“Thirteen.”
Another pause.
“It’s a common enough thing to do,” Jo pointed out. “If you want to prevent something from being found.”
She had a point.
Serial killers don’t care about jurisdiction.
A chill ran down his spine.
“Yeah, it’s probably just a coincidence.” There were far too many in this case already.
They lapsed into silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, Rob said, “Am I seeing you tonight?”
“Have you got time? This case sounds pretty full on.”
It was, but he needed to see her, to hold her in his arms. He needed to feel something good, other than the sadness and frustration at work. Jo made him feel human again. But he didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep.
“Let’s play it by ear. I’ll call you later and give you an update.”
She smiled, but it seemed forced. “Keep me posted.”
Rob’s phone buzzed as he received a text from Mallory. “Crimewatch has gone. The coast is clear.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Jo said, standing up.
He also got to his feet. “Thanks for stopping by. Sorry I dredged up all that stuff about your sister.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Talk to you later.”
Her haunted look told him she was still freaked out.
18
Twenty years was a long time. Manchester was two hundred miles away. The cases couldn’t be related.
Still, as soon as he got back to the squad room, Rob logged into the HOLMES database, the police repository of case information, and pulled up the details on Jo’s sister’s disappearance.
Rachel Maguire. Thirteen years old. Reported missing by her mother, Valerie Maguire at twenty past seven on the 5th August 1999.
A shiver snuck down his spine. Almost exactly twenty years ago.
A subsequent search by the authorities had turned up nothing. It was a local search team who’d discovered the backpack in the lake five days later.
Rob squinted at the low-resolution photograph of the backpack. It was black with long straps, just as Jo had described. The zipper was open, and the inside was glistening wet. There was the rock on the evidence table next to it. Roughly the same size as the one used to weigh down Katie’s backpack.
Was he grasping at straws?
“A PC Brightman called for you.” Mallory came over. He held up a finger with a yellow post-it note stuck to it. Brightman’s mobile number was printed across the top in Mallory’s neat handwriting. “He asked if you’d call him back before five. What’s that?” He peered over Rob’s shoulder at his screen.
“I’m not sure,” mused Rob. “Probably nothing.”
Mallory looked at him expectantly. Rob knew he wouldn’t budge until he’d told him. The DI had a silent, stubborn streak that made him a good detective, but also a pain in the arse on occasion.
“It’s Jo’s sister’s disappearance.” He kept his voice low. He didn’t want the rest of the department to think he’d gone off his rocker.
Mallory scrunched up his forehead, retrieving long forgotten fragments of information. It was fascinating how his mind worked. “Rachel, right? Disappeared when Jo was young. They never found out what happened to her.”
“Spot on.” Rob nodded. “Anyway, it turns out Rachel’s backpack was discovered in a nearby lake weighed down with a rock.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I’m serious. I thought I’d check the original case notes to see if anything else jumped out at me.”
“And did it?”
“Well, it’s almost twenty years to the day. The rock is a similar size. Rachel was thirteen, Katie is eleven.” He glanced at Mallory. “Am I being ridiculous here?”
Mallory exhaled through pursed lips, making a soft hissing noise. “Could be a coincidence. Spooky, though.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Jo’s pretty freaked out too. Anyway, it’s not worth mentioning at this stage.” He closed his laptop. “How are we doing on the other angles?”
Mallory cocked his head to the side. “Nothing on those women who knew Katie. Everybody on Lisa’s list of suspects checks out.”
“That was a longshot anyway, especially now we aren’t even sure the perp is a woman.”
“There’s still nothing on the CCTV,” Mallory updated him. “Katie’s abductor must have parked in a blind spot. Stills from the ANPR camera at the roundabout aren’t clear enough to make out who is in the vehicles.”
“Damn.”
The ANPR cameras weren’t designed to show the individual inside a car, only the license plate, make and model. Without the details of the motor vehicle, they were useless.
“So, we’ve got nothing.”
Mallory shrugged. “We’ve looked at every car that passed through that camera an hour before and after Katie’s disappearance. We’ll cross-reference them with the vehicles of all the persons of interest in this case.”
Rob nodded. “Good work.”
“PC Brightman is waiting for your call,” Mallory continued. “Do you want me to speak to him?”
Rob shook his head. “Nah, I’ll do it. Thanks.”
His DI nodded and went back to his desk, leaving the post-it note on the corner of Rob’s screen.
“PC Brightman, this is DCI Miller from Richmond CID. Thanks for returning my call.”
The police officer grunted. “What can I do for you, DCI Miller?”
Traffic roared in the background. Where was he? In the middle of an intersection?
“I wanted to talk to you about Tessa Parvin,” he began, shouting to be heard. A couple of heads in the squad room bobbed up.
“Who?”
“Tessa Parvin, Arina Parvin’s mother. Remember the missing girl in Bisley four years ago?”
A pause. Rob thought he heard a sixteen-wheeler thunder by.
“I remember,” came the response.
“Could you go somewhere a bit quieter?” Rob asked. “I’m struggling to hear you.”
“Hang on.” The traffic intensified momentarily, then faded to a muted hiss.
“Thanks,” he breathed.
“What about Arina Parvin?” Brightman asked. “I didn’t have anything to do with the case.”
“You were the first responder, weren’t you? You visited Arina’s mother, Tessa shortly after she called the emergency services.”
“That’s right.” His voice was guarded. Rob wondered if DCI Purley had given him a head’s up.
“What sort of state was she in?”
“She was distraught, as you can imagine. Her daughter had just vanished.”
“Did she mention her husband at all?”
“Um, yeah, she did. She seemed to think he’d taken the child and
