Little Boy Lost

by J. P. Carter

  Anna flipped open the laptop, brought it to life, and turned it towards Quinlan.

  ‘You told us that you went out for your usual walk on Monday afternoon at about three o’clock,’ Anna said. ‘You insisted that you did not meet or talk to anyone, and that you returned home an hour later.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I did,’ Quinlan said.

  Anna shook her head. ‘But that isn’t true is it? The CCTV clips you’re about to see prove that.’

  Anna pressed a key on the laptop and the first clip started to play.

  ‘This footage was captured on a camera opposite the Bell Inn pub which is just over a mile away from your flat,’ she said. ‘As you can see it shows you entering the saloon bar at three-fifteen that day.’

  Quinlan shifted uncomfortably on the chair as he watched himself on the screen, and Anna noticed how his lower lip began to tremble.

  ‘And this second clip is from a security camera inside the pub,’ she said.

  It showed a busy bar and at the far end of the room Quinlan could be seen sitting at a table opposite a large man in his mid-thirties, who had on a black leather jacket and a baseball cap.

  ‘You stayed with this individual for forty minutes and you each had a pint of beer,’ Anna said. ‘From the look of it you had a lot to talk about and were clearly enjoying each other’s company.’ The clip ended and she moved straight on to another one. ‘This third clip shows you eventually leaving the pub through the rear door and getting into the man’s BMW in the car park. You can then be seen driving off together.’

  Anna let the video play through before ending it and closing the laptop.

  ‘So there you have it, Mr Quinlan,’ she said. ‘I can only assume that you must have had a good reason to lie to us. So I’ll now give you an opportunity to put the record straight. Tell us why you met up with that man and where he took you after leaving the pub.’

  Quinlan stared at her across the desk, his eyes filled with panic.

  ‘I think we should suspend the interview while I consult with my client,’ the solicitor said.

  ‘And I think your client should stop pissing us around and come clean,’ Anna said.

  Quinlan’s tongue flicked across his lips and the breath rushed out of him.

  ‘It’s none of your fucking business who I meet up with,’ he said. ‘So I don’t see why I should tell you who he is.’

  ‘Well for your information we already know who he is,’ Anna said, and was unable to suppress a grin. ‘He’s the registered owner of the BMW. His name is Craig Sullivan and he lives in Norwood. He has previous convictions for drug dealing and theft. He’s also the younger brother of one Tony Sullivan, who was jailed three years ago on charges of child sex trafficking. It’s strongly believed that he’s now part of the same trafficking network that his brother ran, but so far he’s managed to dodge getting collared.’

  Quinlan clenched his jaw and hissed an obscenity at Anna. Then he leaned forward on the table and buried his face in his hands.

  ‘I want to know where the pair of you went,’ Anna said.

  Without looking up, Quinlan responded with a ‘no comment.’

  Anna turned to Bloom. ‘I suggest you explain to your client that he won’t be leaving here until he’s told us the truth.’

  She then announced that she was suspending the interview and switched off the video camera. She got to her feet and picked up the laptop and documents folder.

  Before leaving the room, she said to Quinlan, ‘My officers are now on their way to Craig Sullivan’s home so it won’t be long before he’s sitting in the room next door. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s just as reluctant as you are to tell us what the pair of you got up to on Monday afternoon.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  ‘We’ll let Quinlan stew for a while,’ Anna said to Walker when they were back in the ops room. ‘Meanwhile, get someone to go back over his phone records and online history. Let’s find out how often he’s been in contact with Craig Sullivan.’

  DS Prescott had already been digging up info on Sullivan and the sex trafficking gang his brother had run. He’d spoken to the Yard’s anti-trafficking unit who had told him that the gang stayed in business after Sullivan was banged up.

  ‘They bring kids into the UK from all over Europe and Africa,’ Prescott said. ‘Most of the children have been kidnapped, but in a number of cases they’ve been sold by their parents. The children – some as young as five – are then sold on or rented out to paedophiles. It could be that Jacob Rossi was one of their victims.’

  ‘But if that’s the case then why send the note to his father?’ Anna said. ‘Surely they’d just be content with having the boy so they could put him to work.’

  ‘Well perhaps they wanted us to think that it was an act of revenge by a grudge-holding individual,’ Prescott said. ‘That way the spotlight wouldn’t fall on them.’

  ‘So where does Neville Quinlan come into it?’ Walker said. ‘Are we thinking he could be part of the gang?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘We shouldn’t rule anything out, but I think it more likely that he’s connected to them by way of being a customer. And one possible scenario is that he’s spent months perving over kids at schools near to where he lives. And while doing so he noticed how Jacob walked home alone along a stretch of road with no cameras. So he flagged it up to Sullivan who realised they could grab the boy fairly easily. Quinlan might have been paid cash or given some free time with kids.’

  Just talking about it was making Anna’s spine tingle. But she knew that such things were going on every day on a huge scale. Human trafficking and sexual exploitation of children was big business across the world. Hundreds of thousands of kids were seized by crime gangs every year and then farmed out for sex. It was therefore quite conceivable that Jacob Rossi had been snared for that purpose. But if so then why had he been held captive in the cellar of a derelict pub in Camberwell? Surely a well-resourced and experienced gang would have taken him straight to a more secure place.

  Anna went into her office and called DCS Nash to brief him on the new lead. The Sullivan name rang a bell with him and he remembered the case from three years ago when a total of four men were jailed for their parts in the multi-million-pound sex trafficking network.

  ‘I’ve cautioned the team not to build their hopes up,’ she said. ‘We’re still lacking solid evidence linking Quinlan or anyone else to the abduction. Plus, forensics have produced sod all. So I’m afraid we’ll just have to hope we get lucky at some point.’

  Nash explained that he would be spending yet another day at the Yard helping to coordinate the Met’s response to the riots.

  ‘I’ve been told what happened to Tom and your daughter,’ he said. ‘Thank God they’re OK. When this crisis is over, I’ll be insisting that you take some more compassionate leave so that you can spend some time with both of them.’

  ‘And I’ll be sure to hold you to that, sir.’

  Walker entered her office just as she came off the phone and handed her a mug of coffee.

  ‘I made it myself because the machine is on the blink,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Max. So what’s the situation with Craig Sullivan?’

  ‘DC Sweeny just called in, guv. She and DC Mortimer have arrived at his house in Norwood, but he’s not there. They want to know what they should do.’

  Anna gave it some thought. ‘Tell them to park up a discreet distance away and keep the place under surveillance. If he turns up they’re to call me for further instructions.’

  Walker’s phone rang so he stepped back out of the office to answer it, and Anna took the opportunity to call Chloe to check that all was well with her.

  She sounded in good spirits and told Anna that Tom was napping and she was eating crisps while watching television.

  ‘A doctor came to see him and he’s doing well,’ she said. ‘We’ve been talking and playing games and he’s been telling me a lot about you that I didn’t know.’
r />   ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that,’ Anna said.

  Chloe laughed. ‘Don’t panic, Mum. It’s all good stuff, mostly about what you did to try to find me over the years and how you never gave up.’

  Anna was reminded that her daughter and Tom hadn’t spent more than a few minutes alone together since Chloe’s return a month ago. So this was the first time Tom had been able to give her his take on what it had been like for Anna during the ten years that Chloe was missing from her life.

  ‘I probably won’t be able to pick you up until quite late,’ Anna said. ‘Are you OK with that?’

  ‘Of course, I am. Have you caught the man who kidnapped that boy?’

  ‘Not yet, sweetheart – I mean Chloe. But we are getting close. I’m sure of it.’

  Anna hung up after telling Chloe not to hesitate to call her if any problems arose. Then she called the team together so that she could update them. There were only nine in total, including four admin staff. She told them about the Quinlan interview and reminded them that they should soon receive the warrant allowing them to force their way into Roy Slater’s home.

  ‘As soon as we get the warrant we’ll go to Rotherhithe,’ she said. ‘And we’ll also need to be ready to shoot off to Norwood if DC Sweeny tells us Sullivan has turned up. It could be a long wait.’

  But it wasn’t. After just half an hour Sweeny reported in to say that Sullivan had arrived back home.

  ‘Stay in position and continue watching the house,’ Anna told her. ‘Don’t move in or do anything to alert him until we get there.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  So another suspect had been lobbed into the mix, and in terms of plausibility, Craig Sullivan certainly ticked the boxes. He was thought to be part of a child sex trafficking gang that used to be run by his brother, Tony. And he met up with the paedo Neville Quinlan the very afternoon that Jacob Rossi was abducted. It was therefore either a big coincidence or else the man was in it up to his neck.

  Anna took the decision to hit the road with DI Walker. She instructed DS Prescott to stay in HQ and have another go at getting Quinlan to open up.

  It had become a fast-moving situation suddenly, and even before they set off there was another development. DC Sweeny called in to say that Sullivan had re-emerged from his house after only a few minutes and was back in his car.

  ‘We’re tailing him, guv,’ she said. ‘But the roads are chaotic and there are diversions everywhere. So I don’t know how long we can keep him in sight.’

  ‘Where is he heading?’ Anna asked.

  ‘North along Norwood Road towards Tulse Hill.’

  ‘Stay with him if you can, Megan. We’ll head that way and I’ll try to get some back-up.’

  But it took Anna only minutes to discover that they were on their own. There were no patrols available to join the pursuit. Units were already responding to emergencies all across the city as a fresh wave of disturbances kicked off. The rioters were on a roll again, emboldened no doubt by the belief that they were on the winning side. They had the police against the ropes, and soldiers were taking to the streets to help quell the unrest.

  As Anna and Walker embarked on the four-mile journey from Wandsworth to Tulse Hill, they soon saw for themselves that London faced another grim day of violent disorder.

  Passing through Clapham, they witnessed skirmishes between police and mobs of young men on the Common, and then they were directed away from the High Street because rioters had erected a barricade across the road.

  They were rerouted through Balham, the neighbourhood where the accidental shooting of a pregnant woman during a police raid on Tuesday had triggered the riots. Damage to homes, shops and vehicles was considerable. Some buildings had burned down, while others were still smouldering. The pavements were packed with restless youths of both sexes who seemed to be having the time of their lives. They were winding each other up, intimidating local residents and shopkeepers, brazenly committing acts of vandalism.

  ‘What I find really scary about all this is how the emotions have changed from anger to euphoria,’ Walker said. ‘They’re really fucking lapping it up, aren’t they? The more people they hurt, the more buildings they trash, the more clobber they nick, the happier they are. And the icing on the cake is seeing us struggling to subdue them. It’s as though Christmas has come early for everyone who has a grudge against authority and feels the need to do something about it.’

  Anna was about to make a point of her own when a newsflash on the radio broke into her thoughts, and caused them both to wince.

  ‘Video footage has emerged which shows two police officers beating a teenage girl with batons during street clashes in Brixton,’ the newsreader said. ‘The girl, who’s black, was forced to the ground where one of the officers then kicked her twice in the head before other protesters managed to drag her away. It’s understood she’s now being treated in hospital. In the last few minutes a Scotland Yard spokesperson has said the incident will be the subject of an investigation. Meanwhile, a prominent community leader in Brixton has described it as a vicious example of the type of police brutality that has encouraged many people to take part in the riots.’

  Anna slammed her palms against the steering wheel and gritted her teeth.

  ‘That’s all we need,’ she said. ‘It’s like throwing gallons of petrol onto a fire that’s already raging out of control.’

  *

  DC Sweeny called with another update as they were passing by Tooting Bec Common.

  ‘Sullivan just stopped to pick someone up, ma’am,’ she said excitedly. ‘They’re now heading west towards Dulwich.’

  ‘So who did he pick up?’ Anna asked her.

  ‘A man in a grey overcoat who looked to be in his fifties. He was waiting on the corner of Norwood Road and Leigham Vale. As soon as Sullivan’s car pulled up he got straight into the front passenger seat.’

  ‘So where exactly are you now, Megan?’

  ‘We’re on Thurlow Park Road. Fortunately, it’s pretty quiet here.’

  ‘That’s good. We’re actually not far behind you.’

  ‘Do you want us to pull them over?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I want to see where they go. This is looking increasingly iffy to me.’

  Anna was very familiar with this part of London so she stuck to the back streets once they had passed Tooting. They encountered fewer problems because the rioters were focusing on the high streets, shopping malls and council estates. Just beyond Tulse Hill Sweeny came back on to say that they had followed Sullivan to a detached house on the edge of Dulwich Village.

  ‘He parked on the driveway and both he and his passenger got out,’ she told Anna. ‘We managed to pull into the kerb about twenty yards back and saw them approach the front door. It was opened by a young woman who let them in.’

  ‘So you’re now parked up with a view of the house.’

  ‘That’s correct, ma’am.’

  ‘Then give us your exact location. We’ll be there in minutes.’

  Walker tapped the address into the sat nav and they were on their way.

  ‘So how do we play this, guv, bearing in mind that we have no idea what the hell is going on here?’

  ‘Craig Sullivan is a person of interest in the abduction and imprisonment of Jacob Rossi,’ Anna replied. ‘We know he’s an acquaintance of another suspect, namely Neville Quinlan, who happens to be a convicted paedophile. We therefore need to question him ASAP.’

  ‘So what do we do if we go knocking on this house and he won’t come to the door?’

  ‘We execute a forced entry. And before you remind me that we’re without a warrant, as far as I’m concerned we don’t need one. We’re in pursuit of someone who we believe has committed a serious crime.’

  Walker laughed. ‘That’s why I like working with you, Boss. We’re always on the same wavelength.’

  Seven minutes later they turned into a short residential street. There were terraced homes on one side and detached houses on
the other. Most of the cars were parked in front of the terraced properties, including the familiar black Vauxhall Corsa from the MIT pool.

  There was a space directly behind it, which Anna pulled into. Seconds later she and Walker were in the back seat of the Vauxhall behind detectives Sweeny and Mortimer.

  Sweeny pointed through the windscreen. ‘It’s the house on the right over there. You can see Sullivan’s BMW on the driveway. No one has appeared since he and the guy he picked up went inside.’

  The house was smaller and less well maintained than those either side of it. The white exterior was in dire need of a fresh coat of paint and the tiny front garden to the right of the driveway had weeds sprouting up through the gravel.

  ‘So what we know is that there are at least three people inside,’ Anna said. ‘One of them is a man who we believe to be involved in the trafficking of children for sex, which is why we want to question him about Jacob Rossi. However, we don’t know the identities of the guy he brought here or the woman who answered the door to them. And we don’t know if there’s anyone else inside. For that reason we need to tread carefully.’

  ‘It might be sensible to wait for back-up,’ Sweeny said. ‘Or even an armed response team.’

  ‘If we do that we could be waiting all day,’ Anna said. ‘And my gut’s telling me that we need to move quickly. Something bad could be happening inside that house and it might well involve children.’

  They all knew it was a justifiable concern, which far outweighed the risks they faced by forging ahead unarmed and without back-up.

  ‘Max and I will go to the front door and I want you two to see if you can make your way around the back,’ Anna said. ‘Be prepared to stop anyone fleeing the scene, but don’t confront them if you think they might have a weapon.’

  Anna’s brain was in overdrive as she approached the house and her stomach was in tight knots. Her suspicions were further aroused when she saw that the curtains were closed across all the windows despite the fact that it was a bright day.