“Did your friend’s uncle find out anything?” he asked before the sergeant had time to take his jacket off.
“Yes, sir. I was going to come and speak to you as soon as I got in.”
He was a little flustered at having been caught off guard. Rob took a step back to give him some space. “And?”
“He looked into Ramin Parvin and found no reference to a daughter. Apparently, he has two sons, but no daughter.”
“You’re sure?” This was a second confirmation.
“Yes, if she’s in Iran, sir, it isn’t under her own name.”
Right, that would have to do for now. It wasn’t hard evidence, but it backed up what Jo’s source had said, and justified the search of the lake.
The morning passed in a blur of impatience. The only highlight was when Jenny told him they’d found the mole who’d leaked the story about Payne’s arrest to the press. The guilty party, a short, stocky bloke who looked more like a bouncer than a telephone operator, had been sacked on the spot. It turned out he had a gambling problem and thought he’d make some extra cash on the side.
“I don’t know how we missed it,” said Jenny. She was close to tears.
“Not your fault,” he told her. At least they’d got to the bottom of that. If the search of the lake had got out, Lawrence would sack the lot of them.
Finally, just before lunch, he got the call he’d been waiting for. He pounced on it before the end of the first ring. “DCI Miller.”
He listened, heart pounding. “You did. I see. Thank you.”
He hung up, dazed. He couldn’t believe it.
They’d fucking found it.
“You’re kidding?” said the Chief Superintendent.
Rob had gone straight to him. Apart from Mallory, nobody else knew about the sanctioned dive.
“Yeah, and it was weighted down, just like Katie’s.”
And Rachel’s.
“Everybody, briefing!”
Rob stood up as his team gathered around him. Evan and Harry who were further away, rolled over on their chairs.
“We’ve had a new development.”
He couldn’t conceal his excitement
Expectant faces started back at him. They were desperate for a lead. Well, this was a doozy.
“As you know, we’ve been looking into the disappearances of several other girls Katie’s age in Surrey and correlating it with Anthony Payne’s movements over the last five years.”
Several nods.
“Well, this morning we sent divers into a lake near to where Tessa Parvin’s daughter Arina went missing four years ago. They found her school rucksack in the lake, weighed down by a stone.”
A collective gasp spread around the room.
“According to Arina’s case files, the SIO, DI Purley, didn’t feel the need to search the woods or look at any CCTV in the area, because he was convinced she’d been taken out of the country by her father. He did fly out on the same day. That was enough for them to close the case. We don’t believe he had anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance.”
There was a pause as this sunk in.
“What happens now?” asked Harry. “Do we reopen the case because it’s linked to ours?”
“DCS Lawrence is going to speak to the powers that be and get it transferred,” acknowledged Rob. “There’ll be an investigation into Purley’s actions, but that’s not our concern.”
“If there are four other missing girls, plus Arina and Katie, does this mean we have a serial killer on our hands?” The question came from Evan, who knew the details of the missing girls better than most.
“It’s beginning to look that way.”
The Chief Superintendent slammed his door shut, making everyone jump.
“He’s not happy,” said Rob. “He hates serial cases.”
“Who’s going to do what?” asked Mallory, thinking like a DI.
Rob took a deep breath. “We’ll break it up between us. These cases go back several years. Take Evan, Harry, DC Bartlett and DC Fagan and look into the four missing girls we know nothing about. Get their cases sent over, contact the detectives in charge, talk to their relatives and get up to speed. You can use incident room two.”
Mallory nodded.
This would give him a chance to lead his own investigation, which was long overdue.
“The rest of you are with me,” Rob said. “We’ll look into Katie and Arina’s disappearances, because there are obvious ties there. Katie is still our number one priority. It is possible she might still be alive. We need to keep tabs on Payne, since he’s our main suspect. In fact, he could be responsible for all the missing girls. If we get him for these two, we might be able to get a confession out of him for the others.”
It was a stretch, but serial offenders loved bragging about their victims. They liked people to know what they’d done. He’d learned that from his friend Tony Sanderson, a forensic psychologist and the UK’s most sought-after criminal profiler. Actually, Tony might have a few insights into Payne, perhaps he’d give him a call. They were due a catch up.
As soon as the briefing was over, he headed outside.
It was time to update Jo.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered into the phone. “Do you know what this means?”
“I haven’t told Lawrence about Rachel,” he said. “He’s having a hard enough time accepting there’s a serial offender operating in his own backyard.”
“It’s got to be linked?” She sounded breathy, like she’d run a mile before answering the phone.
“Let’s get together later and talk about this,” Rob urged. “We need to decide how to handle it.”
“Okay,” she whispered, but her voice had a definite wobble in it.
“Jo, are you alright?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m still processing. With Katie’s backpack it could have been a coincidence, but now with Arina’s…”
“I know. It does make it a lot more likely we’re dealing with the same guy, or a copycat. Payne isn’t old enough to have been involved in Rachel’s disappearance. He’s only in his mid-thirties. Twenty years ago, he’d have been a teenager himself.”
Jo sighed. “I know. I
