‘So? They’re not uncommon.’
‘No. But he swears that there was somebody sitting in the front with a camera. A woman. He didn’t recognise her and she wasn’t there when he came back from doing his shopping but he noticed the camera because he thought it looked professional and he wondered if she was a reporter. He was a bit confused about the timing at first and thought it was after Aleah went missing but then he remembered that it was a Monday because he met a friend for a pint and he always does that when he goes shopping on a Monday. He can’t remember much about her other than the camera and that she was blonde and pretty.’
‘Sara Evans. Must’ve been. What the hell was she doing there and where was Dave Porter? He was with her in Sheffield that week. Was he in the car?’
‘No idea but I’ve got Cooper trying to confirm whether Sara Evans drives a white Fiat 500. My guess is yes.’
‘I think we need to get back over there and find out what she was doing in Thorpe the day before her boyfriend’s daughter went missing. You up for a trip to Sheffield?’
‘Always,’ Hollis joked. ‘Where are you?’
Kate explained what she’d been doing and arranged for Hollis to pick her up at the retail park outside Rotherham; she could leave her car there for a couple of hours.
Traffic was heavy as they left the Parkway and drove into Sheffield. Rush hour was just starting and all the roads seemed to be backed up.
‘Might as well catch a tram,’ Hollis muttered as yet another set of lights turned red to allow two trams to cross in front of them.
‘What’s the rush?’ Kate asked. ‘She might not be at home.’
‘But she might and I don’t want to miss the look on her face when she finds out that we know she was lurking on Crosslands Estate before Aleah was taken. What the hell was she doing there?’
Kate had no easy answer to that. Had Sara somehow befriended Aleah and then lured her away from Main Street with promises of a visit with her real father? Or had Porter taken her and it had gone wrong when Aleah asked to be allowed home? But none of her thoughts linked with the information she’d gleaned from Dave Porter’s mother. How could Sara Evans be linked with the elusive Ian Hirst?
‘Finally,’ Hollis sighed as the lights changed again and the road ahead cleared. ‘We might get there before tea time. He took a different route from their previous visit, driving up through the university to Broomhill and then cutting down towards Endcliffe Park. Kate studied the students who were milling round the campus despite it being the holidays. She wondered if Ben was amongst them somewhere, or he might have been on one of the trams that halted their progress earlier, heading back to his shared house in Upperthorpe. She was glad that he’d been in touch, glad that the first few planks of a bridge had been laid between them.
‘Right, how do we play this?’ Hollis asked as they pulled up on the narrow street. He’d parked a little way down the road from Sara Evans’s house in one of the few available spaces.
‘I think we just confront her with what we know. If we try to trap her in a lie before we tell her that we know she was in Thorpe she might just get defensive and clam up. Have you heard from Cooper?’
Hollis checked his phone.
‘Yep. Sara Evans is the registered keeper of a cream Fiat 500. Cooper’s checking CCTV for the date in question to see if we can spot her in the area.’
Kate scanned the street and was pleased to see the small car tucked into a parking space a few doors past Sara’s house. They hadn’t noticed it before, but they hadn’t known to look. The joys of hindsight.
‘Excellent. Let’s go.’
Kate followed Hollis down the alley between the houses and stood back to allow him to knock at the back door. Sara Evans opened it almost instantly, face flushed, drying her hands on a tea towel.
‘Yes? Oh, it’s you.’ Her curious, open expression turned to one of suspicion as she regarded the two police officers. ‘What do you want?’
‘Can we come in?’ Hollis asked, one of his feet already on the bottom of the two steps which led up to the door.
‘Dave’s not here. He’s gone into town to do some shopping.’
‘It’s not Mr Porter we want to talk to,’ Hollis said. ‘It’s you.’
‘Well… I…’ she seemed to be desperately trying to think of an excuse not to let them in, her eyes flitting from Kate to Hollis and back again.
‘It would be better if we came inside,’ Kate said. ‘Some information has come to light and I’d rather we didn’t discuss it on your doorstep where anybody could overhear.’
Sara opened the door wider and allowed them inside. The kitchen was warm and Kate noticed that the oven was on and the sink was full of used baking paraphernalia.
‘I was just making Dave a cake. It’s our five-month anniversary.’
Kate just nodded.
‘Sara. Why were you in Thorpe the day before Aleah went missing?’
‘What? I wasn’t.’
‘We have a witness who says that a woman matching your description was sitting in her car a few doors up from the Reeses’ house. You do drive a cream Fiat 500?’
‘Yes. But so do a lot of people, they’re very popular cars.’
‘They are. That’s yours outside I assume, a few doors up?’
Sara nodded warily.
‘We have your registration number and, while we’re conducting this interview, one of our colleagues is checking all the available CCTV around Thorpe to see if your car shows up. We have an approximate time from our witness so that should narrow it down. At the moment, I don’t mind telling you, you’re our number one person of interest because you lied and you’re still lying.’
Sara’s face paled and she collapsed onto one of the chairs scattered around the kitchen table. Her eyes flickered wildly left and right as she tried frantically to think up an excuse, a reason for being where she said she hadn’t.
‘Okay,’ she admitted. ‘I was there. On Monday though, not on the day that Aleah was taken. You can check CCTV for that, right? You’ll only see my car on Monday.’
‘Oh, we’ll check,’ Hollis said. ‘What about other vehicles? Is the Fiat the only car that you drive?’
Sara nodded eagerly. ‘It’s my only car. I’m sure you can check that as well.’
‘So why were you there? Our witness said that you had a camera with you. What were you taking photographs of? It’s a bit of a change from your usual subjects.’
Sara reddened and she looked down at the table.
‘I was trying to get some photos of Aleah, for Dave. His mum told him that her stepfather wasn’t very reliable and I was hoping to get some evidence that Dave could use.’
‘Use how?’
‘In court. To get access to his daughter.’
‘Court?’ Kate couldn’t get her head round what she was being told. Everything so far suggested that Dave Porter had given up on his daughter a long time ago. He’d said himself that he thought his relationship with her might be re-kindled but not until she was old enough to make her own decisions.
‘And Mr Porter knew about this, did he?’ Hollis asked.
‘No. Not really. We’d discussed Aleah’s situation but he didn’t know that I was trying to help. He was out that morning catching up with a friend. He doesn’t know that I was there.’
‘What were you hoping to achieve?’
Sara sighed and shook her head.
‘I don’t know. I thought if I could get some photos of Reese being rough with her, or of her looking neglected. Anything really that might help Dave. I didn’t even see her though.’
‘And you didn’t go back?’
‘No.’
‘Did you take any photographs at all?’
Sara nodded. ‘A few. Of the house and the street.’
‘We’ll need copies of those,’ Kate said. ‘In fact, we’ll take the camera you used and the memory card. If it checks out you should have it back in a few days.’
Another resigned nod.
Kate raised her eyebrows at Sara indicating that she meant what she said. She wanted that camera. Now.
Hollis went to the car to get an evidence bag while Sara went upstairs to retrieve her camera, leaving Kate alone to speculate about Sara’s motives for going to Thorpe. They seemed plausible if a bit misguided but she found it hard to believe that Porter hadn’t given his blessing. Then she remembered the looks that had passed between the two of them during the previous visit. The longing, loving looks that spoke of sex and infatuation. Perhaps Sara had wanted to surprise her boyfriend, or at least convince him that he didn’t have to stay away from his daughter.
‘Here,’ Sara said, returning to the kitchen and thrusting the camera towards Kate. ‘Be careful, it was expensive.’
Kate dug in her pocket and donned a pair of nitrile gloves before handling the item. It was a Canon EOS and it looked top of the range.
‘Is the memory card with the pictures still in the camera?’
Sara nodded.
‘And have you downloaded the photographs to any computer or other device?’
‘No. I was going to delete them but I just forgot. Have a look if you like.’
Kate switched the camera on and then passed it back to Sara.
‘It’s a bit complicated for me. Can you get them to display?’
Two taps of the arrow key and Sara passed the camera back. Kate was looking at a shot of the Reeses’ house taken from further up the road. The front door was in focus but the windows and walls were blurred. The next two had zoomed in on the window of the living room; others were shots of the street.
‘Is there any way to store these photographs on the device or are they just on the memory card?’ Kate asked.
‘They’re just on the card. You could just take that and leave me the camera. I need it for a job next week.’
Kate nodded. It made sense and she didn’t want an expensive piece of equipment going missing.
‘Okay, take the card out.’
She’d just opened the side of the camera when Hollis returned with an assortment of evidence bags.
‘We’re just taking the card,’ Kate informed him and he passed her the smallest bag. She placed the memory card inside, sealed, dated and numbered it and gave it to Hollis.
‘We’ll have a look at it back at base. See what Cooper makes of the pictures.’
She stood up to leave.
‘We’ll be in touch Ms Evans.’
Sara didn’t show them out.
Cooper and Barratt were still deep in their data mining when Kate and Hollis got back to the incident room. Barratt was working his way through a page of DVLA information and Cooper was focussed on her computer screen, scanning what looked like traffic camera footage.
‘Any luck with Sara Evans’s car?’ Kate asked, pulling up a chair and looking over Cooper’s shoulder. The DC nodded.
‘Yep. Found it pretty quickly once we’d got the reg. No sign of it on the day Aleah was taken, though. I’m looking for the yellow van at the minute but the feed’s black-and-white so it’s not easy.’
‘Where is this?’
‘Main road through Thorpe. Crosslands is to the north and the rest of the town is to the south. Anybody heading onto the Crosslands Estate would show up on one of two cameras.’
‘But he probably didn’t take the van onto the estate. It was parked at the bottom of the hill in the square.’
‘It’d still show up. Unless he came in from the south. The only camera that would cover that is on Rotherham Road.’
‘Hollis,’ Kate shouted at the DC who had just crossed the office to pour himself a coffee. ‘CCTV scanning. We need all the eyes we can get. Cooper. Get the feed from the Rotherham Road camera. Let’s find this bastard!’
Half an hour later Hollis took a sharp intake of breath.
‘I think I’ve got him.’
The other three leapt from their seats and gathered round Hollis’s screen.
‘Look. A light-coloured Transit van. Index number NE55 NNK. He came into Thorpe off Rotherham Road.
‘Gotcha!’ Kate punched the air. Cooper was already back at her desk entering the registration number into the PNC.
‘Who is he?’ Kate asked.
Cooper stared at the screen, waiting for a name.
‘Anthony Malloy. Took ownership of the van in February 2012. Registered address 45 Fitzroy Gardens, Rotherham.’
‘Google Maps, where the fuck is Fitzroy Gardens?’
Cooper’s fingers clicked across the keyboard and a photograph filled the screen.
‘It’s in Thorpe Hesley. Just off the main road. Hang on. Here we go. No. No. That’s not right.’
Kate peered over her shoulder as she panned down the street which ended in patch of wasteland.
‘The numbers stop at thirty-two. There is no forty-five.’
Kate shook her head. ‘That can’t be right, have another look.’
Cooper zoomed in to show Kate the numbers on the house doors. There was nothing after thirty-two.
‘Hang on,’ Kate said. ‘Look there.’
She pointed to the waste ground where a tumble of red bricks was just visible through the long grass.
‘Demolition rubble. Some of the houses were knocked down. We need to know when.’
‘Give me a few minutes,’ Cooper said and started to type. Kate sat back at her own desk. What the hell was going on? They were looking for Ian Hirst and they’d found Anthony Malloy. Was he their killer? And, if so, who the hell was he?
‘Two years ago,’ Cooper said. ‘Before that the occupants of forty-five were a Mrs Barbara Malloy and a Mr Anthony Malloy.’
‘Barbara is Ian Hirst’s mother’s name! It’s too much of a coincidence. Find them Cooper, they might be able to tell us where her son is.’
Kate was buzzing. This was what she loved about the job, the thrill of getting close to the final piece in a puzzle. They were closing in on the killer, Kate could feel it. He thought he’d been so bloody clever but he wasn’t clever enough. It had taken a while but they’d found him in the end.
‘They’re dead,’ Cooper said. ‘Barbara died last year and her husband followed her in February this year. They’d moved to sheltered housing in Rotherham; Bellingham Court.’
‘Shit! Suspicious?’
‘Lung cancer and a stroke.’
‘Shit, shit, shit! Okay. Hirst must be using a different name, that’s why he’s not showing up on any of the databases. Try Ian Malloy. Barratt, Hollis ring Craig Reese’s sisters, see if they can shed any light on who this fucker is.’
Kate slammed out of the office and took the stairs up to the canteen two at a time. This felt personal. Hirst was messing her around and she didn’t like it one bit. It felt like he was always one step ahead of the investigation, always just around the corner while Kate was running frantically down the street to catch up with him. They’d got a name, they’d got a vehicle, they’d even got the beginnings of a motive but they still couldn’t quite put it all together and find the man.
Two hours later they were no further forward. Cooper had managed to track down one of the Reese sisters – Joanne – but she’d never heard of Ian Hirst. She claimed to vaguely remember the name Tracy Moore but couldn’t be sure. She’d been curt and uncooperative during the phone call, revealing that her sister lived in Australia but little else so Kate made her the subject of an action for the following day, hoping that a visit from a detective might jog her memory.
She glanced at the clock in the corner of her computer screen. Half past six.
‘Guys, I think we should call it a day. I’ll fill Raymond in but you lot should get off and have a kip. Tomorrow we’ll trawl more CCTV, try to ring Carla Reese and interview her sister. We also need to go through the product of the latest door-to-door. It’s already turned up one lead; there might be all sorts in there.’
‘Kate, I might’ve got something,’ Cooper said. She’d been examining the photographs from Sara Evans’s memory card. ‘Look
at this.’
She was pointing to a wide-angle shot of the street with the Reeses’ house in the middle.
‘There’s a vehicle there, at the bottom of the road. All I’ve got is the rear light unit and a bit of bumper but if I enlarge it…’
She pressed a key twice and the photograph zoomed to the area she was talking about. A sliver of red and orange plastic came into focus and part of the paintwork of the vehicle.
‘It’s yellow,’ Kate breathed. ‘He was there.’
‘It’s not a van,’ Cooper said. ‘The light unit’s wrong. And it’s not just yellow, look.’
She pointed to a smudge beneath the reversing light.
‘There’s a bit of orange.’
‘Weird. A car like that would stand out a mile.’
Hollis joined them trying to make sense of the enlarged pixels. He tilted his head to each side then laughed.
‘It’s one of ours,’ he said. ‘It’s the back of a patrol car. There’s a yellow-and-orange diagonal stripe. The backs of the cars have yellow-and-orange stripes. It’s a police car.’
‘The day before Aleah went missing? Wonder what it’s doing there?’
‘We could check the duty logs, see if there’s anything mentioned,’ Cooper suggested.
‘Do it,’ Kate said and they all leaned over Cooper’s shoulder as she typed in the date and location.
‘Nothing,’ Kate said.
‘Could have been a routine drive through the estate,’ Barratt suggested.
‘Yes, because Crosslands is such a crime hot spot and we have the money for that,’ Kate said, sarcastically. A niggling thought was developing in the back of her mind and she didn’t like the feel of it. ‘Is there any way we can find out who it was?’
‘Not really. We can find out who was on duty at the time but if there’s no log of a visit to the estate, it could be anybody. We could check who was busy at the exact time but that will take a while. And it could be an officer who was about to go on or off duty, they might still have had the car. Without an index number, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.’
‘Well, that’s what we need to do. Action it for tomorrow. I want to know who was in that car and what he or she was doing there. Right. Home, the lot of you. Back at seven to do some serious digging.’
Closer To Home Page 20
