by Paul Gitsham
The sharp rap on Warren’s door was a welcome distraction. At his bidding, DC Gary Hastings entered, the light in his eyes and his visible excitement making Warren’s pulse speed up.
“Sir, we’ve found a connection between Sally Evans and Carolyn Patterson.”
* * *
The area around Gary Hastings’ workstation was crowded with most of the team members working the murders.
“I was reviewing the CCTV from the sports centre on the night that Carolyn Patterson was abducted,” Hastings was explaining, “trying to identify people coming and going at about the same time she did. At around the time Carolyn Patterson’s boxercise class entered the bar a group of lads in their twenties and thirties also entered.”
With a click of the mouse, he zoomed in on a picture showing three men with kit bags and wet hair walking through the door. Two of the men were wearing matching tops, although the logo over the left breast was too small and the still image from the video too blurry for Warren to make out the details.
“Meet Middlesbury Sports and Leisure Centre’s over twenty-one men’s football team, currently sitting third in the local amateur league. They train on Mondays and Thursdays and finish at the same time as Carolyn Patterson’s boxercise class. Their star centre forward, absent the last couple of weeks for obvious reasons — one Darren Blackheath.”
“Nice work, Gary. Do we know if the two groups socialised at all in the bar?” asked Sutton, patting the young DC on the shoulder.
Hastings nodded and it was clear that there was more.
“I spoke to one of the bar staff, who helped me identify them and he said that a couple of the girls in the boxercise class actually did the class out of convenience, because their husbands or partners were playing football at the same time. The night that Carolyn Patterson disappeared there was more mingling than usual between the two groups — the girls from boxercise were having an early Christmas drink because their class was finishing. Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember if Carolyn Patterson spoke to the footballers or stayed with her friends.”
“What else have you got, Gary?” Warren could feel the young detective was bursting to share even more.
“The team have a website — just somewhere to share their match reports and fixture lists, post pictures and include links to news articles. That’s where I found Darren Blackheath’s name. The website also has an archive — guess whose name I stumbled across in match reports about two years prior to this season?”
“Alex Chalmers,” breathed Warren, already one step ahead.
“Bingo. They also have a Facebook page — completely open. Both Blackheath and Chalmers are ‘friends’ of the page. The club’s ‘wall’ is quite busy with members posting lots of news and gossip. It seems that Alex Chalmers was a regular player, a useful right back apparently, until about two years ago when he broke his leg. From what I can piece together he couldn’t work or play football for several months, by which time, by his own admission, ‘the beer and fags’ had got him. He hasn’t played since.”
“So he and Darren Blackheath knew each other back then — the question is, are they still in touch now?” mused Warren.
“The answer to that is ‘yes’. Chalmers is still an active member of their Facebook page and, judging by his posts, regularly watches them play and goes out drinking with them.”
Chapter 60
Gary Hastings’ discovery was more than enough excuse to open Warren’s birthday cakes, he decided, and the whole team sat in the main briefing room sipping coffee and brainstorming.
“The question is, how significant is this link and how are these two related to Richard Cameron?”
The question was an open one and causing much speculation.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that Richard Cameron isn’t the team’s latest signing, so how is he a part of all of this?”
“And what about Gemma Allen and Saskia Walker? Do we know if either of these two women used the leisure centre or had any link to Blackheath or Chalmers or Richard Cameron for that matter?” asked Tony Sutton.
“We know that Saskia Walker was a keen jogger. We should check out the membership records — see if she used the gym or took any classes,” suggested Warren.
Gary Hastings, acting as unofficial note-taker, jotted the suggestion down.
“What about Gemma Allen? We didn’t find much evidence in her flat to suggest that she was into exercise. And even if she was, she lived on the other side of town and didn’t drive. There are far more convenient options for her if she wanted to go to the gym,” Karen Hardwick pointed out.
“Check out Gemma Allen at the same time as Saskia Walker. Karen, can you contact her close friends and mother and find out if she used the leisure centre? Also run the names of Blackheath, Chalmers or Richard Cameron by them, see if they ring any bells.”
“The football team train on Monday and Thursday evenings. We should check what they have by way of CCTV footage on those days for the past few months; see if any of our victims crop up and have any contact with the team. We may even see them talking to Chalmers or Blackheath, which would certainly firm up any link,” suggested Tony Sutton.
“That’s a good idea, but could be pretty labour-intensive. See how much footage the centre has — if any — and I’ll see if I can persuade the super to sign off on the extra manpower from Welwyn,” Warren decided after a few moments’ thought.
“What shall we do about Chalmers and Blackheath? Should we pull them in for questioning?”
“Not yet. We don’t have enough to go on for an arrest and if they are in contact with Richard Cameron, we don’t want to spook him. With what we’ve got so far, they’ll never admit to anything. If we can get them bang to rights, maybe they’ll tell us where Cameron is. Let’s keep an eye on them though — we don’t want them disappearing.”
With that, the meeting broke up, the different officers rushing off to pursue their different leads. Only Tony Sutton remained, sitting in his chair, his slice of cake untouched in front of him.
“If you’d told me there was a link this time yesterday, I wouldn’t have believed you. We’d all but eliminated Blackheath. There’s only that business with his alibi that causes us problems. Chalmers I can see, perhaps, although it seems a bit sophisticated for a low-level thug like him. What bothers me is how the hell could two young lads — in their teens when Cameron went down — hook up with him as he strikes again? And why? How does it work? Do they kidnap the girls and he shows them how to get away with it?”
“I agree, Tony. It’s a bloody strange business. Of course, this link between Blackheath and Chalmers could just be a coincidence. In which case, we still need to work out how Richard Cameron came to know these women. It wasn’t random chance. He stalked them; he knew their routines.
“I’ve been reading over the previous cases from the nineties. The similarities are remarkable; leaving aside the DNA evidence and even the methods, with the condoms and the rubber gloves it’s the same MO. He followed those three girls. He researched them; learnt their routines. They were joggers, snatched off the street on their regular runs in the most secluded part of the route. He sedated them, pulled them into the back of his van and drove them to a secluded spot. The only difference is that after he’d raped them, he left them alive.
“Of course, that cost him. The final victim was able to help the police. Maybe he’s learnt from his mistake. That rubber mask that he wore was unusual back then — the one he’s wearing now is ten-a-penny, made in China. The rubber is used in all sorts of products, including the Halloween masks sold in the pound shop.”
Sutton rubbed his eyes wearily. “What we need is some sort of link between Cameron and these two. Perhaps they met on the Internet? We know that Cameron visited bondage sites — maybe they hooked up through them? If and when we bring them in, we should impound their home computers, have IT look for any links.”
“Good idea. In the meantime, we should get IT to keep on looking at Camero
n’s computer and see if he joined any forums. That PC has been a goldmine so far.”
“I agree, guv. But one thing still worries me a little — how could a man twelve months out of prison, who’d only ever done the most basic level courses in IT, use a PC in such a sophisticated manner?”
Warren sighed. “Yet another thing I’ll be asking Darren Blackheath and Alex Chalmers when we pull them in.”
Chapter 61
The remainder of the morning was a mixed bag in terms of progress. Phone calls to the leisure centre revealed that Saskia Walker was a casual gym user. She had a pass, but no membership. The centre didn’t keep records on gym usage for individuals, but it was reasonable to assume that she didn’t use it more than three times a month, otherwise she would have probably signed up for the more cost-effective unlimited usage package. It was impossible to say if her preferred gym nights included Monday or Thursdays.
Unfortunately, there were no records at all of Gemma Allen using the gym. Her friends said that she wasn’t one for exercise and had little or no interest in football or any other team sports, nor had she mentioned any acquaintances who played sport that she might have gone to support out of loyalty.
A query about CCTV footage revealed that the centre stored the tapes for their half-dozen cameras for twelve months before wiping them. Even limiting the search to Mondays and Thursdays for an hour either side of the two-hour training session would be a mammoth task.
Consequently, the appearance of DS Richardson at Warren’s door just before lunch was extremely welcome.
“It’s a stretch, sir, but I think I know how Sally Evans and Carolyn Patterson were kidnapped.” Detective Sergeant Margaret Richardson was a middle-aged mother of two whose former role working with the traffic division had made her the ideal choice to lead the team searching CCTV and traffic-camera recordings on the nights of the kidnappings.
“Tell us what you’ve found, Mags,” instructed Warren, following her to her workstation.
“Sally Evans went missing at six p.m. — right in the middle of the rush hour. Unfortunately, there were no cameras covering the back alley where she was waiting. The best we could come up with was a scan of the roads surrounding the area. As you know we found several dozen vehicles, including Darren Blackheath’s, that could conceivably have taken a detour down that alleyway and stopped for at least a couple of minutes. We prioritised that list by putting certain classes of commercial and public vehicles to one side, figuring that the perpetrator was most likely to be using a private vehicle. We prioritised the list still further, by downgrading vehicles that made that same journey at the same time on at least eight out of the preceding ten workdays.”
Warren nodded his acceptance of her tactics. It made perfect sense. Middlesbury might be a small town, but it still had a pretty busy rush hour. Furthermore, the town stood at the junction of several equally congested A roads and experienced commuters often chose to go through Middlesbury rather than take a substantial detour. Tracing all of those drivers in a short time would tax the resources of the unit and so prioritising the workload was essential.
“That reduced the list to a more manageable number and so we started running the licence plates. But it seems we whittled it a bit too much and found nothing.
“And then Carolyn Patterson happened. As soon as you identified the Middlesbury Sports and Leisure Centre and the approximate time, we did the same thing. That job was bigger, since the time window was much wider and there are several busy residential roads with cars coming and going — not to mention cars picking up and dropping off users of the sports centre.
“To save time, we cross-referenced the two long-lists and picked up three vehicles on both. One belongs to an elderly couple in their eighties. CCTV footage from the car park shows that car coming right up to the centre and an old man getting out. He returns a few minutes later with a teenage girl. I’m guessing granddad picking his granddaughter up from the tae kwon do class that finished about then.”
“Sounds reasonable,” agreed Sutton, who had wandered over to join them.
“The second vehicle appeared at 21:25 and picked up another woman from boxercise. However, we ran the registration through the DVLA and found their home address. There’s a CCTV camera around the corner from their house and sure enough the car was seen seven minutes later. According to our calculations, it’s four point two miles by the most direct route so the car averaged thirty-six miles per hour. That includes three traffic lights and two roundabouts all in thirty zones. I showed the route to one of our fast-response drivers and he reckons that’s pretty quick driving even late in the evening with all of the lights on green; definitely a bit of a boy racer.
“Even if they were able to subdue and get Carolyn Patterson into the boot of the car in sixty seconds, the average speed would have been forty-two miles per hour. If it took two minutes, that’s over fifty. In both cases the car would have probably triggered at least one of the four speed cameras on that route. On top of that, we picked up his car near Sally Evans’ workplace every working day for the past month, at pretty much the same time give or take a couple of minutes. No deviation on the day of the attack.”
“Good enough for me,” Warren stated and Sutton nodded.
“So that leaves one vehicle, appearing on both lists. I have to confess, sir, both times I moved it over to the lowest priority list since you see them everywhere. Besides which, closer inspection reveals it isn’t the same vehicle both times. The licence plate varies by one letter.
“But then Constable Robson, who was assisting me, asked, ‘Why would a post van be out collecting letters at nine-forty in the evening?’”
* * *
“Say that again, Sergeant,” asked Warren, although he was pretty sure he had heard her correctly the first time.
“A Royal Mail postal delivery van drove past a traffic camera at 21:41 hours, about three quarters of a mile south-west of the sports centre. The same van went past another camera to the west of the centre earlier in the evening at 19:56 hours. As best we can tell it didn’t leave that area during that time.”
“Now that is bloody weird. What about this second van?”
“Another van, same model, same year but slightly different index was in the vicinity of Sally Evans’ workplace on the night that she disappeared. Fortunately, the traffic-camera software allows for dirt on the plate or bad lighting and flagged it as potentially the same vehicle. It was photographed at 17:56 hours on the high street just east of the alleyway—” she pointed to a location on a printed map circled in red “—then again at 18:04 hours by this camera, three quarters of a mile further on. The mean traffic speed calculated by averaging ten vehicles either side of the van was approximately thirteen miles per hour, meaning the van should have covered the distance in about three and a half minutes. Those twenty cars are picked up in the same formation at the second camera at about the expected time; the van doesn’t reappear until later. There are four and a half minutes unaccounted for. Time enough perhaps to detour down the alleyway, pick up Sally Evans, then turn around and rejoin the road.”
“OK, that’s a good theory, but surely there’s another possibility: he’s a postman — he could have been emptying a postbox. I’m sure four minutes or so is plenty of time for him to pull over, open the postbox, empty the mail and then pull back into the traffic if it’s busy.”
Margaret Richardson smiled wolfishly. “Already ahead of you on that one, sir. There are no postboxes in that vicinity. Second, even assuming that he had taken a detour after finishing his route nearby — popping into a newsagent for a paper, perhaps — he had no business being in that area at that time. Last collection up that end of town is 16:45 hours. Whatever that post van was doing in the area at that time, it wasn’t picking up mail.”
Warren looked at Tony Sutton, who was looking as shell-shocked as he felt.
“A post van. Who would have thought? They’re like buses and bin lorries — part of the furniture. Who wo
uld ever notice them?”
“And even more importantly,” mused Warren, “who do we know who works for the post office?”
Chapter 62
Middlesbury central sorting office was just to the east of the centre of town. A large, functional affair, it served Middlesbury and most of the surrounding villages. To the right of the lobby a small queue of people waited to pick up parcels. To the left an enclosed but unmanned reception desk with a bell served as gate-keeper for the large double-doors marked ‘Staff Only’ and a cargo-lift, similarly signed. Swipe card readers provided access to both of these.
Warren and Tony Sutton rang the bell. Eventually a middle-aged woman wearing her hair in a bun and a Royal Mail uniform entered through a door behind the reception desk.
“If you have any queries about parcels, you need to speak to that desk. This is for visitors only.”
The line was practised and well worn; she was clearly used to self-important members of the public trying to avoid waiting their turn.
Warren flashed his warrant card. “We’re not here to pick up a parcel. I wonder if we could speak to the person in charge of your vehicle fleet, please.”
The woman blinked in surprise. “Oh. I suppose that would be Mr Carroway. Let me see if he’s in today.” Picking up a phone on the desk, she dialled a three-digit number.
A few seconds later, after explaining who the visitors were, she cupped the mouthpiece. “May I ask what it’s about?”
“A minor traffic incident,” Warren lied smoothly.
