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  But there was no denying Shaw’s ‘expertise’.

  Around her, the summer’s morning opened out into a blurred shimmer of light as she sped back along the motorway, but Anna hardly noticed. Shaw’s words preoccupied her.

  ‘You want to catch the Pogo wannabe? Work out how he chooses which flowers to pick.’

  Her phone dragged her back to reality.

  ‘Justin, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Superintendent Rainsford was asking for you, ma’am.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  * * *

  She got back to HQ in Portishead a little before 1 p.m. The office was deserted except for Trisha, who normally brought her own salads, eating at her desk with her earbuds in. The last time Anna’d asked what Trisha was listening to, she’d said it was an investigative journalism podcast about the death of a reclusive eccentric in Alabama. ‘It’s amazing stuff,’ she’d added. ‘Sophisticated and subtle. You should give it a try. I’ll send you the link.’

  Trisha’s passion was why Anna would crawl over glass to keep her on the team.

  Khosa and Holder were probably in the restaurant or Costa. There was no sign of Woakes.

  Anna went in search of Rainsford. His secretary was also at lunch but she gambled and knocked on his door. He was in, reading through the small mountain of paperwork on his desk, a pair of glasses perched low on his nose.

  ‘Ah, Anna. Just wanted a little chat.’

  Anna nodded. Standard opening gambit for a dollop of the serious stuff from RainMan – Holder’s irreverent nickname for the superintendent.

  ‘DS Woakes has been in to see me.’

  ‘How was he, sir?’

  ‘Angry, I think. Difficult to say because he spent most of the time in here pacing back and forth. Said it helped him think. I found it incredibly distracting. But the point of his visit was to complain about the way he was being treated.’

  ‘By me, sir?’

  ‘You as his line manager. He says he feels undermined and isolated. Says you’ve effectively cut him off from the case he was investigating.’

  ‘For his own good, sir. He searched a witness’s house without permission and was very aggressive. There were good grounds for harassment—’

  ‘Now Woakes is playing the bullying card. He says you’re spreading lies about him. Shifting blame. Excluding him socially.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says your attitude is affecting his professional performance resulting in low morale.’

  ‘Sir, I don’t do social. If I do, it’s half an hour at the pub and the team all know it. It’s never been a part of the job description.’

  ‘It’s a good way to engender loyalty.’

  ‘Agreed, if you’re looking for a way to engender loyalty because you haven’t got the team’s respect. Would you like me to ask my team if they feel the need?’ Anna felt the heat rising in her face.

  ‘I know what your team thinks of you, Anna. None of them want to work with anyone else.’

  Anna blinked. She hadn’t known. ‘Sir, if I can speak plainly and off the record, I’ve learned that Sergeant Woakes had something of a reputation at East Mids. Effectively, he did well on a case through luck and they’ve taken the opportunity of shoving him up the chain and dumping him on us.’

  Rainsford frowned. ‘He came with a glowing reference.’

  Anna snorted and gave it to Rainsford with both barrels. ‘From an ACC. You’ll forgive me for saying this, sir, but ACCs are not always the best people to know what an officer is really like. It may be that he was badly advised. I’d like to think so. But the fact is, Woakes is a loose cannon. Sir, I spoke to Dr Hawley yesterday. He rents a room in a house in Bristol. He told me it had been broken into and an iPad stolen and the place turned over. Someone was looking for something. Hawley is convinced it was Woakes.’

  ‘Does he have any proof?’

  ‘No. And he doesn’t want it investigated.’

  ‘Then it’s his word—’

  Anna interrupted him. ‘Sir, I’ve seen Woakes at work. I would not put it past him.’

  ‘We all know it’s difficult for someone new to settle in. Is it a question of him being too eager to please?’

  ‘I’m not sure what’s going on with him, but this is not a settling in problem. It’s more unsettling.’

  ‘He’s still on probation here, I told him that. We agreed that if the job didn’t suit him we’d discuss other options.’

  Anna tried to imagine what job Woakes might be good at and failed.

  ‘Where is he, sir?’

  ‘I’ve put him in an office down the corridor indexing in HOLMES. He’s not happy, but better to have him here on the job with something to do than wandering about, festering.’

  Anna sighed.

  ‘I know. It leaves a bad taste, but welcome to my world of inclusivity and political correctness.’

  ‘Sir, he’s already messed up the Morton case. What if he does it again? Something important?’

  ‘Then there’ll be lots of ammunition for us, won’t there.’

  She left with her face glowing from grumbling resentment. Everyone knew they needed help and a new sergeant should have been champagne-worthy, but this situation ran the risk of turning into a fiasco. Find something for him to do?

  She’d ask traffic if the bike shed needed painting.

  Thirty-One

  Anna texted Holder and asked him to bring her back a coffee. Rainsford’s criticism niggled and bothered her though her mind was buzzing with what Shaw had told her. She needed to assimilate it and decide on an action. Anna punched Gacy’s name into a search engine. It did not make for easy reading. When she’d finished, she stood and walked into the squad room to look at the images of the stolen girls. They stared back at her. Lost and silent.

  When the DCs returned Anna took the coffee and gave Holder the money for it. Trisha took out her earbuds and they all turned towards the whiteboard.

  ‘First of all, a word about Sergeant Woakes. I don’t think we’ve got off to the best of starts with him, but for now he’ll be providing intelligence support, is that clear?’

  Oh, wouldn’t Rainsford have been proud.

  The exchanged glances told Anna it wasn’t.

  ‘Is that clear?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Right. No more distractions.’

  Anna stood and contemplated the whiteboards. Blair’s image brought the immediacy of her predicament into sharp focus, especially in light of Shaw’s explanation of red rooms. Anna dragged her gaze across to Rosie Dawson’s photograph. She turned to Khosa. ‘Anything new from Varga?’

  Khosa opened her notebook. ‘She spoke to me this morning, ma’am. Nothing specific, I’m afraid. But Edinburgh did find another image of Blair on UWAntme.co.uk, which is the sister site of an American third-party advertiser. It’s the image used on TV and in the press, supplied by Blair’s mother.’

  ‘How does that help?’

  ‘It doesn’t. Not in terms of Rosie, but the posting was fresh and dated yesterday. UWAntme has sites in over 900 locations across almost 100 countries. They use a data outsourcing company. But it’s a free listing for the first week. Varga thinks it might mean the abductor is trying to alert other people, to drum up business. She thinks because of that, Blair might still be alive.’

  Drum up business.

  A little spasm of anger tightened in Anna’s gut.

  ‘What did the advert say?’

  Khosa placed a sheet on the whiteboard. Blair Smeaton’s school photograph stared back at them. The caption with it said:

  Missing awaiting action.

  Pinocchio for interested parties #crypto #pogo.

  ‘Pinocchio, if you remember, ma’am, was the site Edinburgh found Blair’s other photograph on.’

  Holder stared at the UWAntme ad, his face grim. ‘That’s sick.’

  ‘Prospects of tracing who placed this?’ Anna asked.
/>   Khosa shook her head. ‘Varga was not hopeful. If it’s the same guy, he will have covered his tracks.’

  ‘Thanks, Ryia.’ There wasn’t much to be gained from this new intel, except that it reinforced everything she’d learned from Shaw. The anger inside her skipped up a notch.

  Khosa, her expression distant and haunted, asked, ‘Do you think Blair’s still alive, ma’am?’

  The question shook Anna.

  ‘I’d really like to think so.’

  After a long beat, Holder spoke in a low voice. ‘Maybe it would be better if she wasn’t.’

  Khosa stared at the image as if she was trying to make it talk. ‘I wish I knew what #pogo means.’

  ‘I do,’ Anna said. ‘It’s a reference to a serial child killer.’

  Her harrowing words brought them all up short. Both Khosa and Holder were staring at her with expressions of dull horror.

  ‘Are you sure about this, ma’am?’ Holder asked.

  ‘No, I’m not sure. But I want to be. Rosie has been our priority here and the link to Blair was a bonus. Edinburgh’s manpower is naturally focused on finding Blair and currently, they believe the link might implicate a ring. It’s a strong theory, and Varga and the cybercrime team in Scotland have come up trumps with finding images. But what if it’s worse than that? What if it isn’t a ring but just one man? One very troubled and dangerous man who may have learned to monetise his obsession.’

  And as the afternoon wore on, she told them about red rooms. She told them about Hurtcore. She told them about Gacy, about Pogo the clown.

  ‘I don’t know how closely this man identifies with Pogo. I dread to think. But Gacy’s victims were all murdered… eventually. Murdered and then buried. Is this what our perpetrator was trying to do with Rosie’s bones in Charterhouse?’

  She watched their faces harden, Trisha excusing herself once to go to the bathroom, coming back with red rims around her eyes.

  ‘I’m going to talk to Edinburgh about this now. While I do that I’d like you to look hard at the other cases.’

  She walked over to the posted images from Hawley’s cuttings. The innocent faces looked back at her. ‘Katelyn Prosser, Lily Callaghan and Jade Hemmings. I want to know what happened to them. Get on to Varga and ICAT and ask them if there have been any web images of these girls posted. Focus in on their medical histories, too. See if there is anything that might link them together. I know I’ve asked you to do this once, but let’s do it again. Fresh eyes, different angle. One each. I’ll take Katelyn.’

  They already had files. Summarised reports from the separate forces involved in the searches and investigations over an eight-year period during which the three girls had gone missing. Anna took Katelyn’s file through to her office. But before she began reading, she phoned Danaher again.

  ‘This is becoming a habit,’ Danaher said. But there was no trace of irritation this time. Edinburgh were obviously willing to listen to anything Anna had to say.

  ‘Nothing new, it’s only some intel on the image you sent us of Blair. What do your people make of #pogo?’

  ‘We’ve struggled with that one. Of course, there is the crude reference to jumping up and down using a stick. I don’t think you need one syllable explanations of what that implies.’

  Anna didn’t. ‘OK. I may have something.’ She told Danaher about the Gacy link and elaborated on the red room theory.

  ‘My God, who have you got working on this stuff down there?’ Danaher said.

  If you only knew.

  ‘It’s only a theory, I know. It’s not hard evidence, but I thought you ought to throw it into the mix.’

  ‘I’ll pass it on, ma’am.’

  ’How is it going?’

  ‘Slowly. The super in charge is doing a sweep of known offenders. Pulling people in. We’ve got several raids set for tomorrow. If there is a ring, we’ll flush them out.’

  Most of them don’t want to harm their victims. Far from it. They wouldn’t sanction this sadistic shit.

  Shaw’s words rang in her ears. But she was in no position to criticise Police Scotland. All she had to go by were the thoughts of a known serial killer and her own instinct. She wasn’t quite ready to stick her head above the parapet on that one just yet. Anna rang off and turned to Katelyn’s file.

  In a nod to Hawley’s preoccupation with illnesses, Anna noted that Katelyn suffered from asthma and attended the University Hospital in Coventry for years. This was nothing more than a note in the statement from Katelyn’s mother, a single parent with mobility issues. Other than a name, there was no suggestion the father had much to do with the family unit. A unit completed by Katelyn’s younger brother, Duane, aged five at the time of her disappearance. Duane’s father was not involved in looking after the children. He was also not Katelyn’s father. An image of Dawn Prosser, Katelyn’s mother, accompanied the images of the abduction site and of Katelyn herself. At the time of the abduction in 2010, Dawn had been significantly if not morbidly obese and lived in council accommodation in Coventry’s Hillfields estate. As such, Katelyn was expected to do much of the family’s shopping. Twice a week, she would walk to a supermarket two streets away. One cold, damp evening in November, she did not return. CCTV showed her crossing a road on the way back to the block where she lived with her mother and brother.

  A second camera in the lobby of the tower block had been disabled with some duct tape fifteen minutes before the last sighting. No one made a big deal of it at the time. The local youths considered it fair game and it was a regular occurrence.

  But not, as it turned out, this time.

  It was assumed Katelyn was abducted as she entered the building, taken downstairs to the basement and removed through a back door. One witness reported seeing some large laundry bags being removed by a man in a hi-vis jacket.

  So here was a man capable of carrying large sacs of laundry. Could it be the same man capable of carrying 30-odd kilos in a military rucksack?

  It was a tenuous link. But it was a link of sorts.

  There were photographs of the lobby, the basement, the three-room flat the Prossers lived in. What stood out from the investigation was the lack of forensic evidence. No signs of a struggle. No blood. A huge manhunt was launched. Much like the one currently being undertaken by Police Scotland. The press was recruited; Katelyn’s mother made several appeals. All of them fruitless.

  Outside the windows of the MCRTF offices, the sun kept shining, though its drift was ever downwards. In Dawn Prosser’s world, Anna suspected that it had never shone as brightly since that November day in 2010.

  At five thirty, Trisha brought Anna some tea and excused herself. Anna thanked her for staying on the extra half hour. Outside, Khosa and Holder did not look up from their desks.

  Anna busied herself typing up her report on the visit to Janice Dawson in readiness for Trisha to enter it in HOLMES. She should have done it already. A witness assessment, a commentary on Janice’s state of mind and emotional state. Something Shipwright insisted on. ‘Treat the case like it happened yesterday.’

  But there was another report she wouldn’t type up. The intel she’d received from Shaw would have to remain unrecorded. That was for her eyes only.

  When she’d finished, she sat back in her chair and sighed. She was out of ideas. She remembered she hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast. Maybe her brain needed a little sustenance? At six thirty, she got up and walked out into the office.

  ‘Right, come on. Let’s have a debrief away from here. I fancy the Lantern. My treat.’

  Holder and Khosa stretched in unison. Neither of them objected.

  The Lantern was an eighteenth-century riverside pub outside Shirehampton on the banks of the Avon. It was popular, big and had a beer garden, which on a sultry evening in June was a must.

  They sat outside. This, Anna could do. A small group, colleagues she trusted, the talk – to begin with anyway – all work.

  ‘Jade disappeared during a friend’s party. Th
ey’d gone to a park with their bikes. No one missed her for half an hour. By then it was too late,’ Holder said.

  ‘And Lily didn’t come home from visiting a friend who lived 50 yards away. She was rushing because she was late for her tea. Didn’t wait for the friend’s mum to chaperone her. Quiet street. No CCTV. Some eye witnesses reported a workman and a workman’s van. There was some suggestion of a logo. There’d been a cordoned-off manhole for a day before on that same street. It was still cordoned off at the time she went missing. None of the utility services reported any issues, and the cordon and warning cones had all been stolen from a street half a mile away.’

  ‘It the same story with Katelyn,’ Anna said. ‘It looks spontaneous enough to suggest stranger abduction but in reality, every one of those could easily have been carefully planned. There’s a report of a van in the vicinity. But a different colour to the one in Rosie’s case.’ Anna toyed with her food as her thoughts tried to mesh. Frustration growled inside her like a hungry animal. She needed to find the thing that would jolt the investigation forward and over this road block.

  ‘It would take an awful lot of knowledge, ma’am,’ Khosa said.

  She was right. It was asking a great deal of any single theory.

  ‘What about social circumstances? Rosie, we know, had a big family unit.’

  Holder shook his head. ‘Jade was one of three. Father in prison. Mother holding down a job as a shopworker.’

  Khosa put down her fork. ‘Lily had one sibling, a sister. Both lived with their father. Her mother had moved to a different town. She had a lot of personal problems. Saw her every other week, but not always.’

  Anna pushed her plate away. ‘Is that a pattern? They all seem to come from dysfunctional families. Blair included. Her mum is a single parent and they lived in social housing. Could the difficult family dynamics mean they were slightly more vulnerable?’