The Keeper of Secrets: A stunning crime thriller with a twist you won't see coming (Detective Arla Baker Series Book 2)

by M. L Rose

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I need to get on. You want a report and I have a shedload of evidence to wade through.”

  Johnson leaned back in his chair and fixed Arla with a stare. “What did you mean by another side to Maddy?”

  “Well, her boyfriend, who no one seems to know about, including her parents, is almost certainly friends with a gang member and smokes cannabis himself. Whether he does other drugs, I don’t know. Maddy used to get served at pubs, which means she had fake ID.”

  “So do a lot of teenagers. Hardly makes her have a dark side.”

  “I mean an alternative side to her, which her parents might not have been aware of…” Arla broke off and stared at Johnson hard. “What’s this about, sir?”

  “She’s the daughter of a US diplomat. You know what that means.”

  “No, I don’t. My job is to find her, and get her back safe and sound to her parents. I don’t care who her parents are.”

  Johnson shook his head, exasperated. “Think, Arla, for once in your life! If we don’t find her in a couple of days, someone will have leaked news to the media. Do you really think the US Consulate will be doing cartwheels of joy? And then if you put in bombshells like her darker side, God help us. We’re gonna have another feeding frenzy at the zoo.”

  “So, it’s alright to be worried about what the press will say, but we shouldn’t explore Maddy’s personality more, see where it leads us.” She smiled grimly. “Is this tied in to your promotion as well, sir? Wouldn’t do if your last big case, before you got the Deputy Assistant Commissioner job, was a mayhem, would it?”

  Johnson stood up, his face turning purple. “Watch your tongue, Arla,” he hissed. “Remember the times I covered your back. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be directing traffic right now.”

  “And I never failed you in getting a conviction for the bad guys. I always came through, didn’t I, sir?”

  Johnson banged his fist on the table. “For fuck’s sake! Why do you have to be so difficult? You know, Arla, there was a time when I saw you, yes, you,” he pointed a finger at her, “as someone who would climb up the ranks in the Met. I saw you as an Assistant Commissioner, despite being a woman. But you know what your problem is? You don’t know what to say, and when. You can’t control yourself. You’re a brilliant detective, maybe the best I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen plenty, believe me. But you have no tact. You piss off the wrong people.”

  “The truth is often the wrong thing, what people don’t want to here. And I don’t tolerate fools.”

  “And they don’t tolerate you. So, you have a really big fucking problem when one of those fools, as you call them, is the boss of your boss!” Johnson’s chest was heaving. He turned his back to her and walked over to the window. Arla sat down and studied her fingernails. Johnson had given her a start in the Serious Crime Squad. They clashed often, but he also knew her better than most people, bar Harry.

  Johnson spoke in a quiet voice. “This case is bigger than you, me or my bloody promotion. Yes, I do want to leave with my reputation intact. But that’s not the point here. The point is that we are…”

  “Diplomatic about the diplomat’s daughter?” Arla finished.

  “Something like that, yes. I cannot imagine the parents would be overjoyed when they learn their daughter has another side to her.”

  Arla stood up. She was feeling exhausted all of a sudden, and she wished she could dump everything on Harry and take off for the evening. “If that is all, sir…”

  “Do what you have to, but just remember what I said.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Her phone buzzed as soon as she said the words.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Where are you?” Harry asked.

  “Upstairs with the boss. On my way down.” Arla hung up. The incident room was buzzing when Arla entered it. The buzz subsided as she took up her place at the whiteboard next to Harry and Lisa, both of whom stood back as she approached. James stepped up from his seat and handed her a steaming paper cup of Costa coffee. Arla accepted it gratefully and took a long sip.

  Maddy’s photo stared back at her from the white screen, and next to it, Paul’s. It was the first time that she had seen Paul’s photo. He was a handsome young man, curly, black hair cut close to his face, with a pair of sensitive, intelligent eyes that stared out with a mischievous expression on his face. Photos of Emma and Maya had also been stuck on below Maddy’s.

  Arla gave the assembled detectives a quick rundown of the day’s events.

  “Do we have any plain clothes at Paul’s house to keep watch? He could be back anytime.”

  Anderson, one of the uniformed sergeants, who was also black, raised his hand. “There’s a team there already, and I’m heading down there with another one for the night.”

  “Thank you,” Arla said. “Have we searched the grounds in Brockwell Park where she disappeared?”

  One of the Scene of Crime women raised her hand. Her name was Gabby, but she had a longer Polish name that no one remembered. “All the samples came back to the lab last night. We found some hair follicles that belong to Maddy, and some bloodstains that have her DNA. There is another DNA in the bloodstains, but nothing that matches in our database.”

  “So she was injured at the site where she was last seen. Anything else?”

  “Patterns in the grass show that a body had been dragged along it. But it doesn’t really give us much to go on.”

  “CCTV?”

  Lisa spoke up beside Arla. “No CCTV there, only in the main road.”

  Arla thought to herself, then aloud. “We know that she had a rendezvous with Paul. It stands to reason that he was somewhere in the park and close by. Maybe he was watching her, and walked towards her when he saw her. In that case, Paul should have the perfect view of the person who got Maddy.”

  James Bennett lifted a hand up. “If Paul did see something, then why is he hiding?”

  “That could be the very reason why he is hiding. He doesn’t think that we will believe him. That we think he abducted her.”

  “Could he?” James asked. “I see no reason not to treat him as a suspect. He can’t be on the run just because he’s scared. He knows something more.”

  Arla nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. We need to keep open minds. Find Paul, and a lot of this puzzle falls into place.”

  “Anything from the phone?”

  James spoke again. “Got the call log today. She made several calls to an unknown number the day before she went missing. Also some calls to Paul Ofori.”

  “Are we any closer to getting transcripts, or voice logs?”

  “Nope. That will take time,” James said.

  “Last location of phone?”

  “Brockwell Park, then the A23, heading down towards South Surrey. On the night she went missing.”

  “Really?” Arla frowned.

  “Yes. Whoever had the phone must have realised it was still with them, and threw it out. That’s what I think,” Harry said.

  Arla brooded over this. “Anything unusual happen over that stretch of the A23 recently?”

  Blank eyes met her gaze. “Can we look for it, then, please?” she urged. “And get a map of the A23 southbound and that part of Surrey. I want it on the board. If someone did abduct Maddy, then chances are they were driving down the A23 that night with her.”

  They didn’t have a large Ordnance Survey map they could stick on the wall, but they did have Google Maps. Arla used Harry’s phone, and looked at the map.

  “This stretch of the A23 goes down to the M23, which then carries on all the way to Brighton,” Arla said, almost to herself. “Do we know the exact location of the phone that night – before or after they joined the M23?”

  Blank faces regarded her again. She looked at Harry, then Lisa, both of whom raised their eyebrows. Arla shook her head, frustrated.

  “People, come on. Let’s get this ball rolling, right?”

  James piped up from the front row. “I voluntee
r to contact National Highways and Motorway Police, and ask for CCTV feeds from that region.”

  “No, you have too much on your plate at the moment.” She looked behind James and pointed to John Sandford, the tall, broad-chested black sergeant. “Can you…?”

  Arla didn’t have to finish her sentence. “Yes, boss, I got this,” John said.

  Arla turned to the rest of the team. “Can everyone please give John a hand with this? There is likely to be lots of CCTV footage from the motorway cameras.”

  “But guv,” James cut in, “what exactly are we looking for? For starters, will the A23 even have that many cameras? The majority of CCTV is going to be on the M23, and we don’t even know the car went that way.”

  Arla suppressed a smile. The young man’s enthusiasm was heartening, but he was also smart, following the lines of her own logic.

  “Good question, detective,” she said. “No, we don’t know if the car where Maddy’s phone was last located joined the M23 from the A23. It could have joined the M25, for instance. For that matter, why should it be a car? It could be a truck, or even a service station on the motorway.”

  Arla continued. “But we need to think logically here. If someone did abduct Maddy, then they had to remove her from Brockwell Park. She was a tall girl, sporty, and wouldn’t have been easy to move. The abductor didn’t just carry her on his back, did he?”

  All the faces in front of her shook their heads. Arla said, “Therefore, we check CCTV on the T-junction of that road coming out of the park. That road only has one exit. We have an approximate time, and we can use the CCTV images to see what car came out of that road at that time.”

  Harry spoke up. “Unless he, or they, carried her across Brockwell Park, into somewhere like Herne Hill and had a car waiting there.”

  “Possibly,” Arla said, “but what do you do on a warm summer’s night, with strollers in the park everywhere? Would you risk a chance of getting spotted?”

  “Good point,” Harry agreed.

  Arla turned to James. “Have you got the Facebook and social media accounts downloaded?”

  “Yes. She was more on Twitter than Facebook, to be honest. She posted on Twitter regularly, mostly photos.”

  “I want to see them. Have you downloaded them as hard copies?”

  James nodded. Arla looked at her watch. It was almost 8 pm, and the team had been working for almost twelve hours already.

  “That’s a wrap, folks. You know what you have to do. I want the CCTV images, anything else from the SOC guys, and keep up the surveillance on Paul’s house.”

  One by one, the team drifted out. Harry turned to Arla. His face was grave. “It’s been eight days. Nothing on the missing persons database. Not looking good.”

  Arla knew the statistics on missing people well. Sooner or later, most were spotted. Somewhere, somehow, they left a trail. A credit card payment, asking for a lift. If they went totally off the grid, it was bad news. And Arla was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. The first three days were critical for any missing person. Most called back home by that time. Those that didn’t were seldom found.

  Arla stared at Harry’s face and read the concern in his eyes. She said, “Something has to give. I hope she either makes contact in the next two days, or we have a breakthrough.”

  The door of the incident room opened and DCS Johnson walked in. Harry and Arla straightened.

  “Sir,” Arla murmured.

  Johnson planted himself in front of them. “It’s come to my notice we have a surveillance team outside 32 Union Square, where Maddy’s boyfriend was last seen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Johnson didn’t have to say anything else. He stared silently at them for a while, then nodded. “It’s a sensitive region. We need to have a very good reason to be there.”

  “This is the best lead we have, sir,” Arla said. “It might even crack the case.”

  “I hope you’re right, DCI Baker,” Johnson said in a low voice. “For your sake, I really do.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Arla went to the coffee machine at the rear of the station, near the corridor that led to the carpool at the back, and poured herself a mocha. She needed the hot chocolate. Then she got a double espresso, and poured it inside the mocha. Sipping the hot liquid gratefully, she walked back to her office. She took out the folder that contained the Facebook and Twitter posts of Maddy.

  She flicked through them, noting the dates and times of posting. Maddy was a surprisingly mature girl. She cared more about animal rights and global warming, it seemed. Most of her posts were about the ozone layer, depletion of rainforests around the world, and warming seas causing worsening hurricanes. Arla had not seen a pet dog around the house, but there were many posts of an adorable Golden Retriever called Rambo. Arla spotted a photo of Maddy’s brother, Tom, running with the dog on Clapham Common. She could see the common’s bandstand in the background. It was a winter photo, the ground was frosty, and Tom was wearing hats and a woolly scarf. Several more close-ups of the dog followed with its tongue hanging out or chewing food – it was quite clear that Maddy was very fond of Rambo.

  She seemed fond of shoes as well, especially high-heeled and expensive ones. She had posted several images of Christian Louboutin, Manolo Blahnik and Dolce & Gabbana shoes. Arla couldn’t help but stare at a pair of blue leather pumps that would fit perfectly with a blue evening dress she had purchased last year. It would fit well with her blue glitter clutch bag, and the aquamarine pendant necklace… Who was she kidding? When was the last time she had a date or been on a night out?

  Arla kept flicking. She noticed the paucity of photos that contained either Maddy or her friends. A Twitter post of a shoe that had garnered 50 hearts had a caption – ‘for Maddy B only!’ – with several heart and open mouth emojis. Arla looked at the name again. Maddy B. Sounded like a cool name for a teenager.

  On an impulse, Arla flipped open her phone and opened up the Facebook page. She typed in Maddy B, and got a page full of hits. She narrowed it to Maddy B, London, and there were only two. One was an older woman who seemed to be a DJ. The other was Madeleine Burroughs.

  “So, this is where you hide,” Arla murmured to herself.

  Under the moniker of Maddy B, and looking very different in baggy street clothes, Maddy had several photos of herself with Paul Ofori. This Maddy was virtually unrecognisable from the clean-cut, polished public school girl image that Arla had in mind. Her shoulder-length ginger hair was dyed black, unless she was wearing a wig. On a selfie with Paul, Maddy had black lipstick on and black mascara, and Paul wore a string vest, showing off his muscled physique.

  In another, Maddy reclined in Paul’s arms and someone else had clearly taken the photo. Arla noted a tattoo on Maddy’s upper right shoulder. She saw a similar tattoo on Paul’s forearm. Arla zoomed in, and Paul’s tattoo bore the legend Z14, but she couldn’t see Maddy’s tattoo well. She flicked through several more of the photos, and finally got one that had a close-up of Maddy’s shoulder. Her tattoo also said Z14. Arla thought hard, and it came to her.

  The friend of Paul’s, called Sean T. He had a similar tattoo. Arla came to a photo of Maddy and Paul flanked by young men, wearing baseball caps and baggy clothes, with tattoos on their arms, and one quite clearly with a handgun tucked in his front belt.

  Whether the gun was a replica or not Arla couldn’t decide. But it was something the forensic lab could determine for her. She looked at the young men in arrogant poses, with Maddy in the middle. The tattoos were similar for all of them, and spelled out the same letters, Z14.

  Arla took a deep breath and closed the folder. She picked up the phone, called switchboard, and asked to be put through to Trident, London. Originally set up in 1998 to monitor the rise of gun crime in the Afro-Caribbean communities of London, Trident had since morphed into a city-wide operation that pursued gun crime in general.

  The switchboard operator lady said, “Only the on-call duty sergeant is on now for Trident. W
ho will I say is calling?”

  “DCI Baker of the SCU.”

  “Hold on.”

  After a buzz of static, a male voice came on the line. “Detective Sergeant Goodwin here.”

  Arla introduced herself quickly. “I’m afraid I cannot discuss the details of the investigation, but I need urgent information on a gang who could be called Z14, and active in the South-West London area – in Clapham, Brixton, Herne Hill.”

  “I need to log this request, DCI Baker, are you OK with that?”

  “Please do.”

  “Who is your superior officer?”

  “DCS Wayne Johnson of SCU.”

  “Hang on.” The voice vanished, replaced by the buzz again. Arla held on, tapping her feet. She hated hanging on on the phone. She put the phone on loudspeaker and leaned back in her seat, putting her feet up on the desk. She took her flat rubber-soled shoes off. Damn, that felt good.

  The receiver crackled. “DCI Baker?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “There are reports of two arrests in the last six months. Both related with possession with intent to supply Class A drugs, crack cocaine. One also had possession of a firearm. Both of them confessed to belonging to a gang called Z14.”

  Arla digested this news in silence, alarm growing inside her. “Why did they confess?”

  “They faced jail terms, and their lawyers cut a deal with the Crown Prosecution Service, from these notes. CPS allowed them out on parole after six months, pending good behaviour.”

  “Can I have their names please?”

  Arla wrote down the two names, neither of which meant anything to her. She looked up the address of the first man, named Mark Dooley. It was an address in Brixton. She tapped the pen against her lips. Then she called Harry on the phone.

  Harry answered on the first ring. “The wine is chilled, and I’ve made an avocado and prawn salad with chilli garlic flakes. Did you know avocado is an aphrodisiac?”