more of the same.’ He stopped, acutely aware he was going off into a rant again. ‘I’m sorry for the shitty desks and the building site but that’s what we have. There’ll be daily briefings here at 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. so that we can review where we are.’ He turned to the whiteboard. ‘Remember these photos. We can’t bring Grace Okello back but maybe we can tell her we caught him. And maybe, if we’re lucky, she’ll be listening.’
6
He sat at his desk, an Everest of paperwork in front of him, a deep simmering in his blood, the phone lying silent. He’d pushed his other files to the side, the growing mountain of unsolved cases, only the occasional phone call from a distraught relative to remind him they were still active. Each was accorded a separate coloured folder and as he placed them to the side he felt a spasm of guilt. He held the black file in his hands for a moment longer.
This one was different. This one wouldn’t go away. No one else reckoned its contents amounted to a crime but Carrigan thought otherwise. He briefly flicked through the pages inside, the missing-person reports, the detectives’ summaries, the relatives’ statements. There were four photos, uncannily similar. Four teenage boys, three reported missing and one found dead. No one else thought there was a connection. The cases were spread too far apart, up and down and across the country, several years between them. Boys that age often disappeared for their own reasons. Many were never found because they didn’t want to be. But these four, something about them, the way each boy looked like the others, black glasses, long brown hair, something in their gaze. He slipped the pages back inside and put the file to one side.
The drinks machine was at the other end of the building and he walked through empty corridors and the smell of fresh paint then into the old part of the station. Immediately he felt the buzz of the busy squad room, the constant ringing of phones and voices of his colleagues, ears pressed against mobiles, fingers busily tapping keyboards. He nodded and said hello, checked the daily incident logs to see if there was anything that related to his case, then walked past more incident rooms filled with other detectives pursuing killers, drug dealers and internet fraudsters. The walls around him were covered in photos of valorous heroes, injured or killed in the line of duty, and he walked past these sombrely as he always did, not wanting to see their faces and read the futures that would befall them in those eager poses. He waited for his drink to dispense and stared at the crime-stat sheets lining the walls, the rotas crossed out and replaced by illegible scrawls, the reminders of best-practice procedures.
He returned to the incident room and sat back down in his chair, turning on all the lights to offset the gauzy green mist, took a sip of his drink and began going through the stacks of paper amassed on his desk.
He’d faxed Grace’s details, what little they knew, to all the London universities and colleges. The replies had come back quickly. Grace was enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies studying East African History, in the third year of a four-year course. He’d stared at the smudged fax and felt his heart beat a little faster. A coincidence, he told himself, that was all. He crushed the polystyrene cup in his hands and sent it flying towards the bin.
Jennings had secured a list of all the tenants in the block from the management company. He’d fed it through the computer, looking for hits, criminal records, complaints, the usual. Carrigan leafed through the printouts – he had an hour until he was supposed to meet Geneva outside SOAS to interview Grace’s professor. He ran through the list floor by floor; small-time drug offences, a few fraud cases, benefit dodgers, noise complaints.
The names of the tenants were like a roll call at the UN; it seemed that every nationality was
6
He sat at his desk, an Everest of paperwork in front of him, a deep simmering in his blood, the phone lying silent. He’d pushed his other files to the side, the growing mountain of unsolved cases, only the occasional phone call from a distraught relative to remind him they were still active. Each was accorded a separate coloured folder and as he placed them to the side he felt a spasm of guilt. He held the black file in his hands for a moment longer.
This one was different. This one wouldn’t go away. No one else reckoned its contents amounted to a crime but Carrigan thought otherwise. He briefly flicked through the pages inside, the missing-person reports, the detectives’ summaries, the relatives’ statements. There were four photos, uncannily similar. Four teenage boys, three reported missing and one found dead. No one else thought there was a connection. The cases were spread too far apart, up and down and across the country, several years between them. Boys that age often disappeared for their own reasons. Many were never found because they didn’t want to be. But these four, something about them, the way each boy looked like the others, black glasses, long brown hair, something in their gaze. He slipped the pages back inside and put the file to one side.
The drinks machine was at the other end of the building and he walked through empty corridors and the smell of fresh paint then into the old part of the station. Immediately he felt the buzz of the busy squad room, the constant ringing of phones and voices of his colleagues, ears pressed against mobiles, fingers busily tapping keyboards. He nodded and said hello, checked the daily incident logs to see if there was anything that related to his case, then walked past more incident rooms filled with other detectives pursuing killers, drug dealers and internet fraudsters. The walls around him were covered in photos of valorous heroes, injured or killed in the line of duty, and he walked past these sombrely as he always did, not wanting to see their faces and read the futures that would befall them in those eager poses. He waited for his drink to dispense and stared at the crime-stat sheets lining the walls, the rotas crossed out and replaced by illegible scrawls, the reminders of best-practice procedures.
He returned to the incident room and sat back down in his chair, turning on all the lights to offset the gauzy green mist, took a sip of his drink and began going through the stacks of paper amassed on his desk.
He’d faxed Grace’s details, what little they knew, to all the London universities and colleges. The replies had come back quickly. Grace was enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies studying East African History, in the third year of a four-year course. He’d stared at the smudged fax and felt his heart beat a little faster. A coincidence, he told himself, that was all. He crushed the polystyrene cup in his hands and sent it flying towards the bin.
Jennings had secured a list of all the tenants in the block from the management company. He’d fed it through the computer, looking for hits, criminal records, complaints, the usual. Carrigan leafed through the printouts – he had an hour until he was supposed to meet Geneva outside SOAS to interview Grace’s professor. He ran through the list floor by floor; small-time drug offences, a few fraud cases, benefit dodgers, noise complaints.
The names of the tenants were like a roll call at the UN; it seemed that every nationality was
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