‘I’m sure it was.’
‘He just needed some time, and some stability.’ Robertson put down one glove and picked up another, continued wiping. ‘He’d been moving around so much, always running. He couldn’t stay in that home.’
‘You mean his mum’s home?’ asked Lockhart.
‘No. His children’s home.’
‘Children’s home?’ Jordan’s mum hadn’t said anything about him spending time at a home.
‘Yeah. What’s its name, again?’ The coach frowned. ‘The Lighthouse? No…’
‘The Beacon?’
Robertson raised a forefinger. ‘That’s the one.’
Sixty-Nine
After having devoted a significant part of her weekend to the missing children project, Lucy Berry had planned to talk to Dan about it first thing this morning. She’d hoped that they could agree the appropriate next steps to move it forward. But the discovery of Jordan Hennessey’s body yesterday had, understandably, gone straight to the top of everyone’s priority list, including hers. There was so much to do, and they were all feeling the stress of it. Not to mention the fact that everything they did was under the microscope – you couldn’t look at the news now without seeing something about the ‘Church Kid Killer’.
Lucy had spent most of the day working through Jordan’s contact with statutory services and law enforcement, looking for any details that might help their investigation. Nothing stood out yet, but there was so much material that it was hard to make sense of it all. Jordan had been excluded from schools, had a young offender’s record detailing several incidents of vandalism, arson and violence, and extensive contact with Social Services. And he’d only been fourteen years old.
There was plenty more data for her to scour, but when she saw Dan get up from his desk and cross to the tea point, she seized the opportunity. She took her Pip-and-Kate mug – their faces a reminder of why she was doing this extra work – and followed him in. She needed his approval for her plan.
‘All right, Luce?’
‘Hi, Dan.’ She busied herself getting a teabag and popped it into her mug.
‘How’s it going with the records?’ He leant against the countertop, arms folded.
‘Oh, getting there. No red flags so far though.’
‘Nothing that links all three victims, you mean?’
‘Not that I’ve found from looking at Jordan’s files this morning, at least.’
‘OK. You’re doing a great job,’ he said. ‘Keep it up.’
‘Thanks.’
The kettle came to the boil and clicked off. Dan held it up and she placed her mug on the countertop for him to add the water.
‘There’s something I wanted to ask you,’ she said tentatively.
He started pouring. ‘Go ahead.’
‘It’s about the missing children’s data.’
‘Yup.’
‘I was working on it a bit over the weekend, you see, and it occurred to me that, well, if we were able to merge Social Services’ data with the missing persons information, maybe even with Merlin reports, we’d have the best chance of spotting something.’
‘What, exactly?’ He poured steaming water into his own mug.
‘A pattern. Something that connects the missing children.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Er, the only issue is, obviously, that if we want to use Social Services data, we need their permission because they own it.’
‘Are we talking an official request?’
‘Yes. Which needs sign-off from a senior officer.’
‘OK. If you outline the case, I’ll sign it off.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. If you think it’s worth looking into.’
‘I do, absolutely.’ She thought he might challenge her a bit more. This was better than she’d imagined.
‘There’s one thing you might want to try first, though.’ Dan mashed his teabag against the side of his mug. ‘Give Social Services a quick call, find out whose approval we need at their end. Then give that person a heads up. That way it’s less likely to get lost in the system.’
‘Will do.’ Lucy added some milk to their teas. ‘Um, by the way,’ she added, ‘I haven’t forgotten what you said. You know, about doing this on top of my regular hours.’
‘It’s all right, Luce.’ Dan picked up his mug. ‘I trust you.’
Back at her desk, Lucy spent fifteen minutes trawling Social Services’ websites and making several calls until, finally, she had the details of the senior social worker responsible for the data: Alison Griffin. She dialled the office number she’d been given, but it just rang and rang. Lucy wondered if Alison was working from home. There seemed to be no voicemail, and Lucy was about to put the receiver down when someone picked up.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, hello. Um, may I speak to Alison Griffin, please?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Hi, er, my name’s Lucy Berry. I’m an analyst at The Met.’
A yawn was audible on the line. ‘Right.’
Lucy outlined the project and her plan to aggregate the data. When she’d finished, there was a long silence.
‘Hello? Are you still there?’ asked Lucy.
‘Mm.’ Another pause. ‘I don’t think that’s going to work.’
Lucy felt her heart sinking. ‘Um, OK, why not?’
‘Where do I start?’ Alison sighed loudly. ‘We’ve got a four-month backlog of referrals to get through on half the budget we had pre-Covid. And that had already been cut from previous levels. Not to mention the fact that we have a three-step approval procedure for disclosure. You’d be looking at about twelve weeks to get through that, even if we had the resources to work on your request. Which we don’t.’
The social worker’s pessimism was contagious. It sounded as though she’d lost all motivation for her job, and perhaps for anything else. Lucy could almost feel her own energy draining away.
‘Ah, I see.’ Lucy swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Was all her work – and Marshall’s – about to hit a dead end? ‘I understand that you must all be very busy. But perhaps if we pseudonymised the data, then—’
‘It’s not happening,’ Alison stated.
‘Hang on. There might be a way that…’ Lucy stopped when she realised the call had been ended. She stared at the handset for a few seconds in disbelief as her frustration rose. A bit of politeness never hurt anyone. She could live with being treated like that, but it was the social worker’s indifference to the missing children that really stuck in her throat. She took a few deep breaths and dialled Marshall from her mobile.
‘Hi, Lucy. How’s it going?’ He sounded cheerful, and she could hear birdsong in the background. She immediately felt better. ‘I was just emailing you, actually.’
‘What about?’
‘You called me,’ he said. ‘You go first.’
‘OK. Well, unfortunately, the Social Services data is a no-go.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I can make an official written request for it, but their data guardian basically refused to help.’
Marshall let out a brief growl. ‘Is there some other way? I mean, you can access the data, can’t you?’
‘I can, but I can’t use it for our purpose without their permission.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yup.’
‘Can’t you just, er, send it to me?’
‘And risk losing my job?’
‘Well…’
‘Sorry. I wanted this to work as much as you, but…’
‘There must be something we can do.’ Marshall sounded a bit frantic. ‘Another solution, surely?’
‘Let me think about it.’ Lucy pinched her brow. ‘We’ve got so much on here at the moment.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
There was a brief silence.
‘So, what were you emailing me about?’ Lucy asked.
‘Oh, yeah. About Operation Paxford.’
‘OK…’
‘I’ve been following the news. Your third murder victim, Jordan Hennessey.’
‘Yes?’
Marshall cleared his throat. ‘I, um, I saw him. Several times.’
‘Where?’
‘At the Salvation Army.’
Tuesday
19th January
Seventy
‘And Jordan stayed here… how many weeks, did you say?’ Smith leant forward, clasped her hands and studied Neil Morgan. The man had his arm clamped around his wife, Frida Olesen. The pair of them looked more like one of those celebrity couples you see in Hello! or OK! magazine than people who ran a children’s home. And the interior of their house was like something off the telly. Smith wondered where all the money came from. She guessed it wasn’t from Wandsworth Council.
‘Five.’ Morgan glanced at his wife, whose head was bowed. She hadn’t said much since Smith and Khan had turned up at the swanky address a mile down the road from their MIT base at Jubilee House.
‘And did you report him missing at the time?’
‘We did.’
‘Immediately?’ Smith queried.
‘Perhaps not immediately. You see, our family approach to running The Beacon means that the young people are encouraged to take ownership of their decisions.’
‘Were you aware that Jordan had run away from his mother’s home, and had slept in at least eight separate locations or institutions over the month before he arrived here?’
‘Well, when you say aware?…’
‘Did you know that he had a criminal record for violent offences, and may also have been vulnerable to exploitation or at risk of violence himself?’
‘Ah,’ Morgan smirked. ‘I’m afraid we only discovered that later on. Not that it would have changed our fundamental approach to re-parenting Jordan, obviously…’
Smith had taken an instant dislike to Neil Morgan the moment she’d laid eyes on him. OK, perhaps not instant, to paraphrase Morgan. Her first impression had been that he was handsome and suave, with more than a hint of the young Pierce Brosnan about him, but she guessed he was probably ten years or more older than he looked. Morgan was all smooth public schoolboy, a banker or MP relaxing at home with his attractive but silent wife. Not at all the sort of person you’d expect to see running a children’s home in London, even a high-end one like this. Her copper’s nose was twitching like mad.
‘Right,’ she said. Beside her, Khan scribbled some notes in his pad.
‘Richmond Children’s Services didn’t tell us much,’ Olesen said quietly. It was the first time she’d spoken since introducing herself twenty minutes ago, when they’d arrived. ‘They were supposed to have shared his case notes with us, but they didn’t.’
Smith recalled her telephone call nearly two weeks ago with a social worker named Griffin, who had been Donovan Blair’s case manager. Their filing was all over the place after an IT problem last year, she’d said.
Morgan squeezed his wife tighter and patted her knee with his other hand. ‘It wouldn’t have altered the way we interacted with him, though, would it, darling? We treat everyone the same, remember?’
Olesen didn’t respond. Smith exchanged a look with Khan, and chose her next words carefully.
‘So, over the four years you’ve been running this place,’ she said, ‘how many children have gone missing?’
Morgan barked a small laugh. ‘Depends what you mean by missing.’
‘As in, they went off, unannounced,’ replied Smith. ‘And they didn’t come back.’
He held out his palms, almost apologetic. ‘We’d have to check our files, of course, and that would require some time, but I imagine—’
‘Thirteen,’ said Olesen. She looked up and met Smith’s eyes.
Children’s Services for the London borough of Richmond upon Thames was housed in a modern brick-and-concrete structure off Richmond Road in Twickenham. Its thin, vertical, blacked-out windows reminded Smith of those slits in castle walls from which archers fired arrows during a siege. It didn’t exactly look welcoming. Khan brought their car to a stop beside a set of industrial bins.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘We see what Ms Griffin can tell us about Jordan. Or anything else that we want to know about. And I’m not going to let her fob me off with a quick phone call this time.’
After a lengthy process of signing in, explaining that they didn’t have an appointment, and navigating corridors and staircases, they found themselves outside the office of Alison Griffin. A little plastic sign on the wall next to her door described her as ‘Strengthening Families Team Leader’. Smith knocked loudly.
‘What is it?’
Smith eased the door open. The room was large, but its low ceiling and numerous filing cabinets somehow conspired to make it feel cramped. Paper documentation was everywhere: ring binders, manila folders and hand-labelled box files were stacked on shelves and surfaces all around. The thought briefly occurred to Smith that every item here represented something that had gone seriously wrong in a child’s life, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. In the centre of this admin vortex, a small woman with a hard, lined face sat at a desk, hunched over a keyboard.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, peering at them through thick glasses.
Smith advanced into the overheated room and introduced herself and Khan.
‘What do you want?’
‘We’d like to talk to you about a boy who was in contact with your services around six months ago. Jordan Hennessey.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t recall seeing a meeting with you scheduled in my calendar.’
‘That’s because there isn’t one,’ Smith replied. ‘We’d just like to ask you a few questions.’
Griffin’s head dropped back to her computer monitor. ‘I don’t really have time at the moment. We’re snowed under.’
‘This is a live murder investigation.’ Smith spoke firmly. She’d had enough of being pissed around by adults whose job it was to look after children. ‘And we believe there to be a substantial risk of violence against other young people.’
Griffin exhaled slowly and made a show of checking her watch. Smith noticed it was an expensive-looking gold thing. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I can spare a few minutes.’
Smith and Khan outlined the investigation and the issues around Jordan’s records.
‘You’re looking for someone to blame, is that it?’ said Griffin flatly.
‘No, we’re not.’ Smith guessed that if there had been any procedural failings, the reckoning for those would come later. ‘We just want to find out if there’s anything that can help our investigation, that’s all.’ The words were reasonable enough, but she was struggling to keep the irritation out of her voice. This woman was seriously winding her up.
‘Hm. Well, you could see if one of my team is available to direct you to the appropriate files, if you’ve got time to wait. Our filing system is partially paper based, now, after—’
‘An IT problem. You told me on the phone, two weeks ago, not long after another boy in your care had been murdered.’
‘Max…’
Smith didn’t need Khan’s warning. She already knew she’d gone too far.
After a moment, Griffin spoke. Her voice was cold and precise. ‘Are you accusing our service of involvement in a child’s murder?’
She sighed. ‘No. That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Good.’
Smith was grateful when Khan intervened to suggest a way forward, working with a junior member of Griffin’s team to find and check case notes. They were almost at the door when a cork board on the wall caught Smith’s attention. Among the telephone lists and health and safety notices were several photographs. They appeared to show some kind of office party; a group of people in coloured paper hats and novelty jumpers holding pints of beer and glasses of wine. She studied them for a moment. Griffin was in a couple. But one of the faces was familiar, too.
‘When were these pictures taken?’ she asked.
Griffin stood and walked across to the board. ‘Those? Christmas 2019. Why do you ask?’
‘Who’s this?’ Smith pointed to the young man she’d recognised.
‘He doesn’t work here anymore.’
‘What’s his name?’ persisted Smith.
‘Kieran,’ replied Griffin. ‘Kieran Meade.’
Seventy-One
Lexi was struggling to concentrate on her work at the clinic. She and her client Gabriel were sitting opposite one another in the low, comfy armchairs in her consulting room. Over the past couple months, they’d been making progress on his self-esteem issues, gradually unravelling and rescripting the traumas that had followed him through his life. There was more to be done, but she was confident they’d get there. Or rather, they would be able to if she could focus on what he was saying. But there was way too much noise in her head.
Her dad’s symptoms had seemed worse when she’d spoken to him last night. He’d looked really tired, and he sounded awful, breaking into bouts of uncontrolled coughing which left him wheezing for minutes before it started again. She’d ended the call early because she could see that it was so difficult for him to talk. And her parting words had been a firm instruction – reiterated to her mom afterwards – to get him properly checked out in hospital.
Money wasn’t the issue in getting him medical care; he had insurance and, as a veteran, he could potentially get assistance through the VA. It was his stubbornness that was the problem. Lexi had lain awake thinking about him, wishing he’d seek help, wondering if now was the time to go back over to the US and be with him. To drag him to a clinic herself, if necessary. She’d need to find the cash for a plane ticket, but that was the least of her worries. She caught her mind wandering and forced herself to tune in to Gabriel.
Her client was talking about an abusive relationship he’d been able to get out of years earlier, and Lexi made a note to come back to that strength of character as a potential source of confidence today. But, as she let him speak, her thoughts drifted once more. This time to Dan, and to the case she’d been working on with him. She still felt like he wasn’t being completely open with her. It seemed as though her relationships with Dan and Tim were weirdly connected in a zero-sum situation: if one was going well, the other wasn’t.
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