As Erika approached the table, they were looking at an iPad, where Colleen was swiping through the pictures of Lacey they’d chosen to use during the appeal. They were innocent, fun-loving shots: Lacey holding a tabby cat in the garden beside a bed of daffodils; Lacey’s graduation photo where she beamed into the camera with a shiny face; and another of Lacey on the sofa, barefoot in a pale blue dressing gown.
‘This one is lovely,’ said Colleen, craning her head around to see it. ‘I’d kill for thick shiny hair like that…’ She saw Erika and said ‘hello’, then her phone rang and she excused herself.
Don and Charlotte watched Colleen as she left.
‘That woman has a very unfortunate manner,’ said Charlotte.
‘Yes, I’ll have a word with her,’ said Erika. They could hear Colleen on the phone in the corridor outside, telling a journalist he should hurry up, as she’d saved him a ‘front row’ seat.
‘Thank you for doing this, Mr and Mrs Greene,’ said Erika, sitting in Colleen’s vacated chair. ‘I won’t ask how you’re holding up, I know this must be terribly difficult.’
‘Is this just a show to everyone?’ said Don. ‘I can’t help feeling we’re just entertainment.’
‘I can assure you nothing about this is entertaining,’ said Erika. ‘Colleen’s manner might not be user-friendly, but she’s doing all this to ensure as many news outlets as possible have the information of your daughter’s death.’
They absorbed that for a moment.
‘What about the other girl? Where are her family?’ asked Charlotte. Erika briefly explained Janelle’s circumstances. ‘I know it sounds awful, but I was looking forward to meeting Janelle’s mother. It feels like no one knows what I’m going through. I thought she might—’
‘You said you’d catch the person who did this to our Lacey,’ demanded Don. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I won’t lie to you. This person is good at covering his tracks; he seems to know London, and until now he’s had luck on his side…’
‘You’re sure it’s a “he”?’ asked Charlotte.
‘Yes. I’ve just heard back about DNA samples taken from Lacey and Janelle.’
‘What kind of DNA?’ asked Charlotte, her face a mask of horror.
‘Hair. Two small hair samples. We ran these and were able to tell that this is a white male. But he’s not on the DNA database… I’ve worked on scores of murder cases like this, and they always slip up. We have his DNA. We know he drives a Citro?n C3, he’s used it twice and he’s obscured the number plate.’
‘Why can’t you get all the names of people who have these cars?’ demanded Don.
‘We can, but this is a common model. There are thousands of them in the UK.’
‘He doesn’t deserve to live in this world after what he did!’ he said, slamming his hand down on the table.
‘I can’t bear the thought that he could be watching us on television. I’m not going to cry. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction,’ Charlotte spat. Don put his arm around her.
‘I’m doing the talking, love.’ Then he turned his attention to Erika. ‘You think this will work?’
‘In the past, public appeals have given us key breakthroughs in cases like this,’ said Erika.
‘“Cases like this”. You mean serial killers, don’t you?’
‘I’m not saying that. Serial killers are very rare, and we don’t want to jump to any conclusions. We want to keep to the facts of the case.’
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ said Don, looking her square in the eye.
‘I would never do that,’ said Erika.
Colleen returned from speaking on the phone. ‘Right, Mr and Mrs Greene, we’ve got about twelve minutes until we start. The press is almost all here, and we should have a full house.’
She bustled off, leaving Lacey’s parents to digest the phrase ‘full house’.
Erika’s phone rang and she excused herself. She moved down a corridor, and found a corner tucked away from people streaming in and out. A technician walked past with half a doughnut in his mouth and a tall light on a stand.
‘Alright, boss, can you talk?’ asked John.
‘Not for long. What is it?’
‘There’s been a missing person report come in. It flagged up because it sounds similar.’
‘Familiar to our guy?’
‘Yeah. Missing person is a twenty-year-old student called Ella Wilkinson. She was due to meet a bloke on a blind date in a bar near Angel in North London on Saturday night. She left the house alone just before 8 p.m. Never came home. Her housemate found her handbag on Sunday morning, dumped around the corner from the bar. Ella had been chatting to this guy online. The bouncer at the club says he saw her, and shortly afterwards a red car pulled past and down the road beside the bar. He was distracted and a few minutes later she was gone.’
‘Shit,’ said Erika, her heart sinking. She checked her watch: it was now less than ten minutes until the press conference was due to begin. ‘Has she gone missing before? Any history?’
‘No. She’s a student at St Martins, serious about her work, comes from a stable family. I’ve just emailed through her picture and the deets… Do you think you should mention this?’
‘Mention?’
‘In the press appeal, boss. Look at the photo: she looks just like Janelle Robinson and Lacey Greene. There’s mention of a red car…’
‘But no number plate?’
‘No… Boss, she went missing three days ago. The official missing person report kicked in forty-eight hours ago. If we’re working on the assumption that this guy keeps them somewhere for three to five days…’
Colleen appeared at the end of the corridor and beckoned to Erika.
‘John, there’s no time, we’re about to go live…’ Erika cupped her hand over the receiver as two big lads moved past noisily, lugging a large table.
‘But what if this Ella girl is victim number three, boss? And she could still be alive…’
Erika felt torn. At the end of the corridor she could hear the loud chatter from the conference room, and Colleen was now greeting a middle-aged journalist accompanied by her greying cameraman.
‘Fuck!’ said Erika. ‘Have the family been informed?’
‘Officers are on their way to tell them officially, but apparently the housemate has already been talking to them.’
Erika felt her heart pounding: there was no time.
‘John, the press conference has been structured around the existing victims. If we start talking about another girl being abducted, we have to be sure. Is Melanie in her office? What does she have to say?’
‘I’ve left word with her, but she’s away on a conference today.’
The journalists had now moved through to the conference room, and Colleen was approaching her saying, ‘Erika, we need to put a bit of base on you, so you’re not washed-out on camera…’
‘John, find out as much as you can, and track down Melanie. I have to go.’
Erika hung up, took a deep breath and followed Colleen through to the conference room with a sickness in the pit of her stomach.
Chapter Forty-One
The press appeal was done and dusted by 3 p.m. The BBC News channel had covered it live, but it would get its main coverage on the evening news programmes and the late editions of the London free newspapers.
Erika returned to West End Central feeling drained, and found the team scrabbling to assemble the information about the latest missing person, Ella Wilkinson. Crane came over, and she could see that Moss, Peterson, John and the rest of her officers were taking phone calls.