Yes, that’d be it.
‘You look like your head is going ten to the dozen – I can hear the steam puffing away like an old locomotive,’ Sylvia pulled her out of her musings.
‘Sorry, I can’t help thinking that this isn’t a straightforward missing-persons case,’ Helen said.
‘Of course it isn’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, and Hakim’s file wouldn’t have landed on my desk and attracted Peter Knowles’s nose. It’s taken you two days to work that out?’ Sylvia asked.
Helen was shocked but only for a second.
‘So, it’s unusual for you to be sent secondments?’ Helen asked.
‘Rare but not that unusual. Secondments turn up here all the time, just not in my department. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled you’re here, but I reckon the engine’s been lit by someone sat in a lofty office somewhere higher than you or I can reach, and we won’t know the reasons unless we find them ourselves. Why do you think I showed you the memo from the UK Home Office to Peter?’ Sylvia asked.
‘That’s what’s pissing me off. If there’s an ulterior motive to finding Hakim, then I should know about it,’ Helen said.
‘Sure you should. In the meantime, I’d speak to Ricard in Surveillance if you want to set something up at the Ritz – tell him I sent you. He’ll give you all you need.’ Sylvia gathered a few things from her desk and left; she was always on the move and carrying a look of grievance across her forehead.
A quick phone call to Ricard gave her the answers she needed. She didn’t waste any time and set about arranging for surveillance kit to be ordered, and installed at the Hakim’s suite at the Ritz. They’d need compliance from at least one member of staff, but they had plants in all of Paris’s major hotels. They’d need uniforms, shift times, a timetable of the family’s movements (the hardest part) and time. Ricard explained the logistics of such a task without seeming to flinch at all and suggested taking the kit into the suite as part of a routine security drive. After all, Khalil Said al-Rashid ibn Dalmani was an esteemed guest and his son had been abducted. The Paris press knew that much at least. Ricard was keen to make sure everything ran smoothly, including checking entry and exit points to the suite, window and roof access, as well as picking up drone activity in the area.
Helen’s concentration on Ricard’s plans was interrupted for a moment as an officer delivered an envelope to her desk. She nodded her thanks and opened it with her office phone still under her chin. She scanned the document quickly; it was a lab report. She put it to one side while she finished her conversation with Ricard, whose enthusiasm gave her the impression that he didn’t have much on at the moment. Sylvia knew some handy people, and, once again, she was thankful they’d hit it off. She was beginning to feel comfortable in her new surroundings. Once she’d finished with the logistics regarding the Ritz, she hung up and turned her attention to the report.
DNA had been taken from Khalil and his wife, Taziri, as a matter of course before they left Algiers for Paris. Children share exactly 50 per cent of each of their parent’s DNA and, as a result, it was quite simple to create a profile for the child without their own DNA being readily available. Very soon after Hakim’s disappearance the local National Central Bureau of Interpol in Algeria had taken samples from various items left in Hakim’s suite, such as tooth- and hairbrushes as well as pillowcases. The lab report in front of Helen showed a match between a sample from one of those items and the familial sample given by the parents. They now had a watertight benchmark to hand when they needed it, which Helen prayed would be soon. She hoped it would never be used to identify a body.
Her phone rang and it was the control room dealing with telephone reports from the general-public tip line. Data could come in from all over the world off the back of an Interpol yellow notice, but this had come from right here in Lyon. It was a sighting of the two men in the Photofit. The source – a female living close to the La Croix-Rousse area of the city – told them she’d seen the two men talking heatedly in a cafe close to her house. It was a credible lead, because it featured both of their persons of interest at the same time. She said that they had attended the cafe more than once, always over lunchtime. The address of the cafe had been noted and the phone call to Helen was a request for permission to set up reconnaissance on the premises immediately. Of course she approved.
She hung up and searched through her notes for the forensic report of the vehicle apprehended at the scene. It remained in an Interpol compound and had been thoroughly processed. Three separate DNA profiles had been lifted from hairs: two from the driver’s seat, replicated in the front passenger seat; and a third from the back seat, also present inside the boot. She ran the profiles through her computer but came up with
