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FORTY-EIGHT

The station was humming with activity. Kapoor hurried in as Gina took her coat off. ‘We’ve interviewed Colson again and we’ve rearrested him for threatening to share an intimate image of someone without their consent so we still have him in custody for now. Without further evidence, he’ll probably get bail soon.’

‘Thanks for the update.’ After seeing the bunker, Colson had slipped to the back of her mind and Gary had taken over, and his absence was really grating on her. If only they hadn’t let him escape earlier that morning. They’d left PCs at Edmundson’s Farm, collecting names and statements from everyone.

‘The briefing is about to start.’

‘I’m on my way.’ Gina ditched her coat in her office and hurried to the incident room. PC Smith had left forensics and a team behind at Edmundson’s Farm.

PC Ahmed was eating a bag of crisps. Jacob, O’Connor and Wyre were sitting at the main table, all ready to start, and Briggs entered. ‘Right, no time to waste. Can we hush in here?’

The room silenced.

‘Gina, can you lead?’

She nodded and stepped to the end of the table by the boards. The map was now dotted with pins and string connecting the various leads and locations. ‘I’ll give you a quick update to get everyone up to speed. Ruth Pritchard was taken last night from the nature centre car park. Her ex-husband, Gary Pritchard, is our main suspect. We’ve just got back from his place of work and discovered he’s been using an old bunker on the farm. Have you all seen the photos?’

A few yesses filled the room.

‘Right now, our main concern is finding Ruth and Luna, the girl in the photo. Any luck on locating the Elissa Pritchard case file?’

‘Yes, guv. It tells us what we already know, but it does mention more about Gary Pritchard. A few of the neighbours complained about how Gary had seemed with Elissa, one of them saying he slapped her once in public while he was telling her off. And get this, someone mentioned a car with a man on their road and he was wearing a baseball cap. They never said red, but they did say it was in the hours of darkness.’

‘Again, huge coincidence,’ Gina replied. ‘Anything else that stands out?’

Kapoor shook her head. ‘I’ve only quickly gone through it as I found it this morning, but no. I’ll have another look after we finish here.’

Gina glanced at O’Connor. ‘Anything from Garth yet with regards to Gary Pritchard’s devices?’

‘No, the digital team are working on it now. Hopefully we’ll have something soon.’

‘How about the paperwork at Tristan and Moira’s house. Did we find out more about the contractor with the baseball cap? It’s looking likely that he is John Doe and identifying him might lead us straight to Luna and Ruth.’

‘I’ve been in contact with the team there,’ Wyre piped up, ‘but nothing so far. There’s just too much to go through and the Moores are not the most organised of people. They’re being cooperative, though. I’ve had word back that Moira Moore knows all about Tristan Moore’s fling with Colson. He came clean when he managed to get hold of her. She’s coming home from Scotland early. Orla, the FLO, went back this morning despite being asked to leave last night. She is with the family at the moment and she’s also helping to search through the paperwork with Tristan Moore. No news from her so far. Keeley Moore is still worried about herself and the children.’

‘Have any witnesses come forward?’

O’Connor nodded. ‘The team have been inundated, but nothing useful has come out of any of the calls. We’ve had very little from the appeal for information at the nature park.’

Glancing at the boards, Gina scrunched her brow at the chess clues. ‘How about chess clubs?’

Wyre flicked through a few pages of notes. ‘There hasn’t been a chess club in Cleevesford since the mid noughties, but I’ve circulated the artists drawing of John Doe to all local board gaming groups, and no one recognises him. Most of the players go to a club in Warwick now, but so far, no one has recognised the person in the drawing and there are a lot of younger players who wouldn’t have even been there back then.’

Wyre flicked over to another page. ‘There are a lot of businesses and private owners of horses within the area, and a lot have been going a long time. We’ve started researching them and the areas they cover – I’ve marked them with brown pins on the map. None of them link to anything else we have. The next step would be to visit each of them, which we know will be time consuming, but we do have some uniformed officers working on that. I have found something else while going through mispers, though, and I think it might link to this case.’

‘Great. What do you have?’

‘An eighteen-year-old went missing back in 1980. Her name was Joanie Callahan. She worked at a pub in Bromsgrove and one night she left, colleagues saw her getting into a car with a man and no one has seen her since. She had no family. She’d left the care system, had no permanent address and literally no one back then tried to look too deeply into it. I’ve done a little research and she hasn’t cropped up anywhere since. Some of the regulars said she was dating a joiner and they just thought she’d gone to live with him. The detail that links her to the case is, she called this man her white knight when she talked about him to colleagues.’

‘Do we know who reported her missing?’

‘A friend. I tried to make contact with the woman, but she’s no longer alive.’

Gina swallowed a thought about the Joanies of the world; the people with no one to care about them. ‘Can we put her name on another board? We have to consider a link here.’

She glanced at the timeline. Joanie vanished in 1980. Elissa vanished in 1994. Ruth was taken yesterday. There were huge gaps in the incidents.

‘Are they dead or are they still out there?’ She felt her stomach clench. ‘John Doe is only in his forties. He couldn’t have taken Joanie and it wouldn’t be likely that, as a child, he took Elissa.’

Chess and the red baseball cap filled her mind. It was as if the perpetrators were passing the baton along, or was it a network of perpetrators who used a chess club as a front.

She thought of the Bishop, the name that popped up on Gary’s screen. It was frustrating not to have anything back from digital forensics yet.

She bowed her head despairingly as she thought of Luna and Ruth.

Gina continued. ‘We have a lead on Marie. Her surname isn’t, or is no longer, Blaine. It’s Paulson . And she may work for, or have something to do with, a company or business called Fantastic Snacktastic. We can try to search for that. It sounds unique. Maybe she married or changed her name.’

Kapoor dropped her pen. ‘I recognise that surname, guv. She’s the contact of one of the mispers I’ve been looking into. Bear with me.’ Kapoor began scrolling through all her records and notes on her tablet. ‘Mrs Paulson is the contact for missing person, Felicity Vaynor. Felicity would be thirty-four now. She went missing in 2006.’

‘Felicity… Lissy . Colson mentioned that Marie had a cousin called Lissy. It could be her.’ Gina raised her brows. ‘Great find.’ She blew out a breath. ‘Do we have a contact number and address?’

‘We do.’

Gina felt the tension in the air. They needed results and they needed them fast if they were to save Ruth and Luna. Sorrow filled her heart when she thought of Joanie, Elissa and Felicity. No one had heard from them for years. ‘Jacob, can you try to call Mrs Paulson? We need to head over there now.’