by Iain Cameron
She stood at the car door, considering what to do, reply or ignore? She decided to reply but should she be nasty, neutral or nice? He didn’t deserve nice. She wrote:
‘You’ll see me when I decide to come in. Amy’
No ‘love’, no little ‘xxx’s’ and no smiley face.
‘Excuse me,’ a deep voice said behind her.
She jumped at the unexpected sound and turned. A man stood there, close to the back of her car. He was tall, well built with a tangle of light-brown hair and while his face was handsome, the skin looked rough and weather-beaten. When Kelly Langton disappeared, she read every scrap she could about her, not because she knew the woman, as she didn’t, but some of the other mums at school did. She and her friends and much of the chat on Facebook and Twitter believed Kelly had been abducted by some evil killer and vowed to be on their guard. With her husband arrested, the shrieking and panicking tone of the messages abated but many still advised taking care.
There were many suggestions on ways to protect themselves including carrying rape alarms, Mace sprays or something heavy like a small hammer or a spanner. Now, faced with the very situation many feared, she froze in terror.
Her phone was still in her hand but what use would it be if he decided to grab her? Hit him with it? It was made of plastic and glass and would most likely shatter into a thousand pieces on impact. Call the police? There wasn’t time and her fingers were shaking too much to press the buttons.
He edged closer, causing her to step back between the car and a hedge, and behind her a tall wall. She felt boxed-in, like a rat in a trap. It took her a few moments to realise he’d moved to avoid standing in a puddle from last night’s rain.
‘Sorry to startle you. Even wearing industrial boots I still seem to walk quiet.’
‘No…no, my fault.’ Gone was the confident, assertive estate agent, replaced by a squeaky, nervous character from one of Jennifer’s Disney films. ‘I get too engrossed in this,’ she said, holding up the phone, like an ancient charm to ward off evil spirits.
‘I know the feeling. Is this your car?’
‘Yes it is.’
‘Are you likely to be moving it soon?’
‘Yes.’ If you’ll let me, she wanted to say. ‘I’m going... now. Why?’
‘My company are contracted to refurbish the tennis courts over there,’ he said, jerking a thumb behind him, ‘and we’re expecting the delivery of the new surface, nets, posts and the rest of the gear in about ten minutes. Our supplier couldn’t find a smaller truck so a forty tonner will soon be trying to negotiate its way around this small car park. I would hate for your nice new motor to get damaged.’
Sandford Properties in Haywards Heath was on South Road, sandwiched between a bank and a cycle shop, a prominent position near the entrance to the Orchards Shopping Centre. It brought in many browsers and regular customers, but nowadays much of their business was now done on the web and they were considering moving to a cheaper location.
Amy breezed in through the open shop doorway at nine-thirty, daring anyone, most of all her husband to say a critical word. It was her business after all, well half of it and it wasn’t as if she’d been out shopping. She was dealing with the children, his children. She sat down at her desk, put her bag on the floor and glanced at the telephone messages stuck on the mouse mat.
Her desk, situated in the outer office, overlooked the road through floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. There, she and five other agents fielded telephone calls and dealt with any members of the public who wandered in. Her husband, on the other hand, worked in a plush office at the back with a sign on the door marked, ‘Managing Director.’ It was now closed while he talked to a client. Good, not for the client but the closed door, as she didn’t want to face him just yet.
The desk in front of her was occupied by Nick Morgan, now shaking hands with a departing customer and promising to call him. Seconds later, Morgan swivelled his chair around to face her, as he always did whenever she arrived in the morning. Despite being married, and being married to his employer, it did not stop the cocky Mr Morgan coming on to her, and if she was being honest, she rather liked it, especially today.
They worked together most of the time as she ran the letting side of the business and he was part of a team of two with responsibility for finding tenants. Lettings had grown fast in recent years as buy-to-let investments became ever more popular, giving them a good supply of properties which were snapped up by divorced couples, unable to afford to buy two separate houses, large international companies shipping-in senior executives for six and twelve-month assignments, and young couples and singles who couldn’t afford to buy a house of their own.
‘Good morning, Amy. How are you on this damp and dismal morning?’ he said smiling, as he straightened his tie. He was a fastidious dresser, higher than his pay grade but he proved popular with tenants and prospective clients and as a result, he also earned large commission payments.
His hair was gelled into a spiky peak which might be trendy amongst the whacky hair stylists in Brighton where he lived, but back-lit with strong light from the front window, his silhouette made him look like a Mohican Indian, which for a few moments brought a wicked smile to her face, which she hoped would not be misinterpreted.
‘I’m fine Nick, all set for another hard day at the coalface. Did I miss anything while I was out?’
‘Well, I hope you missed me because I missed you.’
‘I meant phone calls and messages, you know the sort of thing.’
‘Ah yes. Mr Haynes called to confirm his three o’clock with you, the lucky man.’
‘Oh God, he would. I hoped he’d cancel after being run over by a bus or contracting a dose of gastric flu.’
‘And you’ve got a message from Martin Swift.’
‘Who’s he?’
He pointed in the general direction of the yellow Post-it note, using it as an excuse to sneak a peak at her breasts, where one button was undone more than usual to spite the occupant of the MD’s office.
In Nick’s spidery hand it said, ‘Urgent’ across the top in red ink.
‘He insisted on speaking to you, which is why I thought you knew him. He asked if you could call back before eleven thirty this morning as he’s going up to London in the afternoon for a meeting and can’t be contacted for the rest of the week.’
‘Fine, I’ll do it. Anything else?’
‘No, but can I say how lovely you look today. The skirt and top you’re wearing really suits you.’ He smiled and returned to his desk, the cheeky scamp. If Chris didn’t show some more remorse, who knows, she might take up one of Mr Morgan’s lunch invitations and make him jealous. She picked up the note with the scribbled telephone number and little heart with an arrow running through it like a homemade valentine, and dialled.
‘Hello, Mr Swift?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good morning. This is Amy Sandford from Sandford Properties in Hayward’s Heath. You left a message asking me to call you.’
‘Yes, I did and thanks for calling back. I own a flat in Horsham but I’m finding I don’t use it much so I’d like to rent it out. Also, as I’m not around the area all that often as I go abroad on business quite a lot, I would like your company to manage it.’
The word ‘manage’ brought a smile to her face. Placing an advert on their web site or in one of a host of local papers and free-sheets to find a tenant was small beer in comparison to the fee received for a managed service with her company responsible for rent collection, organising maintenance and repairs, paying utility bills, and dealing with any other problems arising.
‘When would be a good time for me to see the property and make our assessment of its letting potential?’
‘This morning, if at all possible. As I said to your colleague earlier today, I am out all afternoon and it will be difficult for you to make contact with me for the rest of the week.’
TWENTY-ONE
In frustration, Henderson pushed bac
k in the swivel chair but it collided with the low bookcase, knocking several books and magazines on the floor. Instead of staring at the ceiling for a few moments as an aid to inspiration, he found himself facing the floor as he stooped to pick up the fallen items.
Since the arrest of Brian Langton, DI Henderson had conducted two interviews with him and despite the weight of evidence, he still denied murdering his wife.
‘Yeah, but you’ve been around the block as long as me mate and you know his denials don’t mean a damn thing. The trial’s the only game in town. If the evidence works there, nothing else matters.’
DS Gerry Hobbs only came into his office to talk about one of his cases but somehow the conversation kept coming back to Brian Langton.
‘Do you remember the Billie-Jo Jenkins case?’ Henderson said, edging his seat towards the desk and away from the spiteful bookcase that threatened to fall on top of him one day.
‘Vaguely. Before my time, of course and yours as well.’
‘Aye it was but if you read any of the stories about Langton in the papers, it usually crops up in there somewhere.’
‘I remember some of it,’ Hobbs said. ‘Her step-father got done for her murder, but freed on a re-trial, something like that?’
‘Aye, that’s right. The prosecution case focussed on traces of the girl’s blood discovered on his clothes. He said they got there when he bent down to help her after he found her injured, while the CPS claimed it happened when he killed her. Plus a load of other circumstantial stuff that in the end, seemed to colour the jury’s picture of him.’
‘I don’t remember the exact details…oh I get it. You think because he got convicted on what they said at the time was circumstantial evidence, there’s parallels between it and the Langton case?’
‘Yes and no. In the Billie-Jo case they had a body and a suspect with traces of her blood on his clothing, and we don’t but the process we’re going through is much the same. When we arrest someone we believe to be the culprit, we take our foot off the gas and stop looking for anybody else.’
‘I see what you’re getting at,’ Hobbs said scratching his cheek, the result of not shaving for three days or perhaps the start of a beard. ‘Yeah, sure we do, but there’s still all the evidence to be collated and the CPS–’
‘I don’t mean that. What I mean is we don’t chase down the last few leads we’ve got and maybe don’t bother tying up all the loose ends because there’s no point in looking for a suspect when we’ve got one locked up in the cells.’
‘And you think we should?’
‘I’m beginning to think so.’
‘But why?’
‘The evidence hangs together as a whole,’ Henderson said, ‘but individually it doesn’t, which means if we don’t find something else irrefutable, an iron-clad accusation, a good barrister will tear the evidence apart, item by item. Plus, Langton is so sure of his innocence, I’m starting to believe him, even though we know he lied about the argument with his wife on what became her last night and his relationship with Melanie Knight.’
‘Yeah, but there’s no other lead to go on and why bother, Edwards will never wear it. Anyway mate, I can’t sit around here gassing all day.’ Hobbs stood up and stretched. ‘Ahh, that’s bloody painful.’
‘Done something to your back or are you relegated to the spare room again?’
‘No, not the spare room, if you can believe it. She’s been in a good mood for weeks, the sun shines out of my armpits as far as she’s concerned. No, it’s the gym. My first time back for three years.’
‘Well, you better take it easy the next time, you’re not an indestructible teenager any more.’
‘Thanks for reminding me but it still hurts.’
‘If you see Carol out there, send her in.’
‘Right oh, boss. Catch you later.’
Hobbs was right, he didn’t have anything else to go on, but a few days ago, in an effort to exorcise the demons nagging at his brain, he’s instructed DS Walters to review the missing persons database and see if any other cases exhibited similarities with this one.
If nothing was found in the files, he could stop the speculation and concentrate on finding that irrefutable piece of evidence against Langton but it there was, it left the unpalatable truth that she was taken by an unknown kidnapper or her killer. Considering the ‘clean and professional’ way that her abduction had been carried out; without a witness, without a phone call, and the car vanishing only to turn up days later, made him think it couldn’t be the work of a family friend or a business associate like Ed Hardacre, but someone who had done this before.
Walters arrived a few minutes later bearing a thick tatty folder in both arms. Henderson joined her at the small meeting table and waited while she sorted her papers into some sort of coherent order.
‘Me, Phil Bentley, and Sally Graham worked all day Friday and a good few hours on Sunday on this, and I must tell you, at the start we all thought it was a complete waste of time, and I’m being polite.’
‘Have you changed your mind?’
‘I’m not sure, I’ve been looking at screens and churning numbers so long I can’t see the big picture. Maybe once I’ve heard your opinion it will be clearer.’
She found the sheet she was searching for and placed it in front of her. ‘As you know, mispers are a minefield, ranging from one woman who went off to Blackburn to visit her sister but forgot to ask anyone to look after her dog, and we started a major search for her when the stupid mutt began barking its head off every night, to the woman from Billingshurst who walked out on her husband while he watched television and left his dinner burning on the stove.’
‘Aye, but didn’t we set up a few filters to screen these sorts of people out?’
‘Hold your horses, boss. I’m setting the scene. Now using the criteria we established of a woman missing for more than two weeks in the Sussex area, and limiting the search to the last six-months, the computer spat out fifty-seven names.’
‘Fifty-seven? That many?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she said, ‘but hang on, the news isn’t all bad. We went through as much background information as we could on the system, looking for situations where subsequent contact was made, for example, a detective confirming she wasn’t being held against her will but was unwilling to return home on account of some domestic strife, like our Billingshurst woman.’
‘Thank God for small mercies. This is an exercise to clear my conscience, not to drive a tank through all our budgets.’
‘We also took out another four, because of on-going criminal investigations, three for fraud and one for a serious assault.’
‘Ok. How many does it leave us with?’
‘Um, you won’t like it.’
‘Try me.’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘You’re right, I hate it.’ He got up and paced the room. ‘It’ll take days, maybe weeks to look in detail at all these cases and interview the detectives involved. I hoped the number would be less than ten as we don’t have the time and if I take it to Lisa Edwards, she would never sanction the manpower.’
‘So what do you think we should do?’
He turned and stared at the whiteboard on the wall where he’d sketched a crude mind map of the major elements in the Langton case. He pointed at the board.
‘We don’t know the MO of our perp as we don’t know what attracts him to Kelly and maybe to a few of these twenty-eight women, but we know the effect.’
‘How do you mean?’
He turned to face her, held up his hand and counted on his fingers.
‘One, a disappearing woman. Two, no passport. Three, few personal possessions and four, didn’t take her car. In fact we can probably whittle the personal things down to only those items she carried in her handbag.’
‘Ok, but how does it help us?’
‘Apply them to your twenty-eight, see who left home with just their handbag and didn’t take the car.’
‘I could, but
what if the same criteria are common to all twenty-eight women?’
‘How could it be? How many left without their passport, ten or twelve, maybe? How many dumped their cars near a railway station, five or six? How many never used their credit cards, as many as fifteen, sixteen, perhaps? But how many did all of these things?’
A light seemed to go on in that pretty, stubborn head. ‘Ah, I get it. We’re not looking for one common factor but several together. I think I can see where you’re going with this.’
‘Good. All the studies say the same thing, kidnappers, murderers and rapists don’t choose people at random. They select people using a specific set of factors. Some might make it up as they go along and if it works, they’ll use it again, but others might have been thinking about it for years. So a guy raping nurses doesn’t change and make a grab for middle-aged college professors or shop assistants. If he knows a hospital, a section of railway line, or a piece of waste ground, he’ll use it again and again and again.’
‘They stick to what they know,’ she said. ‘I mean there’s been plenty of cases in the past about the railway rapist, the nurse molester, and the hitchhiker killer.’
‘You’re right, they do it to ensure success, protect their identity and facilitate their escape. It makes perfect sense because there’s a greater chance of them making a mistake and getting caught if they use a different and unfamiliar MO every time they go out.’
‘I’m convinced. The question is, how do we do it?’
‘Let me see your piece of paper.’
She handed it to him and he walked to the whiteboard, cleared a space and began to write.