‘Probably, ma’am,’ Danaher said. She sounded tired. No doubt wondering where all this might be leading.
Anna said, ‘We’ve reopened our case because of some new information. Europol found an image on a site during one of their big raids. Turns out it’s an image of Rosie taken while she was in captivity. We’ve had input from our digital forensic unit and they tell us that the site they found her on was probably linked to other sites where other images might be for sale. I take it you’ve not found anything?’
‘I don’t think we’ve looked. We’ve been concentrating on searches and physical evidence.’
‘Obviously. And I know that would be your priority. But it might be worth your ICAT guys having a peek.’
Danaher sounded surprised. ‘OK. But do you honestly think there’s a link between your case and ours?’
Anna paused. She still hadn’t made her mind up about Hawley. But if there was the smallest chance that he was right and that there was a grain of truth in his theory, then she had a duty to spell it out.
‘We’re fishing for links, just like you are. Someone has pointed out that in a few cases, the victims all had medical histories. It’s pretty thin but—’
Danaher came back right away. ‘You can take Blair off that list. She’s well. No issues, apart from the hearing problem.’
‘Hearing?’
‘She wears a hearing aid. Left ear. Recurrent otitis media. It’s in every school photograph.’
‘And do you have any leads?’
‘No.’ Danaher’s tone stayed flat. ‘Brick wall. Family’s in pieces as you can imagine. The sister worst of all because she was with her. All we know is that he’s white, no distinguishing features and he wore some kind of uniform. Probably nothing official, but enough to fool the girls.’
‘CCTV?’
‘Partial of a white van. No plates.’
‘Age?’
‘No go. Hat and sunglasses. The sister got hit by a stun gun and that shook her up. We’re still working with her on a description. Accent not local. Height average or above, we think.’
Big enough to carry a small child in a rucksack, then.
‘Anything else?’ Danaher asked after a few beats of silence.
‘No. I only wanted to check if your ICAT were involved and to give you a heads up. It’s a stretch, I know, but it might be worth them having a quick trawl through known paedophile forums looking for images.’
‘But won’t that take forever?’ Danaher’s voice was weary.
‘No. Not if they limit the search parameters to the time since Blair was missing.’
There was a pause as Danaher absorbed this. ‘No, of course.’ She sounded suddenly awake.
‘I’ll get Varga’s contact details over to you. Let your ICAT people talk to her directly.’
Danaher rang off.
When Anna went back into the squad room, empty apart from Trisha, she asked her to get Varga’s contact details up to Sergeant Danaher. It wasn’t much, but it was something. If it helped Blair, all well and good. And it didn’t do any harm to know that someone else was looking.
Twenty-One
Woakes met with DCI Sutton from Thames Valley Major Crimes Investigation Team at the HQ in Kidlington. Sutton, losing a battle with his sizeable paunch, in short sleeves and tanned from weekend sailing, was affable enough and gave Woakes some tea as they sat in his office: a box decorated with Post-it notes and tacked-up bits of paper bearing flow charts and graphs. He remembered Rosie Dawson alright. Who wouldn’t?
Woakes had already spent a fruitless morning talking with the Avon and Somerset CAIT. They knew all about Rosie but had nothing new to contribute, as he knew they wouldn’t. There’d been no evidence that Rosie or anyone in the family had any links to pornography but they did provide him with a list of known sex offenders who lived in the area at the time of Rosie’s abduction. They also implied that every one of them had been thoroughly looked at.
Sutton, on the other hand, talked about how the investigation had faltered because of lack of evidence, and he walked Woakes through the months after her disappearance up until the bones were found. Though interested to hear that the MCRTF were looking again, he was not optimistic.
‘Best of luck. We spent thousands of man hours and came up with bugger all. I can’t tell you the number of times I walked through that park in Clevedon. We traced just about every red van in the south-west and came up blank. The post office almost took us to court. We must have spoken to every postie in Bristol with a bloody van. And everyone who bought a decommissioned one and stuck white doors on the back. It was the one definite piece of evidence we had. And now you say they’ve found images?’ Sutton shook his head.
Woakes nodded. ‘Looks like he kept her somewhere. A basement most likely.’
Sutton’s grizzled face hardened. ‘Is Shipwright still running that unit? Ted’s a good man.’
Woakes shrugged. ‘Nah, it’s a DI, me and two DCs. The DI is newly promoted though. Bit of an ice queen, you know.’
Sutton frowned. ‘Didn’t I read that the squad broke the Woodsman case?’
Woakes ignored that. ‘What did you think about the doctor, Hawley?’
Sutton shook his head again. ‘After the bones came to light and forensics confirmed who it was, the review team thought it might be a good idea to have another look at him. But he was clean.’
‘No suggestion that he might be part of something else?’
‘A ring, you mean?’ Sutton shook his head. ‘Nah, nothing remotely suggesting that. We decided it was a random attack by some desperate bastard with an eye for an opportunity.’ Sutton saw the expression on Woakes’ face. ‘Doesn’t help you much, does it?’
‘No. But I needed to tick this box by talking to you.’
‘Your idea or the DI’s?’
‘All mine,’ said Woakes.
Sutton nodded. ‘Sensible. I’d have done the same. She’s lucky to have you watching her back.’
Twenty-Two
Anna needed to speak to Rainsford. The superintendent had been out at meetings first thing, but she saw him arrive back, striding down the corridor purposefully. She got up and was about to find him when Trisha stopped her with a wave, a phone in her hand.
‘Sergeant Danaher, ma’am.’
Anna ducked back into her office and took the call.
‘Hi, Julie.’
‘Ma’am, my guvnor said to give you a call. We found a photo of Blair.’
A trickle of electricity danced over Anna’s scalp. She sat down, made herself concentrate.
Danaher took the silence as her cue to explain. ‘Our tech guys did a sweep and found a posted image on a chat site called Pinocchio. We don’t know who put the image up or where it came from, but it’s on a thread about missing children. A lot of these people pretend to know where these children are, though in fact they get their kicks talking about them. It looks like whoever posted this took the image from some other site.’
Anna waited.
‘It has the same caption as the Rosie Dawson image you sent up.’
‘PPV?’
‘PPV, yeah. I’ve sent it over via Varga. It should be with you shortly. This was taken when Blair was alive. That’s a huge boost to us. My DI says we owe you a night on the town.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘The SIO wants to take a look at your case files, ma’am,’ Danaher said.
‘Absolutely. What’s the thinking?’
‘A ring possibly. That’s his first thought.’
‘He’s not convinced it’s the same perpetrator, then?’
‘We’re not dismissing it, but the MO in the two cases are so completely different it doesn’t add up. Rosie was taken in a park; Blair was abducted into a vehicle with her sister. Admittedly, the locations on the images look similar: concrete floor, plastered walls, but there are differences. Blair seems to be in some sort of hole but Rosie was simply sitting on the floor and there is no hole. Our digital forensic guys tell us these sites often replicate images. Copycats. There’s nothing else solid to connect them and we had to limit our search parameters. Still, the SIO would like to review the file. And our cyber unit are still looking for images. If we find anything else, I’ll let you know.’