by Alex Smith
“Yeah,” said Porter. “It was a trauma group for people who had suffered miscarriages of justice—real or imagined.”
“Was it a requirement that Percival went?”
“To group therapy?” Clare said with a sneer. “Of course not. He chose to go. That whole group was a pain in my arse.”
“But we provided it?” Kett asked. “As in, the police.”
Clare nodded, then shook his head.
“Well, not really. We provided a room, some biscuits, but the group was an outreach project. Why? What does this have to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing,” Kett said. “Maybe everything. Stillwater spoke about therapy too. He mentioned it. Was it the same group?”
“Wait a minute,” said Clare, frowning. “Wait a fucking minute. It was. I remember. The bastard went to town claiming that we’d treated him like shit. He said he was a samaritan who had been trying to do the right thing, who’d rescued that girl. He wanted the world on his side, which is why he went to the group. He brought reporters once, it was a complete shitstorm because they took photos of people going in and out and it’s supposed to be anonymous. It was all part of his show, all designed to make him look innocent when we all knew he’d just fucked up an abduction.”
“So they know each other,” said Kett. The feeling he got was half relief, and half horror.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Spalding, drumming her fingers on the table. “There were a dozen people in that group, and dozens more support groups over the years. They might never have crossed paths, let alone spoken to each other.”
“It needs to be checked,” said Clare. “See if there’s anything in the archives.”
“On it,” said Savage, sitting down at a computer.
Kett was about to carry on but he was cut off as Porter came back into the room. The DI was holding an evidence bag with a phone inside, and he passed it to Kett.
“Battery is low, but we’ve got a charger if you need it.”
“Cheers,” said Kett, pulling the phone out of the bag. “Passcode?”
“Have a guess,” said Porter, and Kett typed in 1-2-3-4-5-6. The phone unlocked and he navigated to the Nest app.
“Let’s start with Monday,” he said, exploring the history. He scrubbed through the afternoon, switching cameras every time Percival left a room. “Connie left for her paper round at…”
“Half five,” said Savage. “They noticed she was missing in the morning.”
“He’s there the whole time,” said Porter.
He was. Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap watching the TV. Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap playing video games. Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap pouring glass after glass of wine. Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap going for a piss.
“There’s no camera in the bathroom?” Kett asked.
“No,” said Porter. “Thank god.”
Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap watching more TV, one hand down the front of his trousers.
“Jesus, this guy plays a lot of pocket pool,” muttered Kett. He was ready to scrub some more when, on screen, Percival got up and went to the bathroom again. “Twice in ten minutes,” he said. “And we know he wasn’t washing in there.”
“I dread to think what he was doing,” Porter said, shuddering.
“Hurry up,” barked Clare.
Kett waited, watching as the bathroom door opened again. There was Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap heading into the kitchen. Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap making a sandwich. Percival in his stinking tracksuit and baseball cap sitting down on a chair in the living room.
“I can’t see his face,” said Kett, squinting at the screen. The man was there, but he was keeping his head down, keeping it away from the cameras. He scrubbed through a little more until 19:43, when Percival walked into the kitchen and got himself a drink. He limped to the same chair again, staying there until 21:13 when he went into the bedroom and lay on the bed. At no point did the cameras reveal a glimpse of the face beneath the hat.
“That’s him though, right?” said Porter, leaning over Kett’s shoulder. “It has to be.”
“Who goes to bed wearing a baseball cap?” said Clare who was looming in from the other side, both of the big men sandwiching Kett. “Is it Percival?”
“I don’t know,” said Kett, all three of them practically cheek to cheek as they watched Percival leaning over to switch off his bedside light.
“There,” barked Clare, loud enough to make Kett’s ear ring. “Rewind it!”
He did, playing the shot frame by frame as Percival leant over. His hat was pulled low over his eyes, and one hand was in front of his face, fingers splayed. But for a second—a fraction of a second—as he neared the light, he angled his head up to see what he was doing.
“Oh fuck,” said Clare. “That isn’t Lochy Percival.”
“And it’s not Stillwater either,” said Kett. The face was pixelated but familiar, a neatly trimmed beard visible. He couldn’t quite place it.
“Sir?” Savage called out from the other side of the room. “I’ve just found the archive for the therapy group. You’re right. For a few months in 2014 both Percival and Stillwater attended together.”
“Who else?” Kett asked, not taking his eyes off the screen. He wracked his brain. Who was that? There just wasn’t enough of the man’s face visible to make sense of.
“There’s a whole bunch of people on the list,” she said. “And plenty more who didn’t give their names. It will take hours to sift through it all. But… hang on… there was somebody in charge of the group, of all the sessions Stillwater and Percival attended. He’s police.”
It suddenly clicked. Kett stared at the man on Percival’s phone and knew exactly what Savage was about to say.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“Raymond Figg,” Savage reported. “He was a therapist before he was a family liaison officer.”
“And now he’s a kidnapper,” said Kett, pointing at the screen. “That’s him. That’s Figg. There are three of the bastards.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The cruiser hit a speed bump at forty-eight miles per hour, almost taking off into the night. Kett squealed as his backside came off the seat, his grip on the door bar hard enough to turn his knuckles white. Savage knocked them down a gear as they burned rubber around a corner, then she punched the accelerator, the car roaring like a jet plane as it tore down a residential street.
“You’ve done this before,” Kett said, wiping the sweat from his brow with his free hand. “Watch out!”
Savage pumped the break, expertly steering the car around a fox that stood, startled, in the middle of the street. Kett’s head thumped off the window and he winced.
“Sorry,” said Savage. “Hang on.”
She slowed as they passed one street, checking the sign, then she took the next turn, bumping the car onto the kerb.
“Number six,” she said, climbing out. “I’ll take the back.”
The street was as quiet and still as a photograph, only the flashing blue lights bringing it to life. Overhead the sky was full of stars but the moon was a yellow fingernail that kept its light to itself. Darkness closed in from all corners, so heavy it was claustrophobic. The street was lined with large, modern houses, all glass and steel and surrounded by gardens. Kett ran to Percival’s and hammered on the door.
“Lochy Percival, this is the police. Open up.”
Nothing, and no lights on inside. He was about to try kicking the door down when a bright yellow shape appeared in the glass. He heard the click of a lock, then the door opened to reveal Savage.
“He’s gone,” she said. “Back door was wide open.”
Kett pushed past her, switching on the lights as he went. The house stank of Percival’s unwashed body, the stench so bad he had to put his jacket sleeve to his face. A quick search revealed that Sava
ge hadn’t been lying, the place was deserted.
The PC’s phone rang and she answered it, putting it on speaker.
“You got him?” came Clare’s voice.
“He’s bolted, by the look of things,” Savage said. “Stillwater?”
Clare’s roared response told Kett everything he needed to hear.
“There’s no sign of Figg either,” Clare said. “How can we have been so stupid?”
“We’ll find them,” said Kett.
“We had them,” growled Clare over the phone. “We had both kidnappers in the station yesterday, Figg too. They were all in the same goddamned building. Our building. And we let them go!”
“And they know we’re onto them,” said Kett, cursing beneath his breath. That was bad news for the three paper girls. From his experience with kidnappers they would be doing all they could right now to destroy the evidence so that nobody could prove their guilt. The thought of it, of Stillwater and Percival and Figg murdering those three children then grinning their way to freedom, made the fury boil in his veins.
“Get back to the station,” Clare ordered. “We’ve got to find those girls.”
“Sure,” Kett said, but he was shaking his head.
We’re too late, he thought. We’re just too late.
“Traffic cameras caught Stillwater at 10:17.”
Porter was mid flow when Kett walked back into the incident room. Clare and Spalding were here too, but other than that the room was empty, everybody on the hunt for the three suspects. The big DI nodded to Kett, then continued.
“He was heading south around the ringroad on the east side of town, clocked doing thirty-three in a thirty so obviously not in too much of a hurry.”
“Was he alone?” Kett asked.
“As far as we can tell. Nobody in the passenger seat. Could be anyone in the back.”
“Or the boot,” said Savage from Kett’s side.
“We need to check every camera on those roads,” said Clare. “Wake the whole city up if you need to, we have to find out where he was going. Figg?”
“Nothing,” said Porter. “Left after the meeting and never showed for his afternoon appointments.”
“He knew we were closing in,” said Kett. “That explains what he was saying when I bumped into you both, I thought it was weird. You remember, Pete?”
“Vaguely,” Porter replied. “Something about everything becoming clear, and the old case you worked in London. Khan?”
“The Khan boy died,” said Kett. “Figg was telling me all I needed to know about the girls. That bastard. But it explains how they seemed to have the jump on us. Like Stillwater and his rabbits. Figg told him we were coming, he wanted Stillwater to make himself look guilty so we’d arrest him, then panic, then let him go. Figg, more than anyone, understands the power a false arrest can give somebody, thanks to his therapy groups.”
“I know Figg,” Clare said, shaking his head. “I’ve known him for years. Didn’t suspect a thing.”
“I’ve met him too,” Kett said. “I don’t really remember. He did his training alongside another FLO in the Met, liaison work. He mentioned he worked on the Khan case, and that was brutal.”
“Sick bastard must have loved it,” said Savage. “He was probably just there to do some research.”
“But why?” Clare asked. “Why take those girls?”
“Why did Dahmer kill seventeen kids?” Kett said. “Why did Shipman kill 250 people? Raymond Figg’s a monster, and I’ll bet you anything he was using those therapy groups as a recruiting ground for people like Stillwater. He knew Stillwater wanted to take that girl in 2014, he knew he was a monster too, all he had to do was shake his hand and bam, he had himself the start of a little gang. Then he wormed his way into the force and the world was his oyster.”
“Percival’s different, though,” said Savage. “He genuinely was innocent.”
“And broken,” said Kett. “What was Percival’s greatest fear? What did he spend every waking minute being petrified of?”
“Being accused of another crime,” Porter said, nodding.
“Which would give Figg and Stillwater some serious leverage over him.”
Kett thought for a moment.
“But not as much leverage as a missing niece,” he said. “That’s why Delia Crossan was taken first. They knew we’d come after Percival. It was how they’d be sure he’d stay quiet. And maybe they promised to keep her alive if he worked with them.”
“So Figg took Delia Crossan?” Clare asked.
“Maybe,” said Kett. “Or maybe it was Stillwater. He didn’t have an airtight alibi for Sunday, but we didn’t care because he had alibis for the other two kidnappings.”
“So Stillwater took Delia, then Figg posed as Percival inside his house, wearing his clothes, giving Percival the chance to snatch Connie Byrne on Monday.” Clare shook his head. “That’s insane.”
“But it’s good,” Kett said. “You know, not good, but if they were using Delia as leverage to get Percival to commit a crime, then she was still alive. She might still be alive.”
“And who took Maisie?” Savage asked. “It had to have been Figg, right?”
“Because Percival and Stillwater had alibis,” said Kett, nodding. “Three men, and each of them took a girl. They’ve been planning this for years. It’s almost like they were competing.”
“But where do they go from here?” Savage asked. “If they were challenging each other to kidnap their victims, then what next?”
Everyone in the room knew the answer, but only Kett managed to say it.
“They take it to the next level,” he said. “They’re going to challenge each other to murder them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“What have we got?”
Kett took a swig from his tea, hoping it would do something to keep the tiredness at bay. Fortunately Savage had made this one, and it was a damned sight better than Porter’s. She sat next to him now, a pile of paper folders on the desk in front of her and her phone in her hand.
“Figg didn’t own, he rented a place over near Mousehold and it’s empty now.” She popped her lips. “When they raided it they found that he’d taken apart two laptops and burned the hard drives along with a load of paperwork.”
“Mousehold,” said Kett. “So there’s a chance he’d have come into contact with our girls. That’s probably where he targeted them. Did he have his newspaper delivered?”
“We’re looking into it. If he did, it wasn’t from Walker’s.”
“No family in the city?” Kett asked.
“None.”
Kett breathed out a sigh of frustration, slamming his fist on the desk. All he wanted to do was get out there and find the three paper girls and the arseholes who took them, but Figg had covered his tracks well. He’d been planning this for a long time.
“Anything from the boss?” Kett asked, and Savage shook her head. Clare had taken Porter, Spalding, Dunst and Pearson out into the city with every uniformed officer available and a promise to knock on door after door after door until they found something. Kett pushed himself up, pacing. “Come on,” he said, as much to himself as anyone else. “Come on, come on, come on.”
The team had already searched everywhere connected to Stillwater, Percival and Figg. Their houses, their workplaces, their childhood homes, their favourite woodland walks. Everywhere. Wherever they’d taken the girls, it was somewhere new.
“Building sand,” said Kett.
“Huh?” Savage muttered, still leafing through the files on the desk.
“Stillwater was covered in building sand, his girlfriend told us. We’re still looking for a building site, a home renovation.”
“Needle in a haystack, sir,” Savage said. “Unless we know whose building site or renovation it’s just impossible.”
“Somebody dead,” Kett said, rubbing his temples. “Recently dead. And the smell. Stillwater’s girlfriend mentioned a smell. Something off.”
“Maybe
he just smelled of Percival?” she said. “I mean the man was rancid. I could smell it on me after I’d searched his house.”
“Maybe.”
Kett paced to the far side of the windowless room, the lights seeming to buzz inside his skull. He wondered if his kids were okay, if they’d wake up to find a bulldog-faced stranger in their house instead of their father. What was he doing back here? He’d promised to leave the case alone and focus on his family, and he’d deserted them yet again.
Sorry Billie, he said.
He’d been offered therapy when Billie had been taken, of course. Bingo had practically stuffed the fliers for bereavement groups into his hand, to the point where he had almost screamed at him.
“She’s not fucking dead, Barry!”
But one afternoon, when the darkness had been so powerful that he wasn’t sure he even had it in him to pick up Alice from school, he’d driven to Victoria Embankment with Moira in the back seat and watched a dozen or so people walk into a therapy session. It had been like watching a procession of shadow puppets, hollow figures emptied by grief.
I won’t be like them, he’d told himself. I can’t give up hope.
And he’d floored it.
He thought of them now, those poor souls. He wondered how many of them had survived their loss, and how many of them had given up.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “The therapy group.”
He walked back to Savage.
“Have you got the list of people who attended?”
“Oh, uh, sure,” she said, rummaging through her files before handing him a folder greasy with dust and disuse. “Hard copies. Like I said, some people didn’t give their names.”
But some had, Kett saw. He flicked through the registers until he found Figg’s trauma group, scanning the names and seeing both Stillwater and Percival. There were seven other people on the list, two of whom were listed as ‘anonymous’. The other five, though, had their full names and phone numbers.
“What are you looking for?” Savage asked.