The Depths

by Catriona King

  The uploaded photograph joined the other two on the screen, separated from them by a gap.

  Ash pointed to its exact match in the pair. “It’s identical to this one.”

  The unmatched image was binned, leaving just the two identical images side by side.

  “I didn’t trust my eyes, so I asked Grace to examine both of them in the lab. Measuring them, looking at any surrounding pores, pigment and so on, and she’s confirmed that it’s the same hand with the same tattoo. Or in this case, Henna scar.”

  Craig tentatively asked a question, praying that he got the answer he was hoping for.

  “Which airport and what destination, Ash?”

  The analyst gave a slow smile. “This mark was noted on the hand of a four-year-old boy flying out of Fiumicino Airport in Rome on the thirtieth of August twenty-fifteen, heading for Boston, USA. One day after Bella Westbury’s abduction.”

  Craig kept praying. “On the American passport?”

  They were in luck.

  “Yep. The embassy got me a copy of it and I’ve checked the images. The kid was definitely Bella Westbury, disguised as a boy a bit older than her and flown directly to the States.”

  Craig wanted to punch the air. But they weren’t out of the woods yet; America was a huge country.

  “You’re trying to pick up her trail?”

  “Yep. I know she flew into Boston on a boy’s name and when, and I have the passport details of the woman she flew with, although they’ll be false for sure. It gets tricky after they leave the airport because they’ll probably have changed Bella back to a girl again, but I’ve contacted the FBI and explained the situation so they’re on the trail.”

  Craig’s dark eyes widened in alarm. “I don’t want them approaching if they locate her! Make it clear that I need to be notified first. Whoever has her could panic and harm her.”

  The analyst’s eyes widened just as much. “I didn’t think of that! I’ll contact them as soon as we’ve finished here.”

  He tapped his smart-pad hastily and a woman’s picture appeared. She wasn’t anyone that they recognised.

  “This was Bella’s companion, and the FBI have her picture as well now. I’m also trying to navigate the adoption system over there, but it’s tortuous.”

  “Don’t waste your time on the state system, Ash; it can take years to arrange adoptions that way so the kidnappers won’t have touched it. If the girl was adopted then it was done privately and the FBI should know who’s involved in that sort of thing. Stay on it.”

  Craig paused and dragged a hand down his face in exhaustion. Yes, they’d had a breakthrough in that they now knew that Bella Westbury hadn’t been killed, but finding her would take more hard slog so it wasn’t time to relax yet.

  But his team had worked miracles so it was time to be positive. His next words were heartfelt.

  “This is astounding work, all of you. Thank you. But we can’t stop here, so…” he motioned Ash back to his seat, “…next steps.” He stood up, flipped over the whiteboard and wrote ‘Arthur Norris’ again, followed by ‘Pierre Galvet’.

  They’d been investigating two cases in parallel for days: Stuart Kincaid’s murder and the abduction of his niece; but were they related as he’d always suspected? Craig shook his head sharply. He hadn’t proved that definitively yet, and until he could point to a link he had to assume none. Then it occurred to him that he and Liam were investigating Annette’s case as well. Three cases at once; it was a first even for them.

  He focused back on their murder investigation; after all, that was supposed to be the squad’s job.

  “OK, Aidan, do you think Norris is going to give us anything more?”

  “No. We’ve squeezed him dry and we’re running out of excuses for keeping him.”

  Craig nodded and turned to one of his other D.C.I.s. “Andy, I want you to get a warrant to tap Norris’ mobile before he’s released.”

  He glanced at his senior analyst who was grinning.

  “Yes, Davy, so that you can listen in. As soon as our mystery woman turns on her phone or Norris connects with her I want her address.”

  As the analyst gave him a thumbs-up, Craig turned back to the squad’s fitness freak.

  “Aidan, you and Andy get a photo of Stuart Kincaid’s watch and run it past the witnesses to see if it’s the one they saw on Westbury, then go to the lab and dig into Kincaid’s effects. I want everything in his luggage pulled apart. I want to know why Kincaid went to that quarry and what Blaine Westbury was looking for at the hotel.”

  He looked at his D.S. “Ryan, I need you and Mary on the next flight to Manchester to interview Galvet. Alice can sort the paperwork for you. Find out who paid him to snatch Bella Westbury and who he passed her on to. Tell him we’ve got him on camera doing it but if he cooperates we’ll put a word in for him with the French police-”

  Liam snorted in objection. “The only word I’d be putting in would be guillotine. We can never allow that bastard back on the streets, boss.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Liam. I very much doubt the French will let Galvet walk anywhere until he’s on a Zimmer, but we’ll need him to believe that they might, to get him to cooperate.”

  As Mary and Ryan took to their feet, both grinning at the idea of a trip, Liam was grumbling, “No south of France for me then.”

  “Sorry, Liam, maybe on the next case. Or who knows, we might be asked to give evidence about the girl’s abduction in the French courts.”

  The D.C.I.’s face lit up as he completely missed his boss’ joking tone.

  “Ash, you’ll already have enough to do, but Davy, I’d really like you to keep digging into Derek Morrow’s computers.”

  “I meant to say, chief, Stuart Kincaid’s computers were clear of child porn.”

  Andy nodded. “Just like his wife said. Kincaid wasn’t a paedophile.”

  The analyst gave the small smile that usually indicated he’d found something interesting to pursue. “I’ve already got something else on Morrow. There’s a WatsUp group on his computers and phone that’s as heavily encrypted as his crypto icon.”

  Craig raised an eyebrow. “Is there indeed? I’d be very interested to see who was in his little group of buddies, and what they said.”

  Liam pulled a face. “It’ll be nasty for sure. Why else would you encrypt a chat group unless something in it makes you look bad?”

  It was a fair bet; there’d been recent court cases where people’s private social media exchanges had revealed some very unsavoury things.

  Just as Craig nodded in agreement his deputy nudged his elbow. “What about us then? What’ll we be doing?”

  “We’ll be going back over everything we know about Blaine Westbury. I want that bastard.”

  Liam looked at him sceptically. “He won’t still be in Ireland! He’d have to be thick.”

  “He was stupid enough to kill someone in the village he was born in and then go to his victim’s hotel, so who can tell what he’ll do next. He must have heard Kincaid’s body been found by now.”

  “How? We kept it out of the papers.”

  “Only his name. The press mentioned a man’s body was discovered in Rownton, so if Westbury did kill Kincaid it won’t have taken him long to work out that that body was him. Then what would you do in his position?”

  The D.C.I. ruminated for a moment. “That all depends on how big a bastard I am. And how brainless. If I was smart I’d just skedaddle off to a warm country with no extradition. But if I was thick and vicious I’d…” His face broke into a smile. “You think Westbury’s going to want to tidy up loose ends.”

  Craig nodded. “I’m hoping that he’s that stupid. If he is we need to work out what those ends might be and get there first.”

  “Ach, sure that’s easy. He’ll kill anyone he thinks might know something about Kincaid’s death and be able to implicate him. So that’s… well, maybe just Arthur Norris and whoever S.W.M.B.O.is, now that Derek Morrow’s dead. That’s if they al
l knew about Kincaid’s death.”

  “Agreed, but we’d better keep a watch on Biddy Evans too, just in case Westbury saw her that morning she saw him. Call the Rownton sergeant now, will you, Liam, and get him to post someone at her house until everything’s sorted.”

  Ryan had a practical question for Craig before he left for the airport.

  “What’s Blaine Westbury using for money, chief? He’s a waster and he didn’t collect his inheritance, so how could he have afforded to flee?”

  “I’d say the fact that he didn’t collect his inheritance means that he didn’t need to, Ryan. He’s obviously found cash from somewhere, but we may not find out where until we pick him up.”

  He turned to the rest of his team and called out over the growing hubbub.

  “Everyone, let me know what you’ve got as and when.” He glanced back at his deputy. “I’m going to arrange a plain clothes officer to tail Norris when he’s released, Liam. When you’ve called Rownton join me in my office. Ash, I’ll need you for five minutes as well.”

  Craig left the now buzzing group behind him and entered his room, just finishing up his call to plain clothes when the others joined him there. He waved them to take seats and handed out coffees without asking for preferences, his mind full of other things.

  “Right, Ash, I’ll let you go and get on with things in a minute, but first, have you or Davy found anything interesting on Pete McElroy’s media accounts?”

  The analyst nodded so hard that his gold earring began to oscillate, fascinating the D.C.I. by his side who’d come from the short back and sides era of masculinity and couldn’t make up his mind whether he thought male adornment was ridiculous looking or whether he secretly envied the young their freedom to try things out. If he’d worn an earring when he was young some hungry bullock would have chewed his ear off, that’s if his father hadn’t first.

  Liam’s thoughts were disturbed by the analyst setting his smart-pad on the desk and eagerly opening a page.

  “OK, so, at first look there was nothing exciting on any of Pete’s accounts. Photos of his kids, some football clips, just the usual. So I went into his email account.”

  Liam cut him off. “How’d you know he had one?”

  It brought a pitying roll of the eyes. “DOH! Everyone has an email account.”

  “I don’t.”

  Even Craig was surprised. “You must have. How do you keep in touch with friends?”

  It was the deputy’s turn to look pitying. “Well, you see, there’s this old-fashioned thing called meeting face-to-face that we country folk favour.”

  “Very droll. But you have to organise that somehow.”

  “I’ve also got another old-fashioned thing called Danni who organises my every waking move on her flipping phone.”

  “Bet she’d love being called a thing.”

  “Ach, you know what I mean. Don’t be going all politically correct on me.”

  Craig waved the analyst on with a smirk.

  “OK, so everyone in the world except Liam has an email, and as most people cut their teeth on one of three or four well-known free email sites, Pete’s account was easy enough to locate.”

  “You got his password from the provider I take it?”

  “DOH again. No-oo. That would have left a paper trail. I hacked it like any decent analyst.”

  Craig raised his eyes to heaven, wondering how many more like him there were around.

  Liam was completely disinterested in the technicalities and impatient, so he gestured at the smart-pad.

  “So? What did you find? An email saying ‘I’m going to kill myself and implicate my ex-wife’ would be good.”

  The earring began to swing again. “Nothing. I went back through months of it, and boy was it boring. Football and rugby.”

  But Craig knew that the analyst’s earlier enthusiasm meant he had something, and he didn’t have the time for a long lead-in.

  “Just cut to the chase, Ash. What have you got?”

  With a pointed sigh the smart-pad was turned around so that they could read its screen and the hacker pointed to an incoming email.

  “That. It’s from another email provider.”

  “But Pete didn’t send it-”

  “It was sent to Pete to verify his ID while he was setting up a second, new, email account. He set it up in October last year but never actually emailed anything from it so there’s nothing in the sent or trash folders, but he did do the old spy trick of writing an email and saving it as a draft. Undetectable unless you know where to look.”

  He opened the email and read out the words that they’d been hoping to hear. Peter McElroy’s suicide note clearly stating his intention to break and enter his ex-wife’s home and murder her partner, hoping that in the process she would end his life.

  The email wouldn’t be admissible because they’d obtained it illegally, but now they knew what had to be in the papers stored at Floods. With this knowledge behind him, the solicitor’s hint and Ben Frampton’s confirmation of what Pete had been planning, Craig was fairly sure he could make a decent case for Sean Flanagan to request a warrant for all Pete’s communications, being careful not to reveal that they already knew what they would contain of course.

  Annette would be in the clear apart from a reprimand for not locking her weapon away, and a potential ‘drunk while in possession of a firearm’ charge that the PPS would find impossible to prove.

  The detective hadn’t realised that he’d gasped until he noticed the others smiling at him and then Liam suddenly slapped Ash so hard on the back that the slight analyst almost found himself propelled across the desk.

  “Well done, son! You’re not so bad really, are you?”

  Between coughs the younger man managed to say that he hadn’t realised the fact was ever in doubt.

  “No, well it’s a turn of phrase, isn’t it. Like, you’re not as big a ballax as I thought you were.”

  Craig translated. “Take it as a compliment, Ash, this is astounding work.” He would be recommending the analyst rose up the pay scale from next week. “Now, do whatever’s necessary to cover your trail. You were never in any of Pete’s accounts, OK?”

  Liam was perplexed. “You’re not using this, boss?”

  “I’ll have the knowledge that it exists to bolster my write-up on Frampton’s interview, but no-one can ever know we accessed it, Liam, understand? I’m going to try to persuade the C.C. to order a warrant for all Pete’s communications on the basis of what we know legitimately. And if we manage it, Annette will owe you her freedom, Ash.”

  All might still be well that ended well, but Craig knew that he’d gone against all sorts of rules even interviewing Ben Frampton so he was probably going to get his ass handed to him in a sling somewhere down the road.

  The, now blushing, analyst was on his feet ready to leave. “OK, great. I’d better get back to work then.”

  As he dashed from the room, obviously embarrassed by the approval of his elders, Craig changed topic with a speed that caught his deputy off guard.

  “Is Biddy Evans being watched, Liam?”

  “What? Oh, yeh, they’ve sent some W.P.C. to stay with her.”

  “And Arthur Norris will be followed and listened to, so hopefully the next couple of hours will reveal who our mystery woman is.”

  The D.C.I. frowned thoughtfully. “I know it’s a stretch, boss, but…you’re not thinking she might have been the one who travelled with the Westbury girl, are you?”

  The question was answered with a shrug. It was a leap to think that Arthur Norris’ mystery S.W.M.B.O. was the same woman who’d flown to Boston with the abducted Bella Westbury three years before. After all, there were billions of women in the world, so why should she have been? Which didn’t mean that Liam was wide of the mark.

  “We’ll see. Let’s just say I’m not ruling it out. OK, back to Blaine Westbury. Any suggestions on how we find him?”

  Just then there was a gentle knock on the door that cou
ld only have belonged to one member of his team.

  “Come in, Davy.”

  The senior analyst entered holding two sheets of paper and wearing an expression that confused them; he looked distressed and triumphant all at once.

  “I think you should see this.”

  Without waiting for a response he handed a page to each detective and watched them intently as they read.

  Liam spoke first. “It’s a list of names. About twenty. So what?”

  The computer expert pulled up a chair, about to start explaining, when Craig did so first.

  “These are all missing children, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  Liam was puzzled. “How’d you know that? And you, where’d you get them from?”

  Davy dug into the detail. “I set up a Europe-wide search as soon as I heard about Bella, looking for abducted children over the past ten years where a body had never been found.”

  As Craig’s lips tightened in understanding his deputy wasn’t feeling enlightened at all.

  “Explain quickly someone, before I pull my gun.”

  Craig waved him down. “He’s saying that Bella was only one of many children who were taken, before and after her, and these are the names of the others.”

  Davy nodded. “S…Some of them. The ones in the EU during that time. If I widen the search to include other nearby countries, eastern European and Nordic, about a dozen more names pop up.”

  He held up his smart-pad seeking permission to show them something and Craig motioned him on. A map of the EU zone appeared with red dots scattered across it, including in Ireland and the UK.

  Craig sighed.

  “These names, Davy, they’re all modern. That means these children are all very young.”

  “I only looked for the ones under five.”

  Liam was frowning. “I still don’t get it.”

  “Very young children will forget who they w…were eventually, but any older than five and it would be hard to give them a new name and family.”

  The D.C.I. thought of his own children and shuddered violently, knowing that the analyst was right. His youngest, Rory, was six, and he could imagine that after a few weeks of being called by a new name in a new country he would completely forget who he’d been before, especially if they fed him enough gummy bears.