The CSI team hadn’t arrived by the time Henley had left Michael Kirkpatrick’s home. Anthony was en route to a shooting on the Kingsland Road, but had promised to dispatch two of his team with unrealistic promises of paid overtime. Henley could feel the anger overwhelming her as she walked back to her car. Someone had dropped the ball and no one was taking responsibility. She was doing everything that she was trained to do, to the best of her ability, but it didn’t feel as though it was enough. As if she wasn’t enough.
Henley drove back towards Greenwich. The electoral roll register checks had produced negative results. Pine hadn’t bothered to register at all, once he was released from prison.
‘There must be something?’ Henley said to herself. She drove down Brixton Hill heading towards Greenwich. She picked up the phone and called Ezra.
‘Ezra, I’m really sorry to bother you so late,’ Henley said, while stopped at the traffic lights outside Brixton prison.
‘That’s all right. But I might have you talk to my girl, she nearly accused me of having a side chick.’
‘I’ll speak to her afterwards if you like. I need to know if you can do something for me. It’s urgent but—’
‘Say no more. What do you need?’
‘An address. I can give you a name and date of birth, but we keep hitting a brick wall when it comes to where he may be living now. I just thought that maybe bank accounts, phone, council tax—’
‘OK, OK. I’ve got you,’ said Ezra.
‘I owe you, Ez,’ said Henley. As she gave him the only personal information that she had on Dominic Pine, it wasn’t lost on her what she was asking Ezra to do. It was no different to what he had been sent to prison for, but at this point she couldn’t see another way. Michael Kirkpatrick had gone from a ‘missing person’ to ‘kidnapped’ and there was every possibility that in twenty-four hours he would be dead.
‘What are you doing here?’ Henley asked as she walked into the kitchenette of the SCU.
Ramouter was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘It didn’t feel right to be sitting at home watching football highlights when he’s taken another one. Tea?’
‘Thank you. That would be great.’
Henley gave Ramouter a summary of what she had seen at Michael Kirkpatrick’s flat and what the neighbour had seen. Ramouter shook his head and swore in the right places.
‘So, what do you think?’ Ramouter asked as he pushed over the packet of jammy dodgers towards Henley. ‘Is he just sticking with his plan or do you reckon that we’ve escalated things?’
‘If anyone has escalated things, it’s Olivier by killing Lauren Varma. This is not our fault.’ Henley dunked her biscuit in her tea. ‘Our copycat’s cooling-off period is over. That’s all. If we were going to look for the positive…’ Henley rolled her eyes at the absurdity of looking for the positive in this situation. ‘He’s on the move and he’s not being careful. He’s never taken anyone from their home before. My theory is that he’s watching all of the jurors. He knows their work patterns, where they live. He’s taken them out in the open. I mean, who in their right mind will be suspicious about an ambulance? If you were out on the street, whether in your car or walking, what’s your natural instinct?’
Ramouter leaned back. ‘Once you hear those bloody sirens, you stop. If you’re driving, you’ll always pull to the side.’
‘But you never think that it’s suspicious, do you? You may be curious, but you definitely don’t think that it’s dodgy. Unless it turns up at someone’s house with no sirens, no blue lights and you disappear just as quietly.’
‘Pine is using the ambulance to pick up his victims. Taking them somewhere and then he has to return it back to—’
‘Back to the station. He uses the same FRU every time. There has to be DNA from at least one of the victims. I don’t care how good or careful you are, I doubt that Pine could clean a vehicle that well to remove every trace of evidence.’
‘But we can’t just march down to the station and ask if we can borrow their FRU. At the moment we’re running our investigation on hypotheses and assumptions.’
Henley didn’t disagree. They sat in silence, drinking their tea, both wishing that it was something stronger.
‘So, what’s the plan?’ Ramouter asked.
Henley was about to tell him that the tea and the chat had been a welcome distraction, but it was almost 1 a.m. and that maybe he should go home – then the phone rang.
‘Ez,’ said Henley. She hadn’t been expecting to hear from him this quickly.
‘Grab a pen,’ Ezra said. ‘I’ve got two addresses. The first is 76 Beech Avenue in Bexleyheath. He’s got a bank account registered to that address and there’s also an Eileen and Ivan living there. Have you got that?’
‘Yeah, I have.’ Henley scribbled the address down on the back of an envelope. ‘Next one.’
‘158 Hanover Street, Camberwell. Electricity, gas, water and mobile phone contract.’
Henley thanked Ezra and told him to take the morning off and that she would clear it with Pellacia.
‘Boss, before you go,’ said Ezra, ‘remember the cell site map. Have you still got it?’
‘Hold on a sec.’ Henley reached for the folded sheet of paper that was underneath a copy of yesterday’s Metro. ‘Got it.’
‘Can you see it?’
‘Shit,’ she said as she placed her finger in the space where the three circles that Ezra had drawn overlapped. In the middle of that space was Hanover Street. If there was any hope of finding Michael Kirkpatrick in one piece, then she needed to get to Camberwell, now.