A Private Investigation Read online

  Smith nodded, undeterred, and said, ‘The same. But as she would say, all’s fair in love and war, and business is war. But she’ll take a very dim view of anyone harming a kid, believe me. If it was one of her drivers, he’d better hope we catch him before she does.’

  Terek said, ‘I’ve got Waters looking over records but there was nothing on Mr King when I left just now. Nevertheless, if he spoke to Zoe Johnson as he says – and I agree that he rings true, DC – that was just minutes before she disappeared. Would he be right about the time?’

  ‘Taxi drivers are always right about the time. Waters was getting a list of burger businesses earlier on. That’s what we need next. I’m sure the council still issues street trader licences for them. Albert reckons this bloke has been around The Crescent for a few weeks now. Even if he’s a cowboy, he shouldn’t be hard to find, should he? If uniform have a ride around as darkness falls, they should be able to sniff him out. Anything from the search?’

  No, Reeve said, and that would be complete within the hour. Smith didn’t say it to them but he thought, in that case no news is good news. The girl’s best chance of turning up alive is not to be found in the bushes alongside the old railway. If they find her this afternoon, she’ll be dead, and the poor sod who does so will wait a long, long time for some untroubled sleep after that.

  Terek said, ‘DC, have you seen Wilson’s interview with Mehmet Sadik?’ and the answer was no, he had not.

  ‘Right, well, while we’re here and waiting, you ought to, and you, ma’am. Wilson thinks we might be onto something. There are things on the CCTV from his shop that he seems evasive about. I think he’s worth a closer look.’

  Reeve said, ‘Yes, anything. Let’s see it. We need a break on this, soon.’

  Terek was good with the video technology, clicking away and quickly finding the correct digital file, but it was Alison’s words that Smith was thinking about. We need a break on this soon? It wasn’t yet forty-eight hours. How would she have coped with a case that went on for several months, punctuated by the regular discoveries of new bodies on the beach? Let’s hope to God that we’re not about to find out.

  Chapter Twelve

  You must allow for cultural differences in body language and the sense of personal space but was Mehmet Sadik standing too close to the girl when he spoke to her? When the CCTV showed him going out from behind the counter and across to where she was sitting by the window? The angle wasn’t ideal but does he put out a hand towards her, as if he is about to touch her? She seems to shrink back a little but it’s impossible to be sure of that. Oh, for some sound on these things…

  Alison Reeve watched it back five or six times, along with Terek and Smith – it’s what you do, sometimes scores of times. You rewind and re-watch these tiny, grey and gritty fragments of life in the hope that eventually someone will see something that moves an investigation forward a millimetre or two.

  And then Sadik points to something at the rear of the shop. What is it? Wilson asked him repeatedly and he says he cannot remember, but no, it wasn’t the door as Wilson kept suggesting to him – it wasn’t the door and of course he never suggested to the girl that she go into the back of the shop with him. Why would he do such a thing? Wilson tells him why, and it isn’t the best moment of this interview, but Wilson is always tough like this, he isn’t making an exception for Mehmet Sadik.

  Then Zoe Johnson laughs at Sadik, laughs into his face. If he had made some indecent proposal to her, that would have been a dangerous thing to do but a fourteen-year-old wouldn’t have understood the danger, not if she was a typical fourteen-year-old… She was, wasn’t she? Only a couple of hours ago Reeve had asked Penny Johnson directly whether she thought her daughter was sexually active. The woman was past the point of pretending outrage at the suggestion, and she had answered honestly as far as the detective could tell – no, said Mrs Johnson, Zoe knows what’s what but I don’t think she has.

  So, if Sadik thought the girl had flirted with him in some way – more potential for cultural confusion there – and then she had laughed at him, that could have triggered it. Zoe gets up from the table then, says something else to the shop’s owner with a look on her face that might be contemptuous, and goes out. She leaves the door open intentionally to wind him up – that’s obvious. He walks around the table, closes the door and then he stands for quite a long time looking out through it – and one can only assume he is watching the girl. After the fourth of fifth time through, Smith himself had said it, in his usual ironic fashion – ‘That’s not a good look, ma’am.’

  Six minutes later, the Asian boy enters. Is he a boy, a youth or a man? Difficult to say, but this is the one who was driving Alana Day and Kristi Hansen around Kings Lake when they should have been moping in their bedrooms at home. There was another one in the front passenger seat and they haven’t located either of them yet. Could they have driven back to The Crescent after leaving Alana and Kristi?

  Finally, Mehmet Sadik locks up the shop and leaves early. He has no explanation for this other than that he didn’t think he would do any more business that night. Wilson had pushed him, saying maybe the confrontation with the girl had upset him, that he had other things on his mind by then. You followed her, didn’t you? It’s alright, we’ve all been there, Mehmet. They can get under your skin, can’t they, and if she’d been leading you on…

  Not nice, thought Reeve, and others would have handled it differently, but the fact was that Sadik wasn’t in the clear after this. He claimed he went home shortly after ten o’clock, and he claimed that by then the burger van had left The Crescent. The girl was nowhere to be seen, he said. Home for Sadik was a rented flat ten minutes’ walk from the shop, in a side-street off the Lakenham road, and he lived alone – there was no-one to vouch for him that evening.

  Simon Terek said, ‘So, ma’am, what do you think?’

  They still had Sadik in an interview room – he had no understanding of what his rights were and that meant Reeve had to worry about that on his behalf, as well as everything else. Answering the detective inspector’s question would involve making the next call in this investigation, and she ignored entirely the impulse to look in Smith’s direction to gauge his opinion. She had learned never to appear hurried but a decision was needed now.

  She said to Terek, ‘Go in yourself and ask for Mr Sadik’s consent to search his shop again and his home. If he agrees, he can go with whoever you send and stay there if it’s all clear. If he refuses, arrest him and then you can conduct the search in his absence. It’s my view that he has given us reasonable grounds for suspicion.’

  And the only downside to that, thought Smith as he sat back at his desk, is that word always gets out – the police have made an arrest in the search for missing schoolgirl, Zoe Johnson. Why do they always point out that she’s a schoolgirl? Arrests are made all the time, and not always because the police think they have the guilty party, but the public, led by the media, God bless them, assume you’ve caught the bugger as soon as someone is arrested. Then they find out his name and begin hounding relatives and friends – at least in this case it looked as if Mehmet Sadik didn’t have many of either.

  The real problems begin when you release them because it’s always presented as police incompetence – either you arrested the wrong person or you’ve let the guilty one go. Trying to explain strategic arrests to bloodthirsty journalists is a complete waste of time. But Smith understood the pressure Reeve was under, and the decision would have been a close call either way.

  He said to Murray over the intervening desks, ‘John, have you watched all the traffic cam footage?’

  ‘No, not yet, but it feels like it. Why?’

  ‘I wondered whether the burger van appears on it. If it left when the kebab man says it did, there’s a fifty per cent chance it went through that camera at around ten o’clock or just after. There are only two roads into and out of The Crescent.’

  Murray got up and went over to O’Leary’s desk;
apparently the footage had not been centrally uploaded and if Terek found out the search would be halted while all protocols were reinstalled into the investigations team. Waters, for reasons best known to himself, was over by the laser printer and waiting to get paper copies of the list of licensed sellers of fast food, instead of simply emailing it to the central database. This was another potential protocol breakdown for which Smith could not be held responsible. Serena had finalised her data collection on Roy Green and Stephen Sweeney but these were at present mere side-streams to the main flow of the investigation, which now seemed to be heading towards a focus on what had taken place in The Crescent last Monday evening. Investigations can develop their own momentum and that’s when the senior investigating officer must be ready with the brakes; it’s all too easy to come off the road at an unexpected bend, or to miss the turning that takes you to the truth.

  John Murray straightened up and called across to Smith, ‘22.06. A van goes north out of The Crescent that could be the one. You can’t read the plate from this and it’s head on, so you can’t see anything on the sides. You can see the driver, it’s a bloke, but no chance of an ID from it.’

  ‘Excellent work, John! That’s broken the case wide open, hasn’t it?’

  Murray looked back at O’Leary’s monitor and watched some more, oblivious to Smith’s comment – they both knew what he had found might be useful even if it wasn’t important. The timing would fit in with Sadik’s story, suggesting that the burger van had left The Crescent a minute or two before he locked up his shop. Assume just for a moment that he is telling us the truth; he did not then see Zoe Johnson in the street after the departure of the van or surely he would have mentioned it. So Sadik walks down the road at say 22.10, and assume just for a moment that Alana Day is spot on with her recollection of the time – she says she saw Zoe at the stall at 21.30. Allow five minutes for the boy to go into the kebab shop to pick up his order – which was what? Has anyone asked? And when did they eat it if they took the girls home for ten o’clock? Is that odd? But anyway, that would be 21.35. Assume all that, and Zoe disappeared in that thirty-five-minute window, didn’t she?

  Her phone had registered itself at 21.44 and then fallen silent. Does it do that when you turn it off, or do you need to disable the device more comprehensively? By removing the battery, for example? He made a note to ask Waters, but nobody under the age of forty ever turns the things off, do they? And then Smith had that moment in a dream when you find you have wandered close to the edge of the abyss or you find yourself on a cliff face with no idea of how that happened but the drop is infinite and you are too terrified to move – the mobile was key to this. Whoever turned off that phone…

  Waters was at Smith’s desk, putting on it a copy of the list he had obtained from the council offices. He said, ‘There are forty-two current licences. It’s a general permissions thing, so they don’t specify who is serving what or when or where. There are some restrictions about not impeding traffic on main thoroughfares, that’s all.’

  ‘“Thoroughfares!” That’s a great word, isn’t it?’

  Waters nodded and said, ‘Yes, it is. I’ve never thought about it until this moment but it is actually one of the greatest words I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘One day soon,’ Smith said, turning on to the second page of the list, ‘you’re going to be sorry that you didn’t treat me with respect to the very end. These do at least have dates on them. Start with the most recent and work backwards. Albert King said the burger man had been around for a few weeks, so he might be a newcomer. Some of these go back donkeys’ years.’

  DCI Reeve came into the office alone and headed for Smith’s desk.

  ‘Right, updating everyone. Mr Sadik agreed to let us visit both his properties again. Simon and John Wilson and two others are doing that now. Mr Sadik isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but I’m guessing even he wouldn’t have agreed if there was anything obvious to be found. The search of the playpark and the railway is officially at an end, and Superintendent Allen will speak to the media again this afternoon and make a further appeal for information. They did not find anything of interest. I’d really appreciate it if you can tell me now that you have found something of interest.’

  She was speaking to all of them, and no-one felt the need to be the first to answer. Eventually it was Smith who ended the silence before it became an awkward one.

  ‘We have a van on CCTV that might be the burger van, leaving The Crescent at a few minutes after ten o’clock. That was the last place Zoe was seen, so we’ll have to track him down. If he’s legitimate, he should be on this list that Chris has just produced. We haven’t found the man who spoke to her in the kebab shop but we know that she was alive, well and eating at least ten minutes after that. If he is involved he must have waited somewhere and kept an eye on her, I suppose… John, it’s worth making a list of all the vehicles that go through the traffic cam up to around ten thirty.

  ‘We know that her phone was active up to a quarter to ten, and I need someone to explain to me how you make a mobile stop automatically reporting itself to its service provider.’

  He looked at Waters, who said, ‘You turn it off, that’s all. There are lots of myths about this, and certain apps might enable the Sim to be located, but the phone needs power to give a signal that can be used to find it.’

  ‘Right, clear enough. So, Zoe turned it off – why? – or someone else did, or the phone lost power in some other way.’

  ‘Or it might have just run out of charge?’

  ‘And then, coincidentally, Zoe also disappeared? I’m not buying that.’

  Another pause as each detective went over it again – this is a crucial part of the process, putting forward ideas and opinions, having them sorted and sifted by others until an order appears, and then repeating this with each new piece of intelligence. Many cases are solved in the end by two or three officers sitting around a desk, beginning sentences with ‘What if…’

  Smith said to Reeve, ‘Neither have we found the Asian boy. The girls have to be covering for him, they know something that would help us to find him, but they’re not daft. They watch the news headlines at least – you could see that Kristi Hansen knew exactly what her mother was thinking about her hanging around with them. We could have another session with them.’

  Reeve accepted it as a possibility.

  ‘Agreed. Though I don’t think they’d cover for anyone who they thought might have harmed Zoe. At least I hope not. Anything else?’

  ‘We should look at Roy Green, the mother’s boyfriend. The bit Waters did on the phone with his boss didn’t make him light up for me, but he might have a different view of Zoe and give us something new. And then there’s this Stephen Sweeney, who we’re told by mum had been taking a bit of interest in Zoe. He doesn’t show up on the radar but we have his details.’

  He looked at Serena who nodded and then all eyes were on DCI Reeve.

  ‘OK. Let’s speak to those. Which one first?’

  Serena said, ‘Roy Green will be at work. Sweeney might be at home.’

  Reeve glanced at Smith, handing it to him.

  ‘Go and have a word, then. Take John with you. Give me a call as soon as it’s done.’

  Serena was more than capable but you do not send a female officer alone if there is even the slightest suspicion that you could be dealing with a man who has offended against a girl – old-fashioned it might be, but you just don’t. The two of them were at their respective desks within seconds, making preparations to pay Stephen Sweeney a visit.

  Smith said, ‘Chris, begin the search for the perfect burger. Onions not overdone and a slice of that delicious processed cheddar, with American relish and a gherkin. It’s out there, I just know it is…’

  Reeve said, ‘I’ve got to let Mrs Johnson know about the search before it’s on the news – I said I would. And I’ll be getting a call from Social Services. There’s a file. I don’t know how bad it is yet. We need someone in h
ere in case Simon finds anything at Mr Sadik’s places and needs backup.’

  ‘Done. Not a problem.’

  Reeve looked grateful but tired, and Smith didn’t envy her the call to Mrs Johnson. Forget the training, forget what the manuals tell you about professional distance. It gets personal when you’re dealing with the parents of children who might have come to harm. You begin to feel their pain, and you begin to feel responsible for it because you haven’t been able to bring it to an end.

  When Reeve had left the room, it was just Smith and Waters again. Just like the old days, Smith thought, in more ways than one, as he watched Dougie’s son get busy with his list, phone at the ready. Who’d have thought his last partner would be a Waters? There are some funny old twists and turns.

  Then he rested an elbow on the desk and his forehead on the upturned palm. He closed his eyes and tried to see it – Zoe at the burger stall. He’d written them down somewhere but could remember Alana Day’s words without checking; “He was laughing and that. He might have been chatting her up…”

  The woman who was probably Stephen Sweeney’s mother had opened the door no more than six inches. The December afternoon was gloomy and the rain that had held off during the search of the nearby playpark was about to begin again, but inside the house seemed darker. There was no sign of a light on behind the woman and it was difficult to make out her features – she was small and round-faced, and after one look directly up at the female police officer, her gaze was focused somewhere else entirely.

  Yes, she said, Stephen was at home, up in his room – she’d go and fetch him. The door was left at its six-inches-ajar position. Serena turned to Murray with her we’ve-got-a-strange-one expression; Murray gave a single nod, stepped past her, pushed open the door and crossed over the threshold, his head cocked and listening for what might be happening upstairs. This was a technical violation of PACE 1984 because no-one was under arrest and they had no warrant to search but Serena Butler understood Murray’s action – if the young man was upstairs, the virtually closed front door would have allowed him to come down and head for the back door of the house.