‘They’re taking the evidence across the border?’ Josh hadn’t spoken a word while Kate was on the line.
‘They’ll probably drop them into the forensics lab in Chorley – it’s the nearest to Manchester,’ Fennimore said, stacking the second sealed box on top of the first.
‘Quicker to process it here, surely?’ Josh said.
‘England and Scotland have different evidential protocols,’ Fennimore said. ‘English courts expect police to abide by English protocols.’
Josh nodded, non-committal.
Finally, Fennimore swabbed the area of the counter where the evidence had lain, using sterile medical swabs: one dry; one wet with sterile distilled water; and a third, unopened, as a control sample. He placed them in the same evidence bag. Fennimore rarely did crime scene processing, but he enjoyed the meticulous nature of evidence collection; the precision, the attention to detail, had a soothing effect on him. This kind of task required complete attention – like the rock climbing he would escape to when his regrets became too painful – only with less risk of broken bones.
When he had the last lot of labelling finished, Fennimore straightened up.
‘All done,’ he said.
‘I’ll shoot off, then,’ Josh said, reaching for the door handle.
Fennimore knew he was anxious about the two police officers still hours away from Aberdeen.
‘Josh?’
The student turned back.
‘Thanks,’ Fennimore said.
‘No problem,’ Josh said, but Fennimore could see that mentally he was already out of the building, merging with the crowds, safely anonymous.
15
Manchester Police HQ, Sunday
Chief Inspector Kate Simms pulled into the car park of Greater Manchester Police’s new glass-fronted headquarters. It was 8:10 p.m., and she had been called in to a meeting with Chief Constable Enderby. Simms had ten days’ leave owing, and she’d promised her family she would take them, but Enderby had arranged the placement with St Louis PD after her first murder investigation the winter before. Brutally punishing, that investigation had made her a few enemies on the force and the St Louis assignment had given her breathing space she needed – a few hours out of her leave wasn’t much to ask in return.
She rode the elevator to his office, prepared to chat about her American trip and congratulating herself on how it had changed her fortunes at work. A few months ago she’d been a mistrusted outsider – worse still, an officer from the Met – tainted by scandal after the disappearance of Fennimore’s wife and child. But the success of the joint US/UK taskforce investigation had earned her the respect of others on the force, as well as the approval of the chief constable.
The first surprise was seeing Professor Varley sitting in one of the chief constable’s easy chairs, his long, undertaker’s face lugubrious and unsmiling. The second was seeing a tech seated at Enderby’s desk, working on multiple screens, positioning and freezing frames, tapping, pinching or splaying his fingers on the glass to shrink or enlarge the images, repositioning them like an impresario conjuring up a light show.
‘Kate!’ Enderby came around the desk to shake her hand. Simms dragged her gaze from the swirl of colour and light on the monitors to give her boss her full attention.
‘Congratulations on your American placement,’ he said. ‘Your triumph made national news on both sides of the pond – did you know?’
‘It was a team effort, sir,’ she said modestly, feeling Varley’s flat-eyed stare on her. When they first met, the psychologist had been dismissive of her – as both a non-scientist and a woman – but he had advised on the American investigation and she had sensed a change in his attitude during that time, perhaps even the beginnings of a grudging respect.
‘Professor Varley is advising on the Myers abduction,’ Enderby said. ‘You’ve been following the case?’
‘Only what I’ve seen on the news,’ she said. ‘Is this about the letter Nick Fennimore got yesterday?’
‘John is one of our IT specialists,’ Enderby said, sidestepping her question.
John raised one hand in greeting, but kept his eyes on the array of screens. ‘In a moment, he’ll take us through the sequence of events immediately prior to the disappearance of Mrs Myers and her little girl.’
‘Ready,’ the tech said.
They stood in a loose arc around his chair.
‘We had to extract footage from CCTV and traffic cams along the route,’ he said, ‘so the quality is variable. If you look in the bottom left of each screen, you will see a time stamp.’
The first short sequence showed mother and child in the leisure park, Julia Myers grim-looking and determined, half-dragging the child along a footpath. Suddenly, the child broke away, made a dash for the road, straight into the path of a car. Simms’s heart contracted and she gasped. The men had clearly seen the footage before, because none of them reacted. The tech tapped the next still image and it sprung to life. Mrs Myers, with her little girl in her arms, lifted the boot-lid of her car a few inches and slammed it, still soothing a tearful Lauren. She disappeared for a second.
‘She’s buckling Lauren into the child seat in the back of the car, there,’ the tech explained. The next clip jerked forward in a series of three-second bursts as they moved out of the range of one camera and into the next. Checking the time stamps, Simms calculated that it took the pair ten minutes to get from the parking bay to the car park exit.
‘Everything seems fine until about a mile down the road,’ the tech said, tapping a new section of the screen. ‘This is a traffic cam at the intersection with the A56.’
The car veered erratically, bumped the kerb, swerved, narrowly missed a car, corrected and then almost ran into the back of a lorry at a traffic light. As they drove through the lights, Julia Myers was still at the wheel, but she looked terrified.
‘That’s the last anyone saw of the car,’ Enderby said. ‘Until it was found abandoned five hours later.’
‘The abductor was inside the car,’ Simms said, a cold hollowness seeping into the pit of her stomach. ‘He ambushed them.’
‘It looks like it,’ Enderby said, his face grim.
She thought back through the sequence. ‘If he broke into the car and hid in the boot while it was parked at the leisure complex—’
‘He should be on the security cameras,’ Enderby finished for her.
‘We checked frame-by-frame – got nothing,’ the tech said. ‘It’s possible he used the cover of other vehicles.’
‘We found the car burned out behind an abandoned furniture outlet about half a mile away,’ Enderby said. ‘The back seat is split-fold – half of it had been folded down – the abductor must have released the lock but held it upright. When he saw his chance, he crawled out of the boot into the car. And he must’ve had a second car waiting.’
‘Tyre tracks?’ Simms said.
Enderby nodded. ‘The wheelbase and treads suggest an SUV – we hope to get a more precise identification soon.’
Simms said, ‘I’m a bit vague on that part of the city, but I’m thinking small-scale factory units and retail?’
‘A fair percentage empty or even derelict,’ Enderby confirmed. ‘Teams have searched every empty building in a two-mile radius and found no trace.’
Simms looked from Enderby to Varley. The senior investigating officer must have briefed the chief constable on the details; she couldn’t help wondering why he wasn’t present – and why Enderby had called her in at this late hour – and on a Sunday.
‘Question, Kate?’
‘I spoke with the SIO leading the case yesterday; I know he already has a full complement of detectives and support staff assigned to it, so …’
‘You’re wondering why you’re here?’
Kate answered Enderby with a nod.
He thanked the tech and asked him to give them a minute. Simms watched the tech leave with a qualm of unease.
‘The letter Professor Fennimore received,
’ Enderby said.
‘You’ve got the lab results?’
He nodded. ‘No indentation, no fibres. But they recovered spores – fungus or mould – a mycologist is looking at them as we speak. And there were fingerprints – as you’d expect. A few were matched to Fennimore, but the rest gave no hits on AFIS.’
‘It was special delivery,’ Simms said. ‘The tracking number—’
‘It was posted at a small sub-post office,’ Enderby said. ‘Their CCTV was out of action. The postmistress remembered an adult man in a baseball cap. That’s the best description she was able to provide.’
‘What about the seal on the envelope?’
‘Fennimore was right,’ Enderby said, his face tense. ‘It was a gummed seal and it had been moistened with saliva.’
Simms felt a little kick of excitement under her ribcage. ‘They found DNA?’
Enderby nodded and the two men exchanged glances, like that was a bad thing.
‘What?’ Simms said.
The chief constable spoke, his face solemn: ‘Kate – the DNA on the envelope is a match to Julia Myers.’
‘The mother,’ Kate said softly.
Enderby nodded.
‘He forced Julia to lick the seal, then he sent it to Fennimore?’
‘Which suggests the abductor has a psychological connection with Fennimore,’ Professor Varley said.
Simms resisted the temptation to say, ‘You think?’ – Varley did not take sarcasm well. Instead, she spoke directly to the chief constable: ‘Sir, why am I here?’
‘I like Nick Fennimore,’ Enderby said. ‘He’s done valuable, even brilliant work in the interests of justice. But he is liable to be—’
‘Unpredictable,’ Varley said.
‘A bit of a loose cannon,’ Enderby said, as if that sounded any better.
Simms didn’t like where this was going. ‘The abductor seems to want to engage with Fennimore,’ Varley explained. ‘If Fennimore decides he can do better than the police—’
‘Professor Fennimore has passed on everything he’s received,’ Simms interrupted.
Varley flashed her a chilly smile. ‘So far.’
Arrogant tosser. She focused her gaze on Enderby. ‘Sir …’
‘History has proved that the professor is not above withholding information,’ Enderby said, his tone reasonable but firm. ‘If he does, I want to know.’
So that was it; she was here because, like the abductor, she had a connection with Fennimore. ‘You want me to spy on him.’
‘I want you to keep me briefed, Chief Inspector,’ Enderby countered, implacable.
16
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.
SIGMUND FREUD
Aberdeen, Sunday
Fennimore sat back and rubbed his eyes; the Paris surveillance had become an obsession. He needed a distraction, but he was still waiting for Essex Police to agree a date for him to examine the victim’s clothing in the Mitchell case. He could get started on the process of emptying his office in Andrew Street ready for the property developers to move in, but he sagged at the thought of it. So instead, he turned to his other obsession and checked Suzie’s Facebook page. A new post awaited his approval. Fennimore characterized himself as an objective scientist and a hard-headed realist, but sometimes, on the point of viewing one of these postings, even as his finger hovered over the mouse button, he would fantasize a message: ‘Daddy, please come and get me.’ Suzie, assertive, coherent, commanding him to act. She would supply an address, even a photograph, so that he didn’t have to imagine what damage more than five years in a void had done to his little girl.
Of course, it wasn’t from Suzie – they never were.
‘There’s two kinds of people doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over,’ the message read. ‘Arrogant pricks who think they can never be wrong, and the incurably stupid. Seems you’ve got a bit of both in you, Fennimore.’
Another rant. He quelled the inevitable disappointment and tapped the mouse pad, seeking out the delete option onscreen. But a phrase further down the message caught his eye: ‘What goes around comes around.’ Where had he read that before? ‘Just remember,’ the message ended, ‘everything – all of it – it’s all on your head.’
His heart contracted, seemed to hold still for a beat, then kicked in again. He knew those words. He grabbed his jacket and keys and ran, crossing Union Terrace Gardens at a sprint, rounding the corner into St Andrew Street and entering the university building in under five minutes. He took the stairs to his office two at a time, his footsteps booming through the empty building, ID card ready in his hand. He waved it over the proximity reader. The LED flashed red. He tried again. Again, red. For one wild, paranoid moment he thought he was locked out, but he took a breath and tried one more time; the reader flashed green and he heard the door latch click open.
The phrasing of the Facebook message was almost identical to the hate mail he’d received after his lecture went live on YouTube. Buff envelope, special delivery: ‘If you’re such a genius, why can’t you find your own daughter?’ The accusation still burned. And the taunt – or threat?: ‘What goes around comes around.’
He needed to find that note.
It wasn’t on his desk. He recalled lobbing it at the bin. But the rubbish bin wasn’t beside his desk. He cursed the efficiency of the cleaning staff, already thinking how he might access the inner courtyard where the building’s rubbish silos were stored. Then he remembered Lazko’s letter of apology: he had binned the journalist’s self-serving bullshit and then hoofed the basket across the room. He peeked behind the door, and let his breath go in a whoosh. There it was, jammed in the corner, the wire mesh dented on one side, and yes – still brimming with junk mail. He snatched it up, ready to tip the lot out on the floor, but stopped just in time: in reality, the cleaning staff rarely made it all the way up to his eyrie – and never, to his knowledge, with a vacuum cleaner. He scouted the room for something clean to cover the scuzzy carpet and his eye lighted on a roll of black bin bags on his desk. A Post-it note in the office manager’s handwriting read, ‘You’ll be needing these.’
‘Joan,’ he murmured, spreading two bags, overlapping, on the floor, ‘you are a pearl among women.’
He emptied a jumble of torn paper and envelopes on to the plastic, but there was no sign of the letter. Cursing, he dragged out boxes and files from under his desk and away from the walls. Still nothing. Then he saw it – to the right of the door – a balled-up letter and crumpled buff envelope, wedged between a bookcase and one of his plastic storage boxes.
He snapped on a pair of nitriles and gently lifted the ball of paper from its hiding place. With index finger and thumb, he gingerly eased out a corner of the envelope. He remembered that he had slit it open with his paper knife, that it had been sent special delivery, just like the news cutting, and – just like the cutting – it had a gummed seal. He went to his office window and, holding the crinkled ball up to the setting rays of the sun, saw a tiny, brownish stain in the corner of the envelope flap. Paper cut, he thought. Blood.
He placed the ball of paper on a clean bin bag and speed-dialled Kate Simms. She sounded awkward.
‘Are you okay?’ he said. ‘Can we talk?’ He wondered for a moment if her husband was close by.
‘I’m in Chief Constable Enderby’s office,’ she explained. ‘Professor Varley’s here, too. I’m putting you on speakerphone.’
So Manchester Police were consulting with Alistair Varley. He seemed to be their go-to guy for psychological insights.
Fennimore explained about the Facebook message. ‘It reminded me of a letter I received, earlier in the week. I have that letter in my hand now.’
‘Surely, your recent … debut on YouTube has made you something of a target for social media trolls?’ Varley’s soupy drawl suggested he held publicity-seeking media trollops in as much contempt as the trolls that persecuted them.
F
ennimore was not about to explain himself to Varley. He bit down on his irritation and said evenly, ‘This is not just another troll.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘The evidence,’ Fennimore said, knowing he was on firm ground. ‘My lecture appeared on YouTube on Monday. I got this letter – buff envelope, special delivery – on Wednesday. Like you, I thought it was run-of-the-mill hate mail – I screwed it up and lobbed it at the waste basket. Saturday, I get the newspaper cutting, and today, this Facebook message.’
‘Ye-es,’ Varley said. ‘But I don’t see how they are linked.’
‘The wording,’ Fennimore said. ‘The Facebook message is almost identical in phrasing to the letter I have here.’
‘Didn’t you say you’d balled the thing up?’ Varley said. It was unthinkable that Fennimore would risk interfering with the evidence.
‘He’s working from memory,’ Simms said, and Fennimore thought he heard a protective pride in her voice.
‘How … impressive,’ Varley said, no doubt with a theatrical roll of his eyes.
Fennimore refused to be rattled. ‘He mentions Suzie – her abduction.’ He had that by heart, too, but he wasn’t about to repeat it. ‘It finishes: “What goes around comes around. Everything – all of it – it’s all on your head.”’
Varley had worked with them on language pattern analysis in the United States. It had helped them to solve the case, so he would know they could not ignore the similarities between the two messages.
‘Package the evidence up,’ Enderby said. ‘I’ll ask the investigating officer to arrange collection.’
Fennimore told them about the fleck of reddish-brown staining, the gummed envelope flap; they all knew it could lead them to the killer.
Simms said, ‘Sir?’ and Fennimore had the sense that she was asking for permission to speak.
‘Go ahead,’ Enderby said.
‘Nick, we got DNA from the envelope you were sent yesterday.’ A slight hesitation. ‘It’s the mother’s.’
Truth Will Out Page 8
