by Jack Slater
‘Right.’ She wrote down the details and pushed herself back across to the other desk so that she could work without disturbing him further.
Pete saw nothing else of interest, so closed the file and moved on. He checked a few JPEGs, finding architectural drawings and a couple of photographs – one of a cardboard and plywood mock-up, the others of actual buildings. He scrolled back to the top of the folder. There were two sub-folders, one labelled ‘Inspiration’, the other, ‘Models’. He opened the first and found a whole lot of JPEGs. He clicked View and selected Thumbnails. A whole series of pictures opened up, of buildings both ancient and modern. Ignoring Sophie’s quiet voice as she spoke into her phone, he scrolled down the page, confirming that all the files were of similar subjects, then closed the folder and opened the other one.
‘Whoah. That’s definitely not what I expected.’
‘What’s that, Sarge?’
He glanced over his shoulder. Sophie was holding one hand over the mouthpiece of her phone as she stared past him at the screen.
‘What I expected was lots of cardboard and plywood models of buildings. What I’ve got instead is lots of young girls. And I mean young girls. Including . . .’ He opened one of the files. ‘Thought so. That’s Becky.’ He clicked the Next button. ‘And Rosie.’
‘Sorry,’ Sophie said into the phone. ‘We just found something significant. We’re looking into a case that appears to involve a Neil Sanderson. He worked in Bath from 2010 to 2012 at an architect’s studio in Argyll Street: Matthews and Roebuck. We wondered if you guys had had any cause to look at him, or any unexplained disappearances of young girls during those years. Say, between the ages of nine and thirteen. OK. Can you make it soon? We’re trying to eliminate him from a child abduction. Thanks.’ She hung up. ‘They’ll call me back.’
‘Right. We need to check Becky’s laptop or whatever. I want her phone checked, as well, ASAP.’ He got up and crossed to the door. ‘Mrs Sanderson?’
*
‘These are all selfies or ones they’ve taken of each other,’ Sophie said, leaning back in her chair.
‘How do you know that?’
They were in Becky Sanderson’s bedroom, the door closed. Pete was sitting on the bed while Sophie took the single chair and swiped through the tablet computer, not bothering with the detachable keyboard.
‘Apart from the obvious ones, where they’re in front of a mirror with a camera phone in their hand, you can tell by the camera angles, the expressions on their faces. They’re having a laugh, a bit of fun. The nearest they’re expecting to get to anyone else seeing these is if they email them to a boyfriend or something.’
‘Then how come they’re on the machine downstairs?’
‘I expect Mr Sanderson found them and copied them, same as you did, Sarge.’
‘And has she sent them to anyone? Check her email.’ He handed over the sheet of paper Gail Sanderson had provided with a list of passwords.
‘OK.’ Sophie closed the picture folder and opened Google Chrome. ‘Let’s see . . .’
There was perhaps ten or twelve years between himself and PC Clewes, Pete thought, but it was like they’d been brought up in different worlds. Sophie appeared to be clued in to all the social media and modern technology, whereas he just stood by on the periphery, an outsider looking in. Much as he had been in recent years with Tommy’s life. Where had he gone wrong? What had happened to put that distance between them?
He blinked as the realisation dawned.
This. Police work. That’s what happened. He’d spent too much time on the job and not enough at home. Emotion welled up inside him. God, how he wished he’d done things differently, arranged his priorities differently.
If they could get Tommy back alive then he would put that right in future, he promised himself. Work would come second to family, not the other way around. And, even if Tommy didn’t come back . . .
Sophie opened up Becky Sanderson’s email account and clicked on the Sent Mail box. Scanning down, she checked for emails with attachments then looked at who they had been sent to. ‘Several to Rosie.’ She opened one and, sure enough, there were half a dozen pictures of Rosie herself, in underwear, topless and nude. She closed the email. ‘I thought you checked her laptop, Sarge?’
‘We did. She must have deleted them. Or these have gone to an account that’s not on the laptop. One she just uses on her phone, perhaps, or . . . Stupid sod.’
‘Who is? Why?’
‘Me. I never thought to ask if she’s got one of those Kindle things. She could have an account set up on that, couldn’t she?’
‘Depending which model it is, yes.’
‘I’ll have to check on that. Don’t let me forget.’
‘Right, Sarge.’ She turned back to the screen. Scrolled down a bit further. ‘Hello.’
‘What?’
‘One here to our little buddy, Richie Young.’ She opened it up. A line of three photos appeared, of Rosie in her school uniform. In the first, she was blowing a kiss at the camera, fully dressed. In the second, she was peeling off her blouse and in the third, she was in her bra, squeezing her breasts together provocatively. ‘She’s teasing him.’
‘You think? We didn’t find these on his computer, did we? So did he delete them, or has he saved them on something else? Not his phone – we checked it.’
‘He could have stored them online and then deleted them off his computer, though. We wouldn’t pick them up on the hard drive if he’s defragged it since.’
‘Where would he put them online, though? And how do we find them? And link them back to him?’
‘Depends where he put them, I suppose. Could be Facebook or a Twitter feed, maybe a photo storage site like Dropbox, Photobucket or Flickr – there’s loads of them.’
‘Could we pick up on a subscription to something like that?’
‘Maybe. A lot of them are free though. And again, he doesn’t need to have set it up on his own computer. He could have done that from school even.’ She closed the email and scanned down further, looking for other possibilities. She found one with some holiday photos, then there was a long gap before another attachment showed. She opened it up. ‘Ooh. Here we go. This one’s to a Chris Mellor.’
Again, several pictures had been sent. Sophie clicked on the first. ‘That’s Becky.’ She scanned through the set. ‘In fact, all of them are Becky. Must be a boyfriend. This is . . . seven months ago.’
‘Another name to check out then.’ Pete made a note. ‘This is getting more complicated, not less.’
‘The modern age, Sarge. Information technology.’
Pete grunted sourly. ‘For every silver lining, there’s a big, ugly cloud.’
CHAPTER 11
‘Jane. What do you know that I don’t?’ Pete crossed to the whiteboard and wrote Chris Mellor’s name next to Richie Young’s. Underneath, he wrote, ‘? Boyfriend of Becky Sanderson’.
‘Not a lot, sadly. The search of the school grounds finished half an hour ago. Turned up nothing of any use. A couple of dodgy roll-ups behind the sports hall, that was about all. I’ve been through the CCTV. There isn’t much. Nothing from outside the school itself. No cameras on that road. It’s mostly residential, so no need. There is one on the main road, about six hundred metres east of the junction, looking towards it and on down to the roundabout, but that’s all.’
‘Anything of interest?’ He crossed to his chair, hung up his jacket and sat down.
‘A silver Peugeot estate car came out of the end of the road about the right time, turned left and then right at the roundabout. I picked him up on the cameras outside here and the old hospital site, then he turned off just past the golf course and I lost him. The relevance being it’s the same make and model as Dave’s mate, Kevin Haynes, drives, which he claims is off the road at the moment. While he was at home yesterday morning. Alone, he says.’
‘Don’t let Dave hear you calling Kevin Haynes a mate of his.’
Jane laughed. ‘An
yway, with all those sightings, you’d think I’d have got a registration plate, but no such luck. He was in front of a Transit-type van when he came out by the school. Then, at the roundabout, the sun was just at the wrong angle – it shone straight onto it, flared it out to white. And you know the camera out here’s not aimed right. Nor is the one up the road. It’s aimed to pick up vehicles going in and out of there, same as ours is.’
‘So we’ve got no proof of whether it’s him or not.’
‘No, but it’s highly suggestive, isn’t it? Right place, right time, right kind of bloke.’
‘Mm-hm. Worth another interview at least. And checking on his car. Meantime, we’ve “borrowed” Neil Sanderson’s laptop. There are some highly suggestive photos on it.’ He held up the laptop, in its plastic evidence bag. ‘Nothing illegal, as such, but they certainly look dodgy in the circumstances. We took a copy of the relevant folder, just in case, but it could do with going through, to see if there’s anything more on it. And we need another word with Becky. Preferably at school, to keep her parents out of it. And we need to know what’s on her phone. If there are any pictures on it that she hasn’t downloaded to her tablet.’
‘OK . . .’
‘Her and Rosie seem to have been making a game of taking selfies in less than the usual degree of attire.’
‘I see. And they’re what Neil’s got on his laptop, are they?’
‘Those and others that he’s taken. Opportunistic rather than posed by the look of them. Some while the girls were asleep.’
‘Which puts him nicely in the frame.’
‘Yes. And Richie Young’s got some pictures that he shouldn’t have, too, of Rosie. And we need to talk to Chris Mellor.’ He waved a hand towards the whiteboard. ‘He’s another student at Risingbrook. Might be a boyfriend of Becky’s.’
‘Bloody hell. You have been busy.’
‘Trouble is, it hasn’t brought us any closer to Rosie. Where’s Dave? Have you heard from him?’
‘He’s on his way. Didn’t get anywhere with Haynes, but he did tell me they went back to where Barry Enstone’s girlfriend works and interviewed several people, including her. She confirmed she was with Enstone at the time Rosie was taken, so that puts him in the clear.’
‘One down then. At least that’s a start, I suppose.’ He took out his phone and dialled. It was picked up on the second ring. ‘Dave? Where are you?’
‘Just pulling into the car park, boss. You in the office?’
‘Yes.’
‘Be with you in two then.’
‘No, you won’t. Sorry, mate. I need you to go out again.’ He saw Sophie come into the squad room with two coffee mugs. ‘We’ve had a few developments. I need you to go see Richie Young. Be a bit heavier with him than I was. We know he’s got some pictures of Rosie somewhere. Laptop, phone, Kindle, Cloud account – I don’t know, but he’s got them. We’ve seen the transmission from Becky Sanderson’s tablet. I want to know everything he’s got like that, where he got them from, if not all from Becky, and when. His mum knows that he wasn’t telling us everything this morning, so hopefully she’s had a word with him in the meantime. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to see your man, Haynes.’ He took one of the steaming mugs from Sophie, sniffed it and took a sip. Standard cop-shop coffee. He grimaced. ‘It seems he might have lied to you. A car very like his was spotted coming away from Risingbrook at about the time of the abduction. We haven’t got a plate, but it wants checking, at least.’
‘You sure you don’t want me to go see him again, boss?’
‘No. Let’s leave you as the sympathetic one for now. And me with Richie Young, eh?’
‘Righto.’
Pete rang off. He got up and went to the whiteboard, where he took a red marker and drew a thick line through Barry Enstone’s name.
‘Sarge,’ said Sophie. ‘I heard back from Bath while I was getting the coffees. They’ve got nothing on Sanderson and just one relevant case while he was there – an eight-year-old girl who went missing after her evening judo lesson.’
Pete paused, a wave of cold rushing down his spine. ‘Our Mr Sanderson’s into judo.’
She nodded, eyes widening. ‘Teaches it, doesn’t he?’
‘I think we need another chat with him. Here, in the station, after we’ve seen Kevin Haynes. Jane, I need you to find out what you can on this Chris Mellor, then go and see him. Again, he’s got pictures. The ones we know of are of Becky, but you never know. And even if that is the case, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a fancy for Rosie, too. Or that he hasn’t passed them on to anyone.’
‘OK.’
‘One of these buggers knows something. They’ve got to.’
CHAPTER 12
The wipers thumped monotonously, barely clearing the windscreen. The rain had started in earnest while they were in the station; not too heavy, but the drops were large and relentless, shining silvery in the headlights.
It was evenings like this when Tommy had most enjoyed his favourite movie, Twister, when he was younger – the weather outside adding to the atmosphere as the characters battled each other and the elements. When Pete had got home from work at a reasonable time, they would huddle up together and he would let Tommy put the DVD into the machine and press the Start button.
Pete didn’t know how many times they’d watched that film.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 17:01. He flicked on the radio.
‘. . . and Manchester United have announced that Ricky Colebourne will play next weekend, after his injury last week against Liverpool. Now, the weather. Skies will clear later this evening, leaving the South-West and South Wales open to frost by morning. Early mist will clear to give a bright day. And there’s more of the same for the next three days, so be extra careful on those morning commutes, but enjoy the sunshine while we can. And that’s the news on BBC Radio Devon.’
He clicked it off.
‘Frost tonight, mist in the morning and the same again for the next few nights. Which means the frosts are going to get harder and harder as each day passes.’
‘Yeah.’ Sophie grimaced. ‘So, if Sanderson’s been spying on the girls, does he get caught, do you think? Have to keep Rosie quiet? Maybe an accident happens in the process? Or are we looking at more than that? Has he actually been abusing one or both of them?’
‘We can’t know the answer to that unless Becky talks. And she hasn’t yet, despite the opportunities we’ve given her.’ Pete flicked on the indicator and slowed for the junction. Headlights dazzled through the rain-smeared windscreen.
‘No, but I don’t suppose we’ve asked the question directly, have we? I mean, you wouldn’t, would you, unless there was a bloody good reason to? Not about her own dad.’
Pete made the turn. ‘Just up here on the left, apparently. Number twenty-seven.’
‘That one’s fifteen. Nineteen.’
Pete’s phone began to ring. He fished it out and handed it to Sophie.
‘DS Gayle’s phone, PC Clewes speaking.’ She paused. Pete could hear a male voice through the tiny speaker as he pulled into a space on the opposite side of the road from Haynes’ house.
‘One moment, sir. I think you need to be speaking to DS Gayle.’
Pete switched off the lights, the windscreen wipers and the engine. The rain seemed to drum louder on the roof of the car as he took the phone back from Sophie.
‘Gayle speaking.’
‘Where the hell do you get off, taking my computer away, Sergeant? Or even being in my house in the first place? I specifically told you I wanted to be here when you came round. You had no right to go snooping in my personal property. The permission I gave was specifically for Becky’s stuff, not mine.’
‘We had your wife’s permission, Mr Sanderson. And, as for you wanting to be there, I made no promise on that. There’s a young girl missing, in imminent danger. We don’t have time to wait on people’s usual timetable.’
‘Well, this is a bloody disgrace. I’m
going to get on to my lawyer. I don’t know what powers you think you have, but that was a blatant invasion of privacy. There’s no way it was legal. Whatever you might think you’ve found will be inadmissible. You don’t have a leg to stand on, Sergeant.’
‘What we found on your computer is directly related to what’s on your daughter’s, so I think you’ll find we’ve got more than enough legs to stand on, Mr Sanderson. We will when we extend our enquiries to your judo club, too, if it proves necessary. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.’ Pete snapped the phone shut, not giving him the opportunity to reply. ‘Right. Where are we looking?’
‘That one’s nineteen, so twenty-seven should be four doors up. The one with the black door, I reckon. He sounded a bit pissed off.’
‘Did, didn’t he? Come on then. Let’s go see if we can spread the joy a bit further. I really should get myself a bloody hat.’ He pushed the door open and stepped out into the rain, pulling his coat up over his head as he ran around the car. He clicked the remote locking device as he ran across the road.
Haynes’ gate was open. They ran up the path, Sophie in the lead. Pete dropped his coat back into place as they stepped under the porch. He pressed the doorbell. The chime sounded distantly in the house, but there was no response. He waited a few seconds and tried again.
‘Looks like he’s not in, Sarge. What do you reckon? Should we wait a bit or come back?’
‘What’s the time?’
She checked her watch. ‘Nearly five-fifteen.’
‘He might not have finished work yet.’
‘Where does he work?’
‘The tyre place on Freemont Street.’
‘We could go there.’
Pete grimaced. ‘Dave went to see him there. I’d rather catch him at home. Put him off his guard.’
‘Yes, but at least we’d see if he was still there. We could pop back here and catch up with him after.’
He shrugged, took out his phone and dialled Dave Miles. ‘Dave,’ he said as soon as the DC picked up, ‘have you got a picture of Kevin Haynes?’