Katie had been lured into the nature reserve, but the sniffer dogs had followed her trail all the way along the river towpath to a grassy patch near Nassau Road, a stretch of roughly seven hundred metres. Anyone sighting Katie in this vicinity, or on Lonsdale Road itself, warranted further investigation.
Rob didn’t hold out much hope. He knew the kidnapper had been very clever and avoided crowds and CCTV. Besides, eyewitness testimonies were notoriously unreliable. The amber alert they’d put out the day Katie went missing hadn’t resulted in many follow ups, and those they had, had turned out to be false alarms.
At nine o’clock they all gathered round the wall-mounted television and watched Crimewatch. The re-enactment was pretty authentic, apart from the few details that the press wasn’t aware of like Katie’s ponytail, the meeting with the dog walker and her friend Candy’s involvement. Everybody cheered when Harry made his appearance. He did a great job of filling in the factual details of the case for the viewers. A natural on camera.
There was a plea by the distraught parents. How the Crimewatch team had managed to get them in the same room together, Rob had no idea.
A hundred thousand pound reward for her release! The Wells didn’t have that kind of money. It wasn’t them, so someone else must be footing the bill.
“Who’s paying the reward money,” Rob asked Jenny, who was sitting next to him.
“I’ll find out.”
The call lines opened, and the operators got to work. The room was soundproof, thank God, otherwise they’d all be driven mad by the constant ringing of telephones.
“Just one reliable witness,” prayed Mallory, as they watched through the glass partition. Serious-faced operators furiously jotted down information on notepads.
“How do you think he knew the camera at the Swedish School was out?” Rob muttered.
Mallory shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“I’m not so sure. Payne used to be a teacher, right? He could have known someone at the school. Maybe he had inside information.”
“Or he could have sabotaged it himself,” suggested Mallory.
Rob grunted. That was a much more likely explanation.
“Do we know what’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“No.” Mallory gave him a look that said, really?
Rob shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to find out.”
“Okay, I’ll put someone on it.” Mallory was learning to delegate. As a DS, he was used to doing most of the dog work himself, but lately Rob had noticed him passing on tasks to Will, Jenny and the other DS’s on the team.
It was a skill he still had trouble with.
After the broadcast, Harry came up to him. “Can I have a word, guv?”
“Yeah, what’s on your mind?”
“I spoke to Fatima, who got in touch with her uncle in the police force, over in Iran.”
“Aah, yes?”
“He said he might be able to help, but it will take a few days. He’s going to make some enquiries. I passed on Ramin Parvin’s details, I hope that was okay?”
He looked warily at Rob.
“That’s great,” Rob put him at ease. “Good work, Harry. And well done on how you handled the Crimewatch crew.”
Harry glowed with pride. “Thank you, sir.”
Rob picked up the case file and prepared to have another stab at Payne. There was no fresh evidence, but the man would be tired and nearing the end of his tether.
If they left it any later, the guy wouldn’t get his eight hours uninterrupted sleep before morning.
Rob was halfway down the stairs when Mallory called after him, “It’s Ed Maplin on the phone. He says they’ve found something buried in the wetlands.”
23
“Fucking hell.” Rob jogged back up the stairs. “Are you serious?”
“Afraid so.”
“What have they found?”
Mallory didn’t meet his gaze.
“Please tell me it’s not a body?”
“I’m not sure. Ed said it looked like a skeleton of some sort. Small, half-buried in the ground.”
Rob squeezed his eyes shut. “Jesus.”
“Even if Katie is dead, she wouldn’t have decomposed so fast,” Mallory pointed out rationally. “It’s not likely to be her.”
“Still, we don’t know what he did to her. Have forensics meet us down there. I want to be sure before we jump to any conclusions.”
“What about Payne?”
“He’ll keep. We’ve got twenty-four hours before we have to charge him or let him go.”
By the time they got to the Barnes wetlands it was well after midnight. The heat of the day hadn’t let up and it was a balmy twenty-four degrees according to the temperature display in their vehicle.
It had been a quiet drive there. There wasn’t much to say and no point in surmising. They had to wait until forensics identified the bones. Then they’d know what they were dealing with.
They drove down Queen Elizabeth Walk toward the Barnes Elms Sports Club and parked in the centre carpark. The white SOCO van was already there, as well as two police vehicles, blue lights blinding in the darkness. There were no streetlamps, the only source of light a grinning half-moon. Giant oaks cast black shadows onto the tarmac. They’d seen it all before.
“Bloody hell,” muttered Rob as he tripped over a pothole and nearly went flying.
“Watch your step,” the PC guarding the vehicles called out helpfully.
“Yeah, thanks. This way, is it?” He pointed down a gravel path that vanished into nothingness.
“That’s it. Then across the rugby pitch and left along the river for about two hundred yards. You’ll see it from there.”
Rob nodded and they set off, their torch beams jumping over the dry, pockmarked grass.
“You play rugby?” he asked Mallory. The white goalposts stretched forever into the night sky. It seemed an inconsequential thing to say, but he was trying not to think about what they would find two hundred yards down river.
“No, I was more of a football player myself,” Mallory replied. “How about you?”
It was clear he was having the same problem.
“Nah, I didn’t go to that sort of
