Watch Over You

by M. J. Ford

  Shoe is on the other foot now, isn’t it? thought Jo.

  ‘Do you want a wingman?’ asked Heidi, as Jo filled a glass with lukewarm water from the tap.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Jo, with a grim smile. ‘I can handle this solo.’

  * * *

  Pritchard had come armed with paperwork – all hard copy – in the same large document case that she’d carried at their previous meeting. Jo switched on the microphone device on the table, and introduced them both for the recording. Pritchard swallowed.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ said Jo. ‘As part of one of our investigations, we’re trying to find Megan Bailey. We’ve been told, by her brother, that she was adopted into the Bailey family. Can you confirm that?’

  Pritchard sifted through the case, and brought out some bound sheets.

  ‘Megan was fostered by the Bailey family from the age of four, and formally adopted at the age of seven, in 2011.’

  Jo made a note slowly, letting the silence stretch.

  ‘And since that time, what level of contact have you had with Megan and the Bailey family?’

  ‘Once the child is legally adopted, we’re not required to monitor them for safeguarding,’ said Pritchard. ‘However, in Megan’s case, she came to our attention again in 2016, when she was discovered to be pregnant.’

  Jo, momentarily taken aback, did the calculations. ‘At twelve.’

  Pritchard tilted her head. ‘Indeed. We interviewed her at the time, both in the presence of her parents, and separately. She couldn’t disclose the identity of the father, claiming the sexual intercourse had happened at school when she had been drunk.’

  When she was at St Cuthbert’s. Xan Do?

  ‘And the pregnancy was terminated?

  ‘It ended naturally before such steps had been fully considered.’

  It was an odd choice of words, Jo thought. ‘What would there be to consider? She was twelve.’

  ‘I believe the family may have had certain religious convictions,’ said Pritchard.

  Jo recalled the solicitous priest. ‘Poor girl,’ she said. ‘It must have been hard for her.’

  ‘For the whole family, I imagine,’ said Pritchard, entirely missing her point.

  ‘Was anything reported to the police at the time?’ said Jo.

  ‘It was decided between the family, their legal team, and child services, to keep the matter confidential.’

  ‘And did Megan have a say in that either?’

  Pritchard looked taken aback. ‘As I said, it was the family’s wishes.’

  ‘But did you carry out any sort of investigation into who the father might be?’ asked Jo.

  ‘It wasn’t deemed an appropriate use of resources,’ said Pritchard. ‘Our concern was looking after Megan.’

  ‘But it was deemed she was best served by remaining with the Bailey family?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The most important thing for a girl like Megan is stability. And besides, she left the school, so the immediate welfare issue was resolved.’

  ‘Tell me, what is a girl like Megan?’ asked Jo. ‘In your professional opinion.’

  ‘From the reports and psychological profiles, very damaged,’ said Pritchard. ‘Sexually precocious and manipulative from a young age. Anger management problems, pathologies of demand avoidance, low scores on empathetic testing. Sadly, if the child comes into our care after three or four, the harm to their psychological wiring is already done.’ She paused. ‘That’s why good parenting in the first couple of years is so important.’

  Touché, thought Jo.

  ‘So after the pregnancy, you began to monitor her again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pritchard. ‘On a six-monthly basis. The family weren’t happy, as you can imagine, and nor was Megan. She missed several of the appointments.’

  ‘And what did you do in those circumstances?’

  ‘There isn’t much we can do.’

  ‘But they were rescheduled?’

  Pritchard coloured. ‘In most cases, no. We don’t have those sorts of resources. We’re only obliged to make reasonable efforts at contact.’

  ‘Surely a case like Megan’s is a priority. Vulnerable girl, problems with alcohol and later drugs. Sexually precocious. Doesn’t something like that come top of the list when it comes to dishing out “resources”.’ As opposed to struggling mums who leave their baby in the car for seven minutes.

  ‘We’re battling cuts, just like the police,’ said Pritchard. ‘And I’m sorry to say there are much more extreme cases to deal with, in which lives are in immediate danger.’

  Jo nodded. ‘Oh, I understand. We’re dealing with four lives that have been quite severely endangered in the last week. And Megan links them all. I can’t help wonder, if you’d been doing your job differently, less box-ticking and buck-passing … might they still be alive?’

  The temperature in Pritchard’s glare was sub-zero. ‘It’s easy to point the finger of blame,’ she said. ‘I suppose all we can do now is try to find her.’

  Jo could have tormented Pritchard a little more, but she’d made the woman squirm for long enough. For all her weasel words about resources, Jo knew she wasn’t lying about the cuts. Taking kids into care and looking after them was always fraught, always rushed and subject to reversals, and rarely straightforward. She’d had to hold back a drunk and screaming mother herself once, as a constable, while an emergency duty team lifted a baby from a cot and took it away to what they deemed a safer environment. She also knew the outcomes for kids taken into care. The prison, substance abuse, and suicide statistics were grim reading.

  ‘Have you any idea where she might be?’ asked Pritchard.

  ‘The only lead at the moment – and it’s tenuous – is “up north”,’ said Jo.

  ‘Interesting you should say that,’ said Pritchard, sifting through her piles of paperwork again. ‘I’m pretty sure she was originally from the Manchester area.’

  Jo felt a tingle of electricity up her spine. It might be nothing, but first the DNA link to the gruesome murder, and now Megan’s own origins – both pointing to the same city. ‘Would Megan have known that herself?’

  ‘She’s still too young to have access to any of her files, and it’s unlikely Mr and Mrs Bailey would have been told any pertinent details about her past – not formally, anyway. They may have gleaned it from her accent, though the file notes she was still barely verbal when they first took her in. Her name, if it helps, was Megan Brown when she came to us.’

  ‘Not a rare surname,’ said Jo. ‘How usual is it to move a child across the country?’

  ‘It depends on the reasons for the removal from the biological parents,’ said Pritchard. ‘Normally we try to rehome with close relatives, but if there aren’t any, or if there’s a safeguarding issue, it’s often decided a fresh start is best.’

  ‘And do you have those details?’ said Jo. ‘About Megan’s early years?’

  Pritchard shook her head. ‘We don’t. It’s dealt with at a regional level. You’d have to talk to child services in Manchester.’

  ‘I will,’ said Jo, standing up. ‘Would you mind waiting here a few moments?’

  Out of the interview room, she went to Heidi. ‘Have you got a number for the inspector on the Putman case?’

  Carrick overheard. ‘For what, exactly?’

  ‘Might be nothing, but it looks like Megan Bailey was taken into care in Manchester originally. Didn’t Putman work with children? He might have known her.’

  ‘It’s a long shot. Twelve years ago. She was three when she went into care.’

  ‘Worth checking out though,’ said Jo.

  Carrick checked his watch. ‘Dimi will be there in half an hour …’

  Jo understood where he was coming from. She knew full well that George wouldn’t appreciate her sliding into his case again.

  ‘Sir, it’ll take two minutes. One question.’

  ‘I agree, sir,’ said Heidi. She passed the number across on a Post-it.

 
‘One question,’ said Carrick, sternly.

  * * *

  Two minutes later, Jo put the call on hold, struggling to control her breathing. DI Southam had been very helpful indeed. Carrick, alerted by her increasingly excited speech patterns through the course of the brief conversation, was standing right beside her desk, and Heidi was looking on intently from the other side of the work station.

  ‘Well?’ said Carrick.

  Jo managed to her words out. ‘I think it’s a member of the family,’ she said.

  ‘Megan’s family?’

  Jo nodded. Was she jumping to conclusions? ‘Christopher Putman worked at a fostering agency in Manchester before being a teacher.’

  Carrick and Heidi linked eyes, confirming they too knew this was as significant as Jo did. She was speaking to herself as much as to them.

  ‘Has to be her dad,’ she said. ‘The real one. He found out the agency responsible for Megan’s rehoming, and then extracted the information. He travelled to Oxford … it wouldn’t be that hard to find her if he knew her exact age. Just trawl the schools, social media. Even if it was twelve years, a dad would hardly forget his daughter’s face.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Carrick. ‘Can we find out a list of the kids Putman rehomed?’

  Jo got back on the phone with the Manchester inspector, who listened patiently to Jo’s theory and said she’d find out more details and send them straight away. ‘Do you want me to relay all this to your colleagues?’ she asked.

  Jo had forgotten about Dimitriou and Reeves in her rush of excitement. It was looking like a wasted trip for them. She told Southam not to worry, it was better coming from St Aldates. They agreed to keep the channels open, and Jo hung up.

  Her mind was still reeling as she sank into her chair. The implications, disordered and random, were cascading through her brain. Harry, Xan Do, the Baileys, Putman … Was this all the work of one person, trying to find his daughter?

  ‘Who the fuck are we dealing with?’

  Seeing the faces of the others across the squad room, she reckoned she was speaking for everyone.

  Chapter 18

  ‘You can do a lot of damage with one question,’ joked Heidi.

  Carrick was on the phone to Reeves and Dimitriou, filling them in on the latest. From the slightly strained pauses, Jo could imagine that George was having trouble following just how fast things were moving during his enforced absence on the M6.

  She went back in to Annabelle Pritchard. There was no need to take her through the developing theory, so instead she simply thanked her for her time and offered to show her out. Pritchard seemed relieved to be dismissed. At the front desk, as she signed out on the register, Jo told her they’d be in touch if they needed anything else.

  Pritchard shook her hand, and Jo was sure her skin was warmer to the touch.

  ‘I hope you find her,’ she said.

  ‘We will,’ said Jo, though quite what it was they would find, she had no idea. In all of this, Megan’s own thought processes were still a stubborn mystery.

  Time to find dad.

  Jo logged on to the national computer, searching records pertaining to Manchester and the surrounding counties and the surname ‘Brown’ between the years 2002, twelve months prior to Megan Brown’s birth, and 2006, for all cautions and convictions of males between the ages of fifteen and fifty. There were 3,014 entries.

  Jo let out an ‘Ugh!’

  ‘Hard luck,’ said Heidi, placing a cup of tea on her desk. ‘Maybe narrow it down by violent crime. If you’re right that this guy’s responsible, he’s not squeamish.’

  It did seem justified given the nature of the recent spate of crimes in Oxford. Jo filtered again for crimes ranging from common assault to murder. The number dropped to seventy-four.

  ‘Better.’ Looking down the list, a number of names appeared several times, but there was no way to see quickly and easily the parental status of the suspect.

  Leaving the window open, she went through to the Home Office’s prisoner register. ‘If it’s the dad, and it’s only happening now, maybe he was inside until recently.’

  She searched for Browns between the ages of thirty and sixty released in the last twelve months, nationally, for any sentence length or conviction type. The records weren’t always terribly reliable, so she didn’t get her hopes up. There were forty hits. She copied the results, listed alphabetically, then compared them to the violent offenders from the Manchester area. There were several matching names, but many of the first names were common ones – John, David, Mark, Simon and William. After several minutes of jumping between both sets of records, she ascertained there were only two actual shared identities by date of birth: Simon Brown and Aljamain Brown.

  Aljamain, arrested several times for aggravated burglary, was forty-six years old, released from Berwyn, a category C prison, in February. Arrested several times in Liverpool between 1995 and 2001, and then in Manchester in 2003, 2004, and then for the last time in 2012. Convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to sixteen years, but released after serving eight. On checking the arrest records, he had three known children. Sadly, the mugshot showed a black man, so that counted him out as Megan’s biological father.

  Simon looked more promising. He’d come out of Frankland, a notorious Category A, meant to house some of the UK’s most dangerous inmates, all of whom were kept in single cells. Jo recalled a particularly nasty case a few years ago when two prisoners had disembowelled a third who’d been convicted of raping a child. Simon had a long list of drug offences to his name, culminating in the beating to death of another man in a fight in Bolton, in 2002. The sustained nature of the assault and the lack of remorse had led to a life sentence, with no chance of parole for fifteen years. He had served three more than that – his file saying he was had spent the final years of his time in prison dealing with addiction problems. Satisfied he was clean, he had been released on probation. There was, however, no record of any offspring.

  Jo found the number for Simon Brown’s probation officer at once, and made the call with middling hopes. The short conversation dashed them. Simon Brown had died two days after being released. Cause of death – an overdose of heroin leading to heart failure.

  Jo sagged in her chair – ninety minutes of her day wasted. She could have gone back and expanded both searches, but it seemed pretty hopeless – conjecture built on conjecture, a house of cards ready to collapse. Maybe the biological father of Megan Bailey had never been arrested or imprisoned at all. Maybe he’d never even known about, or met, his daughter.

  There was a good chance she was barking up the wrong tree altogether, and Megan Bailey’s father had nothing to do with any of this.

  * * *

  DI Southam of Greater Manchester Police rang back less than quarter of an hour later.

  ‘I spoke with Mr Putman’s partner. The fostering agency Christopher Putman worked for is no longer functioning. It closed its doors six years ago.’

  Another dead end.

  ‘There must be records though.’

  ‘Yes, they were subsumed by the city council. I’ve been in touch and they’re digging out the relevant details. They said it might take a day or two, but I’ve impressed upon them that that won’t be acceptable. I’ll go down there myself if I have to.’

  Jo was beginning to like Sue Southam.

  ‘By the way, your colleagues have arrived. Sergeant Dimitriou wants to talk with you.’

  ‘Put him on.’

  ‘Jo,’ said Dimitriou. ‘You’ve been busy.’ He spoke the final word as if it implied any number of unsavoury activities quite distinct from straightforward policework.

  ‘It might go nowhere,’ she replied, ‘but if it’s someone from Megan’s past …’

  ‘Some sort of avenging angel?’ said Dimitriou.

  He clearly wasn’t convinced, but she was ready to fight her corner.

  ‘I can’t see any other link between a charity worker in Salford and the Baileys in a quiet Oxfordshire v
illage. Can you?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘We’re going to look into possible drug links too,’ he said. ‘Check out the financials of Putman and his partner. Can’t hurt to cover all bases, given we’ve made the trip.’

  Again, a certain bitterness in his voice wasn’t well disguised.

  ‘Sure,’ said Jo, though she thought the theory that Putman was involved in the drug trade sounded rather more fantastical than her own.

  Heidi was on another call when she came off the phone, and she wore a puzzled look.‘And how old was the girl, roughly … uh-huh. Okay, keep her there. We’ll send someone … maybe half an hour.’ She ended the call. ‘Jo, we might have something.’

  ‘You’ve not found her?’

  ‘Hard to tell. A woman’s just been car-jacked at gunpoint near Woodstock. We’ve got officers from Kidlington on the scene. But get this – the victim said her attacker was with a teenage girl.’

  Chapter 19

  They reached the scene in less than twelve minutes after Heidi had put down the phone. Jo had done the talking while Andy Carrick drove, slicing through the Oxford traffic with the blues on, then opening up the Toyota as they hit the Woodstock Road. By the time they reached the A44 dual carriageway, he was doing close to a hundred and ten miles per hour. Jo trusted his auto skills, but did her best not to look at the road as she co-ordinated a response on the phone. First and foremost was to share the details of the victim’s vehicle, a black Audi A3, this year’s reg, with neighbouring forces, and to set the ANPR network to automatically alert them in the car passed one of the cameras in the area. A helicopter had already been scrambled to search from the air and an armed response from Thames Valley was on standby.

  Two squad vehicles were parked at the side of the B-road and a single uniformed officer who Jo didn’t recognise was directing traffic around the obstruction they were causing. Carrick followed the signals and parked in front of the other cars. Jo got out. A young Asian woman in smart work attire, maybe only late twenties, was standing by the side of the road on her phone, gesticulating and occasionally pulling at her brown hair as she spoke. Two more officers – Marquardt and Williams from St Aldates – were standing nearby. Jo approached, stepping over what looked like part of a car bumper lying at the edge of the tarmac.