Lucy arrived at Robber’s Row before seven o’clock on Monday morning, hoping to get ahead of herself before the day commenced. The CID office, or DO as it was colloquially called, was not empty. Night Crime were still at their desks, working bleary-eyed through the paperwork accrued during the previous shift, but, rather to Lucy’s surprise, Stan Beardmore was in too. She’d no sooner dumped her laptop on her desk than he stuck his head out of his office. ‘Lucy, can you step in here for a minute, please?’
Thinking that this felt vaguely ominous, as she rarely saw the DI before nine, she wandered in, only to find another person waiting for her too.
Detective Superintendent Priya Nehwal was a living legend in Greater Manchester Police circles. An Indian woman now in her mid-fifties, she was short, squat and tubby, and always wore her long grey tresses in a chunky pony tail. She was famously scruffy, almost never opting for skirts or trouser-suits if she could find jeans, training shoes, a baggy, coffee-stained sweatshirt and a well-worn anorak. But she’d long been regarded as an ace thief-taker, whose meteoric rise through the male-dominated ranks of CID had been earned the hard way rather than conferred upon her through any sort of positive discrimination. She was admired widely, but feared too, because, as one of the senior investigating officers in the Serious Crimes Division, she demanded hard, conscientious work and would crack the whip like a devil if she didn’t get it.
‘Morning, ma’am,’ Lucy said.
‘Sit down, Lucy,’ Nehwal replied, not bothering with niceties. They’d worked together before, and they’d worked well – but the super didn’t really do friendship.
Lucy took a chair in the corner, while Beardmore settled back behind his desk. Nehwal, who was perched on the edge of it, her feet not reaching the floor, didn’t move.
‘I understand you’ve been working on an abduction case?’ she said.
Lucy shrugged. ‘A possible abduction case.’
Nehwal picked up some of the preliminary paperwork Lucy had forwarded to Beardmore the previous day. ‘This pensioner … Harry Hopkins?’
‘That’s right,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s vanished and there’s some evidence that he was taken by force. Possibly from the back gate of his house.’
Nehwal read the report again, her expression inscrutable. ‘How’re you getting on with it?’
‘No real progress yet, I’m sorry to say. I’m working on a couple of theories.’
Nehwal continued to check details. For the first time, Lucy noticed the three tea-stained mugs on Beardmore’s desk. His tie was loose and his shirt collar open. He looked sallow-cheeked and had clearly been up and on duty for quite some time. Whatever the reason for that, at some point during the night Serious Crimes had also become involved.
‘We’ve had no contact from anyone claiming to be the kidnapper?’ Nehwal asked.
‘No, ma’am.’
‘You’ve checked that with the local newspapers, online news sites, and the like?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because, you see –’ the super laid the paperwork down ‘– we may have another one.’
Lucy was surprised. ‘Another abduction?’
‘Yes. And it’s not a pensioner this time. It’s a thirty-year-old fitness fanatic called Lorna Cunningham, who dropped out of sight late on Saturday night.’
‘A fitness fanatic?’ Lucy couldn’t help but frown. ‘That victimology would be very different.’
‘Agreed. I said we may have another one. The jury’s still out.’ Nehwal eyed her. ‘You think Hopkins may have been taken away in a vehicle … and that’s because there was fresh mud splashed all over his back gate?’
‘Well …’ Lucy mused. ‘The mud could have happened any time during the second half of the Tuesday in question. It rained that afternoon, creating puddles. Any car could have driven past and caused it, but Hopkins’s daughter said he was a fastidious, house-proud man, and the interior of the property was like a new pin, which kind of backs that up. She reckons it’s not the kind of thing he’d have left unattended to.’
‘Couldn’t it just be that he hadn’t noticed some innocent person had made a mess of his back gate?’ Beardmore asked.
‘Could be that,’ Lucy said. ‘But then we have the neighbours, the Rodwells. Around half-ten that night they thought they heard the sound of a vehicle speeding off along the back alley, which would have been quite unusual. It’s a fairly narrow passage, and they don’t get vehicles along there very often.’
‘But no one saw anything?’ Nehwal asked.
‘No one we’ve spoken to yet.’
‘Any CCTV in the area?’
‘Again, nothing yet, ma’am. I’ve got Tessa Payne, one of our acting DCs, trawling through footage, but I’m not hopeful. Hollinbrook’s a quiet residential district. I mean, there’s a Neighbourhood Watch thing going and there are some cameras, but so far zilch. If the abductor came in a vehicle – like, say a van – that kind of suggests that he or they are organised. And if they’re organised, they might have scoped out the cameras first, and taken pains to avoid them.’
‘The new one,’ Nehwal said, ‘the Lorna Cunningham incident. That one occurred about eight miles from Hollinbrook, on the canal towpath in central Crowley.’
Lucy was impressed they were able to be so specific so quickly. ‘We know this for sure?’
‘Oh yes.’ Nehwal handed Lucy some paperwork of her own: it was a print-out containing a colour photograph of a woman somewhere in her late twenties, clearly taken at a sports meeting, as she was red-faced and wore a sweaty vest with a number pinned on the front. Her longish, copper-red hair flew as she vaulted over a large, timber hurdle. ‘As I say, she’s a fitness fanatic. She goes for a run every night at around 9.45, usually following the same route, which takes her along the Bridgewater Canal.’
‘And she was definitely attacked on the towpath?’
‘We’re fairly certain. Her boyfriend, Alex Calderwood, reported her missing at around ten last night. Because her exercise gear was missing from the wardrobe and the wash-basket, the officers attending accompanied him along the running route she normally took.’ Nehwal slid from the desk and crossed the office to a street-map of Crowley on the wall. She pointed to a specific section of the blue ribbon that marked the canal. ‘They found her Fitbit here. It was damaged, it had literally snapped off her wrist, so there’d obviously been a struggle. Before you ask, the Fitbit is already down at the lab, priority request.’
‘She went missing on Saturday, and her boyfriend only reported it late on Sunday night?’ Lucy said.
‘Well spotted,’ Nehwal replied. ‘However, he was in Wales all weekend, participating in a charity decathlon. We’ve already checked that out, and it’s kosher. He claims that he’d had no contact from Lorna from Saturday evening onwards. He didn’t think that particularly strange until he got home late yesterday, found that she wasn’t there, rang around and learned from her friend Stella that she hadn’t turned up for a Saturday-night sleepover with the girls that she’d been planning.’
‘So why didn’t the girls report it?’ Lucy asked. ‘On Saturday, I mean?’
‘Sounds like it was only half an arrangement,’ Beardmore said. ‘Lorna had told them she might go around after her evening run, but not to expect her because she could be too tired. So they didn’t think it strange when she failed to show.’
‘She could have gone for a run on the Sunday and been attacked then,’ Lucy said.
‘She doesn’t run on Sundays, apparently. It’s her only day off.’
‘Okay … so she’s been gone one day and two nights.’ Lucy pondered. ‘Well, if she had her mobile with her, we can track her that way.’
‘Apparently, she never takes her mobile when she goes running,’ Nehwal replied. ‘Because if she gets a work call, she’d have to deal with it, and that would disrupt her exercise regime.’
‘More relevant,’ Beardmore put in, ‘a row of derelict garages backs onto the canal towpath at the point where the Fitbit was found. When the scene was examined earlier this morning, the rotted wooden panelling at the back of one of them had been smashed through.’
‘Smashed through from the inside?’ Lucy said.
He nodded.
‘And are we sure that happened on Saturday night, and not some time in the past?’
‘It looks recent,’ Nehwal said. ‘More importantly, the garage itself had a door at the front, which could be opened and closed, but had no lock on it. We’re thinking that would have been a good place to conceal a vehicle.’
Lucy stood up and moved to the map. Up close, she could see that someone had already marked the point of attack on the canalside with red biro.
‘Perfect place for an ambush,’ she said, thinking aloud.
‘Could be,’ Nehwal agreed. ‘If Cunningham used this route regularly, which she apparently did, someone could have observed her, probably over several nights, and then specifically chosen this spot … because they needed a vehicle to make it happen.’
Lucy nodded. ‘The garage is part of a row, but all they had to do was go through the flimsy back wall to grab her. No one would have seen anything. Have we had dogs at the scene?’
‘Of course. But they could only follow Cunningham’s trail as far as the garage interior, which is further evidence.’
‘We’re not saying the cases are definitely connected,’ Beardmore put in. ‘But there is a similarity.’
Again, Lucy thought aloud. ‘I suppose if your gig is abducting people in public, the most important thing, once you’ve overpowered them, is to get them out of sight as quickly as possible.’ She glanced round. ‘And a van is the obvious means by which to do that.’
‘But even in this Harry Hopkins case, that would suggest there was more than one assailant,’ Nehwal said. ‘It’s not that easy getting someone into a vehicle if they don’t want to go. It would certainly have required more than one in Lorna Cunningham’s case.’
Lucy nodded again. This thing was getting uglier by the minute.
‘Something on your mind, Lucy?’ Beardmore asked.
‘It may be nothing,’ she said. ‘But … well, we may not have two abductions, we may have three. In fact, we may have more than that.’
The two senior detectives remained blank-faced.
‘I think you’d better explain,’ Nehwal said.
‘The other day, my attention was drawn to the fact that several homeless people have disappeared in recent weeks,’ Lucy said.
Nehwal frowned. ‘Under what circumstances?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘No clue as yet, ma’am. One day they were around, the next they weren’t. No one seems to know any more about it than that.’
‘Who reported them missing? Their families?’
‘No one. Not officially. It’s mainly Skid Row gossip.’
‘Lucy, homeless people are often transient,’ Beardmore said, shrugging. ‘And they’re usually in poor health. Sometimes they just crawl away and die, and no one even notices. I know that’s awful, but we shouldn’t let it muddy the waters of real investigations.’
‘Stan, one of them was a chap called Fred Holborn,’ Lucy said. ‘And about a week and a half ago, he may well have been abducted by the occupants of a dark-blue transit van.’
Beardmore looked surprised. ‘I haven’t heard about this.’
‘Again, it’s based on unreliable intel,’ Lucy explained. ‘The only witness is a drug-abusing part-time prostitute called Sister Cassiopeia.’
‘Sister Cassiopeia?’ Nehwal said.
‘She was a nun, ma’am, but she got kicked out. She still wears the habit, though.’
‘A druggie sex worker who dresses as a nun …’
‘She’s homeless too,’ Lucy said, ‘so when you get close to her it’s all a bit scuzzy.’
‘A scuzzy druggie sex worker who dresses like a nun.’ Nehwal glanced at Beardmore. ‘Be a laugh trying to get a jury to take her seriously.’
‘What happened?’ Beardmore asked sternly, clearly thinking that he should have been copied in on this by now.
Lucy told them everything Sister Cassie had told her, adding that sometimes it was difficult separating fact from fantasy with such a flaky character, and that she’d been mulling over its potential value as evidence.
‘So, she didn’t actually see anyone grab this guy Holborn?’ Nehwal said.
‘No,’ Lucy admitted.
‘Which would make her testimony next to completely useless.’
‘That’s another reason why I haven’t reported it yet. But, ma’am, there’s something else.’
‘Go on …’
‘Sister Cassie said this was a dark-blue transit van.’
‘And?’
Lucy blushed a little. ‘There’s been a kind of urban myth in Crowley in recent months … that a black van’s been prowling the neighbourhoods at night, looking to snatch pets.’
‘Pets?’
‘Dogs, for the most part.’
Beardmore frowned. ‘I thought you’d wrapped up the dog-fighting enquiry?’
‘We have,’ Lucy said. ‘At least, we’ve charged everyone involved. But there was a whole list of missing dogs given to us, twenty-six in total … and the dog-fighting enquiry hardly accounted for any of them, including a dyed-pink Toy Poodle, which, when it disappeared from its owner’s garden in Cotely Barn, was wearing a gem-studded collar worth two grand – that one’s still missing.’
Nehwal folded her arms. ‘And I thought I was talking tenuous when I tried to link Harry Hopkins to Lorna Cunningham.’
‘I know this is a wild shot, ma’am,’ Lucy said. ‘But initially, I assumed that all the dog-nappings would be connected to this dog-fighting ring … you know, snatched from their owners for use as bait dogs. But most of the dogs we recovered from the dog-fighting farm, even the ones that were dead, had either been bought by the organisers or, in one or two cases, stolen. But as I say, there were lots of others reported missing that just weren’t there. And this black van that’s supposedly been used to snatch them … that wasn’t there either.’
Beardmore looked bemused. ‘You’re saying you think there’ve been two different parties nabbing dogs in Crowley? You’ve now shut one of them down, and the other one, which is still at large, has moved on to nabbing humans?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘I know it seems daft. But it’s the black van factor.’
‘Your van is supposed to be dark-blue.’
‘It could’ve been resprayed since. Plus, a lot of these dog-nappings were allegedly at night. Black, dark-blue … easy mistake to make.’
‘Lucy, there are dark-coloured vans everywhere,’ Nehwal said.
‘I know, ma’am, I know.’
‘But some gut instinct is telling you these cases are connected?’
‘It’s suggesting they might be. Look … one week you’re on the prowl, looking for dogs – God alone knows for what reason – and a week later, you’ve upped your game, and you’re now looking for humans. I know it’s a massive leap. But there is a kind of pattern emerging. The missing dogs were mostly reported during early summer, May, June and July. We’ve had next to none since the beginning of August – except for Milly, Harry Hopkins’s dog, but she probably wasn’t the main target.’
‘And let me guess,’ Nehwal said, ‘it’s during August when these disappearances of homeless people seemed to start occurring.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Quite a coincidence, eh? It’s not just that, though, ma’am. It’s the similar nature of the disappearances. It’s the way the victims are there one minute and gone the next. I mean, according to reports, quite a few of these dogs were taken from their own front or back gardens. Their owners had let them out before bedtime, and left the door open, expecting them to come back in when they’d done their duty. The dogs didn’t come back in, the owners went to look – the dogs had gone without trace. From their own gardens. Isn’t that a little bit similar to Harry Hopkins?’
Neither of the two supervisors replied.
‘And it suggests planning,’ Lucy added. ‘Stan, this wasn’t just opportunism. These were incidents where someone had targeted families who owned dogs and had waited for their moment to strike. To a degree, it’s the same with these missing persons.’ She looked at Nehwal. ‘And your conviction, ma’am, that there would need to be more than one assailant ties in with this very neatly. Even if your target’s homeless, drunk, a drug-addict, whatever … you can’t just drive up to him in the street and snatch him. You have to watch him, follow him, wait till he’s most vulnerable.’
Lucy paused. Nehwal glanced at Beardmore. Neither of them seemed instantly dismissive, but she knew what they were thinking.
Why?
Grabbing a shed-load of pet dogs to use them as bait in fighting pits, while reprehensible, was at least logical. But what other reason could there be for such abductions? And why suddenly extend that to grabbing human beings? What was the pay-off in either case?
But then, second-guessing the motives of violent criminals was often a fruitless quest. In all her police career to date, Lucy had never known an investigator’s hypothesis regarding a crime be dismissed simply because the motivation behind it seemed unfathomable.
Psychopaths tended to have motivations entirely of their own.
‘You really consider this a viable lead?’ Nehwal said, watching Lucy carefully.
‘Ma’am … I’m not trying to pretend it’s anything other than a hunch at present, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it warrants further investigation.’
The detective superintendent nodded slowly. ‘Well, it’s your bed, so you’ll be the one who has to lie in it.’
Lucy was puzzled. ‘Ma’am?’
‘Me and Priya have been chatting this morning,’ Beardmore said. ‘We’re genuinely concerned by this case – that’s the Hopkins and Cunningham abductions, not the missing dogs. We think it needs some, shall we say, special attention.’
‘Okay …’ Lucy said.
‘So what we propose is to set up a small special-investigation unit dedicated to this incident. Only small, mind. A kind of miniature taskforce … to work solely on these two possible abductions, and either establish beyond any doubt that they’re unconnected, in which case we’re back as we were, or to establish that they are – at which point we kick it up the food chain for Serious Crimes’ full and undivided attention.’ He sat back. ‘Do you want to take point?’
Lucy nodded immediately. ‘Yeah … thanks.’
‘Good God, don’t thank us, Lucy.’ Nehwal spoke almost pityingly. ‘It’s got all the makings of a classic ball-acher.’