by Wonny Lea
The beauty of the set-up at the South Wales Police Headquarters of Goleudy was that the setting seemed to retain the best of the past methods of policing whilst offering the opportunities of the most advanced modern detection. Martin hoped it would once again work its magic and inspire the team to work out what had happened to Jason and find him quickly.
If the kidnapper asked for money then as far as Martin was concerned that money would be handed over and only when Jason was returned safely would the team concentrate on getting the kidnapper and retrieving the cash. Not everyone agreed with this strategy and there had been a great debate about it at one of the workshops Martin had attended. Most of the officers there had believed that once money was handed over the kidnapper had all the trump cards and may not honour any previously agreed arrangements to hand over the child.
It was a gamble but for the moment Martin told the team that whatever the kidnapper demanded in terms of a ransom they would get it to him as quickly as possible.
Martin had agreed this strategy with Tina Barnes before leaving her home and had left DC Cook-Watts with the responsibility of helping Tina speak to her bank. He had no idea what amount of cash would be demanded but he didn’t doubt for one moment that Jason had been taken for money and he didn’t want any delays in getting hold of the asking price.
‘OK, let’s get down to business. The little boy, Jason Barnes, aged seven, was separated from his mother just after ten thirty this morning and has not been seen since. They were part of a school trip comprising three coaches that left Holly Road School at nine thirty and arrived at St Fagans National History Museum just about ten.
‘The official adults involved with the organisation were six teachers and three coach drivers, and Matt has interviewed all of them and will give us an update in a moment. There was a parent or guardian responsible for each of the children and the school has provided us with their names.
‘All of those people would have known weeks ago that the trip was planned and could have seen it as an ideal opportunity to snatch the boy. Even for the most vigilant of parents a school trip must be a bit of a nightmare with the dilemma of allowing your child freedom to run about and mix with their friends versus the need to keep an eye on them.’
Matt nodded. ‘I’ve been roped into a number of these outings and needed a stiff drink at the end of the day to get over the experience.’ There was a bit of friendly banter about how little it took for Matt to need a pint after a day’s work and then Martin continued.
‘It’s important that we are all aware of the recent history of Jason’s mother, Ms Christine Barnes, though she prefers Tina. In April this year she won more than eleven million pounds on the Euro Lottery.’
There were whistles and some expressions of envy as a few officers imagined themselves as recipients of that sort of prize.
Martin banged the table. ‘From what I’ve seen and heard she hasn’t had a great deal of happiness from her fortune. True, she has a magnificent house, but she has fallen out with her old friends and finds herself amongst people who are not willing to accept a single parent from a council estate as one of their neighbours.
‘Her lottery win has never been a secret and so there will be plenty of people who are aware that she is more than able to pay a hefty sum of money for the return of her child. What we have to do and do quickly is to narrow down those numbers and concentrate on people who knew her circumstances well enough to capitalise on her day-to-day plans.’
‘We need to look hard at the list of the people who knew that she and Jason were going on the school trip this morning. There will be others apart from those we have already mentioned. Do what we have done so successfully in the past and put yourselves into the mind of the criminal. I think he or she, but for the sake of simplicity let’s say he, had this well planned and so will definitely be someone who knew that Holly Road School were visiting St Fagans today.’
‘What we don’t know is how the kidnapper persuaded Jason to go with him and why no one saw him walking off with the boy. That bit is a big puzzle and if we can solve that puzzle it will be an enormous step forward.’
‘Any ideas?’
Matt jumped in. ‘I’ve been to the spot where Jason was last seen, and he sat on a grass verge with his mother ahead of him and a number of people from his school walking towards that spot. His mother says there is absolutely no way he could have passed her without her seeing him and having put myself in the place that she was waiting, I have to agree.
‘Whatever happened to Jason happened in the space of a couple of minutes and must have been well-planned. A group of people speaking Welsh were the only ones to pass her and she didn’t say anything to them. She said that if they had been from Jason’s school she would have asked them if they had seen him but at the time she had no real reason to worry. As far as she was concerned at that time he was still sitting on the grass having a strop.
‘Tina has been asked if she remembers anything about the people and her recollection is quite good. There were two women, one man, and three children – she thinks one boy and two girls. The two girls caught her attention because they were riding very girly pink scooters and she wondered what Jason would have thought of them.’
Martin interrupted. ‘It’s vital we speak to those people. Do we know if they are amongst those who have been looking for Jason? I have agreed with the chief super that we get a press conference set up as quickly as possible and it’s been arranged for four o’clock. Helen is bringing Tina Barnes in for it and we will use it to appeal to the public in general and in particular to get that group to come forward.
‘Always supposing they had nothing to do with Jason’s disappearance they will have been the last people to see him before he was taken. Maybe they saw him talking to someone and will be able to give us some sort of clue as to how he was moved from that spot without anyone seeing him. They are our best lead at the moment – there’s nothing else of any help.’
Charlie responded. ‘Maybe there is, although at the moment we are still trying to put the pieces together. You will remember that you asked everyone who had been in the area at the time to give us access to all the photographs they had taken on their cameras and phones, and amazingly there were hundreds of them. That’s the thing with digital technology: you can keep snapping away and then just delete any photos that are rubbish.
‘As you would suspect most of the pictures are of seven-year-olds pulling faces and posing with their friends but inevitably there are bits of people in the background. Individual photographs would tell us nothing but we have been able to link a number of shots and have come up with a partial image of a person walking away from where Jason was last seen.’
There was a brief moment of excitement but Charlie quickly defused it. ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes because from what I have seen so far there is no way we will be able to identify anyone from the images we have. At first our technicians suggested we had picked up the ghost of St Fagans but we now think that the image is of a man wearing some sort of white jacket. There are still photographs for us to process and everyone is working hard to get the job done as quickly as possible.
‘There is a clear shot of an elderly couple looking somewhat disdainfully at a little boy attempting to balance a can of Strongbow on his head. With the amount of gel that he has used to shape his hair I’m surprised the can didn’t just stick there but his father has used the video facility on his camera and everyone appears to be laughing hysterically at the boy’s unsuccessful efforts not to drop it.
‘The man who offered that particular phone is a Mr Ponting, and he and his two sons travelled to St Fagans on the same coach as Jason and his mother. He is pretty sure that the last he saw of Jason was when his mother pulled him away from the park and he doesn’t have a clue who the elderly couple are.’
Martin summed up what had been said so far. ‘There are three sets of people that we need to identify and speak to without delay. The party of Welsh speakers,
the elderly couple, and the person in what we think was in a white coat or jacket. I will use the press conference to persuade those people to come forward and hope they will be able to add just a bit more to the picture.
‘Someone must have seen Jason after his mother left him and for the moment let us assume that the only person that did was the person who took him. What does that say to us?’
He answered his own question. ‘Well Jason is a skinny little boy and of average height for his age. I could pick him up and carry him quite easily and I’m not exactly Mr Universe.’ He pointed to one of uniformed officers who was well over six feet tall and built like Atlas. ‘Ian could tuck him under his arm and walk away with him in an instant.’
Matt jumped in. ‘Only problem with that suggestion is that Jason would have kicked and screamed if some stranger had suddenly grabbed him.’
‘But if it wasn’t a stranger?’ questioned Martin.
‘Even so they would have presented an unforgettable image as they walked back towards the museum – someone would have noticed them surely.’
‘I guess Jason could have been wrapped up in a blanket or something.’ Matt made the suggestion even though he felt that it was slightly ridiculous but Martin wasn’t throwing anything out at this stage.
‘What about the fields? Could they have gone across the fields?’ he asked another question and this one was directed at the man who headed up the local SOCOs.
Alex Griffiths had joined the briefing session and now took the opportunity to give some input. ‘There’s not much I can tell you from the scene of Jason’s disappearance as the area has been well trampled over and I can’t even tell you if there were ever any signs of a struggle. On a positive note there is no evidence of blood so hopefully the boy has not been hurt. Perhaps the most significant thing I can tell you is that no one has walked across any of the fields surrounding the path this morning. We have examined every piece of hedge and fence between the park and where Tina Barnes was waiting for her son and there is no sign of the grass being disturbed in any of the adjoining fields. They are not fields that are open to the public and it would not have been difficult for us to pick up any recent footfall. Sorry I can’t be of more help.’
‘On the contrary, being able to eliminate the fields brings us back to the paths, and with the certainty Jason did not pass his mother we now have only one exit to consider,’ replied Martin.
‘It still doesn’t explain how no one saw Jason either on his own or being carried by his abductor … unless of course he was hidden in some way,’ Matt shared his thoughts.
‘That’s the only thing that makes any sense,’ continued Matt. ‘It seems unlikely that he was wrapped in a blanket but he could have been persuaded to crawl into a bag of some sort.’
‘Would have been one hell of a big bag,’ returned Martin.
‘Not necessarily, you would be surprised at what small spaces kids can squeeze themselves into.’ Matt had a sudden mental image of rescuing one of his nieces from a hole she had crawled into when they were exploring some old ruins on holiday in France.
‘A bag, or some sort of container, is the only thing that’s making any sense to me,’ said Martin. ‘If the boy had been wrapped up in anything he would inevitably have wriggled even if he had been persuaded that it was some sort of game. He wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.’
‘As Matt indicated it needn’t have been a huge bag but what would have persuaded Jason to get inside it? He could have been rendered unconscious but there is a serious level of risk involved with that.’
‘Too true,’ responded Matt. ‘A blow to the head would probably knock him out, but could also kill him and chemicals such as chloroform could have the same result in the hands of someone who didn’t really know what they were doing. We are all convinced that the boy has been taken for the love of money and so the last thing his kidnapper will want is a dead hostage.’
‘All this brings us back to the possibility that Jason knew the person concerned and agreed to get into the bag, perhaps as part of some sort of game. It would then have been easy for the kidnapper to walk back towards the car park and drive off with the boy.’
While Matt was talking Martin had concentrated his efforts on setting up one of the large whiteboards in the room and drawing his well-known columns. He headed the first one ‘Absolute Facts’ the second one ‘Facts to be Considered’ and the third one ‘What Ifs’. It was his tried and tested way of coordinating all the many and varied strands of any investigation and he had found on many occasions that by keeping the focus in one place, nothing was left to chance.
He asked his colleagues to recap on the known facts and within minutes his first column was unusually crammed. Quite often at this stage of an investigation there was little information but in this case every detail of the young victim was known. He wrote down the boy’s name, age, height, and weight and used a magnetic strip to attach a photograph of Jason to the edge of the board.
Although he was convinced of the motive for the kidnapping there was no actual evidence to back up his belief. There had been no phone calls either to Tina’s home or to her mobile, and no ransom note had been delivered; for this reason ‘kidnapping’ was placed in Martin’s second column.
Charlie had looked at the laptop that had been brought from the boy’s home. Yes, Tina did have an email address but it had only been used by the technician who had set up the system for her. Tina couldn’t even remember what it was and she certainly hadn’t given it to anyone. So the likelihood of a ransom demand being made via an email or any other electronic method was dismissed. That left a phone call, the usual postal system or a courier service.
There was a general discussion and everyone agreed that any type of special delivery service would be too risky, but as it looked as if the crime had been thought out in advance there could already be a note on its way to Tina.
Intercepting the mail had played an important part in the last case Martin and his team had solved, and Matt picked up the phone to speak to the Royal Mail staff in the Penarth Road sorting office, who had previously been so helpful.
‘If I was sending a ransom note I would do it through a text message. It’s easy enough to pick up pay-as-you-go phones, use them once, and then dump them. You wouldn’t be expecting a reply, just compliance with your demands.’ The suggestion came from Charlie, and as she spoke a number of officers were nodding in agreement.
Matt gave Martin the thumbs up as he ended his call to the sorting office and announced that the staff would pull out all the stops to look for anything in the system en route to Tina’s address.
There was now a mass of things to do in Martin’s second column and he checked his watch. He hadn’t even thought about lunch and realised that it would now be out of the question to grab anything to eat before the press conference. He decided to spend the remaining fifteen minutes concentrating on column three and debating the ‘what ifs’ of the case.
This was always the column that stimulated the most discussion, as always Martin encouraged off-the-wall ideas, and the biggest debate was about who would turn out to be the kidnapper. If Martin had been a betting man he would have made easy money guessing who quickly came to the top of the list.
Sergeant Evans, who was used to galvanising the uniformed staff whenever Martin was heading up a CID investigation, had joined the meeting and been listening to the conversation unfold. He had arrived at St Fagans just after Martin had left and between them he and Matt had organised continued searches and interviews.
He knew from past experience that the way in which he could organise officers to be of maximum support was by knowing what was going on with the thinking process of Martin and his team. There was a mutual respect between a man who coming towards the end of a long career as a front-line officer and a much younger man who was undoubtedly carving out a position somewhere near the top of his profession.
Like everyone else at Goleudy, John Evans knew that a big re-organisation was i
n the pipeline and wondered if what most people believed would be inevitable promotion would take Martin away from something he did so well.
Knowing that his input would always be welcomed Sergeant Evans said what most people were thinking. ‘The boy’s father has got to be near the top of the list of possibilities – have you spoken to him yet?’
‘Not yet,’ replied Martin. ‘His identity is not common knowledge, in fact until today it was only Tina who knew it, but she has now given us his name and we will be bringing him in for questioning.’
‘What about the little boy, does he know who his father is?’ questioned Sgt Evans.
‘No, and when I said his identity was not common knowledge what I should have emphasised that Tina was the only person who knew it – not even the man himself.’
Martin listened to a ripple of general discussion about how possible it would be to father a son and be unaware of the boy’s existence. The general opinion was that even in the days of youthful over-indulgence most men knew where they had sown their oats and could do the maths if one of their conquests had suddenly started attending ante natal classes.
The exceptions that were considered included holiday romances with subsequent loss of interest and contact, and that thought prompted another question from Sgt Evans.
‘Is he still around? If he is he may have worked things out for himself and not wanted anything to do with his son until Tina got that lottery win.
Martin replied. ‘He is still around and he would have had the opportunity of knowing about the school trip today Tina doesn’t want him to be told that he is Jason’s father and so for the moment we’re bringing him in as part of a general trawl of anyone who knows the boy and had reason to know about the school trip.
‘If he has a water-tight alibi for this morning and can satisfy me on other fronts we can simply eliminate him from our enquiry and whether or not he ever gets told about his son will be up to Tina. It will be for us to upset that particular apple cart if we have to.’