Nash took the floor after Anna had called everyone together for the briefing. He had an audience of eleven, including DI Benning and DS Prescott, who had just arrived back from Roy Slater’s house in Rotherhithe.
Nash told the team how pleased he was that the Jacob Rossi case had been resolved so quickly.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been here to lend a hand,’ he said. ‘But myself and other senior officers have been coordinating the Met’s response to the riots. It’s been a mammoth struggle, and as you all know the situation on the streets has deteriorated since the video of those officers beating the girl was posted online.’
He went on to describe the current situation and made mention of the disturbances at London Bridge and the battle that was looming between police and rioters on the Embankment close to Scotland Yard.
‘The strain this is putting on manpower is intolerable,’ he said. ‘Thankfully this latest development in the Rossi case means that we can scale back on the investigation so in the days ahead some of you will be reassigned to other duties.’
Nash then said that he was confident the forces of law and order would eventually prevail and normality would return to the capital.
‘We have been here before, notably back in 2011, and it has never taken the city that long to recover,’ he said. ‘But until the streets are safe once again, I implore you all to be careful out there.’
He then handed over to Anna before slipping out of the room.
She could tell that what Nash had said about scaling back the investigation had taken them all by surprise. So the first thing she did was reassure them that they still had plenty of time to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.
Referring to the notes she’d hastily drawn up, she started to work her way through all the points she wanted to raise.
‘I’ll start with the paedo, Neville Quinlan,’ she said. ‘A short time ago I confronted him with the evidence from the house in Dulwich, including the video clip from the hidden camera that recorded him raping the boy. He had no choice but to fess up to being a customer of the trafficking gang to which Craig Sullivan and Lorna Fitzpatrick belong. But he continued to deny any involvement in the Jacob Rossi abduction, and we know now that he was otherwise engaged when it took place.
‘He also said that he did not tip the gang off about the boy’s route from school to home. And he insisted that he didn’t know and had never heard of Roy Slater. Both Sullivan and Fitzpatrick said the same, and I’m convinced now that they’re telling the truth. I can’t in all honesty believe that any of them sent that note to Jacob’s dad. But I can believe it came from Slater. So unless evidence emerges that proves they’re lying we forget them and hand them over to the NCA.’
Next Anna passed on the updates from DI Bolt, saying that the CCTV footage showed that the Slater murder was not linked to Jacob’s kidnapping.
‘He was another victim of mob madness,’ she said. ‘It seems he drove over to Bermondsey on Friday to visit his favourite bookmakers’ about the same time The Falconer’s Arms pub was hit by the petrol bomb. So Slater would not have been aware that the pub was on fire. We’ll therefore never know if he would have attempted to rescue the boy if he’d been alerted.’
Anna explained that Slater’s Renault car would be examined and that forensics would search inside it for traces of Jacob’s DNA.
‘For now the assumption has to be that he snatched Jacob by himself,’ she said. ‘He was probably waiting in his car for the lad to walk past him last Monday, then grabbed him and shoved him in the boot before taking him to the pub cellar. His motive is less clear. Either he was out to get revenge on Jacob’s dad for screwing his wife. Or he was planning to extract a ransom payment to sort out whatever gambling debts he’d racked up. It could very well have been both.’
She invited detectives Benning and Prescott to talk to the team about the visit to Slater’s house in Rotherhithe.
It was Benning who stood up and pointed to a cardboard box on the desk in front of him.
‘We brought back most of his small stuff and paperwork,’ he said. ‘His laptop and clothes, along with Jacob’s mobile phone and wallet, are with forensics.’
‘What about the rucksack that Jacob had with him when he vanished?’ Anna said. ‘Was that in the house?’
Benning shook his head. ‘Definitely not. We searched every room and the loft as well. It was obvious to us that he was a man of few possessions and my guess is he sold most of what he had to fund his gambling addiction. There are a couple of his bank statements in the box and they show a big overdraft in his current account.’
Benning pointed out that they didn’t come across anything to suggest that Jacob had ever been in the house, and there were no photographs or newspaper clippings of him or his father.
Before Benning sat down, Anna asked him if he had heard back from the Australian embassy about Mark Rossi’s stepbrother, Joseph Walsh.
‘Not yet, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I’ll call them again after the meeting.’
‘Great. It’s one of the loose ends I want tied up. Tomorrow we’ll try to pull everything else together and go tell the parents. The boss is also keen to stage a press conference so before then we need to know everything there is to know about Roy Slater.’
Anna was then told that two officers would be on duty in the ops room overnight and she encouraged everyone else to go home to bed. She had her own notes to type up but decided to leave them until tomorrow.
As she was collecting her coat and bag from her office, DI Benning popped in. Seeing him up close gave her a bit of a shock. He looked really rough. His eyes were sunken and shadowed and his face was a ghostly pallor.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ she asked him.
‘I’m just tired and gutted,’ he said. ‘It’s all so fucking sad. To think that poor Jacob probably died in that hellhole of a cellar because his father played around with another man’s wife.’
Anna nodded glumly. ‘I know what you mean. And I dread the thought that Jacob’s mum will now learn about it. Breaking the news about Slater tomorrow won’t be easy.’
‘That’s why I’d like to be there with you, ma’am,’ Benning said. ‘Would that be possible? You see, I still feel that I let them down. I should have found their son before he died and I didn’t. I failed.’
‘I was intending to take you with me anyway,’ she said. ‘It will probably have to be in the morning first thing. Do you want me to pick you up?’
‘No, I can either make my own way there or meet you here. Just let me know what time.’
‘I will. Now try to get some rest, Detective. You look as though you really need it.’
When he was gone, Anna put on her coat, turned off her office light and headed for the car park. On the way she called Chloe to let her know that she would soon be picking her up from the hospital.