“Where did you say your information came from?” he asked.
“Sources,” I said. “We wouldn’t have bothered you at this stage of the investigation, except it’s a possible kidnapping.” I let that trail off.
“Sources?” said DS Transcombe, who was no doubt thinking of all the unpaid overtime this was going to cost him.
“Confidential sources.”
DS Transcombe narrowed his eyes. You see, the trouble with detectives is that they’re detectives and are literally trained not to believe anything they haven’t verified themselves. Plus about two seconds after Jaget contacted him he would have been on the phone to an “old mate” in the Met. Every good police officer who wants to survive on the job for more than five minutes has a network of “old mates.” Jaget is mine at the BTP. DS Transcombe would have phoned his, let’s call him Bill, and asked just what the Special Assessment Unit is when it’s at home and what should he do about them?
Bill, if he was any kind of an insider, would probably tell Transcombe the SAU was the latest name for the Folly, you know the guys that deal with the “special cases.” You mean like…? Yeah, those ones. So what am I supposed to do with them? Handle the case, keep your distance and kiss your clear-up rate goodbye. Oh well, thanks Bill, that was helpful. Anything for an old mate—you know that.
“Right,” said DS Transcombe, dragging out the word. “Sources.”
See, a reputation, even a dubious one, can be a useful thing.
He asked what we wanted to do next and I asked what actions had been scheduled with regards to Brené McClaren’s disappearance and he said bugger all so far. He’d actioned a statement from the workmate who’d reported her missing and had been planning a visit to her house this very afternoon, as it happened.
“Good,” I said. “Because I figured that would be a good start.” And anyway you don’t go kicking down doors in someone else’s manor without permission. “Where is it?”
“Just down there,” said DS Transcombe, pointing back the way I’d come. “Waterside.”
So we climbed back into our respective motors and drove down to what looked to me a particularly uninspired bit of late twentieth social housing dropped into what had probably been a bit of brown field behind an original row of Victorian terraces. At least parking was convenient, with spaces along the frontage and then steps up to the balcony stroke walkway that is the defining feature of modern urbanism. Brené’s house was the first in the row. We checked the front windows, but the net curtains were drawn and the inside was too dark to see. As a matter of course we rang the bell, banged on the door, yelled “police” and, as a last resort, because we like our dignity, bent over to yell through the letter box.
DS Transcombe sighed and looked sourly at me.
“Bugger,” he said.
Forcing an entry is always a pain because, apart from anything else, modern doors are bloody hard to kick in and don’t have the convenient small glass panels you can smash and reach in to lift the latch. Round the back is even worse because modern French windows are usually single sheets of plate glass and breaking one of those is hard to do safely. Now, Nightingale had been teaching me his useful little spell for popping a lock, but I’m not that proficient at it yet, and in any case if we were dealing with a magical abduction then I didn’t want to contaminate the scene by laying down a new layer of vestigia.
Plus I wasn’t so certain of DS Transcombe that I wanted to freak him out.
In the end Jaget visited the neighbours in turn until he found one that was keeping an emergency spare key for Brené. DS Transcombe took their name and details and told them we might be back to interview them later. Then we let ourselves in.
Nobody had been in the house for at least a couple of weeks. We all knew that from the moment we stepped over the pile of junk mail in the hallway. The mouldy breakfast washing up, the off milk in the fridge, the unmade bed with a thin layer of dust were all just confirmation. There’s always a tension between the need to preserve a scene for modern forensics and the pressure to get a move on in a time-sensitive investigation. We figured we had to do an initial search, but we all put on our gloves and touched things as little as possible.
We discovered that Brené McClaren’s passport was in a shoebox on the top shoe shelf in her wardrobe, there hadn’t been a violent struggle, and she had terrible taste in music.
“What’s wrong with Arcade Fire?” asked Jaget.
I did not dignify that with an answer.
We split up and did a quick canvass of the neighbours. It was late enough for everyone to be home from work, but nobody on her terrace had seen her for days, possibly weeks. I noticed DS Transcombe making a note—someone, several someones probably—was going to be doing a proper house to house just as soon as the overtime was sorted out.
“You think she was abducted on the way to work?” said DS Transcombe.
I pointed out the breakfast things, the unmade bed and the fact that it was a work colleague who had reported her missing. It was thin but it was a place to start—you can’t wait for more data forever.
Despite having a driving licence, the DVLA showed no car registered in Brené’s name. With that in mind, the three of us walked back towards the station to see what the fastest route was likely to be. It was Jaget, with his extensive knowledge of problem spots on the Underground, who knew about the public footpath.
“There’s a couple of good points where people try and access the tracks,” he said.
I didn’t ask why anybody would want to risk the electric two-step on the tracks because, as police, all three of us knew that there wasn’t anything so stupid that somebody wouldn’t try it sooner or later. Although these days there was likely to be some YouTube of them doing it, which at least helped with the post-mortem investigation.
As we traced the route, DS Transcombe made a note of where all the CCTV cameras were and which shops and houses should be in the first wave of door to door.
The actual footpath was practically dead straight and overshadowed by house backs on one side and trees on the other. By this time the sun was low enough for the path to be gloomy with occasional patches of evening sun.
“It’s a good place to ambush someone,” I said as we walked its length.
“Nah,” said Jaget. “First thing in the morning this path is going to be heaving.”
“Doesn’t mean she wasn’t snatched,” said DS Transcombe. “People have been grabbed from crowds before.”
I was thinking of Alice’s tale of how the Princess’s tea had been drugged.
“Perhaps her attacker took her from her house before she could leave,” I said.