Psycho Alley (16 page)

The briefing at Blackpool central was fairly quick, and even though there was much to do following the discovery of Uren's body, Henry did his best to delegate every task, from attendance at the post mortem (even though he would also be attending it) to crime scene management. Tempting as it was to try and get involved in everything, he knew that he had to take a big step back and, where possible, keep to a management role. His troops were professionals and he knew he had to trust them to complete their tasks. The investigation was becoming too complex for him to get involved in anything other than what an SIO would be expected to do.

When the team had dispersed – a team now larger and more unwieldy that ever, after that morning's influx of new blood – Henry scuttled away to his office where he began to make some notes in order to make sense of where he was at. He wrote out bullet points in no particular order of importance.

• Initial job / flasher / indecent assault / kidnap / Could this be Uren? Or are they unconnected incidents?
  
• Percy Pearson – how much does he really know?
  
• Dead girl? Harrogate? Visit parents if ID matches. Shit!
  
• Uren – keep digging into background / who is his best mate?
  
• Revisit bail hostel in Accy. Ms Harcourt. Is she hiding something? Why do I think this?
  
• Rik Dean – keep track with his progress. Welfare issues?
  
• XXXX – Who was with Uren? Need to find. Priority 1.
  
• Who uses incendiaries? Unusual MO / Circulate far and wide? FBI? Karl?
  
• Other abductions in other forces? Circulate.
  

He took a breather, knowing this would only be the beginning of a list which would ultimately translate into actions – and these were just his own jottings. He would have to sit down with Jane and Debbie – and Dave Anger – and others, to carry out a massive brain dump. There was no way he could even think of not including them in this process, because this was a team thing and he had to be seen to be running the job as head of a team, not as some maverick individual operating on hunches and luck. And the sooner that process began, the better. He picked up his phone and called a few people.

By midday he was at force headquarters at Hutton, four miles south of Preston, entering the FMIT building on the campus. Formerly a residential block for students attending the Training Centre, it had been snaffled and converted into offices for what was the SIO team, now FMIT. He entered and made his way to the first floor, passing his old office and hoping to find Dave Anger in his at the end of the corridor.

Anger's office was empty. He could well have been at lunch either at the Training Centre or at HQ, or in some meeting. Henry paused at the door, slightly deflated. He had been hoping to get Anger to authorize an even bigger pool of detectives for the investigation, something Anger had the power to swing at superintendent level. He needed to get into the ribs of the divisional commanders to release more of their staff, because Henry felt he needed more bodies, pronto.

He lingered at the door, weighing up his next move. His stomach made the decision for him: a sandwich from the canteen accompanied by an Eccles cake probably … but first … he stepped into Anger's office and sat down at the desk, intending to write a post-it note … then his eyes locked on to a couple of family photographs on the desk top.

He reached across. One was a wedding photo in a frame, Anger and his bride; one of those typical 70s shots, all flared trousers, sideburns and hair like a Roman emperor. Anger had looked pretty good in those days, actually, a bit of a stud. Henry looked at the bride and thought she looked familiar, but could not place her. He replaced the photo, swivelled in the chair and looked at another framed photo on the bookshelf behind the desk. This was a class photograph from Bruche, the Regional Police Training Centre, near Warrington, circa August 1978.

Working on that timescale, Henry guessed Anger could possibly have been in the recruit intake just ahead of him. Henry had gone to Bruche as a raw sprog in September 1978. He did not recall Anger from those days, but it was not unusual not to know other people, especially from other forces. In those halcyon days, Bruche had big intakes, hundreds of students coming and going through the doors following the Edmund Davies review of policing which had hiked up police pay and attracted many willing fools to the job, Henry being one. There was about thirty young, impressionable officers in Anger's class photo who wanted to be coppers. Three rows of them and three class instructors in the middle of the front row. ‘Q Class'.

Henry chuckled: good, simple days, when being a young cop was great fun.

There were few females in the intakes, unlike the present day. The majority were white, male and overtly heterosexual – and Bruche had been a hotbed of sex; just a few girls to go round – and certainly no gays, at least none who took the risk of being identified.

Henry scanned the faces. He spotted Anger, boyish, smiling, confident and a bit of a looker. There were a couple of Lancashire officers Henry knew, still in the job, one a DI over in Pennine Division who was a big mate of Anger's and who Anger wanted on FMIT. He looked at the other faces and recognized one of the girls, a lass from Merseyside; the name he could not recall, but the body he could. One of three conquests he had made at Bruche, all short-lived flings, but great memories. The one in the photo he recalled seducing – or was it the other way round? – on a disco night; she'd dared him to take her on the bonnet of the commandant's car, and he had not been able to resist. His bum shone brightly in the moonlight that night.

‘Bloody hell!' he shivered at the thought. If he'd been caught it would have ended his police career there and then.

He replaced the photo, and smiling broadly, left the FMIT building. Outside, underneath the trees in the grounds of the training centre, he saw a dead squirrel on a grass bank near to an oak tree. Some wag had put a half-smoked cigarette into its mouth, making Henry giggle out loud.

He was still chuckling when his mobile rang, but he checked himself when he looked at the display and saw who was calling him.

‘Hi John, how are you?'

‘I'm good, Henry.' It was John Briscoe, a forensic submissions officer who must have been calling from a distance of no more than a hundred metres. His office was in the Pavilion Building close by, recently built to house the Serious and Organized Crime Squad and Scientific Support. Briscoe worked for the latter, dealing with all submissions requiring forensic analysis. The DNA swabs taken from the family in Harrogate as well as those from the dead girl had gone through him.

‘Got something for me?' Henry asked tentatively.

Briscoe paused. ‘I have – we fast tracked the DNA swabs from the murder victim and those taken from the family in Harrogate – and did a dental comparison.'

Henry waited, a curious charge in his guts, knowing what Briscoe was going to say.

‘It's a match,' Briscoe confirmed. ‘The dead girl is the daughter of the woman in Harrogate. Your victim has been identified.'

‘Thanks, John, thanks,' said Henry, glad on the one hand that things were moving on, sad on the other for the family in Harrogate who were about to be devastated.

Henry had no choice in the matter. Visiting the next of kin of victims was a given for an SIO, probably the worst job that had to be done, but maybe the most important. Many SIOs believed that catching the offender was the be-all and end-all of the role, and whilst this was vital, the police relationship with the victim's family was more crucial even than that, and Henry was not about to shirk this responsibility. He briefly toyed with the idea of asking the local DI at Harrogate to do the job, but dismissed this almost instantly. He was the one who had to be the bearer of the news, even though the family were already primed for the worst – and then he had to set up a full incident room in Harrogate. What fun that would be, he though wryly. Cross-border shenanigans between forces were always a nightmare.

His biggest problem was who to take with him on the hundred-and-forty-mile return trip. It had to be either Jane or Debbie, because they had already formed a relationship with the dead girl's family and Henry needed a bridge into their world before he completely and utterly destroyed it forever.

Jane or Debbie? A real conundrum.

He'd had an affair with Jane which had ended acrimoniously – and boy, was she intent on never letting him forget that! He did his best to avoid her as much as possible because he didn't really trust her, as he suspected her to be in league with Shark Man. He actually thought they were having an affair at one point, but now he just believed they were out to get him for their own individual reasons. So a two-hour journey to Harrogate, plus whatever time it took to deal with the family, then a two-hour return did not really appeal, coward that he was.

Nor did the prospect of a substantial time spent with Debbie Black really tickle his fancy. Fortunately he hadn't had an affair with her, but they'd had a smoky clinch or two, which had been awfully nice, and she'd made it clear that she had hots for him, which had been sizzling away for most of her career. But he guessed she was an emotional basket-case. Dangerous territory. And at a time when he was doing his utmost to stay on the straight and narrow, to have a straightforward life watching his (yet to be acquired) plasma screen TV with wireless surround-sound. Unfortunately, he was often quite weak when it came to the opposite sex and was walking proof of the truth in the old adage ‘a standing cock has no conscience'.

Jeez, what a choice. He was almost sweating with the weight of the decision. But it had to be one of them.

In the end he chose Debbie Black. At least there was no baggage there to drag along, and he could hopefully convince her that a kiss didn't automatically equate to sexual intercourse.

When he told them, Jane looked deflated, Debbie elated and somewhat smug. Jane perked up when he said he wanted her to cover Uren's post mortem and take charge whilst he and Debbie were out of force.

By that time it was four p.m. He realized the Harrogate trip would have to be an overnighter, which made him wince slightly. But he was certain he had the moral fibre to ensure it remained completely professional. He arranged to meet Debbie at Blackpool nick at five, giving them both time to collect overnight things and get a member of the admin staff to fix up a couple of hotel rooms in Harrogate.

‘Fill me in on the missing girl,' Henry said.

Debbie was driving the careworn CID Vectra Henry had managed to acquire for the journey. Though he had sketchy details in a file on his lap, he wanted her take on things, what she had managed to pick up from her visit to North Yorkshire the day before. They had left the motorway behind and were steaming along the A59 which snaked right across Lancashire and dropped right into Harrogate.

‘Jodie Greaves, nine years old, nips out with the intention of going to her grandmother's last Friday teatime about six-ish. The granny lives, what, maybe quarter of a mile from the girl's home, literally around the corner. She never made it. Disappeared en route.'

‘Anything to say what actually happened to her?'

‘Nothing as of yesterday. The police response was pretty good, so they claim, and I've no reason to doubt that. All the usual Golden Hour tasks done efficiently and effectively. Quite a lot of resources thrown at it, but nothing turned up.'

‘Witnesses? Anyone see her between home and shop?'

‘None as of yesterday.'

Henry crinkled his mouth as he pondered. ‘What's the area like?'

‘OK … not the wealthiest part of what is a very wealthy town. It's a private housing estate, mainly semis, a few flats; there's a small council estate nearby and some sheltered housing for old folk, which is where the grandmother lives.'

‘And the family? What do you make of them? Are they above suspicion?'

‘I think so, but you never know,' Debbie shrugged. ‘Seem decent enough. Mum and Dad both work. There's an elder brother, twelve, I think.'

‘What was he doing?'

‘Watching
The Simpsons
on Channel Four.'

‘Hm, me too,' Henry said.

They fell silent as she drove through the village of Gisburn which straddled the A59 a few miles east of Clitheroe. They were heading into lovely countryside, an area Henry had a soft spot for.

‘Well at least there's one thing,' Henry announced. ‘In cases like these it's usually someone close to home, a relative or friend of the family, who's done the dirty deed. Doesn't appear to be here, unless,' he said ominously, ‘the person accompanying Uren is said relative or friend, or Uren himself is known to the family … something we'll have to explore.'

‘Yep,' Debbie agreed. Everything had to be investigated.

He sighed heavily. ‘But this sounds more like a stranger … snatched at random, or maybe she'd been a target, been stalked before she was snatched … George Uren's not gonna tell us, is he?'

‘No, but whoever he was with has got a lot of talking to do.'

‘Mm, that's interesting,' Henry said, leaning forward in his seat.

Debbie craned her neck to look for something. ‘What is?'

‘Something to follow up … if she was snatched at six, yeah?'

‘Yeah.'

‘And I spotted Uren somewhere around eleven-ish in Fleetwood … what went on during that intervening period? Five missing hours … say three at the most to travel back to Lancs.' He shrugged. ‘All supposition, I know, but that leaves two hours unaccounted for.' He shrugged again and gazed at the road ahead, his mind working overtime. ‘For argument's sake, if she was alive when I first spotted Uren, she would have been tied up in that boot for five hours … poor kid.' A surge of anger rolled through him. ‘Bastard.' He pulled himself up short of going on a rant, concentrating on trying to formulate questions which would need answering. ‘Did Uren snatch her alone? Did he and his unknown mate do it together? Or what? Shit.' He sighed with frustration. ‘And why did Uren end up dead?' He tapped his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘Will we ever know?'