‘If that’s the case, we’ll find evidence for it. We could try making a case for joint enterprise.’
Bliss shook his head. ‘No, he’s too far removed from it, especially as things stand. But I want him to pay. He has to pay.’
Even as he said the words, he knew his plea was little more than wasted breath, twisting away from him in a coiled exhalation that disappeared as quickly as all hope.
Twenty-Nine
Following a couple of after-work drinks with the team, Bliss spent Saturday night in limbo. His head ached with the weight of the investigation. The thought of another young girl – whether Abbi Turner or someone else – already being in the clutches of such a vile monster churned his stomach. A case like this one offered so many opportunities for the investigation team to feel completely useless, and this was one of them.
Earlier in the day he’d thought they had made a valuable breakthrough. DC Ansari had come up with a possible address for Turner, having plotted her profile by taking snippets of social media information and tying them in with their own personal data search facilities. They’d not found Turner at the home in question, but a neighbour had pointed them in the direction of her family. Unfortunately, this brought them to another dead end, with neither parent having seen or heard from Abbi in more than a year. Chandler had poked a card through Abbi’s letterbox, asking her to call as soon as she saw the note, insisting she was not in trouble.
Bliss strongly believed otherwise. He had a terrible feeling that Abbi would soon become their next victim.
Having the girl’s photo on the whiteboard added to his despair. Putting a face to the name meant he would see her whenever he closed his eyes, at which point he would dwell upon all she might be enduring. He knew she might have run away or taken herself off on holiday, choosing not to update any of her social media or contact those close to her in any other way. But he wasn’t feeling it. It didn’t sit right with him. This was not a girl who went five days without keeping in touch – not by choice.
A rapid exchange of calls between Chandler, Yeva and Sara, plus more than a little gentle persuasion, eventually also gave the team Abbi’s personal mobile number. It could not be pinged, suggesting it was either switched off or had been made inoperative by removal of the battery, SIM card, or both. Ansari compiled yet another RIPA request, requiring access to not only text messages, voicemails and image galleries, but also the mapping provided by its GPS movements prior to going offline.
The team were also frustrated by delays in obtaining permission to use an undercover legend. Their request was caught up in the bureaucracy of official channels, and they all knew that meant it was being wrapped in layers of red tape and undergoing all manner of checks requiring signatures of authority. Bishop had eventually called a halt for the day late in the afternoon, and subsequently bought the first round in the Woodman.
Later on, Jimmy took advantage of a night alone by calling his mother in Ireland, conversations with whom latterly had led him to suspect her memory might be on the wane. He also enjoyed a long chat with Molly, a suspect and witness from a previous investigation who had somehow found herself able to pick the rusted locks on the solid steel gates guarding his heart.
Around eight-thirty, Bliss tried taking his mind off the case by watching streamed repeats of Better Call Saul. He’d previously enjoyed the way the series interwove characters and events from its predecessor, Breaking Bad, into its storyline, but this time found his mind drifting after only ten minutes.
This particular investigation was unusual. Cases most often split themselves into two categories: those that gave up their secrets rapidly, leading to early arrests, and those whose lethargic pace led the investigation team into labyrinths from which there was no escape. The difference this time lay in the fact that they were consistently obtaining leads, but none of them had so far prised open the operation enough to provide that single pearl of an answer they needed most. Whatever it was – a piece of CCTV, some DNA, a verbal slip, a witness statement, or a chance occurrence – it had not yet happened. Bliss’s irritation with that stasis only increased his inability to settle.
He played some music, but nothing improved his mood. He went for a drive, but the cobwebs fluttering in his mind remained. On his return, a couple of hits from a new bottle of fourteen-year-old Tullamore Dew loosened him up, but had no effect on his overall outlook. He was in a funk. Shortly after midnight he took his acoustic guitar out of its case and began to strum softly. Bliss soon realised how soft and stiff his fingers had become through lack of practice; the strings hurt like hell, especially the thinner unwound top three. He played through the pain for an hour, remembering the chord sequences to a number of songs. By the time he was done, two of the fingertips on his left hand had been sliced open and he had to wipe blood from the fretboard. He was thrilled to do so.
Sunday came and went at a crawl. Bliss nipped into HQ, but only DCs Gratton and Ansari were in the squad room. Neither had an update for him, so he took himself off to the city-centre community hall where PC Griffin taught boxing to kids deemed to be at risk of falling foul of the system. Keeping himself tucked out of the way, Bliss first went through an old familiar stretching routine. With heat still in his muscles, he
