Authors: James D Mortain
‘MISPER?’ Deans hesitated; he had been dealing with the robbery. ‘Are we talking about the student?’
‘You’ve got it,’ Boyle replied. ‘Grab yourself a brew and come on over.’
‘Not sure what I can offer,’ Deans said. ‘CID didn’t have any involvement. She was medium risk.’
‘Not any more, Deano,’ Boyle said dejectedly. ‘High risk and we’re all tucked up.’
Deans looked at Boyle’s team, each of them avoiding eye contact. It was their first day on duty from rest days – how could they all be unavailable already?
Boyle handed Deans a wad of papers. The top sheet was a contemporaneous transcript of the 999 call, showing the timings, caller details and all subsequent police enquiries – the STORM LOG; the starting point of most investigations. And this one had been the five hundred and fifth call of that day. When Deans first saw this log there were only several lines of information. Now it was four A4 pages long.
‘We need a detective on this now, Deano,’ Boyle said. ‘Uniform have done everything they can but this needs a comprehensive investigation.’ He clutched Deans’ shoulder and leant in. ‘The Boss is starting to kick up about this at prayers. We need progress and we need it pronto.’
Deans sighed, and looked over at the case files on his desk stacked like a game of Jenga. ‘Yeah, no worries. Last I heard, she hadn’t returned to her digs after the weekend. Surely someone’s had contact with her by now?’
‘Not according to uniform,’ Boyle replied. ‘It seems no one knows where the girl is. Can you or someone from your team get back onto the housemate, Jessica Morrison, and track down the boyfriend? Somebody must know something. Pin them down to specifics. Oh, and we need contact with the family, ASAP, compliments of the boss.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ Deans nodded half-heartedly, and shuffled over to his desk to review the enquiries.
PC Wilder of Team 1 had spoken to Jessica Morrison by phone yesterday. She still had not heard from Amy. Deans scanned the rest of the bundle and was disappointed to see telecoms and banking enquiries had not been arranged. Historic cell-site activity could at least show the phone’s location at a given time, and similarly with cash withdrawals, and that would have made for a useful starting point. A Police National Computer (PNC) report showed the boyfriend, Carl Groves, had received a caution back in the summer for a public order offence in the city centre. The officer in the case was PC Hill, a foot patrol officer whose arrest rate was significantly higher than the rest of his team, or the station, come to that. The bosses loved him for it and he regularly received performance awards. The reality however, was that Hill was an average officer who had an unbelievable knack for getting under the skin of the late-night revellers. Those stupid enough to engage or argue got nicked. Hill was like a Venus fly trap, indiscriminate and uncompromising, and Deans imagined Carl Groves had flown just too close for his own good.
He noted with interest that Amy’s family were from Hemingsford. He had been to Cornwall with Maria several times but was less familiar with North Devon. He hunted for the contact details and punched the home number into the desk phone. Being a Wednesday afternoon he did not know whether to expect an answer or not, but the skipper had said the call needed making, and so be it. Deans understood this contact was important and potentially difficult. It had been several days since Amy went missing, with no significant progress. That was unsatisfactory from an investigative perspective, but nothing compared to the anguish her parents must be feeling.
He failed to gain a response from the landline; however, a mature-sounding woman with a soft, warm voice answered the mobile number.
‘Hello. Mrs Poole?’ Deans asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Hello, my name is DC Deans. I’m calling from Falcon Road CID in Bath. I just wanted to make contact with you and introduce myself.’
There was a silence for a few moments, and then Mrs Poole replied, ‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to pass you my direct contact details and let you know that I’m the officer in the case for Amy’s disappearance.’
There was a longer silence.
‘Hello?’ Deans said again, but heard nothing. He pressed on. ‘I’ve only been allocated the job today, but I can assure you that I’ll do all I can to find your daughter, Mrs Poole.’ He stopped talking and waited for some sort of response. It was unusual in these circumstances to be having a one-way conversation, but then again, he would usually be visiting the family in their home. He pressed the phone tightly to his ear and then the magnitude of his error struck him: Mrs Poole didn’t know.
‘Mrs Poole,’ Deans said quickly. ‘Mrs Poole, are you okay?’
Instead of an answer, Deans heard heartbreak and pain. He flicked through the handover papers to the STORM LOG and immediately saw what he had missed.
NOK have not been informed
.
A surge of blood rushed to his head, his cheeks flushed, and he fought in his mind to construct the right words to rectify his balls-up.
‘Mrs Poole, I’m very sorry. It was my belief that you’d already been informed. I’m terribly sorry to have given you the news in this way.’
He stopped, but heard nothing.
‘We received a report on Tuesday from one of Amy’s housemates that she was missing. It’s suggested that Amy hasn’t been answering her phone or social media. Have you had any contact with her since the weekend, Mrs Poole?’
A shadowy sound of gasping breath was all he could hear in the earpiece.
‘Okay, Mrs Poole,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll take it you’ve had none.’ He paused, heard snivelling. ‘Do you have someone else there with you at the moment, Mrs Poole?’
‘Y-yes. My hus-husband… and… s-sister.’
‘I’m glad you’re not alone. Would it be possible to speak to either of them, please?’
The line went quiet for a moment. ‘Who is this?’ a male voice boomed.
‘Hello, sir. My name is Detective Constable Andrew Deans of Falcon Road CID in Bath. Am I speaking with Mr Poole?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sincerely sorry to have upset your wife, Mr Poole. I’m afraid I have some difficult news to pass to you. Your daughter, Amy, has been reported missing by a university housemate.’
‘What? When?’ he barked.
‘She apparently hasn’t attended any lectures so far this week, sir.’
‘What? Why didn’t someone tell us this before?’
‘Please accept my apology for that, Mr Poole. I’ve only been allocated this case today and it was my impression that family would’ve been contacted from the outset. I will look into that for you, and I’ll be making my own complaint to my supervisor.’
‘I don’t give a shit about your supervisor. Where’s my daughter – is she alright?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that right now, but I’ll ensure we’ll do all we can to find your daughter, sir.’
‘What about her AEDs? Has she got them with her?’
‘I’m sorry, her AEDs?’
‘Her medication. She is epileptic. Does she have them with her?’
Deans bunched his eyes and threw his head backwards. The stakes had just risen.
‘I didn’t know,’ he replied gingerly. ‘Her friends didn’t mention anything to—’
‘Amy doesn’t broadcast her affliction. She’s very private about it.’
Deans did not know much about epilepsy and had to think on his feet.
‘How often does Amy take her medication?’ he asked.
‘Every day.’
‘What would happen if she didn’t take it?’
Mr Poole did not answer immediately, and then spoke with a sullen voice. ‘The chance of a seizure increases.’
‘Could you describe her seizures for me, please?’
‘Amy hasn’t suffered from one in quite some time, thankfully, but without her AEDs the risk increases and she could quickly become disorientated… or have a full on attack.’
‘When was her last seizure?’
‘When she was fifteen. She has been on gabapentin ever since.’
‘Gabapentin, her medication?’
‘Yes.’
Deans scribbled the name in his daybook. He would worry about the spelling later.
‘Has she ever missed taking them before?’
‘When she was younger, yes.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Nothing too untoward, thankfully. But we intervened.’
‘So, if she’s missed a few now, there’s a possibility she would be okay?’
‘Well, yes, that’s a possibility. But the longer she goes without her AEDs, the higher the risk of an event.’
Deans noticed he had underlined the word gabapentin in his daybook so much that he was almost through the paper. ‘Mr Poole, when did you or your wife last have contact with Amy?’
‘We left her at the house on Saturday morning. My wife spoke to Amy on Saturday afternoon and was going to call again later tonight. We’re still in Gloucester, you see.’
‘So… you haven’t been home since Saturday?’
‘No.’
‘Okay,’ Deans said, formulating a scenario in his head. ‘I tried the landline, but couldn’t get a reply. That doesn’t necessarily mean Amy was not there, but I’ll contact my colleagues in Devon and request an urgent send-to.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Sorry. A local police officer will attend your home address to see if they can get a reply. It’s possible they’ll need to force an entry, unless there are spare keys with someone?’
‘Yes. Derek next door – Williamson. Number eleven.’
‘I’ll contact my Devon colleagues as soon as I’m free from this call and I’ll let you know the moment I hear an update.’
‘Right, make sure you do. Your name. Give me your name again?’
‘DC Andrew Deans, sir. Falcon Road CID, in Bath.’
At the end of the call, Deans sank his head into his hands and then realised that nobody in the office was talking. He looked up through his fingers and saw everyone gazing back at him.
Deans spent the next hour and a half attempting to make contact with the informant, Jessica Morrison, and Amy’s boyfriend, Carl Groves. He did not chat with anyone else in the office and he did not intercept any other phone calls. Completely focused, he felt the need to remedy his earlier error. He had immediately contacted comms following the call to the Pooles, requesting an officer check the home address. His money was on them finding Amy unconscious on the floor somewhere at home, but now it was out of his hands and he would just have to be patient and wait for Devon to do their thing. He was realistic though, and did not expect an answer for a good few hours.
He gnawed at his nails as he watched the phone. He had put in eight calls; one each to Morrison and Groves, every half an hour. The incessant chatter of his colleagues was making him increasingly agitated and he was going to snap eventually, and so he took a tactical time out and wandered through the nearby streets of the Southgate shopping development.
The voice of Mrs Poole played over in his head, and the bustling shoppers around him faded to smudges.
His phone vibrated in his trouser pocket. It was a text from Daisy Harper telling him there had been a phone call.
He sprang up the two-storey flight of stairs, and found Harper sitting at her computer.
‘Who was it Dais?’ Deans asked.
‘Some girl.’ Harper shrugged. ‘Details are on your desk. Are you getting the brews in?’
Deans did not answer and soon he was speaking with Jessica Morrison. They arranged to meet at her house at five p.m., but Deans refused to discuss any more over the phone. Once bitten, as the saying goes.
His partner for the day was DC Damien Mitchell – one of those people who delight in sharing their personal life, especially sexual activities – grunts and all – in vigorous detail with anyone willing to listen. He could be extremely amusing with his anecdotes but there was a time and a place and Mitchell did not seem to worry about either. He possessed natural investigative flare and would no doubt ascend the rungs of rank in time. If anything were to hold him back, it would likely be a combination of his age, inexperience and having the hormone levels of a rampant rhinoceros.
Deans filled Mitchell in with the job details as they drove to the address, a mid-terraced Victorian house in the student quarter of town. A short concrete pathway bisected a small, wildly overgrown garden that had maybe once passed as a lawn.
A pretty girl in her early twenties opened the front door. She had a pensive but friendly smile. Deans focussed immediately on her vibrant, asymmetrical, red-dyed hair, and then noticed the shiny metal stud in her top lip and a small black spike protruding out of her right nostril.
‘Jessica?’ he asked.
‘Jess.’ She nodded. ‘Come in please.’
They followed her inside, through a poky hallway to a kitchen area at the rear of the property that was surprisingly clear of clutter, for a student home.
Deans offered his right hand. ‘I’m DC Andy Deans. I spoke to you on the phone. And this is—’
‘Hi, I’m Mitch,’ DC Mitchell interjected with a broad smile.
Jess invited them to sit around the kitchen table but she remained standing.
‘Thanks for seeing us,’ Deans said. ‘Do you know why we’re here?’
‘Amy?’ she replied, softly.
Deans nodded and gave a consoling smile. ‘When did you last see Amy?’
Jess pushed back a pile of unfolded clothing that smelt recently washed and leant back against the edge of the worktop.
‘Last Friday. At the uni car park.’
‘Do you know what time?’ Deans asked.
‘About three thirty, I think. I had just finished. So yes, it was around three thirty.’
‘Thank you, Jess,’ Deans encouraged. ‘What was Amy doing when you last saw her?’
‘She was with Carl. They must’ve been heading off to his car.’
‘Boyfriend, Carl?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know it was to his car?’ Deans asked.
‘Because it was my turn to drive us in that week. So she would have taken a lift back with him, or jumped on the bus, because she didn’t come back with me.’
‘What car does Carl have?’ Mitchell asked. He was finally concentrating on something else other than the pile of skimpy underwear next to Jessica’s left hand.
‘I don’t know the make but it’s an orange colour with a black bonnet.’
‘What time in the morning did you and Amy arrive at uni?’ Deans asked.