by Alison James
Signed by: Piotre Zelinski
Witnessed by: DC 4371 Coles
I work at the Crossgates Manor Hotel as a part-time waitress. On the evening of 19 December, I was on duty in the restaurant. A woman came downstairs with a child and sat at a table for two. I don’t remember the exact time but the restaurant was about to close so it must have been around 10.30 p.m. I thought it was a bit late for a small child to be eating. The child was wearing pyjamas with unicorns on. They looked like girls’ pyjamas but the child’s hair was cut like a boy’s. He didn’t speak, and from his eyes I thought he looked as though he was sedated. She ordered a pizza for the child but he barely ate any and his head kept drooping onto the plate, like in those YouTube videos of toddlers falling asleep in their dinner. I made a comment about it being past the child’s bedtime and the woman told me it was none of my business. She paid with cash but didn’t leave a tip.
The second statement was signed by a Jessica Kingdon.
Rachel handed them back to Coles. ‘Well, we know where Michelle Harper is now, at least. But we need to know what she did with the purple suitcase.’
He stared. ‘Are you saying…’
‘That Lola Jade, the “boy” with the short brown hair, was in it? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘Okay, well maybe this will help.’ Coles handed her another document, which Rachel recognised as a telecoms intelligence unit log. ‘The phone that was found in Osborne Terrace has just been analysed by our TIU. The texts are all to one number, which we’ve identified as belonging to Lisa Urquhart. That’s the one called Phone B; Phone A is Harper’s burner.’
Rachel skim-read through them. The first two texts were from three days earlier, on 17 December.
Phone A: Can’t drop LJ with u: too risky. Pigs watchin ur place.
Phone B: Where will u take her then? There’s 24 hours before she and me fly.
Phone A: Will find somewhere to leave her safe. Is only for a little while. Will make sure you have full deets don’t worry! X
The next day, Sunday 18th, there was a call from Phone A to Phone B lasting twelve minutes. At 8.20 a.m. that morning, there was a final sequence of texts.
Phone A: Okay, she is there safely, in place we discussed. But please, NOT FOR LONG, okay? Gave big dose of stuff to last till you can fetch her but make sure you’re not late because of suffocation risk. And don’t tell Kev.
Phone B: Don’t worry, he thinks I’ll just be picking up some of your XS luggage to take with me. Still thinks it’s a girls’ trip! X
Phone A: Okay, well be careful Leess. Please. Tickets and L’s passport are in zipped pocket of case.
Phone B: Not long now! Can’t wait babes. X
Phone A: Whatever happens make sure you don’t screw up collecting L. Can’t tell you how URGENT this is. Nothing must go wrong.
Phone B: Don’t stress, have memorised address of place like you said and will leave plenty of time to get there. X
Phone A: Nearly there now. Fucking Gavin; he’s going to have no idea.
Rachel tossed the printout onto the desk and grabbed her bag and keys, trying to remember where she had left her car that morning.
‘Code red, Constable!’ she snapped, when Coles didn’t immediately jump to his feet. ‘There’s only one person who knows where the case is: Lisa Urquhart.’
‘Two people if you count Michelle Harper,’ Coles pointed out. ‘Why don’t we try asking her first?’ He was pulling on a jacket and hat as he spoke. ‘She’s going to have to talk to us when she finds out her daughter’s at risk.’
Rachel consulted her watch. ‘Michelle will be arriving in Dubai around now. But like I said before, we don’t have any jurisdiction there to intercept her.’
‘No, I meant we can call the plane. When she takes off for Sydney.’
She stared at him. ‘Christ, of course! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?’
Coles had already started running out to the car park, climbing straight into a patrol car.
‘So how does it work?’ Rachel asked as she jumped into the passenger seat and they headed, lights flashing, to Heathrow Terminal 3.
‘Any ground station – like an airline dispatcher or a control tower – can establish two-way communications using VHF frequencies. Well, sometimes they can; it depends on the range.’
‘How do you know all that, Einstein?’
‘My dad used to be a pilot.’
They left the car in an emergency bay and ran to the Emirates control centre, only to have an apologetic ground-crew supervisor explain that because Michelle had just boarded her connection from Dubai, her flight was automatically out of range of the UK ground antenna.
‘But you can try MedAire,’ she suggested. ‘They have special satellite phones to communicate with all aircraft about medical emergencies. Their operators are based in Farnborough, but they have a rep here, I believe.’
‘I’ll go,’ offered Coles, taking in Rachel’s washed-out face. ‘Why don’t you go and track down some coffee?’
He returned fifteen minutes later, shaking his head. ‘They haven’t been able to make contact with the flight – something about weather conditions – but they’re going to keep on trying. Should we wait here?’
Rachel shook her head firmly, handing him a paper cup of coffee. ‘We can’t afford to sit around and wait: this is too time-critical. We’ll have to try the only other person who knows where that suitcase is.’
Thirty-Six
The Accident and Emergency department of Ashtead Hospital was filling up with drunk and disorderly Christmas partygoers, along with a smattering of fractures and sprains from falls on icy pavements. Rachel and DC Coles had to fight their way through to the reception desk.
‘We can’t give out information about patients,’ a weary-looking black woman told her. She didn’t seem to have noticed that Rachel was flanked by a man wearing a police-issue stab vest, or perhaps she assumed he was fresh from a party and wearing fancy dress.
Bristling with impatience, Rachel whipped out her warrant card. The woman glanced at her screen.
‘Mrs and Mrs Urquhart have both been taken to the Trauma Unit. It’s back there, at the end of the corridor.’
They found a harassed nurse in scrubs who told them they would have to wait until someone could speak to them.
‘This is a critical situation: I’m sorry, but it can’t wait.’
Rachel pushed past the nurse into the triage area and started looking in the curtained cubicles, trailing a shell-shocked Coles in her wake.
‘Excuse me, you can’t do that!’ The nurse trotted after them, pulling the curtains closed again. ‘I’ll get you a doctor.’
She came back a few seconds later with a doctor, also in scrubs, who she introduced as the trauma registrar.
‘We need to speak to Mr and Mrs Urquhart urgently.’ Rachel forced herself to slow her breathing; she was gabbling now. ‘We’ve reason to believe they know where Lola Jade Harper is.’
‘Lisa Urquhart is in surgery right now.’
‘Where?’
‘Downstairs in theatre. But I can take you back to speak to Kevin Urquhart. He’s quite badly hurt, but he’s awake.’ He led them into the resuscitation area, which had four bed bays with their curtains pushed back. Kevin Urquhart was just about recognisable through the drips and bandages. His face was cut and bruised and his left leg was in plaster.
‘Kevin, I’m DI Rachel Prince; I’m investigating the disappearance of your niece. I need to speak to you about today’s accident.’
He couldn’t move his head, but his eyes flicked in Rachel’s direction. ‘It was Lisa, she told me to speed up when she saw the panda car. I didn’t know why; she just said we didn’t have time to be stopped by the cops. And then I skidded on the ice and… bang.’ He lifted his bandaged arm and let it drop on the bed as illustration.
‘Mr Urquhart – Kevin – what I’m really concerned about at this moment is where you were going. You were on your wa
y to collect Lola Jade so she could travel with your wife?’
He stared at her, dazed. ‘No. She didn’t say nothing about Lola. We were on the way to pick up some of the stuff Michelle couldn’t take because she was over her weight allowance. Lisa said she checked it into left luggage and we had to pick it up.’
‘Yes, but where? What was the address?’
Rachel was trying to work out how much Kevin knew. He must have been aware that Michelle wasn’t living under his roof, that this was a fiction. But did he think she’d just disappeared back to Willow Way, or did he know about Osborne Terrace? If so, did he know about Harry, or did the sisters keep his appearances to the hours when Kevin was at work? There simply wasn’t time to go into it all now.
‘She didn’t give me the actual address; she just said head up the A420. I assumed we were heading for Heathrow because that’s where I work and that’s where Lisa’s flying from, you know, when she goes on her holiday. Tomorrow.’ He looked anguished. ‘Except she’s not going on no holiday now. The doctor said it’s only fifty-fifty that she’ll even make it through surgery.’
Kevin closed his eyes, and a nurse darted forward to adjust his opiate drip.
‘I think he’s had enough for now.’
Rachel turned to the registrar. ‘What about Lisa?’
He shook his head. ‘Even if she’s out of theatre, she’s not going to be in any condition to speak to you.’
Rachel felt her whole body quiver with undiluted frustration. Each bed in the room had a blood pressure cuff: if someone hooked her up to one, her reading would be at the top of the scale. ‘She’s the only one who knows where Lola Jade is: this is a young child who has been missing for more than seven months now, and who is currently in serious danger.’
‘I’m aware of that.’ The registrar seemed sympathetic. ‘Look, I’ll take you down to theatre and you can speak to her surgeon. That’s the best I can offer right now.’
They were led down to the basement theatre suite with its strange scent of chloroform and singed flesh, and waited in an anaesthetic room for what felt like hours. Rachel refused to sit, pacing and glancing constantly at her watch. Eventually the surgeon appeared through the dividing door, still in his cap and gown.
‘DI Prince – I won’t shake your hand if you don’t mind: I’m still sterile.’
He stood, holding his gloved hands at right angles as though he was about to start cutting and stitching imminently. ‘Lisa Urquhart. I’ve just finished working on her. She’s got a pneumothorax, multiple rib fractures and a fractured femur, and her spleen was badly damaged: I had to perform a splenectomy. There was a lot of internal bleeding, which I’ve just about managed to get under control.’
‘Is she going to survive?’ asked DC Coles.
The surgeon bunched his lips. ‘I’d say she has a chance. If she makes it through the next twenty-four hours.’
‘When can we speak to her? Obviously we wouldn’t normally… but this is extremely urgent.’
‘That’s not going to be possible today, or tomorrow. She’s in a medically induced coma, and will be for at least forty-eight hours. I’m sorry.’
Rachel had already turned away and was racing back upstairs to Resuscitation. She flew over to Kevin Urquhart, with Coles in her slipstream, bending so that her face was near his.
‘Where’s Lola?’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘You’ve got to know something!’
A nurse darted in to intervene, as Rachel bore down on him. ‘WHERE IS SHE?’
* * *
Rachel and DC Cole sat in darkness in the squad car outside the hospital entrance. She was physically shaking and completely empty, like a deflated paper bag.
Cole had bought a bar of chocolate from the shop as they left, and insisted on giving half to her.
‘Come on, it’s late. When did you last eat? You need to keep your energy levels up.’ He gave her an encouraging smile, for which she was grateful. She took the chocolate and did indeed feel better for it, gathering herself sufficiently to engage lateral thinking.
‘Nothing from the MedAire people yet?’
Coles shook his head.
‘Okay, so if we can’t reach Michelle’s plane, and neither of the Urquharts can tell us Lola Jade’s location, our only hope is to work out where she is for ourselves. I’d say the likeliest place is the left luggage facility at Heathrow. We need to radio backup and get some manpower over there as soon as we can; start searching.’
‘Which one, though? There’s one in every terminal except Terminal 1, so that’s four in total.’
‘Good point.’ Rachel just about managed a smile. ‘Although she was flying from Terminal 3, so that’s got to be the most likely location. We’ll start there, but get as many bodies onto it as you can. I’ll phone Ryan Mead, the Met Police officer I met earlier, and get him to start the process immediately, using his bodies. We can’t afford to waste another minute.’
Coles radioed in the request, then slid the car out onto the M25 and headed back to Heathrow, lights flashing, siren screaming.
* * *
Five Metropolitan Police officers took an hour to conduct a thorough search of all large suitcases in the left luggage lockers at Terminal 3, while their colleagues – joined by available officers from Surrey Police – did the same thing at Terminals 2, 4 and 5. The purple suitcase was not found. Nor was Lola Jade.
By the time the search was complete it was after midnight and Rachel was gritty-eyed with exhaustion. She left DC Coles chasing up the staff in the MedAire office again, sank on to a bench with a Coke she’d bought from a vending machine and pulled out her phone.
‘Don’t hang up!’ she said as soon as Brickall answered. ‘Please don’t hang up.’
He heard the sheer desperation in her voice and stayed on the line while she unfolded the events of the day as succinctly as she could, aware that emotional exhaustion was detracting from the narrative thrust.
‘You delivered a kid, Prince? No fucking way!’
‘I did. But unfortunately I didn’t find the kid we’ve been looking for.’
He made a tutting sound. ‘That’s because you made a very basic mistake.’
‘What?’
‘Michelle would never have been able to leave Lola Jade in a suitcase at an airport left luggage place.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they all have a weight limit of thirty-two kilos. And a big solid-sided case with a clothed kid weighing getting on for sixty pounds is going to be over that. Kevin Urquhart’s a baggage handler, so she’d probably already have known that. She needed to leave it in a storage place nearby where the thing isn’t going to be weighed or handled. Where did you say her car was found?’
‘About five miles from here, just outside Feltham.’
‘Hold on…’
Rachel felt as though she could hear Brickall thinking. Hurry up, she said over and over in her mind. Please just hurry up.
‘Let’s have a look, shall we… Okay, the obvious solution is a twenty-four-hour place in Feltham offering personal storage for – among other things – people who are travelling. Sending it to you now.’
Rachel’s phone pinged with a text containing a map pin.
‘I suggest you head straight over there.’
‘We’re still checking to see if MedAire can manage to speak to Michelle in-flight.’
‘Belt and braces, Prince, remember? In this situation you need to do both. Leave someone else trying to make radio contact with the plane and get your fucking backside over to Feltham. ‘Hold on…’ She could hear background noise, including the jangle of car keys. ‘Sorry – just putting my shoes on. I’ll meet you there.’
‘But Mark…’
He had hung up. Rachel had been about to say that she had arrived at Heathrow in a squad car, the keys to which were currently in the trouser pocket of a DC whose mobile number she didn’t know. And she didn’t have an airwave set to contact him with either. For a fleeting moment she co
nsidered phoning Ryan Mead and asking him to organise a car for her, but that would take too long. She was on the exit level for ground transportation so walked straight outside into the frosty, sulphurous gloom and jumped into the first of a line of black cabs with their orange ‘For Hire’ lights on.
She gave the cabbie the map location and told him there was a big tip in it if he put his foot down.
‘Easy, treacle,’ he said in a thick East End accent. ‘Don’t want to get in trouble with the Old Bill.’
She held up her warrant card. ‘I am the Old Bill. And I give you permission to break the speed limit.’
He whistled. ‘Sweet. Always wanted to do that… So, to clarify, fast as I like?’
‘Faster.’
Thirty-Seven
Despite its claim of twenty-four-hour service, the storage warehouse was closed for the night.
A sign outside said: For on-call duty manager phone 07831 560516. There was a security light above the front entrance, but otherwise the building and car park were in complete darkness.
‘Don’t really like leaving you here, darlin’,’ said the cabbie, who had introduced himself as Jim. ‘Doesn’t seem right.’
‘I’ve got a colleague on the way over. I’ll be fine,’ Rachel reassured him.
‘How about I hang around as your wingman till he gets here? I’ve always fancied being one of the Sweeney.’
Rachel left Jim sitting in his cab with the interior light on and pulled out her phone. It was a toss-up – did she summon the manager or call for a support vehicle? She remembered Brickall’s diktat on deploying belt and braces and decided to do both. First she summoned a tactical unit, who would be able to break into the place and search it. Then she called the manager, who answered after a couple of rings.
‘No problem: I’ll be there in three minutes.’
‘Make it two.’
And he was: a cheerful young Turkish man wearing a padded coat over a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.
