Eighty-Six
The second the guvnor reappeared in the MIT office, Smith could tell he was pissed off. And, knowing that he’d just been up to see their boss, she had a pretty good guess why.
‘What’s happening?’ she called out to him as he strode back across to their group, his features set in a scowl.
‘Burrows won’t give us a Bird.’
‘Shit.’
‘But we’re going out anyway,’ he announced. ‘All of us. Right now. And we’re going to find Paige Bradley. Fast as we can.’
The reactions of the team matched Smith’s own response: she was up for this. It was exactly her kind of detective work: practical, active, on the ground.
‘Luce,’ he said, ‘get an emergency location request out on the Mr M mobile phone. Chances are it’s off or he’s chucked it, but we have to check.’
‘Got it,’ replied Berry. Smith could see the determination on her face. She knew how much this case meant to Berry; the analyst had her own small children.
The phone trace was unlikely to yield a result in their timeframe, particularly without it having been prepped through the network provider as part of an ongoing op, as would happen with a live counterterrorism or kidnapping case. They needed to get out there on the hurry up.
‘Where are we going, guv?’ she asked.
‘OK. Andy, Priya, I want you to check records for Sweeney’s address. See if it’s the same as Morris’s, then get over there. Leo, if there’s a second home address, I want you there. Otherwise, get to the Latchmere Leisure Centre where he works. Call some uniforms from Wandsworth over there if you need backup.’
‘On it, guv,’ replied PC Richards.
‘And Priya – call the school and make sure Morris isn’t there. We’ve got to cover all the bases.’
Guptill was already at her computer, while Parsons and Richards were gathering their jackets, phones and radios.
‘What about us?’ Smith gestured to her and Khan.
Lockhart nodded. ‘We’re going to Barnes. You guys know the area.’
‘But it’s massive, guv. How’re we going to find anything in there without I-99?’ Smith couldn’t shake the habit of using the old call sign for The Met’s helicopter, even though the days of the force having its own choppers were long gone.
Lockhart blinked. ‘I’ve got a night vision scope in my car,’ he said. That didn’t surprise Smith. She knew what the boss used to do before he joined the job. ‘But only one of them.’
There was a brief silence. It was broken by Khan.
‘You could get a drone up there, boss,’ he ventured.
‘Drone?’
‘Yeah. My mate Luca was telling me about it. He’s a PC in traffic, yeah, and he just got his drone pilot’s licence last year. It’s meant to be for, like, road crime. Tracking speeding cars and that. But he told me they’ve got thermal imaging for night-time. You get a live downlink on this tablet. He said it’s pretty sick.’
Lockhart stared at him for a moment. ‘Where’s he based?’
‘West Garage,’ replied Khan.
Smith knew the location on Deer Park Road in Merton. With blues and twos on, they could be in Barnes in fifteen minutes.
‘You got his number, Mo?’
‘Course.’
‘Call him,’ said Lockhart, jogging across to his corner desk and snatching up his keys and jacket.
‘What shall I say?’ Khan looked uncertain. ‘I mean, this ain’t really their thing, you know.’
‘Tell him there’s an immediate threat to life. Tell him it’s a kid. And, if he can help us, we might just have a chance of rescuing her. Maybe even catching a killer.’
Khan was already dialling the number before the guvnor had finished speaking.
Lockhart came back over to them, checked his watch. ‘Let’s hope Mo’s mate is still at work.’
Smith guessed the part about threat to life would be the guvnor’s personal assessment. If Burrows had shared it, they’d already be scrambling the helicopter from Surrey. But Smith didn’t need any more convincing. Her adrenalin was pumping, but she tried to breathe deeply, keep herself calm. She knew that her body was trying to get her ready for something big. Something you might only have a chance to do once in a career.
To save a life.
Eighty-Seven
‘Tell me more about Sweeney,’ said Dan, once they were out of Jubilee House and heading to Barnes in his Land Rover. He’d asked Lexi to brief him on the ride to save time. The busy main streets of Putney flashed past her window as he hit the gas hard. They’d already overtaken a few cars and, despite wearing a seat belt, she still had to brace herself by jamming the soles of her Doc Martens into the footwell and pressing her hands against the dash.
‘He’s been coming to the clinic for a couple months, now,’ Lexi began. ‘He was referred because he was getting flashbacks.’ She glanced at Dan. He’d experienced those symptoms of PTSD, too.
‘From what? His military service?’
‘No. Not initially, anyway. He never even told me he was in the army.’
‘What, then?’ Dan swerved out and immediately back in as a bus hurtled towards them. Lexi felt her body tense even more.
‘He had some really tough teenage years,’ she said. ‘He was on the streets for a while, sleeping rough, and he had a heroin problem. I know he used to steal a lot, and got into fights. He had a ton of self-esteem issues that we were working on, but I always felt there was something else.’
Dan kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. ‘Go on.’
‘My hunch is that he was sexually abused, although we hadn’t gotten to it yet. I think he needed to trust me more before he disclosed anything like that.’ Lexi was aware that Dan had taken a lot of time to open up to her when he was her patient.
‘What about the religious stuff?’
‘He didn’t say too much about that. Just a few references to God judging him, but those were during our early sessions, and that was about it. Nothing that made me think he had the kind of fanatical beliefs I put in the profile.’
‘So, he kept that under wraps?’
‘Guess so.’ Lexi thought for a second. ‘I mean, the guy hid a whole second identity from me. I thought he was unemployed. I knew he was collecting benefits as Gabriel Sweeney. But I guess he was working part-time under the name Ben Morris, too.’
‘And he had a record?’
‘Yeah, for assault. He’d even done some time in prison, I knew that. I remember us talking about it when he was first referred, you know, whether it was risky to be alone in the room with him, should we have a panic button, whatever. He got mad a couple times in our sessions, but not at me, and I never felt unsafe with him.’
‘You probably were safe,’ Dan said. ‘Since he seems to only attack children, now.’
‘So, he would’ve used the identity of Ben Morris to get a job working with kids. His record most likely would’ve stopped him getting DBS clearance otherwise.’
Dan pulled out and stepped on the gas, rounded a station wagon. ‘Wonder how he got the documents. You know, to become Ben Morris?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Lexi. She kicked out at the footplate. ‘Goddammit! I’m such an idiot.’
‘Eh?’
‘It never occurred to me that he fitted my profile. I shoulda seen… something, connected the stories he told me in therapy. A lot of them were similar to what these victims had gone through.’
‘There are plenty of people who have a shit life,’ replied Dan. ‘Pretty often, it’s not their fault. But almost none of them go on to kill people. Especially not kids. How were you supposed to have seen it? People are telling you stuff like that every day.’
‘I was profiling the killer,’ she said.
‘And I’ve been SIO on this case.’ He jabbed a thumb towards his chest. ‘I met the guy, twice, and I didn’t see it. Morris actually told me he worked at Richmond Park Academy sometimes, and I didn’t pay attention. For fuck’s sake, your b
oyfriend even told me to look at their supply teachers, and I ignored him.’
Lexi didn’t want to get into talking about Tim right now. She exhaled sharply. ‘Hard to know what is and isn’t important on such a big case, right?’
‘True. But if I hadn’t kept you away from the case, you’d have seen Morris’s photograph on the board a lot quicker and recognised him as Sweeney. I should’ve brought you closer, sooner. And then maybe…’
‘Hey, what is it you told me before?’ she looked at him. ‘No “shoulds” or “what ifs”, right?’
Dan snorted. ‘Something like that.’
‘OK. Quit ruminating, then.’
‘Are those doctor’s orders?’
‘Yeah.’
The buildings were starting to thin out, giving way to trees, hedges and fields. There were still streetlamps lining the road, but their weak yellow pools of light did nothing to illuminate the growing darkness beyond.
‘Sweeney fooled us all,’ said Dan.
Lexi nodded. ‘But now we have a chance to do something about it.’
‘I hope so.’
Lexi knew what that meant. But it was too awful to even contemplate the possibility that they might already be too late.
In the hands-free cradle, Dan’s cellphone rang. The screen said Mo Khan. He hit the green icon.
‘Mo. What’s going on?’
‘Boss,’ Mo’s voice came through the speaker. ‘Luca’s on his way with the drone. Another uniform’s driving him.’
‘Good. How far out?’
‘Er, I think they’re in Wimbledon.’
‘You told him what we’re looking for?’
‘Yeah. Gave him the details of Sweeney’s van.’
‘Nice one. Where are you guys?’
‘Check your mirrors, boss. We’re right behind you.’
Dan glanced in his rear-view. ‘Stay with me. Call Luca and tell him to head to the car park at Barnes train station. And make sure they cut their blues and twos once they’re a mile out, OK?’
‘Got it.’
Dan ended the call. ‘We’ll get there ahead of the drone.’ He pointed below the dash. ‘Can you open the glove compartment? There’s a night vision monocular inside.’
Lexi clicked it open and took out the item. It looked like a cross between a zoom lens for a camera and one of those old-school camcorders.
‘I’ll need that when I start searching the woods,’ he added.
‘You mean when we start searching the woods,’ she corrected him.
‘What? You’re staying in the car, Lexi.’
‘Hell, no,’ she replied. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Eighty-Eight
Lockhart braked hard as they entered the tiny car park outside Barnes railway station. It was rush hour and, despite all the directives about working from home, a ton of people seemed to be commuting. There were vehicles in every parking space and lining the narrow road that led in both directions away from the station. Lockhart steered the Defender over to one side of the forecourt and stuck it up on a verge, half in the bushes, as Smith and Khan pulled in behind.
Pushing tree branches out of his face, he jumped down, popped the boot and grabbed a crowbar from inside. He’d chucked that in the back when he’d last visited Nick’s warehouse, just in case he’d needed to force his way in. He turned to see Green staring at the big, ugly-looking tool.
‘Don’t ask,’ he said.
Khan appeared, mobile clamped to his ear. ‘Luca’s five minutes out,’ he announced.
Smith emerged from the driver’s side of her car holding a torch. ‘Berry says the Mr M phone’s off,’ she said as she slammed the door and hustled over to join them.
‘Then we need to get searching,’ said Lockhart. ‘We don’t know how much time we’ve got. Mo, wait here till Luca arrives. Once he’s got the drone in the air, call me and keep the line open.’ He put one earphone in and ran the cable inside his jacket. ‘Put me on speaker and keep me updated. Let him talk to me directly if he wants.’
‘Boss.’ Khan nodded. He looked nervous, but these days Lockhart knew he could count on him. The young DC had matured a lot in the last year.
‘Max, what’s around here? Where do we look?’
Smith gestured first to the road they’d come down, then to the one leading away at ninety degrees to it. ‘These two roads run northeast and northwest. The densest bit of woods is in the triangle between them. Plenty of dirt tracks where you could take a van off the road and hide it in trees.’
‘All right. We take one each.’
‘Guv.’
‘Mo. Add Max to that call when you ring me.’
‘Yeah, OK.’
‘You got an earpiece, Max?’
‘No…’
‘Take mine.’ Green was holding out a set of earphones.
‘Keep one in so you can get directions, leave the other out so you can hear what’s going on around you.’
Smith plugged the jack into her phone and clicked on her torch.
Lockhart switched on the night vision. ‘Last chance, Lexi. You can stay here with Mo if you want.’
‘I’m coming with.’ Green stood firm. ‘I know Gabriel. If we find him, I can try talking to him.’
Lockhart had seen that look of determination before. There was no dissuading her. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
They set off, Smith northeast, him and Green northwest. The three of them marching away from the lights of the station and into the gloom of a cold, damp night.
Despite the unshakable strength of his beliefs and the conviction that what he was doing was both morally and spiritually justified, he still had the occasional wobble at moments like these. When that small voice – the tiny part of him that remembered himself at that age – told him to let them go free. To just throw the back doors wide or slide the side panel open and tell the kid to get out and run home. That it wasn’t too late for him to stop, or for them to change. But, whenever those poisonous doubts start to creep over his mind, he simply remembered Jim.
The boy whose demise had started all this. He thought he’d saved Jim through his work. He’d taught the lad PE at the school in Richmond. Encouraged him to join the after-school sports club in Wandsworth, too. Jim had the chance to become a pro athlete, he had been sure of it. If he just continued training, kept working hard, he would succeed. Then Jim’s estranged father had turned up one night and murdered his mother. And everything fell apart.
Jim sank first into a mute depression, then into drugs, and with his mum gone and dad behind bars, he ran away from care. It was less than a year before Jim’s body was found in a skip, covered in needle marks, strangled to death. He’d been thirteen. And his killer was never found.
For a while, he’d sworn revenge on whoever had done it. The anger had gradually eaten away at him until, one day, the answer had come to him in a dream. It was gloriously simple. Instead of sending predators to hell, he’d send their prey to heaven.
And now that the memory of Jim’s violated body had pushed any uncertainty from his mind, it was time to act. He hadn’t been able to help Jim. But, sitting beside him now was another little lost soul.
Ready to be saved.
Eighty-Nine
Lockhart paused and, behind him, heard Green stop moving, too. He put the monocular to his right eye and scanned the wooded area around him. He could see nothing but tree trunks and foliage, picked out in shades of green that faded to blackness in the distance. More than once in the past ten minutes, he had thought he’d seen a figure moving. But, each time, the shape had resolved itself into a sapling or bush, bending in the breeze or shaken by the movement of a bird.
‘Anything on the drone camera?’ he whispered into the mic on the earphone cable hanging at his neck.
‘Nothing, boss.’ Khan’s reply came through Lockhart’s earbud. ‘I’m looking at the downlink screen. We’ve got you two moving and Max on the other side of… basically, just a lot of dark.’
‘Max?’
‘Same here, guv,’ replied Smith. ‘Sod all.’
Lockhart knew that time might be running out for Paige Bradley. He felt a creeping nausea coming on. They had to do more. That didn’t necessarily mean moving faster, if it might cause them to miss something. But they needed to widen the search.
‘Luca, can you hear me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ came the response.
‘Pan out to a bigger area around us.’
‘Received.’
So far, the drone had been hovering midway between him and Smith to the east, covering the space between them. It was a couple of hundred metres off the ground and, although Lockhart occasionally caught a faint buzz from its rotors, he couldn’t see their ‘eye in the sky’.
He turned to Green. ‘Let’s carry on,’ he whispered.
‘Sure.’
A few minutes passed with no change except the sense that they were heading deeper into a forest. Lockhart knew from the map that, eventually, they’d come out the other side back in civilisation. But, even so, the feeling of—
‘Boss!’ Khan’s tone was urgent this time.
Lockhart froze, held up a palm to Green. He kept his voice low. ‘Go ahead, Mo.’
‘Luca says he’s got a heat signature.’
‘Where?’
‘East of where you are. Off Common Road.’
‘Luca, what can you see?’ asked Lockhart. ‘Can you zoom in?’
‘I’m doing that now,’ came the drone operator’s voice, more distant than Khan’s, but audible. ‘There’s a small block that’s hotter than its surroundings.’
‘They might have something,’ Lockhart whispered to Green.
‘Where?’ Green hissed.
‘That way.’ He pointed east and checked the night vision again, but he knew it’d be too far to see whatever the drone had picked up. ‘Luca?’
‘Yes! It’s – I think it’s a vehicle. Hold on, let me check…’
‘Don’t drop too low,’ Lockhart warned him.
Lost Souls Page 30
