The Body Under the Bridge

by The Body Under the Bridge (epub)

  Garrison, a forty-two-year-old fishmonger, claimed to have seen Jane Morris on the evening of Friday, 17 October 1982. He waved to her as she passed the shop, then noticed her talking to the young man with dreadlocks. His statement included the line, ‘I kept an eye on her as I’m not overly fond of them sort, you know.’

  His was the only witness statement to mention the dreadlocked man, but Mottram and his team took it at face value. That assumption informed the rest of the investigation, all the interviews with young West Indian men, and the community uproar. Perry had to cross-reference the original file notes for photographs, because few of these had been recorded on the microfiche. The case had attracted an enormous amount of interest, but the thing that particularly piqued his curiosity was a picture taken by a photographer at the South London Press on the first anniversary of Jane Morris’ disappearance. It showed Garrison and his wife, Linda, with a pram. The accompanying article was all about how much they missed their niece, but now had some fresh joy in their life. Perry stared at the picture. Linda Garrison was clearly in her forties, like her husband. He’d have to check her exact age. The article said they had been trying for a baby for years, and had finally been lucky to be blessed with little Graeme. If it had been a girl they would have called her Jane. None of the photographs of the bereaved family at the time of Jane’s disappearance showed anyone who was obviously pregnant.

  If there was a child in the pram, could it really be theirs?

  He had a growing suspicion, and decided to check it from the present-day evidence. He logged on to the police national computer upstairs, and keyed in his personal ID. He then downloaded the full PDF of Dr Delahaye’s post-mortem of Jane Morris, after she had been found in the flood. There was a lot of medical terminology he didn’t understand, and he laboriously looked each term up. One sentence intrigued him. ‘Beta HCG test positive, but uncertainty of effective freezing on human chorionic gonadotropin may cast doubt on nulliparous state.’

  The word nulliparous turned out to mean never having had a pregnancy or birth. Perry picked up the phone and after numerous attempts managed to get hold of the forensic scientist. Delahaye briskly explained the terminology.

  ‘Forensically speaking the most reliable way to determine whether a woman has ever been pregnant is to detect in her bloodstream a particular chemical which is released by the placenta after implantation. It does not in itself indicate whether the foetus was brought to term. However there can be other reasons for the presence of an elevated level of chorionic gonadotropin, and as my report made clear the uncertainties of what happens to this chemical after the body has been frozen make it quite unreliable to deduce pregnancy from this measure alone.’

  Perry was scribbling down notes as fast as he could go. ‘So on balance, doctor, would you say she had been pregnant?’

  ‘At the time of death obviously not. There was no trace of foetal tissue, and the uterus was of a normal weight. But the more vexing question is had she ever been pregnant, and on the balance of probability, assuming no false signal from the beta HCG, I would say yes. That of course is a provisional conclusion.’

  Perry thanked him and hung up. Speaking to a real scientist was refreshing. The man’s mind was clearly as sharp as a scalpel. The detective knew he needed more evidence, and turned to an experienced-looking desk sergeant to help him. ‘In 1982, where might a young girl have dropped off an unwanted baby in this neck of the woods?’

  The sergeant, a thick necked and grizzled officer narrowed his eyes and said. ‘You’d be best off looking for press coverage. Abandoned babies were news. Try to go via the NHS, and you’ll get tangled up in privacy and data protection issues.’ He logged Perry into the database of the local newspapers from that time. Nothing came up about abandoned newborns a year either side of the date of the crime.

  The detective inspector leaned back in his seat with his hands behind his head and his face creased in concentration. What other possible lines of analysis could he undertake? If the Garrisons had adopted a child born to their niece, there should be school records. Again he asked for the help of the sergeant. Fortunately, they were looking in the days before ‘choice’ became the key word in education, so generally speaking most kids went to the nearest infant and junior schools. The two of them put in calls to all the relevant school offices, but considering it was after five o’clock, they knew they would get no answers before the following Monday.

  One idea kept circulating in Perry’s head. That the fishmonger had first impregnated his own niece, and had adopted the resulting baby. Someone in Jane’s family would have known she was pregnant, surely. He conceded it was going to be very hard to prove now, but clearly if he was right, any family cover-up would be a huge issue for the police to have missed. The next thing was to try to find records for the child.

  Perry picked up his coat and emerged into the grey drizzly car park, the drone of traffic all around. He contemplated a long and tedious drive through the rush-hour traffic until he got to Woking, and his own not-very-welcoming home. Work, the best part of the week, was now over. It was Friday night, and all he had to look forward to was the prospect of emotional hand-to-hand combat with his estranged wife, a woman who had the verbal equivalent of a black belt in karate. He dreaded it. If there was anywhere else he could have gone, he would have. He wasn’t due on shift, but he’d go back in to the office first thing tomorrow anyway.

  * * *

  It was Friday afternoon before Gillard was allowed to return home and collect some clothing. CSI chief Yaz Quoroshi was just leaving, the last of the crime scene vans just reversing out of his drive as Gillard drove into the cul-de-sac. They greeted each other through open vehicle windows. ‘What have you discovered?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘The good news is that there is no blood. There was clearly a struggle. The hair you spotted in the hinge of the door matches Sam’s. My guess is she was being carried, probably unconscious, for her head to be that low.’ Quoroshi must have seen Gillard’s jaw clench, because he added. ‘Craig, we have no reason at this stage to think she is dead.’

  ‘Anything in the garage?’

  ‘No. The door was neatly closed after he departed. Your aunt’s emergency call seems to dovetail with that.’

  ‘Rigby won’t let me stay here, so I’ve just got to nip in and get toiletries and clothing.’

  ‘She’s quite right. If the abductor knows where you live, it’s crazy to stay. If he’s trying to get you, there will probably be another message. That’s why I think she is still alive.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘Thanks, Yaz. I’ll be staying with Claire for now.’

  As the crime scene van pulled away, the detective looked at his house, no longer cinched in by blue crime scene tape, and with an unsmiling female PC on guard. Gillard didn’t know her, and in his unshaven and lanyardless state, with a creased shirt and borrowed jacket, he struggled to convince her of who he was. In the end, he briefly put on the blue lights of the unmarked Vauxhall, then dug out some paperwork from the glove compartment. She still forced him to sign in on the clipboard on his telephone table. She thawed a little when he re-emerged from upstairs, showered, shaved and suited.

  ‘Just doing my job, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ He invited her in for a cup of tea and a bowl of soup, which overrode her initial refusals. He didn’t want to admit it, but he couldn’t bear to be alone in the kitchen from which his wife had been snatched.

  * * *

  Gillard was almost back in Guildford when he got a call on the hands-free. It was Detective Chief Superintendent Brian ‘Radar’ Dobbs. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this Craig, but Rigby has asked me to take over as senior investigating officer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s obvious that your mind will be drawn to the one aspect of the case that is of a personal concern.’ Dobbs was a grey and dour individual whose huge ears had earned him his nickname. He’d been on long-term sick leave with depression on and off for a couple
of years, and everyone had expected him to retire. His return a couple of months ago had surprised everyone.

  ‘Yeah, the fact that my wife has been kidnapped, what a surprise!’

  ‘There’s no need to take that tone,’ Dobbs said. ‘The chief constable will undoubtedly give you her reasons directly. In the meantime you should take some time off and try to relax…’

  Furious, Gillard cut the call, floored the accelerator and swore inventively for a couple of minutes. How on earth did anyone expect him to relax while Sam was being held by some maniac? Wouldn’t it be better to focus that nervous energy on cracking the case? He was quite prepared to work a hundred hours a day until she was found. There were things he knew that nobody else knew, there was information he could find that no one else could find. How dare they!

  * * *

  Most of the civilian day staff were just leaving as Gillard’s Vauxhall bullied its way into the car park, blues on, and slewed to a halt untidily in the bay reserved for a riot van. If ever there was going to be a one-man riot, it was now. The moment he burst into reception, the duty officer’s phone rang. His eyes flicked up to Gillard. He mouthed one word and gestured at the handset – ‘Rigby’ – and pointed him towards her office in the next building.

  Two minutes later, Gillard was standing in front of the seated chief constable, having thrown every possible reason at her for having him continue to run Operation Hawkeye. Rigby steepled her long fingers, her nails short and glossy, and gave him the full benefit of the icy blue stare of death. ‘Craig, the sheer intemperate nature of your appeal to me makes it obvious that you’re in no emotional state to run a large, complex investigation. If you would calm down for just a moment, that would be perfectly obvious to you.’

  She shuffled some papers on her desk, and then looked up at him. ‘I’ve passed the search for your wife to the National Crime Agency’s anti-kidnap and extortion unit. The AKEU have people who know exactly what they are doing. An officer will be here before midnight, and the rest in the morning. Now, I know you have unique information, and they will undoubtedly call on that. But I don’t want you here, getting under everyone’s feet.’

  ‘But ma’am, you won’t let me stay at home, because of the so-called threats to me. Where the hell am I supposed to go?’

  Rigby sucked her cheek. ‘I advise you to moderate your tone, Craig. This is in your interests. We are doing absolutely everything we can to find Sam. I understand you have the keys to your late aunt’s house. Perhaps you could stay there? I understand she has cats that need feeding.’

  Gillard could think of nothing worse. He had compartmentalised the prospect of his aunt’s death, someone he knew he would never miss even though he was grateful to her for pluckily following Sam’s abductor. But to be in her house, looking after her damn animals, would be like returning to the nightmare of his childhood that he thought he had escaped.

  ‘I can’t do that, ma’am.’

  ‘As you wish. But I don’t want you here. I’ve just authorised the suspension of your passwords for the PNC and the other databases. Give me your security pass and work phone.’ She even clicked her fingers at him.

  Sullenly, he dropped them on her desk. He was waiting for her to ask for the keys to the unmarked Vauxhall, but as her phone rang she already seemed to be moving on to the next thing. ‘This is a call from Germany, Craig. Perhaps you’ll forgive me?’ She picked up the handset and exchanged a warm greeting with Karl-Otto Ulbricht.

  The interview was over. Gillard turned and made his way down the carpeted corridor, lined with the stern portraits of previous chief constables going back over a century. He had made his marriage vows to Sam almost three years previously. To love, honour and cherish. To protect may not have been explicit, but to Craig Gillard it was central. Few people are better placed than a policeman to protect a woman he loves. But Alison Rigby had just taken away the tools for him to do it.

  * * *

  He drove into the centre of Guildford, unsure what to do next. He had an overnight bag in the car, and was welcome to stay with Claire and Baz Mulholland, but he could hardly mooch around there all day getting under the feet of her numerous kids, and being a target for Dexter, the crazed wolfhound. It was nearly six p.m. and he was hungry, so he put the car in the car park and had a lonely meal for one in Pizza Express. It was only when he was halfway through eating that he realised he and Sam had once shared a meal there on one of their early dates before going to see a film. The thought rather ruined his appetite.

  Like most of the other solo diners, he spent time working his personal phone. Presumably warned off by Radar Dobbs, no one in CID nor anyone in CSI would take his calls. His texts and emails went unanswered. Only DC Michelle Tsu sent a brief reply, saying: ‘Sir, we’re all feeling your agony. I just want you to know that we won’t rest until we find her.’

  Gillard creased his face, trying to suppress the emotion he felt. He became aware of a waitress standing at his shoulder. ‘Was the pizza okay?’ she asked. He nodded mutely, paid up and tipped extravagantly before staggering out. He stared around the streets, shop windows still lit up, even as staff began to lock doors. The streets were busy, the frenetic start of the weekend commute home. All right for those with a home. In the pedestrianised area everything seemed to be moving fast, except the homeless. They occupied most of the benches, grimy plastic bags and shopping trolleys containing pitiful possessions. He found a clean end of a bench at the other end of which perched an elderly lady in a headscarf and a raincoat whose colour could once have been described as coral, sucking on a can of cider. She didn’t see him, she didn’t even see the multitudes who strode past. Her rheumy unfocused eyes, canted skywards, seemed to await a message of salvation from on high.

  For that, he envied her.

  He tried Claire for the fourth time, and she picked up. ‘Craig, where are you?’

  ‘I’m sharing a bench with a lady of the road in the centre of Guildford.’ He told her Rigby’s advice about using Trish’s bungalow. She immediately renewed her offer of the spare room in Staines, but he declined.

  ‘I need to be close to the investigation. I’m going nuts.’

  ‘Don’t, Craig. Rigby is serious. If you cross her she’ll destroy you.’

  ‘How’s the investigation divided up?’ he asked.

  ‘Dobbs as you know is SIO. He’s appointed Perry to look after the Ulbricht and Morris killings, and I’m going to be working with the AKEU guy, Rajinder Otara, who arrives tonight, to find Sam. There’s a total news blackout of course.’

  ‘I’m relieved it’s you, Claire.’

  She chuckled. ‘Mainly because you think I’ll feed you up-to-date information.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘Within reason. I’m working on the basis that as Sam was abducted and driven away in her own car, the kidnapper must either have left a vehicle nearby or arrived on public transport. We’ve got the CCTV in from both Woodmansterne and Chipstead stations, as well as buses in the area.’

  ‘It’s not going to be much help when we don’t know what he looks like.’

  ‘True enough. I guess he wouldn’t be dim enough to wear the car coat.’

  ‘What did ANPR show?’ Craig asked.

  ‘There are no hits on the Mitsubishi Warrior, but then I’m not surprised. He’d be crazy to use such a distinctive vehicle again. But it’s not been reported abandoned either.’

  ‘That sounds good. I’ve got my own plans.’

  ‘That sounds ominous.’ Her voice was cautionary.

  ‘Don’t worry, Claire. I’m just picking up a loose end. You might recall that Sam had an ex-boyfriend called Gary Harrison. A nasty piece of work, serial liar, used to knock her about. He’d have a grudge against both Sam and me.’

  ‘I don’t recall he was on your list?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. I actually overstepped the mark when I put the frighteners on him when I first met Sam.’

  ‘I see,’ said Claire.

 
‘Five years ago he was married with two kids, and lived in the Addiscombe area of Croydon. I’m going to sneak back and get my notes from home, but if you would be kind enough to forward everything we have on him, and a proper address trace, I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘I will if you promise me not to go freelance on this.’

  ‘I promise, Claire. I won’t put you in a difficult position.’

  ‘Okay. I’m trusting you.’ She hung up.

  * * *

  Wallington Close in Addiscombe was a typical piece of 1990s infill development. Forty units of social housing, squeezed onto the sold-off gardens of 1930s semis. More vehicles than space for them, a good half of them parked on municipal lawns, which made the otherwise tidy homes look run down. It was 8.30 p.m. when Gillard’s Vauxhall cruised to the dead end of the street looking for number fifty-nine, the last known residence of Gary Harrison.

  It was a few years ago now, when he had only just met Sam, that Gillard had taken illegal revenge on Sam’s ex for breaking into her home and beating her up. He had sneaked into the back of Harrison’s car and ambushed him when he drove off, almost suffocating him by sliding a plastic bag over his head, twisting the neck then punching him. It was necessary, but he wasn’t proud of it. He’d never even told Sam the details. And here he was again, breaking the rules to look for his nemesis.

  There wasn’t a number fifty-nine.

  The last home was forty-seven, a three-bedroom end of terrace without a garage, but with bin sheds and external meter cupboards beyond the paint flaked ranch-style fencing. A child’s BMX-type bike leaned against the wall just outside the porch.

  He walked up to the door and rang the bell. An Asian woman in traditional dress answered the door. She hadn’t heard of Gary Harrison, nor of the family with two kids who had supposedly lived at number fifty-nine. The detective knocked at two other doors nearby, but gained no more information. The address was the one Harrison had used when he was employed as a chef in a college at Bromley seven years ago. Gillard had already checked with the employer, an educational trust which had since sold off the Bromley site to concentrate on others that it owned. Harrison’s manager was no longer on the payroll. Thanks to Rainy Macintosh, Gillard already knew that no contributions had been made on Gary Harrison’s national insurance record in five years. The home address that HMRC’s national insurance unit in Long Benton had for him was the address of the college.