‘Fine,’ Dani said.
* * *
Dani drove. To start with the two DIs were somewhat cheery and chatty as they caught up, but the initial novelty of seeing each other after so long quickly wore off and awkwardness crept in. The massive elephant remained in the room – or car. Sooner or later they’d have to talk about it. And that would be the case with every one of Dani’s colleagues.
Dani glanced over at Fletcher and caught her staring at the scar, much like Bill and Easton had earlier. Christ, how long was she going to have to deal with this? Yeah, it was only her first day but did everyone have to be so damn obvious?
‘I’m glad you’re ok,’ Fletcher said, quickly looking back to the road. Dani gritted her teeth. How many times had she already heard that same line today? ‘I don’t know how I could’ve coped with… what happened.’
‘I don’t have a choice but to cope,’ Dani said, putting her foot down as the light turned green.
‘You were lucky.’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Just be glad that he got what he deserved, eventually. And that was all down to you.’
‘What he deserved? I’m not too sure about that.’
‘He can’t harm anyone now.’
‘But the problem is, Susan, the damage has already been done.’
* * *
They soon arrived in Harborne, just a few miles from the centre of Birmingham. Dani parked up in the staff car park and stepped out, eyeing up the building in front of her. It looked like a bog standard 1980s redbrick office block, and dominated the otherwise residential street that was crammed with simple terraced houses. The station was bustling with activity. The sprawling building housed not just the local nick for the suburb, but also several of West Midlands Police’s administrative and specialist teams, Missing Persons among them.
DI Gregory, a slightly overweight man in his forties with thin hair on top of his head but an almost impossibly thick goatee beard covering his chin, met Dani and Fletcher outside. The three shook hands. Gregory didn’t let on that he recognised Dani, though she could see that telltale look in his eyes that told her he knew who she was. The Homicide and Missing Persons teams worked closely together, most often when an unidentified body was found. But Dani hadn’t met Gregory before, and Fletcher too had said in the car that she didn’t know him, suggesting he was a recent addition to the team.
Gregory escorted them inside and up the stairs to the third floor.
‘I’ve asked one of my DSs, Jane Carr, to join us too,’ he said as they headed across the somewhat outdated open-plan office space. ‘She’s much more into the detail than I am on a lot of the cases.’
They moved through into a smaller enclosed office, which contained three desks with a round meeting table in the middle.
‘This is Carr’s office, along with the other DSs on the team. I think the others are both off out somewhere so we’ll camp in here for now. Carr was grabbing some stuff from the printer. Please, take a seat.’
Dani and Fletcher did so, and sure enough, a moment later Carr appeared in the doorway. Dani and Fletcher got to their feet and shook hands with the new arrival. Dani stared at Carr as they all took their seats. Carr was a few years younger than Dani and a similar height and build, though with long, straight red hair and a face that was dominated by freckles. There was an eagerness about her, in her expression and her mannerisms. She was basically the copper – keen and dedicated and destined for great things – that Dani used to be. That Dani still wanted to be.
‘DI Stephens briefly explained on the phone what you’re after,’ Gregory said, ‘but you’ll probably need to be a bit more specific if you want us to give you anything useful.’
Fletcher opened her mouth to speak, but Dani jumped in. ‘Initially all we need is a list of any missing persons cases from the last six months that involved a female, fifteen to thirty years old.’
Dani had deliberately set the parameters to ID her Jane Doe wider than strictly necessary, not wanting to miss anything by going narrow.
‘You’d be surprised how many hits that simple search gets,’ Gregory said.
‘How many?’
‘Hundreds. People go missing in all sorts of circumstances. Young, old, male, female. Something like two hundred thousand a year across the country.’
‘But most turn up soon after?’ Dani said. ‘We’re only interested in the ones still missing.
‘Most do. If they’re not found within the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours, then the chances that they turn up alive diminishes significantly with every day that passes. Statistically speaking, at least. I’m sure you know all this, though.’ Dani and Fletcher both nodded. ‘Some turn up months or years later, but generally not. There’s often a story with the people who remain missing. Problems in their lives, whether it’s drugs or alcohol or work or relationships.’
‘Or they’ve been killed,’ Dani said.
Gregory just shrugged at that.
‘Here’s the list that matches your search,’ Carr said, passing two sheets of A4 to Dani. There weren’t hundreds, as Gregory had intimated, but there were still a lot more than Dani had expected. She stared at the list of names for a few moments. Next to each one was various bits of information including the date last seen, date of birth, an address, and a brief physical description. Dani honed in on four in particular, based on their ages and the dates they’d gone missing. One had disappeared just a few days ago.
‘And all these are missing without a trace?’ Dani asked.
‘Mostly, yes,’ Carr said. ‘Of course we put extra effort into the cases where it looks like we can actually do something. And for those people we see as being particularly vulnerable. Children, et cetera.’
‘And the others?’
‘We do what we can,’ Carr said. ‘But we’re not a big team. We can’t devote endless resources to cases where we simply have nothing useful to go on. By that I mean where the disappearance was out of character and out of the blue, and where there hasn’t been any kind of evidence of movement since. Often you find sporadic mobile phone usage. Or use of credit cards, that sort of thing, even if just for a short period of time. For many cases, though, there isn’t a sniff of where the people went, or why.’
‘Technically speaking, a person can be declared dead when they’ve been missing seven years,’ Gregory added, ‘so these are all active cases.’
‘Or earlier, of course, if there’s some evidence of death but no body as such,’ Carr butted in. ‘Like in a plane crash or something similar.’
‘Thank you, DS Carr,’ Gregory said, his tone not particularly friendly. ‘My point was that as a team we’d consider many of the people in these cases to be dead much sooner than seven years. From our point of view there really isn’t any justification in spending time on these problem cases even after a few weeks. At least not without new information.’
Dani wondered why Gregory had felt the need to point that out again, as though justifying why his team was unable to locate these people. She didn’t feel he was wrong for doing so. The weight of knowing they couldn’t realistically do anything to help these people was the same weight Dani had felt countless times in her career when she knew there was a killer out there that they had to catch, but hadn’t yet.
‘What can you tell me about Grace Agnew?’ Dani asked, pointing to the name on the sheet.
Carr shuffled through the papers in front of her and found the profile she was looking for. She turned it around for Dani to see. There was a small colour picture attached. It certainly looked to Dani like it could be the same person as her Jane Doe. Female, young, blonde. But there were probably another twenty on the list that also fitted that bill.
‘Twenty-six years old,’ Carr said. ‘Has been missing for nearly three weeks now. She lives in Bournville in a rented apartment with another young lady. She went out for a few drinks with a group of friends after work. She took a train home from Birmingham with one of those friends, Vic
toria Neville, who’d got off the train at the previous stop, University.’
‘So you know Grace Agnew got off the train in Bournville?’ Dani asked.
‘We think we can identify her on CCTV leaving the station, yes. We can’t be conclusive because the cameras didn’t capture her face very well, but the height, build and clothing match what we know about her.’
‘And? Was she alone?’
‘Looked to be alone, yes. And it doesn’t appear that any of the other people in shot were following her. We’ve been able to locate and speak to most of them without finding anything of interest. Her home was less than half a mile from the station, but there are no cameras around there once you get out onto the streets. She left the view of the cameras and just… disappeared.’
Dani looked over to Fletcher whose brow was furrowed into a frown.
‘And you don’t think that’s suspicious?’ Dani said, her exasperation poorly concealed. ‘A young woman alone at night disappears from the streets and no one’s heard or seen from her since? I’d say there aren’t that many possibilities really.’
‘Who said we don’t think it’s suspicious?’ Gregory said, quite defensively. ‘We take every case we get very seriously.’
‘But this matter hasn’t been passed to Homicide, has it?’
‘Why would it?’ Gregory said. ‘We have no evidence that she’s been killed.’
‘No, but the set of circumstances would tend to suggest something bad has happened to her, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here, DI Stephens,’ Gregory said, his patience all but gone. ‘We’re doing everything we can with this, and with every other case, and we absolutely involve other departments when we have a reason to do so. By which I mean when we have evidence. I’m afraid for we don’t have anything so far for this case.’
‘Unless you’re here to tell us otherwise,’ Carr added, hopefully.
Dani sighed and sat back in her seat. Looking at the details, it was obvious that this woman had most likely come to harm. Wasn’t it? Was it her Jane Doe? Maybe. Maybe not.
‘There are three other cases in the last two months of females in their twenties disappearing at night within five miles of Birmingham city centre,’ Dani said, realising that she was thinking out loud and making connections in her mind that really weren’t all that well-founded.
‘Look, DI Stephens,’ Gregory said. ‘I have a feeling I know the dots you’re trying to connect here, and it’s your call as to whether to go there and whether you want to waste time and effort in the process. If you have evidence that these people have been kidnapped or killed, and if you have evidence that the disappearances are in any way connected, then please tell us, and we’ll help in any way we can. But currently, based on what we know, there simply isn’t anything that we can do for these people.’
‘And to ease your mind further,’ Carr said. ‘We do look for patterns in the data, all of the time. Locations, timings, age, sex, race, lifestyle. If we felt there was any connection here, any reason to believe these people had been killed, and by the same person, we would already have alerted you.’
Dani said nothing to that.
‘Can we take those?’ Dani asked, nodding at Carr’s bundle of papers.
‘Of course,’ Gregory said. ‘The full details of each case is in the HOLMES system too. CCTV, the lot.’
‘Ok,’ Dani said, getting to her feet. ‘Thank you both for your time.’
‘We’re here to help,’ Gregory said, his words at odds with his tone.
* * *
‘So what do you think?’ Fletcher asked Dani as they walked back towards the car.
‘That we need to check all of these out. Speak to friends, family to see if any of these women is our Jane Doe.’
‘Is that all you’re looking to do? Or are you trying to suggest there’s a link here between some of these other cases?’
Dani didn’t answer that.
Fletcher checked her phone.
‘Shit. I really need to get back to HQ.’
Dani raised an eyebrow. ‘Anything I should know about?’
Fletcher went to say something but stopped herself. ‘No. It’s nothing, really.’
As if on cue Dani’s phone buzzed too. She lifted it from her pocket. It was Easton calling.
‘You carry on,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’ll get an Uber back.’
‘You sure?’ Dani asked, holding the phone up to her ear, her finger hovering over the button to accept the call.
‘Yeah. Don’t worry.’
Fletcher turned and headed off without another thought. Dani answered the call.
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Easton said.
‘I’m not?’
‘The old lady. Mrs Staunton. She found a bruise on her neck. I’m no doctor but I’m pretty damn sure it’s from a syringe. She was drugged.’
‘I’m coming now.’
She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked back over to Fletcher who was wobbling along the road towards the high street, one hand on her belly.
‘Are you sure you don’t want a lift?’ Dani shouted.
Was it her imagination or was Fletcher being deliberately shady? Wanting to butt in on Dani’s new case but unwilling to be open about what else she was up to, even though McNair had suggested Dani should be sharing her colleague’s workload? Or Maybe Dani was just being overly sensitive given how vulnerable she was still feeling about her return to her old life.
‘I’m fine,’ Fletcher said, not turning around.
Dani shook her head and pushed the thought away. The truth was, right then she was more focused on what Easton had just said anyway.
She opened her car door, sank down into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine.
Chapter Eight
The sun cast a warm glow over the campus grounds as Grant rushed out of the building and across to his car, providing a sightly complement to the orange, red and brown hues of autumn colour in the many trees. Grant loved the old university campus, with its foliage and grassy fields and large traditional brick buildings, though on this occasion his mind was heavily distracted from the phone call with Mary.
He walked quickly around the groups of students milling about. He noticed eyes on him, people staring. Smirking too? He wasn’t sure. Grant always felt as though people were looking at him, that they whispered about him as soon as his back was turned. The ex-celebrity who’d faded from the limelight to be just like every other schmuck.
Or was it his field of expertise that marked him as an outsider? An oddity?
Perhaps it was all just in his head. His own insecurities showing through. These kids, after all, were probably still shitting in nappies back when Grant was a somebody; would they really care enough to even give two hoots about him now?
He reached the car park, took the key from his satchel and climbed into the driver’s seat of his battered Mercedes. He’d bought it new ten years ago and had never seen the point in changing it. The car did what it needed to do. People didn’t buy houses every couple of years (well, some cretins who liked wasting money did) and similarly cars weren’t a fashion accessory to Grant. They were a functional device and nothing more, no matter how much his wife had tried to persuade him to update.
The tired engine rattled to life and Grant headed out of the campus. As he drove away he became aware that he hadn’t told any of his colleagues where he was going, or that he probably needed cover for his next lecture. That would have to wait. He was too fired up, too distracted to deal with that now.
Grant found his way to the A41 then sped along, heading away from Birmingham and towards his house in the leafy village of Knowle. The traffic in the middle of the day was light and he was soon turning onto his street. As he approached, Grant saw the front gates to the property were open. He drove through and parked the car on the gravel driveway. Mary’s Honda was there, as was Ethan’s motorbike. Feeling renewed anger at the sight of his
son’s loud and brash machine, Grant stepped from the car and crunched across the gravel.
The house was grand, redbrick. He and his wife, Mary, had bought it some fifteen years ago, at a time when Grant’s prominence and earning power had only just started to wane. Back then it had felt like they belonged in the overtly wealthy neighbourhood, but more recently Grant had come to feel like something of an imposter, a feeling certainly not helped by their snooty – and often snoopy – neighbours.
Grant realised, as he drew the key from his pocket, that the weathered oak front door was already ajar. He slowly pushed it fully open then stepped inside.
‘Mary?’ he shouted out. There was no response. ‘Annie?’
No response still, though he’d already assumed his teenage daughter wasn’t in. She rarely was, though there was no doubt she was a good kid compared to their son.
Grant wiped his shoes on the doormat and continued across the wide, wood-floored hallway. Mary would normally scold him if she knew he hadn’t taken his shoes off, but that was of little concern right now. He moved through into the large sun-filled lounge that looked out over their expansive lawned garden. The room was empty and Grant was about to turn back around when he spotted movement outside the windows.
Ethan. He was facing away from the house. A cigarette dangled from one hand. His phone was clasped in the other, held up close to his chin the way youngsters often did, not realising that the whole world didn't want to hear their discussions broadcast on loud speaker.
Grant balled his fists in anger. How sad it was that the mere sight of his son could do that now. Years of pent up anger and frustration were barely below the surface anymore. The worst of it was, many outsiders would probably say father and son were as bad as each other. Grant was aware of how angry he was already.
Yet he wasn’t the one who routinely stepped well beyond the boundaries of reasonable behaviour. At least not without provocation.
The Essence of Evil Page 5