Cold Blood

by Jane Heafield

  Initial report done, it was due to be reviewed as part of a Vulnerability and Risk Assessment, and someone would decide just how much effort should be put into finding the Misper. No risk meant doing nothing and reassessing the situation at another time. At the other end was high risk, which the Home Office had defined as A risk which is life threatening and/or traumatic, and from which recovery, whether physical or psychological, can be expected to be difficult or impossible.

  Bennet marked Lorraine as high risk, which would allocate the immediate deployment of police resources. The case would be appointed a high-ranking investigating officer. As a DCI, Bennet counted: he put his own name in the box.

  Usually, the Missing Person’s Bureau should be contacted if a person was gone for seventy-two hours. Now that Lorraine’s disappearance was noted as high risk, this action was required immediately. Bennet logged the details with them and also with the Major Crime Investigative Support unit of the National Crime Agency. Finally, he updated the Police National Computer, so that police across the country would know that finding her and her vehicle were a priority.

  Within two minutes of making it all official, he got ‘pricked’ – the unofficial term South Yorkshire police used for receiving an automated message sent by its private SMS network, Holding Hands. Sure enough, the message asked him to urgently report to his immediate superior. No need, of course, because he knew exactly what the case was. And now it was official.

  Because he’d designated Lorraine as the highest risk, senior managers would also be contacted. These people usually only got pricked for major events, like the kidnapping of a royal child or a terrorist bombing, and they weren’t going to be happy about being woken for a missing adult nobody.

  So what? The ball was rolling. Bennet would deal with the backlash when it was time.

  31

  On the way home, Bennet called the Red Lion in Lampton, but got no answer. Unsurprising at little past six in the morning. As he was pulling into his driveway, Hooper returned his earlier call. Bennet quickly explained: missing woman, we’ve got the case. ‘I need you to put aside what you’re doing on the Buttery Park case for today and work this.’

  He gave Hooper the names Francis Overeem, Betty Crute, John Crickmer, and Lorraine Cross, wanting them checked out on the Police National Computer. He gave his DC a rundown of events since yesterday, but didn’t mention that Lorraine was his son’s mother. He didn’t talk about his personal life to his team, even though he’d worked with some of them for years, and wasn’t sure how much they knew. Probably a lot, being detectives, but they knew better than to talk about it. He told Hooper to chase up Lorraine’s car and liaise with her husband for further information on her habits and friends and known haunts. More than likely, the husband would inform him of Lorraine’s connection to Bennet, but he could do nothing about that.

  ‘I also need you to get someone to drive down to the Red Lion public house in Lampton and… scratch that. Stick with what I gave you. Get moving, keep me updated.’

  The action he’d been about to give Hooper would crawl its way through him to someone else, who would have to sanction the journey… too much time wasted. He had another job planned in that area, so he would take the Lion task as well. Better if he kept busy and cut down worrying time. He sent Patricia another message, now asking her to take Joe to school. Then he slid his car out of the driveway.

  This time he had more urgency, and an early morning lack of traffic, and a warrant card to show any police who pulled him. Stepping in the car to stepping back out: thirty-three minutes.

  He laid his Pathfinder in the secret car park behind the Lion and jogged out front to rap the big oak door. Publican Jonesy appeared at a first-floor window, sleepy-eyed. Bennet aimed his warrant card up.

  ‘Down you come, open the door.’

  Damn, that felt good. It was a relief to finally not have to pussyfoot around this fool. It took Jonesy a few minutes, and he opened the door with obvious distaste. Bennet walked past him. Jonesy flicked the lights on. ‘So what’s this about? At this bloody hour. Not your film troublemakers again, I hope. You know as much as I know.’

  ‘I want to see your CCTV of Sunday night, when the film crew came in.’

  ‘Still at it, eh? What do you hope to see? Your people upped and offed. Place was heaving, so I don’t know what you think you’ll find.’

  Bennet could have told Jonesy that the film crew were now officially missing and he was investigating it. He didn’t bother. He just stared at the landlord until the man wilted.

  ‘Okay, whatever. Come on. Let’s make this quick.’ Jonesy led him behind the bar and the curtain at the back, where they took uncarpeted stairs to the first floor, where one of the rooms had a foldaway bed and a table bearing the CCTV system. It was a clunky box with a joystick and various buttons, clearly old, and Bennet wasn’t optimistic it would provide a jackpot. He wasn’t even sure what he hoped to find.

  ‘You can probably figure out how to use this,’ Jonesy said. ‘Only look at Sunday, okay? Don’t be noseying at other days. Come down when you’re done. Don’t take ages.’

  When Jonesy left, Liam sat at the desk. At the moment all four cameras were displayed in quad screen, and all were black and white. One picture was an obsidian square of nothing, one watched the beer garden, and the other two covered the lounge from front and back.

  He worked out how to make one feed fill the screen and chose the interior camera above the entrance, which gave the best view of people standing at the bar. He then got his head around how to fast-forward, rewind, and to jump backwards in segments of ten, fifteen, thirty and sixty minutes. Some digital CCTV systems employed trick mode, which meant the playback in fast-forward included only certain frames, but this ancient analogue set-up didn’t. If that sounded like a benefit over modern equipment, it wasn’t: the synchronisation quality would be worse than the live feed. He took the recording back to Sunday gone, 6pm.

  The lounge was empty except for a young woman behind the bar and an older male sitting before it. The low resolution made it hard to connect her face to the one displayed on the wall in the lounge, but a large blot of colour on her cheek, a birthmark, told him he was watching Barmaid Vicky.

  And her sole customer? Unbelievably, it was Dog Man with his pooch under the chair, trusty cup and newspaper before him. In the sandwich shop, Dog Man had said the film crew came into the Red Lion, instead of went. Liam now understood why: Dog Man had watched the quartet enter the pub. A little detail he’d neglected to mention.

  Bennet fast-forwarded until customers started to enter. Because the camera was above the door, Liam’s view was mostly of heads and shoulders. They filed in fast, zipping here and there like electrons as the lounge filled. An anomaly was Dog Man; as if by camera trick, he barely seemed to move. The effect was fractured only when he took a sip of his tea or turned a page in his book. As people came in, Dog Man didn’t even look – but he’d looked when Bennet came in, hadn’t he?

  So Bennet focused on him, not the customers, and when the timestamp read 2051, Dog Man turned his head towards the door. Bingo. Bennet rewound a minute and pressed play, to watch in real time as the people who’d intrigued the old dog lover entered. Only Lopers could garner such scrutiny. He knew he’d found the film crew.

  A woman entered first. Real time, the blonde girl floated up the screen as she walked away from the camera. She grew a body and arms and legs with the changing angle, and he made out double denim. He knew it was Lorraine, even without seeing her face.

  Next came Betty Crute and John Crickmer. Bringing up the rear, in a suit and blue trench coat, was the man known as the director; then Donald Ducke, and now Francis Overeem.

  They were a bizarre-looking group, like something out of a video game. Lopers were one thing, but this group stood out like a sore thumb. If they’d hoped to sneak around the village under the guise of tourists, secretly filming, they’d gone about it the wrong way.

  As the director fol
lowed his colleagues to the bar, a young guy angled their way and bumped him, on purpose. The director raised a hand in apology, which the young thug didn’t care for. Liam saw no other black patrons and wondered if this was a race thing. Maybe these backwater bumpkins thought black people were invading extraterrestrials. Or the pair had had a run-in earlier.

  The crew looked around, then sat at the bar. They seemed to be minding their own business, but local heads were watching, fingers occasionally pointing. Only Barmaid Vicky spoke to them. Just doing her job, perhaps, or, as an out-of-towner herself, maybe she was not so closed-minded to strangers. She stood right across the bar from the director, doing a good job of paying attention to him. The camera didn’t have the resolution to catch moving mouths, but Liam could tell they were talking.

  Overeem looked around again, then back at Vicky. She tiptoed and moved her head, also scanning the room. She shook her head and said something and looked at her watch.

  Intriguing.

  When the crew moved to a table at the back of the lounge, Bennet switched to the other interior camera and got a much better view. The director was indeed about fifty, as hotelier Gemma had claimed, his wavy hair shiny black apart from a scattering of grey around the ears. Tattoo was no older than twenty-five, he guessed, with piercings in her nose, above her left eye, and a bunch in both ears. Grunge was a nerdy-looking guy despite his wild hair and heavy-metal outfit. Lorraine had her back to the camera, so he couldn’t see her face. But he wanted to.

  The crew didn’t seem to be in the pub to interview, and nothing about their demeanour said they were ‘mouthy’. Others were. Bennet watched a young local approach, say something, get ignored, slip out of shot, and re-enter it with three mean-looking older cronies. Words were said. One kicked the table, spilling a drink. Lorraine got up, tugging at the director’s arm. He seemed willing to stand his ground, but she got him moving and his comrades followed. It was 2121. As the film-makers headed for the door, a bag of crisps entered stage left and hit Lorraine on the head.

  Bennet clenched his jaw as Lorraine and the film crew were hounded out of the pub.

  He was really pissed off. He’d suspected the crew had been ostracised from the village, but seeing it on tape made it real. They had come to highlight an old abduction case, to remind the public in the hope of a breakthrough, and the entire village had taken offence. And made it known. Idiots. It explained why Overeem had gone straight to the Panorama to check out. And, later, Crabtree had ordered them to leave his property. Bennet would have probably trashed the place if he’d experienced such hate.

  32

  Downstairs, Bennet slapped the curtain aside. The landlord, Jonesy, was right before him, his back to Liam as he cleaned the till with a small towel. He turned.

  ‘Find what you need? Only looked at Sunday, didn’t you?’

  Liam ignored him and passed through the bar hatch. He went to the framed picture of the staff and jabbed Barmaid Vicky’s photo. ‘Get me her phone number.’

  Jonesy pulled his mobile and recited it. Bennet typed it into his own phone.

  ‘That it, we done?’ Jonesy said.

  ‘Everyone in this village is an idiot. You included.’

  Jonesy threw his towel on the bar hard enough to make a slapping noise. ‘Police or not, you’re now barred. Well done, because I’ve never barred anyone in my life. Maybe you should just not come back to Lampton at all.’

  ‘Don’t you need the Keys to make that judgement?’

  Back in his Pathfinder, in the secret car park, Bennet called a number and, despite the early hour, it was answered quickly.

  ‘Vicky, from the Lion? My name–’

  ‘Jake? I told you I wasn’t interested. And it’s like the crack of dawn.’

  Yet it sounded like she was in the midst of a party. Oh, to be young and wild. ‘Not Jake. Maybe Jake got the message. Detective Chief Inspector Bennet, South Yorkshire police. You were working in the Lion last Sunday night, Jan 19th.’

  A pause as she yelled at people behind her to keep the racket down. ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Lopers who upped and offed. Four members of a film crew. They got kicked out.’

  ‘Yes. But not by me. Mr Jonesy runs the place, so he–’

  ‘I know it wasn’t you. Keep calm. I saw the CCTV of that night and you spoke to one of them, a black man. His name is Francis Overeem. Was he looking for someone?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know. Who?’

  ‘You tell me. He looked around, spoke to you, then you looked around and shook your head and checked your watch.’

  ‘Oh, yes. No, he was asking if we would get busier, that was it.’

  ‘For sure? You’d need to check the time for that? Because it looked to me like he asked you if a certain someone was in, and then you had a look and said this person wasn’t there.’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I think the time thing was to see if we’d reached our peak yet. And they didn’t stay long. So what have they done?’

  ‘Keep this phone nearby, Vicky…’

  ‘London. Vicky Anna London. Look, am I in trouble or something?’

  ‘Another officer will call you, and they’ll want to visit, so stay where you are and talk to the officer when he calls.’

  Bennet deflected more questions and hung up. He then sent another of his team a text with Vicky’s name and number and details of her less-than-convincing answers, and an order to perform a follow-up, face-to-face interview. After that, he set out on the job that had brought him to this neck of the woods.

  Because now he had a good idea where the film crew might have stayed on Monday night.

  33

  During his calls to various hotels, he’d found one just a couple of miles from Lampton whose name now popped back into his head. Name: the Arrow Hotel. In his blog, Overeem had mentioned training for something called the Arrow Climb. Coincidence? Not to a copper.

  The website listed the Arrow as a small pub/hotel, dog and family friendly, with great food, four-star average reviews, and thirty years in the Good Beer Guide. It was on a cliff overlooking Lake Stanton and had once been home to the Stanton family, whoever they were. There was a rumour that marauders had tried to scale the cliff wall by firing arrows and using them like a ladder; today, iron arrows had replaced them and an extravaganza saw visitors attempt to make the climb for a hefty cash prize – only those who’d a room at the Arrow Hotel, of course. The three-day event had been hosted once a month for fifteen years, and there had been ‘NO FATALITIES YET!!’ Liam had never heard of it during his residency in Lampton. Ten years ago it would have been something he’d have given a shot.

  The last Arrow Climb had been Saturday, Sunday and Monday. If Overeem had been planning to enter the competition, it would explain why he’d stayed at the Panorama on Sunday but scheduled an appointment at the Winding Wheel in Chesterfield for Tuesday. Monday night: a room at the Arrow Hotel.

  Lake Stanton had been created by a quarry company forty years ago, but part of the land adjacent had recently been purchased by a large supermarket chain that was hoping to open a giant store within the next few years. Locals were arguing against it at the moment, so there wasn’t much movement. Before everything stalled, the supermarket had re-tarmacked an old road along the western side of the lake for their construction traffic. Google Maps showed Bennet a track running between the new service road and Benders Road at a location north-east of Lampton. That sliver of the world belonged to Ronald Crabtree, and now it all made sense.

  From the ranch, Overeem’s CaraHome could have reached Benders and found the unnamed track, then the service road by the lake. At whose northern end lay the Arrow Hotel. Barely four miles.

  So, Bennet would go to the Arrow Hotel. With luck, Overeem was still there or staff would have a location for him. Last time, the receptionist at the Arrow had blown him off. Not this time.

  34

  ‘Your director, Francis Overeem, has also been reported missing. Thames Valley Police
got a missing person report on Tuesday night from his girlfriend, down in Oxford. No contact, phone dead, no bank activity. They logged the vehicles parked near his home and one of them is registered to Lorraine Cross. Also, they tried to locate two other people he went to the Peak District with, a John Crickmer and Betty Crute. Their vehicles were also parked near Overeem’s house. No one knows where they are, either, and their phones are also out of action. There’s a watch out for Overeem’s motorhome, but it hasn’t been clocked by a camera since entering the Peak District early on Sunday morning. That was just outside Rowsley, about five miles south-east of Lampton.’

  Bennet had pulled into the side of the service road by Lake Stanton to take the call. Tall, thick shrubbery lined the right side, while the lakeside woodland towered above him on the left, condemning the road to eternal gloom. The two-lane tarmac road had indeed been newly laid, but the surface had been torn up in places even more recently: two staggered lines of holes, much like a movie might have employed to show the footsteps of a passing tyrannosaur. Bennet had to drive down the centre line to avoid them.

  The lakeside trees lurked beyond a chain-link fence and, behind it, the remnants of a brick wall. He figured the wall, far more ancient than the road or the fence, was something left over from a land boundary. In places the brickwork was stubs and towers poking up like a line graph; in others giant jigsaw-piece shapes remained. Bennet had no idea how high the wall had been until he parked to answer his phone. There was a whole segment that had endured the passage of years, with arches ten feet high. This location had no chain-link fence, but portions of such material had been used to block the arches. In places the woodland was thin and the sparsity behind the arches allowed him to see flashes of the lake, some fifty metres away. A peaceful site on any other day, when he hadn’t just taken a call that chilled his heart.