‘This is becoming a habit,’ Danaher said. But there was no trace of irritation this time. Edinburgh were obviously willing to listen to anything Anna had to say.
‘Nothing new, it’s only some intel on the image you sent us of Blair. What do your people make of #pogo?’
‘We’ve struggled with that one. Of course, there is the crude reference to jumping up and down using a stick. I don’t think you need one syllable explanations of what that implies.’
Anna didn’t. ‘OK. I may have something.’ She told Danaher about the Gacy link and elaborated on the red room theory.
‘My God, who have you got working on this stuff down there?’ Danaher said.
If you only knew.
‘It’s only a theory, I know. It’s not hard evidence, but I thought you ought to throw it into the mix.’
‘I’ll pass it on, ma’am.’
’How is it going?’
‘Slowly. The super in charge is doing a sweep of known offenders. Pulling people in. We’ve got several raids set for tomorrow. If there is a ring, we’ll flush them out.’
Most of them don’t want to harm their victims. Far from it. They wouldn’t sanction this sadistic shit.
Shaw’s words rang in her ears. But she was in no position to criticise Police Scotland. All she had to go by were the thoughts of a known serial killer and her own instinct. She wasn’t quite ready to stick her head above the parapet on that one just yet. Anna rang off and turned to Katelyn’s file.
In a nod to Hawley’s preoccupation with illnesses, Anna noted that Katelyn suffered from asthma and attended the University Hospital in Coventry for years. This was nothing more than a note in the statement from Katelyn’s mother, a single parent with mobility issues. Other than a name, there was no suggestion the father had much to do with the family unit. A unit completed by Katelyn’s younger brother, Duane, aged five at the time of her disappearance. Duane’s father was not involved in looking after the children. He was also not Katelyn’s father. An image of Dawn Prosser, Katelyn’s mother, accompanied the images of the abduction site and of Katelyn herself. At the time of the abduction in 2010, Dawn had been significantly if not morbidly obese and lived in council accommodation in Coventry’s Hillfields estate. As such, Katelyn was expected to do much of the family’s shopping. Twice a week, she would walk to a supermarket two streets away. One cold, damp evening in November, she did not return. CCTV showed her crossing a road on the way back to the block where she lived with her mother and brother.
A second camera in the lobby of the tower block had been disabled with some duct tape fifteen minutes before the last sighting. No one made a big deal of it at the time. The local youths considered it fair game and it was a regular occurrence.
But not, as it turned out, this time.
It was assumed Katelyn was abducted as she entered the building, taken downstairs to the basement and removed through a back door. One witness reported seeing some large laundry bags being removed by a man in a hi-vis jacket.
So here was a man capable of carrying large sacs of laundry. Could it be the same man capable of carrying 30-odd kilos in a military rucksack?
It was a tenuous link. But it was a link of sorts.
There were photographs of the lobby, the basement, the three-room flat the Prossers lived in. What stood out from the investigation was the lack of forensic evidence. No signs of a struggle. No blood. A huge manhunt was launched. Much like the one currently being undertaken by Police Scotland. The press was recruited; Katelyn’s mother made several appeals. All of them fruitless.
Outside the windows of the MCRTF offices, the sun kept shining, though its drift was ever downwards. In Dawn Prosser’s world, Anna suspected that it had never shone as brightly since that November day in 2010.
At five thirty, Trisha brought Anna some tea and excused herself. Anna thanked her for staying on the extra half hour. Outside, Khosa and Holder did not look up from their desks.
Anna busied herself typing up her report on the visit to Janice Dawson in readiness for Trisha to enter it in HOLMES. She should have done it already. A witness assessment, a commentary on Janice’s state of mind and emotional state. Something Shipwright insisted on. ‘Treat the case like it happened yesterday.’
But there was another report she wouldn’t type up. The intel she’d received from Shaw would have to remain unrecorded. That was for her eyes only.
When she’d finished, she sat back in her chair and sighed. She was out of ideas. She remembered she hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast. Maybe her brain needed a little sustenance? At six thirty, she got up and walked out into the office.
‘Right, come on. Let’s have a debrief away from here. I fancy the Lantern. My treat.’
Holder and Khosa stretched in unison. Neither of them objected.
The Lantern was an eighteenth-century riverside pub outside Shirehampton on the banks of the Avon. It was popular, big and had a beer garden, which on a sultry evening in June was a must.
They sat outside. This, Anna could do. A small group, colleagues she trusted, the talk – to begin with anyway – all work.
‘Jade disappeared during a friend’s party. They’d gone to a park with their bikes. No one missed her for half an hour. By then it was too late,’ Holder said.
‘And Lily didn’t come home from visiting a friend who lived 50 yards away. She was rushing because she was late for her tea. Didn’t wait for the friend’s mum to chaperone her. Quiet street. No CCTV. Some eye witnesses reported a workman and a workman’s van. There was some suggestion of a logo. There’d been a cordoned-off manhole for a day before on that same street. It was still cordoned off at the time she went missing. None of the utility services reported any issues, and the cordon and warning cones had all been stolen from a street half a mile away.’
‘It the same story with Katelyn,’ Anna said. ‘It looks spontaneous enough to suggest stranger abduction but in reality, every one of those could easily have been carefully planned. There’s a report of a van in the vicinity. But a different colour to the one in Rosie’s case.’ Anna toyed with her food as her thoughts tried to mesh. Frustration growled inside her like a hungry animal. She needed to find the thing that would jolt the investigation forward and over this road block.
‘It would take an awful lot of knowledge, ma’am,’ Khosa said.
She was right. It was asking a great deal of any single theory.
‘What about social circumstances? Rosie, we know, had a big family unit.’
Holder shook his head. ‘Jade was one of three. Father in prison. Mother holding down a job as a shopworker.’
Khosa put down her fork. ‘Lily had one sibling, a sister. Both lived with their father. Her mother had moved to a different town. She had a lot of personal problems. Saw her every other week, but not always.’
Anna pushed her plate away. ‘Is that a pattern? They all seem to come from dysfunctional families. Blair included. Her mum is a single parent and they lived in social housing. Could the difficult family dynamics mean they were slightly more vulnerable?’
‘That doesn’t work for Rosie though, ma’am,’ Holder said.
‘No,’ Anna agreed, but Shaw’s words stayed fresh in her head. ‘But if Rosie was his first, his trial run, it’s possible it wasn’t a consideration. He might have been concentrating on other things. Like being certain of the geography, his exit plan. Or maybe he was close enough to them to see the cracks in their relationship already beginning. Her parents weren’t with her when she was taken, remember.’
Khosa looked unconvinced. ‘OK. But if it was all planned, how could he possibly know this information about the victims unless he knew the families?’
Something in her question struck a chord in Anna. She didn’t have the answer, not then, but there was something that chimed.
‘Thanks for supper, ma’am,’ Holder said.
Anna looked at him, realising she’d been wool-gathering for almost a minute.