by Nick Louth
‘Give me the name, I’ll bring you the man.’
The smile she gave him was unusually warm. The man she could rely upon.
‘Craig, I’m giving them two hours, then I turn it over to you, okay? In the meantime, I’ve got something that you can get Carl Hoskins to work on. I’ll email you a picture of Rollason as he is now, and the bus routes he supposedly used. See if you can find him on CCTV.’
* * *
Gillard found himself almost running down the stairs to get back to the CID block. He found Carl Hoskins, sitting alone in the incident room eating a croissant and watching on his screen what looked like semi-naked women grappling with each other. He quickly flicked channels at the DCI’s approach.
‘Watching porn at work, Carl?’
‘No, sir. I was doing my expenses.’
‘What was on the screen?’
‘Wrestling, I think.’ He looked up as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
‘Women wrestling?’
‘Not sure. Err… I think they may have some women,’ he said.
Gillard seized the mouse and clicked on the search history, which clearly showed the oeuvre of Hoskins’ artistic interest. ‘I see it was “Battling babes in baby oil”.’
Hoskins looked up quizzically. ‘I don’t know what it was called.’
‘All right, I’ve got something a bit more important for you to do.’ Gillard logged on to the local crime database and copied across two documents to Hoskins’ desktop. First he showed the detective constable a bus map that ran from the Buckinghamshire village of Grendon Underwood via Aylesbury, High Wycombe and Heathrow to Staines in Surrey. Then he opened a mugshot of an older white-haired man wearing red-framed spectacles. ‘This man disappeared from Wexford Road, Staines, some time this morning. He would probably have arrived there on foot around ten thirty a.m., having caught a series of buses this morning on this route. Did he catch the buses or not? Get me an answer ASAP.’
‘Who is he, sir?’
‘Call him Fred Bloggs for now.’
‘Righto. Are uniforms doing a local search on Wexford Road?’
‘Not as yet, we’d rather proceed covertly to begin with. And Carl?’
‘Sir?’
‘If I find you watching stuff like that again at work, I’ll send you to the headmistress for six of the best.’ He pointed a warning finger at the detective constable.
‘Yes sir.’ Hoskins was smiling.
Gillard realised why. Hoskins would probably enjoy it.
* * *
The answer came within half an hour. Carl Hoskins shouted across the incident room to him. ‘Sir, the bloke you are looking for never got on the bus.’
Gillard made his way across to Hoskins’ desk. ‘The service from Grendon is only once every three hours. I’ve looked at the onboard CCTV for the 07:45 and the 10:45 and he wasn’t there.’
‘That’s a very quick answer,’ Gillard said suspiciously.
‘I was quite surprised myself. The bus company uploads its CCTV in real time to the cloud, and they were able to give me a password. Works like a dream.’
‘George Orwell would be turning in his grave.’
‘What, sir?’
‘Never mind.’
‘I take it our Mr Bloggs was a discharged prisoner from either HMP Grendon or HMP Spring Hill?’
Gillard tried to iron the surprise out of his face at this uncharacteristic intuitive leap. ‘What makes you say that, Carl?’
‘Stands to reason, sir. The prisons are the only things of any significance in the village. No one but a discharged prisoner or a car-less pensioner would be forced to take such a slow and obscure journey by rural bus.’
Gillard nodded. ‘That’s pretty good deductive reasoning.’
‘So is this bloke Neville Rollason, then?’
Now the DCI was truly alarmed. ‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘He’s just an annoying fraudster.’
‘Whose name you don’t want me to have. Okay. It’s just that Rollason got released today with a new identity. And this bloke looks a bit like him.’ Hoskins looked up at his boss. ‘So I’m wrong then, am I?’
‘You’ve certainly turned speculation into a fine art,’ Gillard said, and walked away, aware that he hadn’t answered the question. He strode into his office, shut the door and rang DI Morgan.
‘Rigby has asked me to give you a hand, looking for our missing person,’ he said.
Morgan sighed heavily. ‘I’m sure he’s just playing silly buggers.’
‘Let’s hope so, but I think we had better assume the worst for the time being. From what I’ve heard, the probation officer thought that Rollason had been to his new house. Is that correct?’
‘Yes. She found a coffee stirrer that was still wet, and some dregs in the sink.’
‘Hmm. Is she sure it wasn’t the landlord?’
‘No, she can’t be.’
‘Did she check to see whether there was any luggage? Did she go upstairs? Has someone been there to check?’
If there is a sound to scratching your head, DI Morgan was making it. ‘The answer to all those questions is no, I imagine.’
‘If it was him, he didn’t get there by bus. The onboard CCTV proves it.’
This was news to Morgan. ‘So you’re saying somebody else gave him a lift?’
‘I’m not saying anything. I just don’t think we know enough about his movements once he’d left Spring Hill. However, in the meantime I would strongly suggest you check the Wexford Road house in person to see if he has been there.’
* * *
By four p.m. Rigby had given Gillard permission to reveal to a small special operations group that the person they were looking for was indeed Neville Rollason. The group included DCs Rainy Macintosh and Carl Hoskins, plus the one man who already knew, Special Branch’s Graham Morgan. The group was to report directly to the chief constable and to maintain absolute secrecy about its work, even with family members.
The secret inquiry got off to a slow and discouraging start.
Morgan reported that he had visited the house on Wexford Road. ‘There was no sign of any luggage. The probation officer seems to have rinsed away the dregs and thrown away the coffee stirrer.’
‘Well, that buggers up the chance of any forensics,’ Hoskins muttered.
‘There is something else,’ Morgan said. ‘The back door of the house wasn’t locked. It seems to have been forced at some stage.’
‘Was that known?’ Gillard asked. ‘Did you speak to the landlord?’
‘I left a message for him, but he hasn’t got back to me yet,’ Morgan said. ‘The letting agent didn’t know anything.’
‘Maybe the vigilantes have got him,’ Rainy said.
Morgan shook his head sceptically. ‘I think it’s more likely that Rollason forgot the keys he was given, didn’t realise until he arrived, and just broke in.’
‘He had no known burglary skills,’ Gillard said.
‘Yes, and it shows exactly that,’ Morgan replied. ‘The door was forced.’
‘But having broken in he didn’t hang around,’ Rainy said. ‘Was there anything in there to steal? I dinnae think so.’
‘Well, we know less than nothing, it seems,’ Gillard said. ‘We don’t know how he left Spring Hill except that it wasn’t by bus, we don’t know for certain if it was him that broke into the house, and we don’t know where he is now. There’s not much CCTV in the Wexford Road area, and the nearest ANPR camera is miles away.’
‘But he was given a phone, wasn’t he?’ Rainy asked. ‘We should trace it.’
‘It seems to be switched off. We all took turns trying it,’ Morgan said.
‘So seeing as this is getting increasingly urgent, we might have to go public and blow his cover,’ Gillard said.
Morgan shook his head emphatically. ‘No, no, definitely not. He wouldn’t have wasted this opportunity. He’s not stupid.’
Gillard shrugged. ‘It’ll be Rigby’s decision, and I have a feel
ing which way it will go.’ Rainy threw her pen down in disgust. ‘I cannae believe what’s happened. How can the probation service have lost their most important client on the same day he left prison?’
‘You’ve got to be fair,’ Morgan said. ‘Each probation officer has dozens of offenders they are responsible for. The Parole Board has taken the view for each offender that they are not a risk to the public, otherwise they would not release them. They are bound to be wrong on some occasions. There’s only so much the probation service can do.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if Rollason had killed your child, sir,’ Hoskins said.
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ Morgan said. ‘But would you prefer it if national offender management policy was based on emotion?’
Hoskins’ shrug indicated that he wouldn’t mind if it was. ‘One thing you can be certain of, sir, is that if he is not found quickly there will be plenty of blame to go around.’
‘Aye, you’re not wrong there,’ Rainy said. ‘A right shitstorm it’ll be.’
‘That’s why we have to find him straight away,’ Gillard said. ‘And get some dabs checked for that door, and inside the house.’
* * *
The probation team’s emergency meeting was called for five p.m. sharp. Jill Allsop was already there when Leticia arrived and DI Graham Morgan walked in shortly afterwards. Jill called them all into her office and closed the door.
‘Where’s Verity?’ Jill asked, rolling her eyes.
‘She’s just coming,’ Leticia said. It hadn’t escaped her notice that her boss had spent a considerable time in the ladies’. That was puzzling. If she was pregnant she should be sick in the mornings, not the afternoons. Maybe it was the eating disorder.
Once Verity arrived, the four of them huddled round Jill’s desk. ‘Okay,’ she said, setting out a tape recorder. ‘This meeting is going to go by the book, as if the barristers were already cross-examining us about what happened. The client will be referred to by his assumed name only, is that clear? Leticia, let’s start with you.’
Leticia recounted in detail the journey that morning, Neil Wright’s no-show and the evidence of someone having been there.
‘Graham, do you have anything to add?’
‘Yes. Surrey police have already managed to obtain footage from CCTV, which shows that Wright did not board the bus from outside the prison. The landlord said he hadn’t visited himself, and wasn’t aware of a break-in, but we can’t be certain the offender had anything to do with it. He may never have reached the house.’
‘Someone must have given him a lift,’ Jill said. ‘He must have some friends still on the outside.’
‘Not many, I would have thought, given the crimes he committed,’ Verity said.
‘Well, someone obviously likes him enough to save him a long bus trip,’ Jill said.
Morgan nodded. ‘A taxi would have soaked up most of his discharge grant and would probably have driven right up the lane to the prison. It would be on the CCTV.’
Verity turned to Morgan. ‘Presumably you can trace cars that come along the road outside on those number plate cameras?’
He smiled. ‘You mean automatic number plate recognition? No, the nearest ANPR camera is miles away. It’s the first thing Surrey police looked at.’
Jill Allsop asserted herself. ‘Look, our job isn’t particularly to find him, nor to drag him from place to place in handcuffs. The Parole Board decided to trust him. That was their decision, based on dozens of psychological and psychiatric assessments. Although we had input, the decision was theirs.’ She smiled. ‘If he doesn’t turn up voluntarily to planned probation meetings, or mandatory therapy, on time every time, he is in breach of his licence conditions and can be returned to jail. Simple as that.’
Everyone nodded, grateful for the context and logic that Jill’s leadership always brought. ‘Leticia,’ Jill continued. ‘When you last spoke to Neil Wright, did he seem content with the arrangements that had been made?’
‘Yes. Well pleased, as he damn well should have been considering what a great house has been provided for him.’
‘And in your view, did he seem to have come to terms with his crimes? Did he express any remorse?’
Leticia shrugged. ‘We mainly discussed practicalities. Personally, I thought the decision releasing him was wrong – or at least premature.’
Jill looked down at her documents. ‘There’s nothing here in your meeting report about that.’
‘Well, what would be the point? He just gave me the creeps. While we were sitting there in the interview room, he was looking around and even eyed up one of the younger male prison officers. He made some inappropriate comment…’
‘What kind of comment?’
‘Something about “downy little moustaches and long eyelashes”. It wasn’t so much his comment as the fact he felt the confidence to make it in front of me. I got the impression he couldn’t wait to get back to the fray.’
‘You felt he might reoffend?’
‘It was just a hunch. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to mark myself out as a dissident.’
Verity was now scrutinising Leticia very closely. ‘Why was that?’ she asked. ‘You’re paid for your judgement.’
Leticia sighed. ‘Look, I was given this assignment when all the big decisions had already been made. I don’t think anyone was interested in my opinion.’
‘So what is your opinion?’ Verity asked.
‘I think Neville Rollason—’
‘Neil Wright, please,’ Jill interrupted.
‘I think Neil Wright may have a new name, but he is not a new person and we must never forget that. I think he’s dangerous, in some ways even more so now than he was when he was first imprisoned. Then, he was the perfect embodiment of the Bogeyman. He looked the part. Now, at first glance he looks like a sweet elderly grandfather. But he’s only sixty-three, and I think he’s quite fit and sexually predatory. The man is evil.’
The others looked at each other.
‘I don’t think we need to be quite so tabloid about it, Leticia,’ Jill said. ‘But your comments are noted.’
Just then Leticia’s phone trilled. A text.
‘Ah, it’s from Wright’s phone. Thank God!’ Her face lit up.
There was a warm smile from Jill. ‘Hopefully, we will all have been worried about nothing.’
But as Leticia clicked to the message screen, her jaw dropped open. ‘Oh my God!’
‘What is it?’ Allsop asked.
Leticia showed her the phone.
This is AVENGE. We have Rollason and the bastard is going to pay.
Chapter Twenty-two
Gillard was just tidying up the files when he got a call from DI Morgan. ‘This is the news you didn’t want to hear,’ he said.
‘Rollason has committed another crime already?’ the detective said, leaning across the desk for his notebook.
‘Er no, not quite that bad. We’ve had a message from AVENGE saying they’ve captured him.’
‘The vigilante group? More than half the population would regard that as very good news.’
Morgan cleared his throat. ‘Stop playing silly buggers, Craig, this is serious.’
‘All right Graham, but is it true do you think, just a few hours after his release?’
‘It was texted from his phone to his probation officer, so yes.’
‘Are you sure it’s not Rollason having a laugh? After all, it would be the perfect excuse for him to disappear from all the licence conditions, wouldn’t it?’
There was a pause, as if the Special Branch detective hadn’t considered that possibility. ‘Leticia, his probation officer, tried to ring him back but the phone was already switched off again. Can you trace it for us?’
‘I should be able to.’ Gillard started making notes and then said: ‘If this is a phone that he was given on release, I presume you would have put a tracker app on it to make it easy to follow.’
‘No. His licence conditions preclude any
use of the Internet, and so we could only give him a dumb phone. We can only trace it the old way.’
‘Shame. That is going to cost us several hours. If AVENGE have even half a collective brain cell they will have sent the message from some obscure location and then chucked the phone away. Okay, leave it with me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
* * *
It was seven in the evening, and the CID office emptied out, by the time Gillard was able to turn his attention fully to the vigilante group. Before taking any claim seriously, it should be verified. Standard police procedure. Gillard looked up the AVENGE website, saw there was a contact form, and filled it out. He was not optimistic about getting a return message. As he scrolled around the poorly designed site the detective got a clear impression of amateurism. The grammar was poor and there were spelling mistakes all over the place. It was certainly not as slick as that of Dark Justice, a group that used online entrapment to find paedophiles and then turn them over to the police. AVENGE seemed to be long on retribution but less focused on which areas it should be applied to. No spokesperson was quoted, but the threat of punishment was made again and again. Undoubtedly, it was operating on the wrong side of the law.
Looking around for bodies, he saw that the research intelligence officer’s desk was unstaffed. Shame. He rang Rob Townsend at home. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Rob, but I need a breakthrough tonight.’
He asked the research intelligence officer to use his technical brain to see if he could find any contact details or addresses hidden within the AVENGE site. Gillard then made a few calls to contacts in the Met, West Mercia police and to the National Crime Agency. He was looking for an insight into the vigilante organisation, to see if it had ever been penetrated by undercover officers and to ask what would be the best way to pin it down.
It was eight by the time he made some progress, a call back from Detective Chief Superintendent Nick D’Angelo of West Mercia. ‘It’s a very amorphous organisation, no obvious leader. We’ve got some passive monitoring of some of the Facebook groups they are connected with, which gives a hint of what they’re up to. I did get a male officer into a meeting in Northampton a few times. However, my impression is that the actual cloak and dagger stuff is done informally by a few individuals acting on their own. The videos on their website are generally of the same three or four blokes, from up here in Birmingham to go by the accents.’
