Typically, the squad had at least three cases running, each member of the team involved to varying degrees with tails on half a dozen more needing to be tied off. But all would be at different degrees of maturity with one usually dominating, according to the progress it was making.
The second case was much more challenging and a stark contrast to the evidence-rich case of Lucy Bright.
Rosie Dawson had been abducted and murdered in 2008 at just ten years old. The image pinned to the board, a posed school photograph taken a few months before her life was so brutally ended, revealed a happy little girl with missing front teeth, oblivious to everything except the need to show the world how big her smile was. Rosie wore glasses to treat a squint, a red V-neck school sweater and a tie knotted tightly at the collar of her white school blouse. Anna couldn’t help but smile when she looked at it, but within seconds a flood of anger would follow. But that was OK. Anger was good. She could channel that mental energy. And that was one of the things she could gladly give these innocents. Her energy.
Even so, Rosie’s case was proving to be exceptionally challenging. Anna stared at the image, feeling the dull anger pulse, absorbing it and letting it direct her thoughts.
Child abductions were on the rise in the UK. Stranger abductions made up about 40%. Almost fifty abductions, or attempted abductions, took place every year and were inevitably sexually motivated. Three-quarters of them failed; kids were wary. Every child knew the watchwords Stranger Danger, and yet being forced or invited into cars was still the commonest method.
Thankfully, the high-profile cases were still rare but fifty cases a year meant four a month. And this month was no exception. Just that morning Anna got up to find every news bulletin showing another horror story. Young Blair Smeaton from Edinburgh, taken and still missing. She knew they had a separate word for it up there: abduction of under twelves was known as plagium. It was on the books as a defined common-law offence. Today was day two of Blair’s abduction, and she didn’t envy Police Scotland the task. They’d have the paedophile unit on-board and would be liaising with child-protection to make sure Blair wasn’t on any of their lists. They’d have queried the Police National Computer for known offenders, using extended search terms to link to the MO. Press appeals had already gone out for anyone with any information. They’d have a POLSA, a police search advisor, coordinating the search and bodies on the ground doing house to house. It was protocol. What Avon and Somerset would have done when Rosie went missing.
Rosie’s photo had been up for only a few days, posted on the whiteboard by Trisha Spedding, the squad’s civilian analyst, and already her face was haunting Anna’s dreams. The unsolved murder had been plucked from the cold case files at Superintendent Rainsford’s request. Some new information had come to light. The force’s Hi-Tech unit thought they might have a lead from some images located on a computer file found by Belgian police. But, like all cold cases, it was taking a while to get to grips with it. They’d been frustrated by bureaucracy already, waiting for paper files to come from the force’s offsite storage facility. Whoever had carried out the last review had managed to split the file and the Records Management team were having a hard time pulling things together.
Had she lived, Rosie would now be a teenager, pining no doubt for some boy band member, working out what she was going to do with the rest of her life. All of that had been stolen from her by a monster who had grabbed her cruelly from the very arms of her family and ended her life in the most brutal way.
And to top it all, this investigation had an added wrinkle. A new team member was doing the work-up at Rainsford’s insistence. Detective Sergeant Dave Woakes had joined three weeks before Anna’s return and appeared to have found his feet quickly. Rainsford had taken one look at Anna on her first day back and used words like, ‘Ease back into the swing of things,’ and, ‘Let someone else take the weight,’ with a look in his eye that said this was an order rather than a suggestion.
But Anna was finding it very difficult. Taking a back seat had never been her forte. Plus, they’d yet to get to grips with understanding the significance of the image the Belgian police had found. It was a combustible mixture that drove her exasperation level up from a slow simmer to a low boil over the last couple of days. Her easing-back-in period was well and truly over. The tricky bit would be not treading on too many toes.
Anna’s approach to any cold case, taught to her by her old boss, Ted Shipwright, was to treat each one as if it had happened yesterday. It needed enthusiasm and urgency and fresh eyes, and a soup?on of anger did no harm either. She had no difficulty bringing a barrow load of all that back to the team.
By eight the squad room was full. Holder called out a cheery hello, looking like a twelve-year-old with large-framed glasses, a clean shave and close-cropped hair. He wore a suit half a size too small for him, as was the fashion. Khosa, her dark hair glossy and sharply cut, like her suit, went straight to her desk and dumped a large handbag onto it. It jangled as it settled.
‘What have you got in there, Ryia?’ Anna said.
‘Just the basics, ma’am. Plus, I’ve had another set of keys cut for my brother, who is staying with me for a week.’
‘No,’ said Holder, pulling out a front pocket wallet and a phone. ‘These are the basics. I picked your bag up the other day. It’s like four kilos.’
Anna grinned. ‘Your brother on holiday?’
‘No. Off to uni in October. Just visiting his big sis.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Really well. He’s drunk all the milk already and doesn’t know what a washing machine is.’ She sat, giving both Holder and Anna a forced, over-bright smile.
Trisha Spedding arrived a minute later. An attractive forty-something in a business suit and three-inch heels, she was the civilian analyst on Anna’s team. Immediately she sat down, took off her heels and put on a pair of Nikes. She’d told Anna that on average she walked 5 kilometres a day at work and might as well do it in comfort.
Anna smiled. This was her team.
Before Trisha’s laces were done up, DS Woakes came in through the door backwards, a cardboard tray of coffees in one hand. Not as tall as Holder, Woakes was compact and fit with a football player’s quick reactions. He’d come to the squad from Leicester, where he’d worked drugs and serious crimes, but he was an Essex man by origin and the flat words, the ‘mates’ and the ‘yeahs’ peppered his sentences when he got excited. This was his first sergeant’s post and everything about him suggested a kind of suppressed energy, like a shaken bottle of Dr Pepper with the top still on, ready to froth up with one twist. He was quick to smile and just as quick to lose it if he thought you weren’t looking. Anna had heard he was good at his job, but she wasn’t sure how good he was with people.
‘Right, ma’am, Americano with one sweetener; Justin flat white with one sugar; Trisha tea, milk only; and Ryia, espresso, no sugar. Bosh.’ Woakes entered the squad room with a big smile.
‘None for you, Dave?’ Anna asked when the drinks were distributed.
‘Nah, try not to. Sends me a bit twitchy does caffeine. Just water while I’m training for the Ironman.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Anna remembered. Woakes was one of those. No longer playing competitive sports, he competed with himself in punishing training regimens and even more punishing endurance competitions like Tough Mudder and Ironman. The modern-day equivalent of self-flagellation.
Anna stood at the end of the squad room, next to the whiteboard and her office, a small glass box that had been Ted Shipwright’s up until a few months ago. She was still having problems coming to terms with the fact that it was now hers. Rainsford made her promotion permanent as soon as she’d arrived back from sick leave.
‘OK,’ Anna called everyone to order. ‘Let’s start with Lucy Bright.’
Khosa and Holder exchanged glances, Holder shrugged, Khosa stood up.