Proof of Life

by Steven Suttie

  She was starting to rethink her theory about Jenkins being responsible for the disappearance of Darren and Mr Pollard, and she was starting to feel a little bit bad, too. The man was obviously ill, and she felt disappointed in herself for not having picked up on this earlier, after all, the signs had been there.

  *****

  Mottram Road is one of the main arterial roads out of Stalybridge, linking it to the main routes across the Pennines. It didn’t take Miller long to work out that this was the posh end of town. The further up Mottram Road he travelled, the further away the council houses and the two-up, two-down terraces felt. The homes up here were very nice, and definitely expensive. Some were bordering on mansions, great old Victorian houses, of sizes that could easily be renovated into an old folks home or create a block of flats. Miller was impressed that a couple on a teacher’s and a social services salary could afford to buy one of these impressive homes, but quickly reminded himself that they would have been much more affordable twenty, or thirty years ago. But today, he guessed that you’d not get much change out of £500,000 for one.

  He arrived at the address and parked across the road. The lights were on, and a lady was standing near the front window, she was talking on the phone. It looked as though she was crying. She wasn’t paying Miller any attention, she was wrapped up in her phone conversation.

  Miller saw that a car was headed in his direction, going towards Stalybridge from Mottram. He leant over the passenger seat to avoid the headlights illuminating him, and potentially alerting Mrs Pollard to his presence. The car passed, and Miller looked back across the road, and into the window. She was still there, and visibly upset. Miller checked his watch, it was almost 9pm. He decided that it was too late to pay a visit, especially as Mrs Pollard was clearly in a poor emotional state. Besides, it would be unannounced, and nobody gave any useful information when they’d been surprised, they were usually on the defensive. He typed the other address into his Sat Nav, and it told him that the address was only a mile away, straight down the road, near the town centre.

  A couple of minutes later, Miller pulled up outside the address. It was a row of terraced houses, not dissimilar to the home that Darren Jenkins had disappeared from.

  “Bloody hell, you’ve come down in the world, living here.” Said Miller, to himself - shocked at the stark differences between the two properties.

  Miller decided to have a look around. He went around the back of the properties, and found Pollard’s flat was up a steel staircase, “17b” was painted on the wall in white emulsion, with an arrow pointing up. He went up the steps, taking care not to make much noise. He pressed his shoulder against the door and felt that there was plenty of give in between the door-frame and the lock. It was a Yale lock, three quarters of the way up the door. Miller thought that all doors had a good mortice bolt in the middle section these days, but he wasn’t complaining as he knew that he’d be in here in a second.

  With a heavy push of his leg and his hip against the bottom of the door, Miller heard the Yale lock submit as the force of the door being twisted below released the catch.

  “Easy!” said Miller as he stepped inside and felt for a light switch. His heart was racing, as a sudden excitement filled his veins. This was bang out of order, and wholly unprofessional. Just how he liked it.

  As he flicked the light-switch, Miller was surprised by the sight which greeted him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  DI Saunders was impressed, the televised appeal for information was yielding some amazing calls from the community around Stalybridge.

  Dozens of calls had come in, some of which were trivial, but there were a handful of extremely positive ones.

  A bank clerk at Natwest in Ashton had called to say that Mr Pollard had been in on Friday morning, and had withdrawn £5,000 in twenty-pound notes. This had been the first positive sighting of Mr Pollard, since the last-time anybody had heard from him, which was almost 24 hours earlier, when he’d left the school at around 10am the previous day.

  That wasn’t all. A shop worker at JD Sports had called. He said that Mr Pollard had been into the store and had spent several hundred pounds in cash on clothing for a male teenager, including an Adidas tracksuit, a pair of Nike Air Max trainers in a size eight, a North Face jacket and a couple of t-shirts. He’d asked the assistant if these were definitely popular for a fifteen year-old lad.

  Then, a call came in which had made Saunders punch the air. Donna Moran, the owner of Tameside Camper Hire had telephoned to inform the officers that Mr Pollard had been in on Friday morning, and had hired a Motor-Home, paying in cash for a week’s rental. It had cost over two-thousand pounds. The best news of all was that the Motor-Home had a tracker on it, so that the company could see exactly where their vehicles were at all times.

  It was an unforgettable call, and Saunders was waiting for them to call back again, once the manager had gone down to the office to check her vehicle tracking software, and hopefully provide a location for the vehicle. This was looking very much like case closed, and Saunders loved the feeling, it never got boring.

  “Wait ‘til the Gaffer hears about this little lot,” he kept saying, over and over again, rubbing his hands together.

  *****

  Miller was inside Mr Pollard’s flat. There was evidence that Darren had been there, lots of evidence. Most telling was the dirty-looking school uniform which had been thrown onto the double-bed. There was evidence that new clothes had been bought, and an empty Nike shoebox had been left on the kitchen work-top. Miller looked at the sticker. The trainers were size 8. He went into the bedroom and looked through Pollard’s wardrobe. His shoes and trainers were sized 10.

  An I-phone had been left by the bedside table, it was plugged into the mains. Miller desperately wanted to pick it up and have a look at it, but that would have to wait until the forensics examinations had been carried out. Miller scanned the rest of the room, there was no clear evidence that Pollard had packed anything, plenty of underpants and socks were in the drawer, and a suitcase was covered with shoes, belts and ties at the bottom of the wardrobe. Miller walked through into the kitchen. Several empty JD sports bags lay on the breakfast bar, and several tags had been cut off new items of clothing. North Face, Nike, Adidas and Fred Perry tags lay all over the work-top.

  “What the…” muttered Miller as he found tags from Puma socks, and a box which had contained new boxer shorts, priced at £24.99. They were sized medium.

  Suddenly, Miller felt a very peculiar sensation. He was relieved that these clues suggested that Darren and Mr Pollard were together, and apparently in rather pleasant circumstances. But the sense of relief at this thought, brought with it a very sinister under-current. As far as Miller was concerned, the evidence of these new clothes, alongside those dirty, scruffy looking uniform garments made the DCI think that something rather unsavoury was going on. Classic grooming, he thought. Why would you buy a kid the latest clothes, at significant expense? Especially bearing in mind the fact that the kid in question was the biggest pain in Mr Pollard’s neck. It all had an underlying, ominous suggestion about it.

  In the small bathroom, there was evidence that Darren had taken a bath, or a shower here. A pair of filthy socks and a childish pair of underpants were lay on the floor near the sink, a towel had been used and thrown down beside them. Miller went back to the bedroom, and lifted the quilt, trying to find evidence of sexual activity. There was nothing obvious to the naked eye. He went back through into the kitchen. A large, 16-inch takeaway pizza box lay on the draining board. It had a delivery note stuck to it with Sellotape. It had been ordered at 20:43 on Thursday 16th May, the customer name was Phil. This was good information, it gave proof of life evidence for Mr Pollard, 10 hours after he’d last been seen. Miller lifted the pizza box lid and saw that a couple of dried up, congealed slices had been left.

  Miller looked in the bin, there was a microwave lasagne wrapper and its plastic container, along with a few used tea-bags. There was
no evidence of any alcohol being consumed, which relieved him. He had another quick look around the flat. It was a mess, but it was all surface mess. It looked as though the two had left in a hurry, as behind the clutter, the place looked as though it was usually kept very clean and tidy. Miller rang the CSI duty sergeant and requested a forensics team to attend urgently. It was clear to Miller that this flat, and the items within it contained valuable information which would be crucial to the investigation, especially the phone. Miller rang the local Inspector at Tameside and requested for a police officer to come immediately and guard the address until further notice.

  In the back of Miller’s mind, a thought was troubling him. It had been Pollard’s estranged wife who had reported him missing, on Monday. Officers had been round to the couple’s home on Mottram Road and had taken a statement, and had done the mandatory search of the house, including the attic, garage and shed. Mrs Pollard had not made any reference to the fact that they were estranged, and that Mr Pollard was living at a separate address, down the road. It smelt funny, and Miller now wanted to know what the smell was. As soon as the PC arrived to keep the flat secure, he decided to drive back up Mottram Road, and have it out with Mrs Pollard.

  Miller pulled up, in the same spot he’d parked at half an hour previous, and put his phone on airplane mode so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. His earlier intentions of showing good manners and compassion at this address were the last things on

  his mind now, as he walked across the road, and up to the front door. He tapped out a CID knock on the door, and heard activity inside the house, somebody talking, as they walked towards the front door. Miller checked his watch. It was 9.30pm.

  *****

  Donna Moran, the owner of Tameside Camper Hire had kept her word, and had been back on to Saunders. She had gone back to the office and checked the tracker status for the mobile home which Mr Pollard had hired the previous Friday.

  She had a location, and her excitement was clear as she read the Satellite co-ordinate details to Saunders. He couldn’t tell if she was more excited about being involved in a major police operation, or to get the vehicle back in one-piece. These motor-homes cost over a hundred thousand pounds and insurance companies always wanted to pay a largely reduced figure on the true value.

  Saunders jotted down the numbers. “Thanks so much Donna, if I need any more details, I’ll give you a buzz back, is it okay if you stay there so that if the vehicle starts moving, you can guide us?”

  “Yeah, no worries. But it looks like its parked up for the night, it’s a nice spot on the coast.”

  “Great, well that would be perfect. Stay there, hopefully I’ll ring you to tell you that you can have your motor-home back in one piece within the hour!”

  As soon as the call ended Saunders typed the co-ordinates into Google Maps. Instantly, the location appeared on the screen. The motor-home was eighty-five miles away, on the coast in North Wales. Saunders zoomed in to the specific location and recognised it immediately as Llandudno, just two hours drive away. He felt his heart racing in his throat and grabbed his phone, and called Miller. It didn’t connect.

  “You’ve reached DCI Andrew Miller, sorry I can’t take…”

  “Fuck’s sake.” He tried it again. It didn’t connect. He left a voice-mail. “Sir, its Saunders, urgent call, I’ve got a location for… long story, but I’ve got a location for Philip Pollard. Call me back asap.”

  Five minutes passed where Saunders did nothing other than pace between the office window, his Google map of Llandudno, with its big red flag on the location of the vehicle and called Miller again.

  “What the fuck?” He said, time and time again as the familiar “You’ve reached DCI Andrew Miller, sorry I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as humanly possible” message.

  “Yes, but you never do, Sir!” said Saunders to the voicemail recorder. The DI was fuming, he put his phone in his pocket, realising that Miller must be doing something pretty important if he’d switched his phone off.

  Saunders decided that there was no time to waste, he needed to alert the local police to this unexpected and extraordinary development. The police in Llandudno would have to get involved with the business end of this major missing persons inquiry.

  Zooming right in on the map, so that he knew exactly what he was talking about, Saunders opened another window and opened the national police service contact database. He found the nearest operational police station at this time was 6 miles away in Colwyn Bay, a sixteen-minute car drive away, if no local officers were available.

  Saunders was stressed. He didn’t know if he should wait for Miller to call the shots, or just get on with the job and get this handed over to North Wales Police. He was tapping his pen against his hand as he tried Miller’s phone a final time. It went straight to answer machine.

  “Fuck it,” he said, as he dialled the Inspector’s number for Colwyn Bay Police Station. Saunders introduced himself, explained the situation and then hastily relayed the information regarding the vehicle, and most importantly, its last known location.

  “Ah, yes, I have it here, see, that’s on the Orme, that is.”

  “Sorry, I don’t speak Welsh. What are you saying?”

  “I’m just saying, that location is on the Orme boyo,

  bloody big rock on the edge of Llandudno, that is.”

  “Right, and the two most famous missing people in the UK are there, right now.”

  “Yes, I appreciate you saying that, but like I say, it’s a bloody big rock sticking out into the Irish Sea, so it not going to be difficult to find them, is it?”

  “I don’t know it.” Said Saunders, his enthusiasm fading a little. It was as though the most mellow police Inspector he’d ever encountered was talking about a missing cat.

  “Well, see, there’s a great big rock that sticks out of the end of Llandudno, it’s a mile wide, and it has a single track, one-way road which goes all around it. If these people are in a vehicle, then there’s only one place they’re going to come off there. Now, this location you’ve given me, it’s the car park of the café half-way round.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s a great spot for a motor-home. Providing it’s not windy mind! If it is windy, a good gust could throw you down to your death in the sea from there.”

  “And is it windy there now?”

  The Inspector thought about the question. “No, not particularly.”

  Saunders was beginning to get annoyed with this Inspector, he was either taking the piss, or he was as thick as Theresa May on a walking holiday. The Manchester DI couldn’t decide which of the two depressing options was better.

  “Okay, I’ve despatched our undercover patrol car, it’s not too far away, so they’ll be up there in the next five to ten minutes. My officers will be able to assess the situation without arousing any suspicion. And we can take it from there.”

  “So, what, are you going to ring me back?”

  “Yes, I’ll give you a call as soon as I know what’s occurring. Don’t worry Detective Inspector, you’re in safe hands with us.”

  Saunders thanked him and hung up. “I’d rather have Benny from Crossroads in charge, mate,” he said under his breath, as he started nibbling at a finger-nail.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The huge front door opened slowly, and a nervous-looking face peeped around the small gap. It was the woman that Miller had been watching earlier, through the living-room window.

  “Hello, my name is DCI Andrew Miller, Manchester City Police, can I come in?”

  The door swung open, and Miller stepped up the couple of steps into the house. Normally, Miller would engage in a couple of minutes of exchanging pleasantries and setting up a relaxed mood. But tonight, he couldn’t be arsed with all that. Sandra Pollard showed the DCI through to the lounge, and he started his interrogation as he was still walking.

  “I’ve just come from your husband’s flat. I’
m not being funny, but why haven’t you told us about this vital detail?”

  Boom! That instant, unforgiving line of enquiry went off like a firework, and Mrs Pollard looked shocked, frightened almost.

  “I’m… we’re…”

  “When I looked through the missing person report this morning, it had this address as Philip’s home. But as the day has gone on, I’ve learnt that he hasn’t lived here for several months.” Miller wasn’t being aggressive, but he was certainly demonstrating his most assertive manner. “I’ve wasted several hours today, missed vital information. Can you explain that to me please?”

  Mrs Pollard sat down. She was an attractive, mid-fifties, professional looking woman. She looked ashamed, and embarrassed. “I’m just… I’ve been worried about him. I didn’t think it mattered about his flat… I knew he wasn’t there, I’ve been round, several times over the weekend.”

  “You’ve been in the flat?”

  “Yes.” She started crying.

  “So, you’ve seen what is in there?”

  She started nodding, and more tears came flowing.

  “Can you describe what you saw in the flat, please?”

  “Darren’s stuff.”

  “And can you please explain to me why you failed to mention this when you reported Philip missing?” Miller wasn’t happy with this, it didn’t make sense.

  Mrs Pollard looked stressed, she tried answering, but she was worked up, and it was never a productive scenario to have a witness feeling so stressed out. Miller decided to soften his approach.