Deity

‘Do you need a warrant?’

‘We’ve got one,’ replied Brook. ‘We’ll execute after the press briefing.’

Charlton nodded. ‘Okay, but tread lightly. A missing daughter buys a lot of sympathy and the press may descend in numbers after they’ve been briefed. What about the college?’

‘It’s the last day before half-term tomorrow so we flood it with bodies, question everyone we can,’ said Brook. ‘Hopefully tonight’s press conference will shake something loose. Someone must know something.’

‘What about neighbours around the Kennedy house?’

‘We’re putting a canvass together. Not much to see or hear apparently,’ answered Noble. ‘We’re still following up but an appeal through the media might help.’

‘Other party-goers?’

‘As far as we know, only the missing four and Jake, the lad in the film, were invited. He went to the Kennedy house but says he didn’t go in. No idea why — yet.’

Charlton looked at his watch again — an hour to the press conference. ‘So where are they? They can’t just disappear into thin air, not all four of them, abducted without a struggle or a witness.’

‘We agree,’ said Brook. ‘They left of their own accord. They each packed a small rucksack with a few clothes. They each made their bed, took apart their mobile phone, removed the SIM card and placed the phone on the Deity leaflet, on the bed. It’s a statement.’

‘That tells us what?’ asked Charlton.

‘That they’ve decided to leave,’ said Brook.

‘Why?’

‘Why do teenagers do anything? Each of them, in their different way, is unhappy. Adele is having problems with her boyfriend and father, Kyle is gay and confused and Becky has had her dreams of being a model shattered.’

‘And Russell Thomson?’

‘Not sure,’ admitted Brook. ‘But there are rumours he’s been bullied in the past. We’re checking. Either way the artefacts send a message. They’re leaving their lives behind. No computer to email them, no phone to contact them or trace their whereabouts. We’ve applied to their providers for a record of their email and mobile usage before they disappeared but that’s still in the pipeline. DC Cooper was checking their online presence. .’

‘They don’t have one,’ said Cooper. ‘They’re not on Twitter except for Adele, and she hasn’t tweeted for several weeks.’

‘What’s the content?’ asked Brook.

‘I’ve done a printout for the board but it’s all activist nonsense about the environment, the dangers of nuclear weapons, that sort of thing.’

‘Wanting to breathe clean air and avoid vaporisation,’ said Brook, with a sideways glance at Cooper. ‘What a weirdo.’

‘Emails?’ asked Noble, trying not to smile at Cooper’s discomfort.

‘Nothing,’ answered Cooper stiffly. ‘Wherever they are, they haven’t sent an email using any account their parents told us about since last Friday. And any record of their emails before then, has been wiped from their computers. Not only that, they haven’t even left a message on Facebook because I checked. All four of them unsubscribed on the day of the party.’

‘Wow,’ said Morton.

‘Wow is right,’ said Cooper. ‘My kids would rather lose an arm than their Facebook presence. However, there’s already a Facebook page dedicated to their disappearance. It was started by a Fern Stretton and I’m keeping an eye on it in case anything useful crops up. Also I’m keeping tabs on the comments on YouTube. You never know. No chat on Twitter yet.’

‘Okay, I’ll ask again,’ said Charlton. ‘Where are they?’

Brook looked him in the eye. ‘At the risk of stating the obvious, we don’t know. In fact, we don’t know anything about their movements after the party. That’s our starting-point. I rang Alice Kennedy earlier today to ask her to leave the house and touch nothing else. If the four don’t come forward in the hours after the press conference, we’re going to need SOCO to go over the whole place as well as each student’s bedroom.’

‘Are there any facts I can use at the press conference?’ asked Charlton, starting to become frustrated.

‘Becky and Adele both had passports from recent foreign holidays,’ said Noble. ‘However, Kyle Kennedy has never left the country and according to his mum, didn’t have a passport. But she was wrong. He applied for a passport three months ago. I got on to the Passport Service this morning when we found out Russell Thomson was also missing. Thomson applied for a passport at the same time as Kyle. The interesting thing is, the same person endorsed the back of their photographs. .’

‘Let me guess,’ said Brook, deep in thought. ‘Adam Rifkind.’

Noble smiled. ‘How did you know?’

‘I met Rifkind this morning. He’s a lecturer at Derby College. He teaches English Literature and Media Studies to all four. He’s the perfect choice to endorse a passport application. And there’s one more thing. He’s Adele Watson’s ex-boyfriend.’

‘That’s not all,’ said Cooper, rifling through his notebook. ‘You asked me to track down the Deity website.’ He found the right page in his notes. ‘The domain name was registered and paid for by Adam Rifkind.’

‘How did he pay for it?’

‘Credit card, six months ago,’ answered Cooper.

‘Six months?’ said Brook, mildly surprised.

‘So we have a suspect,’ said Charlton. ‘And he’s been planning this for a long time.’

‘Planning what?’ said Brook. ‘Persuading four young adults to walk away from their unhappy lives? There’s no crime in that.’

‘What about the happy slapping?’ insisted Charlton.

‘He wasn’t involved in that.’

‘Somebody filmed it and it’s on his website,’ said Cooper.

‘Russell Thomson filmed it. Or that’s what we’re meant to believe.’

‘How do you know Thomson filmed it?’ asked Charlton.

‘I didn’t say that, I said we’re meant to think he filmed it because he’s a film nut and because he recently acquired a camcorder from his mother. And according to Miss Thomson, the camcorder is never off his wrist,’ added Brook. ‘He wanders the streets filming whatever takes his fancy so the broadcast we saw could be a product of that.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Charlton.

‘You think someone’s yanking our chain?’ said Noble.

Brook grimaced at the metaphor. ‘I’m sure of it. But I prefer, What we see and what we seem is but a dream. These kids are smart, sir. They’ve disappeared without a trace. That takes some doing.’ He looked at Charlton. ‘I think we’re being challenged, presented with an alternative reality. We have to question what we see, who people are.’

‘You’re not making sense,’ said Charlton impatiently.

‘The Edgar Allan Poe poem you just heard quoted on the website was also used in a film called Picnic at Hanging Rock.’ Brook held up one of the DVDs and tossed the other to Noble. ‘Adele, Becky, Kyle and Russell watched it last Thursday.’

‘The day before they disappeared.’

‘Right. And when we looked through Adele’s bedroom, she had the anthology of Poe’s poems opened at the same poem. She’d written Miranda in the margin.’

‘Who’s Miranda?’

‘She’s a character in the film. She disappears with her friends.’ Brook looked around at all the furrowed brows. ‘Exactly. Sergeant Noble and I will be watching it tonight. Anyone else who hasn’t seen it should do so after us.’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ asked Charlton. His voice had been rising steadily. ‘I can’t start waffling about some old film to the press.’

‘We don’t know what’s going on because we’re not supposed to,’ said Brook softly. ‘They’ve created an enigma for us and we have to find them to understand it.’