The Red Telephone Box (DS Dave Slater Mystery Novels Book 5)

by P. F. Ford

  ‘Oh. Is that right?’ she said, indignantly. ‘Well, we can change that, right now.’

  Slater glanced down as his phone beeped.

  ‘It’s Steve Biddeford. That means he might have something for us.’

  Goodnews got her feet and set off towards the door. She had a date with DCI Murray – and she didn’t think it would be a pleasant one…for him.

  ‘I’ll see you back in the incident room in five minutes,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I just need to go and establish a bit of clarity between myself and DCI Murray before he goes home.’

  As Slater watched her storm off through the door, his phone started to ring. He fished it from his pocket and saw it was Steve Biddeford.

  ‘Yes, Steve?’ he said into the phone.

  ‘I think we might have something,’ said Biddeford.

  ‘Give us five minutes, and we’ll be there,’ said Slater.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘So, what have you got?’ asked Slater, as he and Goodnews came into the room and stepped up behind Biddeford so they could watch over his shoulder.

  ‘I can show you exactly where he got off the train,’ Biddeford said. ‘He might well have paid for a ticket to Southampton, but he only went three stops. Watch.’

  He pressed play and they watched as a train drew into view and stopped. As if it had all been prearranged, the train stopped in exactly the right spot so that when the doors opened they were centre screen. Norman stumbled off the train, and after a few seconds, the doors slid back together. Keeping his head down, he shambled towards them and then disappeared from view as he passed under the camera.

  ‘That’s definitely him?’ asked Goodnews.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Biddeford. ‘Even though he’s hiding his face, you couldn’t mistake him. The hair’s a dead giveaway.’

  ‘Can you pause it a minute, Steve?’ asked Slater. ‘It’s him alright, but there’s something different.’

  ‘There is?’ asked Biddeford.

  Slater had to study the image for a good few seconds before he realised what it was.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘He’s not wearing his denim jacket, and he’s not carrying it either. He must have left it on the train. He loved that jacket, so why would he have left it on the train?’

  ‘He’s hiding his face from the camera, and he’s dumped his jacket,’ mused Goodnews. ‘He would know we’d check the CCTV, so maybe he thought dumping the jacket would make him harder to spot.’

  ‘With that hair, and being that size? I don’t think so,’ said Slater. ‘Besides, he’s getting off at a station hardly anyone uses. It’s not as if he’s got a crowd to blend into.’

  ‘I don’t want to sound unkind, but he’s never going to blend into a crowd,’ Biddeford said. ‘He’s that distinctive I reckon we could spot him in a full house at Wembley stadium.’

  ‘Okay. I can buy into that,’ said Goodnews. ‘So would he have left his jacket there so we’d know he’d been on that train? It’s all very well to say we’d spot him on CCTV, but you can’t always rely on the CCTV to be working. Maybe this was a “just in case” scenario.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Slater said, unconvinced.

  ‘I’ll switch to the other camera that shows him leaving the station, now.’

  This camera wasn’t quite so useful. It was obviously stationed above the exit doors, but because of the angle it was set at, the images weren’t quite so good.

  As Biddeford pressed play, Norman’s head and shoulders came into view briefly, but then he turned left and walked out of shot.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Goodnews, obviously disappointed.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Biddeford, turning his chair round to face her. ‘It’s an unmanned station. I think we’re lucky the camera was working and we got anything at all.’

  Slater was still looking at the screen although he was listening to the conversation rather than actually watching the video.

  ‘And that’s it?’ asked Goodnews. ‘So no one else got off the train? Was there anyone else in the carriage?’

  Biddeford shook his head.

  ‘Sorry. That’s all we’ve got,’ he said.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Slater leaning towards the screen. ‘What’s that?’

  Goodnews and Biddeford turned back to the screen, but there was nothing to see.

  ‘Rewind it a bit,’ said Slater.

  They watched as the video went into reverse. For just a second or so, a figure could be seen running backwards under the camera.

  ‘There!’

  Biddeford stopped the video and pressed play. They watched as a man briefly came into view.

  ‘Pause it there,’ said Goodnews.

  She leaned forward for a better view.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’ she asked Biddeford. ‘I thought you said no one else had got off the train.’

  ‘I can’t make out any features,’ muttered Slater. ‘But there’s something familiar about him.’

  He thought about it for a few moments.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Maybe it will come to me later.’

  Slater could see the back of Biddeford’s neck flushing red with embarrassment.

  ‘I might have missed him coming out of the station,’ admitted Biddeford, reluctantly. ‘But I’m sure he didn’t get off the train.’

  ‘Let’s go back and watch the train come in again, please,’ suggested Goodnews. ‘And this time let’s watch until the train actually pulls out.’

  There was an awkward silence as Biddeford replaced the CD and started again.

  ‘Slow it down so we can take a good look through the carriage windows,’ said Goodnews. ‘I want to see if this mystery man was on board.’

  As the video ran at half speed, the train crawled jerkily into the station.

  ‘Look. There’s someone sitting right at the front of the carriage,’ she said, leaning forward to get a better view. ‘But I don’t think it’s our man, it looks like a girl. And anyway, Norman’s right at the other end of the carriage.’

  They watched as Norman disembarked and the doors slid shut. Then they watched the side of the stationary train as it just sat in the station.

  Biddeford reached for the stop button, but Goodnews tapped his shoulder.

  ‘Not until it leaves the station,’ she reminded him.

  Finally, the train began to inch forward and then suddenly stopped again. The same doors Norman had used slid open and a girl emerged carrying a large canvas bag in her arms. She jumped from the train and turned her back to the camera to watch the train pull away. She seemed to have her hands full, and as the train disappeared from view, she bent forward, placed the canvas bag at her feet and stuffed something into it. Then she heaved the bag up onto her right shoulder and turned towards the exit.

  The position of the camera and the fading light made it difficult to make out any detail in her face, and it was even quite difficult to make out what she was wearing.

  ‘Looks like a student,’ said Biddeford. ‘At a guess she could be late teens. Not exactly the profile of your average kidnapper.

  ‘Teenage girl, for sure,’ said Goodnews. ‘But let’s not write off anyone as a suspect just yet, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Boss,’ said Biddeford, and Slater thought he detected that slight patronising tone again.

  ‘Now, the man came out of the station just after Norman,’ said Goodnews. ‘But there didn’t seem to be any sign of him on the train, so it figures he was waiting inside the station. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ Slater nodded. ‘But if he knows there are fixed cameras it’s no wonder we didn’t see him. It wouldn’t be hard to avoid them. Maybe he just got a bit careless with the one out front.’

  ‘Now let’s go back to that outside video,’ she said to Biddeford. ‘Let it run on for a few minutes from when Norman emerges.’

  Biddeford did as he was instructed and set the video running again. They watched as Norman emerged again, followed by the running man.

  ‘I know it’
s only the back of their heads, but I want stills of Norman and of that man,’ said Goodnews.

  ‘Right,’ said Biddeford. ‘I’ll make them as clear as I can.’

  It was fully two minutes before the girl emerged from the station. Again, she had her back to them so they still had no idea what she looked like, but at least now they could see she was wearing a black tee shirt, black shorts, and white socks and trainers. The bag was dark blue, or possibly black.

  ‘How tall do you think she is?’ asked Goodnews, turning to Slater.

  But Slater didn’t hear. He was focused on the canvas bag hanging from the girl’s shoulder.

  ‘There. Look,’ he said, pointing at the screen. ‘Hanging from her bag. We wouldn’t have been able to see it if she’d turned left straight out of the door.’

  There on the screen, hanging from the girl’s bag, was the sleeve of a denim jacket. The cuff of the sleeve was torn and hanging off.

  ‘She’s got Norman’s jacket,’ said Slater.

  ‘Oh well done,’ Goodnews said, happily. ‘Good spot.’

  Then she tapped Biddeford on the shoulder.

  ‘I want stills of that girl, too. And I’d like them all asap.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Biddeford. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll have them all.’

  Goodnews led Slater away from Biddeford’s desk and back up to the desk at the front of the room.

  ‘That was good work,’ she said. ‘Tell me, is Biddeford always in such a hurry? Left to him we would have missed both the man and the girl. Between you and me, can I trust him?’

  ‘Err, well,’ said Slater awkwardly. He really didn’t want to start telling tales on people.

  ‘Look, I know you feel you have loyalties to people,’ she said. ‘But I need to know who I can rely on and who I have to keep tabs on. What I’ve just seen was pretty unimpressive.’

  ‘He was really good when he first came on board,’ said Slater. ‘But there was a bit of a situation a while back. That’s why he’s been away on secondment at a bigger station.’

  ‘Did that situation involve you by any chance?’

  ‘It did,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t have a grudge if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘It’s not what I’m thinking,’ she said. ‘But I would like to know what happened. Maybe you can tell me in the car in the morning.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Slater.

  ‘Right now I think we should all go home and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘We can’t work without it. Tomorrow morning, you and I are going to wherever that station is. We need to see if we can find out what happened after he got off that train. But my question is, can I trust Biddeford to do what I ask while we’re out?’

  ‘He already knows he’s cocked up,’ said Slater. ‘I’ll tell him you weren’t impressed. He won’t be in a hurry to do it again.’

  ‘Good. Because, tomorrow morning, I want him to find out where that girl got on the train, and I want to know if the man arrived on an earlier train.’

  ‘The girl looks like a student of some sort,’ suggested Slater. ‘Maybe she lives in the village.’

  ‘But why would she have his jacket?’ asked Goodnews.

  ‘Maybe she’s a tea leaf. She saw it there and just couldn’t resist picking it up.’

  ‘Is it a big village?’

  ‘What, Little Balding? No. It’s quite small,’ said Slater. ‘And it’s not somewhere we get called out to very often. It’s one of those “awfully nice” English villages, if you know what I mean. It’s full of thatched cottages and it’s apparently one of the most photographed villages in the south of England. There’s a residents’ committee whose specific task is to maintain the appearance of the village as it was in its heyday. They’ve even bought their own red telephone box and had it installed on the edge of the village green.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Goodnews. ‘It’s amazing what you can do if you have enough money.’

  ‘Ah yes, money,’ Slater said, smiling. ‘You’ll notice the smell of it as soon as you get within a mile of the place. There’s maybe 60 or 70 old houses that formed the original village, and then there’s a couple of small modern developments. When I say small, I mean the number of houses, not the size of them.’

  ‘Big and expensive?’ asked Goodnews. ‘In keeping with what’s already there?’

  ‘They certainly weren’t built with the first time buyer in mind, that’s for sure.’

  ‘That could help us. If it’s only a small village, there’s a good chance someone might know who the girl is, and where she lives.’

  ‘You don’t see her as a suspect, then?’ asked Slater.

  ‘I think it’s highly unlikely,’ said Goodnews. ‘But I’m not ruling anyone out completely. At least, not until we’ve spoken to them.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was the next morning, and Goodnews had just told Biddeford what she wanted him to do. He wasn’t exactly thrilled with her idea, and it showed.

  ‘Don’t pout, Constable,’ she admonished. ‘If I wanted to work with children I’d have chosen to work in a nursery.’

  Slater was suddenly finding it difficult not to smirk, so he thought it might be best if he found something to do. He turned away from them and leaned across his desk. As he did so, he noticed Biddeford’s face had turned a furious shade of red.

  ‘I realise you want to show everyone how you’re the closest thing to a real life, Action Man,’ continued Goodnews. ‘And, who knows, maybe you’ll get the chance to do that when we find Norman. In the meantime, I need someone I can trust to do this work. DS Slater assures me you’re the best we have at this work, and we owe it to Norman to be the best we can, so it’s a no-brainer.’

  Slater hadn’t said anything of the sort, he thought indignantly. He knew how much Biddeford hated computer work, and now he was going to think Slater had dropped him right in it.

  ‘I want to know if that running man arrived by train,’ continued Goodnews. ‘And if he did, which train, and where did it come from. I also want to know where the girl got on the train. In short, I want to know everything you can find out about both of them and their journeys. Meanwhile we will be out at Little Balding trying to do the same, but we’ll be doing it the old-fashioned way by knocking on doors and asking questions.’

  ‘Right,’ said Biddeford, unhappily.

  ‘And at some point,’ added Goodnews, ‘you should get a call from Norman’s old station in London. I’ve asked them to identify anyone they feel could be behind this. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, Boss,’ Biddeford said, sighing. ‘But I think we’re wasting our time with the girl.’

  ‘Your opinion is duly noted,’ said Goodnews, evenly. ‘And if we can prove you’re right, we’ll cross her off the list. Until then, my experience trumps your hunch, so you’ll do as I ask.’

  ‘Yes. Boss.’ Biddeford spoke through gritted teeth

  ‘Is he always such an annoying little sod?’ Goodnews asked Slater a few minutes later, as he drove them out of the car park.

  ‘He never used to be,’ said Slater. ‘Like I said, when he first joined us he was a joy to work with, and very keen to learn. Then, he went on secondment for a few months.’

  ‘And now he thinks he knows it all,’ finished Goodnews. ‘I really don’t like having someone like that in my team. They think they’re special, but all they are is bloody hard work.’

  ‘I can handle him,’ said Slater.

  A wicked smile crossed her face.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I can handle him. I’ve just got better things to do with my time.’

  She gave him a sideways look.

  ‘It looks like he’s another one who behaves like a little boy so, like you, he’ll have to change his ways. He either works the way I want or he’s on his way to work somewhere else. It’s not complicated.’

  Slater chose to ignore the dig about little boys.

  ‘You didn’t help the situation by telling him I sai
d he was the best at research,’ he told her. ‘He hates being stuck on a computer. He’ll think I did it on purpose.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Maybe it will make the two of you sit down and talk about whatever your problem is and get it out of the way.’

  ‘We don’t have a problem,’ said Slater, defensively.

  ‘Oh, please. You could cut the atmosphere between you with a knife.’

  He didn’t think it was quite that bad, but it was true there was still a bit of an atmosphere between them. They certainly weren’t best mates.

  ‘You don’t mind ruffling feathers, do you?’ he said, warily.

  ‘In my experience,’ she said, ‘trying to establish yourself and get things done without ruffling feathers is a waste of time. It’s like I said to you before – you can’t be the boss and be one of the lads. It doesn’t work that way so there’s no point in trying. And just so you know, I don’t go out of my way to make enemies, but I’m also not here to make friends. I’m here to get a job done, and believe me, I know how to do that.’

  Slater didn’t doubt her for one second. He also couldn’t be sure exactly where he stood with her. Was that warning for him specifically, or was it a general warning that he should spread around? Or was she just making conversation? He really didn’t have a clue.

  They drove on in silence and he recalled Norman telling him how he thought there would be a new broom sweeping through Tinton before long. He glanced quickly at Goodnews. Was she it? Had the new broom arrived? Quite honestly, he couldn’t decide if DI Marion Goodnews was the broom, or if she was just riding it, and he smirked to himself at the thought.

  Then a wave of guilt swept through him. When he thought about it, she had actually been very good to him so far. After all, he had called her a plonker before they had even been introduced, and then he’d got all arsey over nothing. And what had she done? Did she tear him off a strip like most DIs would have done? No. On the contrary – she had kept her temper, given him some breathing space, and let him start again. He knew he really had nothing to complain about.