Looking out at the assembled journalists, Ruth took a moment. Kerry Mahoney, the chief corporate communications officer for North Wales Police, who had come up from the main press office in Colwyn Bay, sat next to her. Ruth had met her before and had her down as a patronising bitch. Mahoney came from the new school of thought that believed the media needed to be controlled and even manipulated. Mahoney believed in media blackouts and vague press releases. In contrast, Ruth believed this new policy ignored two key reasons why they should keep the media fully informed and up to date. First, the public had a right to know what was happening in their communities, especially if there was any threat to their safety. Second, it was a fact that the police stood a better chance of catching criminals if they used the media to appeal for witnesses.
On the table in front of Ruth were several small tape recorders and microphones. Here we go, she thought. It didn’t seem that long ago she was doing a press conference in the hunt for Andrew Gates at Christmas. The thought of that case made her shudder.
‘Good afternoon, I’m Detective Inspector Ruth Hunter and I am the senior investigating officer for the investigation into the disappearance of Rosie Wright. Beside me is Kerry Mahoney, our chief corporate communications officer. This press conference is to update you on the case and appeal to the public for any information regarding Rosie’s disappearance on Monday evening between six p.m. and nine p.m. Rosie’s family are understandably very worried, and we are looking for any information that can help us bring Rosie back home safely.
‘At this stage in the investigation, we know that Rosie was with friends on a farm in Capelulo. She was last seen at around eight p.m. The area where she went missing is very quiet, so if you saw anything out of the ordinary, however insignificant you think it might be, please contact us so we can come and talk to you. I have a few minutes to take some question.’
‘Can you confirm that a significant amount of blood was found at the farm yesterday?’ a reporter asked from the front row.
Bloody great! I don’t want to have to talk about this now. Nor do I want anyone to think that this is now a murder case!
‘All I am prepared to say is that there is a thorough forensic examination taking place of Haddon Farm. If there is anything significant, then we will let you know,’ Ruth explained. She wanted to make sure that the media continued to report this as a missing teenager story.
‘If a significant amount of blood was found, are you now treating Rosie’s disappearance as a possible murder?’ asked another reporter.
For fuck’s sake! Did you not just hear me? Let’s wrap this up, I’ve got a teenager to find, Ruth thought.
‘I can only reiterate what I’ve already told you. As far as we are concerned, Rosie Wright is missing and we are doing everything in our power to find her and bring her home safely,’ Ruth said, but she knew she sounded a little irritated.
‘From the forensic investigation so far, do you think that Rosie is still alive?’ a television reporter shouted from the back of the room.
Ruth couldn’t help glare at him for a second. ‘Right, thank you, everyone. No more questions.’
As Ruth stood and gathered up her files, she noticed Mahoney giving her a slightly conceited look. She could see that Ruth was a bit rattled and she was judging her.
Oh fuck off, you smug bitch! Go and write a press release. I’ve got a proper job to do.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Ruth was back in her office ploughing through paperwork so she could get out and continue the search for Rosie. Checking her watch, she could see that Rosie had been missing for over thirty-six hours. They still had no concrete leads, and it was frustrating her.
Losing concentration on the job in hand, Ruth ran theories around her head. Rosie Wright was a well-adjusted teenager from a seemingly normal home. Haddon Farm was the end of the road. Rosie hadn’t been abducted from a dark city street or walking home from school. Therefore, it wasn’t a random abduction. Rosie Wright had been targeted by someone who had contact with her, or had seen her, prior to Monday night.
A tweet flashed up on her phone from the Media Team at St Asaph: ITV Wales Breaking News – North Wales Police appeal in search for missing teenager Rosie, aged sixteen. At least the press conference was generating the right kind of publicity.
Nick came into her office and handed her a coffee. ‘Thought you could do with this, boss.’
‘Cheers. Anyone spoken to the FLO?’ she asked. It had been the FLO’s job to break the news to Jason and Kathy Wright that Rosie’s blood had been found at the farm. She couldn’t imagine how terrified they must have felt hearing that news.
‘The FLO said that Kathy Wright went to bits. They’ve had a GP out to give her something to help her sleep. Jason Wright was very quiet and uncommunicative,’ Nick explained.
Uncommunicative? Ruth thought. There was something about Jason Wright that just didn’t sit right with her. Did his erratic behaviour suggest that he was hiding something?
‘I’ll go and see them this afternoon,’ Ruth said.
‘Oh, and we’ve found the press leak. One of the SOCOs admitted she had told her brother about the blood and he happens to be a journalist,’ Nick said.
‘I hope Travis gives her a proper bollocking!’ Ruth growled, but then her attention was drawn to the screen on the wall of CID, which was showing the BBC News channel.
Ruth got up and took two steps out to watch the news feed. It was the tail end of the morning news, and the male and female anchors sat together on a red sofa. The photo of Rosie Wright appeared behind them on a screen.
‘The search for missing teenager Rosie Wright continues in North Wales today,’ the male anchor said solemnly.
A map of North Wales appeared on the screen with the location of the farm circled.
‘Rosie was with friends when she went missing from the Capelulo area of Snowdonia some time on Monday night,’ the female anchor continued. ‘Police will resume their search of the local area this morning with the help of dog teams and helicopters with thermal imaging equipment. Local volunteers have been helping police in their search for Rosie, who has been described as a happy and fun-loving teenager by friends and family. In a press conference earlier today, the police dismissed reports that a significant amount of blood had been found at the scene and stressed that they are continuing to treat this as a missing-persons enquiry.’
Sian looked over at Ruth and approached.
‘Nothing of you from the press conference? You didn’t get your fifteen minutes then?’ Sian teased her.
‘Thank God. I look like shit,’
‘Not from where I’m standing,’ Sian replied flirtatiously under her breath.
Ruth felt a twinge of guilt as Sian smiled at her. There was still an emotional hangover from spending time thinking about and mourning Sarah the previous night.
Merringer arrived with printed pages. ‘Boss, routine PNC check on the family. It seems that Gareth Wright has several convictions for possession.’
Ruth nodded. ‘Maybe Gareth supplied his sister and her friends with those pills?’
‘I also did the usual check of the sex offenders register. There is a Martin Hancock that lives close to Capelulo. Aged forty. Suspended two-year sentence for downloading and possession of indecent images. Lives on his own,’ Merringer explained.
Ruth nodded and glanced over at Sian. ‘Sian, can you go and talk to this Martin Hancock? He’s on the register and lives locally. And take DC French.’
CHAPTER 5
Forty hours
Ruth was feeling the time pressure of the case as she and Nick arrived at Haddon Farm. There were still no solid leads and they were hurtling towards the dreaded forty-eight-hour mark. She knew that after that point, the team at CID Llancastell would begin to lose hope of finding Rosie alive.
Where the bloody hell was she?
The area was still and virtually deserted except for two uniformed officers who were there to prevent the rubberneckers from trampling on
the crime scene. The flowers, candles and messages had doubled since the last time Ruth had been there.
In the distance, a police search adviser, PolSA, had organised uniformed officers to conduct a fingertip search of the dark woodland. The stillness was broken by the deep bark of a German shepherd search dog with his handler.
Before work that morning, Ruth had googled Capelulo and looked at the map. Lying close to the north-western tip of mainland Wales, it was just south of the massive headland called the Great Orme. The word orme was said to have had a Scandinavian origin. The story went that a Viking raiding party saw the rock rearing up from the mist in front of their longboat and, mistaking it for a serpent, they fled in terror.
Ruth wanted to revisit the area to see where Rosie had gone missing from. She wanted to walk the scene so it was clear in her head. Were they missing something? At the moment, they were struggling to come up with any decent hypothesis for what had happened to Rosie. The blood in the yard suggested she had been attacked. But then what? Had someone dragged her from the farm and taken her away? How? By car? And why? They had none of the key ingredients – motive, means and opportunity. All they knew was that it wasn’t a random attack. So, who had contacted or had seen Rosie in recent days or even weeks?
Ruth closed her eyes for a moment, letting the air freshen her face. She found that sometimes, in the quiet of a crime scene, she could think and feel clearly what might have happened.
Come on, Rosie. Where are you? We’re running out of time. What happened to you?
Standing in the yard by the boarded-up farm sheds, Ruth looked down at the ground and the blood stains that were now covered and numbered with yellow plastic forensic tags. Some of the blood-soaked straw had been scattered by the wind. Had Rosie struggled and been stabbed before being bundled into a car? If that had happened, there would have been some spots of blood. But here they had pints. Why?
Ruth looked over at the barn. On the other side, the girls had been out of sight as they sat by the fire pit, drinking, dancing and giggling with music blaring. They wouldn’t have seen or heard a thing.
Turning back, Ruth looked over the meadows and the river that snaked through them in the distance. She brought her thoughts back to the long steel gate and the track that led away up through the fields. How did anyone take Rosie from the farm without being seen? None of it seemed to fit together into a coherent theory.
Walking back through the barn, the sound of the wind was amplified by the wood of the roof. In several places, the wind whistled through the gaps in the timber. The smell of hay was strong, and now there was also the faint scent of the chemicals the SOCOs had used out in the yard.
Emerging from the barn, Ruth looked down at the fire pit where the girls had congregated on Monday evening. The logs were black. A loud noise took her attention into the sky as two Canada geese flapped overhead.
She imagined Emma and her friends. The music, the drinking and the howls of laughter. Teenage girls hadn’t changed that much since she was young. She would have been their age in 1985. It would have been Duran or Wham. And it would have been Battersea Park or down by the river at Wandsworth. Cider, music and dancing. Pink ra-ra skirts, Choose Life, lace in their hair just like Madonna. Like a virgin ...
A gust of wind blew a tousle of her hair as she came back to the present. If Rosie had been attacked in the yard, her friends would have been oblivious. It was too far away. Peering from where she stood, the track through the fields was clearly visible. Could they have missed a car coming down to the yard? It was still somewhat light at around eight o’clock. She wasn’t sure.
The sound of footsteps on the grass approached.
‘Penny for them, boss,’ Nick said, looking around.
‘Whoever attacked and took Rosie would have taken a huge risk of being seen if they had come down the track? Why would they do that?’
Nick looked over from where they stood. ‘A car coming down there would have been visible for a while.’
‘So, they either took that risk, or they came and left from a different direction,’ Ruth said.
‘How? There’s no other way of getting a vehicle down here. Even a four-by-four would struggle across those fields.’ Nick said.
‘Tractor or quad bike?’ Ruth suggested.
‘Maybe? Still noisy and visible.’ Nick said.
‘And they had an unconscious or dead body with them.’
‘How tall is Kathy Wright roughly?’
‘Short. Five foot two, five foot three.’
‘I’ve seen the photos on the fridge. Rosie was about the same height and probably a stone lighter. She can’t have been more than six or seven stone.’
‘So, she could have been carried away, at least for a while.’
The blue-and-white police tape rustled noisily in the wind as Ruth gazed around at the landscape.
Then she spotted something that sparked an idea. ‘The river?’
Nick followed her gaze. The river was about a third of a mile from where they stood.
Did someone take her to the river and escape that way?
‘Actually, you’re right. I know someone who used to take a canoe on the Afon Gyrach.’
‘Let’s see how long it takes to walk there,’ Ruth said as she pulled out her phone and started the timer and began to make her way to the river.
‘Carrying Rosie would slow you down.’
‘If you’re a big bloke, carrying six stone over your shoulder isn’t going to slow you down that much,’ Ruth said as she marched onwards.
Nick glanced back at the barn and the farm buildings. ‘If you walked in a straight line, the girls’ view is blocked by the barn all the way.’
Ruth met his glance. Were they on to something? Or was this just an elaborate distraction? They couldn’t afford distractions and time was running out for Rosie.
As the lowlands dropped and then dipped sharply at the river’s edge, Ruth stopped the timer on her phone. ‘Five minutes, and we weren’t racing. It’s not long to keep out of sight if you have a boat waiting.’
About twenty yards to their left, Nick spotted a small area of sand and pebbles where the river bent right. It was essentially a tiny beach. He jumped down and inspected the ground.
‘What is it?’ Ruth could see that Nick had found something.
‘Drag marks. Someone has pulled a boat onto this beach. You can still see the marks in the sand.’
‘Do we really think that someone attacked Rosie in the barn and then took her away on a boat down the river?’ Ruth wasn’t sure that this hypothesis felt right.
Nick shrugged. ‘It would explain why no one saw anyone arriving or leaving. It would explain why house-to-house has thrown up nothing and why Traffic haven’t found any vehicles leaving the area at that time.’
It was a good point, Ruth thought as she looked down at her phone. ‘We need SOCO down here now before it rains and those drags marks are washed away.’
GLANCING AROUND AT the immaculate front garden, Sian and DC French made their way up the neatly paved steps to Bluebell Cottage, where convicted sex offender Martin Hancock lived.
On the way there, Sian mulled over a dream she had had the previous night. There were flashes of it still in her mind. She couldn’t recall much, but she did remember that in it Ruth had been in bed with her previous girlfriend Sarah. It wasn’t surprising after their conversation about the dates in November and going to Berlin. It was always going to be like that. It was worse than Sarah being dead because there was always the remote possibility of her being alive somewhere. What the hell would they do if she was alive? What would she do if Sarah just turned up on the doorstep one day? She knew all that when she agreed to move in with Ruth. However, sometimes it did make her question if she had done the right thing.
Pushing those thoughts to one side. Sian found herself surprised at the pristine condition of the garden and cottage. Hanging baskets were full of the tumbling purples and pinks of fuchsias. As she rang the doorb
ell, Sian could hear classical music from inside the house. A moment later, the door opened and a man in his forties looked at her. He was greying, handsome and took care of himself. He was dressed in a blue shirt and jeans.
‘Mr Hancock?’ Sian asked. She knew that sex offenders came in all shapes and sizes, but even she was surprised by how she found Hancock. ‘I’m DC Hockney, and this is my colleague DC French. We’re from Llancastell CID,’ she said, raising her warrant card.
‘I thought it wouldn’t be long before you knocked on my door,’ Hancock said with virtually no hint of annoyance. ‘Come in, please.’
Hancock showed Sian and French in. The house smelt of coffee and expensive aftershave. Inside, the cottage was decorated in a shabby chic style with fashionable cushions in all shades of blue. Like the outside, it was immaculate. A copy of that day’s Mirror newspaper lay on a nearby desk with the headline: Police Intensify Search for Rosie and a photograph of Rosie.
‘Would you like coffee?’ Hancock asked.
‘No, thank you. Just a few questions to help us with an ongoing missing-persons enquiry,’ Sian explained.
My gaydar tells me that a well-groomed man, living on his own with such attention to home furnishings is unlikely to be heterosexual, Sian thought.
Hancock gestured them to sit on the Tiffany-blue sofa in the living room. ‘Please, sit down.’
‘Thank you,’ French said.
Sian and French took a seat next to each other as Hancock sat opposite them on another pristine matching sofa. It was a pleasant change from some of the rat-infested drug houses Sian had attended in recent weeks.
‘I’m guessing that it’s about the missing girl? Rosie, isn’t it?’ Hancock asked.
‘Yes, Rosie Wright. Did you know her?’ Sian asked. Hancock certainly wasn’t skirting the issue.
‘Not really. I knew her by sight, that’s all,’ Hancock said. ‘Pretty girl. It’s been all over the news. Poor family.’ Sian wasn’t sure that she was buying his compassion. It felt a little phoney.
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