Mallory got to work on Anthony Payne, digging into the sex offender’s background. “Liaise with Jo,” Rob had told him. “She was also going to look into him.”
Rob went to find Harry. “Have you managed to talk to your friend with the uncle in Iran yet?” He got straight to the point.
Harry, who was on the phone, hung up. “Yes, I did. She’s going to Skype him this evening and ask him to look into it for us. Apparently, he’s not very high up in the police force, so she doesn’t know how much use he’ll be, but she said she’d ask anyway.”
“Okay, good. Keep me posted.”
Then he got hold of Jo. “Mallory’s going to call you about Payne’s background. We’re trying to find out if he had any connection to Katie Wells.”
“I’ve cleared it with my boss,” she told him. “I’m going to look into him too. I’ll give Mallory a call this evening if I haven’t heard from him by then and we’ll compare notes.”
“Thanks, Jo.” He hesitated. “There’s something else I wanted to ask you.”
“Yeees.” She dragged out the word, but he heard her smile.
“Arina Parvin, the girl who went missing four years ago, may be living in Iran. Do you or the agency have any contacts in that country who can find out for us?”
There was a pause.
“I think we may know some people. There’s an underground women's empowerment group. I can’t give you any more details. I’ll see if I can get in touch with them. They might be able to help.”
Hope surged through him. It could be a better line of enquiry than Harry’s friend’s cop uncle. “That would be great. If she is there, we can rule out one of these coincidences.”
And it would give Tessa Parvin closure.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a frustrating blur of false sightings, unhelpful forensic reports and useless CCTV footage. By five o’clock, Rob was ready to tear his hair out.
“There must be something.” Even he could hear the desperation in his voice.
“I think there is.” Evan’s quiet drawl.
Rob hadn’t heard him approach his desk.
“You got something?”
“I don’t know what I’ve got. You’d better come and look at this.”
Rob followed him back to his desk. The American DS glided rather than walked, in a smooth, efficient motion. It was the same when he eased himself back into his chair.
“I looked into the disappearances of other young girls in the area. There are several possibilities.”
“Rob lowered his voice. “Show me.”
Evan clicked through to a digital map. On it, he’d pinpointed the locations of the missing girls.
“Cheam, Elstead, Dorking and Bagshot,” read Rob. “All Surrey, except for Cheam, which is near Sutton, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s right. They’re fairly spread out, which means they fall into the jurisdiction of different constabularies,” said Evan. “That’s one of the reasons nobody’s connected the dots.
Rob studied Evan’s screen. “Ages?”
He glanced at his notepad. “Rosie Hutton was twelve, Elise Mitcham eleven, Chrissy Macdonald was fourteen, and Angie Nolan was ten.”
“They fit the age range,” he mused.
“They were all reported missing by their parents after failing to return from school or the park or playground. Angie, the youngest, had been under the supervision of her grandmother. She didn’t see who took her.”
Rob gnawed on his lower lip. “If you add Arina Parvin to the list, and now Katie Wells, that’s six girls that we know of, who have gone missing in the last…” He glanced at Evan. “How many years?”
“I looked at the last five years, but it could go back further.”
“Christ.” Rob ran a shaky hand through his hair. Was this something? Or yet another coincidence?
“And get this,” Evan said. “Rosie Hutton’s school satchel was found weighted down in a nearby river.”
It was definitely something.
He exhaled shakily. “I’m going to have to run this by the Chief Superintendent. I don’t know what to make of it.”
Evan stayed silent.
Sam Lawrence had been something of a mentor to Rob when he’d first arrived at Richmond CID. He practiced tough love, but it worked, and Rob had a soft spot for the feared DCS. He often ran ideas by him or bounced hypotheses off him. It was silly not to. The man had over thirty years’ experience in the field.
He knocked on Lawrence’s door. As usual, it was ajar, but that didn’t mean you shouldn’t knock. Many a DS had learned that the hard way.
“Come in, Rob.” Lawrence beckoned to him. “I’ve been meaning to catch up with you. What’s news?” He came around from behind his desk and gestured to the three armchairs positioned around a small circular table. “Let’s sit here. I could do with some tea.”
He picked up the phone and asked someone at the other end to bring them a pot and two cups. “Coffee’s undrinkable.”
They sat down. The Chief Superintendent leaned back and waited for him to start talking.
He swallowed. “Sir, there’s something I need to run by you.”
Lawrence frowned. “What’s on your mind, son?”
The man was intuitive. He only ever called him son when he knew Rob was taking serious strain.
“It was something Tessa Parvin said,” he began.
The Chief Super nodded. “Well, spit it out, then.”
“She always believed her daughter was kidnapped, even though the official police report concluded the father had taken her to Iran.”
“Bloody embassy never got back to me,” Lawrence growled.
“Well, in our last interview, she mentioned other girls who’d gone missing in the county under similar circumstances to her daughter.”
Lawrence’s eyes narrowed. “She did, did she?”
Family members and friends of the victims were prone to overuse of Google and often got the wrong end of the stick. He was right to be suspicious.
“We proceeded with caution,” Rob was quick to assure him. He hesitated. “DS Burns has discovered four other missing girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. All in the greater Surrey area.”
Lawrence’s eyes fixed on him.
“That’s not all,” said Rob. “A school satchel belonging to one of the victims was found near to where she disappeared,
