A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Allen nodded his approval before saying, ‘As you know, I have already spoken to the local media. They are reporting it as a teenager going missing, that’s all. It will be mentioned on KLFM this morning and there will already be a post on the community Facebook page. We do not need to release any further details at this stage – I hope that is clear to everyone.’

  He might mean me, thought Smith – he’s never been convinced that I had nothing to do with the press acquiring certain details about Captain James Hamilton after we arrested Petar Subic. In his day, Allen probably wasn’t a completely useless detective. But what Allen was worried about here was the leaking of the mention of young Pakistani men taking teenaged white girls for rides around Lake late on a Monday evening. That was a fire risk and the detective chief superintendent was right to underline the dangers.

  Allen said, ‘Good. What else? Do we have someone out at the Johnson house? What’s the domestic situation? What do we know about the girl’s mother?’

  Terek said that family liaison in the form of Ann Crisp was back there this morning. Emotionally, the circumstances in the home seemed to be exactly what one would expect – nothing had aroused Ann Crisp’s suspicions at this stage. Allen asked about the absent father and fortunately Terek had been told enough by the liaison officer for Smith to maintain a diplomatic silence concerning his meeting with Penny Johnson the previous evening.

  ‘The girl’s mobile phone account, then. Where are we with that?’

  There was an awkward pause. DCI Reeve looked at DI Terek who looked at DC Butler, and Smith thought, don’t try to land this on Serena, Simon Terek, because you’ll regret it if you do. She had only done what she had been told this morning and interviewed Gemma Powell instead of chasing the phone record.

  Terek said, ‘We’re in the process of getting a look at that, sir.’

  ‘I see. What about social media? Does Zoe Johnson have Facebook?’

  ‘I – yes, we believe she does.’

  ‘We believe so? Don’t we know for certain, Detective Chief Inspector?’

  This was a mess, and in uncovering it Allen was only doing his job properly for a change. There is a reason for the chain of command and for the hierarchy that has evolved – a detective inspector tells his sergeants what needs to be done and the sergeants work out the best way to do it with the people they have available. Wilson had done this correctly that morning, and his team was out doing essential work; Terek had taken Smith out of the loop over the past two days, and this was the result.

  Alison Reeve said, ‘Yes, we do know for certain, sir. I think that will be Chris’s next job this morning. And Serena will be getting access to the phone records right away.’

  It was Terek’s most awkward moment since he arrived at Lake a few weeks ago – the dream start he had made in leading the teams that arrested Peter Vince and Johnny Fisher for the murder of Bernard Sokoloff was in no-one’s thoughts this morning. In this job, you’re not even as good as your last case – it’s the one you’re in the middle of that counts.

  The superintendent raised his eyebrows and looked around the table. He did not catch Smith’s eye directly but the thought might have been there – that only one detective here had direct experience of the true weight of responsibility that comes when a girl has gone missing, and when you have been given the task of finding her. A long time ago, of course, and no doubt under very different circumstances, because there was no reason to think the worst here. But Smith had been in the dreadful situation of hearing that another young woman hadn’t come home last night, and knowing with awful certainty that someone would find her body out in the dunes in a few days’ time unless he managed to catch the man responsible. Only Smith had felt the extraordinary pressure of deciding where to place his next piece, knowing that a life might depend on the choice he was making, that for some innocent the wrong choice might mean that it was game over.

  Allen had nodded and left without another word. This was bad for DCI Reeve as well. She said to Smith, ‘Have you got this now?’, which was brutal in front of Terek and his junior officers, but that’s how you have to be sometimes. Smith said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and began to lay out the notes in front of him. Then she said to Terek that they could talk in her office, and they left the room as well.

  Murray said, ‘Is it me or is it warm in here?’

  Smith said, ‘Warm, John? I thought it was a bit chilly…’

  And then to Serena, ‘Everything you can get on Zoe’s phone, on my desk within the hour. When we get these girls in, we’ll get parental consent for their phones as well, which should speed things up. We might not need to look at those, but we’ll get it ready, just in case. Chris, Zoe’s Facebook page, shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. Also, while you’re at it, make a start on the other girls’ pages, they’re bound to have them. You know what you’re looking for – any mention of Zoe or these lads they hang around with. Anything at all that we can use in the interviews to let them know we’re serious. John, give it ten minutes and then remind Alison – sorry DCI Reeve – that she needs to ring the school. It shouldn’t take longer than that to dismember a DI. Then organise two marked cars to collect the girls – they do not come in in the same vehicle. Find two good WPCs who know how to put the wind up them without giving anything away. Now, the canteen staff need our full support at this difficult time. Who is fetching the first refreshments?’

  No request to access the content of Zoe Johnson’s mobile phone texts had been made but under the RIPA regulations they could see the data for the two messages she had sent to Gemma Powell on Monday evening, along with the dates and times of earlier texts and calls that she had made – though in common with most other youngsters, Zoe had rarely used her phone to make phone calls. The second message to Gemma was the last activity on the mobile, according to the screen that Serena Butler had studied before summarising the results for Smith.

  When he asked her to check again that the phone was not pinging away somewhere, she told him that she had already looked for that – it wasn’t, and that meant it was, at the very least, turned off. But she had a time for the last trace, and that was interesting; Zoe’s phone had been registered as still being switched on in the north of Kings Lake at 21.44 on Monday the 4th. Typically, phones connect to the nearest mast every few minutes, so it was a reasonable assumption that someone had turned the phone off shortly after that time. Why, Smith had said. Who turns their phone off, apart from dinosaurs like me who think they can save the battery or something? Teenagers never turn their phones off, do they?

  ‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘that we don’t have a way of turning these devices back on, isn’t it?’ but unfortunately Waters overheard this.

  ‘With the right software installed, that’s already possible. What’s the model?’

  Serena told him and he shook his head – ‘No, sorry. Won’t apply in that case.’

  Smith took a long look at Waters before he said, ‘Thanks for that. Really useful.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Where had that ridiculous phrase suddenly appeared from? Smith was hearing it everywhere. You ordered a coffee in a café, thanked the girl for serving you and she said it was no problem…

  Smith said, ‘Are there any problems with the social media dimension to all this? Because it seems to be taking you longer than usual. You’ve been at it for almost ten minutes.’

  Waters was spreading his long fingers in some odd combinations across the keyboard and the laptop was making clicking noises.

  ‘No, just getting some screenshots. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, not on a first glance. It’s the usual lots of friends, lots of likes competition. Zoe doesn’t post much herself but she visits plenty of others’ pages. Alana Day is busy every day, Kristi Hansen not so much. Impossible to say if there is anyone nasty lurking about but we could track down all these contacts if we had to. Take hours, though. We’re not at that point, are we?’

  ‘No, thank God. P
ray that we’re not in the future as well. Any other observations?’

  ‘No mention of the boys in question, but Alana has lots of stuff only friends can see.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’m sure that after this morning’s interviews, you can send her a friend request. Talking of which, I think I can hear fairy footsteps in the corridor.’

  John Murray entered the room and headed for Smith’s desk.

  ‘They’re both downstairs, DC. Has the DCI had a word with you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Mrs Hansen’s here with her daughter. Mrs Day is not. When Reeve called her up, she said she hoped we’d scare the – well, putting it more politely, scare the living daylights out of her kid. She said, if we wanted to keep her in, she’d bring a change of clothes tomorrow.’

  Smith looked around at them all and said, ‘Oh, I see. Message received and understood then.’

  He wrote things down on a couple of the pages of notes in that small handwriting, and three pairs of eyes were watching. No-one did that any more, made hand-written notes. It was quaint, an anachronism, but none of them smiled or even considered doing so, because it worked.

  ‘Right. If there is a concerned mother involved she needs to be both reassured and charmed. John and Chris, sort out who’s going to do which bit and then talk to Kristi in Interview One. I’m taking Serena in with me in case things turn nasty with Alana. A video of me trying to subdue a female teenaged delinquent could find its way onto YouTube and I might go viral. We’ll be in Interview Two, in case we need to consult.’

  Waters said, ‘Are you serious about the video, though?’

  Smith nodded and said, ‘Yes, record it. If anything is said about what else they got up to on Monday night, I want to be able to hand it over to Allen and let him deal with it. Sorting out the complexities of multicultural policing policies is way beyond my paygrade, and I’ve only got three weeks left anyway. I can only do so much.’

  When the four detectives compared notes after the interviews, Smith voiced the idea that John Murray might be facing the charge of wasting police time – even though the two schoolgirls had been brought to Kings Lake Central in separate cars, their stories were remarkably similar. They were similarly vague about the identities of the two young men with whom they had spent an hour last Monday evening and even similarly vague about the car in which they had spent it. Both girls thought it was probably a blue one. Alana Day said that one of the boys might have been called Muhammed – Mo for short – which seemed like progress until Smith pointed out that this had been the most popular boy’s name for babies for some years in the UK and there was no reason to doubt it had been fairly popular in the Pakistani community for quite a while before that.

  When asked where they had been driven, both girls gave a variation of ‘Just around town’, and when Mrs Hansen demanded to know how long this had been going on, her daughter shrugged and said that she didn’t keep a diary and it wasn’t that big a deal anyway, but maybe they had been around with those boys half a dozen times.

  Waters had said to her then, ‘But they’re not really boys, are they Kristi? They’re older than you and Alana.’

  The girl seemed quite pleased that he had pointed this out and took it as a compliment.

  ‘Not that much, they’re still at college. It’s not like what you hear about in the news, they’re not dirty old men or nothing. And they don’t drink, do they, s’gainst their religion, so you don’t even have to worry about them drink-driving.’

  This last was directed at Mrs Hansen, whose response was a slight shake of the head and a mute appeal to the older detective to do something or say something. But John Murray said, ‘Kristi? You know these boys go to college, you know they’re Moslems but you don’t know their names?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Alright. Take us through what happened on Monday from the beginning again, leading up to when you saw Zoe Johnson. Take your time, don’t miss anything out.’

  ‘Again. But I just…’

  Murray was a great believer in the old adage that drops of water will wear away a stone.

  Alana Day was a slight, pretty, red-haired girl with an air of vulnerable innocence which immediately had Smith on his guard – there was a significant mis-match between what he could see in front of him and the attitude of the girl’s mother, who really had not turned up at Lake Central to sit with her daughter. He made no attempt to get further information about the Asian boys and perhaps that was why this interview was in the end the more productive one. It was Alana who had first spotted Zoe in The Crescent, standing at the burger van – she had pointed this out to Kristi who had also had a good view of the younger girl.

  Smith had asked, ‘What time was that?’ and Alana had been sure enough that it must have been half past nine – she had to be home by ten or she’d be grounded again she’d told the boy driving and sure enough he had dropped her off at that time.

  ‘And did Zoe see you? Did she give any sign that she had?’

  ‘No… But she did, you could see she did, you know? Gave us that long stare, like she was saying, look at me getting chatted up.’

  Serena said then, ‘Is that what was going on? Did it look as if she was being chatted up by the man in the burger van?’

  The girl gave them a half-mocking smile, and Smith’s sympathies went out momentarily to the missing Mrs Day – this one was seven and a half stones of trouble if ever he’d seen it.

  She answered, ‘Can’t say that, can I? Could’ve all been in her head.’ And then to Smith she said, ‘You know what these young girls are like.’

  Something seemed to have caused DC Butler’s hackles to rise a little.

  ‘Zoe Johnson is about one year younger than you.’

  ‘I know – I can remember being that age. Girls like that get desperate for attention, don’t they?’

  After watching this brief exchange, Smith had decided it was time to intervene.

  ‘Alana, did you see an actual conversation? Were Zoe and the man talking to each other or was it one-way?’

  ‘No, they was talking. He was laughing and that. He might have been chatting her up.’

  ‘What was Zoe wearing?’

  The girl closed her eyes as she pictured it – something that Smith had often seen good witnesses do.

  ‘Sort of dark-coloured coat, might have been dark blue or green. Didn’t see no hood on it. Jeans and trainers, white probably or mostly. Light-coloured trainers anyway.’

  ‘Gloves?’

  Alana looked surprised that he would ask that but she answered definitely enough – ‘No, I could see her hands when she was eating the burger or whatever she’d asked for.’

  ‘So she stood at the stall and ate. Was there anyone else around?’

  ‘Not that I could see. There was some taxis parked up in front of us, but there usually are in that place. We was only there a couple of minutes.’

  This all has the ring of truth, thought Smith. Then he said, ‘You’ve been helpful, Alana. When you heard the appeal for information at the school, why didn’t you tell someone then? It would have saved us some time.’

  The girl shrugged it off.

  ‘I wanted to talk to Kristi first. Probably would’ve said something today but somebody dropped us in it, didn’t they?’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it. But I advise you not to go looking for that person or trying to make anything of it. Zoe’s disappearance is a serious matter now.’

  Alana Day nodded and Serena said, ‘Also, it would help us if you don’t go posting anything about what we’ve said this morning. Too much chat can make it more difficult for us to be sure who saw what and when.’

  ‘Yeah, alright. Can I ask a question, though?’

  Smith said, ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Do I have to go straight back to school?’

  Chapter Ten

  Whatever took place in DCI Reeve’s office lasted more than thirty minutes instead of the ten that Smith had pred
icted. When Terek returned, there was nothing to be read on his face. He acknowledged Smith across the room, sat at his desk and wrote some sort of note before opening his screen and reading several pages of something. Smith ignored the twinge of sympathy and moved on – he had himself incurred not a few bollockings over the years and considered them an inevitable part of a job in which there are so many moving parts that failure from time to time is unavoidable. If he was made of the right stuff, the detective inspector would get over it.

  They could not be far away from the moment when either Reeve or Allen would march through that door, call a briefing and ask where we are with all this, so that was Smith’s immediate focus. And the reason he was certain this would happen was simple – Zoe Johnson had been in the Railway playpark, and then she had been in The Crescent at nine thirty or thereabouts. After that she had disappeared. The area between the two places consisted of a disused railway line running through a patch of urban wasteland and scrub. There would need to be a search, a proper search this time, and that was a major operation involving dozens and maybe scores of officers. There would be media interest and the entire operation would go up several notches because everybody knows that at that point you’re not expecting to find a live girl playing hide and seek under a hawthorn bush.

  He had put Waters onto Roy Green and Serena onto Stephen Sweeney, telling them to start from the beginning to make sure that he, Smith, had missed nothing. John Murray had been given the job of taking the two girls back quite deliberately; once out of the building and together in the same car this time, it was possible that the girls would say something new that might be of value without realising it, and Murray was exactly the sort of quiet presence to make the most of that. He would also speak to the school’s principal and brief him on the state of the investigation into the Zoe’s disappearance.