Chloe- Lost Girl

by Dan Laughey

  ‘Is Tony around?’

  ‘I expect so, though I do not clock my staff in and out.’ Sant got the impression Rothwell was being evasive again. It took a while, but eventually the message hit home. ‘I can check if you like.’

  Head back, hands deep in pockets, Sant’s voice was a breeze. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  Rothwell led him down more corridors to a door with a list of names on it, none of which were engraved in brass. Dr Anthony Gordon’s was among them. The professor swiped the card on his lanyard across a scanner before pushing open the door to a dingy office containing eight desks crammed together in open-plan chaos.

  The room was empty with the exception of one hard-working soul and the fan keeping him cool.

  ‘Can I borrow you for a few moments, Tony?’ called Rothwell, not even bothering to enter the stuffy room. ‘Detective Inspector Sant wishes to see you.’

  Tony said nothing but stood up obligingly.

  ‘Why don’t I talk to Tony here?’ Sant pointed to empty chairs.

  ‘Umm, fine,’ said Rothwell, who saw fit to show his visitor into the room, orchestrate the handshake and sit back, arms spread-eagled, hands gripping the locks of his fair hair.

  Sant stared at the sitting Rothwell. ‘Alone, if you don’t mind.’

  It seemed an eternity before message number two got through. At last the professor strolled out, another bout of nervous laughter trailing behind him like a long-forgotten child.

  Tony Gordon was average height and average weight, though the head above his thin neck and shoulders seemed disproportionately big. He was almost bald on top and his eyes a striking blue. An arresting face with sharp features, Sant placed him in his late twenties. Any older and he was employing the right stylist.

  ‘I believe this young woman is a student of yours.’

  He passed a photograph to Tony.

  The young man took one look and let out a sigh. ‘Chloe. I assumed she was the reason you’re here.’ He spoke with Received Pronunciation, pitch-perfect. ‘It feels so bizarre that she could just disappear. Every day of each week I’m expecting to see her.’

  ‘A regular attender?’

  Tony froze for a moment in confusion before nodding.

  ‘I take it Chloe was – is a sensible student?’

  Tony blinked his blue eyes and stared up at the ceiling. ‘She’s incredibly mature for her age. I tell her, and all my students, where not to go in this city – the streets and parks and people to avoid. Chloe is the last person I’d imagine getting into trouble.’ He hesitated before saying: ‘She even carries a rape alarm.’

  This was news to Sant. ‘You noticed it on her?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fastened to her purse. Her accommodation is a ten-minute walk from here, and on dark evenings she’d make a point of returning home before daylight faded.’

  ‘Did she tell you where she lived?’

  ‘I know where she lives, Inspector. I’ve walked Chloe back to her place several times, especially on dark nights. Safety in numbers is what I preach.’

  ‘How responsible of you.’ Sant hoped he didn’t sound patronising. ‘But wasn’t that a diversion for you?’

  ‘Not in the least. I live not far from the student population of Leeds. My house is within walking distance of here.’

  ‘What did you and Chloe talk about?’

  The young man pulled out a pen lodged behind his earlobe. ‘Oh, all sorts of things, mostly history-related as you can imagine. We share an interest in modern political history.’ He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a diary. ‘You may be in luck. You see, Asperger Syndrome affects people in different ways, and one of the techniques I deploy to reflect on interactions with others is to write down my thoughts on a daily basis.’

  Sant peered over Tony’s shoulder. ‘You’re a prolific writer.’

  ‘You bet. One day I hope to publish my diaries in ten thousand volumes,’ he joked. ‘But seriously, this process is important to me. It helps me to manage my relationships with others. My condition means I have to think all the time about saying the right thing. Sometimes I say the wrong thing, or respond in the wrong way, so writing everything down helps me to improve my social skills. Predictability and structure are vital to me, and the routine of writing helps me to cope.’

  ‘If you don’t mind spilling secrets, what was the last thing you wrote about Chloe?’

  Tony flicked through a few pages before finding what he was looking for. ‘Here we are: dated the 21st of May.’ He calculated in his head. ‘Over five months ago.’

  ‘The last time you saw her?’

  ‘I think so. I haven’t seen her since the summer vacation, that’s for sure.’ Then he read the entry for that date: ‘“Late afternoon – Chloe came to see me about doing a PhD. She asked me about psychological studies of fascism; seems fascinated with the language of dictators like Hitler and Mussolini, though she wants to focus on contemporary rather than historical fascist movements. I warned her about the dangers of an oral-history approach. Interviewing skinhead racists could pose serious ethical problems. She laughed at that. Then we shared the coffee from my flask and I walked her home”.’ He paused, poignant. ‘That was the last time I saw her.’

  Sant nodded. ‘Did Chloe mention a period of history she wanted to study?’

  ‘Not that I can recall. Late twentieth century I would suggest, after the fall of Nazi Germany and Italy. Do you think her research has anything to do with her current predicament, Inspector?’

  Sant looked down at his shoes, brushed at his jacket. Blinked up at Tony. ‘Well, we need to consider all possibilities, and I’m certainly interested in what motived Chloe; what she spent her days doing before she went missing.’

  Tony replaced pen to earlobe. ‘I can check her student file if you like. Find out what essays and presentations she’s completed on fascist politics.’

  ‘Very helpful of you. How about I visit again later today?’

  ‘We can meet in the refectory for dinner,’ Tony said.

  ‘Fine by me. And keep that diary safe. I may ask you to consult it again.’

  ‘Sure thing. And I will read through my entries for the last year or so. See what else I wrote about Chloe.’ He yawned. ‘Excuse me, Inspector. I’ve been hard at work this morning on a monograph about British politics during the Thatcher years. My publisher will have a fit if I fail to get the typescript delivered by the end of the week.’

  Sant wanted to ask what a monograph was, but thought better of it. Instead he arranged a time for dinner, made a note of Tony’s number in case he was running late, and then set to the orienteering task of finding his way out.

  As he was passing the unchangeable Debbie at reception, he remembered a question he’d forgotten and asked her if a student called Owen Madeley was enrolled in the School of History and Politics. She clicked her mouse but no record of that name appeared anywhere on her system, which meant Madeley wasn’t a student of any description. For good measure he asked her to search for Jake Downing, and got what he’d expected: Downing was in his second year of a five-year architecture degree.

  Be that as it may, he won’t be building my future paradise, Sant vowed.

  A stubble-faced Capstick emerged from the archives bleary-eyed and covered in dust, like a walking snowman on acid.

  ‘Auditioning for the next Harry Potter movie, Capstick?’

  ‘Not much chance of that, sir. The last instalment was years ago.’

  ‘Always time for a sequel. Get on to J. R. Rowling and tell her you’re game.’

  ‘It’s J. K., sir.’

  Sant waved his arm. ‘J. K., J. R. – what difference does it make?’

  ‘Quite a lot. J. R. was shot – ’

  ‘Yes, so I recall. I always did have a soft spot for Dynasty.’

  ‘Dallas.’

  ‘I meant Dallas.’ His lips twisted. ‘Wasn’t Dallas before your time?’

  ‘The repeats are on YouTube.’

&nbs
p; ‘The wonders of technology. A pity we don’t have all our police records digitised yet. What’s the story with the files?’

  Capstick, carrying a red ring-binder that had seen better days, was trying but failing to conceal the excitement on his face. ‘These are the ones we’re after.’

  They sat down at a sawdust-scented desk. Capstick carefully opened the ring-binder, partly to avoid throwing more dust around and partly for dramatic effect. Then he began to read.

  ‘“Events of Wednesday the 31st of October 1984 in chronological order: at 8.35am a 999 call from a member of the public informed police of two men interfering with a yellow Ford Cortina parked directly opposite Leeds Parish Church.’

  ‘I bought an old Cortina for two-hundred quid once,’ Sant said.

  Capstick screwed up his eyes at his boss before continuing. ‘“Police Constable Frank Tanner, driving a police van in the vicinity, took the call and drove to the scene”.’

  ‘Was anyone with Tanner?’

  ‘No record of anyone.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘“PC Tanner left his vehicle on arriving at the scene and approached the two men, one of whom – he realised too late – possessed a firearm”.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  Capstick scanned the page. ‘8.43am.’

  ‘Eight minutes from emergency call to police presence – a bit sluggish,’ remarked Sant, ‘but then again, suspected car theft hardly counts as a top priority.’

  ‘Give him credit though,’ said Capstick. ‘He wasn’t the only officer called to the scene, but he got there first.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘“At 8.45am PC Tanner was shot in the stomach by the man possessing the firearm”.’

  ‘Do we know why he was shot?’

  ‘Sadly not, but I’ll come to that shortly, sir.’ Sant gave a sharp nod. ‘About the same time that PC Tanner was shot, Sergeant Gray entered the fray. He’d been dealing with a minor incident at a nearby pub, answered a radio call for assistance, arrived on foot moments later.’

  ‘He was shot too.’

  ‘Fatally – at closer range than PC Tanner. Ballistics tests indicated ten feet. An eyewitness saw Gray after he’d been shot. He was slumped over a wall, motionless. Tanner was lying on the road in a pool of blood. Here are the photographs.’

  He passed a plastic wallet to Sant and was impressed by his partner’s cool indifference to the bloodbath before him.

  ‘Did they catch the killer?’

  ‘Not for a very long time,’ Capstick sighed. ‘They nearly got him on the day in question, but somehow he escaped.’

  Sant extracted a toothpick from his inside pocket and comforted himself chewing on it. ‘What do we know about the chase?’

  ‘A tale of frustration by all accounts. First to give chase was a community constable called PC Jack Patel.’

  ‘Indian?’

  ‘Malaysian, actually. He left the force and returned to Malaysia not long after the shootings, complaining of homesickness. There couldn’t have been many Asians in the force back then.’

  Sant nodded. ‘There were a few Indians when I signed up in ’85. Not many. And even fewer black people. Times have changed.’ He examined the toothpick. ‘We’re not exactly flooded with applications from ethnic minorities even now, though, are we?’

  Capstick went on: ‘Anyway, it seems this PC Patel was following Gray at a distance – Gray may have seen him and signalled for help – and as soon as Patel realised his colleagues had been shot, he ran after the two men, who by now had legged it from the crime scene.’

  ‘They both got away?’

  ‘Yes. The accomplice too. They split up almost as soon as they took flight. Patel decided to pursue the gunman. The report states: “He chased the assailant through the Garden of Rest into Duke Street, along Russell Street, into Brick Street, across York Street and finally into the Quarry Hill area. The assailant fired at Patel several times but missed. It’s thought the accomplice climbed up the embankment and followed the railway line east”.’

  ‘So Patel lost the gunman in Quarry Hill?’

  ‘Not quite – the report continues: “He tracked him into Marsh Lane where the assailant headed towards the Woodpecker pub at the junction with York Road. He then climbed a fence in the pub car park and dropped down into an alleyway at the back of Shannon Street”. Quite an audacious move, considering the drop was twenty feet or so.’

  Sant scratched his head. ‘He injure himself in the process?’

  ‘Very likely, which explains his next move.’

  ‘Hijack a car,’ the inspector said as he bit down on the toothpick.

  ‘A van.’

  ‘Near enough.’

  ‘His first attempt failed. He tried to stop a Volkswagen and was almost run over.’

  ‘If only!’

  ‘It was second-time lucky – he targeted a blue Transit van that had stopped for petrol at the filling station on Shannon Street. According to the file, “the assailant wrenched open the Transit door, ordered the driver out at gunpoint, and then drove off at 8.55am”.’

  ‘And that was the end of that.’

  Capstick shook his head. ‘You see, by this time it was approaching 9.00am, the phone wires were going crazy and a small army of officers were on the chase. Three policemen actually ran up Shannon Street at that exact moment and saw the tail-end of the incident at the filling station. They managed to get hold of another van and sped off after the Transit, giving chase for half a mile before they lost it in traffic.’

  ‘Hadn’t the call gone out for roadblocks?’

  Capstick scanned the file with his finger. ‘At 8.58am,’ he noted, ‘and specialist firearms officers equipped with rifles were deployed. Just when they thought they had him surrounded, he foiled them.’

  ‘A clever criminal.’

  ‘He had some nerve. The man whose van he stole was a maintenance man of some sort. You know, blue overalls, hard hat, protective gloves, all of which were left in the back of the van. So the gunman abandons the Transit as soon as he can, puts on all the attire, and strolls around disguised as a maintenance worker.’

  Sant bit on his toothpick. ‘You’ve got to admire the man’s guts.’

  ‘It even appears he spent forty minutes in the grounds of Victoria Primary School pretending to measure up some building project authorised by the local authority.’

  ‘What did our master of disguise do next?’

  ‘I’ll quote from the report: “Investigators believe that at around 9.53am that morning, the assailant took refuge behind a garage on Torre Road. He discarded his overalls and safety helmet – they were found a few hours later – and was next seen about twenty minutes later walking along Rigton Drive near the Ebor pub. Then, about 10.45am, a woman was seen by a passer-by on the same road giving directions to a man who walked with a distinct limp”.’

  ‘Caused by a twenty-foot fall?’

  ‘That’s what police suspected. By 11am the search was centred entirely on Torre Road and Rigton Drive. Then a red herring cropped up. More than twenty officers wearing flak jackets, armed with rifles and a loud hailer, cordoned off and surrounded a house they believed the gunman was hiding in. It was a false alarm – the house was unoccupied with the exception of a very frightened black kitten.’

  Sant meditated for a few moments. ‘Probably an omen.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were superstitious, sir.’

  ‘Only on Halloween, Capstick.’

  ‘This was Halloween.’

  ‘Exactly, and our bus massacre fell on Halloween, too.’

  Capstick turned to his partner. ‘Significant?’

  ‘The short answer is: I don’t know.’

  He took the ring-binder from Capstick and browsed the report himself, shaking his head now and again. What a mess. Several glaring mistakes stood out. The initial response was weak. Why PC Tanner had been radioed when he was on his own and clearly vulnerable was a mystery. True, the 999 cal
l hadn’t appeared to present a danger, but that was never an excuse for cutting corners.

  Cutting aptly summed up those times. The mid-1980s saw major spending cuts, austerity, high unemployment. Sant recalled how hard it had been to land a job on the beat. Ironically, he had the miners’ strike to thank for helping him get a foot in the door. The Thatcher government couldn’t have it both ways, cutting police numbers to save money whilst talking tough about law and order in the face of raging miners and their families. So after a year of assessing how far the miners would go to test her patience, Mrs Thatcher dug deep into her skin-tight pockets and invested in officers. Thankfully, the strike had ended before Sant took up post. He never fancied a quarrel with decent men from humble backgrounds like his own.

  Perhaps Tony Gordon’s book on the Thatcher years would analyse her policies on policing. He wondered. He’d read elsewhere that Mrs Thatcher had financed a tougher approach to all kinds of disorder, including riot police and armed officers. But rumours about her plans for a national police force akin to a militarised state appeared farfetched.

  ‘You said the gunman was eventually caught?’

  ‘Not so much caught as killed, sir.’

  ‘By an officer?’

  ‘He shot himself.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Not according to the records, though the whole affair sounds fishy to me. See what you make of this: a few years later, in 1987, he was involved in a gang attempting an armed robbery of a supermarket in Stockton-on-Tees. He was the getaway driver, but he panicked when two uniforms approached in a marked vehicle. He had a sawn-off shotgun with him, which he used to force the officers out of their van. Then he took off but didn’t get far before a second marked van collided into him. Somehow he accidently shot himself in the midriff when the police rammed his van into a wall.’

  ‘Did he die instantly?’