Unsolved

by Michael Fowler

  The woman’s voice made Hunter jump, and he sprang open his eyes. Coming towards him was a slender female in her mid-thirties dressed in a dark blue pullover and fitted slacks. She had auburn-tinted dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail, revealing a red, flustered face. At first glance, she reminded him of local actress Katherine Kelly.

  ‘My daughter had a dental appointment. I didn’t know you were starting this morning until I got a phone call last night from the new Detective Superintendent, so I couldn’t let you know I’d be in later.’

  ‘St. John-Stevens?’

  She nodded, setting down her bag on the desk next to his. ‘That’s him. He’s replaced Superintendent Dawn Leggate, so he told me. Pity, I like her.’

  ‘Yeah, so did I,’ Hunter returned with a sigh. Then he asked, ‘Where is everyone else?’

  With a burst of laughter, she replied, ‘I’ll stick the kettle on, put on my face and fill you in.’

  Twenty minutes later, make-up on and looking refreshed, Detective Madeline Scott, — Maddie, as she preferred to be called — sat at her desk, a steaming mug of tea clasped in her hands, facing Hunter. She said, ‘I’m afraid, it’s only me, Sarge.’

  ‘You and I are the Cold Case Unit? That’s what you’re saying?’

  She nodded. ‘And I’m only here because of what happened to my daughter.’ Maddie Scott went on to explain that she had transferred to the Cold Case Unit following a serious accident involving her ten-year-old daughter, Libbie, six months previous, who had been thrown from her horse, landing face-down on hard-standing at the stables. It had caused multiple fractures to her face which required reconstructive surgery, and now she was undergoing dental surgery to replace the teeth she lost. Maddie told Hunter that before the accident she had been a front-line detective in Rotherham, and she had been offered the place in the Cold Case Unit because there were less operational constraints and it therefore gave her the flexibility to handle all the hospital appointments without impact on the department. ‘That’s why I was late coming in this morning. Libbie had to have some impressions made for her new implants.’

  ‘Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that, Maddie. That must be really hard on you.’

  ‘It has been. It was a real worry at first. She had to be air-lifted to hospital, and seeing the state of her face after all that surgery freaked me out, I can tell you, but she’s getting there now. There’s still some considerable work to do with her teeth, but the consultant said that by the time she’s a teenager no one will be able to tell anything at all.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’

  ‘It’s been six months of worry, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I bet it has.’ Hunter studied her face a moment. She wore a look of quiet contemplation. He said, ‘So what happened to everyone else?’

  ‘Police cuts. The Cold Case Unit was the first to be wound up when they needed to back-fill detective posts. Because the work wasn’t seen as being front-line, it wasn’t as important and so the department was culled. I only survived because of my daughter. I’ve been working alone since the move to this place six weeks ago.’

  Hunter pursed his lips, shaking his head. It suddenly hit home how underhandedly St. John-Stevens had operated. He had totally fucked him over. He was a detective sergeant in charge of one person. He could feel the heat rising to his face, his anger boiling to the surface again, and he fought to restrain it, taking a drink of tea to hide his emotion and steady his agitation. Swallowing slowly and setting down his mug, he said, ‘So Maddie, now all that’s clear, do we actually have cases to investigate?’ He found his voice wavering.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she blurted out, then quickly followed up by adding, ‘of sorts.’

  ‘That sounds ominous. What do you mean “of sorts?”’

  ‘The force has seven outstanding murders, the longest going back to nineteen-sixty-two, but all of them were reviewed a year ago and there are no further lines of enquiry or fresh evidence, or so it’s been determined. To be honest, I haven’t looked at any of the murder cases. I’ve looked at the outstanding sex crimes, and while some have lines of enquiry, none of them present themselves as a series. The cases I’ve been focussing on, because there’s only been me, are missing persons, to see if there is the likelihood that any of them have come to harm.’

  ‘And how many of those do we have, Maddie?’

  ‘To be honest, Sarge, I’ve not counted them. Quite a few. I’ve looked at dozens these past six weeks, and I’ve got three on my desk that I feel have lines of enquiry that can be followed up.’

  ‘Okay, thanks for that.’ Hunter took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This wasn’t the type of work he was used to. It sounded laborious, almost mind-numbing. St. John-Stevens had well and truly done a number on him. He gave Maddie an earnest look and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Maddie, but don’t you find the work boring, going through old missing cases that many people have already done work on and come to a dead end?’

  ‘I thought so at first, until I started the enquiries, and then I found some of them really got under my skin because of the element of mystery to them. Why did they disappear like that? I just kept telling myself I could be looking at a case of someone who’s been murdered by a serial-killer, and that’d be a real Brucie Bonus for my career if I identified that. Thinking like that spurred me on when it started getting tedious. And because I’ve been on my own for the last six weeks, that positive thinking has kept me going.’

  Maddie’s sermon suddenly made Hunter think of his conversation with Beth the previous day, when she’d talked about victims’ families getting closure and about everything happening for a reason. Both women’s words pricked his conscience. He said, ‘Do you mind if I have a look at them?’

  ‘Not at all. I’d be glad of a new pair of eyes. Besides, it’s you who now makes the decision as to the cases we investigate.’ Maddie set down her mug and lifted out three blue folders from her tray.

  As she handed them to him, Hunter could see the top folder was crammed with paperwork, an elastic band securing the contents. He clasped a firm hand around it, plonking it down on his desk. He would look at that one last — he guessed there was at least three hours of reading material in there. Taking the two thinner folders from her, he said, ‘And no need to call me Sarge whilst there’s only us two in the office. Hunter will do just fine.’

  Later that morning, Maddie went out to grab lunch for them both. With the office to himself, Hunter separated the two slimmer files and picked the one bearing the name Alison Chambers. The first document in the file was the missing report. As Hunter cast his eyes over it, he was surprised at the age of Alison — seventy-nine years old. He knew from experience that the majority of people that went missing were young, mainly teenagers. Someone of Alison’s age who went missing tended to have dementia, Alzheimer’s or depression of some kind and simply wandered off, only to be found in a confused state, hours, or at the most a couple of days, later. He saw that Alison had been missing since 1991, disappearing on Friday the 12th May, after telling a neighbour she was heading to Rotherham shopping centre. Alison had suffered a minor stroke six weeks earlier and was making her first trip out to buy some meat, salad and fruit from the market, she had told her neighbour. She was last seen at a bus stop a quarter of a mile from her home.

  Hunter speed-read through the information detailing everything that had been done to try and locate her, saw that there was no suggestion Alison had been acting out of character or was mentally ill and that there was no reason to believe she was likely to commit suicide. All this information had been provided by her fifty-two-year-old son, who was in regular contact with his mother and had spent a few weeks at her home, looking after her following her stroke. As Hunter finished reading the missing report, he saw that all avenues to trace Alison back in 1991 had borne no fruit and an attachment to the report showed that media appeals had been made to locate her for three consecutive years, none of them resulting in anything positive. />
  There were three witness statements in the file, one from Alison’s son, one from the witness who had seen her at the bus stop and one from the female neighbour who had seen Alison on the morning of her disappearance, when she had told her she was going shopping. That last statement detailed what Alison was wearing. Hunter made a note of the witnesses’ names and wondered if any of them were still alive. He worked out that Alison’s son would now be seventy-one. Flipping back to the missing report, he made a note of the name of the constable who compiled the report and the officers involved in conducting enquiries to trace Alison. He recognised a couple of the names, none of them still working at Barnwell station, and knowing that they would be now in their early fifties he reckoned they had retired. The last thing Hunter looked at were three photographs in Alison’s file. He noted on the back of one that someone had pencilled the age of sixty-eight, eleven years younger than her seventy-nine years, but had added ‘good likeness.’ He put the photos back in the folder, gathered together all the paperwork, clipped a sheet of plain paper to the cover and compiled a list of enquiries to do and slipped it across onto Maddie’s desk. As he turned to the next folder, Maddie appeared, holding a supermarket carrier bag which she dumped on her desk.

  ‘I’ve bought us some biscuits as well,’ she said with a smile, slipping off her jacket. She pulled out a bottle of milk and made her way over to the kettle. ‘Been up to much?’ she asked, turning to Hunter.

  ‘Read one file and listed a number of enquiries that can be done. I’ve put it back on your desk if you can oblige?’

  ‘Sure, no problem. It would be good to be able to do some detective work for a change.’

  ‘It’s nothing earth-shattering, I’m afraid, but at least it will show we’ve done a review.’

  Maddie nodded, lining up two mugs, dropping a teabag into each one. ‘I’ll crack on with them when I’ve made us a brew.’

  Hunter gave her the thumbs-up and picked up the second folder. This one bore the name Catherine Dewhurst and he flipped it open. The first thing he noted was her age: seventy-five. Another elderly lady. He immediately skipped past the descriptive details of Catherine to the vulnerability section to see if there was anything recorded. There was nothing. Like Alison Chambers, there was nothing to suggest Catherine had any mental illness or was deemed to be a suicide risk. Hunter quickly read on, taking in that Catherine had disappeared almost eleven months before Alison, on the morning of Sunday the 23rd April 1990 after leaving her home to walk to church half a mile away, where she’d been an active member of the congregation. She’d never made it to church, which was completely out of character.

  There were some old newspaper cuttings in this folder and he could see that her disappearance had generated a lot of publicity; nevertheless, it had not produced one shred of evidence as to what had happened to her. Like Alison Chambers, she had disappeared without a trace. There were witness statements enclosed and photographs of Catherine, but before looking them over Hunter raised his head and said, ‘Maddie, the first two files I’ve just read through relate to two missing elderly ladies, one seventy-nine and the other seventy-five. Although they are eleven months apart and the circumstances of the two disappearances are different, I’m curious because of the age of the pair. It just seems so unusual.’

  Maddie looked his way.

  He continued, ‘You said you’ve already gone through and reviewed a number of missing files. Are any of those of elderly women?’

  Maddie processed the question for several seconds and returning a studious frown answered, ‘Not that old. The oldest was a mid-thirties male from what I recall. Most of the others were teenagers and a few were in their early twenties. Why? Do you think there could be a link with their disappearances?’

  Hunter shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not sure. It might be just a coincidence. These two women have no reason to disappear and they don’t fit the profile of people who go missing for no apparent reason, but I also might be reading too much into what’s in the files. I’m going to write down some lines of enquiry for both of them. Can you do some digging and give me your opinion?’

  Maddie nodded sharply. ‘Sure. Love to. See what I said about some cases getting under your skin? You’ve caught the bug already.’ She winked at him.

  Hunter returned a smirk and revisited the file, picking out the witness statements.

  At lunchtime Hunter changed into his running gear and went for a jog, taking the mile-long route to nearby Manvers Lake, completing its full circuit of three miles before heading back to the office. He pushed himself hard to combat the urge he still had to throttle the life out of St. John-Stevens and by the time he’d got back, he felt a lot less stressed. He showered, changed and made his way back up to his new office where he saw Maddie busy at her computer with one of the missing person files open.

  She glanced up as he entered and said, ‘I’m just going through the missing persons archives to see if there are any others that are in the same age group as these.’

  Hunter acknowledged Maddie’s comment with a nod, made them both a cuppa and took up the seat at his new desk to go through the last folder while he ate his sandwich. The bulging folder showed all the signs of being well-handled, and its contents were secured by an elastic band. The moment he started to slip off the band, it snapped and some of the paperwork spilled across his desk. He could immediately see that there was no semblance of order to any of the documentation, and so the first thing he looked for was the missing person report. He was surprised when he found three of them mixed among a number of witness statements, all handwritten and showing the patina of ageing. He was about to pick them out when he spotted a quantity of typed sheets that appeared to be a summary of the file. Knowing these were his best starting point, he picked out the first page.

  The title instantly grabbed him — A summary of facts relating to the missing Banister family. The second thing that caught his eye and piqued his interest further was the date — 16th July 1991 — and it instantly triggered a vague recollection of seeing something about this case on the news at the time. It flashed into his thoughts because it was the year he’d joined the Force, and he’d been at training school when this had happened. He pulled out the remaining pages of the summary — it stretched to six pages — and began reading.

  The first thing he noted was that twenty-six-year-old David Bannister, his wife, twenty-five-year-old Tina and their daughter, two-year-old Amy, had all been reported missing by David’s mum the next day, Wednesday, 17th July, 1991. She’d reported them missing at just after ten in the morning when she’d visited their house and found the doors unlocked, and in the lounge signs of a disturbance. Those signs were a small side table overturned, the phone ripped from its socket, a photograph that normally sat atop the fireplace smashed on the floor and a few droplets of blood on the tiled hearth. She’d immediately called the police.

  The house had instantly become a crime scene, and following examination by SOCO a further smear of blood had been found low down on the door jamb that led into the back kitchen, which tests had later revealed was the same blood-group as Tina’s. Further staining had been found on the kitchen floor, and although it had proved to be blood, there was evidence that someone had used bleach to clean it up, resulting in the blood being corrupted and disabling tests to determine who it belonged to. Numerous fingerprints had been uncovered, but all had been eliminated as people who’d had access to the house.

  During enquiries into the family’s disappearance, it had been reported that police attended the Bannister home three weeks earlier following a report of a domestic disturbance, and Hunter noted that no action had been taken after Tina Bannister had refused to make a complaint — standard police response in those days. On the day police had taken the initial report of the family going missing from David Bannister’s mother, it had been discovered that David’s car had also disappeared. An extensive search had been carried out, but it had never been found.

  After several
days of intensive investigation, interviewing family members, neighbours and friends, it had been uncovered that although Tina had been a doting mum to her daughter Amy, she’d had a reputation as a woman who’d regularly flirted with men in the pub where she’d worked as a barmaid. David’s mum had revealed that the domestic incident followed David’s discovery that she’d had a sexual fling with one of his work colleagues.

  Two-thirds of the way through the report, Hunter read that another work colleague, George Evers, had tipped off David that he had seen Tina having lunch with a man in a local pub and had seen that same man leaving the Bannister home one afternoon the week before the family’s disappearance. On the day the family disappeared, David had told George Evers that he was going home at lunchtime to hopefully catch his wife with the man in question. That was the last time David had been seen. Whilst extensive searches had been carried out locally, together with a number of media appeals, no concrete information had come forward that determined the whereabouts of the family.

  The conclusion of the investigation findings was that David Bannister had gone home that lunchtime, that there had been an altercation of sorts at the family home, and that David had more than likely killed Tina and his daughter and then driven away with their bodies and committed suicide by driving into a river or lake. Several local waterways had been searched during the six-month long enquiry, but neither David’s car nor any of the bodies had ever been found.

  Finishing the report, Hunter lifted his head and stared at the ceiling as he considered the contents. He found it very difficult to understand how a complete family could just disappear like that and instantly came to the conclusion that the circumstances warranted further investigation, if only to satisfy himself that every avenue had been considered. His first port of call would be to talk with the officer who’d headed up the investigation and the officer who’d conducted most of the enquiries. Dropping his gaze to the typed report, he turned to the back page to see who had compiled the summary. As his eyes danced across the name, he grimaced. Detective Constable St. John-Stevens. That’s all I fucking need!