by BL Pearce
Instead, they’d set out to prove Arina had indeed been kidnapped by her Iranian father and smuggled out of the country. The evidence of this, in Rob’s opinion, was heavily circumstantial. He’d never have signed off on it.
On a whim, he called Tessa Parvin. She answered straight away.
“Good Morning, Mrs Parvin. Would you be able to meet me at the site where your daughter was kidnapped tomorrow morning? Yes, in Bisley. I’d like to see it for myself.”
Tessa readily agreed.
“Okay, great. Shall we say eleven o’clock?”
Tomorrow was Saturday, and technically he was not working, but in investigations such as these, the days blurred into each other. He figured he’d take the morning off and check out the route Arina Parvin took home from school that fateful day four years ago.
Next, he texted Jo and asked if she’d like to come along.
“Hell yes,” she responded, which made him smile.
“What is this?” DCS Lawrence burst through the door, newspaper in the air.
Everyone’s head whipped up.
“They know about Anthony Payne. How the hell did they find out about him?”
Their arrest outside the gallery hadn’t exactly been low key, but as far as Rob knew, no one had alerted the press as to who he was.
Lawrence smacked the newspaper down on Rob’s desk.
Known Sex Offender Arrested, screamed the headline.
Rob picked it up. “A confidential police source confirmed that known sex offender Anthony Payne has been arrested in connection with Katie Wells’ abduction,” he read aloud.
“Exactly!” fumed Lawrence. “Someone from this department leaked Payne’s arrest to the press. Now it will be all over the dailies. Christ, the man could sue us if he’s innocent.”
“I don’t know how this happened, sir.” Rob glanced at his team. Everybody appeared as shocked as he was. There were no guilty looks or shifty glances. “I don’t think it’s one of my team.”
“Well, someone bloody leaked it,” roared Lawrence, stomping toward his office. “I want that person found and suspended until this investigation is over. We plan our press releases so things like this don’t happen.” He went inside and slammed the door.
A deathly silence fell over the squad room.
Finally, Rob stood up and addressed everyone in a low tone. “I don’t for a minute think any one of you had anything to do with this,” he began. “But if you do know something, now’s the time to speak up. I’ll do what I can to mitigate the consequences.”
Nobody replied.
Mallory glanced at the room where the hotline operators were still busy taking down details from callers. The day shift had begun two hours ago. “Were all the civilian operators vetted?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Jenny, who’d been in charge of hiring them. “As much as we could on such short notice.”
“Understood, Jenny,” said Rob. “Ask Vicky Bainbridge to get hold of The Daily Mail and find out who their source is. Tell her to offer them an exclusive once we know who kidnapped Katie. That should do the trick. If not, we’ll have to start questioning them, and we don’t have time for that. I need all hands on deck. Katie is still missing and until we have her safely back home or in a body bag, we are not giving up. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” chorused the team as Jenny scuttled out to talk to Vicky.
Payne’s chubby solicitor was up in arms about the newspaper article. “This will ruin my client’s reputation and his business,” he shrieked, waving The Daily Mail in Rob’s face.
“I’m sorry about that,” said Rob through gritted teeth. “The leak is being dealt with.”
“My client is going to claim compensation for this.”
Rob nodded warily. “Unless he’s guilty, in which case the only place he’s going is prison.”
Chubby didn’t like that. Rob left him huffing and puffing and marched into the interrogation room where Payne was waiting. Mallory walked in behind him, case file in hand. They had less than two hours in which to charge or release him.
“How did you sleep?” Rob sat down opposite the sex offender. Despite the uncomfortable holding cell, he seemed well rested and confident.
“You’ve got nothing on me,” he sneered, ignoring the question.
Rob glanced down at the list Jo had emailed through containing the residences Payne had lived in over the last five years since his release from prison.
“Where did you live once you got paroled?” he asked the suspect.
Payne frowned, surprised by the question. “Um, Croydon. That’s where I grew up, so that’s where the council placed me.”
“You know the area well?”
“Yeah, I guess so. What’s this about?” He stared at Rob as if he were trying to work out the angle, but Rob gave nothing away.
“Did you know that while you were living in Croydon, a young girl called Rosie Hutton went missing?”
Payne swallowed. “No, I didn’t know.”
“Yes, she disappeared on her way home from school on the tenth of November 2016. She was twelve years old.”
Payne didn’t reply. He simply watched Rob with wary eyes.
“You moved to Guildford in 2017. Is that right?” Rob enquired.
Payne nodded.
“And while you were there, a young girl called Elise Mitcham disappeared on the way home from school.”
Rob watched him for a reaction. He’d gone very pale.
“You can’t pin those on me. I had nothing to do with those girls’ disappearances.”
“So you say,” murmured Rob.
“You owned a white Ford Transit van,” stated Mallory. “Registration LP03 8JR. Can you confirm that was your vehicle?”
He gave a small nod. “I worked as a delivery driver when I got out. What’s wrong with that?”
“Would you say you knew the greater Surrey area fairly well?” Mallory asked.
“Yeah, so what?”
“It would be easy for you to kidnap unsuspecting schoolgirls with a van like that, and hide their bodies around the county,” Rob cut in.
“What? No. I haven’t kidnapped anyone.” He glanced at his solicitor. Panic in his eyes.
“Detective, this is a fishing expedition and you know it. My client hasn’t done anything wrong. You’ve kept him here for nearly twenty-three hours. I think it’s time you made a decision. He’s been through enough.”
It killed him to admit it, but the solicitor was right. They had nothing linking Anthony Payne to Katie Wells. He didn’t own any property, his vehicle hadn't appeared on any of the ANPR cameras, and even though he’d disappeared off CCTV for an hour at the exact time of Katie’s disappearance, they couldn’t prove he was anywhere near her house or school.
The fact that he’d lived in the nearby vicinity of two other missing girls meant nothing. So did a million other people. A fact his defence team would not hesitate to point out.
“Okay, Mr Payne, you’re free to go, but you’re still a person of interest in this case, and we may need to talk to you again.”
His solicitor thumped Payne on the back. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Rob shot them both a dark look as they exited the room.
24
Bisley Common was forty-six hectares of protected woodland, grassland and heath.
Rob and Jo met Tessa Parvin in a dirt layby on Stafford Lake Road, the pedestrian entry point where Arina and her friends would have begun their walk.
The secondary school they’d attended was two blocks away. Arina’s friends would be sixteen now and in their GCSE year.
Tessa Parvin climbed out of her car, flushed and jittery. The wind whipped her messy cloud of black hair around her face. She grasped Rob’s hand. “Thank you, detective. I can’t believe someone is actually taking Arina’s case seriously for once.”
Rob nodded. He was operating purely on gut instinct here. There was nothing linking the two cases other than her, a
nd the somewhat nebulous fact that Anthony Payne had lived in the general vicinity four years ago.
“This is my colleague, Jo Maguire,” he said. Jo offered a bright smile.
He left out that she worked for the National Crime Agency and that she was less of a colleague and more of a girlfriend. Did one even say that at their age?
“How old was Arina when she went missing?” Jo fell into step beside Tessa. There was nothing awkward about Jo. People warmed to her and Tessa Parvin was no different.
“She was twelve,” she gulped.
“And this would have been her exact route home from school?” Jo confirmed. Rob had briefed her on the way over, and she’d had a quick look at the case files he’d printed out from the database so he could study them at home.
Tessa said that it was. She stared at the ground as they trudged along a well-worn footpath towards a wooded area up ahead. Tall grass and shrubs brushed their ankles, buckling in the wind. The heath changed from ochre to gold and back again as the gusty waves swept over its surface.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Jo mused. Rob picked up the scent of pine on the warm breeze. A small herd of deer huddled in a cluster, all facing the same way. He’d always wondered why they did that?
The footpath took them into the woods, weaving between pine trees, ancient oaks and holly. It was protected from the wind, although they could still hear the manic rustling of the branches above them.
“It’s thicker than I thought,” said Rob. From the map, the wooded area hadn’t looked all that large, but it was surprisingly dense. It would be easy to lie in wait and not be seen.
Jo caught his eye; she was thinking the same thing.
They pressed on until they came to a fork in the road.
Tessa paused. “This is where they would have split up,” she said. “The other girls live on that side of the common, so they would have gone that way around the lake. Arina would have walked on.”
“Lake?” asked Jo.
“Yes, I think it used to be an old quarry. It’s more of a deep pond actually.”
“Let’s carry on then.” Rob strode ahead, his head turning from side to side like a homing beacon. He could hear traffic and knew the road was close by, but on this section of the footpath, Arina would have been invisible. Anyone could have grabbed her and dragged her into the surrounding bushes.
A hundred metres later they emerged onto a winding road. It was busy, cars rushing downwards through the green tunnel of trees. The woods didn’t end here, the road had simply been carved through the trees.
“What’s on the other side?” he asked.
“That’s a school,” Tessa told him. “A private boy’s school. Arina used to go around the back to get home, she was too shy to walk past the front.” Her eyes glazed over with memories.
Jo touched her arm. “Do you want to show us her route home?”
They waited for a gap in the traffic. There was no hard shoulder, but there was a slim dirt verge where a vehicle could pull over if necessary. On the bend, it was a dangerous place to stop.
When there was a break, they darted across. A high wall flanked the pavement, behind which was the school.
They took the first right and walked around the school. Then they turned left and two hundred metres after that, Tessa came to a halt.
“This is it.”
In front of them was a neat, red brick, double-storey terraced house. Tessa stared at it, unmoving.
“I’m sorry, this can’t be easy for you,” Jo said.
“I haven’t been back here since…” Her words petered off.
“Thank you for showing us.”
Rob glanced back the way they’d come. “Arina could have been snatched at any point from the fork in the footpath to here.”
Tessa nodded. “That’s right. But there are security cameras mounted on the wall surrounding the school, and the footpath is the most likely spot.”
He’d seen one camera at the start of the road, but not any others. He’d make sure to pay more attention on the way back. The entire walk had taken them twenty-five minutes.
“Did Arina walk back home through the common every day?” Jo asked.
Tessa shook her head. “Not in winter when it was dark. She took the bus, then. It went around the common but dropped her at the bus stop outside the boys’ school.”
It was a pity she didn’t take the bus that day. But it had been a warm, summer evening. Late July, if he remembered correctly. The temperature would have been similar to what it was now, in the first week of August. Warm, humid with a light breeze, perhaps.
They walked back past the school. There was a second camera, but it was hidden from view by a tall Scots pine, which was why he hadn’t noticed it earlier.
“Did the police check the CCTV footage, do you know?”
Tessa shrugged. “If they did, they didn’t tell me.”
That wasn’t unusual. The police didn’t share their methods with the victim or the victim’s family.
“They might not have, considering they assumed Arina had been kidnapped by her father,” Jo pointed out.
His thoughts exactly. That was something he’d ask DCI Purley when he spoke to him next.
“Is this road always this busy?” Rob asked.
“Only in the morning and evening, and on Saturdays,” Tessa said. “It’s a shortcut to Woking and the A3.”
Rob frowned. “When Arina was coming home from school, that would have been about…?”
“Three-thirty,” supplied Tessa. “She didn’t have anything on after school that day. She did computer club a couple of times a week, which ended at five, but not the day she went missing.”
Three-thirty. The traffic wouldn’t have started building by then. The kidnapper could have parked on the dirt verge and hidden in the woods, waiting for Arina to walk past. Alone. Unguarded.
He suppressed a shiver. What kind of man lay in wait for a young girl like that? How twisted did he have to be?
“Did Arina mention anything suspicious in the months or weeks leading up to her disappearance?” Jo wanted to know. It was a good question, and one he hadn’t thought to ask himself. Most victims knew their attackers.
“No, I don’t think so.” Tessa wrinkled her forehead.
“No problems with friends or boyfriends? Any teachers giving her a hard time, or problems at school?”
“Nothing like that. She was a good, hardworking girl. She got good grades and didn’t mix with boys. She was still too young for that.”
Twelve was a bit young for boys.
“You mentioned she didn’t have much of a relationship with her father,” Rob said. “Was that something she found difficult?”
“What do you mean?” Her voice was sharp. Defensive. Rob met Jo’s eye. It was a rather extreme reaction to a fairly simple question.
“It must have been difficult having a father who, in your own words, didn’t care about her because he wanted a son.”
She kept her eyes glued to the footpath. Dry twigs cracked underfoot, the echo making it sound like someone was following them.
“It wasn’t ideal, but they were civil to each other. Ramin often worked late, so Arina would be up in her room or doing homework by the time he got back. They didn’t speak much.”
“Still, it couldn’t have been easy for her,” commented Jo. “Did she ever talk to you about it?”
Tessa shrugged. “Once, when she was little. I tried to explain, but what can you say that won’t hurt their feelings? When she grew older, she understood.”
That still didn't make it right.
They emerged from the woods out into the open heathland. Jo breathed a sigh of relief. The sun was high in the sky, the clouds wispy and fragmented, blown apart by the wind. She turned her face upwards, absorbing some of the warmth and shaking off the gloom that had enveloped them.
Rob did the same. There was definitely something creepy about those woods.
“I think she was abducted in th
ose woods.” Rob turned onto the A3 back to London. “I want to check that camera footage from the school.”
“If it’s on file,” added Jo. “They may not have requested it.”
Rob grunted. That would have been a serious oversight, in his opinion.
“I wonder if they searched the woods for her school rucksack?” he said, thinking out loud.
“Even if they did, they may not have searched the lake.” Jo glanced across at him.
He slowed down behind a lorry. “I can’t authorise a search of the lake,” he said. “This isn’t my case. I shouldn’t even be here.”
“What if it is the same?” she said. “What if Katie, Arina, the others, they’re all connected?”
“Unless I can prove that, I can’t get Arina’s case transferred. Besides, Lawrence would go apeshit. You know how he feels about serial murders. I’d never hear the end of it. For all we know, Arina could be safe and sound and living in Tehran.”
“I’ll get hold of my contact tomorrow,” Jo said with a renewed sense of urgency. “One way or another, we have to find out whether that girl is still alive.”
25
On Sunday afternoon, Rob got a call from the duty sergeant informing him that Jo was in the lobby. He told the officer to let her up. She appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed casually in jeans and a white shirt.
He greeted her with a smile. “What brings you here?” She didn’t usually arrive unannounced.
Evan and Harry were working silently on their laptops, along with two other members of Galbraith’s team. The rest had the day off.
They were monitoring Anthony Payne’s movements. According to the tail, he hadn’t deviated from his usual routine. He’d worked on Friday, but after the press arrived at the gallery, he shut up shop and vanished out the back. The tail had picked him up again at his car, and followed him home to his flat in Putney, where he’d been hunkering down ever since.
“I’ve heard from my contact in Tehran,” she told him. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
They went into one of the small, soundproof offices, used for meetings about things that were too sensitive to be said out in the open.
