by BL Pearce
“Well, in our last interview, she mentioned other girls who’d gone missing in the county under similar circumstances to her daughter.”
Lawrence’s eyes narrowed. “She did, did she?”
Family members and friends of the victims were prone to overuse of Google and often got the wrong end of the stick. He was right to be suspicious.
“We proceeded with caution,” Rob was quick to assure him. He hesitated. “DS Burns has discovered four other missing girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. All in the greater Surrey area.”
Lawrence’s eyes fixed on him.
“That’s not all,” said Rob. “A school satchel belonging to one of the victims was found near to where she disappeared, weighted down in a river. Like Katie’s.”
There was a long pause.
“You want to know what I think?”
Rob nodded. “To be honest, I don’t know what to make of it, sir. If we add Arina Parvin and Katie Wells to that list, that’s six kids in the last five years. And the satchel is a remarkable coincidence.”
Lawrence didn’t speak. There was a respectful knock and Celeste came in carrying a tea tray. Sensing the heavy atmosphere, she put it down and backed out of the room.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
The Superintendent hated the S-word. The two most difficult cases of his career had been serial offenders.
“That’s why I wanted to bounce it off you, sir. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but we have to consider we may have a serial killer on our hands.”
“For fuck’s sake.” His voice reverberated around the office. “Why can’t it be a simple kidnapping? Why does it always have to be a fucking serial killer?”
Through the glass, heads dropped as colleagues concentrated extra hard on their tasks. Hear anything? Of course not.
“I’m not saying it is a serial killer, sir, but think about it. Six missing girls. Same age. Same county. We have to consider that they could be related.”
“They might be isolated events,” he retaliated. “Young girls go missing all the time. They run away, become drug addicts, try to escape abusive parents. What makes you think these six are related?”
“We don’t. We haven’t looked into them yet. It’s just a line of enquiry that I thought we should pursue.” The tea remained untouched.
Lawrence fell silent, his fingers drumming on the arms of the chair. Rob waited for him to say something.
“Okay, Rob. I suppose you may have a point. But our focus is on Katie Wells, not these other girls. This could still be an isolated event. Fucking hell, it’s more likely to be someone who knows the family than a deranged serial killer.” He shook his head.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll put DS Burns and DC Malhotra on it, while the rest of the team concentrate on Katie.”
Lawrence glanced wistfully at the teapot but made no move to pour. “The Crimewatch report is going out tonight. I’ve seen the rough cut. Damn fine job your young sergeant did. He looks good on the box, doesn’t he? We might have to get him to give the press statements from now on. Gives the department a good name.”
How could Harry not have a positive effect on the audience?
“I’ll be sure to watch it,” he said.
“They filmed on location too,” he said. “Compelling stuff.”
“Hopefully it’ll generate some leads,” Rob said, although his voice lacked enthusiasm.
“We’re going to need some extra bodies to man the hotline,” Lawrence said. “Hire civilians. The pros are too expensive.”
“Yes, sir.” He mentally added it to his to-do list.
There was a knock at the door. Rob glanced up. He was surprised to see DS Freemont standing there. That took balls, considering the Chief Superintendent’s recent outburst.
“Enter,” said Lawrence.
“What’s up, Will?” asked Rob.
“Guv, you’re not going to believe this. Lisa Wells knows Anthony Payne. She made two calls to his gallery back in March.”
20
Rob jumped up. “She knows him?”
“Yes, sir. They spoke twice, each time the call was longer than two minutes. They definitely know each other.”
Holy shit.
He excused himself and followed Will back to his desk. Will pointed to the screen. “There are the call logs.”
Rob could see for himself. She’d made two calls, one on the thirteenth and one on the fifteenth of March.
“Get her in here,” he snapped.
This time he met her in the interrogation room. Once again, he’d informed her she wasn’t under arrest, that this was just routine questioning. To prove the point, he’d got them both a coffee on the way. It was the crap from the canteen, but it was the thought that counted.
Did she mind if he recorded their chat?
She shook her head. She seemed confused, frightened even. Like she was expecting bad news.
“How are you holding up?” he asked her.
“Okay, I suppose, given the circumstances.” Her words didn’t convince either of them.
“We’re making progress with the case,” he told her. “One line of enquiry we’re following up on has to do with a man called Anthony Payne. Do you know him?”
She frowned, then her eyes widened. “Why, yes I do. Ant owns the gallery in the village.”
Ant, eh?
“That’s right. Do you mind if I ask how you know him?”
“He acquired one of my paintings,” she said.
He hadn’t been expecting that. “I see.”
“The gallery is across the road from where I work. I often pop in there on my lunch break. One day we got talking and I mentioned I do a bit of painting myself. He asked to see my work, so I showed him, and he agreed to display one of my pieces.”
“Did you take them round to the gallery?”
“No, they’re quite sizey. He came to the house.”
Rob’s breath quickened. “And this was back in March?”
“Yes, why? Is there a problem?”
Rob forced his voice to remain calm. “Lisa, did you know Payne is listed on the sex offenders register.”
Her mouth formed a perfect O.
“I had no idea. I invited him into my house. He met Katie.” She gasped. “You–You don’t think he had anything to do with her disappearance?”
“We don’t know at this point,” he admitted. “But we’re looking into it.”
She shook her head. “I thought he was gay.”
She had a point. Rob had got that impression too, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t abducted Katie.
Now they had confirmation that Payne knew the family, Rob leaped into action. It felt good to be moving forward again. The Chief Superintendent signed off on a warrant and Mallory organised a search of both Payne’s house and the gallery.
“Get down there, Rob,” Lawrence barked. “We can’t risk anything going wrong. This has to be by the book.”
The Olympic Cafe terrace was full to bursting point on account of the fine weather, and the diners gawked as the convoy of police vehicles pulled up outside the gallery. Another team had been dispatched to Payne’s apartment in Putney.
Rob handed him the warrant. “We’re here to conduct a search of the premises,” he told the astonished gallery owner.
“But I haven’t done anything,” he retorted, going red in the face. He kept glancing at the diners next door, terrified everyone would find out about his record.
“This could ruin me,” he hissed to Rob.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you lied to us. You knew Katie’s family and you denied it when asked.”
“I don’t know what you mean?” he fumed.
“Katie Wells? You have Lisa Well’s painting hanging in your gallery.”
“That’s Katie’s mother?” he gasped.
Rob was impressed. If he was lying, he was damn good at it. “I had no idea Lisa was Katie’s mother. I never made the connection.”
/> “Uh-huh.” Rob left him standing outside with a police officer and went to see how the search was progressing.
Gloved officers systematically worked their way through the back office. They confiscated Payne’s laptop and mobile phone, much to his dismay.
Then a press van arrived and immediately began filming.
“Get rid of them,” hissed Rob, as a man with a lens walked right into the gallery. Two uniformed officers escorted him out.
“I swear, I’m going to have to move again because of this,” complained Payne. “Thanks very much!”
Rob ignored him. If he was innocent, it would hurt his reputation, but once again, he should have thought of that before he sexually assaulted a minor.
“Let’s go to the apartment,” Rob said to Mallory, once the forensic team had taken the electronics away. They’d get the report in due course.
Payne’s apartment block was not much to look at. Constructed by ugly brown brick, typical of the council blocks in the seventies, it stretched sixteen stories into the sky. His flat was somewhere in the middle.
It was much nicer inside. Payne had good taste. Cream carpeting, classy off-white walls, a collection of impressive paintings by artists Rob had never heard of.
The master bedroom was a decent size for a council flat, even if it was dominated by a king-size bed. A landscape in a gilt frame hung on the wall in front of the bed. Rob stopped in front of it. Cows grazed in a meadow with a series of hills in the background, but instead of the expected colours, it was painted in shocking pinks, vibrant yellows and luminous greens. The combined effect was a gauche explosion of colour.
Each to his own.
There was nothing to implicate Payne in Katie Wells’ abduction. His flat appeared to be clean. They hadn’t found so much as a packet of Haribo’s in the cupboard.
They were about to leave when an officer in the second bedroom gave a shout. It had been converted into a study.
“You got something?” The gloved officer was searching the desk.
He handed Rob up a sketch. It was pretty simplistic and looked like it had been drawn by a child. In the bottom left hand corner was a signature.
Rob caught his breath.
Katie Wells, 11 years old.
21
Anthony Payne was arrested on suspicion of the abduction of Katie Wells.
Rob let him stew while the team plundered his phone records, bank accounts and cell phone data. Anything that put him in the vicinity of Belgrave Street on the morning of Katie’s disappearance.
Failing that, any co-conspirators he might have worked with, properties he might own or vehicles he might have leased. Other than a storage facility on Lower Richmond Road, there was nothing suspicious.
Rob dispatched uniform to search the storage unit. It was in a secure building with constant CCTV coverage. No way he could have smuggled Katie in there. “Look at that footage,” he told the PC over the phone. “Make sure he wasn’t there.”
“I move around a lot,” Payne said when the interrogation finally got underway. “I need somewhere to store my stuff.”
“Why do you move around so much?” Mallory asked.
Payne raised an eyebrow. “You really have to ask?”
“We’re searching it as we speak,” Rob told him.
He shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve got nothing to hide. I don’t know anything about Katie’s disappearance.”
“Where did you get the sketch?” Rob asked. “For the recording, I’m showing the suspect a pencil drawing by Katie Wells, found at his home.”
He slid the paper across the table. Payne’s eyes softened. “The kid drew that for me, okay? It’s nothing sinister.”
Rob frowned. “You expect us to believe that?”
“Believe what you want. It’s true, ask her mum. While Lisa showed me her work, her daughter drew that. She was sitting at the kitchen table with us.”
Mallory made a note to check with Lisa.
“Was that the first time you met Katie?” Rob studied him across the table. Payne was at ease, arms folded in front of him, brow smooth and unfurrowed. Not a drop of perspiration under his arms or on his forehead. He didn’t come across as a guilty man.
“Yes.”
Beside him sat his solicitor, a chubby man with a goatee. He’d represented Payne during his trial and was well versed with his history.
“Is that when you decided to start spying on her?”
“What? Are you crazy?” Payne glanced at his solicitor. “Is he allowed to ask me that?”
“My client has denied he had anything to do with the disappearance of Katie Wells,” the solicitor said.
“So you didn’t watch her? Follow her around, learn her routine?”
“No!”
“And you weren’t lying in wait on the morning of the second of August, when she walked to school.”
“Once again, my client has denied any knowledge of Katie Wells' disappearance.”
Rob ignored him.
“Are you sure? Because I think you did. I think you liked what you saw that day you visited the Wells’ house, and it triggered a yearning inside of you. It’s been over five years since you were released from Wakefield. Five years of hiding your passion from other people, and when you saw Katie, you snapped. That’s why you kept her picture.”
Payne just shook his head, while his solicitor looked boot faced.
Rob went on. “You planned your moment carefully, didn’t you, Ant? When Katie was late for school, you struck.”
“You’ve got nothing on me. You’re grasping at straws.”
Was he?
Rob scowled at Payne who still hadn’t broken a sweat. He was either a brilliant liar or a calculating psychopath – maybe both.
“Where were you the morning of the second of August?” asked Mallory, diffusing the tension.
“At the gallery. I already told you, I open at eight thirty on Tuesday mornings.”
For the purposes of the recording they had to go over it again.
“And Indigo at the Olympic Cafe can vouch for you?”
“He served me an iced mocha Frappuccino.”
They hadn’t checked up. Mallory fired off a text message to one of the officers still at the gallery and asked him to take a statement from the barista, backing up Payne’s claim.
“You could have gone afterwards,” Rob pointed out. “Katie was taken between eight-thirty and ten past nine.” At twenty past, Lisa had got the call from the school.
“Was she?” Payne looked straight at him.
Shit. He walked into that one.
“Yes, she was. Which means you could have got your iced whatever, then driven to Belgrave Road and waited for Katie to appear. Maybe you’re there most mornings. Maybe you like to watch as she walks to school.
That touched a nerve. He shifted in his chair and for the first time Rob thought, I’m getting somewhere.
Unfortunately, there was no CCTV in Katie’s street, but there was near the gallery. He met Mallory’s eye, and his DI nodded and left the room. “For the recording, DI Mallory has left the room.”
Once again, Rob saw Payne’s gaze flicker over Mallory, but this time it was tinged with fear.
He finished up the interview and told Payne he was holding him while they cleared up a few things. Payne simply grunted in response. His previous cockiness had all but disappeared.
“I’d like to have a word with my client in private,” the solicitor asked. He’d also sensed something was up.
“Sure, go ahead.”
Rob left them to it and went to speak to the custody sergeant. It wasn’t over yet. Payne had definitely flinched when he’d mentioned Katie’s school. Were they on the right track? Did the sex offender have something to do with the missing child?
And was that a good or a bad thing?
“I’ve got Edward Maplin on the phone,” Jenny told him as he entered the squad room. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Put him through.” Ro
b sat down at his desk, appreciating the air con. The interrogation room had been sweltering. “Ed, what can I do for you?”
He listened for a moment.
“We have covered those areas. But go ahead.”
They could search them again if it made them happy. People liked to feel as if they were doing something proactive.
“Sorry, guv. He was adamant, so I thought it best to put him through you.”
“It was nice of him to call,” Rob admitted. “He didn’t have to.”
Three days. It was usually about now a body turned up.
Mallory had assigned two detective constables to look through the CCTV footage on Church Road. They’d isolated the camera nearest the gallery and were homing in on the footage taken on Tuesday morning.
Rob resisted the urge to peer over their shoulders. When he’d first arrived at Richmond CID, he’d been assigned that job and he knew it required the utmost concentration. They didn’t need a frustrated DCI distracting them.
“Anything at the storage unit?” he asked Mallory, who was in constant contact with the search team.
“Nothing. Just a lot of sealed boxes that look like they’ve been there for years. They’re going through them now.”
“He probably put his stuff in there when he went inside,” Rob remarked. He’d never thought about the logistics of going to prison before.
“Makes sense,” Mallory muttered.
Half an hour later, a uniformed police officer sent through Indigo’s statement confirming that Payne did indeed buy an iced mocha Frappuccino on Tuesday morning at eight seventeen AM according to the till slip.
“Bugger. Still, he got awfully edgy when I suggested he’d watched Katie.”
A shout from across the squad room.
Yes!
Rob strode across the room to where the two DCs were ploughing through reams of footage.
“We found something, guv,” the young woman said, pointing to the screen. “That’s the suspect. He’s on foot, walking away from the gallery with his iced coffee at twenty past eight on Tuesday morning.”
“He didn’t go back to the gallery?”
“No, sir. Not until nine thirty.”