The person taking the initial call was required to ask sixteen very important questions in order to establish whether the person was actually missing from home or was just absent. The details included the usual – full name, date of birth, home address, description of the person, clothing that they were wearing, mental state and physical state – from which they built up a picture.
Once answered, the details were logged on the command and control system called OASIS. At this point a duty inspector was informed and had to make decisions on escalating the misper report or not.
The electronic system was vast and not always speedy so they worked through the paper copies of reports filed at Halesowen and the electronic system for other stations.
‘Okay, divide the pile into four and let’s get cracking.’
There was no higher priority than giving their victim a name.
Kim sat at the spare desk, and the room fell into silence. Only the sound of pages turning could be heard.
Kim used the process of elimination. The two most common forms of description were hair and eye colour. The eye that had remained visible through the swollen flesh had been blue.
Any report that didn’t contain both blonde hair and blue eyes was turned face down onto the desk.
‘Bloody depressing,’ Bryant said, shaking his head.
She noted the way he gently placed each report that wasn’t a match. She got it. The investigator in him wanted to delve deeper into every single one of these missing females. The father in him wanted to bring them home.
‘How far back did you go, Kev?’ she asked.
‘Three months.’
So bloody many in so short a period of time.
‘Got her,’ Dawson said, holding aloft a piece of paper.
Everyone except Dawson looked at each other doubtfully.
His eyes moved over the details as he nodded. ‘Yeah, boss. There’s a picture. She’s wearing that cross.’ He began to read. ‘Been missing since Saturday lunchtime. Reported by her parents. Her name is Jemima Lowe.’
Kim felt a bit of peace rest in her mind.
Her victim had a name.
Now Kim just had to find the bastard who’d killed her.
Eight
‘Go on then. How much?’ Bryant said.
She knew what he was asking. They often mused at house values. The property concerned was that of the Lowe family.
Dawson was bringing the family home. Kim hated that they had to see the body of their daughter in such a condition, but it was necessary for them to progress with the case.
She knew that Keats would have done his best to minimise their distress, but he was a pathologist, not a miracle worker. The truth and brutality of Jemima’s battered face could not be hidden. There were no kind words that could disguise the pain their daughter had felt immediately prior to death. It was a picture that would never leave them.
It had been a positive identification based on clothing, jewellery, an appendix scar and a poorly formed bone in the little finger of the right hand.
Their victim was definitely thirty-one-year-old Jemima Lowe.
Kim narrowed her eyes and assessed the property. It was double fronted with a door nestled between two leaded bay windows.
The house was detached and the two-car garage ended the row of three similar properties.
‘Three ten,’ Bryant guessed.
Kim shook her head. No way was it over two hundred and eighty grand.
‘Come on. It’s gotta be four bedrooms if not five.’
She explained her disagreement. ‘On the other side of that treeline is a busy road and the Merry Hill shopping centre. Look at the bigger picture.’
‘Yeah but—’
‘They’re here,’ she said as a vehicle rolled slowly towards them.
As the car stopped, Dawson got out of the front passenger seat and opened the rear door.
Mr Lowe stepped out and assisted his wife, who in turn held out her hand for the third occupant. Their other daughter.
Mr Lowe offered a brief nod to Dawson, who offered a respectful nod in return before getting back into the car.
She noted, as the family walked towards her, the absence of direct eye contact with each other. To do so would destroy their defences. To see their own pain reflected in the face of someone else would confirm what their hearts were not ready to accept.
Yet there was a physical connection threading the whole family together. Mr Lowe draped his arm loosely around the shoulders of his wife whose hand clung to that of her daughter. Sara Lowe had the same blonde hair as her older sister but she carried a few more healthy pounds.
‘Mr Lowe, Mrs Lowe,’ Bryant said, stepping forwards. ‘Detective Sergeant Bryant and Detective Inspector Stone. May we come in?’
Mr Lowe hesitated before nodding yes. Every other inch of him begged them to go away. And Kim sincerely wished that they could.
Intruding on the grief of a family was like entering their bedroom in the middle of the night.
They followed the family as they walked slowly across the drive.
Mr Lowe opened the front door and stood aside for his wife and daughter to enter. Once inside, the family paused in the hallway, not knowing what to do. Everything was the same but strange now. Their house looked different because their daughter would never be there again.
No one knew what to do. Normality had been suspended until they found a new one.
‘I’ll make tea,’ Mrs Lowe said to no one in particular.
It was an action, a movement, a minor distraction. The family liaison officer would arrive soon and even that small task would be shared.
A door to the right led to an informal lounge decorated in shades of beige. Kim saw a flat-screen TV in the corner.
Mr Lowe guided them inside. He took an armchair while she and Bryant took the sofa.
‘We are sincerely sorry for your loss,’ Kim offered.
Good manners prompted a nod as though the platitude meant something. It meant nothing. Anything other than it suddenly all being a mistake was meaningless to the grief-stricken man. And she understood. She had seen what he had just been forced to see. For her it was horrific enough; for him it was a trauma she couldn’t measure.
Kim guessed him to be mid-fifties. The white shirt and charcoal trousers showed the body of a man who had stayed fit and trim. His hair was short and unashamedly grey. His face carried an outdoor complexion.
‘Can we excuse Sara from this?’ he asked, looking from her to Bryant. The sudden concern took its place in his eyes amongst the worry and the grief.
Kim nodded. She would speak to Jemima’s sister only if absolutely necessary.
Mrs Lowe entered the room and placed a tray onto the glass coffee table. The tray contained a teapot, sugar bowl, milk jug but no teacups. No one commented as Mr Lowe stood for his wife to take the chair.
She was a woman who matched her husband’s height inch for inch with the assistance of high heels. Her hair was a mass of unruly red curls being held in check by clips and a rubber band. As Mr Lowe stepped behind the chair and placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder Kim couldn’t help but notice what an attractive couple they made.
‘Can you tell us when Jemima went missing?’ Kim asked.
‘Saturday afternoon,’ Mrs Lowe offered. ‘She was late from work. She’s never late from work.’
Kim wondered if it was something the thirty-one-year-old did every Saturday. Come home for tea with the parents.
‘Was Jemima married? Children?’
Mrs Lowe shook her head. ‘I got the feeling it was something she was beginning to think about, but her career has taken precedence since she left university. She’s an equine specialist but she’s been working locally and living here until she could get everything sorted.’
‘Sorted?’ Kim asked.
‘Oh, I’m sorry she’s… she’s…’
Mr Lowe took over from his wife, whose thoughts had been diverted by her own use of the present tense.
‘Jemima suddenly made the decision to move to Dubai about five years ago. She went to work for a family of horse breeders. She’s been back less than a month.’
Kim nodded her understanding.
‘Did Jemima have a boyfriend?’ she asked.
‘She’d been seeing someone. Just a couple of dates, I think.’
Bryant’s pen was poised above the notepad.
‘His name is Simon Roach, someone she met while shopping over the road. Deputy manager, I think.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘Once,’ Mr Lowe confirmed. ‘One night she brought him round for a meal.’
‘And?’ Bryant asked.