Chapter 1

Incident Room - The City

The police incident room was full but it was silent. It was as though someone has said something that there was no response to. It was a busy incident room and yet it was like just for a few seconds time had been suspended. Desks were strewn with paperwork - white A4 sheets with lists and paragraphs of information. And then there were scraps of paper with names and telephone numbers. Up front there was a white board up - and that white board contained a very rough, very scruffy and scribbled looking flow type chart. This room with twenty odd officers in, some uniformed but most in plain clothes looked like chaos but for some reason there was this knowledge, or this expectation that it was organised chaos. And yet at the same time there was this silence. Male and female officers were mostly seated - a couple stood at the back of the room and all focus was to the front of this room. Blinds were closed cutting off the bright sunlight from outside. Back in the day there would have been a cloud of cigarette smoke creating a filter through which one would have watched and listened. But that would have been that, back in the day.

“This last girl was sixteen - just sixteen. She’s just vanished off the face of the earth. It’s like she doesn’t exist anymore. It was like this happy go lucky girl was there one minute and gone the next.” The voice was of a plain clothes woman officer, DCI Pepper Reed. Her voice was cigarette husky and there was this hardness about that voice that told that maybe she had been there, done that and got the T-shirt. Except this time there was the feeling that it was different. That hardness to her voice was tinged with something that was more than concern. It could have been that there was fear in there somewhere. As though maybe she recognised that this was something that she had not come across before. Something that niggled at the back off her mind and wouldn’t let go. This was different to anything she had ever come across before and because there was that unknowing, that ‘unknown’ feeling about this whole thing, this came across in this woman’s voice.

“That’s three in the last four months. Listen up - that’s THREE people, three female human beings who have just vanished in the last four months. And the thing about this is that there is nothing seemingly linking the three. They didn’t know each other. They weren’t the same age. Look, the first one was a woman in her thirties, a solicitor. The second a woman in her twenties a nurse. And now this, a sixteen year old schoolgirl. Does this mean that this person, and we can only assume it’s a man, is working down in age? Do they just get younger and younger? In that case, what’s next, a baby? These people don’t even come from the same area of the city. There is no link - no connection between these females other than they have vanished into thin air. Indeed, THAT is the ONLY link, that they have vanished without trace. There are more questions than answers at this point in time.” DCI Reed paused. She wasn’t a woman who was usually stuck for words. She had headed missing person enquiries before. She had headed murder, abuse and rape enquiries before. She had done them all and she had solved them all, to her credit. But that voice of hers, the tone she spoke in, there was none of the usual hardness or confidence there. It was like she had a bad feeling about this one. It was like even she was thinking that she would have to reach out for some kind of help, or divine intervention on this one.

“We have to treat these as individual missing persons. And yet we have this tenuous link between them. At the moment, there is no reason to think they have been murdered because there are no signs of murders having been committed. There are no bodies and there are no signs of foul play. At the scenes, or at the scenes we ‘think’ these people were taken from, there are no signs of struggles - there is no blood which suggests no violence as such was used. In fact forensics have come up with nothing. And when I say ‘nothing’ I mean absolutely NOTHING. These women, and this young girl have just ‘gone’. I’m not gonna lie people, I have a bad feeling about this. But there is no reason why I have this bad feeling. I just do. I don’t like that there is nothing for us to go on. I don’t like that we have more questions than answers. I don’t like it that we have this brick wall before even this investigation is off the ground.”

Once again there was that silence. It was as though if she didn’t have a starting point then how could she expect them to have one? But in fairness DCI Reed wasn’t expecting her squad to come up with answers that she couldn’t find herself. “What’s going to solve this is team work. We have to work together and stick together. It could be the tiniest, smallest of things that eventually cracks it. And bear in mind we have to solve this one way or another. We either have to find these females alive or we have to find bodies. The option of this going on and on and this becoming a cold case is not on the table. This case is open and it will be closed, one way or the other.” The way that this woman was speaking now was getting through to her squad. That was the reason for the silence. That was the reason for the feeling of dread that seemed to fill the incident room. It was the reason that this ‘mood’ existed. This woman had got over the situation and she had got her own alarm, and her own ‘fear; if fear was the right word. Every one of those officers in that room was getting it. That this was no ordinary investigation. That this was not something that would be solved overnight. This would have been the first time that some of these men and woman would have had to resort to good old fashioned detective work. This would have been the first time that some of them would have worked on a big case - let alone one that had this ‘feeling’ of doom attached to it. This was proper police work. Or maybe it would something beyond police work. Only time would tell.

“There is actually something else that does link these people. Apart from the fact that they have vanished without a trace that is. There is also the fact that there was no reason for any one of them to go missing. What I am saying is that we can effectively and completely rule out that these people have walked out of their lives of their own accord. What has been established is that each of these females was happy in their life. Both older woman were career women heading to the top of their games. Both were in completely different fields, but both were successful. The sixteen year old was a model student destined for great things. She came from a perfect home with parents who absolutely wanted the best for her. Her school grades were good - better than good. And she was heading for university, earlier than she might have otherwise. The women, one single, one married led perfect lives. We’ve looked mildly into the backgrounds, the lifestyles and the circumstances. Nothing, and I repeat nothing would lead anyone to believe that these people went missing of their own accord. If there is anything that can be a certainty, it’s that they have been taken.” Once again there was that almost dread in DCI Reed’s voice. As though she was fearing this ending with her finding out something that she didn’t want to find out.

“You guys join this investigations with the basics already done. This is a proper investigation make you no mistake. But now we have to dig deeper. We do have to look at families and relationships. We have to go into areas we might not want to - areas that we may possibly feel uncomfortable - but we can’t avoid it. We can leave no stone unturned and we won’t. There has to be something out there that we have missed so far. There has to be something that has eluded us up to now. Look for links between the missing people. There are no obvious links at the moment - but you need to look further afield. Look for any link no matter how distant. I don’t need to tell you guys that the smallest thing could be key in this. The smallest thing could crack this case wide open and that is what we need. We have to think ‘forensic’ in detail and we have to think BEYOND forensic. I’m telling you all that this is not your normal police investigation - this won’t be covered in the text books, or case histories. This is different and we have to think differently as a result. Try not to fall into set procedure. Think out of the box. ‘I’ am already thinking out of the box.” There were little murmurings in the room, as though this woman detective was spooking the shit out of her squad. But there was also this feeling that this is what she had to do. This was a woman, a professional woman who didn’t spook easily. She didn’t wake up in the mornings shitting herself about what she would come across on this day. She simply got on with it. And up to now she had got on with it successfully.

“We can pretty much discount kidnapping in return for ransom. I only wish it was as simple as that. Trust me, if that was it, we’d have it cracked by now. We cannot discount that this is the work of some kind of deviant who has sexual motives. Trust me when I say we are going to have to look in some pretty dark places in order to find what we are looking for.” And again DCI Reed’s voice tailed off and there was this silence. “Is there any reason you are thinking like that Ma’am? I mean the deviant and sexual motive thing?” That was a young male officer asking from the back of the room. “Absolutely no reason. I have no reason for thinking the way I am thinking right now.” And she tailed off again. “And how or what are you thinking Ma’am?” That was the same officer following up. “I’m feeling ‘bad’ about this one. I’m thinking that this is not good. Now that could be because we have so little to go on. It could be because we have this solid brick wall in front of us which is ten miles high and three miles thick so that there is no way over it and no way through it. I just have a bad feeling about it and the longer it goes on, the worse that feeling gets. What I want is you guys to separate yourself from the normal world. Whatever is going on here is not normal. We are dealing with one clever son-of-a-bitch who seems to have every angle covered. Holiday leave is cancelled, and there’s as much overtime as anyone wants. There is no budget on this. I have it from high up that this is one case that cannot go unsolved. Now you guys can take what you want from that. In this day and age, strict budgets and lack of officers on the streets - but we have no budgets and limits in numbers. Every available resource is being thrown into this and we have to make sure that we repay that with a result.”

Again there was that silence that hung over the room like a curtain of doom. This woman was not painting a good picture. In fact she was painting the worse possible picture of this case. But maybe she had to. Maybe she had more to go on than her feeling and she just wasn’t divulging it all yet. Maybe there was a reason that she was doing it that way. If there were no leads, if there was no obvious direction in which the investigation could go, maybe there was a feeling that whoever was committing these ‘vanishings’ was a police officer - or someone connected to the police service in some way. If not an officer, a forensically aware person. Someone who could commit these vanishings and not leave a trace. To be able to do such a thing would mean the person having expert and specialist knowledge. It would be a person who would know how to cover their tracks, and the tracks of their victims. It could well have been that DCI Reed knew more than she was letting on, and that what she was letting out there in the incident room was on a need to know basis. Maybe that was why she seemed different. Maybe that was why her tone of voice was so ‘different’ to what it had been before. Maybe it was all something she had to bottle up because she couldn’t let it out. It could have been that this person was one of their own - one of her own squad even. The person could be in the squad room right now. The actual perpetrator could be in there now listening to this briefing and taking it all in. It seemed that this was a case in which everyone could be a suspect until they were ruled out.

“Y’all can start with the last people who saw them. Work on them. The circumstances of them being together or seeing each other. Circumstances leading up to and after. These last people to see our missing people are going to have to be drilled pretty hard. They may know something that they don’t know they know. They may need their memories jogged. It’s going to be tough on them but they need to understand that we need answers. We need a lead, however slight that lead is, we need it.” DCI Reed was drilling down into the nitty gritty now. She had got the squad’s attention and now she needed them to work off their instincts. She needed them to be on it and on it in such a way that results were garnered. “I want a group of you looking into the families. Go back as far as you can, go as deep as you can. Find out if there is conflict there, a history of trouble maybe. On the face of it these people are perfect but is there such a thing as perfect? The smallest thing may be what we are looking for. I’m not going to pretend that this is going to be a walk in the park because it’s not. Like I said you are going to have to be prepared to be uncomfortable with what you are doing. You are going to need to ask questions that these people are not expecting - and you are going to have to make sure that they answer them to the best of their ability. More to the point you are going to need to be satisfied that you exhaust every avenue with every single person you question. And if there is even the slightest reason, the smallest tiniest reason for you to put a red flag next to someone’s name then you do it. DON’T have to go back to it at a later date. Red flag even if you get a feeling that something isn’t right. So let’s get to it and I want hourly updates, not daily - HOURLY. I want to know everything as close to real time as it’s possible to be.”

DCI Pepper Reed nodded to the entire room and for a few seconds there was this silence again. It was like they were all letting what she had said sink in. If what DCI Reed had intended was to spook this squad then she had done that with interest and that period of silence told of that. Pepper wasn’t this woman’s real name. It was a name that had been given to her because of her red pepper like hair. She was a mature woman who had this huge thick mane of hair that kind of stood her apart from other woman. She kind of accepted the pepper thing because she wasn’t about to change her hair colour for anything. She liked her hair. She liked its lush thickness and she just liked that she had ‘big hair’. It kind of added to her already substantial height. There weren’t many women officers who exceeded six feet in height but Pepper Reed was one of them. When she had worked through the uniform branch she had cut a striking almost fetish like figure in her uniform. There weren’t many women officers who were as curvy as Pepper either, but who could also maintain a level of fitness. And that was this thing about DCI Pepper Reed she was fit, she was curvy and she was tall. Legs that went on for days. And then thing was that she had come through the force at a time when sexist behaviour, and little gropes and fondles were an everyday occurrence. But she had come through. And she had soon established a reputation that told that she wasn’t someone to be fucked with.

Pepper had once told a senior officer who had his hand up her skirt and was fingering the crotch of her panties, “Take your hand away or I’ll break your wrist and then every finger you have. You won’t be doing this to any other woman.” And the thing was that she had stood stock still. She hadn’t panicked and she hadn’t screamed the place down. She could have but she didn’t. She had been as calm as you like and she had looked this officer directly in the eye as she had spoken her words. He had tried to stare her down but it hadn’t worked and her eyes had just pierced right through him and ever so slowly his hand crept down her legs and from under her skirt and away.

There had always been the intimation that her career would suffer for what she had said to this senior officer - but that hadn’t panned out. He shortly retired and she went on up the ladder. No-one would ever be able to accuse DCI Pepper Reed of selling herself to get ahead or of fucking her way up the ladder. She did it on merit and she did it on ability. She watched as the murmur came back into the incident room. The little groups were getting together and they were filing out slowly. She was watching every single one of them. Who knows, maybe she was even thinking again that it was one of her lot. It was like she was studying each officer and then ruling them out, or not, of her enquiries. Eventually she was on her own in that incident room. She sat on a heavily padded leather chair and she was looking at the flow chart. She was thinking. She was deep in thought. And she was distorting her full lips with her fingers. She knew she was undertaking something that she didn’t know if it would be solved or not. For the first time in her career she didn’t really know how things were going to pan out and she didn’t like that feeling. She didn’t like that uncertainty. She didn’t like it at all.