Chapter 78
The get-together at the Joneses’ house had continued until late, and it was Easter Sunday, so the office was quieter than usual. But today was the first Sunday that Freddie Aspinall would not be adding to his dreadful tally or depositing the body of a previous victim.
News of Freddie Aspinall’s suicide still dominated the headlines, with the Middlesbury Reporter getting in some sly digs about the effectiveness of the investigation.
‘The Video Analysis Unit have a potential sighting of Freddie Aspinall outside the front entrance of Bristol Parkway train station the day that Charley Gibson’s car was abandoned,’ said Richardson. Sitting beside her ever-present bottle of water was a cup of coffee and a blister pack of aspirin.
She pointed at her screen. ‘This is a small shop selling travel accessories, including luggage. Unfortunately, the angle is poor and the person we believe to be Aspinall is wearing a baggy hoodie and a baseball cap, and keeps his head down.’
A large man wearing a backpack entered the shop.
‘Annoyingly, the shop’s own footage from this date was erased a day before the Transport Police requested it, so we have nothing from inside.’ She smothered a yawn as she fast-forwarded four minutes. The same man emerged, head still down, carrying a large electric-blue suitcase.
‘We have him going back up the street, still no face shots, then he disappears for another six minutes.’ She ran the video at full speed again. ‘We believe this is him again.’
The man she pointed at was the same size and build, but his hoodie was a different colour, as was the baseball cap. But the electric-blue suitcase was clearly the one bought minutes earlier.
‘That case is easily big enough for a fold-up bicycle,’ she said.
‘Any idea where he goes next?’ asked Warren, fighting not to yawn himself, now Richardson had set the ball rolling.
‘They are collating the video now. We should be able to follow him across the platforms and work out which train he catches. We may even get some video from inside the carriage.’
‘That’s great work,’ said Warren. ‘I don’t think it’d stand up to cross-examination in court, but fortunately, there isn’t going to be a trial.’
‘Hutch, see if the Aspinalls’ FLO can persuade them to attend a final interview. That blue suitcase is another item we haven’t recovered. If he did have some other place he stashed things, we need to know about it. And whilst you’re at it, set up some more interviews with his workmates; see what else they remember.’
Returning to his office, he was snagged by Janice. ‘Sir, I have the editor of the Middlesbury Reporter on the line.’
Warren gave a dismissive snort. ‘Tell him to speak to the Press Office. If he thinks he’s going to get anything from me that is printable, he has another thing coming.’
Entering his office, he snagged his mug off the desk, before heading back out. It was mid-morning and he was going to need coffee and custard creams to sustain him until he went home for lunch.
‘He says it’s urgent,’ said Janice. ‘He sounds worried.’
Warren gave a sigh. ‘Put him through to my phone.’
He took a moment to compose himself before picking up the handset. The last thing he needed was an ill-tempered quote splashed across the Reporter’s website.
Three minutes later, he was heading to Grayson’s office.
* * *
‘Tell me again why I should give a shit that Marcia Cooper isn’t answering her phone?’ said Grayson. The superintendent wasn’t usually a big drinker, but Warren had all but poured him into the taxi that had taken him home after the party. ‘Kick it over to Missing Persons,’ he instructed.
‘I already have,’ said Warren. ‘But he says that she was supposed to be meeting an anonymous source who promised to spill the inside story on our investigation. She was really excited; apparently, they hinted there was lots to tell, whatever that means.’
Grayson groaned. ‘Great, just what we need. But if this scrote is determined to keep their identity secret, then they probably insisted that she turned her phone off.’
‘They have a strict policy that reporters meeting sources alone should do so in a public place and keep their phones on. They have tracking software installed on all of their handsets.’
‘Sensible,’ said Grayson. ‘Might she have disobeyed that rule?’
‘Perhaps, but the meeting was scheduled for over three hours ago.’
‘Any idea where they were supposed to meet?’
‘McDonald’s on the Copperston Road Roundabout. The GPS recorded her handset as arriving at 07.43, for an eight a.m. meeting. It stopped transmitting two minutes later.’
‘They must have CCTV of the car park,’ said Grayson. ‘Well, if somebody is bad-mouthing us to the press, I want to know who they are. I’ll string them up by their bollocks.’ He reached for his phone. ‘I think we have sufficient concern about her safety to justify a warrant for her phone records and real-time location tracking, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I’d say so.’
* * *
‘If the editor of the Middlesbury Reporter had called us sooner, we might have made it in time for breakfast,’ said Ruskin as he and Hardwick entered the McDonald’s takeaway. ‘I could murder a McMuffin right now.’
Flashing his warrant card, he introduced himself to the duty manager.
The restaurant had both drive-through and seating facilities, and so the two officers divided the bank of surveillance cameras between them, with Hardwick focusing on the exterior and Ruskin on the interior. They knew from the GPS on Marcia Cooper’s phone what time she arrived, and so started from that time point.
‘I have her entering the car park exactly when expected,’ said Hardwick. ‘Damn, it looks as though she’s parked on the far side of the car park, out of sight of the cameras.’
‘Still no sign of her entering the seating area,’ said Ruskin a few moments later.
‘Whoa, there she goes,’ said Hardwick. ‘Her car’s leaving already.’ She looked at the timestamp. ‘That’s just over six minutes she’s been here. The meeting wasn’t even scheduled to start until eight.’
‘Could she have received a text?’ suggested Ruskin. ‘She could have been using a burner phone.’
‘Maybe. Or perhaps it was just a drop-off? A folder through the car window.’
‘So why is her phone still off?’
‘Something doesn’t smell right,’ said Hardwick. ‘I’m going to call Rachel and Mags.’
* * *
‘I have no sightings of her car on ANPR,’ said Richardson when the conference call connected. ‘Wherever she went, it wasn’t by an arterial route or through the centre of town.’
‘If she was using a burner, could you identify it?’ asked Ruskin.
‘Technically yes,’ replied Pymm. ‘I could request a cell mast download of every handset that has connected to the nearest tower, but that’s going to capture dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent users. I can tell you right now we aren’t even close to justifying such a warrant.’
‘I take your point,’ said Hardwick. ‘For all we know she might be doing an in-depth interview with somebody who is giving her the scoop of a lifetime. But if she is in any danger, then by the time we prove it, it could be too late.’
‘I can request that the phone companies retain the information,’ said Pymm. ‘That way there’s no delay if we do get a warrant.’
‘I’ll arrange for somebody to recover the CCTV footage for the Video Analysis Unit,’ said Richardson. ‘But in the meantime, keep on looking. If she did meet her source there, then there’s a chance they’re on camera. Run it for an hour or so each side of when she arrived to see if anyone interesting pops up. Log any licence plates that you see.’
Hardwick hung up and turned to Ruskin. ‘Looks like we’re here for the foreseeable. There’s no way I can face that without coffee.’
Chapter 79
‘Sorry about that,’ said Hutchinson, returning to the gathering in the centre of the office. Warren was passing around a bag of doughnuts. ‘That was the FLO for the Aspinalls. He’s at their hotel, since he wasn’t getting any answer when he phoned them.’
With Freddie Aspinall dead, and his wife seemingly in denial, that wasn’t a huge surprise. ‘Maybe they’ve turned off their phones?’ Warren suggested.
‘Well that’s just it. He’s standing outside Patricia Aspinall’s room, and he’s convinced he can hear a phone ringing inside. There’s no response to knocking on either her or Spencer’s door.’
‘That sounds like a welfare issue,’ said Warren. ‘Tell him to go and ask for the manager to let him in.’
He turned back to the briefing. ‘What do we still need answers for?’
Although there wouldn’t be a trial, separate inquests would be held into each of Aspinall’s victims, and they owed it to their loved ones to make sure that the man responsible for their deaths would be recorded as such, even if he was now beyond justice.
‘I’m trying to pin down if he was absent from work the day Charley Gibson’s car was driven down to Gloucestershire,’ said Hutchinson. ‘They were on a job, but it was over two months ago, and nobody can remember if they saw him.’
‘Speak to the client,’ said Warren, distracted momentarily by his mobile phone buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it; he’d check his voicemail when he had a moment.
‘What else?’
The phone stopped. Almost immediately, it started again.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘let me deal with this.’
He stepped away from the desk and pulled it out. Susan. He felt his gut tighten. His wife was a schoolteacher – she knew better than most how difficult it was to answer the phone during work hours. Normally she just left a message. Accepting the call, he forced a positive note into his voice. ‘Hi, sweetheart, everything OK?’
‘I’m bleeding, Warren.’
His blood ran cold.
No, this can’t be happening again. When they’d lost the twins, it had nearly broken them, and it had taken over a year before they had been ready to start trying again. This time, they were farther along, and only recently had Warren allowed himself to start believing this time would be different.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, his voice so calm it was as if somebody else was speaking.
‘I’m at home.’ She gave a little gasp. ‘Please hurry.’
‘Have you called an ambulance?’ Everyone around him had fallen silent.
‘They said it’s not an emergency. I’ll have to wait for one.’ There was a fear in her voice that he couldn’t remember hearing before.
He could see Sutton mouthing ‘Go!’ at him.
‘Hold tight, I’ll be home as soon as I can.’
‘Please hurry,’ she said, ending the call. Warren stood for a moment staring at the silent handset, dazed.
‘Do you want me to drive you?’ asked Sutton.
‘No, I’ll be OK,’ managed Warren. Richardson appeared beside him, pushing his suit jacket into his hand.
‘We’ve got everything covered,’ said Sutton. ‘Go and be with Susan.’
Not trusting himself to do more than nod his thanks, Warren took off for the stairs at a fast jog.
Sutton collapsed into his chair. ‘Shit,’ he said quietly.
* * *
‘Come on, pick up,’ Warren urged Susan, as he voice-dialled her mobile again. Once more, it went straight to voicemail. She must be using it; was she speaking to the hospital?
‘Call home phone,’ he instructed the car’s hands-free kit.
The landline started ringing. ‘Pick up, pick up, pick up,’ he repeated quietly, as he navigated a roundabout, his tyres squealing. The phone eventually cut to voicemail.
‘Damn it!’ he swore, thumping the steering wheel.
Breathe, he ordered himself, deliberately easing off the accelerator; he would be no use to Susan if he wrapped the car around a lamppost.
* * *
Karen Hardwick stared at the split-screen CCTV monitor, trying to ignore the steadily mounting throb in her temples. The source couldn’t have picked a better time for a covert rendezvous, with a steady stream of vehicles entering through the main entrance. She noted each vehicle registration, the time that it entered and exited, and whether it went to the drive-through or the car park.
The VAU had specialist software that could do this far quicker than she could, but it would take time for someone to arrive and retrieve the data, return it to the unit down in Welwyn, and upload it in a usable format; far better that she and Ruskin had a quick look for anything obvious before they arrived.
She had soon got into a rhythm, splitting her focus between the four different cameras, but her eyes were already feeling dry. Beside her, Ruskin stared unblinking at the faces of customers entering the restaurant. He thought it unlikely that the informant would have gone to all the effort of concealing their identity, only to enter a public restaurant for a coffee and a pastry, but there were also customer toilets inside.
Squashed as they were in the cramped office, Ruskin felt Hardwick stiffen beside him.
‘What have you got?’
She rewound the footage a few seconds. ‘There, see that?’
Ruskin squinted ...
