Needless to say, the GMP were not happy that we’d dug up yet another weird case on their patch and must have been overjoyed to dump this mystery on Seawoll. You can get a lot of co-operation out of other forces if you offer to pick up the tab.
During the previous December, despite now being able to communicate, Francisca continued to present as disorientated and confused, so she was referred to the Mental Health Liaison Team for an assessment, who then admitted her to one of their mental health wards for an evaluation period.
‘She was there for two weeks,’ said Danni, ‘appeared to get much better, and since they needed the beds they moved her to a halfway house. We haven’t got her medical records yet but we have talked to the halfway house.’
Who described her as quiet, well-behaved, very clean, maybe obsessively so.
‘Apparently she fell in love with the Hoover,’ said Danni. ‘Would offer to clean people’s rooms when she’d finished with the communal areas.’
‘Did she have any friends that weren’t household appliances?’ I asked.
Behind Danni I heard the unmistakable thunk of a car door closing and a distant rumble that I recognised as Seawoll talking to a third party.
‘Yeah, one friend,’ said Danni. ‘A woman called Heather Chalk, born Chester 1986, on the PNC for shoplifting. I’ll send you the details in a minute. Also treated as an in-patient for depression, which was why she was at the halfway house too. They got very friendly and she was the one who helped Francisca learn English. Which she did amazingly fast. Then early Feb, both of them walk out of the halfway house and never come back.’
‘Just like that?’
‘They were both there voluntarily. The staff were concerned but there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it,’ said Danni. ‘It wasn’t a police matter.’
Is now, I thought.
‘The thing is,’ Danni said, ‘before she was in hospital Heather was living on a narrowboat on the Macclesfield Canal and that’s gone. We asked around and they said Heather had a friend boat-sitting it. We found the friend about an hour ago and she says that Heather took possession again. Had a new friend with her – one that matched Francisca’s description.’
Danni, Seawoll and a couple of bods from the GMP had been checking the canal banks either side of the old mooring.
‘Can you sail a canal boat from Manchester to London?’ I asked.
‘Of course you can,’ said Danni. ‘That’s what the canals were built for. But … get this. Canal boats have registrations, just like cars, and we have the registration for Heather’s boat.’
And a description. Seawoll had already contacted Stephanopoulos to organise a search at the London end. Danni had some friends who lived on narrowboats and she said that the Canal Wardens monitored the boats.
‘If you’ve got a cruiser licence you’re only supposed to moor up for a maximum of fourteen days,’ said Danni. ‘So the wardens check registrations regularly.’
And kept surprisingly good records.
‘You have to,’ said the guy from the Canal and River Trust. ‘Or some entitled bugger will squat the best moorings.’
Heather Chalk’s boat had been recorded as tied up at the Kensal Green visitor mooring at 10.15 a.m. and we’d been scrambling ever since.
‘You need to change your motto,’ Stephanopoulos had said over the radio as we headed west for Kensal Rise. ‘Knowledge is Power doesn’t hack it – it should be Solum stulti irruunt – only fools rush in.’
‘I rather believe you looked that up specially,’ Nightingale had replied.
Me and Guleed stood on the bridge and looked west along the canal.
On the northern bank was a permanent mooring where affluent boaters could pay to enjoy the canal lifestyle without the faff of having to move every two weeks. On the southern bank was the towpath proper, modern flats, beyond them a red-brick mega-Sainsbury’s with its own access to the path and a stop-and-shop mooring – maximum stay four hours. Two narrowboats were tied up there.
‘There’s an inlet just there,’ said Guleed, pointing to where a channel cut under the modern flats. ‘Leads to a water activity centre.’
Just before the canal turned out of sight, there was a humpback bridge over an inlet that no longer existed, we thought, and then a couple of hundred metres beyond that, out of sight around the bend, the public mooring where Heather Chalk’s boat had been recorded the previous afternoon.
‘We want to stage on the lump there,’ said Guleed, pointing to the vestigial humpback bridge.
We would be between Francisca and the Sainsbury’s. There the north bank was filled with nothing but the stone-studded expanse of Kensal Green Cemetery and, on the towpath side, a decommissioned gasworks that was now a storage site for scaffolding, and the mainline railway track.
‘And an electrical substation,’ said Guleed. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Better than a school,’ I said. ‘Or a market.’
Nightingale reported that he’d reached his bridge and was deploying. Our TSG contingent called to say they were still five minutes out – traffic being heavy. I was calling our armed response unit when Guleed banged me on the arm with the back of her hand.
‘Two women,’ she said. ‘On the hump.’
I grabbed my binoculars from the Asbo and had a look.
Two white women. I didn’t need to check the descriptions because I recognised one of them from Middlesex Street – although minus the burning halo.
‘It’s them,’ I said, and Guleed called it in.
Both women were dressed in jeans, jumpers and waterproofs. Heather Chalk’s jumper was cream-coloured and bulky, Francisca’s was a mad mix of purple, blues, reds and oranges as if hand-knitted from multicoloured wool. It was the kind of jumper that white kids get for Christmas from eccentric grandmothers. Their waterproofs were zip-up cagoules in orange and navy blue. Sensible clothes for living on a boat in the middle of winter.
Francisca was pulling a canvas shopping trolley.
The two women were chatting as they came down the steep slope. Relaxed, companionable – routine.
‘They’re doing their shopping,’ I said. ‘Sainsbury’s.’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ said Guleed – which was the most swearing I’d ever heard her do. ‘We need to keep eyes on – with luck they’ll come back the way they came.’
‘It can’t be me, she’s seen me,’ I said, but Guleed was already stripping off her kit and dumping it in the back of the Asbo.
‘Don’t let any of the TSG lot steal my vest,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had it adjusted.’
By the time the two women had turned into the supermarket’s back gate, Guleed was sauntering down the towpath towards them. Stephanopoulos, who had a map in front of her, ordered me to take position at the gate as soon as they were out of sight.
The TSG would drive their Sprinter around and park in front of the Sainsbury’s. People are used to seeing police vans parked up around the place, and as long as nobody did anything stupid – Stephanopoulos left a menacing pause after that phrase – our targets should ignore it.
The armed response unit were to park on the bridge and act as reserve.
Nightingale’s team would advance up the towpath from their end, and secure the narrowboat while Nightingale took position on the humpback bridge thing.
‘Everybody stay calm,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Guleed, don’t get too close – we have a perimeter around the supermarket so we can always reacquire them when they leave.’
‘They’re going in through the main entrance,’ Guleed said. ‘Temporary loss, I’m following.’
In the background was the unmistakable clatter of shopping trolleys being shunted about.