Despite having been a police officer for six years, and a sergeant for one of those, strapping young graduate Pete Coll was Brighton Police’s new boy. In search of a better life, Pete took the brave step of transferring from the Metropolitan Police, accepting demotion to PC as part of the package.
He and his wife Julie had a one-year-old baby girl, Sarah. After great consideration they had decided the capital was no place to bring up a child and so took the financial and career hit and moved to Seaford, just along the coast from Brighton.
Four months in, Pete and his partner PC Paul Richardson crewed the Moulsecoomb response car, as I would do three years later. Brighton’s east and west divisions had merged so new bonds were being formed. Pete and Paul were picked for this detail because of their experience and common sense but, like any officer assigned a new beat, they needed to get to know their patch.
It had been a fairly standard Thursday 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift, with the usual hotchpotch of shoplifters, burglaries and minor car shunts. Even for October, the weather was gloomy. Wet and cold, a swirling low fog had descended over most of Brighton, the bars of mist giving the place an eerie feel.
Just over an hour before they were due to clock off, the call came that would change so many lives. The radio message contained little detail, just that Karen and Nicola had not come home after playing. The parents had searched the nearby area but had not yet found them.
Children often go missing, especially on estates like Moulsecoomb where the streets double up as extended play parks. Most return quickly and safely and suffer nothing more than a flea in the ear for their troubles. So, when they were dispatched, Pete and Paul were not unduly worried.
However, once they drove into Newick Road from the opposite end to the Fellows’ house, they quickly realized that this was anything but ordinary. As they approached, they were struck by the crowds milling around. On a night like this, most people would normally stay behind closed doors, but something had brought them out onto the streets.
All eyes turned to Pete and Paul as their car coasted to a halt and they took in the concerned faces and flurry of activity on the street. Neither had met Barrie Fellows before but they soon spotted that this swarthy, slightly scruffy man was who they had come to see.
He appeared in shock while his neighbours showed him a combination of deference and concern. Some people darted in and out through the Fellows’ open front door. Others marched to and from the Hadaways’ house where a similar, but smaller, worried crowd loitered.
Pete and Paul got out of the car and pushed their way towards Barrie. For once, their uniforms were respected. ‘Mr Fellows, can we go inside so we can understand what’s going on please?’ Pete asked, hoping others would respect his privacy.
‘Yes, come in,’ Barrie replied, leading the way.
Despite Pete and Paul’s attempts to isolate the three petrified parents, increasingly worried neighbours still dashed in and out of the house. Some seemed to defer to Barrie for their next instructions. As gently as possible, the officers slowly coaxed everyone out. This was not easy in a community who rarely saw the police as a force for good; many felt only their own could find the girls. But eventually there was some peace and quiet and the full story emerged.
Despite their fears, Pete and Paul still went through the list that kicks off any missing person enquiry. We call it ‘clearing the ground under your feet’, seeing what is immediately in front of you in the hope the answer is obvious. They set about capturing basic descriptions of the girls, securing recent photos, listing school friends, playmates and habits. Both houses were searched to check the children weren’t hiding somewhere. So many kids do. But tragically, like Tia Sharp who was murdered and dumped in her loft in 2012, others are killed then secreted in their own homes.
The parents’ trust in the officers grew as they saw their anxiety was shared. With a modicum of calm restored, Pete left Paul with the families while he drove around the area hoping to find the girls before night finally fell. Having checked the streets, where the community were still out in force, he made his way over the road to Wild Park.
With the car’s full-beam headlights sweeping the terrain, he inched up the narrow roadway that skirts the playing fields with his windows open in the vain hope of catching the girls’ chatter or giggles.
As he approached the park’s pavilion, a couple of hundred yards up from the main road, he stopped and got out. The damp, cloying fog chilled Pete’s throat. The temperature was dropping as his fear for the girls grew. He walked around the wooden shack, checking for any signs the girls could have sneaked inside. He checked underneath and, finding nothing, returned to Newick Road.
To this day, he needlessly beats himself up that had he searched just another fifty yards to his right, among the gorse and bracken, the results might have been very different.
Expectantly, Barrie, Susan and Michelle turned as Pete walked through the front door of the Fellows’ house. His worried face and the absence of any sheepish children scuppered their brief optimism.
Being a former sergeant, Pete was used to responding to critical incidents and he knew this was fast becoming just that. If he did not get some support now, all his colleagues would be going off duty and into their second pint before he knew it. A quick call to Sergeant Derek Oakenson was all it took. Having succinctly laid out his fears, Pete was assured that the late turn would be kept on duty and the night shift called in early. Derek reminded Pete to start an incident log, a document that would eventually swell to the size of a telephone directory.
Back at Brighton Police Station the cavalry was being rounded up. As well as uniform back-up, DS John Atkins had hoisted DCs Tony Baker and Ken Probert out of the bar. Knowing only that two nine-year-olds were missing, they grabbed a set of car keys from the detective sergeants’ office and made straight for Newick Road. Their own instincts and the subdued buzz of activity around the police station and across the radio told them they were in for a long night.
Unbeknown to them, the duty inspector had already alerted Superintendent Dave Tomlinson, the dapper senior officer responsible for operational policing across Brighton, and he was already back at his desk.
I was that officer some twenty years later so know that it has to be very serious for somebody that senior to come in so soon into an enquiry. Dave assessed it early: the age of the girls, the weather and the failing light all eliminated the possibility they were still out playing. From his point of view, it was an incident that required immediate action.
While Pete and Paul were busy scouring for new clues and Ken and Tony were making their way to Moulsecoomb, Dave was putting a structure around the search. As is often the way, the real workers, the constables and sergeants, have little idea, nor do they care, that they are working to a higher plan.
His calm-as-you-like persona hid a deeper, sensitive soul. He had a threefold plan; first was to interview close family, friends and others who might provide some snippet to suggest where Nicola and Karen had gone. That was where Ken and Tony came in. Second was to search throughout Moulsecoomb, checking any likely place where the children might be. That would soon be Pete and Paul’s brief. The third phase was to search the wider area, including other parks, the seafront and amusements.
As any good commander would, Dave was planning ahead. He would throw everything at this until at least 2 a.m. when, if nothing developed, he would reassess the position and possibly send officers home with orders to be back at first light.
DCs Probert and Baker arrived in refreshing haste and took over the investigation, freeing Pete, Paul and their initially reluctant shift-mates to gather under a railway bridge close to the Fellows’ house for a briefing.
As the mist thickened, made all the spookier by the low sodium lighting piercing its way through the gloom, Sergeant Derek Oakenson and Pete spelled out to the shivering officers their fears for the worst if they did not act quickly. While this was Moulsecoomb and girls went missing all the time, the gathered cops soon shared their concern. Among others, they inspired PC Nigel Smith, another new arrival at Brighton, with whom, a year or so earlier, I had sniffed out drug dealers at Gatwick. Nigel had originally been sceptical but as he listened to Derek and Pete beseeching them to think of their own children out on their own on this cold misty night, the gravity of the situation hit him.
As the superintendent had ordered, the two dozen or so officers searched the streets, gardens, parks and wasteland into the early hours, and many would have stayed longer if there had been the slightest chance of finding the girls. Barrie, Susan and Michelle were given places to look to keep them occupied and to help them feel they were doing something constructive. Given Karen’s love for the seaside, Michelle trudged along the beach calling out her daughter’s name and checking under the rows of upturned fishing boats stretching from the Palace Pier to Brighton Marina.
Back at the station, shift patterns for the following day were turned on their heads allowing Pete and Paul’s section to return early the next morning and focus on the search.
Shortly after 2 a.m., Pete and his team were stood down despite there still being no sign of the girls. As he drove home, he yearned for his fifteen-month-old daughter, Sarah, trying to put himself in the Fellows’ and Hadaways’ shoes.
His heart ached for them.
DC Ken Probert, the first detective deployed, knew he was in for a long night. I know Ken well. He was a detective superintendent around the time I was a DI and, during murder enquiries, his intellect, attention to detail and recall were second to none. Those qualities are born not bred and, even now, his recollection is impressive. He still remembers the frantic comings and goings, the snippets of information that emerged on that night almost by accident, like the fact that Karen had gone fishing a few weeks previously. With Russell Bishop and his teenaged girlfriend Marion Stevenson, it turned out.
Ken was conscious that, with Lee being away, Michelle’s distress was aggravated by her relative isolation. He was becoming more convinced that, despite all the police activity and the searching by neighbours, this was not going to end well. He worked until dawn, gently probing, checking Michelle’s recollections, just in case some deeply buried clue or even suspicion floated to the surface. Alas, his tenacity and resilience – physical and emotional – came to nothing and exhausted he headed home, hoping to wake to the unlikely news that the girls had turned up safe and well.