Fifty-Five
It was a twenty-minute drive from Southmead to Portishead along the M5 and Anna negotiated it with her mind fizzing and her face hot. She hated being lied to. And King had lied to her. Worse, he’d seen how interested they’d been in Beth and used what she’d told him to his advantage. Left her trussed up in a dingy prison to die frightened and alone.
Anger threatened to overwhelm her. She recognised it for what it was and knew she needed to be careful. Anger was sometimes necessary. But, like any weapon, it needed to be aimed and used with skill.
Dawes rang when she was halfway to HQ.
‘We’ve missed him, ma’am. He’s buggered off.’
Anna slammed her palm against the wheel. ‘Shit.’
‘I know. We’ll get the place properly searched but my guess is he’s flown.’
‘Justin’s told you what Beth said?’
‘Most of it.’
‘How could we have let this bastard slip through our fingers?’
‘Norcott knew all along—’
‘No, we can’t blame Norcott for this. I’ve read his files. King was on his case, literally, for years. I think he deliberately kept Norcott at Ryegrove, trod on any hope he had of release by cooking up damning psychiatric reports. He had power over Norcott until he got shifted to a different section where he couldn’t have so much influence. We can’t blame Norcott for being scared of King.’ Anna heard the disgust spilling out of cracks in her speech. Dawes could hear it too.
‘No, I am bloody well not. You and Justin get over to HQ and we’ll go over everything we’ve got.’ Dawes ended the call before she could add, ‘And everything we sodding missed.’
Trisha and Khosa were already in the office when Anna arrived. They both sent her encouraging little smiles, but they were not what she needed this morning. She didn’t need sympathy. She needed them to be on top of their game.
‘Before either of you ask, I’m fine. Justin and Phil are on the way in and we’ll go through everything that’s happened then. In the meantime, I have to speak to the POLSA. Trisha, have you heard anything from Superintendent Rainsford?’
‘Both bridges are open this morning and he’s on the way back from Cardiff but snarled up on the motorway after an earlier accident.’
Anna nodded. She caught Khosa’s eye. ‘I’ve got your joggers in the wash. Get them back to you in a day or two.’
‘No need, ma’am.’
‘Thanks for last night.’
Khosa shook her head.
In her office, Anna rang Lambton’s number. The extraneous noise on the call told her he was outside.
‘Good to hear your voice, Inspector.’
‘Slow. We have a lot of branches and trees down. It’s making the going tough.’
‘You got my message about the amusement arcade?’
‘The Underwater Search Unit? They’re on it. They’ve been inundated, as you can imagine, and were out until midnight but should be with us by ten.’
‘Is there still a lot of water?’
‘I drove through this morning. It’s a mess but there’s less than there was. Probably no more than three feet around the building you were in last night.’
Three feet sounded deep enough.
‘OK. I’m aiming to get over there at some point.’
‘I’ll let USU know. You OK, ma’am?’
There it was again. The sympathetic concern that irritated her so. A little spurt of anger threatened to spike her response, but she bit it back. Lambton had driven her and Dawes to HQ last night in record time. ‘Yes, I am. And thanks for your help.’
‘It’s me who should be thanking you for finding that nurse. If we’d have missed her, I would not have been able to live with myself.’
Anna ended the call, turned to her computer and began writing up her report on last night. Beth would need to be reinterviewed but since what would follow today was a consequence of what she’d learned at the side of Beth’s hospital bed, she needed to put on record her observation of her state of mind as well as the words she’d spoken. It all needed to be put into HOLMES and, in her experience, there was no time like the present. She opened the recording app on her phone and typed as she listened back.
She kept on writing exactly what Beth Farlow had told her until movement in the outer office announced Dawes and Holder’s return. Anna joined them and exchanged a nod with Dawes, who reciprocated. No need for words. They’d shared the experience and that was enough. Tea was rustled up and a little banter about how much damage the storm had actually caused rippled around the room, but Anna didn’t let it run on. She called for everyone’s attention, skipping over the previous evening, knowing that everyone in this room, like everyone in the whole building, knew exactly what had happened. They were part of it. But they hadn’t heard Beth Farlow’s statement. Not all of it. And so, Anna laid it all out.
‘If Norcott is to be believed, then it’s likely King, the Dorell siblings and Krastev were in this together. They were the figures in Norcott’s sketch.’
‘By this, what do you mean exactly?’ Dawes said.
‘I mean the Black Squid deaths. My guess is Norcott witnessed something and, from what Beth Farlow told me, it wasn’t exactly a suicide. Norcott said the victim on those railway tracks – and we can assume this is Jamie Carson – was not a willing participant.’
‘If he was dragged out and chucked under a train then it sounds more like a bloody sacrifice,’ Dawes said.
Anna nodded. Trisha’s face was white. Khosa and Holder both looked like something had died under their desks. ‘My own feeling is that Jamie, and the others like him, were coerced into going to their suicide spot, but once there Krastev made absolutely sure they carried out the final act.’
‘Then it’s not suicide. It’s murder,’ Khosa said.
Anna nodded. ‘Kimberley Williams jumped, we know that. In her case it must have been coercion. The act confirmed by social media. So the modus has changed. But at the beginning Krastev was the facilitator. He was there to make sure the victims did what they were supposed to do. In both Carson’s case and, I suspect, Abbie Shaw’s.’
‘Jesus.’ Holder let his head drop.
‘It would be good to talk to Norcott,’ Khosa said.
Anna nodded. This was the one part of Beth’s story she hadn’t told them. But they deserved to know. ‘I doubt that’s going to be possible. The Underwater Search Unit is back in the amusement arcade. Beth said King left Norcott trussed up on the floor there. And while I was wading through it… I felt something on the floor. Something heavy that I couldn’t move. We’ll know for definite within a couple of hours, I expect.’
They all looked at her. No one said anything. Trisha excused herself. It wasn’t the first time the civilian analyst had done so. Anna suspected it would not be the last.
‘I’d like to be alone with King for ten minutes when we find the bastard,’ Dawes said thickly.
Join the queue, Anna thought. It’ll be a long one with me at the front.
‘Finding him is our top priority,’ she said instead.
‘We’ve got a search team and Forensics at his place now, ma’am. I’ve asked them to check for a passport. But I’ve already alerted the Border Agency. Question is, do we go to the press?’
‘I need to talk to Superintendent Rainsford about that,’ Anna said. ‘But let’s involve transport police, too. Get them some images of King.’
Holder said, ‘Do you think he’ll run or hide?’
‘God knows,’ Dawes said.
‘But it still leaves us with the Dorells.’ Anna stared at the two figures on the screen. They were still unformed shadows in this mess and she had no clear picture of their role.
Khosa stood up with a notepad. ‘I did speak to Joshua Dorell’s probation officer. The day after his licence expiry date he disappeared. The supervising officer said Dorell texted him and said he was going off the grid and added several other words which were best forgotten.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘It coincides with his sister’s disappearance. Joshua Dorell’s PO said he was always talking about the road. Going back on the road. My guess is that they’ve headed back to their roots, ma’am. We’ve traced his bank statements. Five months ago, the day after his licence expiry date, Joshua Dorell withdrew £25,000 from his account. Since then there’s been nothing.’
‘If they’ve dived back into one of those New Age communes, we might never find them,’ Dawes muttered.
He was right, but they needed to use what they had. ‘OK, there’s enough to do. I’m going back to Severn Beach.’
Holder said, ‘Need any company, ma’am?’
‘No. Stay here and find King.’
‘You sure, ma’am?’ Holder held her gaze.
‘Very.’
She left them to it, grateful for Holder’s concern and dismissing it as unnecessary. But as she came in on Green lane over the M49 again and found herself once more on Beach Avenue where she’d exited Lambton’s Land Rover shoeless the night before, the memory of that cold brown water made her shiver. Much of the flooding had drained away, leaving a brown slick in its wake. As if some huge slimy serpent had slithered this way. At the junction in front of the bus stop, the water was only a couple of feet deep. Several police vehicles were parked out of the water, and Anna recognised Lambton’s Land Rover immediately. She walked across, showed the duty uniform her warrant card and stood at the edge of the floodwater. Lambton was in waders next to the bus stop. He saw her and came over.
‘They’re in there now, ma’am,’ he said.
They’d opened the shutters on the amusement arcade. Two black-rubber-suited men stood in the compound. Another two were inside the arcade on their knees, the water up to their necks. They were dragging something out. She heard shouts and someone went to fetch a black plastic sheet. The two men outside joined the two inside and manhandled something heavy out through the compound and up Beach Avenue. When it was free of the water, they covered it in the plastic, passing the point where Anna was standing, to where the water ended. There they put their burden down.
Lambton walked over and spoke to the USU men. When he came back, his face was grim.
‘It’s a body, ma’am. Male. Too much bloating and clothing to make out much else.’
‘They’ll take it to Gupta?’
‘Yeah. He’ll have it by midday, probably.’
It. Colin Norcott wasn’t an it, and yet she could not blame Lambton for his words. They couldn’t be sure until someone ID’d the body. But she had no real reason to doubt it was Norcott. And she was glad she’d come because there would be no one else to mourn him with Beth in the hospital and his mother long since dead. She felt she owed Norcott for no reason other than the fact that his life had taken the wrong fork for the sake of a barbecue and some dodgy mushrooms.
Anna nodded. She turned, got back in her car and drove away.
She’d left her work phone in the car. It had already been on silent for the visit to Beth but now she heard it buzz incessantly. She picked it up and saw five missed calls from Rainsford. She put the car in gear and called him back.
‘Anna, where the hell have you been?’ The question was curt, but more anxious than angry.
‘Sorry, sir. I’ve only now seen your calls. I’ve just watched them take a body out of the amusement arcade at Severn Beach.’
He said nothing for a couple of seconds. ‘Where are you now?’
‘On the way back.’
‘My office as soon as you get here.’
Rainsford’s door was along the corridor from the office they shared as the MCRTF. He sat behind his tidy desk with a framed photo of his family in pride of place and a corkboard with monthly target graphs on the wall behind. ‘Sergeant Dawes has filled me in. You’ve had a rough couple of days,’ he said by way of greeting.
‘Why have I got the feeling that today isn’t going to get any better?’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen or heard the news?’
‘No. We’ve had enough of our own.’
Rainsford nodded. ‘I recorded this for you.’ He pointed a remote towards the TV on his wall. BBC Breakfast, the news bulletin.
A familiar TV studio filled the screen. The female presenter gave the camera an earnest look. ‘Police have confirmed reports that a convicted murderer has escaped from custody while being treated in an NHS hospital.’
A different image appeared. A man, balding, heavy-lidded eyes staring defiantly back at the world.
‘Hector Shaw was serving an indeterminate life sentence for the murder of six people when he absconded from Worcester Royal Hospital, where he was being treated after collapsing in prison. Maggie Whitehead has the details.’
The scene shifted to a different part of the studio. A curved desk, two women. ‘Thank you, Helen. With me is Detective Superintendent Jackie Peterson from Worcestershire Constabulary. Superintendent Peterson, could you tell us about this very worrying incident?’
Peterson was dressed soberly in a jacket and blouse, blonde hair to her shoulders. ‘Yesterday afternoon between three thirty and four, we were contacted by prison guards who were escorting a prisoner for HMP Whitmarsh by the name of Hector Shaw. The events are that during that afternoon, Shaw was taken to a part of the hospital for an MRI Scan. He was accompanied by one of the guards and taken by a porter to the MRI suite, where he underwent the investigation. When it had finished and during the transfer back to the ward, the porter, who we now believe was known to Shaw, threatened the guard with a gun, tied him up and locked him in a storage room while Shaw escaped wearing scrubs and a white coat. We believe that he and the porter then got into a stolen vehicle, a black VW Passat, which then made its escape.’
Rainsford paused the TV. Anna kept looking at the screen for several seconds, blinking, trying to assimilate what she’d heard.
‘But I was with him yesterday morning.’
Rainsford nodded.
‘He looked sick. Really sick.’
Rainsford nodded again. ‘I’ve spoken to the doctors. His anaemia, they think, was self-inflicted. He was bleeding himself. But the medics wanted to be sure by ruling out an internal source, hence the MRI. Yesterday, he waited until he had the transfusion before escaping.’
‘Instant rejuvenation.’ Anna nodded. Just like a vampire, she thought. Her brain was thumping. She hadn’t thought to ask. Hadn’t spoken to anyone in authority at the hospital about Shaw’s illness.
‘Have you any idea where he might have gone?’
Anna shook her head. ‘None.’ Rainsford kept looking at her, waiting for her to say something. ‘What?’
‘Come on, Anna, you’re the obvious target.’
‘Me? No way. He doesn’t want to get to me, sir. He wants the people who killed his daughter.’
‘She committed suicide.’
‘He doesn’t think so. And I’m beginning to agree with him on that one.’
‘What do you mean?’
Anna was acutely aware of how keen Rainsford had been to point the team in the direction of the broader scope of the Black Squid suicides. Dawes had kept reminding her of that. But the picture was only now becoming clearer with the Dorells in the frame. Time to update him on what they had so far, even if it was still all conjecture.
She told him about the Dorells. About how Krastev was not just a facilitator but very likely an enforcer. About how King and the Dorells had watched Jamie Carson die, perhaps even at Krastev’s hands. ‘The Black Squid feeds on these kids’ anxieties. And it’s no good thinking it’s too far-fetched to be true, because we have proof. They think they’re in a game. But what they weren’t expecting was the big monster waiting at the end of it in the shape of Krastev. Shaw was convinced that the same thing happened to Abbie.’
‘But why would anyone want to…’
She sent Rainsford an almost pitying look. ‘I don’t know enough about the Dorells to answer that yet, sir. But what I do know is that there is no point trying to apply any logic to this.’
‘I don’t like it. I still think Shaw’s too unpredictable.’
‘What do you want me to do? Hide? Safe house?’
Rainsford narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m going to put someone outside your flat for a few days. Until we catch this bugger.’
Anna shrugged. There didn’t seem much point in arguing.
Rainsford got up from his seat. ‘Where next?’
Anna sighed. ‘We look for King. Look for the Dorells. Confirm the body in the amusement arcade is Norcott, though it’s unlikely to be anyone else. He’d insulated it with old sleeping bags. Had enough food in there for a week. A Primus stove, a battery lamp, paper for his golems. We have CCTV footage of him using the walkway across the M5 to the services at Gordano. They have free showers there.’
‘Do we have any more insight into why he was off-grid?’
Anna shook her head. ‘Do we need one? The authorities treated him like an animal. His mother treated him worse than one. Why would he want to be a part of any kind of society? I may get more from Beth when she’s fit enough for reinterview.’
‘OK, I think we have plenty to be going on with. The Dorells may be the breakthrough in the Black Squid business we’ve been looking for. It’s good work, Anna.’ Rainsford nodded, his gaze never wavering from Anna’s face. ‘You look awful. Take the afternoon off.’
‘So I can sit at home and think about what I bumped into in that amusement arcade in the dark and the wet?’
Rainsford said nothing and they both knew his offer was half-hearted. He needed her locked and loaded.
‘Someone is still sending messages to troubled kids, sir. The Black Squid… We need to stop it.’
‘I’m still putting a car outside your flat.’
‘Tell them not to expect tea and biscuits.’