‘Of course, lad. I’d be glad to. Now why don’t you sit yourself down’ – he patted the chair next to him, as if Black were a nine-year-old – ‘and I’ll tell you all about it.’
Black took the seat.
‘What do you want to know?’ asked Fraser.
‘Everything.’
‘Sure,’ said Fraser. ‘Put the kettle on again, will you, Rodgers? There’s a good lad. Oh, and see if you can find Lucas here a biscuit.’ He turned back to Black. ‘Because everything is going to take a while.’
There were a couple of long residential streets full of two-up two-downs between Collemby Town Hall and the Teale family home. Beth decided to use the time productively while she walked, by taking out her mobile phone and doing a quick Web search on her new partner. On reflection, she was pretty sure Anne Hudson had been exaggerating to make Beth feel apprehensive. If Lucas Black really had killed someone, surely it must have been in combat with the army, not while serving in the police force, which was a wholly different proposition. In other words, Anne had been stirring it, her obvious motive jealousy because she had been passed over by DCI Everleigh in favour of Beth.
The Google search took a few moments and, at first, it didn’t help. There was an American actor who shared the same name, so she amended her search by keying in the words ‘police officer UK’ after ‘Lucas Black’.
The number of results that came up then stopped Beth in her tracks. There were dozens of newspaper articles about Black and they all appeared to be about the same incident, which had occurred seven years earlier. These weren’t just local newspapers either. They were the big, heavy-hitting national tabloids. The first headline screamed at her.
UNARMED MAN GUNNED DOWN BY DETECTIVE.
The second read: SHOT DEAD BY POLICE.
Oh Christ. Anne Hudson hadn’t been exaggerating. Lucas Black really had killed a man. He had shot someone, and that someone hadn’t even had a weapon. How the hell had that happened, and why was he still a detective? How come he wasn’t out of the force or even languishing in a jail somewhere, serving life for murder?
Beth took a moment to look around her. The street was empty of people, so she stopped on the corner. She scrolled down until she found an article that covered the outcome of the case and began to read.
No action will be taken against a police officer who killed an unarmed man. The Crown Prosecution Service is refusing to prosecute Lucas Black, 31, who shot Rory Jordan, 44, in his garden, despite the victim being unarmed at the time. The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated the shooting and criticized Detective Sergeant Black for acting rashly and inadvisedly, and for using excessive force. They concluded that he may have a case to answer for manslaughter. However, the CPS has ruled out prosecution, on the grounds that a jury would be unlikely to convict Black, due to a ‘perceived threat’ to the officer in question, even though the detective was some way from Mr Jordan and armed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and that a prosecution would not be in the public interest.
Black, an authorized firearms officer, was called to Mr Jordan’s home in Ashington, Northumbria, in November, to assist colleagues during a stand-off. It followed a report from a neighbour of a domestic disturbance involving an alleged assault on Jordan’s wife and threats made against her and their nine-year-old daughter. Police surrounded the building and, when Rory Jordan left his house via its rear door, Black shot him in the chest. He died on the way to hospital.
In a statement from her solicitor, Jordan’s widow, Carol, 38, said the killing of her husband was both unlawful and completely unnecessary. ‘This policeman should be in prison for life for what he did to my husband. Nothing will bring Rory back, but it chills me to think that Detective Sergeant Black has got off scot-free when he is a clear and obvious danger to the public. He has ruined my life and my daughter’s life but will go unpunished. Where is the justice in that?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Beth, closing the Web page on her phone abruptly, as if banishing the news. As she walked the final yards to Alice Teale’s home, she tried to imagine any scenario where a detective could legally and morally justify gunning down an unarmed man outside his own home. She couldn’t think of one.
5
Beth Winter experienced the full brunt of Alice Teale’s father’s frustration. ‘He stood in front of me, right there’ – and he pointed to the floor – ‘where you are standing, and he told me’ – he shook his head in disbelief – ‘DI Fraser said, “Mr Teale, I shall not rest until we find your daughter,” and now you’re saying he’s given up already!’ He took a deep breath and went to his armchair then sat down heavily in it. Ronnie Teale was a big man who seemed to dwarf his wife, a slight woman who occupied a small corner of a floral-patterned sofa. Abigail Teale watched her husband carefully, as if she wasn’t sure what he would do next. Their nineteen-year-old son, Daniel, stared down at the carpet.
They were all seated, while Beth stood there, feeling like an intruder.
‘I thought at the time what a daft thing to say,’ said Ronnie. ‘“I shall not rest” – of course you will. You have to sleep, you have to stop and eat. Bloody ridiculous. But I didn’t think he’d just bail out like this.’
‘I understand your frustration, Mr Teale …’
‘Do you? I doubt it!’
‘… but the force chose to offer DI Fraser early retirement, which he wasn’t expecting when he agreed to the case. He had limited time to accept the offer.’ Beth wasn’t sure why she was defending DI Fraser, a man she had never met, then she realized she was doing it to spare the Teales’ feelings. She wanted the family to believe they were committed to finding their daughter. ‘I can assure you that the detective taking over is the best there is.’ She desperately hoped they wouldn’t do a Web search on him once they learned his name.
‘You’re just going to start again, is that it?’
That was it, but Beth didn’t feel she could admit this. ‘The work that has already been done will be invaluable, and we won’t have to duplicate it,’ she said. ‘The most important thing is to make sure we are all fully focused on the search for Alice.’
‘She’s been missing for days, and not a trace of her,’ said her father. ‘Not since she left school that evening.’ He frowned. ‘Who leaves school at nine o’clock at night?’ he asked. ‘Bloody stupid!’
He got up out of his chair and walked to the window. He was like some big, wild animal trapped in a cage. Then he turned back to Beth.
‘This is all my fault,’ he said abruptly.
She waited for him to explain.
‘This is all my fault,’ he repeated. ‘My fault.’ But his reproachful look fell on Alice’s mother.
‘How is this your fault, Mr Teale?’ she asked him.
‘I should have kept a closer eye on her, instead of letting a teenage girl go out every night like that.’
His wife pursed her lips, as if she had been indirectly accused of permitting this while his back was turned. In a low voice that sounded full of meaning, Abigail Teale said, ‘You kept a very close eye on her.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
But Alice’s mother said nothing. She just stared towards the back window, as if the answer she needed were written on the glass. Ronnie seemed to suddenly remember that Beth was there. ‘Alice is always out, never at home.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ hissed her mother.
‘Not mine!’ He was angry again. ‘I barely bloody saw her. If she wasn’t doing after-school clubs, she was down that working men’s club …’
‘You told her to get a job,’ Abigail reminded him, ‘because money was tight.’
‘And so it is, but does she have to work there?’
‘Where else is she going to get a job round here?’
Beth got the impression that Abigail Teale rarely stood up to her husband, because the man seemed rattled by her defiance. This was not what Beth had been expecting. Why were they acting this way, partic
ularly Alice’s father? Instead of focusing on finding their missing daughter, they were arguing. It was bewildering.
‘And even when she is at home, she’s always up in her room, studying.’
‘I thought you’d be glad of that,’ Abigail said, and her husband shot her a look. ‘At least she isn’t lazy, at least she’s trying to better herself.’ And even though the comments were aimed at Alice’s father, it was her brother’s turn to shift uneasily in his seat, as if personally wounded by his mother’s words. ‘She can never do anything right.’
Ronnie seemed to get exasperated then, and turned back to Beth. ‘I don’t know what you want from us,’ he told her. ‘We’ve made statements, we’ve told you everything we know about that night – which is next to nothing, by the way. We’ve let your colleagues look all round our house and in Alice’s room, we’ve given you the names of her friends, her work mates, her teachers. What else is there?’
‘What do you think has happened to her, Mr Teale?’ Beth asked him.
‘How should I know?’ he shouted at her. ‘She’s gone off somewhere, done something bloody stupid.’
‘What kind of something?’
‘Find her and you can fucking ask her!’
‘Calm down, Ronnie,’ his wife urged him quietly.
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ he snarled at his wife. ‘Not anywhere’ – he jabbed a finger – ‘and never in my own house.’ And he gave her a look of such venom Beth found it quite alarming.
‘But what makes you think she’s been stupid?’ she asked.
‘Because she’s always doing daft things!’
‘Please try and stay calm, Mr Teale. We need your help to find your daughter.’
‘I don’t know where she’s gone.’ He was wild-eyed, as if he had taken that comment personally. ‘This has got nothing to do with me.’
‘No one is saying that it has,’ said Beth, wondering why he might have interpreted what she had said that way. ‘In your statement, you said you were out at the pub when Alice went missing. Which one?’
He seemed to hesitate for a moment. ‘I was …’ he began, but then stopped.
‘It was around nine o’clock,’ she reminded him.
‘I know what time it was,’ he snapped. ‘Just let me … I’d have probably been in the Dirty Donkey around about then.’
‘The Black Stallion pub?’ she clarified, noting that he had made his location and the timing of it a little vague.
‘Yeah.’
‘All night?’
He shook his head then realized she wanted more than that for an answer. ‘It was Friday night,’ he said. ‘I called into a few places around town.’
‘But you were definitely in the Black Stallion at nine o’clock?’
‘Why are you asking me that?’ He turned to his wife. ‘Why is she asking me that?’
This wasn’t going well, and Beth started to worry that her first attempt at securing an alibi might lead to the victim’s father lodging an official complaint against her. She could imagine how Black would take that. Ronnie Teale’s anger was blinding him. Beth needed the man to see that they were both on the same side, while at the same time trying to eliminate him from their inquiries. ‘I’m just trying to place you on the night, Mr Teale. We’ll be doing that with everyone.’
‘I’m her bloody father, woman!’ he shouted, jabbing a finger into his chest to make his point.
When Beth spoke she was deliberately calm. ‘Then you’ll understand that everything we do is designed to bring your daughter safely back to you.’ She took a breath and turned to the man’s son.
‘What about you, Daniel?’
‘Me?’ He seemed surprised Beth even knew his name. ‘I was in my room, messing around on my laptop.’
‘You chat to anyone online?’
‘A few people,’ he said, and she figured that would be easy enough to verify.
‘Do you have anything to add to your statement at all? It’s been a few days, and you may have thought of something else?’
Daniel looked to his dad, as if seeking guidance or approval, but the older man’s face betrayed no hint of what he might be thinking. The young man turned back to Beth. ‘Me? No,’ he said.
‘I was wondering if you could tell me about some of Alice’s gang?’
His father jumped in. ‘Gang? She wasn’t in a gang.’
‘Her group of friends,’ Beth clarified.
‘You know what she means,’ snapped Mrs Teale.
‘What do you want to know?’ asked Daniel.
‘Who she hung out with, who she liked and disliked and who liked or disliked her, if anyone held any grudges against her or had argued with her, perhaps acted out of the ordinary, that kind of thing.’
‘There was never any of that,’ said her father before the boy could speak.
Beth was really tiring of his obstructive manner now. ‘With respect, Mr Teale, how would you know?’
‘I know my daughter.’
‘But you said Alice was rarely at home and, when she was, she was usually in her room, studying,’ Beth reminded him. ‘If she did have a problem with someone at school, you might not have been aware of it.’
‘So how is he going to know?’
Beth wondered why he was being so difficult. Did she really have to spell it out? ‘Because Daniel is younger, goes to the same places and knows the same people.’ She turned to Daniel. ‘Also, I understand that you two are close. Maybe Alice told you something in passing that you thought at the time wasn’t important but might prove significant now?’
The boy’s eyes darted quickly between his father’s face and Beth’s. ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘But I can’t think of anything.’
‘What kind of “something”?’ asked Ronnie.
‘I don’t know,’ said Beth, ‘but if Alice ran away, she obviously had her reasons and may have confided them to somebody. If someone abducted or harmed your daughter, something might have triggered it. I’m trying to find out everything I can about her, in case one snippet of information points us in the right direction. Is that all right?’
‘Of course’ – his tone was defensive – ‘why wouldn’t it be?’
‘Then perhaps I could talk to Daniel on my own for a while?’
He looked as if he didn’t like that idea, but his wife asked, ‘Where’s the harm in that?’
‘Do what you like,’ said Ronnie, then pulled the lounge door open with such force Beth wouldn’t have been surprised if he had ripped it off its hinges. He walked into the tiny hallway and took a coat down from the wall hanger. ‘I’m going for a pint.’
No one questioned this. Perhaps no one dared to. Instead, they waited till they heard the sound of the front door opening then closing firmly behind him.
‘He’s gone,’ said Alice’s mother, as if they hadn’t all just witnessed his departure. ‘His daughter’s missing and he’s gone to the pub.’ Beth noted she hadn’t raised any objection before he left. Had she reached the limits of her defiance, or did she just want him out of her house?
‘“I’m going for a pint.”’ Daniel mimicked his father, adding a sneering tone, and his mother did not chastise him for it. ‘That’s his answer to everything. He doesn’t give a shit. He never has.’ Beth didn’t have any experience of dealing with worried parents of missing children, but she strongly suspected that Ronnie Teale’s reaction was far from typical. At least Daniel was more talkative now his father had gone, but she still wanted to get the lad on his own.
‘It’s a nice day, Daniel,’ said Beth. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk while we talk?’
6
‘I give you one job, and you muck it up,’ protested Fraser.
‘Sorry, boss, we’ve run out.’ Rodgers had failed his DI. He couldn’t find a biscuit for Lucas.
‘You can’t get the staff these days.’
‘Alice Teale,’ Black said abruptly, trying to bring an end to the banter. ‘What have you found out?’
‘N
ot much,’ said Fraser, and when the detective inspector realized how that made him sound: ‘Not much of significance, but there’s a lot of information and a ton of gossip.’
‘Go on.’
‘Events-wise, we have a reasonable idea of what happened. Alice Teale was last seen on her way home from an after-school club around nine p.m. on Friday. She set off from the school on foot. Sometimes she gets the bus and other times she walks, depending on the weather and how late it is. There are two buses an hour that go along her route. The school is at one end of the town and her home is two and a half miles away at the other. We’ve asked the drivers, and they reckon she never got on a bus. She’s a very bonny lass, so they’d have remembered her.’
Black opened the file that was resting in his lap. There was a photograph of Alice Teale clipped to the first page. He had to agree with Fraser: Alice was strikingly pretty, with long, wavy brown hair, full red lips and bright green eyes.
Fraser continued, ‘At first it was treated like any normal, run-of-the-mill disappearance. The uniforms assumed, like in the vast majority of cases, that she’d had a row with a boyfriend or was upset with her parents and expected her to show up sooner or later. Her family went out looking for her that night. When Alice didn’t reappear in the morning, other people joined the search for her, retracing her route, knocking on the doors of her friends and classmates, asking questions, but there was no trace of her.’
‘What about her phone?’
‘Switched off,’ he said. ‘Or disposed of. We’ve not had a signal from it since she went missing, and she hasn’t answered it.’ Then he cautioned, ‘Kids these days do know that you can trace people through their mobile phones if they’re switched on. I blame the telly. She hasn’t posted anything on social media either or used her debit card anywhere.’
‘What do we know about Alice?’ asked Black.
‘She has a busy life for an almost-eighteen-year-old. Alice is deputy head girl, seemingly popular with her classmates and good at her studies, likely to go to a decent university, according to her teachers. She took part in a lot of extra-curricular activities, too.’
Alice Teale is Missing Page 3
