Isolation

by Jay Nadal

  Scott saw a different side to McCormick. A side that few had lived to tell.

  “I’ll let this one go,” Scott nodded. “But the next time you’re in my face like this, I’ll have you banged up quicker than you can take a shit.”

  “Get your facts right, Inspector, before you come here again. And bring a warrant. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Do you think I did it? Do you think I waited over twenty years to kill a copper, or some old bint married to some drunken journalist? You’re fucking clueless.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But, you’re linked to the death of Ashman’s wife, and Golding. I also believe you’re connected to the death of Amy Harp’s family. She used to work at the care home. It was her job as a nurse to look after the welfare of the very same children being exploited by you. I swear before the end of today, I’ll have you.”

  McCormick snarled, as he nodded towards his security team.

  As they left, Scott heard the sound of breaking glass. McCormick rampaged through his lounge, venting his anger on the ornaments and glass sculptures that adorned shelves above his fireplace.

  44

  In the hours since Scott had been in bed he had woken six times. Not for long, but enough to break his sleep into unrefreshing chunks. With every disturbance came another theory or connection. A futile tussle of conflicting thoughts plagued him. His fatigued body craved sleep but his racing mind wouldn’t turn off long enough to allow it.

  He needed a rested mind. And yet his brain churned away in the darkness like a runaway motor.

  Resigned that sleep would not happen, he rose early…and exhausted. He felt the tiredness in his chest, in how he breathed. His thoughts dragged by in slow motion as he drove to work.

  Scott had dropped the USB stick with the high-tech team late last night. He needed its contents as a matter of urgency and hoped the results would drop into his in-box at some point this morning.

  A heightened energy surged amongst the team with everyone committed to uncovering the extent of the abuse scandal that had rocked the care home many years ago and had destroyed so many recent lives.

  Scott moved from desk to desk, reviewing information, collecting details and passing on further instructions. The team jumped in their seats when the doors to CID flung open, and Quinn burst in.

  His face mottled crimson, and his eyes large and furious, he stormed towards Scott. His spat out his words with the ferocity of a semi-automatic assault rifle. Without wiping the spit from his ashen face, he went nose to nose with Scott.

  “You fucked up.” His fuse simmered and fizzed like a firework in a chill autumn breeze, then he exploded with unrestrained fury, grabbing Scott by collars of his jacket.

  In that frozen stand-off Scott maintained his composure, and held Quinn’s wrists. Mike launched from his seat in Scott’s defence, wedging his sizeable frame between the two senior officers, pushing Quinn back. Quinn, not taking the hint, piled forward, pointing an accusatory finger in Scott’s direction. “You fucked up my operation,” he snarled.

  Abby, Helen and Raj, sat open-mouthed, unsure whether to intervene, as they watched two senior officers go toe to toe.

  “Scott! Quinn! Get your backsides in my fucking office, now!” Meadows bellowed from the doorway.

  The officers glared at each other as they sloped off in Meadows’s direction.

  Scott and Quinn hovered, their bodies rigid with unresolved rage as Meadows slammed the door behind them. The walls reverberated from the impact.

  “If I wanted to watch two grown men having a fight, I’d go to West Street on a Friday night at kicking out time. What fucking right do you have to storm into my CID, and verbally and physically attack another senior officer?”

  Quinn had crossed an invisible line offending Meadows in a way Scott had never seen.

  Quinn seemed to be fascinated with his shoes. Ragged gulps of breath lifted his chest and the hinges of his jaw turned white as he clenched his teeth together in a futile attempt to quell the anger and adrenaline that still consumed him.

  “And in front of my junior officers. You might be Billy Big Bollocks in the Met, but you’re nothing more than a detective inspector on my patch, and therefore I expect, and demand, a level of respect towards myself and my officers.”

  Quinn froze to the spot. Anger and embarrassment flooded his body in equal measures. “I’m sorry, Sir. My behaviour was inexcusable. I apologise unreservedly to you and to DI Baker.”

  Meadows paced from behind his desk, glaring at Quinn.

  “All it would take is one phone call and your career would be over. What the fuck was that party for?” Meadows asked pointing towards the door.

  Quinn stuffed his fingers in his pockets. “Scott went to see McCormick last night. We had intelligence to suggest that McCormick was personally going to attend a consignment being brought into the country last night.”

  “Consignment?”

  “Yes, intelligence suggested that six Albanian women were being brought in for financial gain, and sex. The destination was unknown, but we suspected that they would be taken to Bayswater, West London. There’s been increased activity from McCormick’s associates in the area.”

  “And how did Scott fuck that up?”

  “Because Scott went in there without checking with me first, and McCormick missed the rendezvous. As a result we’re heading back to London. We are ending our surveillance operation here.”

  “Well, I cleared Scott’s visit with CC Lennon, so that pantomime was unnecessary.”

  “Perhaps so, Sir. But we believe there’s a risk of a turf war brewing. We had a report last night about one of Quinn’s men found dead in a field just off the A23. His hands were tied behind his back with a cable tie, with a black hood over his head. He was shot in the back of the skull. It bears all the hallmarks of a gangland execution.”

  “You think McCormick is in danger?”

  Quinn shrugged. “It could be a revenge killing, or it could be the first attempt at taking down McCormick. It’s not uncommon to weaken defences first, since it leaves the prime target vulnerable and easy to pick off.”

  The potential threat to life, in this case McCormick’s, only added to the pile of priorities for Scott. After Quinn stomped away, Meadows assured Scott that he would look into whether they needed to advise McCormick of an imminent threat to his life. Scott could tell from Meadows’s tone that their job would become far easier if someone took McCormick out.

  If McCormick was removed, others would slot into place and take up where he left off.

  “Quinn was out of order having a pop at you like that in front of all of us. He showed a blatant disregard of rank.” Abby fumed as they walked through the doors of the council offices. “Meadows should have him kicked out. What a prick!”

  “I’d agree with you on the prick side. At our first encounter, I got the impression Quinn thought highly of himself. It didn’t bother me. It made him look an idiot.”

  “Well, you should have seen him leaving the floor. He came in to pick up the jacket he had thrown on the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to look at us as he left.”

  Scott saw it as nothing more than a disagreement between two officers. He had been in the job long enough to see more than his fair share of scraps between colleagues. A mixture of egos, politics, pressures of the job and a broken chain of command resulted in nothing more than a melting pot of emotions and stress.

  A slender man, in black trousers, and a blue check shirt approached Scott and Abby as they waited in reception. “I’m Joe Skinner,” the man said swinging his ID card around his finger on a lanyard. “I’m the archives manager.”

  Scott led the introductions. He had put him at no older than his early twenties, with brown spiky hair. His face bore the pockmarks of teenage acne. There was some pinkness to his complexion from the scars, with dark brown circles around his eyes, either from lack of sleep or poor nutrition.

  He led them to the lifts, which they took down to the basement before
snaking their way through a warren of corridors beneath the offices. He made small talk along the way, explaining that the call surprised him, and he didn’t fully understand the gist of what they needed. But he would be happy to cooperate in whichever way he could. Skinner unlocked a door and led them to a large, stuffy room with no natural daylight. Labelled boxes were stacked upon each other from floor to the ceiling.

  Pointing to one corner, Skinner confirmed the boxes related to employee and resident records for the care home. “I apologise in advance if you can’t find what you’re looking for, or the files are in disarray. Accounting procedures back then were archaic and basic, to say the least. I should imagine that you’ve got the details here somewhere, but I can’t guarantee how comprehensive they will be.”

  Skinner left his contact details with Scott before making his excuses and disappearing. A blanket of dust particles hung in the air and aggravated Scott’s sinuses as they shifted a few boxes. The sides of the boxes had been dated and broken into segments of the alphabet. Some boxes had been labelled ‘staff’ and others had been labelled ‘children’ or ‘families’.

  “What are we looking for?” Abby asked, pulling a face, as her fingers touched the dusty boxes. Abby hated a lot of things, dust was one of them. She spent every spare minute dusting her house. With dust, her OCD would kick in, and she would fly around the house, a duster in one hand, a can of Mr Sheen in the other.

  “A name.”

  Abby rolled her eyes saying, “Well, that’s helpful.”

  “We’re looking for anything that has Amy’s name on it. As well as anything that might look like a complaint, notes of interest, or even notes of concern.”

  “I assume that anything with Ashman, Golding or Anderson in the notes will be of interest as well?”

  Scott nodded, as he lifted the lid on the first box labelled children. He flicked through the contents, finding basic invoices, letters, photographs and thin Manila folders, one of which caused his eyes to widen. It was marked ‘residents – children’.

  He leant against a wall and opened the file. The first page in the folder contained handwritten notes on a young girl called Sylvia Martin, aged eight. Included was a grainy black-and-white image of her standing there in a small pinafore dress, a solemn face framed with a crude bowl-shaped haircut. She’d been at the care home for three years. Her parents had abandoned her and her younger brother. The younger brother had been sent to a different care home. Scott shook his head at the logic of such a decision. He thought it would have been better for both siblings to be close to each other at a difficult stage in their lives.

  He flicked through the file finding countless similar records of young boys and girls who had, through no fault of their own, ended up in a care home. Each photo stood out for one simple reason.

  Not one child was smiling.

  45

  Scott placed the file to one side before opening the next box. He found similar information inside but just a different year, with more soulless faces staring back at him. The following two boxes offered the same grim viewing. Despite looking at dozens of photographs, he had yet to find one child smiling. He couldn’t be certain, but the answers he needed were within these boxes.

  “Abby, organise a van to meet us here. There are too many boxes. We could be here for days, and we don’t have the time. We need more resources.”

  It took more than an hour for two uniformed constables, along with Scott and Abby, to transfer the boxes from the archives to the police van. Scott and the officers waited a further ten minutes for Abby. She’d washed and scrubbed her hands repeatedly until every last speck of dust and dirt had gone.

  Scott commandeered one of the training suites. By late afternoon, every bit of floor space was covered with box lids, stacks of paperwork, brown Manila folders and empty coffee mugs. The team crawled around on their hands and knees to separate the relevant from the not so relevant. Photos of children with tragic expressions plastered the walls.

  Helen sat in one corner hunched over a laptop punching in the names of each new individual file they discovered. Scott compiled a secondary list of the same names, more for his reference than anything else. He started reading each name as Helen checked the circumstances of each individual.

  John Buck, a lorry driver for DHL. Celia Davies, deceased, died aged nineteen, suicide. Annie Williams, deceased, died aged twenty-seven, suicide. Adam Franklin, a farmer in Devon. Christopher Shaw, deceased, aged thirty-one, suicide. Martin Taylor, bank manager, Norfolk. Olivia Walker, aged thirty-seven, reported missing twelve years ago.

  “These are just for starters,” Scott announced. “We’ve drafted in some extra officers and PCSOs. Separate the files out by timeline, corresponding to when they were at the care home. Look for anything out of the ordinary. How many of them were loners? How many claimed they were being abused or bullied? Cross-reference their records to see if Golding, Anderson or Ashman were mentioned.”

  Scott paced the room, stopping at various photographs. “Where are you?” he muttered as his eyes scanned the sorrowful faces.

  Pulling open another box, he sifted through the files of former residents. He glanced at each picture wondering if the face had been part of McCormick’s prostitution ring. Sorrow and sadness flooded his mind. The care home set up to protect them but morphed into nothing more than a fertile breeding ground for McCormick’s twisted desires.

  The care home was becoming the linchpin to his investigations. What Scott needed now was the motive.

  Each file presented the same gloomy picture of downtrodden, soulless children. A massive task loomed ahead. Scott spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trawling through the files. A resident wasn’t the term that sprung to mind. They were children in desperate situations, in dire need of support and love. The harsh reality befell them less than mirrored their hopes and dreams.

  Scott’s team and the uniformed officers, knelt, hunched or sat in silence absorbed in the files. Each was analysed in fine detail, the reader picking apart the small and often incomprehensible details, looking for keywords, phrases or descriptions that would suggest deeper investigation. The volume of information meant that each file needed to be reviewed by two separate officers to ensure that they missed nothing.

  Scott ordered the officers to take a break when food arrived. He’d ordered in a large delivery of pizzas and kebabs, which they hungrily tucked into like vultures feeding on a carcass.

  Scott took a few moments alone to walk around the room, his eyes darting from one image to another as he picked through his chicken sheesh. Helen had placed seven photos of former residents on a noticeboard. Each photo depicted an image of a girl no older than her late teens.

  “These are the residents we’ve identified as having criminal records for soliciting,” Helen offered as she joined Scott alongside. “I just figured that if McCormick had groomed girls into prostitution at the care home, then there’s a possibility that some may have continued into their late teens and beyond.”

  “And they have charges for soliciting whilst at the care home?”

  Helen shook her head as she wiped her mouth with a napkin. “No, Guv. The ones here were charged with soliciting after they had left. I’ve started to contact them.” Helen tapped one black-and-white image on the board. “Christine Lamb. She’s in Sussex County of all places. I spoke to her flatmate. Christine has been assaulted by her pimp. I’m going to finish up here and head over before it’s too late.”

  “Good call. Keep me updated.”

  Scott’s phone vibrated in his pocket. As he grabbed it, the screen lit up, and Cara’s name popped up. “Hi, babes. How’s you?”

  “I’m good, Scottie. More to the point, how are you? I was expecting to see you over an hour ago.”

  Scott slapped his forehead with his free hand. “Shit, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot to call you. I’m bogged down at work. I’ve got the whole team staying late tonight, and I’ve drafted in other uniformed officers to hel
p us go through the boxes dating back over twenty-five years. Remember that care home I was telling you about?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, it’s all the residents and employee files from back then.” Scott could hear Cara’s sigh. “I’m sorry, babes. I’ll be back later. So don’t wait up for me.”

  There was a hint of dejection in Cara’s tone. She understood the pressure but looked forward to spending the evening with him.

  Scott groaned and pulled his shoulders back to relieve the tension burning in his back. They were up to more than two hundred files on former residents, growing larger by the minute. He would work for a little longer before calling it a day and sending the team home for a few hours’ rest, before starting again.

  He picked up another file as his weary body slumped into a chair. Another grim, sad face stared back. Christopher Green. He punched the boy’s name and date of birth into the computer, and two potential hits came back. He scanned through the details before identifying the correct file for Green who lived in Basildon, Essex.

  Scott printed out the details, before repeating the process with Angela Abbott who lived in Cardiff, Patricia Lewis who lived in Macclesfield and Wayne Jackson who lived in Eastbourne.

  46

  Scott tiptoed into the house in the early hours of the morning, careful not to wake Cara. His body needed to rest yet his mind compelled him to move, to burn the anxiety out. Exhausted, and too tired to eat, he fell asleep in an instant.

  He hated waking and peeling himself away from Cara’s naked form. He had curled in behind her last night, draping his arm across her, and relishing the warmth of her back pressed against his chest. Showered, and bleary-eyed, he planted a soft, loving kiss on her forehead as she slept. Yet again, he would make it up to her once the case ended. When he had a spare moment, he’d look up the details of rental cottages in the Cotswolds. A few days away from work would do them both good.