A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  She turned her face to look into the dark space beyond the noticeboard, and Smith could see her more clearly; traces of the daughter’s prettiness were still there but the woman’s cheeks were thin, the nose was sharp and the eyes were deep in shadow. She looked malnourished, and he wondered about drink or drugs somewhere in the footnotes to her own narrative.

  ‘One of their places, the kids. Here all the summer, weren’t they? So I …’

  ‘Zoe didn’t tell you where she was going? She didn’t say whether she was meeting someone?’

  He knew the answers, of course – those are the most important sorts of questions that detectives ask.

  ‘No, she didn’t say nothing about this place. She wouldn’t meet anyone here. She told me she wanted to go to Jaimee’s, that’s her best mate, and I said she was staying in to babysit for once. I don’t ask her to do a lot, it’s not as if I… Y’know?’

  Smith nodded and said, ‘But Jaimee didn’t see her last night, or hear from her. You thought this was one of the places she might have come. Is there anywhere else?’

  There was nothing at all to be gained by telling Penny Johnson about the messages sent to Gemma Powell yet – for one thing, she would want to go into the playpark straight away.

  She said, ‘Zoe’s got other friends but we’ve spoke to ’em all by now. She don’t just hang about on street corners, she’s a good girl compared to lots of ’em on the estate. This ain’t like her and I don’t want none of you thinkin’ it is.’

  ‘We’re not making any assumptions at all, Mrs Johnson. You should be getting back, this is not the weather to be out, and your other youngsters will be worried enough already. Can I give you a lift?’

  Penny Johnson took a longer look at him then, and the thing that had annoyed her first – that there was just one bloody copper out looking for her girl – now struck her as strange, too. I mean, she thought, he’s not your run-of-the-mill sort, is he? Wellington boots and that sodding great torch, wandering about on his own in the dark? The first time I’ve ever seen his face but he seems to know all about it already. Getting on a bit, too. He’s right about the kids, though. Don’t know how anyone’s going to get any sleep tonight…

  ‘Alright, then. Ta.’

  And on the way back, he chatted to her some more and asked about Zoe’s proper dad, and when was the last time she had any contact with him. Did Zoe have his phone number, and all that? Long gone, she told him, and not bothered about her, but it was nice of the detective to take an interest. Before she got out, she asked him, because he was a sergeant and that, whether he was in charge of it now. But he said he didn’t know, not yet.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Zoe Johnson has now been missing for more than thirty-six hours, including two nights away from home. Those of you with the experience know that this is significant. Temporary runaways almost invariably return as darkness falls. I’ve no doubt a psychologist would be able to tell us the reason why.’

  Detective Superintendent Allen paused and looked over the room full of officers, uniformed as well as plain clothes, as if amongst them there might be lurking an unsuspected individual of the said profession, but no-one stood up to declare themselves.

  ‘Therefore we must now assume that this girl is not a temporary runaway. She might still be in Kings Lake or she might have left the town, choosing not to go home or to contact her family, though as yet we have been told nothing that would explain why. Or, for any number of reasons, she might now be unable to return home and unable to contact her mother. It is important that we make no further assumptions at this stage as to why that might be. Our priority is to gain information and intelligence, not to theorise or to speculate.’

  So far, so good, thought Smith. Looking around at the detectives, he wondered how many had any experience of this. Waters and Ford he knew did not – Serena Butler maybe. John Murray did, as did John Wilson, but he didn’t know about the rest of Wilson’s team. DI Terek must have come across something similar down there in Huntingdon but this would be his first time helping to manage such an inquiry.

  Superintendent Allen was concluding the address now.

  ‘The local media have heard about the appeal at the school yesterday afternoon, and I have a meeting with them in a few minutes’ time. I will be saying that we are concerned about Zoe Johnson’s welfare, and that if she can contact home, she should do so. Anyone with any information should get in touch with us and I will give out one of the usual dedicated phone numbers. Detective Chief Inspector Reeve will be taking the lead on this now. Finally…’

  The door to the briefing room opened, and Allen turned to look. It was Priti Patel, looking more fetching than ever because she was a little embarrassed. She held up a slip of paper and Allen waved her forward to where he was standing – then he took and read the message.

  ‘We have a girl in reception with her mother – a Gemma Powell. Apparently, she was spoken to at school about Zoe Johnson yesterday. Who were the officers involved?’

  Allen had the rare gift of making even the simplest request for information into an accusation. Smith saw Serena stare hard at Waters until he raised his hand.

  Allen said, ‘Good, well done, Walters. As soon as DCI Reeve has briefed you, let’s get this young lady interviewed again. You all need to be aware that this sort of investigation can produce a huge amount of intelligence in a very short space of time. I want everyone to be at the top of their game. Let’s get to it!’

  The matter of Detective Inspector Terek’s desk had become an interesting one to Smith over the past few weeks. It had altered the dynamics of the spaces they used in several ways. For example, because Terek spent more time in here than in his own office, so now did DCI Reeve – it was where she usually had to come if she needed to speak to him. Perhaps the plan was to convert the entire operation to open-plan, and Smith wouldn’t be at all surprised because that’s the model now adopted in many forces. He would have argued against it if he had been a part of it, but rehearsing the arguments was pointless, and so he simply watched as Reeve, Terek, Chris Waters and Serena Butler talked around the detective inspector’s desk.

  This would be about Gemma Powell. Serena had already told him it was Waters the girl had talked to yesterday, so let Chris do this on his own in Interview One, and record it. Someone, ideally Smith himself, naturally, should be next door and watching the live version as well. What would it be? The girl hadn’t told the whole truth but had shared something with mum, who had realised the significance of whatever it was? Maybe Gemma Powell knew where Zoe was at this moment, and in half an hour she would be safe and secure in the back of a BMW. Stranger things have happened.

  But in the meantime, Serena needs to be getting after that phone account, not standing over there with the others. The sum total of his own work in the past half an hour had been to look at a map of the Dockmills estate and decide which streets the uniformed people would knock door-to-door this morning; the estate was huge and they could not manage it all, not in the first round. He made sure, though, that the door-to-door would include every house between Zoe’s home and the entrance to the Railway playpark.

  Chris and Serena left the room together, so that wasn’t helpful. He stood up and walked around to her desk but she had left nothing visible concerning the mobile phone account – he had no idea how far she had got with it since last night. John Murray was with Wilson’s group on the other side of the room, and Wilson was organising visits to locations that might have CCTV; inwardly, those officers would be groaning at the thought because the more they found, the more they would have to sit through. It takes hours of time and all your concentration because every moment must be viewed in real time; the girl might appear as a grainy image for a just a few brief seconds if she appeared at all. Miss that and you miss a potentially crucial piece of evidence. And we don’t even know for sure what she was wearing yet – who is establishing that?

  Smith returned to his own desk. On it lay several A4 sheets w
ith headings and notes, but these days running the desk means joining things up digitally. Was there anyone in the building technologically or temperamentally more unsuited to that job than himself? If Simon Terek had shown any hint of a sense of humour since he arrived at Kings Lake, one would have had to assume this was a joke in thoroughly bad taste.

  He picked up the list of street names and decided he would take this down in person to Uniform Ops. Taking the route using the back staircase would mean he could go by Interview One and at least get a passing look at Gemma Powell. Almost unbelievably, as he neared DI Terek’s desk, the inspector asked him where he was going. It was a moment beyond satire. Under normal circumstances this would not have deterred Smith from making several noble attempts but he had somewhere else he wanted to be. He kept walking, waving the list and saying that uniform needed it right away. Terek began to say something about scanning it then, but Smith didn’t hear him. The door swung to behind and then he took a swift left towards the rear of the building. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to participate in an investigation, especially if it’s your last one.

  There had been at least twenty uniformed officers still being briefed downstairs before they went out to the Dockmills, and Smith finally had the feeling that an operation to find Zoe Johnson was underway. In a full-scale search, of course, there might be hundreds but they were not there yet – even so, there was still that sense of expectation, of being a part of something larger and more important than the familiar daily routine. A sense of expectation and of excitement? In truth, the answer is yes. People do this job for a number of reasons, and that’s one of them.

  Smith had glimpsed the girl in Interview One on the way down. Gemma Powell was not wearing her school uniform, and she looked years older than her fifteen or sixteen. The mother had been silent and stern-faced, and Waters had been doing the talking. Smith wondered how far they had got in the three or four minutes it had taken him to get downstairs and explain the list of streets to be visited.

  When he arrived back on the corridor, the girl was talking. He edged past the door and looked into the recording room next door. It was empty. DI Terek at the very least should have been in there. Should? There are no protocols set down for who should listen to a voluntary witness but Gemma Powell, as things presently stood, was the last person to have any contact with the missing girl; she must have failed to disclose something at the school yesterday or why else was she here? And in that case, why wasn’t a more senior detective observing?

  He glanced up and down the corridor before going into the recording room and closing the door. There were lots of buttons, switches and screens but he knew which one to press to bring the picture up onto the main screen, and fortunately the sound was switched on as well.

  At first there was silence, and the girl looked distinctly unhappy. Smith saw a glance between Waters and Butler, and though he had no idea what had just transpired, he looked at both of his protégés and told them again not to be afraid of the silence, not to be tempted to keep filling in those spaces yourself when it is the witness or the suspect who should be doing the talking.

  Eventually the girl turned to her mother and said, ‘I can’t. They’ll bloody murder me if I do!’

  Mrs Powell said, ‘There’s no call for that language in here,’ and Smith had to fight back an impulse to go straight next door and congratulate her before the interview was allowed to continue. But Mrs Powell hadn’t finished.

  ‘And you’ve got to tell them. For one thing, Zoe’s mum will be frantic by now. What if it was you gone? How would I be feeling now? You don’t have a choice, Gemma. Tell them the names.’

  Another silence and in it Smith found to his surprise that the Alwych in his jacket pocket had somehow found its way into his left hand – then he reached inside for the silver propelling pencil.

  Gemma said, ‘Alright. But I ain’t goin’ back to school today. I ain’t going to be there when they gets called out of class, because they’ll know who told.’

  Mrs Powell said, ‘No, you’re not going back until I’ve spoken to the head anyway. Now, tell the officers who told you they saw Zoe in town on Monday night.’

  Alana Day and Kristi Hansen – spelled like that with a K, Waters had checked. Serena did a smart thing, too. She asked Gemma to explain why the two girls had not told anyone else at school, and why Gemma thought they would “bloody murder” her for giving up their names. The answer, when it finally came, brought Smith’s note-making to a halt.

  ‘They was riding around the town an’ that?’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Some boys.’

  ‘Do you know the names of the boys? Because they’re also potential witnesses. We need to speak to them.’

  The girl seemed uncomfortable again, perhaps because Mrs Powell’s intimidating stare was fixed once more upon her offspring.

  ‘I don’t know which boys exactly. If I did I couldn’t spell their names. Couldn’t hardly say them, could I?’

  ‘Why not, Gemma?’

  ‘It was some of the Paki boys.’

  ‘Gemma!’

  The mother was embarrassed but Waters waved it away, and Serena made a note, as did Smith behind the lens of the camera. One fragment of intelligence, a single detail or even a word, can alter the direction of an investigation or add new layers of complexity. No-one in the interview room or the recording room had ever been to Rotherham but the story of what took place in that town for more than twenty years has entered the consciousness of every police officer and social worker in the country. The failure of successive authorities to act is a shadow that still hangs above them all.

  Waters did the right thing – he did not pursue any attempt to get names from Gemma now that he had those of two more girls who, if Gemma was telling the truth, would be able to answer that question, along with several others. Instead, Waters said, “It’s alright, Gemma. This is all helping us to look for Zoe, more than you think.’

  Smith saw the mother’s hand reach out and squeeze her daughter’s arm, and he knew why. He guessed what she was thinking – whatever her own girl had seen or done, she was still there, she could still be touched and hugged and reassured.

  Serena said, ‘Gemma, is this why Alana and Kristi didn’t say anything at school? They knew they’d be in trouble because of who they’d been out with? They thought their parents would find out?’

  ‘’S’right. It’s only havin’ a ride round an’ that. Everyone thinks the worst, don’t they? But they’re alright.’ Then the girl turned to her mother and said, ‘And they call themselves Pakis, so that ain’t being racist either.’

  A look passed between the mother and the female detective. As far as Smith could read it through the camera and its fixed point of view, the look from Serena Butler said, someone’s going to need to ask your daughter the question, and the mother’s silent reply had been, I know, but not now, leave it to me. It would in no way be to Christopher Waters’ discredit if he had missed entirely that particular exchange – it was probably something that was easier to see from a distance.

  Smith switched off the screen and stood up, returning his notebook to the familiar pocket. There was no-one in the corridor but in a minute or so, he calculated, the two younger detectives would be reporting their findings to Terek. A couple of minutes after that, the proverbial cat would be amongst the proverbial pigeons.

  Chapter Nine

  DCI Alison Reeve sent a message but she might just as well as have sent up a flare because Detective Superintendent Allen strode purposefully through the doorway of the operations room not five minutes afterwards. Reeve had called the remaining detectives together after hearing what Waters and Butler had to say but she had not begun to brief them, and Smith knew that was because she had anticipated the arrival of the superintendent. Wilson and his team had already left in search of CCTV – John Murray had remained behind and now sat alongside Smith. Terek was present, and so were Chris and Serena.

  Smith had lo
ng ago concluded that Allen was at his best when he was terrified of controversy – this was a difficult trait to manage upwards but just occasionally it was useful. Allen had immediately taken charge of the briefing that Reeve had arranged.

  ‘Now, let’s be very clear what we have here and what we do not. As I understand it, we have a girl who was spoken to by us yesterday at her school, who has now come forward with additional information. This includes the names of two more girls from the same school, who, according to the first girl, have told her that they saw Zoe Johnson at… Where was it?’

  Smith was holding a small sheaf of papers and pretended to look it up, demonstrating what a fine job he was making of managing the desk. Then he said, ‘At The Crescent, north-east of the town centre, sir.’

  ‘Good. But we do not yet know the time of this claimed sighting. It might or it might not be the last trace we have of the missing girl – I mean, if this supposed sighting took place before she sent the texts received by the other girl… There are too many girls in this business already. Smith?’

  ‘Gemma Powell, sir. It’s the same girl – the one who received texts from Zoe and who has told us what Alana Day and Kristi Hansen were saying after school yesterday.’

  ‘Right. Well, my point is we do not know the time of this sighting of Zoe Johnson, do we?’

  ‘No, sir, we don’t.’

  And the superintendent’s point would have been Smith’s point had he been sitting in that chair; in such investigations, timing and the timeline are of the essence.

  Allen said, ‘Establishing that is a priority, then. DCI Reeve?’

  ‘As soon as we’re done here, I plan to contact the head teacher again. We’ll ask for contact details for the two girls named by Gemma Powell. I’ll speak to their parents first and then we’ll collect the girls from the school and interview them here – separately, of course. By the time we get around to it they should be pretty shaken up – we shouldn’t have too many problems getting to the truth of it.’