The Body Under the Bridge

by The Body Under the Bridge (epub)

  ‘What gave you the suspicion?’

  ‘Linda and Harold had tried for a baby for years and got nowhere. Linda was just consumed with the desire to be a mother, and I think Harold had suggested years ago that they adopt. I had known that my Harold liked young girls, but I never guessed that he had taken advantage of his own niece, until Eileen whispered to me one day that her little Jane was pregnant.’

  ‘How did they conceal it?’

  ‘I think Harold threatened Jane to keep her mouth shut. And it would have destroyed the family, no mistake. Harold and Linda offered to bring up the child, and Linda dressed up for a pregnancy that she didn’t have. It seemed like the best solution. Frank got a bent doctor to write a series of false sick notes for Jane saying she had glandular fever, and pulled her out of school. Harold and Linda moved across to a rented flat on the other side of the High Road, to be on the safe side, away from nosy neighbours and Jane’s friends. The girl didn’t leave the flat for months once she began to show. So in November 1981, on the settee in that poky flat in Wandsworth, I delivered my granddaughter’s baby. It was a tiny little thing, just an angry red bundle of noise and fists. But it wasn’t black, thank God.’ Seeing Perry’s expression, she hurriedly added: ‘Not that I’m racial, mind. It just would have been harder to pass off as Harold and Linda’s.’

  ‘What about registering the birth, midwife visits and so on?’

  ‘The same bent doctor sorted that out. He had some gambling debts that Frank let him off. By the time social services and the NHS heard about little Graeme, he was already a toddler.’

  ‘But he would only have been six months old when Jane disappeared,’ Perry said. ‘I’m really surprised police didn’t look more closely into the origin of that child when your granddaughter disappeared.’

  ‘The Garrison family knows how to keep its gob shut. Besides, we had a story to tell that the police in those days liked to hear: gone off with a darkie.’

  Perry recoiled at the epithet. ‘Did you suspect that Harold had killed her?’

  ‘Not at first. But I had noticed how she looked at him so accusing like. I think she wanted her baby back. And she used to cry a lot. We told the police how she’d been quite listless and down with the glandular and all that, and that was true. She was a living misery after we gave her baby away to Linda. I think everybody was worried that she was going to grass her uncle up.’

  ‘When did you know it was him?’

  ‘I think it was when he sold up the business, and bought some warehouse space somewhere to set up a fish wholesaler. I thought, “I bet poor Jane is in the freezer”.’

  ‘Weren’t you ever tempted to tell the police?’

  ‘And throw my family to the wolves? Not on your nellie. No, the nearest I got was when Harold died in 2002. Graeme came to see me, and said he would sort out the sale of all his fish stuff, which had lain unused in some warehouse somewhere since he got ill and closed down the wholesaler. Hello, I thought, what’s going on here. That Graeme never offered to do anything for nothing. Even then he was a smarmy one, trying his charm to get round me.’

  ‘Did you have an address for this wholesale business?’

  ‘No. I’d lost interest. I think it was somewhere in Surrey. But as they always say, tell me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies.’

  * * *

  After he had finished the interview Perry picked up his notes and drove off towards his home in Woking. The datasticks now contained photographs of all the historic case records, witness statements, interview records and so on from 1982 that he had picked up from the archives in Tooting, and now this crucial evidence on tape from the grandmother. He emailed off a digital copy of the interview to DC Rainy Macintosh and DCS Rajinder Otara.

  He wasn’t going to go straight home, though. His sanity depended on not having to confront Mel again. Last night he had slept in the car in a country lane, and if necessary he would do it again tonight. He could keep the laptop charged from the USB port in the car, and could pretty much do what he needed to do.

  Perry parked his unmarked VW Polo by the site office of the Shepherds’ Rest estate and set the dash cam so it would capture all the vehicle movements through this, the only entrance to the estate. If a black Range Rover passed, he would spot it.

  He rang Rainy Macintosh, who had been researching all the British suppliers and distributors of ultra-low temperature freezers. ‘Hiya boss,’ she said with her usual level of cheerful Glaswegian insubordination. ‘Still at work on a Saturday evening?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he replied. Just planning revenge against my wife’s lover, as one does.

  She told him that most of the freezers were used in medicine, mainly designed for small samples. They would generally be too small to hold a human body. They were also pretty expensive.

  ‘I’ve been on to the four biggest suppliers, and they do keep customer lists because of a servicing requirement. Most of them are companies or universities or research institutes.’

  ‘What about the exceptions?’ Perry asked.

  ‘Aye, if you go on eBay or Alibaba, there are all sorts of manufacturers you can deal with directly. If it’s a Japanese tuna freezer, or walk-in freezer room, you can get one made to order. These are going to be much harder to trace so—’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt. I’ll call you back later.’ Perry had spotted a black Range Rover entering the estate. He shut the laptop lid, tossed it onto the passenger seat and watched as the vehicle went past him. The driver was a bulky male wearing sunglasses. Once it had turned onto Southdown Way, Perry followed at a discreet distance. The target turned left into Ryeland Drive. His own home was on Romney Crook, the next turning on the right. He willed the vehicle to make the turning, but it did not. Instead it continued up the slight hill, and into Wensleydale Walk, parking outside number sixteen, in the same half on, half off the curb fashion that Perry had witnessed outside his own home. This must be him. The man who makes my wife howl with pleasure.

  Bastard.

  Perry didn’t dare draw attention to himself by stopping, but drove past and into a cul-de-sac beyond. He turned the car around, stopped for a couple of minutes and then drove back at low speed. The driver was nowhere to be seen.

  That was fine. Perry would come back later.

  He drove home, and was relieved to see no sign of his wife’s Audi. Ideally, he wanted to get his hands on her phone and examine the call records to really work out what had been happening, but Mel was a very canny woman and the device was never out of her sight. In fact it was a toss-up whether Mel or Vanessa spent more time glued to their phones.

  Once into his home office, he picked up the phone, intending to ring Rainy back. Then he stopped. There was something he wanted to do first. Something about the Wensleydale Walk address was familiar. He logged on to the local crime database and discovered that, yes, this was the house from which the Mitsubishi Warrior had been stolen a couple of weeks ago. He looked up the details of the couple from the electoral register. Kyle Halliday and Angela Wright. There were no previous entries for him.

  Perry looked back through his emails, and found one that had been sent all around by DC Hoskins, headlined ‘The tale of the flying slipper’, attached to which was the video from Halliday’s CCTV. He had glimpsed it once at the office already, but now took a more detailed look. His adversary in love had certainly been courageous, rushing out to stop the thief. The comical partial disrobing, and the obviously painful fall, made Perry chuckle. Whichever German coined the word schadenfreude, delight in the misfortune of others, had clearly understood the innate cruelty of the human soul. The man was certainly muscular and well-developed. Trying to confront him physically, however tempting, might be stupid. There would be better ways.

  After three viewings, Perry set aside project vengeance, and got on with the day job. But at last he had a smile on his face.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours on from the start of Project Hawkeye, NCA resources had filled up th
e surveillance suite at Surrey Police headquarters. The mobile ANPR units were parked along key junctions on the patchwork of minor roads within the target area. They sent in a constant stream of data which was assessed in real-time by two specialist officers. So far, the Mitsubishi Warrior and Sam’s black Renault had eluded them. On the row behind, a supervisor and assistant were overseeing another five plainclothes officers in the field, visiting places within Surrey where ultra-low-temperature freezers were known to be installed. Next to them were two officers tasked with monitoring the various phones.

  The usual bane of electronic monitoring in policing is delay. But with the power and technology available to the National Crime Agency, that had been almost eliminated. There was one final thing that Otara wanted, and it could not be obtained without the signature of the Home Secretary. On a Saturday, and even with the help of the chief constable, making the case to the Home Secretary’s duty officials had taken a few hours. But finally, permission had been granted. Reading the confirming email, Otara raised a fist above his head and yelled: ‘We’ve got permission! GCHQ are sending us their top expert. First thing tomorrow.’

  One of the officers monitoring the phones hissed for quiet. ‘I’ve got something,’ she said. She turned on the microphone, and they listened in mounting horror to a message just left for Gillard on his home landline.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gillard was back at home by five. He had been encouraged by his meeting with DCS Raj Otara. The National Crime Agency had the resources to get to grips with the kidnap, but he still felt that he should be contributing. Otara had encouraged him to ring if he had any fresh ideas, but there were one or two things he wanted to do himself. He was aware that the person Sam had spoken to most in the last couple of weeks was Ellen, the old friend who had been a police cadet with her. She was the only person who’d been given their address in the last two weeks.

  He had no idea what the surname was, and CSI had taken Sam’s laptop, which would have given him access to her Facebook page. Using his own laptop, he tried to log into Sam’s account, making a number of guesses at the password. After fifteen minutes he had got nowhere. At one level he was impressed that it wasn’t easy to guess, but right now it was very frustrating. He recalled that Ellen worked as a receptionist at a vet’s practice in Bedfordshire. Going through Sam’s address book, he found a number for a vet, and rang it. As he did so, he heard the landline downstairs going, and then half a minute later the call-waiting flashed up on his mobile. It was DCS Otara from the NCA. Nobody had replied at the vet, which was probably closed for the evening, so Gillard hung up and took the waiting call.

  ‘Craig, the kidnapper has just left a message on your landline. Listen to it, and call me back with your thoughts ASAP. We’re getting a trace.’ Otara cut the line.

  Gillard ran downstairs to the telephone table in the hall and saw the new message light was flashing. With an unsteady finger, he pressed the button.

  ‘Craig. You are being rather dim. It’s gone five in the afternoon, and I’m here with Sam. I can’t put her on the line, because she’s gagged. In fact she is rather trussed up altogether. I’ve been enjoying her again, Craig, in a variety of ways, but I’m getting a little bored now. And you know what happens when I get bored. She only has twenty-four hours to live. That’s five p.m. on Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow. Do you think you can find her in time? Frankly, I doubt it. But I do know you’ll try.’

  The hinted abuse made the detective’s guts feel like they were trying to turn inside out. He forced down the rising bile, and tried to quarantine his emotions. Poor Sam. What she must be suffering. He didn’t have time to indulge his rage, but it was there, a gathering shadow over everything.

  Twenty-four hours!

  The voice, that’s what he must concentrate on. He didn’t recognise it at all. It was hard to match it against his memory of the shouts of the man who tried to run him over. What he could hear now was a southern accent, almost jaunty, not London particularly, nor Essex. Could it be Gary Harrison? He had been her boyfriend, so enjoying her ‘again’ might reference that. Gillard had never heard him talk. The one perfect person to have answered that question was of course poor Sam herself. This was a really important piece of evidence. The NCA would have access to linguistic experts who could narrow down the origin of this accent to within a few square miles. But probably not within twenty-four hours.

  Gillard played the message again, recording it on his mobile, then rang the incident room, getting straight through to Otara. The NCA expert was ecstatic about the trace they had got on the caller’s mobile. ‘Fantastic, we were hoping for a breakthrough like this. We’ve got a location, in the village of Westmeare.’

  ‘Westmeare?’ His first thought was Adrian Singer, who lived there, but had gradually been sidelined as a suspect. The voice Gillard had heard on the message was quite different from the more cultured tones of the music teacher.

  ‘We’ve three cars on their way, the first is just three minutes away,’ Otara said. ‘Stay strong!’

  He cut the line, leaving Gillard staring at the handset. He had never felt so impotent. He was just thinking about how to track down Ellen when the landline rang. He picked it up.

  ‘Is that Craig Gillard?’ The voice was female and vaguely familiar.

  ‘Yes,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘It’s Ellen Bramley, Sam’s friend—’

  ‘Ah, what a coincidence! I’ve been trying to track you down.’

  ‘Craig, I’m so sorry I didn’t call earlier. I heard from one of the other former cadets that something terrible’s happened to Sam. That she’s disappeared or something.’

  Chief Constable Alison Rigby had made clear that not a whisper of the kidnapping was to leave Mount Browne, not even to family members or close friends. A round robin from her to all Surrey Police staff warned that even a single article in the press might jeopardise Sam’s life. Gillard had only been given permission to let Sam’s parents know after reassuring the higher-ups that they could keep a secret.

  ‘Ellen, this is really, really important. I can’t tell you what has happened to Sam, except that her life is in grave danger.’

  The cry of sympathy, and a great rush of questions, brought Gillard’s own emotions close to the surface. He fought hard to keep his own voice steady. ‘Ellen, we don’t have much time and I need you to help me, even if you think the information I’m requesting may be sensitive and not relevant. I need to ask you some questions about your ex-boyfriend.’

  ‘Gabriel?’

  ‘Yes. Do you have a surname and an address for him?’

  ‘Gabriel Hallam.’ She read out an address in Fleet, Hampshire. ‘I don’t think he’s there much. Why are you asking about him? Is it about the money he borrowed from me?’

  ‘Amongst other things. Has he paid it back?’

  ‘No.’ There was a catch in her throat. ‘I’ve not seen him at all.’

  Gillard feared she was about to cry. ‘Ellen, do you have a work address for him?’

  ‘Only a phone number. He’s self-employed. Something in tech, travels all the time.’ She passed it over. It was a mobile number. ‘Why are you asking about him?’

  ‘Gabriel was due to come with you to a dinner party here, but couldn’t come. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you had given him this address?’

  ‘Yes, he said he might be a little late so would come independently.’

  Gillard wrote down a few more questions as they occurred to him.

  ‘How did you meet him? Was it online?’

  ‘No. His car broke down just outside my house, and he knocked on the door for help.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Sunday, 12 January.’ The precision of her response showed what a significant moment it was in her life. Gillard felt sorry for her, but didn’t have the time to indulge it.

  ‘What kind of car did he have?’

  ‘A black Range Rover. But
it wasn’t his only one.’

  ‘What was the other vehicle?’

  She blew a long sigh. ‘I don’t know. It was big and green, though. We went out in it for one of our early dates.’ She thought for a moment. ‘It had a little funnel thing on it, that stuck up like a chimney.’

  The Warrior? Gillard’s mind reeled. ‘That’s a snorkel, for deep water use. Did it have an open pick-up back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know the registration numbers?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Ellen, do you have any pictures of him?’

  ‘I did. He hated having his photo taken, because he had this scar. He forbade me to show anyone, he said that people were after him.’

  ‘Can you email me the pictures?’

  He could hear her voice dissolving now. ‘No, no I can’t. I deleted them both when he dumped me. And now I wish I hadn’t.’ Her voice tailed off into a full blown bout of crying.

  I wish you hadn’t, too. ‘Ellen, I need you to bring your phone to a police station for forensic examination. We have people who may be able to retrieve the deleted photographs. You have to do this immediately, do you understand? I’m really sorry to have to ask this, but it’s extremely important.’ He asked her where her nearest police station was, and he made a note to get an NCA officer over there immediately with a portable data extraction kiosk. Finally, he had the momentous decision to make over whether to let her listen to the phone message he had just received. Any hope of keeping the nature of the crime secret would go, but if she recognised his voice, it would crack the case right open.

  ‘Okay, Ellen. I’m going to let you in on the secret.’ He held his mobile next to the answer machine and pressed play.