hell about something, and I intend to get to the bottom of what it is. You were lying through your crooked teeth the whole time we were being recorded …’
She didn’t get any further, as the solicitor interrupted, saying that he didn’t like her manner towards his client. Woggle-Eye gave a superior smirk, though it disappeared from his face soon enough when he was escorted back to his cell to await further questioning.
As Groves trotted along behind the bustling tubby figure of Hardy, she asked what had come up, and why they were rushing.
‘A young girl, Genni Lacey, has gone missing. Didn’t come home last night, and her parents thought she might be staying with a friend. Even though her mobile was going straight to voicemail, they didn’t worry too much. It was only when she didn’t come back this morning, either, that they phoned some of her friends and it was then they realised there was something wrong. When the friends all came back and said they hadn’t seen her, the mother phoned her in as a missing person. A missing minor: she’s only fourteen years old.’
‘So we’re going to interview the parents, are we?’
‘While Uniform searches the house and garden.’
‘Shouldn’t we carry on with the interviews, though? After all, two men are dead, boss.’
‘Yes, and they’ll be just as dead whether or not we take time off to speak to the distressed parents of the missing girl. She might still be alive, and our investigating at this stage could make all the difference.’
‘Message received and understood, Inspector. Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Because you’re not a hard-nosed bitch like me,’ replied Hardy, who then had to blow said nose rather theatrically as the thought of her Ben still lying in the hospital came to mind. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll get Colin Redwood and Lenny to have a go at them all, and we can listen to the tapes later. Colin’s really straining at the leash at the moment and Lenny’s seen everything there is to see. He’s as likely to be intimidated as an egg is to fry in a freezer.’
‘That sounds like a good idea, guv.’
‘It certainly sounds like one to me. I look forward to the results.’
‘So what exactly are we going to do?’
‘If there’s no trace found of Genni at the house, we can try to reconstruct her last known movements, who last saw her, that sort of thing, then we can get a search party organised. No doubt devilish Devenish would like to spruce himself up again for a public appeal.’
‘I hate it when the homes of missing kids are searched, as if their parents are suspected of killing them and concealing the body,’ Lauren said.
‘But how often that turns out to be true,’ said Olivia.
The girl’s family home turned out to be on a new estate of four and five-bedroomed houses. Although the estate was on the very outskirts of the town and the last houses had only recently been sold, already new building was extending further into the countryside. The structures of smaller houses had sprung up beyond the estate like wooden-framed saplings, and there seemed to be no end to the relentless march into what had all been fields when Olivia was young.
They didn’t reach the doorbell to ring it, as the front door was opened to them as soon as they started up the path by a weeping woman with red eyes and a slumped-over posture. She was about forty, and looked as if she usually dressed smartly, but couldn’t quite carry it off today. Her cardigan was buttoned wrongly, her tights laddered, and her hair unsprayed and flying away from what was probably its normally immaculate coiffure.
Behind her was a man of similar age, dressed as if for the office in a suit, white shirt, and tie, but wearing the expression of one who did not want to change into something more informal in case it was bad luck. As they were bidden to enter, a marked car pulled up by the kerb containing the uniformed officers who would conduct the search of the property. They were in luck with it being a modern structure: there were so many less nooks and crannies in which to conceal a body; not that they expected to find one.
Thomas Lacey, the missing girl’s father, directed the uniformed officers towards the attic, where they would start searching the house from the top down, while the girl’s mother, Abi, showed the two detectives into a minimalist and spacious living room, referred to, rather horribly in Lauren’s opinion, as ‘the lounge’.
When all were seated on the comfortable white leather suite, Mrs Lacey asked them if they had any news of their Genni. She seemed to check herself, before adding that the girl’s full name was Imogen, but they had shortened this to Genni, spelling it out for Lauren, who was taking notes oblivious to the fact that Olivia had already brought out her voice-activated recorder and received a nod of confirmation from the parents that it was all right to use it.
‘When did you last see your, er, Genni?’ asked Hardy, trying to look as sympathetic as possible. She had had a case like this about five years ago, when a little boy had gone missing, and his body had turned up shoved behind the panel of the bath – although it must have been moved there after the police search, for he wasn’t there when they had carried it out. The parents had later confessed that his body had been in a suitcase in the overhead beams of the garage, and the officers must have missed this on their search of the property. And they had seemed such concerned parents, too, worried almost out of their wits – and it had all turned out to be a con.
It was Mrs Lacey who spoke. ‘She went out yesterday just after she’d eaten her tea. She always has something when she comes in from school, and we eat later on, when Thomas is home from work.’
‘So did you see her then, Mr Lacey?’
‘No, I haven’t seen her since I dropped her off at school yesterday morning.’ That would need checking, thought Hardy, to see that she actually had reached school, and that the mother wasn’t just covering up for her husband.
‘Let’s get some basics sorted out first,’ Hardy had requested. ‘How old is Genni, and have you got a recent photograph of her that we can use in our search?’
‘She’ll be fifteen in three weeks’ time, and I’ve got her most recent school photograph on the wall unit. I will get it
back, won’t I?’
‘Of course you will, Mrs Lacey. What did your daughter do when she had finished her meal?’
‘She went upstairs for a while, then she came down in a T-shirt and jeans and with her rucksack. She told me she was off to a friend’s house, and that she’d be back at bedtime.’
‘And that was all right, was it?’
‘She had her mobile phone. We thought that if she could call us and we could check with her, then she’d be fine.’
‘We usually advise parents of young teenagers, especially girls, to ask them for a contact landline number for where they’re going, so that it can be checked that they’ve arrived, then get the child to phone the parents either for a lift home if it’s after dark, or to tell them that they’ll be home within a short time-frame.’
Both parents looked devastated, and Lauren felt that she had to say something. ‘We do realise that it’s very easy to be wise after the event, and if you’ve always been able to trust your child before, you might not have seen the necessity to take precautions like that.’
‘What did your daughter eat for her tea before she went out?’ asked Hardy, trying not to be affected by what seemed genuine panic on the parents’ faces.
‘Why do you want to …? Oh my God, you think she’s dead, don’t you? You think she’s dead, and you’re just not telling us.’ Abi’s face was as white as paper as she said this, her voice shrill and panicked, and Thomas went over and sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders, his hand pulling her head down to rest on him.
‘There, there, Abi, love,’ he comforted her. ‘She’ll have lost her phone and gone off somewhere without a thought for all the worry she’s causing.’
Pulling herself away from her husband, she said, ‘But she’s not that kind of girl at all. She’s always meticulous about telling us where she’s going.’
‘And do you often check?’ asked Hardy, giving them a hard look.
‘No, we don’t. Up until now we’ve always trusted her.’
Hardy remained silent, letting them work it out for themselves. ‘You mean she could have been up to anything, don’t you, and we’d have been none the wiser?’ Abi whispered.
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