‘What else can you tell us about this man? What did he look like?’
‘Well, I did see him. But only from behind and the side. And my mind was on other things… He was quite dumpy; he had dark hair. Mid-length.’
‘You didn’t happen to see the number plate of the car?’
‘No, sorry. I’m not in the habit of remembering those.’
‘What exactly did this man do as you walked past?’
‘He looked as if he was moving around from the boot of the car; he hitched up his trousers – I remember they had a brown stain on the rear – the fabric was a sort of tweedy green. He went to the driver’s door and got in.’
Moss wrote another note:
WAS THERE A GIRL WALKING AWAY FROM CAR?
‘Did you see a girl up ahead of you, walking away from the car?’ asked Erika.
There was a pause on the line.
‘No. No. Latimer Road is a long straight street, and you can’t turn off it until you get down to the bottom, where a train track runs along behind the buildings. The buildings on the opposite side of the street are all being refurbished, and they’re covered in scaffold.’
Erika gripped the phone. ‘How long does it take to walk down to the bottom of the street?’
‘I don’t know. Four, five minutes.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
Erika put down the phone.
Moss gave a yelp of glee and jumped up and down again. ‘A blue Ford! He’s using a different bloody car!’ she cried.
‘Yes. We’ve got him. Now we have to find him,’ said Erika.
Chapter Seventy-Three
After confirmation of the blue car, the atmosphere in the incident room became energised, and the team began their search afresh, looking to trace the journey of the car. Finally, just before 9 p.m., CCTV footage came through which led to another breakthrough.
‘Look!’ cried Crane, jabbing his finger at his computer screen. ‘We’ve got him. We’ve got him! This is footage from the next building along the block, before the Latimer Road offices. It’s from a block of private apartments which have a doorman and security…’
Erika and the rest of the team crowded around Crane at his computer.
‘At 8.11 p.m. our blue Ford passed, which ties in with him passing the security cameras on the Latimer Road offices, twelve seconds later!’
He played the footage again through the projector on the whiteboard.
‘Go back to just when he crosses the image and pause it,’ said Erika, moving over to stand next to where the picture was now huge on the wall. Moss joined her. Crane ran the footage back and paused. They peered at the car.
‘Shit, we have a partial plate, J892,’ read Moss. ‘Half of it is grimy, but we’ve got a partial number plate! We’ve got a partial!’ She hugged Erika. ‘Sorry, I must stink,’ she added. ‘All day in a cramped hot office.’
Erika grinned. ‘Okay, this is really good everyone, and thank you for coming in this weekend. I know it’s been a slog, but now we have a partial, I need to ask a little more from you all. We need to keep working to trace the journey he took after abducting Beth. We need to work our contacts,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘Let’s get on to TfL. Now we have a partial number plate it should speed things up with their image recognition.’
* * *
Two hours later, a batch of video files came through from Transport for London.
‘Okay let’s see what we have,’ said Crane, downloading the files. Everyone gathered round his computer. He clicked on the first. ‘Here he is, 8.28 p.m.,’ he said, as a time-lapse image on the screen showed a blurry side-on image of the blue car moving past a petrol station forecourt. Crane minimised the screen and pulled up the next video file. This time the car was pictured head-on and passing some traffic lights; they could even make out a white face through the windscreen, but the whole image was blurry.
‘So he goes past here at 8.30 p.m., and again cha-ching, we’ve got that partial number plate: J892,’ said Crane, grinning up at Erika.
‘So he’s obscured the number plate again.’
‘But not well enough this time,’ said Peterson.
‘Crane. Where does he go next?’ asked Erika.
Crane clicked on the third video file, which showed the blue car from behind, moving past a traffic camera mounted high above the road, and away until the image became blurred.
‘Where does he go? Did he turn right?’ asked Peterson.
‘Or is he going over the brow of the hill?’ asked Moss.
‘There isn’t a hill,’ said Erika. ‘Look, at the next car, it signals right.’ They played the footage a couple more times.
‘Is this still Tower Bridge Road?’ asked Erika.
‘Yes,’ said Crane.
Moss went to a nearby computer.
‘Where does that right turn-off lead to?’ asked Peterson.
‘Tower Bridge Road turns off to Druid Street, and it’s a dead end,’ said Moss, working on her keyboard.
‘How much footage did they send through of each file?’ asked Erika.
‘They only sent two minutes of each,’ said Crane.
‘If Druid Street is a dead end, then he would have had to come back out at some point,’ said Erika.
‘Unless the car’s still parked there,’ said Peterson.
‘I want someone from uniform to go over and check out Druid Street,’ said Erika. ‘It’s a long shot, but we need to see if the car is still there. In the meantime, I want CCTV footage from this Tower Bridge Road camera for the twenty-four-hour period afterwards. Just in case.’
‘Hang on, boss. We don’t need to send uniform division over to Druid Street,’ said Moss, looking up from her computer.
‘Why not?’ asked Erika.
‘They’re already there. The body of a young woman has been found. Police are on the scene.’
Chapter Seventy-Four
It was just after 2.30 a.m., when Erika, Moss, and Peterson turned off the main road into Druid Street. They were waved through the first police cordon, and parked behind two squad cars and a support van lining the pavement. The streetlights were out on the cul-de-sac, and Erika counted six houses. Number four was busy with officers moving in and out, and bright lights shone from the open door. The rest of the houses on the cul-de-sac were dark, apart from one at the end, where a young couple stood in the light of their porch, watching.
Erika and the team approached the police tape with their warrants, and explained that the murder scene may be part of their investigation. They were given crime scene overalls, and suited up before they ducked under the tape and made their way to the front door. They were then met in the cramped hallway by DCI Mortimer, a grey-haired man Erika had never met. He was friendly but a little wary.
‘We’re not trying to crash your case,’ she explained. ‘I just want to know if you have an ID on the victim. We’re investigating the abduction of a nineteen-year-old girl called Beth Rose.’