Proof of Life

by Steven Suttie

  “I dunno. I was just so buzzing to get a letter back off him. I didn’t want to come across as a pain in the arse.”

  “Well, from what I can gather from the letter, I don’t get the impression that he would have thought of you as a pain in the arse. I mean, he could have just left that line out, if he didn’t want to see you.”

  “Well, okay, I just didn’t want to hear the lecture.”

  *****

  Upon leaving the prison, Miller sat in his car and rang Kieron’s mum, after getting the number from the Governor.

  “Hello, is that Kieron’s mum?”

  There was a sudden frostiness on the line, the sound of panic.

  “Yes, who… who’s this?”

  “Hiya, it’s nothing to worry about.” Miller sensed that Kieron’s mum’s first instinct was concern about her son’s welfare.

  “Oh, right…”

  “My name is DCI Miller, I’ve just been in Forest Bank, to

  see Kieron. It was about his former teacher, Mr Pollard.”

  “Oh, right, aw God, you had my heart going then, thought something was wrong.”

  “No, no, not at all. Kieron contacted us, wanted to put his side of the story across regarding Mr Pollard. He feels that we’re barking up the wrong tree, insinuating that Mr Pollard is…”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you on the news. He’s right, its way off, what you’ve been suggesting about Mr Pollard.”

  “Well, I’m starting to see that. He’s a nice lad, Kieron.”

  “Yes, well, he’s a nice lad, but he’s a lot of work. Always has been.”

  “He says that he was quite close with Mr Pollard. Would you agree with that statement?”

  “Yes, I would actually. Mr Pollard really cared about him, tried really hard with him. It was all for nothing, mind.”

  “That’s pretty much what he told me. But he wanted me to know that he really doesn’t think that Mr Pollard has any sexual interest in the missing lad. Would you agree with that, based on your knowledge of him?”

  “Yes. In a heart-beat. That’s not what Mr Pollard’s about. Not at all.”

  “Okay, well, that does present a problem. We can’t seem to find another reason for him to take off with this young lad.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that. But I’d never have let Kieron anywhere near Mr Pollard if I’d had the slightest doubt about him. Honestly, he’s just a really good guy.”

  “Kieron told me that he paid for a trip to London, out of his own pocket?”

  “Yes, he did. I tried arguing with him, saying that firstly, it was too generous, and secondly, Kieron didn’t deserve it anyway! But he insisted, he said that Kieron would get a lot from it.”

  “And did he?” asked Miller.

  “No, he got arrested for knocking a policeman’s helmet off. Mr Pollard had to spend the afternoon in the police station with him!”

  “Right, yes, he did elude to that, but said he couldn’t remember what he’d done.”

  “Yes, that’s Kieron. Claims that he can never remember what he’s done wrong but can remember the name of every Man United player since George Best played for them.”

  “Okay, well, like I say, he’s a nice lad. I hope things work out for him when he gets out.”

  “Thank you. That’s really kind of you to say.”

  Miller hung up and felt like he wanted to nip home and change his shirt. He could still smell the stale, lingering odour of despair from the jail as he headed back towards Manchester.

  “Sod it,” he said, as he reached the A6. The traffic was light. He could be home in ten minutes, and back at work in half an hour. Plus, he would win brownie points off the wife for making an unexpected trip home.

  Miller indicated right, rather than left, and pressed his foot on the accelerator, switching on his blues and twos so he could race along the East Lancs road towards Worsley, without picking up a speeding ticket.

  Ten minutes later, he was home. Clare looked pleased to see him.

  “Hello stranger!” she said.

  “Hiya, alright?” said Miller as he kissed his wife.

  “Yeah, not bad, just having this sandwich, then doing some washing before I pick the twins up.”

  “Oh, cool, you can chuck these in. Been in Forest Bank, I smell like an inmate!” Miller started stripping off, and Clare pretended to gag as she chewed her sandwich.

  “What?”

  “Nowt. Just playing. What were you doing in prison, anyway?”

  “Some young lad that Mr Pollard used to teach had some information. Good kid.”

  “Can’t be that good, if he’s in jail.”

  “Yeah, true.” Miller didn’t have time to discuss modern criminal philosophy, so agreed with his wife’s rather sweeping statement. “Interesting chat though. The more I hear about this missing teacher, the more intrigued I am about him.”

  “Have you forgiven him for dumping that tracker device then?”

  Miller was stood in his boxer shorts. “No.” He said, his eyes bulging out in a very camp and over-the-top way, which made his wife laugh loudly.

  “Right anyway, I’d better get back. I’ve got Pollard’s wife coming in, going to try and get her to do an emotional plea.”

  “Well, I suggest that you put some clothes on first, or it won’t be an emotional plea, it will be a mercy plea!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Miller was back in the incident room, and happy to see that all of his team were in the office, all busy working on their various tasks.

  “Right guys, any chance we can break off from what we are doing? I think we need a team-talk.” Miller walked across to the incident room wall and waited for his colleagues to finish the calls they were making, the research they were carrying out, and the notes and reports they were working on. They knew the drill when Miller made a request like this; carry on until it’s a sensible time to stop, and then join him. One thing that really annoyed the DCI was sloppy work, and experience had taught him that disrupting his team when they were in the middle of something only encouraged mistakes and problems further down the line. It made sense to let them finish what they were doing, or make notes of where they were up to.

  Five minutes later, the team were all sat around their DCI, who was still altering things on the incident room wall. The huge space only had a quarter, less even, filled with information. The other three quarters of the wall were brilliant white. Just huge sheets of paper which were yet to be written on, or to have photos, or maps or pictures of evidence pinned on. The wall didn’t look as busy as it probably should, considering the amount of intelligence that had been pouring in over the past twenty-four hours or so.

  Once he realised that everybody was ready, he turned around and faced the officers, his regular team of detectives, Saunders, Rudovsky, Kenyon, Worthington, Chapman and Grant. The five police constables who’d been drafted in for the early shift on the incident-room phones had also joined the meeting, their phones had been taken off the hook for now.

  “Alright everyone, sorry to break you away from your duties, I’m sure you’ve all been having a very productive time?”

  There were plenty of enthusiastic nods and shouts of “yes, Sir.”

  “Good, it’s a pretty good case this, I’m quite enjoying it. I’ve got Philip Pollard’s estranged wife coming in at five, so I thought we should touch-base. I’m going to try and get her to do a press conference with me. It’s all booked for six in the media-centre. So, if you can all please be as lovely as ever, put her at ease, make her feel at home, that will be a massive help. Okay?”

  “Sir!”

  “Yes, no problem Sir.”

  “Cheers, I appreciate your support. Whether she does it or not, I still have to present some information to the press and do a fresh appeal for eye-witnesses. The opinion that I set out with at roughly this time yesterday has been scrapped and as each hour passes, I seem to be revising my opinions about everything!”

  The team s
miled, or laughed. They too recognised what an unusual investigation this had been so far, one with lots of strange stops and starts.

  “Alright, this morning when we met, the general consensus was that our earliest theory was based around dad,” Miller walked a few feet, to the picture of Michael Jenkins and patted it, “was a non-runner. I want us to revise that and put him back in the race. He’s not odds-on favourite but I feel it would be foolish to eliminate him entirely at this stage. I’ve just come back from visiting one of Mr Pollard’s former pupils, another disruptive lad who spent a great deal of time with Mr Pollard. He says that there is absolutely no way that the motivation behind this incident is romantic.”

  “Can we trust him though?” asked DC Bill Chapman.

  “I think so. I can’t think of any reason why he would go to the trouble of having his Governor ring us to tell us that. Why would he?”

  “To get out of his cell for half an hour?” countered Chapman.

  “Yes, it’s a fair point. But he laid it on very thick, he was furious that we’re slagging Pollard off, genuinely gutted at how he is being portrayed in the news. Also, he said that his mum would back him up and I’ve phoned her. Same story.”

  “Yes, Sir, we are getting a number of calls along those lines from ex-pupils.” It was one of the PCs who’d been answering the phones all morning.

  “Well I think we need to think outside the box, then.” Suggested DC Rudovsky. “If its not a love affair, pervy old teacher and infatuated kid, then what is it?”

  “Exactly, Jo. We need to give this some consideration. We need to work out a reason why a well-respected, highly-regarded teacher would ruin his reputation to run off with a kid from his school, wreck his entire career, end his troubled marriage, all for a kid who does his head in.” Miller had a very serious, thoughtful look on his face. It was obvious to all of his officers that he was stuck.

  “Sir,” said DC Chapman, going in for round two. “I’m of the opinion that he has harmed or intends to harm Darren. It’s the only explanation for this if it’s not sexual or romantic.”

  Miller didn’t give it a second’s thought. “No, I reject that Bill. If that was his intention, which would be wildly out of character anyway, but if it was, why would he go and sort Darren out with all that nice new clobber?”

  It was a good question. Why would he? It wasn’t even the mid-price range stuff. It was all the best and latest sportswear from JD Sports, the premier shop for kids that age. Pollard had even asked the staff if this was the best stuff for a fifteen-year-old. It had been a treat, that was Miller’s first instinct, and he still felt it was the case. Chapman looked pissed off that his suggestion had been binned so quickly. But then again, Chapman always looked pissed off, so nobody could really tell the difference.

  “Don’t worry about it Bill, I’ve been wrong about several theories on this so far, at least, that’s how it looks. But I’m confident that Pollard doesn’t wish any harm on Darren. I just don’t have a clue what he’s up to.”

  “Sir,” said Saunders. Miller took his eyes off Chapman and focused on his number two in the department. Miller looked relieved that Saunders had something to say. It was always good stuff from his DI.

  “Go ahead Keith.”

  “I’ve been chasing up ANPR logs for the mobile home. It’s not been past a single camera since it arrived in Llandudno.”

  “And when did it arrive in Llandudno?”

  “Sunday. I’ve been onto Donna, and she’s generated the GPS log on that vehicle since Pollard hired it. It travelled across to Scarborough on the first day, and stayed overnight on the promenade, that was Friday.”

  “The Scarborough on the opposite side of the country?”

  “Yes, Sir, the one on the east coast, two hundred miles away from Llandudno on the west coast. He’s then headed back in the direction of the north-west and stayed near Harrogate on Saturday night. Then, on Sunday, they arrived at Llandudno. We’ve got ANPR data which confirms this, as well as CCTV of the mobile-home at a garage close to the Yorkshire Lancashire border. It clearly shows Pollard filling up and paying, but there is no sign of Darren on the footage.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, according to the GPS tracker, the motor-home stayed put in Llandudno, until we arrived on Wednesday night.”

  “In other words, we know that Pollard got to Llandudno, but we have no idea when he left?”

  “Precisely. There is absolutely no record of the motor-home’s registration plate going through ANPR since Sunday.”

  “And no proof of life for Darren Jenkins since the CCTV footage at the shop on Thursday.” This comment from DC Helen Grant lowered the mood significantly.

  Miller walked across to another wall in the incident room, where a gigantic map of Great Britain was displayed. He began putting red pins on the map, one in Scarborough, one in Harrogate, and one in Llandudno.

  He tapped the map, about four inches westerly of Llandudno. “Look over here, Holyhead, what’s that, half-an-hour’s drive? Less?” The team nodded. “How hard would it be to get on a ferry to Ireland? It could explain the lack of ANPR pings.”

  “Possible, Sir, assuming that Darren is actually with Pollard, and that he had his passport with him.”

  “I doubt he’s got a passport somehow, they don’t strike me as the kind of family that jet-off to Benidorm every summer. But even if Darren has got a passport, I doubt that he’d have taken it to school with him last Thursday morning!” Rudovsky was right. It was a bit of a stretch of the imagination.

  “No, wait,” said Kenyon. “How stringent are the checks on the English, Irish border? A motor-home has got plenty of places for Darren to hide. Under the bed, in the toilet… I dunno, in a quilt.”

  The team looked at Kenyon and they considered this suggestion. It was true, the border wasn’t as intensive as the major borders at airports.

  “Yes, you’ve got a point Pete,” said Miller. “Me and Clare went to Dublin for a romantic weekend a few years ago, didn’t get asked for passports once, on either side.”

  “Okay, this is good. But, I’m not happy that there isn’t a single ANPR camera between Llandudno and Holyhead. There’s got to have been one.” Saunders pulled his phone out of his pocket, and Googled “ANPR Anglesey.”

  Anglesey is the island on the very edge of north-west Wales, where the famous Holyhead ferry terminal has daily departures and arrivals to and from Dublin. It is a major terminal which deals with over a million passengers per year.

  “Ah, here we go,” said Saunders. There are several ANPR cameras on Anglesey, the most prominent ones are on the Menai suspension bridge, and the Britannia bridge, the only two road links between the island and the Welsh mainland. They’ve got the island locked down, all traffic coming in, or going out, is covered by cameras. There’s no way around it.”

  “Well, its very good news. It means that they didn’t go that way. So, we can scrub a search of Ireland off our list!” Miller smiled.

  “No, Sir. It means that when Pollard removed that tracking device off the motor-home, he very probably changed the number-plates, too.”

  “Shit.” Miller hadn’t considered this. And as soon as he deliberated it, it made perfect sense. And it also meant that trying to find a white motor-home with unspecified registration plates was going to be a hell of a challenge, to say the very least.

  “For God’s sake.” This was the last thing Miller needed to hear.

  *****

  Sandra Pollard arrived at the reception desk a few minutes before five. She was joined by her daughter, Jess, a voluptuous, attractive, professional looking woman in her late twenties, or early thirties. She was linking her mother tightly.

  The receptionist phoned Miller, and he came down to greet Pollard’s wife of thirty-five years, and Pollard’s daughter, in more pleasant and cordial circumstances than last time they had all met, at the Pollard home the previous night.

  “Hello, hello, thanks for coming, I’ll take you
upstairs and show you both around.” Miller was warm, charming. Mrs Pollard seemed receptive, she was still grateful for Miller’s kindness in not arresting her, he’d been well within his rights.

  Jess Pollard however didn’t seem so keen on the DCI and made no secret of her hostility. He had been quite rude to her the previous night, closing the door in her face. He decided to fall on his sword and apologise, even though he didn’t mean it.

  “Look, Jess, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” she said, brushing her long, wavy black hair behind her ear.

  “I’m sorry about last night, if I came across as ill-mannered.”

  “Well, you did, actually. My mum’s going through hell right now. We both are. I didn’t expect to be made to feel like a suspect!” Miller nodded sympathetically and apologised again. He didn’t mean it, he didn’t like this young woman much. Miller suspected that Mrs Pollard hadn’t explained to her daughter that she’d had a close-call the previous night and that she could have very easily been banged up for numerous offences, such as providing false statements, aiding and abetting an offender, and perverting the course of justice. As such, this young woman’s frosty greeting was a bit much but Miller did appear genuinely sorry to her. All he wanted was her mother on the 6 ‘clock news. Jess’s bullshit was a mere distraction.

  “Look, can we start again?”

  “Yes, for my mother’s sake.” Said Jess, feeling empowered and vindicated by Miller’s response. Little did she know that he thought she was coming across as a bit of a diva and that this wasn’t about her. He smiled charmingly and touched her shoulder gently.

  “Thank you. Okay, well, let’s go upstairs, and I’ll introduce you to my team, and let you see what’s happening.”

  Miller led them up the stairs and started his boring introductory speech about his department as they made their way towards the SCIU offices on the first floor. Once they arrived the DCI held open the door and welcomed them through.

  “Right, first things first, would you like a drink? Tea, coffee?”