Patel nodded his understanding.
‘Everyone else is to focus on our new investigation.’ Kate stepped to the far side of the board and pointed at the picture of the foot. ‘All we know so far is this foot was severed using an electric handsaw with a rotating blade, like a pizza cutter. DC Rogers will be speaking with local DIY and hardware stores today to find a list of purchasers. I want the rest of you to split the list of teachers between you. Make contact with each – ideally face-to-face – and establish if they have witnessed anything unusual or anybody acting suspiciously in the vicinity of the school in the past week. I’m going to follow up with the third-party contractors who had reason to be at the school: the groundsman, cleaners, photocopy engineer and building inspector.’ Kate paused. ‘Where’s Olly Quinlan? Has anyone seen him this morning?’
The sea of faces shook their heads.
Kate leaned closer to Patel. ‘Olly was supposed to be on the security-camera footage from the entrance to the school and any nearby businesses. See if you can get hold of him, and find out why he isn’t here.’ She turned back to Laura. ‘How did SSD get on with examining the caretaker’s keypad?’
Laura referred to her notes. ‘Only one set of prints were recovered from the internal and external keypads, and they’ve been confirmed as belonging to Mr Linus, who voluntarily provided a sample for comparison. There were no discernible footprints that could be recovered from the ground surrounding that private gate.’
Any potential lead not panning out was a disappointment, but at least in this case it meant the team could concentrate on the two entrances that were protected by security cameras.
Kate finished her coffee as she watched the group disperse. It was odd that Quinlan hadn’t showed. Watching hours of monotonous security camera footage was one of the worst parts of the job, but it was a vital component in most successful investigations and he hadn’t even reported in to say he’d managed to secure the feeds from the school. When he showed, he’d have to have a good explanation for his absence.
‘Mrs Barclay said she’s taking Georgie to her grandmother’s this morning, but will be back this afternoon,’ Laura said, snapping Kate’s attention back to the office. ‘Do you want some company with Daisy’s parents?’
Kate had been dreading the possibility that the time would come when they needed to request a DNA sample for comparison. She nodded, welcoming Laura’s offer of support.
8
‘Ma’am, you should have turned down there to get to the Emersons’ road,’ Laura interjected.
Keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the road, Kate gently shook her head. ‘We’re not going there yet… I want to see Daisy’s final route again first.’
Kate had walked, driven and jogged this route several times in the last week already, but Laura would understand why she needed to do it again. Heading through the next set of traffic lights towards Portswood, Kate pulled the car hard to the right up Highfield Lane, before turning left onto Abbotts Way, where Georgie Barclay’s house stood. It was such a peaceful road, especially this early on a Saturday morning.
Kate completed a U-turn before pulling up across the road from the Barclay household, but kept the engine running. ‘From Georgie’s statement, we know Daisy headed north out of the door, in the direction of home. But she never made it. Her road is only ten minutes’ walk away, and between here and there, there are plenty of houses with curtain-twitching neighbours, two bus routes, and enough traffic that somebody must have seen what really happened to her. Right?’
Laura nodded. ‘Do you fancy walking the route she was most likely to have taken?’
Kate killed the engine and the two of them stepped out into the light sleet that was now falling. They crossed the road and stopped outside Georgie Barclay’s house.
Kate looked up at the three-bedroom semi-detached. ‘According to Georgie’s statement, Daisy left here at nine fifteen, having told Georgie she was heading straight home. Can you time this?’
Laura pulled out her phone and flicked to the stopwatch app. ‘Okay. Go.’
Kate tried to picture Daisy’s movements a week ago as they headed to the end of the road. It had been a dry and cold night. There were no real signs of activity in any of the properties in the narrow street yet, but the chances are there would have been at least a couple of homes with residents awake when Daisy had passed a week ago. Yet nobody had reported seeing a girl in a purple coat walking alone.
At the end of the road, Kate paused. ‘Do you think she crossed the main road here, or walked to the pedestrian crossing further up?’
Laura considered the question. ‘For me, it would depend on the amount of traffic heading along the main road. If traffic was light, I’d jog across where we are now, but if it was heavy, I’d use the crossing. It’s what – fifty metres away? It all depends how much of a hurry she was in.’
Kate turned and headed to the crossing, waiting for the first car to stop, before making her way to the middle. ‘If you’re a driver who’s just let Daisy across, would you remember it?’
Laura shrugged. ‘Probably not. Unless she did something unusual, like she was crying, or gave me an angry look, I don’t think I’d remember.’
They continued across the road before Kate spoke again. ‘There are two obvious routes to her home from here. If she heads left up to the church, she can walk up Church Lane, before turning right onto Welbeck Avenue, or she heads right, down to Shaftesbury Avenue, and all the way along until she reaches the opposite end of Welbeck Avenue. There’s probably only a minute’s difference in the routes, so which does she take?’
Laura looked left and then right. ‘According to Georgie they regularly used both routes when walking between their homes.’
‘Of course, there is the third option as well: she could have walked down to Portswood Road, and along until she got to Bowden Lane which joins Welbeck Avenue, but that’s a good five minutes or so longer, so I can’t understand why she’d go that way unless she was stalling.’
‘We have no witnesses that identified her on any of the three routes, ma’am.’
Kate sighed. ‘Let’s head up Church Lane, which is the most direct route. What amazes me, is this route is usually littered with students from the university heading to bars and clubs at that time of night, yet nobody has come forward to say they saw Daisy. Hopefully today’s appeal for witnesses on the campus will solve that.’
* * *
They arrived at Daisy’s house, a three-bedroom semi set back a few metres from the road, behind a small and unloved lawn.
The front door was opened by Daisy’s father, Barry. Dressed in a sleeveless vest, the tattoos that adorned both arms glowed green beneath the rich tan of his skin. His eyes looked tired and sad.
‘Wondered when you’d make an appearance,’ he grizzled, opening the door wider for them to enter and following them into the living room where they found Val glued to the television screen. It took a moment before she realised anyone had entered the room, but as she looked up and recognised Kate, she tensed.
‘You’ve found her?’ Val said, clutching the arms of the chair as if anticipating the blow she was about to receive.
Kate glanced at the screen which was showing the BBC 24-hour news channel and then back at Val, whose eyes looked swollen and tired beneath a layer of heavy makeup. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘It’s been all over the news that there were police at her school last night. The reporter said there were forensic specialists going in and out of the old sports hall. It’s about my Daisy, isn’t it?’
Kate gave her what she hoped was an assured look. ‘Right now, my colleagues are processing the scene to determine exactly what happened.’