by Nick Oldham
‘I bloody wonder,’ Henry said — again to himself. He was doing too much of that lately, chatting alone. Not good. The first sign of madness.
His mobile rang: ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, the ring tone the chief constable had once told him to get rid of as it was unprofessional. Because of that, Henry had kept it. It was Debbie Black.
‘How goes it?’
‘Not good. Family distraught, getting worse by the minute. Even so, I need to get home for a day or two, if that’s OK? The incident room is up and running here, as you know, so I could do with a breather, please. Need to get my washing done.’
‘Yeah, no problem … just one thing I could do with you to have a look at first, if you don’t mind.’
‘Go on,’ she said unenthusiastically.
‘The location Jodie was taken from? Is there any sheltered housing, old people’s accommodation, anything like that nearby?’
‘If you remember,’ she said in a rather pedantic way, ‘Jodie was actually on her way to see her granny, who lives in an old people’s complex nearby.’
Henry did remember, after being reminded, that is. He resisted the temptation to say, ‘I’ve got a lot on my plate,’ but bluffed by saying, ‘Right, yeah, I recall.’ Debbie’s silence at the other end let him know she wasn’t taken in. ‘This is a bit of a long shot, but could you make some enquiries with the police over there, just see what other crimes have been reported in the area, say up to two weeks before Jodie was taken … I suppose I’m looking for burglaries, bogus official-type offences, distractions.’
‘Henry, I’m completely goosed. I’ve been living out of a suitcase over here, in a hotel room, all at short notice, I might add.’ She sounded harrassed. ‘I’ve got a hire car, but I’ve had enough and need a bit of a break. I need to get home and sink into my own bath, y’know?’
Henry bit his tongue, fighting back the urge to tell her she was also being paid well enough for her time and that she was a cop twenty-four hours a day, blah, blah, blah. He didn’t. ‘I know it’s hard, but if you could just do that for me, then come back and we’ll reassess everything. How’s that sound?’
‘Urgh,’ she said sullenly.
‘If you can make it back before closing, we could have a drink,’ he volunteered, then winced. Why the hell he’d said it, he didn’t know. She would surely see it as a come-on.
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said, suddenly sounding eager. ‘We have unfinished business, don’t we?’ she added, sultry now.
Henry hung up, doing a silent scream again. Mr Self-Destruct was at it again, the man who could not say no. He growled at himself and picked up the Intel reports again, sure there was something else he was missing. Before he could concentrate, his desk phone rang, making him jump.
‘Henry, it’s me, Jane. I’m in comms on the seventh floor.’ Her voice was urgent. ‘A report’s just come in … a young girl’s gone missing on Shoreside. There’s something about it. I’m not happy.’
Kerry Figgis, nine years old,’ Jane Roscoe said, reading out loud from the report on the monitor of the computer screen in comms. ‘Mother sent her to the shop at six o’clock and she never returned.’
Henry automatically checked the wall clock: six fifty-three p.m. Missing for almost an hour now, the report having come into the police at six forty-five. A uniformed patrol was at the family house and another mobile patrol was combing the streets. Henry swallowed, a trickle of seat beaded from his hairline down his temple. He tugged at his collar. He was torn. As senior officer it was incumbent on him to keep an overview of what was unfolding, but as a hands-on cop he wanted to be at the scene, directing people, pointing this way and that.
Jane was eyeing him, sensing his tension. ‘Could be nothing,’ she said. ‘We deal with thousands of mispers each year. Most turn up unscathed.’
‘Not all go missing when we’re hunting for a child murderer, though,’ he said.
‘Might be no connection whatsoever.’
‘Well, until we know different, we’ll treat it as though it’s the next victim, although, again, it doesn’t fit the pattern. But then again, where is it written down that crims have to stick to patterns?’
‘It isn’t, though they often do.’
‘And, remember — we interrupted something when we spotted Uren and his pal in Fleetwood; if Morrison isn’t the mystery guy, and it looks like he isn’t, then we have to assume that whoever he is, is still out there, still on the prowl. Maybe we’ve made him act outside his normal pattern?’
Jane understood. There was no egg-on-face to run an MFH enquiry as though it was a murder. Better safe than stupid. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘All the bread-and-butter stuff. Make sure the bobby on the scene does the initial house search and get a real story from the parents or whoever’s in charge. Take it from there.’
‘Alpha Six to Blackpool,’ the voice of the first officer at the scene called up.
‘Go ahead,’ The radio operator dealing with the incident was sitting close to Henry and Jane, earphones on. The two detectives could hear the conversation through their own PRs.
‘Done a quick search of the house, no trace of the misper. Got a description if you want to circulate?’
‘OK, go ahead — you’re on talk-through,’ meaning the officer could be heard by all other patrols on that frequency.
He began to relay the description of Kerry Figgis over the airwaves. Henry listened, nostrils flaring. In his uniformed days he had reported dozens of kids missing, and most had turned up just as he was circulating their details. Without exception, they had all come home or been found sooner or later. He’d even found one hiding in a wardrobe, another in a garden shed, just to wind up the parents, which was why an initial house search was essential.
‘DCI Christie to Alpha Six,’ Henry said when the officer had completed the transmission, using his PR. ‘Can you talk?’
‘Yes.’ Meaning he could not be overheard by the family.
‘Quick situation report, please.’
‘OK, boss. Kerry left home at six from the house on Cloister Parade to go to the shop next to the pub on Preston Road.’
‘By what route?’
‘Down the Parade, up through Song Thrush Walk and out on to Preston Road.’
‘Is it a route she’s done before?’
‘Yeah, lots of times, apparently.’
‘How long should it take for her to get to the shop?’
‘Three minutes, maximum.’
‘Did she get there?’
‘No.’
‘OK — first impressions?’
‘Genuine,’ he said firmly. ‘She’s never been missing before, family say there’s been no falling-out or disagreements … I’m concerned at this moment in time.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Henry said.
‘Alpha Nine to Blackpool,’ another patrol called up. ‘I’m at the shop now and they know this girl well. Just to confirm, she hasn’t been in, not today anyway.’
‘OK, could she be with friends?’
‘Just starting that enquiry now.’
‘Shit,’ Henry said, but not down the radio. Panic welled up, but he controlled it, looking thoughtfully at Jane Roscoe. ‘Song Thrush Walk,’ he said quietly. ‘AKA Psycho Alley … bugger.’ He made a decision. ‘Whether or not this is linked to our job or not, we do this properly because I’m not taking any chances. Get all available resources to the area, road-policing unit, dogs, ARV’s, Support Unit and whoever else is knocking about. I want some initial hasty searches and I want the patrol inspector to get his or her arse down there, get an RV point sorted and this all coordinated.’ He was almost breathless, counting off the things on his fingers. ‘You stay in here, Jane … I’m going to speak to the family.’
‘No surprise there,’ she muttered.
‘I’ll feel better on the ground, at least initially.’ They regarded each other. ‘Have I missed anything?’
In the gap between question and response
, the radio blared again.
‘Alpha Nine to Blackpool — urgent!’
‘Go ahead,’ the comms operator replied.
‘Got a witness who saw a young girl getting into a car on the Preston Road side of Song Thrush Walk, on the car park behind the shops … from the description of the girl, it sound like our misper.’
Henry Christie did not want to make any more assumptions. Without exception, they always came round like an angry alligator and bit your arse — rather like his blind, but short-lived, belief that Morrison was the killer he was after. Which was why, as he sat in the living room of the Figgis household, he was not going to immediately decide that George Uren’s mystery partner and probable murderer was responsible for what appeared to be the disappearance of Kerry Figgis.
In most cases, it was someone close to the victim anyway; a friend, relative, work colleague, who was responsible for the crime. As much as TV drama, films and the factual news liked to sensationalize, most abductions and murders were committed by someone in this category, not a super serial killer. Most murders were grubby, unspectacular, sordid, brutal affairs committed by half-wits and doom-brains, not by masterminds.
Which was good in one respect because Henry usually felt intellectually superior to the majority of people he locked up.
He looked at the room. It was comfortably, if cheaply, kitted out, with mainly self-assembly furniture, all of which was chipped and knocked. The three-piece suite was tatty, worn and looked very comfy. The pictures on the walls were inexpensive but reasonably tasteful prints bought from DIY superstores.
Henry had never come across the Figgis clan before, so that was a positive for him as he sat there, trying not to stereotype another family existing on a council estate.
He was sitting on an armchair next to Kerry’s mother, who was sunk into the settee. She had short, blonde, spiky hair, studs through her nose and left eyebrow, and a lot of empty holes in her pierced ear lobes. She was caked with a layer of badly-applied make-up, which had run into little rivers as her tears fell down her cheeks. She had sobbed uncontrollably since his arrival, and had chain-smoked through it all. Other members of the clan were doing the same thing, and the air in the room was thick with an unmoving cloud, making Henry fully appreciate the dangers of passive smoking.
She was called Tina, and she was twenty-six years old. Next to her on the settee, holding her with dramatic tightness, was Callum Rourke, the boyfriend. From the huge craters and pimples on his face, Henry guessed he was about nineteen. The missing girl’s grandmother, Tina’s mother, a woman with a harsh cheese-grater voice, aged about forty, sat in the armchair opposite Henry. She must have had Tina when she was about fourteen, Henry thought bleakly. She was wearing a far-too-short denim skirt, which rode up to reveal an overweight expanse of chubby thigh which she was not trying to hide.
Tina glanced at Henry. Not much had been said for a few moments, but now that gap of silence was filled with a roar of anguish as she stood up, her thin body juddering with sobs. She pushed Callum out of the way as he stood up with her, and rushed to the door, exiting and running upstairs, howling as she went.
Callum made to follow. Henry was up quick, stopping him with a hand to the chest. He looked at the grandmother and with a twitch of the head, gestured for her to go and see to Tina.
‘I’d like a word with you, Callum,’ he explained and encouraged the woman to go with another jerk of the head. ‘Sit down, mate,’ Henry said when she got the message and went.
He was no more than a spotty beanpole of a lad, not someone who looked capable of being the guardian of a nine-year-old kid. He sank back into the settee slowly at Henry’s request.
‘You’re the love interest?’
‘Yep — you know that.’ There was a big, yellow-topped pimple on the young man’s chin, fit and ready to erupt.
‘So what’s the crack? You here all the time? You look after Kerry?’
‘I live here, yeah — ever since the shit who says he’s Kelly’s father left ’em in the lurch,’ he spouted defensively.
‘You work then?’
‘All the hours God sends. Down at Tesco.’
‘When did you last see Kerry?’
‘When she went out to the shop. We were havin’ tea and we needed some bread, so Tina sent her.’
‘When I got here, you weren’t here,’ Henry said. ‘Where’d you been?’
‘Lookin’ for Kerry.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘You fuckin’ think I did it, don’t you?’
‘Did what?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever happened to her … I dunno.’
‘Did you?’
He slumped back, shaking his head. ‘You’re all the friggin’ same, you set o’ twats. Well, I’ll tell you.’ He sat upright, tense, and pointed at Henry, angry. ‘I love Tina, she’s my world, and I love little Kelly. We’ve made a go of things since shit-face pissed off and left her, and I wouldn’t hurt a hair on that little girl’s body, or God strike me down.’ His speech was impassioned, impressive. A tear formed in his eye, and the cynical Henry thought, ‘Doth he protest too much, or would I think that anyway — or am I just being cynical, even though I know I’m not cynical?’
‘OK,’ Henry said, easing off, ‘but get yourself ready to be questioned closely, because if Kerry doesn’t turn up alive and well, you’ll be in our sights just so we can eliminate you from the enquiry.’
Callum nodded glumly, accepting the inevitable. ‘You’d better look at Kerry’s dad, though … he was always makin’ threats about no one else could be her dad, how he’d kill her rather than have someone else being her dad, even though he was the one who buggered off.’
‘We will,’ Henry promised. ‘No stone unturned.’
He did a walk through of the route Kerry would have normally taken from home to the shop. The evening had gone cold and his suit provided him with no real protection from the chill of Blackpool.
Kerry’s house was on Cloister Parade. He stepped out of the front door, down the garden path and along the Parade. Fifty metres later he turned into Song Thrush Walk, otherwise known as Psycho Alley. Suddenly, from the brightly-lit Parade, Song Thrush Walk was all darkness, no lighting whatsoever, even though there were lampposts. He looked up. Smashed lenses told the story. He walked on, high walls either side of an alley about eight feet wide. His foot scuffed a bottle, he felt broken glass underfoot, crunching as he walked, like stepping on garden snails. The alley dog-legged, first right, then left, then twenty metres further opened out on the car park at the rear of what used to be a row of shops — a chippie, a hairdresser and a convenience store and beyond them the pub on Preston Road. Only a heavily-defended convenience store now existed in the row, the other businesses boarded up and empty. The car park was unlit and, emerging into it from the walk did not make you feel secure. There was a burned-out car, lots of fly-tipping — a discarded three-piece suite and a large mattress — and signs of substance, drug and alcohol abuse, discarded needles, bottles, cans and glue tins.
Henry shook his head.
A young girl coming through the alley to go to the shop. The Figgis family needed berating for sending her alone. It was no wonder the alley was the scene of assaults and muggings. It was ripe for them, a bad place where bad things happened. He resolved to get something done about it as he walked across the car park.
He stopped in the middle, the spot where, allegedly, Kerry had been seen getting into a car. What did that mean? ‘Getting into?’ Willingly? Unwillingly? He needed the witness to be spoken to in some detail. He considered it was his job to do that, but realized he would have to delegate it to someone else, but someone he trusted. There was only so much he could do personally.
It was the fundamental question, though.
Willingly, unwillingly?
Someone she knew? Or a stranger?
Henry carried on towards the shop, nostrils flaring.
Eleven forty-five p.m.
‘What’ve we not done?’ The question wa
s thrown out to Jane Roscoe and the other detectives and uniformed officers crammed into the MIR. There was a distinct hum of body odour and everyone looked creased and worn out. It was Henry who had barked the question, asking it in a defiant way which almost dared anyone to suggest that something had not been covered or at least considered. ‘To say that we’ve got an abduction on our hands, a nine-year-old girl missing, what have we not done that we should have done in the last five hours?’
The sea of tired blank faces told its own story. Henry experienced a slight tinge of regret for the challenging way he’d posed the question. Anyone who came up with something now would expect to be treated with hostility, and he realized he would have to be careful. Just because he was knackered and under pressure did not mean he had to alienate the people he depended on, people who had been run ragged for the whole of the evening. They were all as exhausted as he, all as dedicated and professional. He needed to keep them on board. He tried to soften his tension-raged face, opened his arms and said, ‘Any ideas warmly welcomed.’
Nothing.
He checked his watch: ten to midnight. ‘OK folks, back for a seven-thirty a.m. briefing.’
‘Why not seven?’ someone chirped.
‘I’m already breaking working-time regs by asking you to come back at half-seven. But if anyone wishes to trap at seven, I’ll be here.’ From the nods and the looks on the faces, he knew that to a man and woman they would all be back. A missing girl, added to everything else that had happened since Friday, meant that everyone in that room thought it obscene to be even going home, let alone going to bed. The reality of it was that there was little to be done at that time. Every possible lead in terms of friends, relatives, acquaintances had been followed up. They hadn’t yet traced Kerry’s true father, which was a bit unsettling. Searches had been done, would be redone in the cold light of dawn. The night duty inspector was staying in touch with the family and all night patrols had been briefed … and Henry was feeling nauseous because he feared the worst. Kerry Figgis was probably dead now, and he felt a fraud too for even thinking about going home.
