by Iain Cameron
‘Continue pushing this one, people,’ Henderson said as he gathered his papers together. ‘I’m convinced Cindy is still alive but we’re running out of time. I’ll see you all again at this evening’s update meeting. Six-thirty, sharp.’
Henderson walked back to his office, a sense of foreboding at the back of his mind. There had to be something more they could do to give them a clue as to why someone would kidnap Cindy Longhurst: a successful photographer with no apparent enemies. He knew from previous experience of kidnaps, the longer this went on, the less chance they had of finding her alive. When the kidnappers had got what they wanted, be it sex, money, information, they would most likely kill her. He put the time period at a couple of days not weeks.
‘Ah, there you are, Angus,’ Detective Chief Inspector Lisa Edwards said as she came striding towards him. ‘It’s early and yet you look harassed. Where have you been, a team meeting about the Longhurst case?’
‘Got it in one.’ He walked into his office and threw the folder he carried on the small conference meeting table and sat down. Edwards took the seat opposite.
CI Edwards was a tall, stocky blonde from West Yorkshire. While blondes were reputed to open their mouths before connecting with their brains, women from her part of the world had a reputation for talking straight, if not on occasion downright blunt. The hair today was tied back in a ponytail. This not only emphasised the tiredness and lines around her eyes, the result of manpower shortages, a burgeoning overtime bill and a crap time over the Christmas break when her husband walked out and failed to return.
‘What’s the latest?’ she asked.
‘I’d love to tell you why I think she’s been taken, never mind by who, or where, but I can’t even do that.’
‘No dodgy deals with back-street financiers, jealous ex-husbands or angry disputes with neighbours?’
Henderson shook his head. ‘She’s no wall flower, building a successful photographic studio after her divorce and still finding time to protest about a host of big issues. Having examined her finances and the people she associated with, only one sticks out. He’s an ex-boyfriend who bombarded her with texts.’
Okay, and what about this Ted Mathieson character? In my time I’ve known a lot of dodgy guys in the haulage business.’
‘It was Mathieson who lent Cindy some of the money to finance the building of the studio. She wasn’t in arrears with the payments.’
‘Maybe he needed to get his investment back pronto and she refused, or couldn’t come up with the cash.’
‘According to Cindy’s assistant, Annie Heath, they were the best of friends. He’d come over and see her every month or so and take her out to lunch.’
‘A true gentleman. There’s not many of them about,’ Edwards said, a dark look passing across her face. ‘Maybe he wanted something more than a business relationship and she didn’t.’
Henderson smiled. ‘If he did kidnap her, it’s a hell of a queer way to try and impress a woman.’
‘Aye you’re right, it’s a bit too caveman for me too. Talk to Mathieson, find out what he’s got to say about her disappearance.’
‘I intend to.’
‘Where do we go from here? Her picture’s everywhere, if anyone spots her they know we’re looking for her. Hospitals, what about them?’
‘Harry’s group ran a check on those in Sussex, Surrey and Kent. No sign.’
‘Okay. What’s next?’
‘We’ll continue to plug away with wall posters and newspaper updates. On the research side, we’re all set to trawl through her customers. We’ll also be talking to her ex-husband, ex-boyfriend and of course, Ted Mathieson.’
Edwards stood to go. ‘It sounds like you’ve covered all the bases. Just as well as I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I investigated a similar case in Leeds three years back involving a woman in her early forties. The killer kept her in captivity for five days, raped her time after time and beat her up almost as often. When he’d finished with her, he dumped her lifeless body in a quarry.’
‘You caught him?’
‘Oh, yes. A neighbour, three doors down. Let’s hope here,’ she said with a sigh, ‘we don’t see the same result. See you later.’
SEVEN
‘What goes on in this place?’ Walters asked as she closed the car door.
‘The manufacture of engineering products for industry, their website says, but don’t ask me to explain what it means.’
They had driven into an industrial estate in Jubilee Way, Burgess Hill, and were now standing outside a long, grey building with the name Harris Manufacturing Ltd in bold blue letters above their heads. Along the walls of the building sat broken pallets and metal cages containing all manner of rusted junk.
‘Do you think I’m going to need overalls and a hair net?’
‘Cindy’s ex is an accountant, not an engineer.’
They walked inside and Henderson realised Walters’s earlier question about clothing didn’t sound so fanciful. The Reception area looked grubby, as if the folks out in the manufacturing floor, which could be seen through a large and scratched Perspex window, came traipsing through here regularly. Out there, he could see a huge machine and inside it, a tool spinning at fantastic speed, sheering millimetres off the surface of a static piece of metal.
‘Detectives Walters and Henderson to see Greg Jackson,’ the DI said to the receptionist when the phone was no longer clamped to her ear.
‘I’m not sure he’s free. Our Managing Director, Mr Richardson, is trying to expedite an urgent order.’
‘I don’t care how busy he is,’ Henderson said, ‘I want to see him now.’
‘I don’t think–’
‘Listen, Ms Fenwick,’ Henderson said, following a glance at her name tag. ‘If you don’t call him now, we’ll head upstairs ourselves and take him back with us to Lewes. With luck we might return him in about three hours.’
‘There’s no need to take that tone with me. I’m only doing my job,’ she said, her exaggerated body language conveying more than her words. She picked up the phone, ‘I’ll see if he’s available.’
A few minutes later they were seated inside a small meeting room. The walls were coffee-coloured, the table and seats looking as though they’d been rescued from a second-hand furniture shop and the room exuding all the charm of an undertaker’s waiting room.
‘What a dump this place is,’ Walters said, taking a seat with some reluctance. ‘If they’re making any money, they sure aren’t spending it on the meeting rooms.’
‘They’re making money all right but I think the MD and senior managers are creaming off most of it. Did you see the cars around the side of the building?’
‘I thought they belonged to the company next door.’
‘No, they’re parked in spaces reserved for this place.’
‘The big Merc and a couple of BMWs?’
‘They could be leased, of course, but the website listed all the big airlines they dealt with and talked of a full order book.’
‘I take it back then.’
The door opened and a man walked in wearing the harassed face of someone who’d got out of bed on the wrong side or wished he’d stayed there.
‘Hello. I’m Greg Jackson,’ he said holding out his hand for the officers to shake.
‘Detective Inspector Henderson and this is Detective Sergeant Walters, Surrey and Sussex Police, Major Crime Team.’
‘You said on the phone this has something to do with my ex-wife, but for the last few years I’ve had nothing to do with her. She not my responsibility any more. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my department. My boss is going ape-shit and some of my colleagues are in tears.’
‘Mr Jackson, close the door and come and sit down. This will take as long as we need. We are here on an important matter which takes preference over any issues your boss may have.’
‘Try telling that to Rich
ardson,’ he said as he closed the door.
‘I will if he dares to interrupt.’
Jackson was of average height, with light brown thinning hair, and wore a tired grey suit that had seen better days. He spoke in a West Country accent with the added texture of a pronounced nasal tone, indicative perhaps of a sinus complaint. In Henderson’s experience on meeting one side of a divorced couple, it was often the woman who didn’t look to be wearing well, but based on the many pictures he’d viewed of Cindy, the roles here were reversed.
‘Mr Jackson, I’m sure you’re aware that your former wife, Cindy, has recently gone missing, believed kidnapped?’
‘How could I not be? My daughter was dumped on my doorstep by one of your lot and the story’s been all over the front pages and television for days. On social media people are taking about nothing else, some suggesting I must be hiding her in my basement or some other rubbish.’
‘Are you?’
‘What, keeping her in my basement? You’re having a laugh. I live in a crappy new-build in Burgess Hill with such a small garden the trees next door block out the sun. So, no, I don’t have a basement.’
‘Garden shed, maybe?’
‘Nowhere. I was glad to get shot of her if you must know.’
‘Surely not, sir,’ Walters said, a mischievous tone in her voice, ‘when she received such a large amount of money in her grandmother’s will?’
‘You know about that?’
She nodded.
He sighed, perhaps loath to re-visit painful memories. ‘We’ve been divorced for seven years and about a year after it happened, her grandmother died and left her a shed-load of money. I told her that me and Jamie deserved half. For sure, we’d split the finances at the break-up, but I visited the old woman as much as she did.’
‘How did she respond?’
‘She said she was putting some of the money in trust for Jamie when he reached twenty-one but she told me to get lost. As far as she was concerned, we settled all the financials during the divorce.’
‘You didn’t agree.’
‘Too right I didn’t bloody agree. I even took legal advice. As I said, I liked the old woman and went to see her as much as Cindy did.’
‘What did you think when she invested the money in a big house in Hurstpierpoint and a new studio?’ Henderson asked.
‘I felt well pissed when I first heard, but despite not giving us a bean she’s a great photographer. I didn’t doubt she’d make a success of it.’
‘Do you think she has?’
There was a loud rapping on the glass and Henderson turned to see a man in a tailored suit, perfectly cut to fit his portly frame, tapping an expensive-looking watch and walking away.
‘That’s Richardson telling me to hurry up.’
‘We won’t keep you much longer, sir.’
‘I hope not or it’ll make him even madder than he is now.’
‘We were talking about Cindy’s studio,’ Henderson said.
‘Yes, I think she’s made a success of it. The place is always busy and it’s the go-to studio for video makers who use the fields outside to film adverts for butter and yogurt and all that crap.’
‘How are the children taking the news?’ Walters asked.
He sighed. ‘It’s hit Molly really hard. Not only is her mother missing, she’s not in her own house with her own things. Jamie, who’s seventeen, didn’t take our divorce well. Maybe that’s how all teenage boys behave, I don’t know. He hated my wife for splitting us up but I didn’t turn his head. Let’s just say he’s less upset about the current situation than his sister, and secretly pleased to have Molly around.’
‘Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kidnap your ex-wife?’ Henderson asked.
‘To shut her up, she never stops talking. Now that I think about it, that could be counter-productive as she’d never stop haranguing the kidnappers over the injustice of it all.’
‘Was she in debt to anyone, did she do drugs?’
‘She’s got no debt that I know about and didn’t drink. She didn’t agree with drugs.’
‘Is there anything in her past you think might come back to haunt her?’
‘No, I don’t think so…but wait. About four years ago, she was involved in a bad car accident. She knocked a guy off his bike, crushing his legs and leaving him in a wheelchair.’
‘Sounds serious. Was she hurt?’
‘No, she wasn’t hurt and the accident wasn’t her fault. It was a filthy wet night in Brighton and she was driving along the Old Shoreham Road.’
He looked up, distracted at something going on in the outer office. With an annoyed scowl and a flick of the wrist he indicated to whoever was outside, clearly not his boss, to go away.
‘She hadn’t been drinking,’ Jackson continued, ‘and driving at less than the speed limit when a cyclist came out of nowhere. He was coming down Park View Road, no lights and it didn’t seem like he was braking. He skidded under the front wheels of the car crushing his legs. She hadn’t been drinking like I say, but the cyclist tested positive for cannabis. The police didn’t charge her.’
Henderson couldn’t recall hearing anything about this in their discussions about background checks. Perhaps with no charges being brought, no details were documented. He would ask someone to look into it.
‘It’s an interesting story,’ Henderson said, ‘but I would imagine it would be difficult for a bloke in a wheelchair to kidnap anyone.’
‘I’m not so much talking about him, but his family. His dad, Tony Mitchell, is a builder and his other two sons are built like brick shit-houses. They were very bitter when they heard the police verdict, telling the papers that no mistake, sometime in the future Cindy would get her just desserts.’
**
They left the meeting at Harris Manufacturing five minutes later. Greg Jackson showed them to the door, but on the way, he got collared by the MD who gave the hapless accountant a dressing down for keeping him waiting.
‘I wouldn’t want to work for a tyrant like him,’ Walters said as she climbed into the car.
‘Me neither. He just about tore the man’s head off.’
‘What did you make of–’
Henderson’s phone rang. After a brief conversation, he dropped the phone back into his pocket, reversed the car and shot out of the industrial estate while still clipping up his seatbelt.
‘What’s the big rush?’
‘Harry Wallop received a call a few minutes ago from a dog walker. Yesterday evening in Wild Park, from a bit of a distance away mark you, the caller said she saw a bloke lift a large bag from the boot of his car and drag it into the woods. It looked heavy but she thought no more about it until she picked up last night’s paper at breakfast and read an article about Cindy Longhurst’s disappearance.’
‘Christ, it took her until this morning to put two and two together? I thought her picture was all over the place.’
‘It is, but at least now it sounds like we’ve got a positive lead.’
‘Positive, yes if it points us to our missing woman, but negative as it means she’s dead.’
‘I know, but we need to confirm it one way or another.’
Morning traffic was light and they made the journey from Burgess Hill in less than twenty minutes. By the time they parked close to three police vehicles, the search was only just getting underway. At over 140-acres in size, it was the biggest park in Brighton. He hoped the search team had a specific area to focus their efforts on, otherwise it would take more than the twenty-odd officers Harry had deployed to find anything.
It looked to Henderson as if the woman holding the leash of a glossy Cocker Spaniel, now talking to DS Wallop, was their witness. She had obviously just remembered the place where she saw the man the previous evening, because Wallop lifted his radio and seconds later, the search team changed direction. They were now focussing their efforts on a narrow band of ground on the north side. He approached the pair.
‘Morni
ng sir.’
‘Morning Harry.’
‘This is Mrs Jenny Davis, the lady who saw someone unloading a heavy object last night.’
Henderson shook her hand, hoping it wasn’t the one used to pick up the dog’s poo, evidenced by the blue bag in her other hand.
‘Thank you for contacting us Mrs Davis.’
‘I wish I’d called you last night. I knew about the missing woman, but I didn’t make a connection with the car in the park until I read an article in The Argus this morning.’
‘Good job you did.’
‘I said to my husband, Eddie…’
Henderson was half-listening as he watched the activities of the searchers. In a wide line, they were now making their way slowly into thick woods.
‘…he said to me, Jenny, you need to pick up that phone and call the police. So, I did.’
‘Thank you for doing so. Harry, I’ll take a walk over there and join the search team.’
‘See you later, boss.’
Henderson walked towards the trees, Walters beside him.
‘You extricated yourself expertly there, gov, she’s the type who could buttonhole you for a couple of hours.’
‘If the mischief took hold, which it didn’t, I was about to suggest you could look after her and take her statement.’
‘Good job you didn’t.’
They parted the branches and dipped inside the cover of trees. It looked to be a dense wood from a distance, but they found they could walk easily between the trunks as they were spaced a few metres apart, and the thick composition of the canopy overhead left the undergrowth sparse and easy to negotiate. It took a few minutes to catch up with the search team as they were making rapid progress too.
‘I can’t see a guy dragging a heavy bundle much further than this, gov.’
‘I’m thinking the same thing.’ Henderson reached for his phone to call Wallop to tell him this didn’t look like the right area, when he heard a shout.
Many of the officers broke away from their regimented line to locate the voice, Henderson and Walters followed. A minute or so later, they found the search team gathered around what appeared to be a hollow about four metres across. Henderson pushed through the crowd of bodies to see what everyone was looking at.
