`DC Quinn? PC Alok Kumar. Your DS told us you were coming.'
It takes Quinn a moment to realize that he must mean Gislingham. Old assumptions die hard. As they walk through the office area, people glance up from their computers. Most do little more than register a stranger. A couple of the women gaze a little longer. One of them smiles. Quinn's day starts to look up a bit. Though he's still bloody freezing; the room is icy, everyone else is wearing jumpers.
`Sorry about the cold,' says Kumar genially, `the heating's on the blink again.' He pulls up a spare chair for Quinn, then sits down at his computer and navigates to the video player. `Here you are. The bus company sent over all the CCTV from their vehicles for that day.'
`Great, thanks.'
`And when you're ready we can go down to the station and talk to some of the cabbies.'
He smiles. He has amazingly good teeth.
`Coffee?'
Quinn looks up. `That'd be great `“'
`The machine's in the kitchen. Second door on the left.'
In Oxford, Gislingham's parked just off the far end of the Botley Road. He has coffee too `“ two coffees in fact: takeaways from a cafe in the shopping centre. He gets back to the car and hands Everett the cardboard tray. She seizes one of the cups and wraps her hands round it. Gislingham pulls the door shut and the car starts to steam up.
`Your nose has gone bright pink.'
She makes a face at him. `Hey, Eddie,' she says in a squeaky American accent. `How come you're such a big hit with the girls?'
`Showing your age, Ev,' he grins. `That ad must be thirty years old.'
`More like forty,' she says, grimacing. `Not that I'm that old, of course. And I'll forgive you your lack of gallantry, because of the coffee.' She takes a sip. `So, where next?'
Gislingham turns to his notebook. Esmond's mobile phone arrived by special delivery from the Met that morning, and for once, they had a bit of luck: the password was almost the first combination Baxter tried. 1978, the year Michael Esmond was born. As Baxter observed grimly, `Never underestimate the stupidity of supposedly intelligent people.'
The phone got them into Esmond's texts (nothing doing), his private email account (another password, not yet cracked), and last but not least, his contact list, which included the elusive pay-as-you-go mobile he'd been calling since the previous summer. It's logged in the phone as `Harry', a name which left them all looking at each other blankly when Baxter read it out. There's been no Harry anywhere `“ not in his list of colleagues, his current students or his Facebook contacts. And when Somer called Philip Esmond to ask him, he was none the wiser. And that in itself has piqued their interest. Sometimes absence is as telling as discovery. And so, for the last two hours, they've been checking the locations where `Harry' was when Michael Esmond called him, but so far they've come up completely empty: no one knows anything about a Harry. And now there's only one location left to check. Gis looks across at the houses opposite. `I think it must be one of those.'
`OK, just let me finish this.'
They sit there a moment, watching as a bunch of teenagers wander past, laughing, seemingly oblivious to the cold.
`Must be nice, being a student,' says Gislingham.
Ev peers through the glass. `They're not students. Well, not from here, anyway. They're from the youth hostel.' She nudges him and whispers, `The backpacks rather gave it away.'
Gislingham is all fake astonishment. `Hey, have you ever thought of a career as a detective? Because, you know, I think you might have a talent for it.'
She digs him in the ribs and they fall silent again. A few drops of rain start to spatter the windscreen.
Everett finishes her coffee. `OK `“ you set?'
By four o'clock Quinn has had enough. It's pissing down with rain and he's pretty sure he has a cold coming. He's spoken to seventeen taxi drivers and four station staff, and not one of them recognizes Michael Esmond or has the slightest idea where he went after the CCTV showed him leaving the station, hitching his bag over his shoulder and heading for the exit. By the time Quinn's walked back to police HQ for his car, his shoes are wet through and his mood has hit rock bottom. And the sight of a smiling (and very dry) PC Kumar coming towards him does nothing to improve it.
`DC Quinn `“ did you have any luck?'
Quinn glares at him. `No, I sodding well didn't.'
Kumar's smile falters. `Oh, sorry to hear that. You want to come in and dry off?'
`If it's all the same to you, I think I'll just get going.'
Kumar hesitates. `I did have one idea`¦'
`Oh yeah, what was that then?'
`I looked at that footage again. There are two cameras at the station `“ one outside and one inside. At 3.26 the inside camera shows him walking across towards the exit and disappearing out of view.'
`Yeah, and?'
Quinn's tone was a bit shorter than he intended and Kumar looks a little dashed. `It's just that he doesn't appear on the outside camera for another two minutes fifteen seconds. So I was trying to work out what he could have been doing during that time.'
`Went to the Gents?'
Kumar shakes his head. `The station toilets are in the other direction.'
`OK, so what's the answer?'
`I think he was looking at the map of the local area. It's by the doors, just out of camera range. I reckon he didn't know exactly where he was going. It was somewhere he hadn't been before.'
Quinn opens his mouth and closes it again. He's underestimated this guy. `OK, so let's say you're right. Where does it get us?'
Kumar brightens up. `Well, I reckon it rules out visiting a friend. And given we can't find a bus or taxi who picked him up, I think we need to assume he was on foot.' He pulls a map out of his jacket. There's a circle marked on it with red pen, with the railway station dead centre. `This is as far as he could have got at a reasonably fast pace in thirty minutes.'
Quinn takes the map. `On the basis that he walked around half an hour, spent an hour wherever it was, then walked back?'
Kumar nods. `Seems a fair enough place to start. And we can probably get CCTV for most of the obvious routes. At least for the first mile or so. Which is something.'
Quinn is still staring at the map. `And of course we do have one other thing on our side.'
Kumar frowns. `What do you mean?'
Quinn looks up and grins at him. `Half this circle is in the bloody sea.'
Sent:Tues 16/01/2018, 19.35Importance: High From:AlanChallowCSI@ThamesValley.police.uk To:DIAdamFawley@ThamesValley.police.uk, CID@ThamesValley.police.uk Subject: Case no 556432/12 Felix House, 23 Southey Road `“ additional tests
I have carried out the additional tests you requested on Matthew Esmond's clothing. There were no traces of any kind of accelerant. Nor was anything discovered on his hands during the PM. It is, of course, possible that he was very careful and/or wore gloves, but with a boy that age, I suspect that degree of planning/foresight is very unlikely.
`The last address was a non-starter,' says Everett. `No one had ever heard of a `њHarry`ќ, never mind Michael Esmond. Though it was obvious the bloke we spoke to recognized the picture. But he said it must have been from the news.'
8.15 a.m. Gis is perched on the radiator in my office, trying to warm up. Outside, it's only just starting to get light. The stone is orange in the street lights.
`Did you believe him `“ this bloke?'
Gis considers. `Seemed straight up.'
`Anything else useful on Esmond's phone?'
He shakes his head. `Baxter's been through it. Nothing doing, I'm afraid. Last call was a voicemail from the wife on the 3rd. All she says is she's sorry she didn't call the night before, she was too tired, but she's at home and Zachary's been ill so could he call her. Which, of course, he never did.'