Childhood Studies course at the university and she had a work placement at Little Angels nursery. How did we manage to miss the connection?’
‘Alice worked as a checkout girl as well as at the nursery. The supermarket job is down as her main employment. I only remembered now because the photograph her Dad provided for the appeal was of her in her nursery uniform.’
‘Ma’am?’ Enders said. ‘This gets worse. I’ve just run the misper search again. Remember the results included a number of girls who did not match Kelly’s description?’
‘Don’t tell me…’ Savage groaned.
‘Yes. Simone Ashton. Full time job at Robins in Plympton.’
‘Ma’am?’ Calter, sounding even more tentative than Enders had. ‘Rosina Olivarez.’
‘So?’
‘Just a hunch, ma’am. Bring her up, Patrick.’
Enders switched programs and brought up the Leash files. Click, click and Rosina’s details flashed up on the screen. Occupation: Student. Occupation Notes: Degree in Aquaculture. Part time job at Tina’s Teds Playgroup in Mannamead.
‘Bloody hell,’ Savage said. ‘There needs to be a major review of how the data is entered and analysed. The connection was right in front of us, but the system hid the link away. Whatever, this isn’t looking good.’
‘Coincidence?’ asked Enders.
‘Possibly. If not then I sure don’t know what to think. I mean, are these girls being targeted because they are child minders?’
‘Isn’t there a fetish where men dress up as babies, complete with nappies and dummies and stuff?’ Enders said, a look of disgust on his face.
Riley came into the room carrying a pile of documents. He dumped them on a desk and nodded at Enders.
‘Paraphilic infantilism is the correct term: the desire to be treated like a toddler again. But last time I looked your average toddler wasn’t killing teenage girls, or stripping them and having sex with them.’
‘Alright Mr Fast-Track, what’s your suggestion then?’ Enders said.
‘As you guys are always telling me, I am the ebony boy from the ivory tower. What do I know about the real world?’
Touche, thought Savage.
Calter moved over from her desk to join the boys and soon the three of them were talking about fetishes, Enders arguing that if sex wasn’t in bed and the light wasn’t out then it was not for him, Riley insisting that having some kind of fetish didn’t make you mad, Calter saying she would try anything once with the right person. The conversation wasn’t leading anywhere useful so Savage grabbed her cup of coffee, got up and moved away.
The main whiteboard had one victim photograph taped slap in the middle: Kelly Donal. How many more would they need to add? How many girls who never knew each other linked forever by death. How many more families destroyed?
DS Collier joined her.
‘Problems, ma’am?’ He nodded at the board.
‘I think we may have some more,’ Savage indicated the screen which Enders was sitting at, with the thumbnail pictures of the girls smiling out. ‘We need action points on those three. Their workplaces, Rosina Olivarez, Simone Ashton and Alice Nash. I want their pictures up here on the board as victims.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, you’ve lost me.’
Savage realised she was rambling, but she did her best to explain the nursery angle, how the victims had something to do with caring for young children. Collier said he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to generate a load of new actions around hunches.
‘We don’t know these new mispers are victims yet,’ he said. ‘We are stretched enough as it is and this will simply generate more and more threads to follow. We will be wasting precious resources on girls who might turn up tomorrow. We will have officers out on wild goose-’
‘Shut it, Collier,’ Savage said, angry with Collier’s focus on silly administrative details. ‘If the girls turn up alive and well then that is a result in my book. If, God forbid, they turn up dead then we will have done some useful groundwork. And anyway, I might remind you the Olivarez girl is very much dead.’
Collier shrugged. He didn’t dare argue with his superior, but Savage saw he was riled. His office system was in danger of being overloaded now he was going to have to insert material from Leash into operation Zebo. All his careful planning was being blown out of the water. That couldn’t be helped though. Every piece of data would need to be re-evaluated in the light of the new evidence. It was going to be a mammoth task. Savage attempted to placate him by placing an arm around his shoulders.
‘Come on, I’ll get some fresh coffees and we will see how we are going to handle the new data. And then I will go and see Hardin and persuade him to get me some extra bodies in here.’
Savage had got the coffees and Collier began to explain about the problems of not letting Zebo get overloaded by the sheer quantity of data that had been gathered during the Leash inquiry.
‘Leash has been going on for twelve months flat out,’ he said. ‘Zebo has been going a week. There must be a hundred times more material in the Leash case.’
Savage didn’t have time to address his concerns because DI Davies and DC Jackson had come in. Their faces wore glum expressions, like little kids who had opened all their Christmas presents at once and didn’t have anything else to look forward to.
‘It’s that little prick, Dickie boy Trent,’ Davies scowled. ‘He retracted his confession. He is now saying Mitchell carried out all the rapes and he just drove the car. He fingered Forester too. Told us Forester supplied the GHB and took the videos. Says he was too scared to tell us before.’
‘He knows Mitchell and Forester are dead?’
‘We had to tell the bitch Bradley, yes.’ Davies looked downcast. ‘Disclosure of evidence and all that fucking crap.’
‘Very convenient.’
‘Yeah. With those two out of the way, him and the bloody lawyer can concoct whatever story they like.’
‘So you are here about Forester?’
‘Clever girl!’ Davies beamed, a smile spreading like the Cheshire Cat just got the cream. ‘We need to get into his network and find out what connections he had.’
‘Have you threatened Trent?’
‘What with? Having charged him with the nine rapes he is going down for life even if he tells us where Elvis is living.’
Savage could imagine Trent had worked everything out. Once he had admitted the rapes he would have known his situation couldn’t get any worse if he kept his mouth shut. He had been right because the other two suspects were dead and by changing his story he now had a way out.
‘We’ve got Forester’s mobile phone logs, they might be some help.’ She nodded at Collier and he went off to get a printout.
‘Great. We think Trent had a Pay As You Go contract, because we can’t find anything in his bank statements and we can’t locate the bloody phone. If we can get Trent’s number from Forester’s phone we can go to the mobile operator to get the complete record set.’
‘So where did the phone go?’
‘Little wifey,’ Jackson said. ‘She seemed so sweet and put upon, but we reckon she grabbed the phone while we were running around securing the house. If you remember she refused the offer of a FLO and went off to a friend’s for the night. Must have ditched the thing because she is denying all knowledge.’
‘Wait a minute…’ Savage paused ‘Can’t you put it to him the wife must have known?’
‘And she goes down as well? We tried, he just shrugged and said “prove it”.’ Davies tapped his head with his forefinger. ‘Mr Know-All. He’s got an Excel bloody spreadsheet up here filled in with all the possibilities. His wife going down for any more than being a pain-in-the-butt isn’t one of them.’
‘Here you are, sir,’ Collier had returned and he handed a printout to Davies. ‘All the numbers Forester called in the month before he went missing, ordered by frequency.’
