“I know you want it to be him, Lisa, but we have no proof.”
“Well, maybe it’s about time we did,” Callie told him.
“What exactly did you have in mind?” he asked.
“I think we, you, should set up a sting operation to find out,” Callie explained, and was pleased to see that he didn’t object straight away.
“It’s not that easy.”
“I’m sure, but if it helps, I bought these in the corner shop on Bohemia Road this afternoon.”
She pushed the carrier bag towards him with her foot, and he took it and glanced inside.
“You could say that you have information that the shop is being used to sell the cigarettes and set up a raid on the shop, just as you would be expected to do, and make sure Claybourne’s nephew is aware of it,” she continued.
“But−?”
“Already have surveillance in place, so that you catch them shifting the stock before the raid.”
“And make sure he doesn’t know about that.” Lisa was smiling, she clearly liked the idea, but it wasn’t her who Callie had to persuade.
Phil played with his drink as he gave the idea some thought.
“Is there anyone in the department you feel you could trust to do this with you?” she asked.
“My boss,” he confirmed. “We discussed doing something like this, unofficially, when the last raid was a washout.”
“And you think he’ll go for it?”
“Of course, he will.” Lisa was enthusiastic.
“It’s possible.” Phil was more cautious and Callie liked him all the more for that.
“But you will put it to him?”
He nodded.
“There are a lot of aspects we will have to work out, so I can’t promise if, let alone when, it will happen, and I won’t be able to tell you in advance, you do understand that, don’t you?” He looked at Lisa as well, including her in the question and she nodded.
“Of course.” Callie smiled at him.
“We’ll just have to wait to read all about it in the papers.” Lisa held up her drink. “Cheers.”
They clinked glasses and Callie was more than a little pleased with the outcome. She just hoped they found something to definitively link Claybourne to the smuggling. Like Lisa, she would look forward to reading about his arrest in the papers, and hoped that it was in the not too distant future.
Chapter 29
Feeling pleased with herself that a second area of concern in her life was now on its way to resolution, thanks to her interference – as she had no doubt Miller would describe it – Callie decided to drop into the police station on her way home. She wanted to see how the response to the call for information about the age-regressed photo of body number nine was going. When she went into the incident room, she could see immediately, to her surprise, that there was a name written next to the photograph.
“Daniel Spencer,” she said thoughtfully, going up to the board and touching the photo gently.
“Yup.” Jayne Hales came and stood next to her. They both sighed as they looked at the photo. “Ran away from a children’s home when he was thirteen. Mum was already dead of a heroin overdose, no one knew who Dad was. His gran’s been trying to find him for years and had pretty much given up hope. She’s dying of cancer.”
As before, Callie felt pleased that the body had finally been identified, but sad for the poor woman who now knew that he was dead. Would it be a relief to know?
“She said, bad as it was to hear he was dead, she could die in peace, knowing there was nothing more she could do for him.” Jayne seemed to know what she had been thinking.
“Oh wow! That’s just so awful. Does anyone know where he has been since he ran away?”
“We’re getting some information in. It seems, like Michelle, that he went to London. Like most of them do. The Met Police are looking into that end. Now they have a name, they can track social security information, and The Sally Army are helping. They’ll know more by the end of today, almost certainly.”
Callie knew that The Salvation Army did a lot of work with runaways and the homeless, so they might, indeed, be able to cast light on where the two had been living, and what they had been doing to support themselves, although Callie had a pretty good idea about what they might have been doing.
“Did they show any signs of having been sex-workers or addicts? On the PM report?” she asked and wasn’t surprised when Jayne nodded.
“They were both positive for a number of recreational drugs, although Michelle wasn’t for ketamine, just Daniel, and yes, both had signs of regular and sometimes rough, sexual activity. Anal scarring was present in both cases, but no DNA or signs of recent sex. As you know, there’s absolutely no chance of getting any information out of the GUM clinics, where they were probably treated for STDs or had HIV tests.”
Callie knew Jayne was right, genito-urinary medicine clinics that treated patients for sexually transmitted diseases, would never reveal any details, always supposing the names and addresses their patients gave them weren’t real anyway.
“And no idea what they were doing in Hastings?” she asked, although she knew that might never be known.
“Well, Michelle obviously came looking for Daniel, but what he was doing round here, we have no idea. Meeting a dealer perhaps?”
“You’d have thought there were plenty of those in London without having to come down here.”
“Agreed, but why else?”
They both stared again at the photo and thought about a little boy lost.
* * *
It was a subject that Callie gave considerably more thought to that evening
