by Tim Ellis
There was complete silence. ‘Good, I’m glad we understand each other.’
‘Good speech, Sir,’ Richards said as they walked along the path back to the car.
‘Thanks, Richards.’
‘What now?’
‘Back to the station to read the files on Amy Linton, and make up an incident board. Until we have some idea who the other children are we’ll focus on her.’
‘This is not what I had in mind for my first day back, Sir.’
‘Or any day for that matter, Richards.’
***
John Linton used to be an Army sniper, a Staff Sergeant, a man with a life and lots of friends – but that was before someone took his little girl. Now, he was an overweight alcoholic with eczema, no life, no friends, and a rage he couldn’t control.
He’d been in Iraq before the war started for real – attached to the US Army Special Forces as part of the Northern Iraq Liaison Element to take control of the North East corner of Iraq – when Amy had gone missing. The US Army had been great getting him back to the UK within twenty-four hours, but it didn’t do any good. Every night before she went to bed, they’d spoken on the mobile videophones he’d bought specially for his tour of duty. The phones and the calls were expensive, but as far as he was concerned nothing was too good for his wife and little girl. After he’d said goodnight to Amy and she’d gone to bed, he and Maggie had shared their day. He missed her, and he could tell she missed him. Even though he was half a world away from the two people he loved, his life had been simply perfect. Those videophones had been worth every penny.
Then, his life had begun to unravel like a piece of cheap knitwear. Amy had disappeared. His heart began thrashing about inside his ribcage as he thought about the phone call from Maggie. He took a drink from the can of beer in his hand. He’d barely been able to understand what she’d said she was so upset, but eventually her words hit him in the chest like a soft-nosed 7.62 round and ripped his insides apart. He’d gone to the Commanding Officer who made some calls to verify the story, and then Staff Sergeant John Linton was treated like a VIP as they drove him to the airport under Military Police escort. Before the twenty-four hours were up, he had Maggie in his arms.
Now, Maggie and he were strangers. Yes, they lived in the same house, but that was all. He blamed her, because he had no one else to blame. It was her fault that his Amy had gone missing, her fault that he pissed the bed most nights, her fault that he had sores on his shins that itched like hell and wouldn’t heal, and her fault that he had nothing to live for. Each day he stumbled out of his filthy bed, and sat in the same chair drinking beer and staring at the wall.
Each day, he waited for news of his Amy, any news. It was the not knowing that was destroying him from the inside out. He had the idea that she was still alive, somewhere, waiting for him to rescue her. He’d been a soldier, a firearms expert, a killer, but he couldn’t save his own daughter. Helplessness had been his constant companion. He crushed the beer can in his hand and threw it at the wall. Beer spurted over the carpet and furniture.
‘Maggie?’ he shouted. ‘Get me another beer.’
Her room was the kitchen. His room was the living room. They didn’t sit together anymore, there was no conversation, no sharing, nothing.
Maggie came in, handed him a beer, and then left. At some point she’d stopped saying, “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” or “You need to stop this, John.” One day, she’d just given up and left him to stew in his own juices. He’d expected her to leave him, but for some reason she’d stayed.
Friends and relatives used to call at the house, on the telephone. Now, nobody knocked, the telephone sat silently in the hall gathering dust. Grieving should take a couple of months, a year at most – eight years was far too long to grieve. It was as if they were trapped in a time loop – re-living the same day over and over again. They were like two lost souls haunting the in-between, waiting, waiting for news. Waiting to be set free from this living hell, neither able to move on from 17th January 2003.
Chapter Two
Parish sat in the Incident Room at the oblong Formica-topped table with a stack of files and a four-sugared coffee he’d made himself. Richards stood at the large whiteboard holding the marker pen like a light sabre.
‘Amy Linton at the centre top,’ Parish said as he riffled through the three-inch thick main file.
Richards wrote the child’s name in neatly printed letters.
‘Date of birth, January 4th 1993, which made her ten year’s old when she went missing on the 17th January 2003. If she’d lived she would be eighteen now, probably with a boyfriend, and on her way to university.’
‘It’s really sad, Sir.’
‘All murders are sad, Richards, but child murders particularly so. Their lives are wrenched from them before they’ve had a chance to live. But… let’s stay objective shall we? If we become maudlin and emotional we’ll never find the killer. Emotions are like slivers of kryptonite. On a child case you have to lock them up in a lead-lined box so that you can do your job.’
‘I don’t know if I can do that, Sir.’ She pulled a paper tissue from her jeans’ pocket and dabbed at her eyes.
‘Well, you’d better learn, Richards, or you’ll be no good to me. Right, shall we move on?’
‘What about the other bodies?’
‘For now, there are no other bodies. Let’s just focus on Amy Linton, and deal with her today. After we’ve seen Doc Michelin, and he’s confirmed her identity we’ll have to go and tell her parents we’ve found their daughter after eight years. That’s a task I’m not looking forward to.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Amy Linton lived with her parents at 12 Barnard Acres, in Lower Nazeing.’
Richards wrote the address on the board underneath the name.
‘At three-fifty in the afternoon of the 17th January 2003 Amy disappeared from a child’s park in an adjoining road called Crooked Way. After school, she was on her way to the childminders three doors away from her own home.’ He opened up another thick worn file and slid a third across the desk. ‘You read the file on telephone calls, I’ll look at the interviews.’
Richards sat down and began skimming through the file and making a mind map on a sheet of plain white paper. He did the same. The house-to-house enquiries revealed nothing of any interest. Interviews with children and parents – who were in and around the park at the time – indicated Amy was there, but then she wasn’t. Everyone figured she’d gone home, no one saw her leave, and nobody saw either a stranger or an unfamiliar vehicle. Parish immediately had the idea that the killer might be someone who was familiar to Amy, the other children, and their parents. ‘Start a list at the side of the board.’
‘I haven’t finished reading yet, Sir.’
‘You can come back to that,’ he said pulling her file towards him while she tried to stop him.
‘Sometimes…’
‘You just want to hug me?’
‘Not even close, Sir,’ she said standing up and picking up the marker pen again.
‘Right, nobody saw a stranger or an unfamiliar vehicle around the park.’
‘So, who’s on the list then?’
‘In seventy-eight percent of child murders the parents or a close relative are the principal suspects.’
‘I love the way you do that.’
‘You say that every time, Richards.’
‘It must be true then.’
‘You say that, as well.’
‘I know.’ A smile flickered across her face. ‘That’s a high statistic.’
‘Too high to ignore.’
‘So, you think it was the parents?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Well…’
‘The father was a soldier serving in Iraq with the US Special Forces. He was flown home when Amy was reported missing. The mother worked at a local pub.
‘We can discount the parents then?’
‘Yes, but it might be tha
t Amy did know her abductor, so we can start there. If no one saw a stranger then…’
‘…It might have been someone that everyone saw, but nobody took any notice of?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But, surely the people who were investigating Amy’s disappearance in 2003 would have considered the people she knew?’
‘Of course they did, but in 2003 Amy was only missing. Now, she’s a dead body that will hopefully provide us with some evidence. Although, if Toadstone’s got anything to do with it we’ll probably get nothing as usual.’
‘Stop being mean to Paul, Sir.’
Parish looked through the file until he came across the name of the lead investigator. ‘Crap! I should have known.’
‘What, Sir?’
‘Trevor Naylor and John Lewin.’
‘It was their case?’
‘Yes, which means we’ll get no help from either of them.’ Naylor had recently disappeared after trying to kill Parish and Angie Richards, and he had also murdered John Lewin – his partner – seven years ago.
‘Nor hindrance,’ Richards said.
Parish squinted at her. ‘Is it me, or are you becoming cynical, Richards?’
‘It’s you, Sir.’
‘I hope so, because I can’t work with cynical people.’
‘You’re cynical.’
‘Exactly, I need a counterbalance for my extreme cynicism and you’re it.’
‘Okay, Sir,’ she said and smiled. ‘What about the other children?’
‘How can I keep my train of thought if you keep derailing it with interruptions about the other children?’
Putting hands on her hips Richards said, ‘But… if a close relative killed Amy, because that’s what the statistics suggest, who killed the other children?’
‘I thought we were focussing on Amy Linton today?’
‘But you can’t ignore the other children.’
‘So, what you’re saying is that because there are an unknown number of other dead children the killer couldn’t have been someone Amy knew, and we should just ignore those people as suspects?’
‘Well, no…’
‘So, now they are suspects? Make your mind up, Richards.’
‘You’re twisting my words, Sir.’
‘That’s a scandalous accusation to make. I wouldn’t know how.’
‘You know very well how to twist words. In fact, you could teach night classes in word twisting at the local college.’
Parish grinned. ‘As unlikely as relatives being the killer might appear, we have to put everyone into the suspect pot. You know the drill – we pull them out one at a time and eliminate them from consideration. Forget about the other dead children for the time being. We know absolutely nothing about them, and until we do we can’t investigate their deaths. Let’s keep it nice and simple today and concentrate on Amy Linton.’
‘Okay, Sir.’
‘Good.’ He began scanning the file page by page. ‘The relatives are listed here. Amy’s father, John Linton, has two brothers and a stepbrother, and Margaret Linton has two sisters and a brother. Write, Perry Linton, Roger Linton, and the stepbrother is Gregory Thompson. John Linton’s father is still alive, so put him down as well: Albert Linton. He divorced his first wife and married Jennifer Amelia, who has three brothers: David, Richard, and Stuart Amelia. Margaret Linton’s siblings are: Patricia Fenton – she’s married to Jeremy Fenton, and Pippa Walford, which is Margaret’s maiden name. Her brother is Silas Walford.’
‘Are there many more, I’m running out of room?’
‘So when the Chief asks us why our suspect list is limited to eleven people, I’ll tell him that we ran out of room on the board?’
‘Stop being mean, Sir.’
‘You’ll just have to get another board, but… you’re in luck. Margaret Linton’s father is dead and he had no siblings. Pippa lives at home with her mother, Mary-Ann. Albert Linton’s first wife was Rachel Stonehouse who died of cancer fifteen years ago, and she had one brother called Mark.’
‘Stonehouse?’
‘Yes, and that’s it for close relatives except, we may as well put down Jeremy Fenton’s brother, Lucien Fenton. That gives us a list of thirteen.’
‘There are a lot of people in this family. Sometimes… I wish I’d had some sisters and brothers. My dad didn’t have any brothers, and my mum only had a sister who died when she was young. I have no grandparents, and you haven’t got any relatives. Compared to the Lintons, we’re an anorexic family.’
‘Families aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, Richards. Look at our last case and what Ruben’s father did to him, and Naylor did to his wife and kids.’
‘Have you ever thought about trying to find out more about your parents?’
His parents had died in a car crash when he’d been two years old, and confined him to the care system. They were poor, and left him nothing except a senile old grandmother on his mother’s side in a home who had died many years ago. He had no brothers or sisters. There was an Aunt in Australia and an Uncle in Japan, but they didn’t want to know him. He had his nightmares of being abused in Beech Tree Orphanage before he went into long-term fostering at eight years old, but there were no keepsakes, letters, or photographs of his parents to look at. If he’d ever had any they were long gone. All he had were two names – George and Enid Parish – who used to live in a small rural village called Goffs Oak. He’d never been there, and he didn’t even know what work either of them had done.
‘No. Can we move on?’ In the back of his mind though, he had an idea that he might try and find out what he could about his parents, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell Richards that.
‘I suppose,’ she said.
‘As far as I can see the children and adults who were in and around the park when Amy went missing are…’
‘Children?’
‘You sound surprised. Do you know of any children who have killed other children, Richards?’
‘Well, yes… there was…’
‘You don’t need to list them. I can think of at least three recent cases as well as a number of others. Anyway, we can’t rule out Amy Linton being killed by another child or children at this stage.’
‘But what about…?’
‘Don’t ask about the other dead children.’
‘But aren’t we wasting time?’
‘Doing a thorough investigation is not wasting time, Richards. What will you say when the Chief asks whether the other children in the park have been eliminated as suspects?’
‘Well…’
He mimicked her voice. ‘We thought it was a waste of our valuable time, Chief.’
‘That doesn’t even sound like me.’
‘Yes, I’d like to solve the case yesterday, but I’d also like to be thorough. Making sure we don’t miss any important details, or skip over suspects is not a waste of time.’
‘You’re right, sorry, Sir.’
‘Of course I’m right, I’m the Inspector. Start writing: Tommy Jensen, Polly Towler, Andrew Barrows, Ryan Faraday, Suzie Aleczandrowicz, Pippa Newton, Mrs Sheila Barrows, Mrs Constance Towler, and Mr Zak Newton. As far as I can see that’s all the people who were in the park that day besides, of course, Amy Linton.’
‘And none of them saw anything?’
‘Correct.’
‘What if…?’
‘…Someone lured her away from outside the park?’
‘Some of my mum’s second-sight is rubbing off on you.’
‘In bed at night, you mean?’
‘I don’t even want to think about what happens when you’re in bed with my mum, Sir. It’s just spooky how you knew I was going to say that.’
‘I’ve never been to this park, but I can’t imagine a person luring a child away without someone else seeing them.’
‘Are there no photographs of the park in the evidence boxes?’
Parish ransacked the files, but couldn’t find any photographs. ‘No. We’ll have to go there a
fter we’ve seen Amy’s parents.’ Parish checked his watch. It was ten past twelve. ‘And we’ll have to go soon if we’re meeting Doc Michelin for lunch.’
‘They might be at work. Do you know if the Lintons will be at home? Maybe we should visit the park first, and then go to see her parents afterwards?’
‘See, that’s why I brought you with me today. I knew there was a reason.’
‘You’re so kind.’
‘I know. After we’ve finished here, you can go up to forensics and ask your not-so-secret admirer Paul for a digital camera.’
‘I’m not going to take your bait, Sir, but he won’t be up there anyway.’
His mouth curled into the suspicion of a grin. ‘I forgot. There’ll be someone there you can ask. Right, should we continue?’
‘Did Naylor and Lewin have a theory about who had taken Amy, or where she’d gone?’
Parish skimmed the files and eventually said, ‘I don’t know why I’m doing all the work and you’re standing there watching me? Especially when I’m the DI and you’re the trainee detective.’
‘I’m the one with the marker pen.’
‘Well, next time I get the marker pen.’
‘You’re the boss, Sir.’
‘That’s right, Richards, and don’t you forget it.’
‘So, did they have a theory, or any suspects?’
‘No, but they covered all the bases. Within the first forty-eight hours they’d carried out a house-to-house, interviewed all her friends, done a reconstruction, searched woodland for miles in every direction, and pulled in every known paedophile within a fifty-mile radius.’
‘And they found no clues and no suspects?’