CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Day Four

Julie was staring at her computer screen when Swift arrived in the office. She had uploaded and enlarged the little piece of city map from Rosa’s bag, and was poring over the dense housing and unusually straight roads.

‘Any joy with Mark Robinson, Sir? Did he come up with anything else?’

Swift walked over to her desk and glanced at the screen. ‘No, nothing new, and I have to admit he seems pretty genuine to be honest with you. He said he’d made sure none of the kids had taken anything or found anything up there and he’s sure only Owen saw the body.’ He leaned further towards the screen and perched his glasses on his forehead. ‘Well there’s not much to go on there, is there?’

Julie shook her head. ‘I can’t believe there’s so little on this map. There are five places of worship, one with a tower and one with a spire, minaret or dome, according to Ordnance Survey. Then there are six schools, two colleges, a library, a station and an Ice Dome, all within about a mile and a quarter.’ She grimaced. ‘But there are no road numbers, no rivers and nothing else that would be blindingly obvious.’

Swift let his glasses drop back into position. ‘Even the railway station is anonymous.’ He stood up and frowned. ‘That bit to the west of the caravan site, the very top left-hand corner. Could that be beach?’

Julie clicked on the tiny pale orange triangle where Swift had been pointing and enlarged it. ‘I think you could be right, Sir. So if that’s beach, then this oblong job here could be part of a pier?’

‘So that’s narrowed it down then, Julie. All you need to find is a seaside town with a pier and well-educated, God-fearing ice-skaters.’

‘Right, Sir. I’ll get onto seaside Ice Domes then.’

Rhys, Goronwy and Morgan burst into the room, discussing a disputed high tackle in last night’s rugby match, although Julie thought this might not have been the only explanation for Rhys grabbing Morgan round the neck and attempting to drop him to the floor. There were still occasions when she would like to attempt that move on him herself. The three of them sauntered over to the board, still shoving each other like schoolboys. Julie pinned an enlarged copy of the map onto the board and then reached under her desk and retrieved a large carrier bag. ‘This might be altogether more enlightening, Sir.’ She removed the bag and handed Mick’s drawing of the stranger to Swift.

‘Someone’s talented then. You haven’t done this, have you?’

‘Not in a million years. I got thrown out of art lessons at school. I was so bad, the teacher thought I was taking the mickey,’ Julie laughed. ‘It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I got to do chemistry instead.’

‘The detail on this is absolutely stunning,’ Swift said. ‘Look at the depth in that face.’ He held it at arm’s length. ‘That’s impressive, that is. Who is he?’

‘It turns out the boys at the farm found a waif and stray up in the hills on the farm’s land and took pity on him. They let him stay for a couple of nights in one of the cottages. He said he was looking for a woman.’ Goronwy chuckled, which earned him a look from Swift. Julie dug her notebook out of her bag and flicked through the pages. ‘They said, “a woman had stolen his sister’s son and he had come to find him”. And this is the best bit, Sir, they thought he knew where they both were.’

‘That’s excellent, Julie. Well done. And where were they?’

‘Ah, well, that’s the bit they didn’t know.’

Morgan Evans tutted loudly. ‘Well that’s no use to anyone is it?’

Julie turned to glare at him, but Swift ignored him ‘So why didn’t Mrs Wilkinson tell us this?’

‘I think they’re all just a bit terrified of Major Wilkinson, to be honest. The lads didn’t want him to know that they’d let the man stay, or that Mrs Wilkinson knew about it.’

Swift nodded. ‘Fair enough, but let’s make sure we keep an eye on them over there shall we? Now, Morgan, what have you got for us?’

‘There’s just a bit more, Sir.’ Julie pulled a smaller drawing from the bag. ‘It’s the same rose.’ She held up Mick’s drawing of the tattoo on the man’s wrist next to the photograph of Rosa’s tattoo. ‘See?’

‘But that’s not conclusive, is it?’ Morgan shook his head. ‘A rose is just a rose. It doesn’t mean to say they were done by the same person. I think we’re adding two and two and coming up with nine here, Sir.’

‘Oh come on.’ Julie rolled her eyes at Morgan Evans. ‘There’s more than a nod to an Irish connection here, with the Quigley thing and Rosa’s shamrock tattoo. So maybe this guy, Ardal, is Rosa’s brother and just maybe she was down here trying to find her son.’

‘Everything is possible,’ Swift said. ‘Let’s remember to keep an open mind shall we? It’s not as though we’re falling over ourselves with clues is it, Morgan? Now, how did you get on with the market in Builth yesterday? Does anybody know anything else we didn’t already know?’ Swift wandered over to join Julie at the board.

Morgan Evans shook his head. ‘No, nothing interesting. One or two of the lads work a few of the markets, but they said they’d not heard anything from Builth or from anywhere else either.’

‘Rhys, Goronwy, anything to report?’ Swift asked.

‘I’m expecting a call back now, this morning,’ Rhys said. ‘We think we might have got somewhere with dental records on the victim.’ He dropped his bag on his chair and joined the others. ‘She had terrible teeth, which made it pretty conclusive apparently. They phoned late last night. She is Rosa, but her surname isn’t Quigley, it’s Harding.’

‘So where is she from?’ Julie asked.

‘Well, up until five years ago she was living in a place called Walton-le-Dale.’

‘That’s a posh part of Preston,’ Goronwy said. ‘We’ve contacted social services and the local GPs to see if she’s known to them. Turns out she was known to social services, but only for serial truanting from school. She fell off their radar at the same time the GP last saw her. After that we’ve nothing.’

‘Has someone contacted her last known address?’ Swift asked.

‘Not yet, Sir, we wondered if you might want the local police to visit, just in case it’s her parents still living there. They wouldn’t know what’s happened to her yet, would they?’

‘Good point, Goronwy.’ Swift blew out a breath. ‘I wonder if a little trip up to Preston might be an idea.’

‘I could do that, Sir.’ Morgan Evans pushed past the others to stand by Swift.

‘How old would that make her now, Goronwy?’ Swift asked. ‘When was the last time social services had any contact with her?’

‘She was sixteen.’ Goronwy checked his notes. ‘After that she seems to have got herself sorted out. But these reports mean that we now know she was twenty-three when she died. She did finish school, and without any further problems, according to social services. The woman I spoke to said she’d just got in with a rough crowd and she picked up a couple of warnings, but she was soon back on the straight and narrow. As far as she was concerned, Rosa was never a huge problem. She even did her A Levels and had a place at university.’

‘So where did she go to uni?’ Julie asked.

‘She didn’t. She was supposed to be going to Edinburgh to study veterinary science, according to the school, but she never showed up for registration.’

Swift sighed. ‘We’re going to have to talk to the parents then. She hasn’t come up anywhere else on the radar? No hospital visits, A&E, benefits?’

‘We only found out her real name late yesterday, Sir. We’ll get onto that now, this morning.’ Rhys headed back to his desk and Goronwy followed.

‘We now know she was a Type 1 diabetic too,’ Julie said.

Swift let the air escape from his mouth. ‘She didn’t have much going for her at all, did she, poor dab.’ He stared at the board. ‘OK, let’s consolidate what we’ve got and we’ll get together at three o’clock. Morgan, I’d like you to concentrate on this map. See if you can work out where it is and if you can get an address for the house circled here,’ Swift pointed at Julie’s map. Julie frowned but Swift handed her Mick’s drawing of the blond man. ‘And you can get this copied and circulated and see if you can work out who he is, Sergeant.’

‘That won’t be tricky, hardly at all, Sir.’

Julie collected the copies of the drawing of the missing man and mused, where on earth she should start? Goronwy had confirmed from social service reports and dental records that Rosa’s former name was Harding and that there was no record of a Rosa Harding of the right sort of age having been married in the UK.

‘Had she always been known as Rosa, do we know?’ She stood by Goronwy’s desk as he flicked through screens.

‘Rosa was her middle name, apparently. According to the dental records she was Caroline Rosa Harding. And there’s no record of a marriage in that name either.’

‘So she dropped the Caroline.’ Julie grimaced at the state of the dental X-ray on the screen. ‘I suppose that would make her a bit harder to trace if her parents were looking for her?’

‘So why did she run?’ Julie asked.

Goronwy shrugged. ‘Why does anyone do a runner?’

‘Parent trouble?’ Rhys grinned. ‘I sometimes felt like doing a runner when my dad got going.’

‘Your dad’s really sound, soft lad. And you wouldn’t have gone anywhere, not really. Your mum looked after you far too well for that.’

‘Why else would you just disappear?’ Julie tapped her biro on her teeth and Rhys cringed, as he always did. ‘If I’d had a place at uni to study veterinary science nothing would have stopped me from going.’

‘Maybe she was worried about going to university?’ Rhys said. ‘It’s not easy for some kids to leave home, is it?’

‘Easier to go to uni than to just run away though, surely?’ Julie said. ‘Unless…’

‘Go on, Sarge.’ Goronwy looked up at her.

‘Well we know she had a baby, don’t we? Kay Greenhalgh said she couldn’t be sure when that was, but what if she was pregnant when she left school or soon after and by the time she was due to go to Edinburgh three months later…’

‘She couldn’t hide it any longer.’ Rhys rolled his eyes. ‘Maybe her parents didn’t even know anything about the baby.’ He nodded towards Morgan Evans who was bent over the fragment of map across the room and lowered his voice. ‘Do you think the boss will send Morgan to see her parents?’

Julie shrugged. ‘I think if there’s a possibility that we may be right about her identity and provided we can find her parents, then maybe Lancashire Constabulary might be a better bet. The signet ring and the initials fit, but now we’ve got final confirmation from Kay Greenhalgh and the appalling teeth and your research that it is Rosa, or Caroline, then the parents will need local support.’

‘Sarge.’ Morgan Evans shouted across the office. ‘Do they have trams in Blackpool?’ When she got to his desk he was pointing at the very edge of the map at a faint black line with tiny cross-markings running between what they’d decided was a pier and the Ice Dome.

‘They do, Morgan.’ How the hell had she missed that? ‘And if that is Blackpool, then the oval patch of sand with a star on it will be the Sandcastle and the scribbly mess just below the Ice Dome isn’t an industrial estate. That must be the Pleasure Beach.’ She shook her head. ‘Stupid.’

‘Call yourself a northerner, Sarge, fancy not spotting the tram track.’ Morgan Evans laughed. ‘It had to be somewhere on a west-facing coast with the beach over there didn’t it?’ He pointed to the pier. ‘So how come you know all the sights of Blackpool then?’

Julie blushed ‘It’s not that far from Manchester you know.’ She smiled, remembering girlie nights out, the Golden Mile, the cheesy illuminations and heart-stopping rides at the Pleasure Beach. ‘I may have been for the odd visit.’

‘So where’s this house, then?’

‘I’ve absolutely no idea, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find out, should it?’

Morgan laughed. ‘So I finally get to do some detecting, do I?’

Julie bit back a retort, which even by her standards of sarcasm would have seemed unkind.

To be fair to him, he had probably reacted in exactly the same way she would have done, if she’d failed her Sergeants’ Exam, twice, and some foreigner from the big city had been foisted on her.

‘Give me a minute,’ she said, heading for Swift’s office. Two minutes later she was back. ‘Come on,’ she said, handing him the pile of posters. ‘Hand that over to Rhys. He can bung it into Google Street Map and have a virtual wander round the streets of Blackpool. Let’s go and see if we can work out who this guy is and what he’s been up to.’