She handed the mug of instant to Bev.
‘We left with a couple of lads about half three,’ Charlotte went on. ‘Went to a party with them, left there half four or so and came home.’
Charlotte reached for her cigarettes. She offered one to Bev, who accepted.
‘Do you remember the lads’ names?’
Charlotte smiled. ‘It wasn’t that kind of night. We were just having a laugh. Nothing serious. I couldn’t tell you their names.’
She agreed she had seen them around town and would be able to provide a rough description.
‘Where did you meet these lads?’ Bev asked. ‘Rendezvous?’
‘No. The Jolly Roger.’
‘Jack Goddard.’
‘Who?’
‘The drunks in the Jolly Roger.’
‘Oh, them,’ Charlotte said, studying the glowing tip of her cigarette.
‘Did you see them again that night?’
‘I didn’t,’ Charlotte answered. ‘Poor Alex obviously did.’
‘So did you meet the lads before or after the drunks?’
Charlotte gave that some thought.
‘After,’ she said.
‘There’s something not right about them,’ Bev said, standing by the kettle in the HOLMES room.
‘In what way?’ Sam asked.
‘It’s just a feeling in my water,’ Bev shrugged. ‘Mind you, you were right about Tracey. Dolled up to the nines. You should have seen her face when she saw me. Even told me she was expecting Ed.’
Sam rolled her eyes.
Bev smiled and whispered: ‘Walls have ears.’
Ed walked in. ‘What did you make of those two then?’
‘I was just saying there’s something not right about them.’ She poured the hot water into two mugs. ‘Want one, Ed?’
‘Cheers.’
‘Their stories were too similar, the times too precise, the vague descriptions of the two lads could have fitted half the under 25s of the UK.’
‘When was the last time they said they saw Jack Goddard?’ Ed asked.
‘In the Jolly Roger.’
He took the mug from the windowsill. ‘You best follow me.’
The three of them stood around a TV monitor in a small adjoining office. Paul Adams was sitting in front of it.
‘Show them, Paul.’
He pressed play and the screen flickered into life. Seaton St George town centre.
‘Look at the time,’ Ed said. ’11.30.’
The picture quality wasn’t great, but it was good enough.
‘The time is about five minutes out,’ Ed said. ‘The tower clock is showing 11.30 when the timer shows 11.35. Look,’ Ed said, pointing at the screen. ‘Here’s Tracey and Charlotte.’
Sam and Bev stood either side of Paul and leaned closer to the screen.
‘Keep watching,’ Ed said. When he next spoke, his voice was louder. ‘There.’
Paul froze the screen.
‘Well, well,’ Sam said.
‘I knew they were lying,’ Bev said.
Both girls looked at ease with Jack Goddard and Glen Jones.
Chapter Seventeen
Ed unwrapped a Twix.
‘The best lies are always the ones closest to the truth.’ He turned the confectionery in his hand. ‘Jesus, if these shrink any more The Borrowers will be able to eat them…Tracey and Charlotte say they went clubbing with two guys they met in the Jolly Roger.’
‘Goddard and Jones?’ Sam said.
‘Exactly.’
‘Paul.’ Sam was on her feet. ‘Sort out the CCTV from the front door of Rendezvous. See if we can get Tracey and Charlotte going in and more importantly, coming out.’
‘Will do.’
‘Start with them coming out,’ Sam told him. ‘Look after three. Maybe Jack Goddard was in there…Christ, wouldn’t you think someone would have a conscience and tell us? The calls from the public are a joke. I’ve seen more calls on prostitute murders.’
It was well known within murder teams that the type of victim often dictated the amount of help coming in from the public. A child abduction and the phones were melting but with prostitutes, the attitude often seemed to be ‘so-what’, despite the best efforts of SIOs to humanise their victim.
‘They either despised Jack Goddard and don’t want to get involved, or they were so pissed they genuinely can’t remember seeing him,’ Ed said.
‘Or high on whatever and don’t want us poking around in their business?’ Bev ventured.
‘Nonetheless, a young man is dead... murdered,’ Sam said. ‘I want Jamie Telford and Glen Jones locating. Bring Jones in. Can we have a have quick heads-up?’
Nods all round.
‘My office in 10.’
Sam threw the Manila folder into the centre of the table. A4 paper with four photos to a sheet slid out. Each photo a different girl, all taken from Goddard’s phone.
‘I don’t want these photos being shown to all and sundry, but we need to identify these girls,’ Sam said. ‘Some will be too embarrassed to want anything doing but some might.’
Bev thumbed through them and stopped on the third sheet. She pointed at the girl in the bottom left corner. ‘That’s Charlotte Swains.’
Sam held out her hand, took the sheet from Bev, and studied the picture.
‘She was with Tracey Davies and Amber Dalton when I saw them in the university on Tuesday night.’
Paul looked at the photograph.
Ed looked at Sam. ‘You got on well with Amber, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’
Paul Adams’s only involvement in that rape and murder investigation was as a Family Liaison Officer. He put the paper on the desk.
‘Amber reported to me,’ Sam said. ‘She was the rabbit in the surveillance and I kept in touch with her up to trial.’
‘Perhaps you should pay her a visit,’ Ed said. ‘Could the group she’s involved with be Macavity?’
‘Possibly.’
‘One thing’s for certain,’ Ed continued. ‘Elliott Prince never mentioned Charlotte Swains when he gave me the list of girls they’d photographed.’
Bev jumped in, her words rapid.
‘Another two of these photographs,’ she said, ‘They’re women I visited who’d rang in to say Goddard was a predator.’
‘But,’ Sam said. ‘They never mentioned the photographs.’
Paul spoke. ‘As we’ve all said, maybe they were embarrassed, and if they thought we didn’t know about them, they may have just chosen to not tell us.’
Sam moved that slice of the investigation to one side and turned the attention back to Aisha.
‘Tomorrow I want samples of Aisha’s handwriting,’ she said. ‘Get them from college or even better from friends but not from her home. I don’t want the parents antagonising. Not yet anyway. If something has happened to Aisha, I want them to think we’re on their side, that we believe them. If something has happened to her, we’re not going to sort it overnight, but just in case she writes to us, or anybody else, I want to be ahead of the game.’
Ed walked along to the small office where the Intelligence Cell was located. It wasn’t the biggest intelligence set-up, but it was, for now at least, dedicated to both investigations.
Two detectives, late 40s, were sat behind desks, writing in the A4 books next to their computers.
‘Stand by your beds,’ Ed said, closing the door behind him.
The two greeted him with the look of tired, hungry men.
How’s it going guys?’
‘I’m just about finished with Aisha’s uncle,’ one answered.
Ed wheeled the spare chair alongside the detective, sat down and looked at the screen.
In the centre was the name Gurmej, a spider’s web of lines spreading out from it.
The strands showed his address, properties and vehicles he had access to, and his associates. He hadn’t come to the attention of the police, but some of those associates were already known. He was unemploy
ed and moonlighted as a taxi driver, but as the Licensing Authority had no record of him, he was probably driving someone else’s car and using their hackney carriage licence.
‘So, bogus taxi driver,’ Ed said.
‘Yes.’
‘You know what, Asian taxi drivers have a better intelligence set-up than we do.’ Ed rubbed his eyes. ‘Families use them to spy on their daughters. Any shameful behaviour is then reported back to the family. Can I get a printout of that?’
A key depressed and the printer whirred into life.
‘Cheers,’ Ed said, standing up, pushing the chair and letting it slide towards the wall. ‘Did I ever tell about the time when I was a young PC, a superintendent came into panda control, handed me an envelope and told me to fax it to a superintendent in a neighbouring police station?’
Both detectives shook their heads.
‘I started to open the envelope and he went ballistic,’ Ed told them. ‘Called me a moron and said ‘can’t you read?’, it says private and confidential, you imbecile’.
‘But... ’ I said. ‘Don’t you 'but' me, just fax it, or you’ll find yourself on point duty for the next month. I didn’t fancy directing traffic so I just faxed the envelope.’
The two detectives started laughing.
‘The daft bugger thought he was Doctor Who, fax the envelope and the Super at the other end would open it. He never came back when the other Super no doubt ripped the piss out of him. How would the likes of him manage now?’
He took the paper out of the printer and walked out, the detectives still having a chuckle. They were in a windowless office, more like a cupboard, and did a great job. It was Ed’s responsibility to make sure they kept it up. A little humour went a long way.
Ed’s smiles didn’t last long. He’d barely walked 10 metres along the corridor when he answered his mobile and spoke to a Detective Inspector from Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.
Introductions over, the DI outlined the reason for his call.
‘It was found in a disused lock-up on the outskirts of Plymouth,’ he told Ed. ‘On bricks, stripped. No interior, engine gone, but the VIN plate was still on it. That’s how we identified it.’
Ed terminated the call. Why was Sukhi’s car in a lock-up in Plymouth?
Chapter Eighteen
Ed walked into Sam’s office. His nostrils twitched at the smell of a recently smoked cigarette. Since people had to actually walk off-site to smoke, she’d probably had two.
‘Enjoy them?’ Ed said.
‘I need to quit again,’ Sam sounded like she was trying to convince herself. ‘I hate standing out there, smoking on the roadside.’
The lunatics had finally taken over the asylum. Headquarters was set in acres of its own grounds but people had to walk on to the main road and smoke in front of passing motorists – a great image for the police.
‘Still beyond me why people can’t smoke in the grounds,’ Ed said. ‘You know when I joined for the first time back in 1978, the only non-cops were the cleaners, the typists, and the cooks. That was it. Everybody else was a cop. Chief Inspector in charge of admin and finance at each nick, overseen by one of the ACCs. Now support staff, an oxymoron if ever was there was one, make up a huge proportion of our numbers and complain about everything.’
Familiar rant over, Ed sat down. It was just after 6pm.
‘Sukhi’s car’s been found in a lock-up in Plymouth.’
‘What?’ Sam looked up.
Ed told her the gist of his conversation with the DI.
‘Plymouth?’ Sam repeated. ‘So what does that mean? They drove as far away from the North East as possible? That would make sense.’
Ed wasn’t convinced.
‘Or somebody drove the car there so if it was found, it would throw us off the scent, focus all our enquiries down there.’
Sam was silent, running possibilities through her mind.
‘I can understand why they’d get rid of the car,’ she said at last. ‘It could be used to trace them. Aisha’s family would only need someone working in the DVLA. The car's got to be taxed and tested.’
Both Sam and Ed knew there had been cases around the country of runaway girls being tracked down by distant relatives with jobs working in housing departments, benefits offices, even the police.
‘They couldn’t sell it, not legally,’ Ed was saying now. ‘But it could be moved on for parts to someone who wouldn’t ask questions.’
‘Car ringers?’ Sam suggested.
‘Possible.’
Sam stood up. ‘You know, the romantic in me hopes they’ve got to Devon and are living happily ever after in a little white cottage overlooking the sea.’
‘And the realist?’ Ed asked.
‘Just keeps hoping they’re alive.’
Jamie Telford and Glen Jones had spent the day holed up in one of the sea-front beach huts, their phones off. The huts, run during the summer by the local authority, were locked out of season. Glen had forced the padlock from the end hut months ago and put his own padlock in its place. He knew he’d have the hut until the end of May when the council prepared them for hire.
‘Why did you tell Elliott?’ Glen said, sitting on an old beer crate. ‘You know he’ll only feel more important.’
Jamie lit another cigarette.
‘I couldn’t get hold of you and I was panicking.’
The inside of the hut was like the worst inner-city smog or the infamous smoking rooms in Schiphol airport, fresh air as scarce as rocking-horse dung.
Glen opened the door, the rush of salty sea air a relief even to a devoted smoker like him.
‘Does he know about your letter?’ Jamie said.
‘Nobody knew about it until I told you an hour ago,’ Glen answered. ‘Nobody alive anyway. Jack knew.’
Jamie picked up the piece of paper from the wooden table.
‘And you’ve no idea when this was taken?’
‘None,’ Glen said. ‘How many parties have we been to in the last two years? How many times have we woken up with hardly a clue what happened the night before?’
Jamie looked again the paper. ‘Yeah, but on this one you and Jack are together.’
‘We were always together,’ Glen said. ‘Besides, the pictures could have been taken separately and messed with on Photoshop. There’s no such thing as ‘the camera never lies’ anymore.’
Jamie was still looking at the paper and the photograph it held, Glen and Jack on their hands and knees, a vibrator inserted into each of their backsides. ‘What did Jack say about it?’
‘To ignore them,’ Glen said. ‘Ours never came with a threat to distribute. Never came with a threat, full stop. Just said Sisters of Macavity.’
‘Have you no idea who’s doing it?’
Glen shook his head once. ‘Perm any one from dozens.’
Jamie stubbed his cigarette into a glass ashtray.
‘Are you going to the police?’
Glen laughed with zero humour. ‘And say what? We’ve taken pictures of loads of girls asleep in their beds and sent them out on Instagram and now this has happened? Don’t think so.’
‘But what if these Sisters of Macavity killed Jack?’ Jamie said.
‘I think they did,’ Glen hesitated. ‘When we find out who they are, we might tell the police... or we might solve the problem ourselves.’
Jamie looked hard at his friend.
‘Don’t be daft, Glen,’ Jamie said. ‘What can we sort? We don’t even know who we’d be looking for.’
‘Not every girl on campus hates us, Jamie,’ Glen told him, then fell silent.
Jamie Telford reached for the half bottle of whisky. Maybe he should go to the police himself.
Ed turned into his street and immediately saw the E-Class Mercedes parked on the road outside his house. Eric’s car.
Shit, have I forgotten another night?
He was pulling on to the driveway as Sue rushed out and opened the driver’s door almost before he had stopped.
Thank God I haven’t forgotten anything
‘Is everything okay?’ Ed asked her.
Sue was almost whispering. ‘They have some information about Gurmej – Aisha’s uncle.’
‘What information?’ Ed shut the car door.
‘I don’t know,’ Sue said. ‘They want to tell you. They want certain assurances, Ed. They’re scared.’
They walked towards the front door.
‘Have they had a drink?’ Ed asked.
‘Leela’s driving but Eric’s on the whisky.’
Ed looked at his watch. ‘In that case, I’ll have a beer, pet.’
He chanced his arm and playfully smacked her on the bum as she crossed the threshold. Her little shriek and jump meant he was out of the dog house, for now at least.
‘How’s it going, Eric? Leela?’ Ed said in greeting.
They were both sitting around the large farmhouse table.
‘Could be better,’ Eric said, eyes fixed on the whisky in the tumbler he held in his hand.
Sue passed Ed a chilled bottle of Newcastle Brown.
‘We’ll leave you to it,’ Sue said, leading Leela into the living room.
‘What’s up, Eric?’ Ed asked when the two men were alone.
‘Ed, I need certain guarantees,’ Eric told him. ‘What I’m about to say has to be between you and me.’
His hand shook as he raised the crystal tumbler.
‘I won’t make any statements and I certainly won’t go to court. I can’t let it get out that I’ve told you.’
He gulped the whisky and wiped his chin.
‘You know that not everybody in my community approves of your relationship with Sue, or my friendship with you.’
Ed poured his beer into a Wellington glass.
‘You know my thoughts on some of the so-called leaders in that community,’ he said. ‘Self-elected and bigoted misogynists.’
Eric was looking at his whisky again.
‘I know, but Ed, I cannot let them know that my relationship is anything but one of friendship with you. If they thought I passed on information, that I was a police informant... ’
Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set Page 42