The father turned his head away. “I’ve never met him. Whenever I asked Hollie, she’d tell me to mind my own business. What could I do?”
Ground her? Or don’t parents do that anymore?
Mr Jardine fixed Jones with tear-filled, pale brown eyes, and grabbed his arm. “Please find our little girl. She’s everything.”
The hidden steel behind Frank Jardine’s meek exterior showed as the fierce grip on Jones’ forearm increased. He felt the man’s desperation, and couldn’t ignore his own empathy for a distraught father.
Somehow, Hollie’s photo appeared in his hand. He stared down at it, and Jamie Cryer’s smiling face stared back at him.
Siân’s voice in his head said, ‘Don’t do it, Davey-boy. Don’t you dare’. He normally followed her advice, but not this time.
“I’ll find her, Mr Jardine. I promise.”
3
Thursday evening - Investigations
Time since abduction: nine hours, thirty minutes
Jones yelled down the phone at the technician. “What about ongoing police work? Isn’t there a, what-do-you-call it, backup system?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Chief Inspector, but we’ve been the target of a series of security attacks over the past few weeks. We need to close the system to initiate an upgrade or we’ll be wide open to hackers.”
The woman didn’t sound at all sorry. Her voice held a note of boredom. “You’re the third senior police officer I’ve talked to tonight. Every force in the country has had adequate warning. You should have failsafe duplicate systems in place. It’s part of the national standards.” She paused. “And by the way, we chose this time because only seventeen percent of PNC searches are run overnight.” Another pause. “I can give you ten more minutes before we pull the plug but that’s all. If it’s any help, the system should be back online by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“What’s the point in having a Police National Computer system we can’t access? A young girl’s life is at stake.”
Jones slammed the phone into its cradle and punched the desk with the side of his fist. A sharp pain jarred through his wrist and stung his fingers. He shook the hand.
Wonderful Jones, that’ll help.
As the tingling in his fingertips diminished, he turned to face the room.
Alex Olganski sat at the computer station, her head bowed, eyes focused on the monitor. Ryan Washington, a hook-nosed, stoop-shouldered Detective Constable, and the fleshy DS Charlie Pelham, sat hunched over telephone handsets. Each spoke quietly. Papers and yellow telephone notes littered the desks. Jones wanted to jump across the room and tidy them into neat piles, but that would only help him, not the case. Ryan and Pelham worked hard, but the information they had gathered over the past couple of hours was background colour and contained nothing to help locate Hollie Jardine.
Pelham’s attempt at searching her school locker ended when the deputy head stated the school didn’t have any. The children were ‘encouraged to travel light’ and, ‘with the advance of new technology, heavy textbooks are no longer required’.
Ryan had accessed the school’s IT system, but found nothing in Hollie’s file relevant to the search. Jones despaired at the loss of real honest-to-goodness paper.
“Who’s responsible for overseeing the backup PNC system?” Jones asked the group.
Pelham lowered his head and studied an incident report. Ryan answered for him. “Superintendent Peyton refused to release the funds to expand the local network, boss. Said it wasn’t worth it for the time we’d need the thing. Phil tried to talk to him about it last spring when you were in High Court on the Skelman trial, but the Super wouldn’t listen.”
“You mean there’s nothing backed up locally?”
Pelham coughed and shuffled in his seat.
Ryan lowered his gaze. “We have some files on the local servers, but the system’s a pig. Nobody’s spent any money on it for years. Our in-house system keeps crashing. Bloody thing’s useless.”
Jones couldn’t believe it. No one could ever accuse him of being a high-tech advocate, but even he could see the value of uninterrupted access to data files.
Superintendent Douglas Peyton was a bean counter of the worst kind. If Hollie Jardine died because of Peyton’s penny-pinching Jones would cheerfully castrate the bastard.
Jones tried to relax his aching jaw muscles and turned to the only working VDU in the office. “You’ve got ten, no … eight minutes, Alex. How’s it coming?”
She rattled the keyboard. “I need to know what search parameters to use. I have entered adult males in this region. What age range? Centre of operation? Modus operandi?”
Jones tugged at his earlobe. All he knew for certain was that Hollie called her boyfriend ‘E’. He didn’t even know whether it referred to a surname or a given name. Hell, it might even be a pet name.
“Pull out every male with a history of molesting or grooming underage girls. He was old enough to drive, right? So he’s at least seventeen. Upper age? Oh, I don’t know, fifty-five? He was probably a Caucasian, judging by what Hollie’s school friends said. Get me every name you can and we’ll go through it later.”
He checked the time—seven minutes left.
Alex bowed her head and concentrated on the screen showing the soon-to-be-locked blue search template.
Come on, Alex. Down to you now, lass.
She cursed in Swedish, glanced at Jones, and shook her head in apology. He stood over her and tried to read the screen. Her fingers fluttered over the keys, but her eyes remained glued to the screen. Jones wondered when she’d learned to touch-type. He also wondered why it mattered.
Alex stopped typing and looked up. Smudged mascara, where she rubbed her eye, drew Jones’ attention.
“Boss, please?”
Jones raised an open hand. “Sorry,” he said.
He turned to leave the room, but paused long enough to straighten some of the papers on Ryan’s desk. He couldn’t help himself.
Jones could think of nothing better to do than pace the corridor outside the SCU briefing room and monitor the time rushing past with the speed of Usain Bolt on a world record breaking day. He considered entering his office to organise the papers the admin officer would have thrown on his desk, but couldn’t stomach the thought.
No matter how many times he told the woman to put new files in the in-tray, and not on his blotter, she refused to listen. He began to wonder whether someone on the team egged her on, to annoy him. Well it bloody worked. Jones hated mess in his personal space, and anywhere else come to that.
He wiped a coating of dust from a windowsill in the hall with his handkerchief and shook the cloth out before folding it into a neat square and replacing it in his inside jacket pocket. He wondered, not for the first time, what the cleaners did to earn their minimum wage.
He called the control room again. All twenty-seven local patrol cars reported no success. Officers had stopped and searched one campervan fitting the description, but cleared the owners, an elderly Welsh couple, to go. Apart from that, they had nothing.
Jones ended the call and popped his head around the SCU office door. Alex still attacked the keyboard with controlled fury. Pelham and Ryan hadn’t moved.
Jones’ spirits sank. She needed to come up with a list of suspects before the deadline. If not, they’d be stymied until morning and Hollie’s chances were … He refused to complete the thought and paced the hall for five more interminable minutes.
“Boss, I have it!”
Jones burst into the room to find Alex smiling in triumph.
“Excellent.” He touched her shoulder. “Now, print off four copies.”
The laser printer hummed, and Jones signalled for Ryan to distribute the output.
“There are fifteen men who fit the profile,’ Alex announced. “That is, fifteen with a particular interest in older children.”
With a magnetised strip, Jones stuck his copy to the wall-sized whiteboard and finger-walked thro
ugh the names. Searching first for anyone he recognised before skipping to the first ‘E’ he found.
Method, Jones. Miss nothing. Go through each name in turn.
He scratched off two men. One had died a couple of weeks earlier, and the other was tucked away downstairs in the holding cells, charged with exposing himself near a school playground.
“Doesn’t anybody update the PNC? I thought the whole point of a computerised system was to have accurate records. Anybody else have anything?” Jones found himself shouting, despite struggling for control.
Pelham pulled at his lower lip before pointing to his list. “You can remove Ewan Priestly; he’s too ugly. Wouldn’t turn the head of a young girl.”
Damn, that’s one ‘E’ gone.
“And bin Ivan Zylic,” Pelham continued. “Extradited to Serbia. I sat in on his extradition case last month.”
“Ryan?”
“Sorry, boss. Don’t recognise any of the others.”
“Alex?”
“Someone attacked the paedophile, Glen Evans yesterday. He is in hospital, I think.” Alex picked up the desk phone. “I will check.” The handset disappeared under her long blonde hair.
Jones didn’t miss the initial letter of Evans’ name. His heart sank a little more as they struck a second ‘E’ from the reduced list. He turned to Pelham and Ryan. “Take three names each. Report in the minute you clear anyone. Alex and I will take the remaining four. I want every one of these sick buggers interviewed, checked, and crossed off. I don’t care how many uniforms you allocate to help with the search. Off you go.”
Pelham’s shoulders sagged. “What’s the point of running around after her? The kid’s a runaway. She packed her bags and took her passport, didn’t she? Waste of bloody time.”
Jones turned on Pelham and stepped close. “What did you say?” The stink of sweat mixed with stale tobacco forced him to breathe through his mouth. Jones backed away one pace. “What the hell’s wrong with you, man? What would you do if your Greg disappeared? Do I have to remind you Hollie Jardine’s a child? She should be home with her parents. I want her found. Understand?”
“Yes, boss. Sorry.” Pelham raised a placatory hand and rushed to follow Ryan through the door.
Jones didn’t believe the apology. Pelham’s laziness had worsened in recent months and he constantly stretched Jones’ patience beyond its limits. He wanted to kick the lazy bugger off the team, but the crafty old sod had protection from on high in the emaciated shape of Superintendent Duggie Peyton. Jones needed to tread carefully.
Alex finished her call and crossed off Evan’s name. “Broken arm and concussion. Definitely, he is not our man.”
Jones checked his Seiko. “Hollie’s been missing over ten hours. We’re running out of time, if the poor child isn’t already dead.”
“Our four suspects.” Alex pointed to each name in turn. “Aaron Smollett, Jackson Perry, Nigel Simms, and Edward Flynn. Who do you want to look at first?”
“Edward Flynn. I know the name from somewhere.”
The final ‘E’. Was he clutching?
Alex shrugged. “It is unfamiliar to me. Born in 1961. He has more than fifty years.”
“Would a man in his fifties turn the head of a teenage girl?”
“Excuse me?”
“Her diary.” Jones handed her the pink journal. “The entries read like a young girl with a crush on a slightly older boy, not a middle aged man. She uses the initial ‘E’.”
Jones spun on his heel and headed for the door. “I’ve an idea. Send patrol cars to pick up Perry, Simms,” he called over his shoulder, “and follow me to the archives. We have some old-fashioned police work to do.”
The archives, across the road from the smart new police headquarters, had missed the latest round of renovations. The under-used, dusty vault hadn’t changed much in the eleven months since Jones last searched through the paper records, but the smell of damp and decay had worsened by a country mile. Cobwebs hung like shrouds, dust clung to every flat surface, and flecks hung in the still air as large as confetti in a wedding photo. Jones sneezed twice and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He shuddered at the grime and wished he had a dust mask handy.
According to the Sex Offender’s Registry, Edward Flynn’s most recent court appearances dated back to 1995. It took Jones half an hour to find the case file. Something told him they were getting close to an answer. The familiar burst of adrenaline accompanying a potential break in the case made his heart rate jump. This was the buzz he lived for, the parmesan on his pizza.
Alex arrived as he dropped the thick manila folder on the reception desk. The file hit the surface with a clap and stirred up a thick cloud of dust. He sneezed again and regretted being so aggressive with the file. He waited for the dust to settle before flipping open the front cover. The excitement melted away the instant he read the first page.
“Damn it!”
“Boss?” Alex’s eyebrows knitted together.
“Look.” Jones pointed to the big red letters stamped diagonally across the top page: DECEASED. “So much for my bright idea.”
He stepped back to let Alex take a closer look and allowed his shoulders to slump. Now they had nothing but the other names on the SO list.
Alex read the entry aloud. “Died in prison. Isle of Wight, March 2007. He served twelve of a twenty-five-year sentence for the grooming, kidnap, rape, and murder of a twelve-year-old girl. An inmate stabbed him to death in the prison chapel two days before his release for good behaviour. It would appear the other prisoners were not too happy about Mr Flynn being released.”
“So it would appear.” Jones rubbed his face with his hands. “Flynn’s MO matches Hollie Jardine’s abduction. Hell, I thought we were on to something. I don’t suppose he has a brother, does he?”
Alex flipped a page and continued reading. Jones closed his eyes, and tried hard to think of something they’d missed, another line of enquiry, but came up empty. All they could do was hope one of the other men on the list became a hot candidate, or someone spotted the campervan. But the holiday season had already started, and the mass exodus of campers making the trip to all-ports-south made the odds of finding a specific vehicle bloody long. They didn’t even have a registration number.
“I have something.” Alex turned her head up from the file, her eyes shone. She pointed to an entry in the file under ‘Next-of-Kin’. “Edward Flynn had a son, Ellis.”
Jones slapped a palm on the desk. “Ellis Edward Flynn, more Es. Is there anything in the file on this Ellis?”
“There is a reference number here. It means he has a case file.”
Jones rummaged behind the serving counter for the index list. “Call out that number for me.”
“2-3-6-8-9-8-6.”
It took him a couple of frustrating minutes to find the number in the index and its designated shelving area. They hurried to the correct section to find an unholy mess of misfiled case folders. Hundreds of them, all stacked in haphazard fashion on sagging metal shelving units unsuitable for the task. Jones nearly screamed.
“This is what happens when we rely too heavily on IT and outsource the hard copy filing to the lowest bidder. Nobody’s sorted these files in months. Damn it. Heads are gonna roll for this.”
“If we take the files and place them on the floor in regular stacks, we can perform a binary split. It will be much faster, yes?”
Jones ground his teeth. “What the hell’s a binary split? Yet another piece of technology I’ll have to learn?”
Red spots coloured Alex’s high cheekbones. She lowered her head and picked up the first file. “Sorry, boss. It is a mathematical process.”
Jones coughed and followed her lead. He clamped down hard on his frustrations and studied Alex's methodical approach. When she finally came up with the file, it had taken fifteen minutes. It would have taken a damned sight longer without her system. Alex tossed the file onto the table in front of him with a self-satisfied grin.
“So that’s a binary split, eh?” He smiled. “Thanks, Alex. Sorry for being so short with you back there.”
“It is okay. I also want to find Hollie Jardine.”
Jones pointed to the notes. Ellis’ folder was considerably thinner than that of his father. “Do you mind reading the file? Your eyes are sharper than mine.” He paced behind her while she scanned the papers.
“Not much here, boss. He has never been in trouble as an adult, but there is a sealed juvenile record.” She checked the time on her mobile. “We will not be able to access that file for six hours.”
“Does it give a current address?”
She pointed to a box on the top page. “Tile Hill. You know the place?”
Jones nodded and allowed himself a grin. Perhaps his fears of a motorway trip for the campervan had been premature. “A small town a few miles south east of here. There was nothing on the SO register about Ellis Flynn so he may be an innocent. On the other hand, he might have taken Hollie to his home.”
The information fitted, it felt right, and his internal mechanism agreed. Jones made the decision.
“Call Ryan and Charlie. Get them to meet us at Tile Hill. I’ll organise a couple of uniforms for added backup.”
Alex rushed from the room but Jones paused a moment and eyed the desk. Although he would have put any other officer on a charge for doing the same thing, Jones picked up both folders and took them along.
What the filing clerk doesn’t know …
Jones, Pelham, Alex, and Ryan, together with two uniformed constables, pitched up at Ellis Flynn’s 1930s, Art Deco house in two police cars and Jones’ Rover. Jones ordered a silent approach and they turned off the flashing lights and the sirens a mile from the house.
Half past three in the morning. Hollie had been missing nearly twelve hours. The odds against her survival lengthened with each passing minute and everyone in the team understood that.
The first ominous thing Jones noticed was the For Sale sign in the postage-stamp front garden.
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