‘I hear you were in the job, once?’
Starkey laughed. ‘Long time ago, ma’am. I joined quite late but I’ve been out of it for four years. We moved and I couldn’t spare the sixteen hours a month because of my job and I wouldn’t pass the bleep test now unless you stuck a lit firework where the sun doesn’t shine.’
‘This is about the Rosie Dawson case. I realise it’s been a while, but you gave a statement about a van you saw on the day she was abducted. I wanted to check if you’d thought of anything else that might be useful.’
‘No, I’m afraid not. I’ve thought about it a lot, obviously. And I’ve kept an eye out for that van every time I get in the car. But I gave everything I knew to the team at the time.’
‘You were coming off the motorway when you saw the van, am I right?’
‘Yeah. Coming off the motorway at the Hither Green roundabout. I was on a half shift at the station that evening, six to eleven. My normal employers were good about letting me leave early from work when I had a Specials shift to go to. That gave me time to get home, change into my uniform and get some food. The van had pulled way out over the junction and cars ahead had stopped to let it out, that’s why I remembered it. The driver had pulled out at Padmore Road.’
‘Heading back towards the roundabout?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
‘You don’t know if he got on to the motorway?’
‘I’d long gone in the other direction by then.’
‘And you said,’ Anna scanned the report, ‘it was a post office van?’
‘Yeah. White rear doors but everything else red. Looked like a converted PO van to me. No logo but then they take that off for resale. Definitely a Vauxhall combo though.’
‘The other witnesses said they’d seen the abductor get in to a white van.’
‘From the back, it would look that way. As I said, my theory is that the van had been pranged and they’d replaced the rear doors. Two hours later I was on the search team. If only I’d known, I’d have looked at the plates.’ Starkey sounded genuinely regretful. ‘It was unusual, and I’ve not seen anything like it around these parts or elsewhere. And I drive a lot.’
‘Looks like the team spent a lot of time looking for Vauxhall combos afterwards, but they found nothing.’
‘I think he went to ground ma’am. There was no CCTV footage but I arrived at exactly the time he would have been at that junction, according to the other witnesses’s sightings.’
‘Okay. You have our number if you can think of anything else. No matter how small or irrelevant you think it is, okay?’
‘So, you’re reopening the case, I take it?’
‘It never really closed. We’re taking a fresh look.’
‘Best of luck, ma’am.’
‘No thoughts of coming back, Kevin?’
Starkey laughed. ‘It’s a young man’s job. I’m well past it.’
He rang off and Anna put an asterisk next to his name on the file to indicate she’d made contact. Ah well, she’d expected nothing else.
Sighing, she asked Trisha for copies of Blair’s image and took it in to her office and placed it next to Rosie’s. She stared at them, willing them to give her more information than was obvious from the brutal reality of the girls’ prisons. Rainsford was right, it was a breakthrough of sorts, but even so, she felt helpless and lost. Nothing here gave any tangible clue as to where they were taken, and yet there were obvious similarities. There needed to be more. It was rare for a cold case to gather traction so quickly and Anna felt the urge to run with it rather than let it run away from her. But to do so she’d need to take a few risks.
Or one big one.
She hadn’t been entirely straight with Rainsford. Trisha had handed her the sheet from Europol on Krastev that morning. It made for unpleasant reading and confirmed what Holder had told her on the way home from visiting Shaw.
Boyen Krastev AKA Mihai Petran Height: 181 cm DOB: 30/05/1965
Nationality: Bulgarian Wanted for Aggravate trafficking in human beings, rape, grievous bodily harm, kidnapping. Forgery of administrative documents, participation in a criminal organisation.
The list of offences read oddly, the charges unfamiliar and a little archaic to Anna. But it was the next paragraph that made her cringe.
While on detention, Krastev failed to turn up to court and his whereabouts after that are unknown.
They now knew to where he’d escaped. And they also knew his whereabouts. The DNA confirmation would take a while but hopefully it was only a question of matching results from Petran with what Europol had on Krastev and, since Petran’s body was found on another force’s patch, North Wales organised crime unit was doing all that. Trisha, she knew, was keeping tabs on developments.
Anna felt no reason to doubt what Shaw had told her. There could be no reason, either, to delay letting Rainsford arrange for Shaw to take her to Sussex – other than her own reluctance. But an idea had begun tumbling over in her mind; gathering pace with each revolution, an idea which would mean another visit to Shaw before she’d allow him to unearth another of his grisly prizes. And that was definitely something she would not tell Rainsford about yet.
Quickly, she gathered up what was on her desk and left her office.
‘I’m off to tie up a few loose ends,’ she said to Trisha on her way out. ‘Oh, and when he emerges from the super’s office, tell Sergeant Woakes he’s got the afternoon off.’
Trisha smiled. ‘With pleasure ma’am.’
Twenty-Three
Blair ate some bread and drank some water. She had no idea what time it was, but she was beginning to feel sleepy. She didn’t want to climb back into the hole to sleep, but if the dog man came she might not wake up in time to hide in there. She made herself remember the last time he’d come. The door made a lot of noise and he moved really slowly. She decided there would be time.
She arranged the two duvets into a makeshift bed. One to lie on and one to cover her, though it was warm enough in the cave to lie on top of both. In her bedroom at home, the one she shared with Kirsty, she sometimes slept without a cover in the summer. They’d had bunk beds for ages, but Kirsty’d got a new bed under all her posters on the other side of the room. Blair hadn’t minded because she slept on the top bunk now and all her animals slept on the bottom: a purple dolphin called Duane, a fat green snake called Monty, loads of ponies, each with different hair colour, and a brown and white dog mum won in a raffle. Bernard was huge and lovely to cuddle.
And then there was mum… She missed mum. Even when she’d had a bottle of wine that always made her all red in the face, like she’d just run around the estate, she was still mum.
Blair stopped the tears from coming. She didn’t believe the dog man anymore. And mum and Kirsty would know by now that he’d taken her. Maybe they were out on the street calling her name. She thought about calling back but her throat was sore from already doing that lots.
Was it Monday? They always had macaroni cheese on Monday. Blair loved the crusty bits of burnt cheese.
She wiped away a silent tear.
She was tired. So tired.
She lay on the duvet, listening and hearing nothing.
Eventually, Blair fell asleep thinking about Bernard.
Twenty-Four
Anna took the fleet car and headed south.
Danaher’s call and the image of Blair Smeaton she’d sent was a lit firework in her head. Woakes had been dismissive and his mere presence was proving to be an unwelcome distraction, but Khosa had seen it right away.
‘Does this mean Hawley’s right?’