Patel looked disappointed. ‘You could at least talk to Sam Evans at Bradfield. See what he has to say?’
Ambrose stared at the cluttered surface of the desk, his big hands curled like empty shells on the stacks of paper. He didn’t like creeping around behind Patterson. But sometimes you had to take the back alley. He sighed and reached for a pen. ‘What’s this profiler’s name, then?’
Carol walked into her squad room, feelings mixed when she saw her team already settled round the conference table, ready for the morning meeting. She was proud that they were pulling out all the stops in their bid to assure their future, but bitter because she felt it was futile. ‘What’s going on here?’ she said, detouring to the coffee machine. ‘Did the clocks go forward without me noticing?’
‘You know we like to keep you on your toes, chief,’ Paula said, passing a box of pastries round the table.
Carol sat down, blowing gently on the steaming coffee. ‘Just what I need.’ It wasn’t clear whether she was referring to the drink or to being kept on her toes. ‘So, anything in the overnights?’
‘Yes,’ and ‘No,’ said Kevin and Sam simultaneously.
‘Well, which is it?’
Sam snorted. ‘You know that if this kid was black and from a council estate with a single mum this wouldn’t even have made the overnights.’
‘But he’s not and it did,’ Kevin said.
‘We’re just capitulating to white middle-class anxieties,’ Sam said scornfully. ‘The kid’s with some girl or else he’s had it up to here with Mummy and Daddy and taken off for the bright lights.’
Carol looked at Sam with surprise. The most nakedly ambitious of her team, he was generally first out of the starting blocks on anything that had the potential to raise his profile and improve his standing. To hear him spout a position that appeared to have its roots in class politics was akin to tuning in to the Big Brother house to hear them discussing Einstein’s theory of special relativity. ‘Any chance of anyone explaining what you guys are talking about?’ she said mildly.
Kevin consulted a couple of sheets of paper in front of her. ‘This came in from Northern Division. Daniel Morrison. Fourteen years old. Reported missing by his parents yesterday morning. He’d been out all night, they were worried stiff but assumed he was making some point about being a big boy now. They rang round his friends and drew a blank, but they reckoned he must be with somebody they didn’t know about. Maybe a girlfriend he’d kept quiet about.’
‘It’s a reasonable assumption,’ Carol said. ‘From what we know of teenage boys.’
‘Right. They thought they’d re-establish contact with him when he turned up at school yesterday. But he didn’t show. That’s when his parents decided they should talk to us.’
‘I take it there’s been nothing since? And that’s why Northern are punting it our way?’ Carol held her hand out and Kevin handed over the print-out.
‘Nothing. He’s not answering his mobile, not responding to emails, not activated his RigMarole account. According to his mother, the only way he’d let himself be that cut off is if he’s dead or kidnapped.’
‘Or else he doesn’t want Mummy and Daddy to find him shacked up with some cutie,’ Sam said, clamping his mouth shut in a mutinous scowl.
‘I don’t know,’ Kevin said slowly. ‘Teenage boys want to boast about their conquests. It’s hard to believe he’d resist letting his mates know what he was up to. And these days, that means RigMarole.’
‘My thoughts precisely,’ Carol said. ‘I think Stacey should check out whether his phone’s switched on and, if it is, whether we can triangulate his position.’
Sam half-turned away from the table and crossed his legs. ‘Unbelievable. Some over-privileged white boy goes out on the razz and we’re falling over ourselves to track him down. Are we that desperate to make ourselves look indispensable? ‘
‘Clearly,’ Carol said, her voice sharp. ‘Stacey, run the checks. Paula, talk to Northern Division, see where they’re up to, if they want any help from us. See if you can get them to send us any interview product. And by the way, Sam, I think you’re wrong. If this was a black kid from an estate with a single parent who took his disappearance seriously, so would we. I don’t know why you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about this, but lose it, would you?’
Sam blew out his cheeks in a sigh, but he nodded. ‘Whatever you say, guv.’
Carol put the pages to one side for later and looked round the table. ‘Anything else new?’
Stacey cleared her throat. There was a faint lift at the corners of her mouth. Carol thought it translated as the equivalent on anyone else of a shit-eating grin. ‘I’ve got something, ‘ she said.
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘The computer Sam brought in from the old Barnes house,’ Stacey said, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I’ve been working it pretty hard for the past week. It’s been very instructive.’ She tapped a couple of keys on the laptop in front of her. ‘People are amazingly stupid.’
Sam leaned forward, accentuating the planes and angles of his smooth-skinned face. ‘What did you find? Come on, Stacey, show us.’
She clicked a remote pointer and the whiteboard on the wall behind her sprang into life. It showed a fragmentary list, with missing letters and words. Another click and the gaps filled with highlighted text. ‘This program predicts what’s not there,’ she said. ‘As you can see, it’s a list of steps for murdering Danuta Barnes. From smothering her to wrapping her in clingfilm to weighting her down to dumping her body in deep water.’
Paula whistled. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You’re right. Amazingly stupid.’
‘That’s very lovely,’ Carol said. ‘But any decent lawyer’s going to point out that it’s circumstantial at best. That it could be a fantasy. Or the outline of a short story.’
‘It’s only circumstantial till we find Danuta Barnes’s body and compare the cause of death with what we’ve got here,’ Sam said, reluctant to let go of the possibilities of his discovery.
‘Sam’s right,’ Stacey said over the chatter that his words provoked. ‘That’s why this other file is so interesting.’ She clicked the remote again and a map of the Lake District appeared. The next click revealed a chart of Wastwater that clearly showed the relative depths of the lake.
‘You think she’s in Wastwater.’ Carol stood up and walked over to the screen.
‘I think it’s worth taking a look,’ Stacey said. ‘According to his list, he was planning on somewhere he could drive to but somewhere that was also quite remote. Wastwater fits the bill. At least, looking at the map, it looks like there’s not many houses round there.’
‘No kidding. I’ve been there,’ Paula said. ‘A bunch of us went up for a weekend break a few years ago. I don’t think we saw another living soul apart from the woman that ran the B&B. I’m all for a bit of peace and quiet, but that was bloody ridiculous.’
‘He had a kayak,’ Sam said. ‘I remember that from the original file. He could have draped her across the kayak and paddled out.’
‘Good work, Stacey,’ Carol said. ‘Sam, get on to the underwater unit up in Cumbria. Ask them to set up a search.’
Stacey raised a hand. ‘It might be worth asking the geography department at the university if they’ve got any access to ETM+.’
‘What’s that?’ Carol asked.
‘Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus. It’s a global archive of satellite photos managed by NASA and the US Geological Survey,’ Stacey said. ‘It might be helpful.’
‘They can spot a body from space?’ Paula said. ‘I thought being able to watch my home TV in another country was about as far out as it gets. But you’re telling me the geography department at Bradfield Uni can see underwater from a satellite? That’s too much, Stace. Just too much.’