by Paul Gitsham
“It could also explain the short time between attacks — he doesn’t feel he has time to waste,” concurred Jordan.
Warren shuddered. If Cameron really was terminally ill with death beckoning, then what fear could the future hold for him beyond his own demise? With nothing to lose and nothing to fear, Cameron might be capable of anything.
Wednesday 28th December
Chapter 53
Despite the lack of progress in recent days, Warren felt optimistic as he greeted the team from the BBC’s Crimewatch programme the following morning. When a case such as this progressed to the manhunt stage, then leads from the general public became essential.
With a suspect clearly in the frame — and a phone call first thing from Forensics had confirmed Cameron’s culpability for the Saskia Walker murder as well as Gemma Allen — the programme would focus on finding Cameron by direct appeal, using images of the convicted rapist and his Land Rover as well as shots of the four kidnapping spots and dumping grounds.
Although Detective Superintendent Grayson would be appearing in the Cardiff studios live that night, much to Warren’s dismay he was expected to help narrate the crime scenes and do additional pieces to camera. How much of his discomfort would be evident on screen he would have to wait and see.
Filming was an impressively slick operation with several teams working simultaneously. Different members of Warren’s team escorted each camera crew to the different scenes as they gathered background footage. Warren was then ferried from scene to scene to deliver short pieces to camera. Considering that they had less than eight hours of daylight, the camera crew shot an impressive amount of film, uploading it directly to the BBC studios in Cardiff, ready for transmission later that night.
By the end of the day, Warren was surprised to find himself looking forward to seeing the finished product. Just one viable lead was all he wanted. Just one lead…
It was a sentiment echoed by the whole of the team as they gathered for their end-of-day briefing at six o’clock that evening.
* * *
Warren arrived home at six-thirty. The Crimewatch episode was due to air at nine with a fifteen-minute update on any progress after the ten o’clock news. Warren wanted a shower, something to eat and a quick snooze before settling down to watch the show. Specialist call takers would be manning the telephone hotline all night, passing on any information deemed useful to Warren’s team, so he planned on returning to the station at eleven to deal with anything that came in. A few members of the team were planning on watching the show live in the briefing room, but Warren decided that he’d rather die of embarrassment in the privacy of his own home than in front of his colleagues.
Unlocking the front door, he was met by the smell of spices, and the glow of the kitchen light.
“Surprise!”
Susan greeted him at the threshold with a big hug and a kiss.
“I caught the train down this afternoon — I figured if you didn’t arrive back home by the time the turkey curry was ready I’d put it in a tub and drive over to the station.”
Holding her tightly, Warren was lost for words. Immediately, the strain of the last thirty-six hours melted away; he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed his wife.
Her mother had been a bit disappointed that Susan would rather spend time in an empty house whilst Warren worked than stay with her parents, but her father and Granddad Jack had both encouraged her to go, knowing that Warren could do with her support. Once again, Warren was reminded of how lucky he was.
The curry was almost ready, so Warren raced upstairs for a quick shower, all thoughts of a leisurely hot bath and a snooze vanquished. By the time he came back downstairs the aroma of spices filled the house and the table was set with fresh naan and poppadums. It would be a couple of hours before Warren was due back into the office so he enjoyed a small glass of red wine.
By the time the show was due to air, Warren was feeling relaxed and sleepy, curled up on the sofa with Susan. Nevertheless, the militaristic opening bars of the Crimewatch theme music roused him fully and the nerves came back.
The murders were given a generous portion of the show, almost half its running time. To Warren’s amusement, Grayson, resplendent in full dress uniform, appeared stiff and uncomfortable in the ninety seconds or so that he appeared on screen. Warren, on the other hand, appeared surprisingly relaxed during the several minutes he spent describing the four murder sites and dumping spots.
“You’re a natural,” Susan whispered to him after a short segment showing Warren describing how Carolyn Patterson had put up a fight against her attacker. The producers showed several high-quality photographs of Richard Cameron and pictures of a near-identical Land Rover to the one he owned. In a recent development, the firm that Bill Evans worked for had generously underwritten a reward for information leading to his daughter’s killer. If anyone was harbouring the man, then perhaps that might be the tipping point. Time would tell.
All in all, not too bad a performance, he decided. He suspected that John Grayson would be less satisfied. Warren couldn’t help a slight grin at that thought.
* * *
The BBC ten o’clock news had featured a short segment about the murders followed by several minutes on the local Look East bulletin. During that time Warren had fielded calls from Bernice and Dennis and Granddad Jack, all congratulating him on his appearance and wishing him good luck. As an aside, Granddad Jack had said that Nana Betty would have loved it and that he was certain she was watching it ‘from upstairs’. The short follow-up programme claimed that there had been several promising phone calls from the public and so Warren drove back to the station, his excitement overcoming his reluctance to leave Susan.
The first thing he noticed upon his arrival was that some wag had used gold tinsel from the Christmas tree to make a star around his office door nameplate. After enduring a bit of good-natured teasing about his performance, he entered the office to find that the jokers had gone one further and unscrewed a mirror from the bathroom, attached it to the wall and arranged fairy lights around it in a pastiche of a Hollywood dressing room.
“I’m glad you lot have kept yourselves busy,” he yelled through the door to the sound of cackling laughter.
The practical joke had lifted the spirits in the office somewhat and so Warren was reluctant to get down to work. Nevertheless they had a lot to do. The specialist call takers had received several phone calls about possible sightings of Cameron and the team attacked the list with gusto. Nevertheless, by midnight, the team had nothing new to go on. Most of the leads were unreliable — a polite euphemism for hoax and crank calls — or could be easily eliminated by further questioning about specific details.
However, the producer of the show had remained optimistic. In a phone call to Warren he’d admitted that the the nutters all called within the first half-hour of the show airing. More serious callers often second-guessed themselves and discussed it with partners before phoning the next day. The Crimewatch phone lines would remain open until the following midnight, whilst the charity Crimestoppers and the police’s normal incident line would be open twenty-four-seven.
Consequently, Warren left the office in the hands of the night shift at one a.m., leaving strict instructions to call him if anything significant came in.
Susan was asleep on the sofa when he got in, shaking the light dusting of snow off his coat. She knew without asking that they had no new leads and so led him to bed without a word.
Thursday 29th December
Chapter 54
The following day started promisingly with two suspected sightings. One in a guest house in Leeds, another in a Travelodge near Bristol airport. Unfortunately, it took only a few hours for both leads to be dismissed by local officers. The first turned out to be a retired architect staying at the guest house since the daughter he was visiting for Christmas had no spare room. Officers reported that he bore a superficial similarity to Cameron but was clearly not him.
The se
cond suspect was even less likely; a look at the hotel records revealed that the long-since-departed guest had checked in with his wife and two small children after a long-haul flight from Florida. An attached copy of the suspect’s passport photograph had dismissed him completely.
As the day wore on, numerous calls claimed sightings of the young women shortly before their disappearances, firming up the police’s reconstruction of events those nights. For Saskia Walker in particular, this helped narrow down the window during which she was snatched to only a couple of hours.
It was late afternoon when it was reported that Richard Cameron’s Land Rover had been located.
“Two old boys on an early morning fishing trip spotted it partially covered in a clearing about a week ago as they hiked down to the river. They noticed it had no plates and thought it a bit dodgy but after a few hours standing in icy water up to their bollocks forgot all about it.”
Tony Sutton was reading from his scribbled notes.
“One of them saw the report in the newspaper and drove back out there this morning to find it was still there. Someone from Motor Vehicles has been out there and confirmed the vehicle’s identity off the VIN plate. They’re processing the scene now before taking it back to the garage for Forensics to look at.”
The day’s dead ends had made Warren twitchy and impatient and he needed to stretch his legs.
“Fancy a day out in the country, Tony?”
“I’ll fetch the picnic blanket from the car.”
* * *
A mass of black thundercloud was making it even darker than normal for this time of day and by the time Warren and Tony Sutton arrived at the small clearing in the trees they both had their Maglites out.
Even without licence plates, the Land Rover was clearly the one that the officers had seen parked up outside Cameron’s house. A line of police tape marked a ‘No Go’ zone around the off-roader and a police photographer was just finishing taking pictures of the foliage around the vehicle’s wheels.
Warren could make out the form of an older man with a beard sitting in a police-issue Range Rover, dressed in a thick, dark green windcheater and wearing a cloth cap, sipping a plastic cup of coffee. Jonathon Fitzgerald, the man who’d called the vehicle in.
Warren and Sutton clambered into the Range Rover and thanked the man for his time. It was pretty much what Sutton had already stated. Mr Fitzgerald and his brother-in-law, both retired carpenters, had gone out for a spot of quiet fishing on the Friday before Christmas.
“I’ve always said I’d rather spend four hours standing in three feet of icy water and catch nothing than spend four hours queuing in bloody Marks and Spencer to catch a half-price jumper.” He grinned, showing tar-stained teeth. “The missus says I’m a miserable bugger when I’m shopping anyway so she let me go fishing with Derek, her brother.”
Warren smiled in sympathy and urged him to go on.
“Well, we parked up at that layby about a mile down the road and walked up here through the edge of the woods. There’s a slope down to the river bank there. We’ve been a half-dozen times over the past couple of years. Anyhow, as we cut deeper into the woods to get to the slope, I spotted the Land Rover parked up. I was a bit miffed at first. There isn’t much space on the bank and we’d just hauled our kit a mile for nothing. Plus, you ain’t supposed to drive into the woods — it damages the ground. But I figured, one rule for us, one rule for them. When I got closer I noticed he didn’t have any licence plates, which I thought was a bit weird.” He looked a little embarrassed.
“I’m sorry to say, but by the time we’d finished and gone to the pub to get something warm down us, both of us had forgotten all about it.”
Warren dismissed his concerns with a wave of his hand.
“Did the Land Rover look as if it had been recently abandoned?”
The man looked thoughtful. “Truth be told, it looked as if it had been there a few days. It was pretty dirty and covered in pine needles. I couldn’t put a date on it, but I reckon it had been there some time.”
“When was the last time you and your brother-in-law came through here?”
“Months ago. It definitely wasn’t here then.”
After a few more routine questions, the two men thanked Fitzgerald again and stepped back out of the car. A light drizzle had started.
The crime scene manager — not Andy Harrison for once, noted Warren with surprise — strode over to them.
“We’re almost ready to lift it onto the truck. Do you want a quick look at the scene, first?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” said Warren, although he had a sinking feeling in his stomach. If the vehicle had been abandoned as long as the witness claimed, then it was unlikely to be much use in tracking Cameron’s current whereabouts.
“How long do you reckon it’s been here?” asked Sutton, the expression on his face clearly showing his feelings mirrored Warren’s.
The CSM bent down to point at the vehicle’s wheels, which had sunk slightly into the mud.
“Its tracks have been entirely obscured by rainfall and weather, but it has sunk into the soil significantly, so we can make a few estimates based on that.” He pointed to the piles of dead pine needles and other leaf-litter that covered the surface of the vehicle.
“There is plenty of detritus here. Based on what that gentleman said the car was already looking pretty covered when he saw it last week. It’s purely speculation, of course, but I’m thinking at least ten days. If it was spring-time we’d be able to measure plant growth around the wheels et cetera, but there’s not much happening this time of year. Certainly not enough to give you an estimate with a precision in days or weeks, which I guess you guys want.”
Warren sighed and thanked the CSM. The tow truck had now arrived and the car would soon be on its way down to Welwyn. The forensic team would stay for a while longer, looking over the newly exposed ground under the vehicle and performing a fingertip search for anything of interest, but there was nothing for Warren and Sutton to do here.
Walking back to the road, Warren mused aloud.
“If he was going to dump the vehicle, he must have had a way of getting back to civilisation.”
“Either he had somebody give him a lift, he hitch-hiked or he walked,” stated Sutton.
“If somebody gave him a lift, then that implies somebody working in partnership with him. What about his son? He’s already admitted to covering for his old man’s absences — could he have got a call one night asking to be picked up in the middle of nowhere?” Warren chewed his lip thoughtfully.
“It depends on when the car was abandoned,” Sutton agreed. “That old boy claimed to have seen the car Friday. Assuming that he didn’t come and fetch it again, that pre-dates Saskia Walker. If he was correct about it already being covered in leaf-litter and the CSIs are correct in their guesstimates, then that suggests it was abandoned before Monday; Gemma Allen was taken on the previous Saturday.”
“The same day Michael Stockley claimed his old man disappeared.”
“So was this how he planned it? Or was he responding to events?”
By now the two men had reached their car and Warren started up the hot-air blowers.
“It could be that he was just responding to events. How’s this for a scenario? Cameron snatches Gemma Allen. As we know, it wasn’t clean. Maybe there was some blood. More worrying though, for him, the condom splits when he rapes her. He realises that the game is up as when we find her body we’ll surely do a DNA test and link him to the attack. So he decides to do a runner. He hides the Land Rover up here — he knows that it’s a liability now as we’ll be trying to trace it. He has money and so he decides it’s time to go on the run.”
“The idea’s got merit,” conceded Sutton, “but there are still a few holes. If he was going to abandon the Land Rover, why bother hiding it so well? He couldn’t have predicted that those two daft old coots would come down here in sub-zero temperatures to avoid the Christmas shopping. He went to a lot of
trouble — he definitely didn’t want it found.”
“Maybe it has Gemma Allen’s blood in the back. Anyone who watches TV knows we only need a pinprick’s worth these days. Her face was pretty messed up — she must have bled a fair bit.”
“I could buy that if he thought he could still get away with it, but didn’t we already decide that he knew the game was up anyway after the condom split? In fact, if he was worried about ensuring there was no link between Gemma Allen and him, his best bet would have been to have disposed of her body fully and the Land Rover.”
“Well, so far he’s shown no interest in disposing of the bodies. He just leaves them in remote enough places that he gets a few days’ head start. Realistically, how long could he have expected Gemma Allen to have been undiscovered? A week or so? He dumped her on the border of two working farms, in the middle of a public right of way. By the very latest you’d have expected some ramblers to stumble across her body as they burned the calories off on Boxing Day.”
Warren shook his head. “I don’t think he was prepared to dispose of her body. How would he do it anyway? This isn’t Hollywood. No matter where he dumped her, she would be discovered eventually. And the ground’s rock hard. He’d have half killed himself trying to dig a decent grave with a shovel somewhere and even then he probably knows that we can spot newly turned earth this time of year using thermal imaging cameras on helicopters.”
Sutton shrugged, unsure about that idea. “So you think he decided to go on the run when the Gemma Allen killing went wrong? I suppose if he is being reactive rather than proactive, then our chances of catching him are better.”
Warren sighed. “Maybe, but I can’t help feel that he just activated a previously worked-out Plan B. His son said that he cleared out their joint account — when did he do that?”
Sutton flicked through his notebook. “The day before. He did it over the counter in branch.”
