by L M Krier
At least it gave them a bit of respite for Jo to start ADRs on the team and for Ted to go over the case files they had to date to make sure he had all the available information at his fingertips.
He’d arranged to use the downstairs conference room to accommodate the larger than usual numbers. He wanted his full team there, with the exception of Virgil. He was leaving him free to pick up anything else which came in. Océane was working on the phones which had now been recovered near the point at which the victims were last seen.
Maurice was in and would go back to the hospital after the briefing. Both he and Darren’s mother were getting anxious because the hospital staff were making noises about discharging him. They felt they were close to doing all they could for his physical injuries and he had so far refused to have anything to do with anyone from the psychiatric unit.
Darren was still saying little, even to his mother. He hadn’t spoken directly to Maurice, apart from repeating his own nickname, but Maurice’s presence didn’t seem to produce the same level of panic which the appearance of a male psychiatrist had done. He would still sometimes fall asleep holding on to Maurice’s hand, clearly finding some comfort with him there.
DS Streeter had come over from Lincolnshire, bringing Nigel, the maker of bad drinks, with her. DS Groves from Humberside was present, with a DC he introduced as Ruth Fleming. She’d been involved in family liaison with the parents of their victim, Robbie Mitchell, so would bring valuable first-hand knowledge of him and his background.
Two Uniform officers from Preston, who had handled the disappearance of Darren Lee, had also come, Sergeant Janine Walsh and PC Alfie Ridgeway.
Ted had expected either Jim Baker or Superintendent Caldwell, possibly both, to sit in, but the two of them had been called away to yet another budgetary meeting up at Central Park.
Ted called the briefing to order and welcomed the visitors.
‘Thank you all for coming. I confess to being the old-fashioned sort who likes to meet in the flesh at least once. After today we should be able to manage any joint briefings via video link.
‘I think if we all pool what information we have and compare notes, we might have a much better chance of making some progress. I’m particularly looking for similarities between the cases. If we can establish a pattern between them, it might help us going forward.’
He’d started a whiteboard, with photos of the three young men, their names and details, plus the dates of the cases, clearly showing the six-month intervals.
‘So, can we list similarities and differences, please. And we’ll need a scribe. Rob? Your handwriting is usually legible. For our visitors, these briefings are informal, a place to kick ideas around. Please feel free to put in anything which comes to you, as and when. And don’t worry that it might sound far-fetched. Let’s face it, we’ve got the possibility of 666, the Number of the Beast, being relevant, so I think it’s safe to say anything goes.’
‘The ages are around the same, boss. Two were seventeen, Tim Phillips was sixteen when taken, seventeen when found.’
‘From their photos, they look quite young,’ Jezza said, studying the pictures on the board. ‘You could perhaps take them all for fifteen, going on sixteen.’
‘They’re all nice looking boys, too, sir,’ DS Streeter commented. ‘Now I see the other two next to our Tim, it’s striking.’
‘Sir, you mentioned that Darren Lee had been to a gay bar the night he went missing. I rather clumsily said to you previously that Robbie’s parents had some doubts over his sexuality. DC Fleming was the one who spoke to them at length. Ruth?’
‘Sir, we never really established much about that side of Robbie’s life at the time. He was last seen by his friends at a club in Hull, but not a gay club, so that question never really arose. After the Sarge said you’d brought up that subject, I went back to talk to some of his friends again, to explore that angle a bit more.
‘Robbie was a really nice lad, according to everyone who knew him. And he was a very good friend. He wasn’t gay, but one of his close friends was. There’d been some trouble in town with attacks on young men going to gay bars and clubs. Robbie arranged for a group of his mates always to hang around with the one who was gay to make sure nothing happened to him.
‘So yes, he was going to gay hang-outs, but not for himself. He seems to have been quite shy and reserved. He wasn’t seeing anyone in particular, just going out in a group of friends, although there was apparently a girl at his school he used to sit and talk to sometimes.’
Ted looked at the two officers from Lincolnshire.
‘What about Tim Phillips? Do we know anything about his sexuality?’
‘It didn’t really come up in our enquiry either, sir,’ DS Streeter told him. ‘Tim went missing after an evening out at the cinema with friends, a group of boys and girls from the same school. He wasn’t with anyone in particular, but they weren’t all in couples. Tim was younger than the other victims, sixteen, and he barely looked that. He’d have had problems getting into even some of the less particular pubs and clubs looking that young and without ID.’
Ted nodded. ‘Good point. Thank you. Is that significant? The fact that these boys all looked younger and were all quite strikingly good looking? What did Tim’s mother say about him? Did she know if he was seeing anyone?’
DS Streeter gave Nigel a nudge with her elbow as she said, ‘DC Willis was lucky enough to talk to the mother. Definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer, sir. More interested in going out drinking and playing bingo than making sure Tim was all right.’
‘Sir, yes, the mother is known to us. She has a couple of public order offences and wasn’t the best parent the lad could have had, especially as a single parent. It was never going to work, sending Tim home to live with her when he was as damaged as that. She’d never really been able to cope as a mother and by all accounts, Tim wasn’t a bad lad. He was doing surprisingly well at school.’
‘So that’s another similarity between the three boys. All good students, not in any trouble. Can you flag that up, please, Rob? Darren’s interest was fashions, wasn’t it?’
The two Preston officers nodded and the sergeant put in, ‘Very good at art and design, hoping to go on to college to take it further, sir.’
‘And other than him going to gay bars, what else did you find out about Darren?’
‘Not involved with anyone in particular. His friends said he was a bit of a flirt, but definitely interested in boys rather than girls for dating. He was close friends with some of the girls he was at school with though, sir.’
‘Robbie, DS Groves? What were his academic interests?’
‘Music and the arts, sir.’
‘And Tim?’
‘Engineering, sir. His ambition was to join the Navy to learn it as a trade.’
Ted was studying the board, trying to see what might link the three victims directly.
‘Now we know we almost certainly have three victims of the same attacker, we need to look at what other connections there are between these three. Did they ever meet? Have their paths crossed? And did their abductor get to know them through some shared interest they may have had?’
‘Social media, boss,’ Jezza put in. ‘If there’s anything on their phones about which ones they used, Océane might be able to find the common denominator. I’ll flag it up for her. Laptops, too. The viewing history would give us a clue if the three had any common interests. Have they been examined? Perhaps they were into World of Warcraft or something, like our Steve.’
Ted looked at the officers from Preston, Lincoln and Humberside.
‘Laptops? Were they examined at the time, and did they reveal anything? And can we get them couriered over here, please, as soon as. We’re lucky enough to have a CFI on site so we might as well make good use of her. She may find things which a summary search overlooked.
‘So, back to the phones. All three were dumped, it seems. Luckily all three were found, against the odds. Tim Phill
ips’ one probably because it had been left in a churchyard, so it was less likely to be picked up and pocketed.’
‘Robbie Mitchell’s was, too, sir,’ DS Groves put in. ‘It was found on a shelf in the porch of a church not far from where he was last seen.’
‘There’s one of your biggest connections then, sir,’ Sergeant Walsh put in. ‘Darren’s phone turned up at a church and was handed in. It was actually inside the church, left on a pew.’
Ted frowned, looking at the information Rob was writing up on the board.
‘Why haven’t we picked up this link before? Is the church the factor which links all three of them to their attacker?’
‘Sir,’ Steve sounded more hesitant than usual, with strangers present. ‘This really will sound far-fetched. But with the 666 link suggesting something Satanic, surely the abductor wouldn’t be frequenting churches to leave the phones there? Certainly not going inside one.’
‘But why would the victims themselves finish up at a church after their night out, and why would they leave their phones behind?’
‘Boss, perhaps the church is the link, though? Some kind of church organisation? Something which might see them going to an event where they could all have met?’ Jo Rodriguez suggested.
‘Were any of them religious in any way?’
Blank looks all round. Then DS Groves spoke.
‘With respect, sir, it’s not the kind of question that tends to get asked in a Missing Persons’ enquiry, unless someone disappeared from a church.’
‘It was a question, not a criticism, DS Groves. But now we have a possible link, can we please look into it, everyone? Find out if any of the three of them attended church or any kind of activity connected to church or religion.
‘DS Groves, you might be able to help us. Would there be some sort of activity which could conceivably have seen three of them, from three different areas, meet up somewhere?’
‘Yes, sir, it’s possible. There are various youth movements connected to churches. Scouting, Rangers, that type of thing springs to mind. And they often have area meet-ups, camps, all kinds of things. Which also gives the possibility of the abductor being involved. A Scout leader, perhaps?’
‘Right, everyone, that’s another important angle we need to look at, please. Someone the three of them might know. Or at least someone whose appearance wouldn’t give them any cause for concern, so they might willingly go off with them.’
‘The most obvious person with the church connection would be a vicar then, boss,’ Mike Hallam suggested. ‘Or at least someone wearing a dog collar and looking like one.’
‘Then why the 666, the Number of the Beast?’ DS Groves asked.
‘Because he thinks the lads are sinners? Perhaps he thought they were all gay and was trying to cure them. Some of the injuries inflicted appear to be similar to the kind of things you hear of being done on these gay cure programmes.’
‘I take it we’re assuming the abductor is a man? I have to confess I’m struggling to imagine a woman inflicting injuries like these on young men. Will you be getting a psychological profiler in, sir, to give us more of a clue?’
Ted gave a wry smile. ‘My team will tell you, DS Groves, that I’m not big on the idea of psychological profilers.’
There was a small ripple of mirth from Ted’s team members. They knew he had always resisted the idea of bringing in anyone like a profiler to work on his cases.
‘I will, of course, do anything which I think might advance our case, within our budget. So as I said what we need to do is to find the principle link, the common denominator between these three young men.’
Ted walked over to the whiteboard as he spoke. ‘It’s quite a wide area, geographically, so the internet is the likely place to start. But we also need to be thinking of someone who might have had contact with all three of them. The Scouting suggestion is a good one. A vicar isn’t grabbing me quite as much, unless someone can give me a reason he might have met up with three people over such a wide area. What else? We’re missing something.’
‘A careers advisor?’ DS Groves suggested. ‘My kids are too young yet but do they still have such people who visit the schools?’
‘A concert, sir?’ Steve suggested. ‘We know Robbie liked music. Océane will be able to see from their laptops what their musical taste was. Perhaps they’d all met up at a gig somewhere at some point? And possibly met their abductor there at the same time?’
‘The three of them may never have met up, but all three could have met their future abductor at something like that,’ Jezza put in.
‘We need to find that link,’ Ted stressed. ‘Let’s start again with background checks on all three victims, see if we can’t find some places in their lives where there’s an overlap. Thanks, everyone, I think we’re done here. Please keep me informed at all times of any new information, and we’ll catch up via conference call before the end of the week. Megan, could you please show our visitors where they can get a coffee before they go back? And Sal, have you got a minute, please?’
As soon as they were alone, Sal started to speak.
‘Boss, I know what you’re going to say and I’m sorry. I should have checked, when I phoned Preston and Humberside, where the phones in their cases had been found. We should have been on to that link much sooner and I missed it. I can only apologise.’
‘It’s not like you, Sal. You’re the last person I would expect to miss a detail like that. Is everything all right? Anything I should know about?’
Sal was one of his most meticulous officers. He’d worked in Fraud before joining Ted’s team and never usually missed a single detail.
‘Nothing, boss. It was just a slip. It won’t happen again.’
‘See that it doesn’t, please.
While he was downstairs, Ted decided to put his head round the door of Inspector Kevin Turner’s office for a quick catch-up. He found no one there. He was about to go to see the Ice Queen to let her know how the joint briefing had gone when he heard voices from her office which told him where Kevin was. He could hear through the closed door that Kevin’s voice was rising, cut across by the lower, measured tones of the Super. He couldn’t hear what was being said and he didn’t want to lurk in the corridor eavesdropping. No doubt Kevin would be straight on the phone to him when he took his leave to have a rant about whatever it was that had caused such a heated debate.
Ted had just had time to make himself a green tea and drink half of it back in his office when his desk phone rang. He expected it to be Kevin. Instead it was a royal summons – his turn to be called to the Super’s office to hear whatever she had to say. He would have liked to find out first from Kevin what was going on but she made it clear she was expecting him immediately.
Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be good news, he thought, as he gulped the rest of his tea then made his way down the stairs.
‘Come in, Chief Inspector.’
Her formal greeting set the tone. Ted instinctively knew that whatever she had to say was not going to please him. He waited to be invited to sit down. She didn’t offer coffee. That of itself meant this was something serious.
‘I won’t beat about the bush. Superintendent Baker and I, as you know, have been at Central Park discussing budgets yet again. I must say at the outset that this is no reflection on you or your team. But cuts have to be made and so far you have escaped. Not this time, I’m afraid. We both fought long and hard to plead your case and were at least successful in damage limitation.
‘Nevertheless, your team will have to be reduced by one Detective Constable and I’m afraid the decision as to who that should be is up to you. In addition, your CFI and her very expensive computer are to be transferred up to Central Park. A centralising of resources. You will, of course, still have access to her skills, but no longer exclusive use of her talents. You’ll have to join the queue like everyone else.
‘Superintendent Baker and I really did the very best we could for you. You could easily have los
t your DI or one of your sergeants, which would have been a bigger saving. We managed to limit the cut to one DC, which was a small triumph.
‘I am going to need your decision by end of play tomorrow. You could see if anyone is interested in transferring voluntarily to another division which may have a vacancy, or even to another force. There is also the possibility of an attractive redundancy package for someone with sufficient length of service.’
‘You mean Maurice, ma’am? He’s the only one with enough years for that to apply to. You know why I want to keep him on the team. You’ve seen at first hand what he can do. He’s invaluable at the moment with the Darren Lee case. He’s the only man Darren has shown any connection with at all. You want me to get rid of him?’
‘Believe me, Chief Inspector, it could have been a lot worse. And I would suggest you don’t complain to Inspector Turner until you hear what he is facing in terms of cuts to his uniformed officers and CSOs. I understand why you want to hold on to DC Brown but our hands are tied. Someone has to go. It’s your team, so the decision as to who that will be has to be yours, and it needs to be made quickly. Rumours will soon start flying round the station and it’s not fair to your team members to leave them with uncertainty hanging over them as to who is to go.
‘It’s not an easy choice to make, but I would suggest you start from the point of what the ADRs show up in terms of personal development and performance. Try to analyse which team member contributes the least to performance overall, rather than to focus on individual skills.
‘As I said, I need your decision by the end of the day tomorrow. These changes need to come into force as soon as possible. Your CFI will be transferring on Monday. She is aware. She’s been informed by HR so that is at least one task you won’t have to undertake.
‘But I do need your decision by tomorrow, or sooner if at all possible. Thank you, Chief Inspector. That will be all.’