Stolen

by Paul Finch

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘You’ve checked that with the local newspapers, online news sites, and the like?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because, you see –’ the super laid the paperwork down ‘– we may have another one.’

  Lucy was surprised. ‘Another abduction?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s not a pensioner this time. It’s a thirty-year-old fitness fanatic called Lorna Cunningham, who dropped out of sight late on Saturday night.’

  ‘A fitness fanatic?’ Lucy couldn’t help but frown. ‘That victimology would be very different.’

  ‘Agreed. I said we may have another one. The jury’s still out.’ Nehwal eyed her. ‘You think Hopkins may have been taken away in a vehicle … and that’s because there was fresh mud splashed all over his back gate?’

  ‘Well …’ Lucy mused. ‘The mud could have happened any time during the second half of the Tuesday in question. It rained that afternoon, creating puddles. Any car could have driven past and caused it, but Hopkins’s daughter said he was a fastidious, house-proud man, and the interior of the property was like a new pin, which kind of backs that up. She reckons it’s not the kind of thing he’d have left unattended to.’

  ‘Couldn’t it just be that he hadn’t noticed some innocent person had made a mess of his back gate?’ Beardmore asked.

  ‘Could be that,’ Lucy said. ‘But then we have the neighbours, the Rodwells. Around half-ten that night they thought they heard the sound of a vehicle speeding off along the back alley, which would have been quite unusual. It’s a fairly narrow passage, and they don’t get vehicles along there very often.’

  ‘But no one saw anything?’ Nehwal asked.

  ‘No one we’ve spoken to yet.’

  ‘Any CCTV in the area?’

  ‘Again, nothing yet, ma’am. I’ve got Tessa Payne, one of our acting DCs, trawling through footage, but I’m not hopeful. Hollinbrook’s a quiet residential district. I mean, there’s a Neighbourhood Watch thing going and there are some cameras, but so far zilch. If the abductor came in a vehicle – like, say a van – that kind of suggests that he or they are organised. And if they’re organised, they might have scoped out the cameras first, and taken pains to avoid them.’

  ‘The new one,’ Nehwal said, ‘the Lorna Cunningham incident. That one occurred about eight miles from Hollinbrook, on the canal towpath in central Crowley.’

  Lucy was impressed they were able to be so specific so quickly. ‘We know this for sure?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Nehwal handed Lucy some paperwork of her own: it was a print-out containing a colour photograph of a woman somewhere in her late twenties, clearly taken at a sports meeting, as she was red-faced and wore a sweaty vest with a number pinned on the front. Her longish, copper-red hair flew as she vaulted over a large, timber hurdle. ‘As I say, she’s a fitness fanatic. She goes for a run every night at around 9.45, usually following the same route, which takes her along the Bridgewater Canal.’

  ‘And she was definitely attacked on the towpath?’

  ‘We’re fairly certain. Her boyfriend, Alex Calderwood, reported her missing at around ten last night. Because her exercise gear was missing from the wardrobe and the wash-basket, the officers attending accompanied him along the running route she normally took.’ Nehwal slid from the desk and crossed the office to a street-map of Crowley on the wall. She pointed to a specific section of the blue ribbon that marked the canal. ‘They found her Fitbit here. It was damaged, it had literally snapped off her wrist, so there’d obviously been a struggle. Before you ask, the Fitbit is already down at the lab, priority request.’

  ‘She went missing on Saturday, and her boyfriend only reported it late on Sunday night?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Well spotted,’ Nehwal replied. ‘However, he was in Wales all weekend, participating in a charity decathlon. We’ve already checked that out, and it’s kosher. He claims that he’d had no contact from Lorna from Saturday evening onwards. He didn’t think that particularly strange until he got home late yesterday, found that she wasn’t there, rang around and learned from her friend Stella that she hadn’t turned up for a Saturday-night sleepover with the girls that she’d been planning.’

  ‘So why didn’t the girls report it?’ Lucy asked. ‘On Saturday, I mean?’

  ‘Sounds like it was only half an arrangement,’ Beardmore said. ‘Lorna had told them she might go around after her evening run, but not to expect her because she could be too tired. So they didn’t think it strange when she failed to show.’

  ‘She could have gone for a run on the Sunday and been attacked then,’ Lucy said.

  ‘She doesn’t run on Sundays, apparently. It’s her only day off.’

  ‘Okay … so she’s been gone one day and two nights.’ Lucy pondered. ‘Well, if she had her mobile with her, we can track her that way.’

  ‘Apparently, she never takes her mobile when she goes running,’ Nehwal replied. ‘Because if she gets a work call, she’d have to deal with it, and that would disrupt her exercise regime.’

  ‘More relevant,’ Beardmore put in, ‘a row of derelict garages backs onto the canal towpath at the point where the Fitbit was found. When the scene was examined earlier this morning, the rotted wooden panelling at the back of one of them had been smashed through.’

  ‘Smashed through from the inside?’ Lucy said.

  He nodded.

  ‘And are we sure that happened on Saturday night, and not some time in the past?’

  ‘It looks recent,’ Nehwal said. ‘More importantly, the garage itself had a door at the front, which could be opened and closed, but had no lock on it. We’re thinking that would have been a good place to conceal a vehicle.’

  Lucy stood up and moved to the map. Up close, she could see that someone had already marked the point of attack on the canalside with red biro.

  ‘Perfect place for an ambush,’ she said, thinking aloud.

  ‘Could be,’ Nehwal agreed. ‘If Cunningham used this route regularly, which she apparently did, someone could have observed her, probably over several nights, and then specifically chosen this spot … because they needed a vehicle to make it happen.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘The garage is part of a row, but all they had to do was go through the flimsy back wall to grab her. No one would have seen anything. Have we had dogs at the scene?’

  ‘Of course. But they could only follow Cunningham’s trail as far as the garage interior, which is further evidence.’

  ‘We’re not saying the cases are definitely connected,’ Beardmore put in. ‘But there is a similarity.’

  Again, Lucy thought aloud. ‘I suppose if your gig is abducting people in public, the most important thing, once you’ve overpowered them, is to get them out of sight as quickly as possible.’ She glanced round. ‘And a van is the obvious means by which to do that.’

  ‘But even in this Harry Hopkins case, that would suggest there was more than one assailant,’ Nehwal said. ‘It’s not that easy getting someone into a vehicle if they don’t want to go. It would certainly have required more than one in Lorna Cunningham’s case.’

  Lucy nodded again. This thing was getting uglier by the minute.

  ‘Something on your mind, Lucy?’ Beardmore asked.

  ‘It may be nothing,’ she said. ‘But … well, we may not have two abductions, we may have three. In fact, we may have more than that.’

  The two senior detectives remained blank-faced.

  ‘I think you’d better explain,’ Nehwal said.

  ‘The other day, my attention was drawn to the fact that several homeless people have disappeared in recent weeks,’ Lucy said.

  Nehwal frowned. ‘Under what circumstances?’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘No clue as yet, ma’am. One day they were around, the next they weren’t. No one seems to know any more about it than that.’

  ‘Who reported them missing? Their families?’

  ‘No one. Not officially. It’s mainly Skid Row gossip.’

 
‘Lucy, homeless people are often transient,’ Beardmore said, shrugging. ‘And they’re usually in poor health. Sometimes they just crawl away and die, and no one even notices. I know that’s awful, but we shouldn’t let it muddy the waters of real investigations.’

  ‘Stan, one of them was a chap called Fred Holborn,’ Lucy said. ‘And about a week and a half ago, he may well have been abducted by the occupants of a dark-blue transit van.’

  Beardmore looked surprised. ‘I haven’t heard about this.’

  ‘Again, it’s based on unreliable intel,’ Lucy explained. ‘The only witness is a drug-abusing part-time prostitute called Sister Cassiopeia.’

  ‘Sister Cassiopeia?’ Nehwal said.

  ‘She was a nun, ma’am, but she got kicked out. She still wears the habit, though.’

  ‘A druggie sex worker who dresses as a nun …’

  ‘She’s homeless too,’ Lucy said, ‘so when you get close to her it’s all a bit scuzzy.’

  ‘A scuzzy druggie sex worker who dresses like a nun.’ Nehwal glanced at Beardmore. ‘Be a laugh trying to get a jury to take her seriously.’

  ‘What happened?’ Beardmore asked sternly, clearly thinking that he should have been copied in on this by now.

  Lucy told them everything Sister Cassie had told her, adding that sometimes it was difficult separating fact from fantasy with such a flaky character, and that she’d been mulling over its potential value as evidence.

  ‘So, she didn’t actually see anyone grab this guy Holborn?’ Nehwal said.

  ‘No,’ Lucy admitted.

  ‘Which would make her testimony next to completely useless.’

  ‘That’s another reason why I haven’t reported it yet. But, ma’am, there’s something else.’

  ‘Go on …’

  ‘Sister Cassie said this was a dark-blue transit van.’

  ‘And?’

  Lucy blushed a little. ‘There’s been a kind of urban myth in Crowley in recent months … that a black van’s been prowling the neighbourhoods at night, looking to snatch pets.’

  ‘Pets?’

  ‘Dogs, for the most part.’

  Beardmore frowned. ‘I thought you’d wrapped up the dog-fighting enquiry?’

  ‘We have,’ Lucy said. ‘At least, we’ve charged everyone involved. But there was a whole list of missing dogs given to us, twenty-six in total … and the dog-fighting enquiry hardly accounted for any of them, including a dyed-pink Toy Poodle, which, when it disappeared from its owner’s garden in Cotely Barn, was wearing a gem-studded collar worth two grand – that one’s still missing.’

  Nehwal folded her arms. ‘And I thought I was talking tenuous when I tried to link Harry Hopkins to Lorna Cunningham.’

  ‘I know this is a wild shot, ma’am,’ Lucy said. ‘But initially, I assumed that all the dog-nappings would be connected to this dog-fighting ring … you know, snatched from their owners for use as bait dogs. But most of the dogs we recovered from the dog-fighting farm, even the ones that were dead, had either been bought by the organisers or, in one or two cases, stolen. But as I say, there were lots of others reported missing that just weren’t there. And this black van that’s supposedly been used to snatch them … that wasn’t there either.’

  Beardmore looked bemused. ‘You’re saying you think there’ve been two different parties nabbing dogs in Crowley? You’ve now shut one of them down, and the other one, which is still at large, has moved on to nabbing humans?’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘I know it seems daft. But it’s the black van factor.’

  ‘Your van is supposed to be dark-blue.’

  ‘It could’ve been resprayed since. Plus, a lot of these dog-nappings were allegedly at night. Black, dark-blue … easy mistake to make.’

  ‘Lucy, there are dark-coloured vans everywhere,’ Nehwal said.

  ‘I know, ma’am, I know.’

  ‘But some gut instinct is telling you these cases are connected?’

  ‘It’s suggesting they might be. Look … one week you’re on the prowl, looking for dogs – God alone knows for what reason – and a week later, you’ve upped your game, and you’re now looking for humans. I know it’s a massive leap. But there is a kind of pattern emerging. The missing dogs were mostly reported during early summer, May, June and July. We’ve had next to none since the beginning of August – except for Milly, Harry Hopkins’s dog, but she probably wasn’t the main target.’

  ‘And let me guess,’ Nehwal said, ‘it’s during August when these disappearances of homeless people seemed to start occurring.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘Quite a coincidence, eh? It’s not just that, though, ma’am. It’s the similar nature of the disappearances. It’s the way the victims are there one minute and gone the next. I mean, according to reports, quite a few of these dogs were taken from their own front or back gardens. Their owners had let them out before bedtime, and left the door open, expecting them to come back in when they’d done their duty. The dogs didn’t come back in, the owners went to look – the dogs had gone without trace. From their own gardens. Isn’t that a little bit similar to Harry Hopkins?’

  Neither of the two supervisors replied.

  ‘And it suggests planning,’ Lucy added. ‘Stan, this wasn’t just opportunism. These were incidents where someone had targeted families who owned dogs and had waited for their moment to strike. To a degree, it’s the same with these missing persons.’ She looked at Nehwal. ‘And your conviction, ma’am, that there would need to be more than one assailant ties in with this very neatly. Even if your target’s homeless, drunk, a drug-addict, whatever … you can’t just drive up to him in the street and snatch him. You have to watch him, follow him, wait till he’s most vulnerable.’

  Lucy paused. Nehwal glanced at Beardmore. Neither of them seemed instantly dismissive, but she knew what they were thinking.

  Why?

  Grabbing a shed-load of pet dogs to use them as bait in fighting pits, while reprehensible, was at least logical. But what other reason could there be for such abductions? And why suddenly extend that to grabbing human beings? What was the pay-off in either case?

  But then, second-guessing the motives of violent criminals was often a fruitless quest. In all her police career to date, Lucy had never known an investigator’s hypothesis regarding a crime be dismissed simply because the motivation behind it seemed unfathomable.

  Psychopaths tended to have motivations entirely of their own.

  ‘You really consider this a viable lead?’ Nehwal said, watching Lucy carefully.

  ‘Ma’am … I’m not trying to pretend it’s anything other than a hunch at present, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it warrants further investigation.’

  The detective superintendent nodded slowly. ‘Well, it’s your bed, so you’ll be the one who has to lie in it.’

  Lucy was puzzled. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Me and Priya have been chatting this morning,’ Beardmore said. ‘We’re genuinely concerned by this case – that’s the Hopkins and Cunningham abductions, not the missing dogs. We think it needs some, shall we say, special attention.’

  ‘Okay …’ Lucy said.

  ‘So what we propose is to set up a small special-investigation unit dedicated to this incident. Only small, mind. A kind of miniature taskforce … to work solely on these two possible abductions, and either establish beyond any doubt that they’re unconnected, in which case we’re back as we were, or to establish that they are – at which point we kick it up the food chain for Serious Crimes’ full and undivided attention.’ He sat back. ‘Do you want to take point?’

  Lucy nodded immediately. ‘Yeah … thanks.’

  ‘Good God, don’t thank us, Lucy.’ Nehwal spoke almost pityingly. ‘It’s got all the makings of a classic ball-acher.’

  Chapter 14

  Miles O’Grady drove a brand-new silver-grey Jaguar XJ, which he hadn’t just acquired for its elegance and power. He wanted people to know he was a success, though he didn’t want to d
raw undue attention to himself by being overly showy. In that regard, the Jag was just right.

  But O’Grady didn’t feel especially empowered that Monday morning, as he circled the bus station and veered right onto the broken, weed-filled paving stones of Long Acre. Just across it from Dashwood House, he pulled up in front of the door to the subterranean garage he rented, climbed out, opened it manually, drove through, got out again and closed and bolted the door behind him. As he eased the Jag down the ramp, the motion-sensitive light flickered to life, exposing a dank concrete cellar large enough to accommodate about three vehicles, though O’Grady’s was the only one that parked here. He paid for this place out of his own pocket, and so kept it exclusively for his own use. Roper and Stone didn’t even know about it, and so whenever they came to the office, they had to use one of the pay car parks in the town centre.

  But at present, neither the Jag nor his underground concrete kingdom did anything to soothe O’Grady’s anger. He parked, and then sat behind the steering wheel, seething. When the light switched itself off again, he barely noticed.

  The only real thing to do, he finally told himself, was to go along with this.

  At least for the moment.

  Until such time as an opportunity arose to break it off permanently.

  But when would that be, if ever? How much money would he lose?

  The Crew. The fucking Crew!

  How the hell did you fight them?

  It only made sense to cooperate. If you didn’t, the cost could be shocking. He’d heard enough bloodcurdling tales – drive-by shootings, firebombed properties, limbs broken by hammers and axes – to know what might await him if he didn’t.

  But as O’Grady walked stiffly up the steps to the garage’s side-door, his fists were clenched at his sides like bone mallets, his incisors bared between lips drawn tight and grey.

  It just wasn’t in his nature to give in to toe-rag criminals. Because ultimately that was all they were. For all their swanky cars and hand-made suits, they were low-level filth from the bad side of town, bullying, immoral scum.

  All that previous night, he’d been tormented by thoughts like these, tossing and turning under his sweat-soaked bedsheets, only just avoiding giving Megan a slap when she’d snapped at him to stop keeping her awake. When he entered the office and sat behind his desk, he glared at the open doorway in front of him, as if it was somehow the fault of the wooden frame that Frank McCracken had come in through it. However much he mulled it over, the essential problem remained – that attempting to double-cross the Crew, in any shape or form, was likely to be lethal. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t offered carrot as well as stick. It was a simple equation: you joined them or you died. But no …