‘The phone call may turn out to have nothing to do with the abduction.’
DCI Kessen was present at the briefing, but sitting to one side and letting DI Hitchens take the floor. Fry wasn’t surprised to see the acting head of CID. If the Birley case became a murder enquiry, Kessen would be appointed Senior Investigating Officer. But for now, they had no body, no evidence that there had been a serious crime. The possibility that Sandra Birley had been abducted from the Clappergate car park was just that - a possibility.
‘Are we going to get the husband to make an appeal, sir?’ asked Cooper, raising his hand. Fry nodded reluctantly to herself. At least that was one tactic they could use without committing themselves to anything.
‘We think it’s too early yet,’ said Hitchens. ‘Besides, he
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isn’t in any condition at the moment. I spoke to the family liaison officer first thing this morning, and it seems Mr Birley’s emotional state has deteriorated considerably since yesterday.’
Then it turned out that the two retired DCs had been working an early shift, too. They’d already been through the CCTV footage from the Clappergate multistorey. That wasn’t anybody’s favourite job. Feelings in the room began to warm towards them.
‘First of all, we’ve eliminated the owners of the other two vehicles that were left in the car park overnight,’ said the one with the black-and-white tie. ‘The first bloke had drunk too much in the pub and sensibly decided to get a taxi. He turned up to get his car next morning, so we got a statement from him. He didn’t see anything. But how would he, when he was in the pub at the time?’
‘OK,’ said Hitchens. ‘And the other one?’
‘Even more innocent. He works in the IT department of a company with offices in Buxton Road. That afternoon, he dropped a computer monitor on his foot and broke two toes. He was in A & E at the relevant time. His girlfriend turned up to collect the car.’
‘They never really looked like contenders anyway. Why would Sandra Birley’s attacker leave his own vehicle in the car park as well as hers?’
‘Exactly, sir. But we had to eliminate them. We’ve also been through every bit of tape from the functioning cameras, and we’ve managed to trace all the vehicles that left the car park later that night - in other words, after Mrs Birley was abducted. There were only four of them, because the place was practically empty. In fact, we’ve matched all but one of those vehicles to CCTV footage of the owners returning to their cars. Two were lone males, and there was one couple but older, in their early sixties. It’s clear from the tape that the woman isn’t Sandra Birley. She’s the wrong age, wrong
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height, wrong clothes, everything. All of these people have been spoken to, and they seem to be genuine.’
‘And none of them saw anything suspicious?’ asked Fry.
‘That’s right, Sergeant.’
Fry sighed. That was the trouble with law-abiding members of the public - they never saw anything. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d attended a serious incident, only to be met by members of the public with helpful smiles and short-term memories.
‘If my maths are correct, there was one more vehicle.’
‘Unfortunately, the fourth vehicle seems to have been parked on Level 2.’
‘Where there’s a nonfunctioning camera?’
‘You’ve got it, Sarge. We do have footage of the vehicle exiting the car park at the barrier. It’s a blue Saab. There appears to be a male driving, no one visible in the passenger seat.’
‘And has the owner been interviewed?’
‘He lives in Sheffield. There’s a team on the way there now to talk to him.’
‘So if the Sheffield driver is eliminated,’ said Fry, ‘the only other possibility is that our man didn’t have a vehicle of his own in the car park.’
‘Well, he had to have a vehicle somewhere close by,’ put in the DC with the striped tie. ‘He must have been parked on the street.’
‘More CCTV footage, then. The town centre cameras?’
‘Right.’
Fry turned back to the DI. ‘And what are we doing about the phone messages, sir? The clues he left…?’
Hitchens had his map pinned up on the board - or at least, an adaptation of it, showing the whole six-mile circle around Wardlow, with labels marking a scatter of locations.
‘We’ve passed on a list of potential locations for the uniforms to check out when practicable,’ he said. ‘By that, I
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mean any locations that might possibly be referred to as “the dead place”. Otherwise, unless his clues get any clearer, there’s nothing concrete for us to act on. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any reasonable theories, let’s hear them. If you haven’t heard the tapes and you want to listen to them, speak to DS Fry.’
‘When practicable? That could mean never,’ said Cooper.
Hitchens shrugged. ‘As you said yourself, DC Cooper, the possibilities are endless. We need something more substantial.’ ‘We’re hoping he’ll phone again?’
‘Well, it would help, wouldn’t it?’
DCI Kessen had been listening quietly to the discussion. When the meeting had finished, he stood up and put his hand on Hitchens’ arm.
‘Keep me in the loop, won’t you, Paul?’ he said. ‘Regular updates.’
Ben Cooper was about to leave the briefing with everyone else, when the DI called him over. He thought at first he’d misheard, and Hitchens had to speak to him again - a bit louder this time, as if Cooper was daydreaming at the back of the class.
