by Wes Markin
‘I estimated because I can’t be sure of the exact time.’
‘Yes, but two witnesses are sure. The librarian said that you asked her to call the police at twenty-four minutes past, and Jessica Hart said you arrived back at twenty-five minutes past.’
Rushton grew paler. ‘So, it was ten minutes?’
‘You told me it only takes thirty seconds to walk to the toilet, and you ran back. What happened during those ten minutes Mr Rushton? And you must be completely honest with me now.’
‘I called my wife before I went to the toilet. I’m sorry, it slipped my mind with everything that happened―’
‘Do you often leave your classroom to phone your wife?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So, why today then?’
‘She’d phoned three times.’ He paused to sigh. ‘Something was wrong. I didn’t really have a choice.’
‘So you used Paul Ray’s disappearance as an excuse?’
‘Yes, but of course I didn’t realise he’d actually disappeared.’
‘Can I see your phone log?’
‘Yes,’ Rushton said, hoisting his phone out. He showed Yorke the three missed calls from his wife between eleven and eleven fourteen; he also showed his return call to her which began at eleven sixteen and finished at eleven twenty-one.
‘What was the emergency?’
Rushton looked down at the table. ‘It wasn’t an emergency, she was angry.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s personal, can I not keep it that way?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
He sighed. ‘My wife’s friend saw me having a drink with Jessica Hart last night at a pub after work.’
‘Was the drink innocent?’
‘Not really,’ Rushton said, and sighed again. ‘We kissed.’
‘You’re having an affair?’
‘Not as such, we’ve only kissed. Too much to drink I think.’
‘Jessica’s engaged to be married?’
‘Yes. That’s why she wanted me to keep this information out of the interview. Will her fiancé find out?’
‘I don’t know, but right now, that is not a concern. Will you come to the station and make a statement?’
‘Am I a suspect?’
‘As I said, you discovered the crime scene, you are important. I hope you can continue helping us.’
‘Of course. I’ll go.’
‘DC Willows will take you.’
Yorke found a quiet spot to contact HQ and request background information on Simon Rushton and Paul’s parents. Rushton was clean, but he suspected this would be the case – to work in this school, he’d have to have had a sparkling Criminal Records Bureau check. He’d had a very eventful career in the army, but was well decorated, and highly regarded.
Joe Ray had never wanted for anything. The pig farm run by his grandparents had made a fortune. He’d invested his inheritance on an expensive little shop in town which sold colonial styled furniture imported from China and lived in a cottage which was worth over half a million.
Yorke joined Gardner back in the room with Paul’s parents. Sarah was still tearful; Joe still looked angry.
‘I need to know if there’s anyone that has a problem with you. Any annoyed customers? Neighbours perhaps?’
‘No,’ Joe said. ‘We’ve always kept a low profile in that way. We prefer not to be as boisterous as some of my relatives were.’
‘Still, it will be worth you compiling a list of recent customers.’
‘You think Paul has been kidnapped?’ Sarah said. She had an annoying habit of polishing the screen on her phone over and over again with her sleeve.
‘It’s a possibility. A customer, someone who knows you, may be aware of your wealth.’
Her eyes widened.
‘So, the best thing is for you to consider all the people that may be capable of doing this. Mrs Ray can you think of anyone who has acted suspiciously around you lately, or might bear some kind of grudge?’
‘She doesn’t know anything,’ Joe said. Yorke noticed the aggressive tone in his voice.
‘Maybe, it’s best if you let your wife answer?’
‘She’s upset, and this is going to make it―’
‘Ask my husband about his girlfriends,’ Sarah said.
Yorke heard Gardner’s chair squeak as she shifted position.
Joe turned to his wife. ‘Sarah ...’
‘Don’t you dare start pleading, you bastard! Our son is missing. Go on, ask him, Detective, ask him about his girlfriends.’
‘Mr Ray?’
‘Some minor indiscretions―’
‘Minor!’ Sarah said and then snorted.
‘There’re a couple of incidences I’m not too proud of―’
‘A couple!’
‘How many affairs have you had?’ Gardner said.
‘He won’t even remember,’ Sarah said, standing up. ‘Excuse me for a moment.’ She walked out of the room.
Gardner turned to call after her. ‘Mrs Ray, it’s better─’
Yorke touched Gardner’s shoulder. ‘Let her go.’
Joe said, ‘She’s exaggerating of course. Recently there have been two. Chloe Cox, a parent of one of Paul’s friends, and Amie Yao, my Chinese interpreter at work. But I can tell you now, those women have nothing to do with this.’
‘Are they married too?’ Yorke said.
‘Chloe is.’
Gardner said, ‘You said you were keeping a low profile. Does her husband know?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Well, we’ll have to speak to him,’ Yorke said. ‘I need a list of all the women you’ve had relations with.’
They could hear Sarah Ray crying outside.
‘She needs your support right now,’ Gardner said. ‘Not this.’
‘You don’t understand - she’s been ill for such a long time, it’s been difficult.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Yorke said.
‘OCD. She’s disgusted by germs and cleans continually. It isn’t good for Paul to see, it always upsets him. It upsets me.’
No wonder she has OCD with you having all these affairs, you dick, Yorke thought.
‘Does your son know about these women?’ Gardner said.
The vein next to Joe’s mole began to throb again. He looked up at the ceiling, gritted his teeth for a moment and then looked Yorke straight in the eye. ‘He caught me in the office, just last week, with Amie ... kissing.’
‘And?’
He chewed his bottom lip for a moment and then said, ‘He threatened to run away.’
Outside, Yorke said to Gardner, ‘Rushton, and now Joe Ray! Does no one believe in the sanctity of marriage anymore?’
‘I do,’ Gardner said, popping another tic-tac.
Yorke smiled. ‘Good. So, what’s your take on all this?’
‘Like you, I think it’s too elaborate a set-up for a twelve year old. But, we can’t rule out the possibility that he’s run away, especially after what he saw his father doing.’
‘If he is on the town path, or sitting by the river, I want to know as soon as possible, before this investigation escalates any further.’
He phoned Jake, who had returned to the reception area to assist the officers with calming parents. He quickly brought him up to speed.
‘I want you to escort the parents back to their house. Arrange for an FLO while you are there, but the priority is to look over Paul’s room thoroughly. If he’s run away, Jake, we need to know, quickly.’
‘Okay, sir.’
His phone beeped. He looked at the message. Hi DCI Yorke, Martin Price in the reception, the press are already gathering like wolves. They know a child is missing. I need to talk to them, and quick.
Martin Price was the senior Wiltshire County police public relations officer.
‘Emma, Martin Price is in reception. I would like you to brief him. Have him tell the press that we suspect truanting and that the boy has run away. No doubt they wil
l have heard about the blood, but tell Price to neither confirm nor deny it. It is likely the press will question the scale of an investigation for a boy who has only just run away, but we’ll have to keep them in the dark at the moment regarding all the peculiarities. At least if the story hits the press, the boy will be found sharpish if he’s just hiding out.’
‘Okay, sir,’ Gardner said.
Yorke looked at his watch and saw that it’d gone two. Paul Ray had been missing for almost three hours. He stood by the taped line, waiting for Lance Reynolds, who was managing the SOCOS, to give him an update. Ahead, he saw the Exhibits Officer, Andrew Waites, recording all evidence onto his clip board, narrowing his eyes, occasionally tugging on his wispy white sideburns.
Reynolds came over. ‘Okay, we’ve already matched the bloody footprints leading from the door to Rushton’s shoes, but we’re still working on the muddy ones on the toilet seat. They’re not as clear. We have sampled the mud, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful on this.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’d need a sample from the area of origin to work with for comparison. The comparison would be good evidence; it would consider animal waste, pollen and other factors. But the other option isn’t great. It would take weeks, possibly months, to work backwards and identify the origin of the sample.’
‘Are there fingerprints around the message?’ Yorke said.
‘There was nothing around the message, but we lifted the fingerprints from the bloody handprints.’
‘Rushton claims he steadied himself against the sink, they’re probably his.’
‘We’ve also lifted some faecal matter from inside the toilet bowl, which has already been sent back to HQ along with a sample of blood and the mud.’
‘Good, anything else?’
‘Not yet, but we’ll keep at it.’
‘Thanks.’
Yorke caught up with Topham outside a classroom. ‘Any witnesses yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Topham said. ‘Officers are moving from classroom to classroom. A few students have come forward to say they saw Paul Ray walking quickly past their room toward the school toilets, and that they saw Rushton running back covered in blood, but no-one has given us anything we didn’t already know.’
Yorke’s phone rang. It was Jake.
‘Talk me through the room, Jake,’ Yorke said.
‘Typical teenager’s room. Cans of deodorant, creased magazine posters. He’s obsessed with Chelsea football club; his walls are painted dark blue and his duvet is covered with caricatures of the players. There are a few Doctor Who pictures, but the most common posters are of Frank Lampard, Chelsea’s midfielder.
‘On his bookshelf, he has a lot of sci-fi books; he has all of Asimov’s Foundation series – I loved those books myself as a kid. I’ve looked through his drawers and cupboards, clothes, board games. He has a laptop which is password protected, and his parents are not aware of the password, so I’ll bag that up.’
‘Anything else.’
‘No ... hang on―’
‘What?’
‘A Chelsea calendar with today’s date circled, he’s made a note ... Frank Lampard interview, five PM.’
‘TV or radio?’
‘It doesn’t say what show, just the time.’
‘Hopefully, that interview will bring him home. Is the FLO there yet?’
‘Bryan Kelly has turned up.’
‘Good, he can continue probing the parents. I need you back here to manage your officers searching out CCTV footage. I would also like you to contact the station for me and have Rushton put his statement on record.’
‘Okay.’
He turned back to Topham. ‘I want to start setting up an incident room and I want you to manage it, okay?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘We’ll grab Emma from reception, where she’s briefing Price, and I’ll get Iain to manage the officers moving from room to room hunting witnesses.’
Challenging the meteorologists’ predictions, the snow continued its heavy assault on Salisbury. Yorke, Gardner and Topham stayed close with arms folded as they marched through a crowd of parents being held off by ten uniformed officers. The parents paid them little attention, but the three members of the press recognised Yorke, and they started to advance on him.
He managed to get to his beige Volkswagen Beetle before they caught him, but he still swung around and said, ‘Martin Price will brief you in a moment. Thank you.’
He climbed into his car, while Gardner and Topham got into the police issue Lexus beside him.
His phone rang, he looked at the screen.
Harry ... that was quick.
He sent him through to voicemail. There was too much going on right now without throwing Harry and emotion into the mix.
2
FORTUNATELY, YORKE’S BROODY Beetle was in one of its better moods today, and maintained its distinctive, contented hum as the air cooled its engine.
Shortly after three, Yorke finished the run up to Devizes. He went and sat in a large incident room and took an update by phone from Jake.
‘PolSA still haven’t turned up anything in the cathedral or the school, the SOCOs are still working the bathroom hard, my officers are looking over the CCTV footage from the local area, but have nothing yet.’
‘Thanks Jake.’
Yorke looked around. The incident room was as white and sterile as a hospital operating theatre. Whiteboards, lining the far wall, had been polished by an overenthusiastic cleaner. Soon, the official name of the incident would be scrawled across the top of it in DI Mark Topham’s handwriting, jagged like electricity.
Yorke noticed the table reeked of varnish. He longed for the older, grittier incident rooms with sharp-cornered tables, distributing their huge splinters.
He heard the rattling of a teacup against a saucer behind him and turned to smile at Wendy, a Management Support Assistant.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking hold of the saucer.
Topham came into the room. Across the top of the central whiteboard, he scrawled the words, ‘Operation Haystack,’ a random incident name which the computer had churned out.
‘Well, that doesn’t inspire optimism,’ Yorke said.
It took Topham a moment to get the joke. ‘Well, we’ve found tough needles before.’
Yorke smiled. ‘True.’
DI Emma Gardner came into the room next, followed by Jeremy Dawson from HOLMES, looking young enough to be on work experience from a local secondary school. He greeted everyone and then started setting up his laptop.
Yorke looked down at his notes and said, ‘Everybody in the school will be given an opportunity to come forward with anything they’ve witnessed. I have Simon Rushton at Salisbury Station preparing a statement. Following the disappointment over the school’s lack of camera footage, CCTV from the surrounding area currently remains our best shot at finding out where Paul went. DS Jake Pettman has DCs interviewing the two women Rushton claims to be having an affair with to see if this event can be connected to their husbands in any way. FLO Bryan Kelly is with the boy’s parents and will be gathering a list of all the women Joe Ray has had an affair with. PolSA and the SOCOs are still working the area. We’ve thrown a lot at this, and if the boy does turn up at five PM to watch his favourite footballer on the TV, we are going to look very stupid.’
‘But in this instance, looking stupid would be a good thing,’ Gardner said.
Yorke nodded while waiting for Dawson to finish furiously tapping on the keyboard. ‘Anything to add?’
Gardner shook her head.
Topham said, ‘Do the Rays have a lot of money?’
‘I’m not sure about disposable income, but they have a healthy business and a good property.’
‘If the boy has been kidnapped though, couldn’t the kidnapper have chosen a more lucrative target?’ Topham said.
‘I hear what you’re saying, Mark, that’s why I’m leaning towards the idea that someone is just pissed off at him.�
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‘The bloody message they left would then make some sense,’ Gardner said.
Yorke and Topham nodded.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ Topham said.
Divisional Surgeon Dr Patricia Wileman walked in, her eyes were wide. ‘We’ve tested the blood, it’s not human.’
Yorke leaned forward whist Patricia screwed her face up in disgust. ‘It’s pig’s blood.’
Jeremy Dawson stopped typing and the room went silent.
It took Yorke a few minutes to collect his thoughts. ‘Having pig’s blood all over the bathroom floor is more than a coincidence. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the name Ray has been linked with pig farming. Whoever took Paul, if he has been taken, is leaving these messages on purpose,’ he paused to let everyone draw the obvious conclusion, ‘every person who has ever had a problem with the Rays needs to be identified ASAP.’
‘That will be a long list,’ Gardner said.
‘And one that would include Harry,’ Topham said.
The room went quiet again.
‘You know Harry as well as I do,’ Gardner said to Topham, narrowing her eyes. ‘And you know he hasn’t got a malicious bone in his body.’
‘True,’ Topham said. ‘But we have to consider it.’
Yorke gritted his teeth as he thought of the phone call from Harry he had ignored earlier. This had the potential to get very messy. ‘Mark’s right, Emma. You know as well as I do, grief does horrible things to people, especially when it involves violent death.’
Yorke’s phone rang, the number was unknown. He answered it.
‘Sir, it’s Lance Reynolds, we have another interesting result.’
‘Go on.’
‘The faecal matter splattered in the toilet bowl has been tested for a very high dose of saline laxatives. At a normal dose, saline laxatives can take half an hour to three hours to work, but this kind of dose can go to work a lot quicker.’
‘Is it possible that Paul could have taken this laxative during his break, between ten forty and eleven, causing the onset of diarrhoea at two minutes past eleven?’
