Anna learned a good deal more about DI Joe Benning on the drive back to Wandsworth. And the more she learned, the more sympathy she felt for the man. It seemed that life had been terribly cruel to him.
He got married in his late twenties and his wife gave birth to a daughter, but she was tragically killed when she was hit by a car as she ran into the road at the tender age of six. Three years later his wife left him for another man and they divorced. And then, three months ago, he was diagnosed with early onset vascular dementia, aged just forty-six.
‘It was the last thing I expected to be told,’ he said. ‘I went to the doctor because I started forgetting things, and I just didn’t feel myself. They put it down to stress at first, but eventually I had an MRI scan, which showed that not enough oxygen was getting to the top of my brain, which is a tell-tale sign of the condition. But they told me it can take years to have a serious impact on my life and my work.
‘Fortunately, the force has been incredibly understanding and I’m being monitored by a specialist, even though the symptoms haven’t progressed and most days it doesn’t feel like there’s anything wrong with me. However, on her advice it’s been agreed that I’ll soon step back from frontline investigative work and take a desk job. That’s why I was so determined to find Jacob Rossi alive. I didn’t want what might possibly be my last case to end in disaster. But now …’
Anna hadn’t expected him to be so forthcoming, but she was glad he had been. It didn’t mean she would make allowances, but she would keep a close eye on his performance. And she’d be sure not to overload him with work. After all, the riots meant that her team was seriously depleted, and she was confident that even a detective who was no longer at the top of his game would still be able to make a useful contribution.
*
When she got back to the office she checked her phone to see if Tom had responded to the text she had sent earlier. But he hadn’t, and since it was well after midnight, she saw no point in ringing him. He would have let her know if there was a problem.
She was hoping that Chloe would appreciate what he’d done by taking her to his flat. With luck it might even change her daughter’s opinion of him. She really hoped so because she loved both of them, and in the not too distant future she wanted them to be a family.
DI Walker had been holding the fort and told Anna that the team were still working flat out. However, the riots were causing problems at every turn.
‘I sent DC Niven with a uniform to Roy Slater’s home in Rotherhithe,’ Walker said. ‘But they ran into a disturbance while driving through Bermondsey. They were forced to take a detour along a road littered with broken glass and got a puncture. They’re trying to fix it, but if they can’t we’ll have to send someone along who can do it for them.’
Other difficulties they were having included getting people to respond to phone calls and collecting CCTV footage.
‘Give me twenty minutes or so to get my thoughts in order and we’ll have another briefing,’ Anna said. ‘I want to make sure we’re in a position to steam ahead when daylight comes. Hopefully things will settle down a bit then and we can make more progress.’
Benning said he wanted to make some calls so Anna told him to take his pick of all the empty desks. She also gave him directions to the vending machines and toilets.
Then she went to her office, switched on the telly, and settled down to pore over her notes.
But they didn’t amount to much, and the reason Jacob Rossi was abducted and chained up in a pub cellar remained a mystery. It did not appear as though he’d been sexually abused, although they wouldn’t know for certain until they’d heard back from Gayle Western.
So why was he held captive for so long? Was the kidnapper intending to demand a ransom at some point? Or was the aim simply to cause the family, especially his father, a lot of pain and anguish?
There were four potential suspects, but the frontrunner at this stage had to be Neville Quinlan. He was a convicted paedophile who claimed he was out walking when Jacob went missing. And he claimed not to remember where he’d walked. Anna found that hard to believe because he struck her as someone who was careful about his movements.
Three days prior to the boy going missing, he’d parked his car opposite the entrance to Jacob’s school and his unconvincing excuse was that he had stopped driving because he was feeling too unwell to carry on. Another lie, Anna reckoned, but one that would be even more difficult to disprove. It didn’t mean they wouldn’t try, though.
She felt that with their limited resources Quinlan was the one they needed to focus on. Gavin Pope was in the frame, of course, and they needed to find out if he had visited The Falconer’s Arms since Monday while his wife was at work. Was he the person who had dropped by at least once with food and drink?
Of course, it was also possible that Pope or Quinlan had an accomplice who visited Jacob. If so then it struck Anna that it could be just about anyone.
It was too early for Anna to form an opinion of Roy Slater. But if what Pope and his wife had said was true then Slater might conceivably have decided to seek revenge against the man who effectively wrecked his marriage and caused him to have a breakdown.
And then finally there was Michelle Gerrard, the woman who’d been posting vicious comments online about Jacob’s dad. According to Walker, the techies were still trying to find an address for her. Her social media accounts contained hardly any details so it was proving difficult.
They needed to establish whether there was a connection between her and Rossi. Or was she just a nutter with nothing better to do than offend celebrities she had never met?
It occurred to Anna that the worst-case scenario would be that there was no link at all between the kidnapper and the Rossi family. That Jacob was taken by a complete stranger. Someone who planned it well in advance or else seized an opportunity. It would make their job more difficult, especially in the absence of solid forensic evidence and incriminating CCTV footage.
She rubbed at her eyes, which were dry and gritty. She had an uncomfortable feeling that this investigation was going to be one of the most difficult she had ever taken on.
The news coverage on the TV served only to fuel her pessimism. The riots had now claimed at least four lives, and it was believed that the bodies of more victims were waiting to be recovered from wrecked buildings and fires that were still raging.
There was also startling footage from a helicopter of a blaze that was tearing through buildings close to Vauxhall tube station. The newsreader revealed that it was started by a firebomb thrown through the window of a gift shop. This was known because one of the people who had witnessed it had just minutes ago posted a clip of the incident online from his or her mobile phone. It ran for only five seconds, but you could clearly see the front of the shop as a hooded youth hurled a blazing bottle at it.
The coverage then switched to the live scene outside Buckingham Palace where police had formed a line to stop rioters throwing objects over the railings into the grounds.
‘The number of violent incidents outside London has also increased dramatically tonight,’ the newsreader said over more footage of clashes between youths and police. ‘This was the scene in the centre of Manchester an hour ago. It’s not on the scale of London but it is putting an enormous strain on the city’s emergency services. Reports are also coming in of disturbances elsewhere, including Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford.’
The roundup ended with a review of the newspaper front pages, which perfectly summed up the dire situation facing the country.
THE ANARCHY SPREADS
DESCENT INTO HELL
RULE OF THE MOB
THE BATTLE FOR LONDON
FLAMING MORONS
THUGS AND THIEVES TAKE OVER THE STREETS
Anna sat back in her chair as the blood hummed in her ears. She experienced a sudden urge to get in her car and drive over to Tom’s flat so that she could put a protective arm around her daughter and tell her yet again how much she loved her.
The motherly instinct had resurfaced the moment Chloe had come back into her life. And it was stronger now than ever because it was obvious that at this moment in time nobody in London was safe.