by C. S. Barnes
‘May I?’ Edd asked, gesturing toward an empty chair at the table and Mrs Gregory gave a curt nod of approval. He positioned himself opposite Eleanor who, so much for her excited demeanour the first time around, looked tired, troubled even. The young woman refused to make eye contact with Edd and he wondered what had changed from the first talk to this one. ‘Everything okay, Eleanor?’ he asked, his tone gentle.
The young woman looked up. ‘Has something else happened?’ Her voice cracked halfway through the sentence and, as though sensing her daughter’s need, Mrs Gregory appeared with a glass of water for her child. Eleanor sipped at the drink before speaking again. ‘I mean, have you found something else?’
‘Sort of. We’ve found some things on Jenni’s computer–’
‘The search terms?’ Eleanor cut across him, showing the enthusiasm that he recognised from their previous encounter, albeit a fraction of what it was.
‘Something else. There are conversations between Jenni and someone.’
‘Who?’ Eleanor snapped without missing a beat.
‘That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us. Do you know of anyone she was talking to online, maybe? Or even someone at college who she spoke to a lot via the net, anything like that?’ Edd asked, cautious not to put words in the girl’s mouth but conscious that teenagers sometimes needed the grown-ups to do the thinking for them.
Eleanor seemed to really consider this before answering. ‘I can’t remember her mentioning anyone, no.’
‘Is that all then?’ Mrs Gregory chimed in, no sooner had her daughter answered.
‘Not quite,’ Edd said, addressing the mother before turning back to the daughter. ‘How would you feel about coming down to the station again? We’ve got some things we’d like for you to take a look at, and we can have a chat in the interview room.’ Edd was mindful of his tone slipping into toddler territory, taking on the same level of patronising that he typically only reserved for Emily when she was being especially difficult. He straightened himself up a touch before continuing. ‘Your mother would be there as well, of course.’
‘Does she have to do this?’ Mrs Gregory asked.
‘We’re not charging her with anything, if that’s what you mean,’ Edd replied, knowing that it wasn’t at all what the girl’s mother had meant, but also knowing what the impact of mentioning charges would be. When he looked back to Eleanor, she was still downcast, and Edd couldn’t help but wonder what had prompted such a change in just a few days.
‘Honestly, DS Carter, I think Eleanor has been through enough recently.’
‘I understand that, I do,’ Edd said, standing to address Mrs Gregory directly. ‘But if we stand a chance of catching Jenni Grantham’s killer, we’re going to need Eleanor’s help. I’m sorry to put her and you in this position.’ He wasn’t sorry at all, and as for putting Eleanor in this position, she seemed to have previously enjoyed the excitement of being in a police station, so Edd had to hope that when she returned to the interview room, the same engagement that they were gifted with the last time would reappear.
Both mother and daughter swapped a guarded look. Eventually Mrs Gregory asked her daughter: ‘What do you think, El, are you up to it?’
In a bid to offer additional support – or rather, encouragement – Edd chimed in again. ‘We’ll be bringing Patrick in as well, so it’s not like you’ll be going through this on your own.’
The colour from Eleanor’s face drained, as though someone had uncorked her. She looked hard at Edd for a second, her eyes narrowing while a redness crept up from beneath the collar of her jumper, slowly spreading across her neck and up to the back edges of her cheeks. She gave her head a firm shake before turning to look at her mother, and when Edd followed the young woman’s stare, he found her mother’s expression was also one of confusion. Eleanor looked from her parent back to the officer in front of her and stammered, ‘P-Patrick? You mean, you’ve found him?’
DC Brian Fairer stood at the front door of the Nelson house, straightening out his tie while he waited for someone to respond to his second knock. Before his knuckles could make contact with the door for a third time, someone pulled it open with a curtness that startled the officer. In the doorway there stood a middle-aged man with bags for life beneath his eyes and a thin layer of grease forming over the front of his hair, and it crossed Fairer’s mind that he might have the wrong house altogether.
‘Mr Nelson?’ the officer offered, half-expecting denial from the man.
‘Are you with the police?’ Despite the man’s physical abruptness, his tone was much softer, with a hint of desperation that Fairer hadn’t been anticipating. ‘Do you have something? Is there news?’
Fairer was taken aback. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t–’ he started but Mr Nelson cut across him.
‘You’d better come in.’
The man disappeared into the house and from the open door, Fairer watched as he walked through the second doorway on the left side of the hall.
When seconds had passed, it seemed unlikely that the man would make a miraculous return so Fairer followed him in, closing the door behind him and following the steps into what turned out to be the living room. On the sofa, the man sat with his arm around a woman – one who Fairer thankfully recognised as Mrs Nelson, from his previous attempt at coaxing Patrick out of the house. The woman was clearly distraught, her face pock-marked with small patches of red, meanwhile tears continued to run down her face quicker than she could catch them. She looked up to Fairer with the same unexpected desperation that he’d noted from her husband. Mrs Nelson opened her mouth as though to speak but a dry croak emerged, followed by a fresh bout of tears.
Fairer rubbed at the back of his neck, scanning the room for clues of what the hell was happening here. He crossed the room to the other sofa and lowered himself down onto it, to sit face to face with the troubled couple. Despite his desire not to look like a total amateur, Fairer had to come clean.
‘Mr and Mrs Nelson, I’m afraid I’ve walked into something that I’m not sure about here.’ He paused, adjusted his tie, and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘In the Major Incident Team, we’re not always kept up to speed on day-to-day cases and I’ve got to hold my hands up and say that it looks like there are some crossed wires, or missed steps, or – well, something,’ he said, running out of filler phrases. ‘The reason that I’m here is actually to talk to Patrick, if he’s feeling better. We could really use him at the station this evening.’
Mrs Nelson looked at Fairer with a wide-eyed expression before succumbing to another wave of tears. She pressed her face against her husband’s chest and pulled his arm tighter around her, as though she were seeking physical protection from Fairer’s questions. Meanwhile, Mr Nelson showed no such need for protection; his cheeks were bloated with air and his face reddening, and had he not been holding his wife then Fairer would have been preparing himself for a fist-fight of some description by now.
Holding in his frustration, to some degree, Mr Nelson managed to force out: ‘Are you taking the piss?’ His tone rid of the earlier desperation, replaced by annoyance, and hurt. ‘Jesus Christ, are you all sitting about with your thumbs up your arses? Too busy to find a missing lad, too busy to solve a murder?’
Fairer pulled back, as though recoiling from the words. ‘A missing lad?’
Mrs Nelson cracked, lifting her head from her resting pose and said – or rather, shrieked: ‘Patrick. Our lad. Our Patrick. Missing!’
Fairer shot Mr Nelson a panicked look before letting his eyes drop down to the man’s wife, who had collapsed back into her earlier position. The whole situation dawned on Fairer in a vicious wave: the early desperation, the hope of news, the tears, the bags, the tension…
Patrick Nelson was missing.
27
Melanie slammed her empty mug down on the desk as though she were dropping a gavel. ‘This is utter bollocks.’ Superintendent Archer looked taken aback by the DI’s outburst, but she did nothing to stop the
flow of her junior officer once it had started. ‘You knew we were running a murder investigation up there, you knew that kids from the college were involved, one of the victims, in fact, and you keep something like this to yourselves?’ Melanie unleashed her frustration on DS Ken Fern from the Missing Persons department, who simply sat there and took the criticisms as though he had been expecting them from the off, which made Melanie all the more irritated. ‘My men looked like total arses out there yesterday–’
‘That’s not unusual though,’ Ken cut across her, speaking for the first time and leaving Melanie wide-eyed and tight-lipped as she tried to hold in a cutting comeback.
Superintendent Archer leaned forward in her seat, as though preparing to physically put herself between the two officers. ‘I think that’s quite enough,’ she said, before another insult could be launched. ‘Fern, you know you were out of order on this,’ she said, leaving a beat of silence as though she expected a response despite not having asked a question. When Fern didn’t offer an answer, Archer pushed, ‘Or do you think your actions were justified?’
The DS paused, as if weighing up his options before answering. ‘With all due respect, Ma’am, you’re giving us a bit too much credit for how malicious we’ve been here. It’s a young lad who’s done a bunk from his parents and as for the murder link, a lot of kids go to that college. I don’t think it’s as much of a personal attack from my team as Watton, DI Watton, seems to be taking it.’
‘He’s best friends with the murder victim,’ Melanie added, her voice taut.
‘Obviously if we’d known that–’
‘Which you would have done, had you made us aware of the report that he was missing.’
‘We’ll go in circles on this all day, officers,’ Archer refereed again. ‘Fern, whether it was intentional or not, you’ll hand over everything that you’ve got to DI Watton and her team, assuming that you do have something.’ Melanie smiled at the cutting remark, but DS Fern seemed not to have even noticed it. ‘Whatever case file you’ve put together, I want the Major Incident Team to have it before the morning is out.’ She looked up to her clock. ‘That gives you an hour, and if you can’t do that, you’ll be back in here by the afternoon.’
‘The whole case?’ Fern asked, clearly taken aback by the request.
‘Problem?’ Archer replied, her attention already breaking away to the paperwork that covered her desk in a patchwork pattern.
‘A little problem, Ma’am, yes, it’s a Missing Persons’ case.’
‘Not anymore it’s not,’ she said, lifting a single sheet of paper for closer inspection. ‘Now it’s MIT, and you’ll respect that decision, and you’ll have the folders ready within the hour. Or…’ She trailed out and glanced to Fern for him to provide the missing words.
‘Or I’ll be back in here by the afternoon.’
‘Bingo.’ She set the sheet of paper down and picked up another. ‘You’re excused.’
Melanie and DS Fern stood from their seats but Archer eyed Melanie with a raised eyebrow. ‘You’re staying, there are things to discuss.’ Melanie deliberately didn’t look at Fern; she knew the expression he’d be wearing would be one of smug judgement, and she had no patience for it.
When he’d seen himself out of the room, closing the door with a firm bang, Archer gave Melanie her full attention. ‘Where are we with Knight?’
Melanie sighed. ‘We’re going to have to release him, Ma’am.’
‘Because?’
‘DNA match, or lack thereof, and there’s no evidence to place him as the person Jenni was talking to online either.’
The superintendent lowered her head and, with each hand, rubbed hard at the patches of skin either side of her eyes. When she looked back up to Melanie, the DI saw for the first time just how tired her superior was.
‘No chance of that changing?’ Archer pushed.
‘DC Morris is still in possession of Knight’s laptops, but she’s gone through them thoroughly with the tech team and there’s nothing. I’m assured there are one or two things left to check but, given the type of PC user that Knight is, Morris is quite sure that he doesn’t know the ins and outs of a system enough to hide things the way Jenni did.’ Melanie had finished but her boss seemed to be waiting for more. ‘That being said, we did learn that Jenni was in a rush to meet someone and to get somewhere, which tells us more about her state of mind than we knew before speaking to Knight.’
Archer didn’t look convinced, but she pressed on all the same. ‘Now another college student seems to have been targeted though. So, what are we thinking here?’
In the absence of a concrete answer, Melanie opted for honesty. ‘I don’t know, Ma’am. Knight isn’t good for it, we’re all certain of that much. It’s a concern that Patrick Nelson has become involved in this way because honestly, I thought he and the Eleanor girl knew more than they were letting on, but now…’ She petered out, trying to order her thoughts before finishing. ‘It’s a growing concern that someone is going to, or has started to, target college kids. It complicates the Michael Richards involvement, of course, because he never abducted his victims, so it may be that the Michael Richards link was a coincidence to begin with, or it may be that Patrick’s disappearance is entirely unrelated, or–’
‘You’re having too many maybes and ors, Detective Inspector.’
‘It’s been nearly two weeks, Ma’am,’ Melanie said, by way of defending herself. ‘We’ll get there, we just need the right break.’ Although Melanie couldn’t deny that she was worried. Whoever had killed Jenni Grantham had been clever and calculated and, whether they’d left clues or not, they were far too intricate to be understood at just one glance. But Melanie knew herself and she knew her team, and she had to believe that they would find – something. ‘Rest assured, we’re giving everything we’ve got to this. Now we’ve got the Nelson case as well, we can look at that alongside Jenni’s case and build up.’
Archer looked at her with narrowed eyes, as though inspecting Melanie for something. The DI expected another grilling, or at the very least a cutting remark, but in the end her superior quietly dismissed her with a good luck. ‘And you know where I am.’
Edd Carter dragged the spare table from the back corner of the room and placed it alongside the one Chris Burton had already cleared for use. As soon as the tables were pieced together, Melanie up-ended the box of evidence that had been delivered by PC Emerett on behalf of Missing Persons just five minutes earlier.
‘Is there anything else I can do for you, DI Watton?’ the young PC had asked.
Melanie, her face already buried in the box before her, replied, ‘You can tell DS Fern that he’s a coward.’ After that, she dismissed the officer and called her team to attention to dig through the early findings of their colleagues.
However, when the contents of the box were spread out across two tables, Melanie saw that one table – or maybe even half a desk – would have been just fine. Different members of Melanie’s team – Carter, Burton, Fairer, and Read – grabbed at a sheet or bundle of paper apiece, leaving nothing left for the DI herself. While she waited for their early summaries, Melanie turned her attention over to the evidence board. Alongside a smiling Jenni Grantham, there was pictured a beaming Patrick Nelson, his blond hair spiked with too much gel and his mouth pulled into a wide grin. If anyone were to look, they’d find three happy kids in that photograph; but with one dead and one missing, Melanie had to admit that she felt a flutter of panic at what fate might be waiting for Eleanor if they didn’t move quickly enough.
‘It’s been two days,’ Carter said. ‘Two days since he went missing, and there’s allegedly a FLO at the house already.’
‘Which there wasn’t,’ Fairer added.
‘Nelson told his mother that he was going out, without notice or prior warning to her–’
‘Is that weird, for a teenager?’ Read interrupted Edd.
‘I mean, if she’s commented on it, it must be weird for Patrick. He went out and to
ld her that he couldn’t stop to talk because he had somewhere important to be, and he was late.’ Edd lifted his head from the sheet and locked eyes with the DI. ‘Sound familiar?’
‘It’s also what Jenni told Knight,’ Melanie filled in.
‘I’ve got the father’s statement here,’ Burton chimed, her face still angled toward the sheet. ‘I’d heard Patrick on the phone to someone about five minutes before he left,’ Burton read verbatim from the evidence. ‘I couldn’t hear what was being said but he sounded off, like his voice was rising a bit, I suppose. After that I heard him leave his bedroom and walk downstairs, which I didn’t think anything of, and a minute or so later the front door shut. When I went downstairs again my wife told me that Pat had gone out and that he didn’t seem right, but honestly, we didn’t think much more of it. We put it down to a fight with a friend…’ Chris petered out. ‘It goes on from there but there’s nothing revolutionary really.’
There was a lump of something in Melanie’s chest as she saw all eyes turn to her, her team waiting for guidance. An hour and a half earlier, she had total faith in their abilities; she needed some more of that faith.
‘Right,’ she said, leaning on the table to address them. ‘Carter, you’re with me, we’re going to interview Patrick’s parents and we’re going to do it properly. I’ll drive. On the way you can check the status of a FLO. Burton?’ she said, pulling her DC’s attention. ‘I want you to contact DC Morris, get her back here and tell her we need another round of CCTV coverage. If both of you are on it, God willing we’ll find something faster the second time around. Read and Fairer, I want you to get over to the college. Call ahead if you want, or don’t, either way Gibbons should co-operate with us at this point; one student dead and another missing can’t be doing anything for his reputation. Are we all clear on where we’re at?’
She made eye contact with each member of the team, checking one by one that they understood their instructions and one by one the officers left their posts and moved to make a start on their jobs. But Melanie couldn’t let them go without one final motivator. ‘Detectives,’ she said, waiting for their attention to settle on her. ‘I don’t want another body on that board.’