No Middle Ground Read online

‘Yeah, I’ve put a call out. At least we’ve got plenty of bodies around here at the moment.’

  ‘True, but they need something solid to aim at. In the meantime, by the way, Joe Hanson’s on the way back here in the back of a police van. Or at least I hope he is by now. They caught him up in Lincolnshire.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About twenty-five minutes ago.’

  ‘Christ, it never rains but it pours, eh? We’ve got our bloody work cut out, making the charges against him stick in less than twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Especially if we’re a man down,’ he agreed.

  ‘Are you going to let the others know or should I?’

  ‘I will. But what about Southam and Tommy?’

  ‘We can’t be in two places at once, can we?’ she said. ‘I’ll tell Mark Bridgman he’ll have to pull in some more crew.’

  ‘No, I should do that.’

  ‘Yeah, but… It’s your son we’re talking about, boss. Are you sure you’re all right with that?’

  ‘Far from it, but what alternative is there? We can’t let Hanson walk.’

  ‘No, but we can’t let Steve Southam get away either.’

  ‘I know,’ he said more sharply than he’d intended. ‘I’ve been struggling with that ever since the last time you called.’

  ‘Sometimes there just isn’t a choice, boss. We have to trust other folk to do what we can’t.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Dick Feeney took his seat and Pete waited a few seconds longer. Then he remembered that Dave wasn’t going to be joining them.

  ‘OK. We’re one down with a hell of a lot of work to do in not a lot of time,’ he summarised. ‘Mark’s crew’s out there with every available mobile unit as well as half of Jim’s crew and most of Simon’s, looking for Tommy and Steve Southam. We’ve got to find something – anything – concrete to prove these murders are down to Jonas Hanson. Or that they’re not,’ he acknowledged with a shrug.

  ‘Well, of course they are,’ Jill protested. ‘How else is he going to have all that stuff? All those photographs, the jewellery and so forth, all hidden away in his loft like that.’

  ‘You know as well as I do what the CPS are like,’ Pete reminded her. ‘They’re looking for excuses not to prosecute wherever possible. They’ve always been that way, but especially now, with budget cuts, staff shortages and the costs involved in a trial.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dick grunted. ‘Worst bloody thing ever invented, they are. Designed to get in the way as much as possible of both police work and justice.’

  ‘Nevertheless, they’re the reality we’ve got to live with. So, the order of the day – or night, in this case – is to work our way around them as solidly as possible. And to that end, I’ve started compiling a timeline from his paperwork so we can compare it to the murders we know he’s got evidence of. If we can put him in any of the locations at the time of the disappearances, we’ve got him nailed. Because, of course, the stuff he’s got…’ he glanced at Jill. ‘… the CPS will say he could have got off e-bay. To be fair, there are some sick buggers out there who collect that kind of stuff.’

  Jane grimaced. ‘That’s all kinds of…’

  ‘Sick?’ Pete suggested.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So, if everyone’s up for it, let’s get down to work.’

  ‘Have you called Louise, boss?’ Jane asked. ‘Let her know what’s going on?’

  It was Pete’s turn to grimace. He knew he had to make that call, but he really didn’t want to.

  ‘Not yet,’ he admitted.

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘I know, but with Tommy still out there…’

  ‘She knows the score on that,’ Jane argued.

  ‘Doesn’t mean she likes it.’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t, but she’ll like it even less if you leave her in the dark,’ Jill pointed out.

  Pete grunted. He knew they were right. It didn’t make the prospect any easier to face, though. ‘OK, In a minute. First, let’s get this lot allocated.’

  Nobody had objected to the extra shift, even though it would probably go unpaid.

  ‘What I’ve been doing is taking a month at a time, as that’s the way he’s stored the stuff, and created a time-line from it, then tried to match that to the disappearances.’ He handed out one of Hanson’s monthly envelopes from the file he’d been working on to each of the team. They could see what he’d done already on the board opposite their block of desks. ‘Even one solid connection will help but several will nail him to the wall.’

  He sat back, took a deep breath and picked up his phone to dial.

  ‘Hello?’ Annie said, picking it up.

  ‘Hello, Button. How are you doing?’

  ‘Daddy! Will you be home soon? Have you got Tommy back yet?’

  It would be so easy to answer her questions and let her pass the information onto Louise, but it would also be a cop-out. ‘You’d best put your mum on the phone, love.’

  ‘Huh?’ she sounded disappointed. ‘You haven’t, have you? Where is he? Is he all right, at least?’

  ‘As far as we know, yes, love. He is. And there’s an awful lot of people out there trying to make sure he stays that way.’

  ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘You know as well as I do, I’m not allowed to be,’ he said. ‘Fetch your mum, eh? I’ll see you soon.’

  He saw Jane’s eyebrows rise at the lie and waited until he heard the clunk of the phone going down on the table before saying, ‘It’s all relative, isn’t it?’

  She grunted. Then the phone was picked up. ‘Pete?’

  It was Louise.

  ‘I’m just calling to tell you I probably won’t be home tonight. Or if I am, it’ll be late. I had to tell Annie we haven’t caught Steve Southam yet, so we haven’t got Tommy back, but there’s a hell of a lot of bodies out there, searching, and they’ve got it narrowed down to a pretty tight area so I’m waiting for a call anytime to say they’ve got him.’

  ‘You’re waiting for a call?’

  ‘You know I can’t be directly involved but the team have been. Dave’s at the RDE because of it. And we have got a huge job on here, too, and we’re on the clock.’

  She knew what that meant.

  ‘What’s happened to Dave?’

  ‘Southam knocked him off his bike.’ It was an over-simplification, but it would do for now.

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  She sighed. ‘We’ll see you when we do, then.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just make sure you find him. Or they do.’ She was referring to Tommy, he knew.

  ‘You know Mark. He won’t give up until he does.’

  They both knew from past cases that Mark Bridgman could be as dogged as a Bull Terrier when he got his teeth into something.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  Louise simply grunted and put the phone down.

  With another heavy sigh, Pete followed suit. His home life was going to be more difficult than he’d known for a long time until they found Tommy and freed him from Steve Southam’s clutches. But he didn’t have time to dwell. He picked up the envelope he’d been working on when it all kicked off – was it really still less than an hour ago?

  It was more than possible for someone’s life to be turned upside down in a matter of seconds – his own had been a little over a year ago when Tommy first went missing - but it still seemed an incredible concept. You plodded along in your little groove and suddenly something hit you like a tsunami out of the blue, knocking you completely off kilter in a way that was both catastrophic and irredeemable.

  Still, he had work to do. He tipped out the contents of the envelope in his hand and began sorting them into order, ready to pull them into another solid timeline.

  *

  ‘Boss? Look here,’ Ben said into the quiet of the early evening.

  Pete glanced across. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘A link
, I think.’

  Between the time of day and the number of officers out on the hunt for Steve Southam, they were on their own in the squad room.

  ‘Here we go. A poet who didn’t know it,’ Dick said. ‘Keep going, Spike, you’ll have a limerick in a minute.’

  ‘Just ‘cause Dave’s not here to pick on…’

  ‘Talking of Dave.’ Pete cut in over Ben’s protest. ‘Jill, give the hospital a call, will you? See if there’s any news yet.’ He stood up to cross behind Dick and see what Ben had found.

  It had been a couple of hours or more since Dave would have got to the RDE and they’d heard nothing.

  ‘Let’s have a look, then’ he said to Ben.

  ‘Here. End of March 2015, he was in Lowestoft. He bought a tank full of petrol there on the 30th. Two days later, he was in Bromsgrove. We’ve got a ticket for a B&B there. And on the 31st a woman disappeared in Bedford, which is right in line between the two. She was twenty-seven years old, a mother of three and on the dole as well as being, according to Bedfordshire police records, on the game. And she hasn’t been seen since. Here’s her mug-shot.’ He clicked a button on his keyboard and a new window opened with a police photograph of a slim, dark-haired woman who looked significantly older than her years and was dressed in a strappy, low-cut top.

  ‘That’s a bit tenuous,’ Pete said. ‘He happened to be passing when it happened?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘Given his record, though, and the fact that she matches one of the photo sets he’s got…’

  ‘Well, that’s better, but it’s still not conclusive.’

  ‘How’s this?’ asked Dick.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was actually in the town in question at the time for this one.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bristol. Again, the turn of the month. June to July 2014. A seventeen-year-old vanished from Fishponds on the 30th. He was staying in the area at the time. She hasn’t been seen since, either. Wasn’t known to be a prostitute, but she did have a drug habit and a limited income. There should be a picture of her in the misper file.’ He tapped a few keys and as Pete headed back to his chair. ‘Here we go.’

  The photo was not an official one but a family portrait. She looked a lot less than her age, despite her drug habit. There was no telling how long she’d had that when the photo was taken, though, he reflected. And appearance-wise, she could have been the younger sister of the one Ben had found.

  ‘Are we beginning to think he’s got a type?’ Pete reflected. ‘Or is it too soon to say? Either way, it’s time I ordered some grub.’

  Jill put her phone down and looked across. ‘Dave’s still in surgery, boss. He had internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. It’s been a bit touch-and-go, the nurse said. They’re dealing with that before they get to his broken bones, but they’ve struggled to stop the bleeding.’

  ‘Well, they will, won’t they?’ said Jane. ‘He’s on warfarin since he had that triple bypass – what is it, four years now?’

  Pete nodded. ‘Surely, they knew about that, though. He goes to the RDE, to the clinic.’

  ‘Bloody right hand don’t know what the right hand’s doing, never mind the left in that place sometimes,’ Dick muttered. ‘I expect they’ll blame the new computer system – even if it is four or five years old now. Best ring them back and tell them, hadn’t we?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Jill said. ‘Don’t want you pissing them off when they’ve got a mate of ours under the knife.’

  ‘Bloody bingo!’ Jane shouted. ‘This one, there’s no arguing with.’

  ‘What?’ Pete demanded.

  ‘End of September 2014, Hanson was in Cardiff. I’ve got a receipt from the Mount Pleasant Hotel there for five nights overlapping into October. And on the third of October, the morning after he left Cardiff, a young woman was reported missing. Eileen Atkinson, aged 22, last seen with “friends” the previous evening.’ She hooked her fingers in the air to emphasise the quotation marks in the comment. ‘She wasn’t known to the police, but she was a prostitute, as admitted by one of those friends. And last seen means getting into a green Peugeot estate car with a blond-haired man, probably in his fifties. She’d popped round the corner for a pee, was on the way back at the time she was picked up.’ She took a breath. ‘And get this… The friend in question got a good enough look at the bloke as he drove past her before turning the corner that she was able to provide a sketch.’

  Pete’s eyes widened. ‘Well, don’t leave us in suspenders, let’s have a look.’

  Jane grinned as she turned her screen around and peered over the top of it. ‘Remind you of anyone? Ben?’

  ‘If that ain’t Joe Hanson I ain’t from Devon,’ Ben said firmly.

  ‘Nice one,’ Pete confirmed. ‘You get tonight’s gold star. Have we got the witness’ details?’

  Jane grimaced. ‘Yeah, that’s where the news isn’t so good,’ she admitted. ‘She was a heroin addict. She’s no longer with us.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make her evidence inadmissible?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Ohhh, no,’ Pete denied in a deep voice, imitating a certain dog from a well-known series of TV ads. ‘Section 116 of the 2003 criminal justice act allows it at the judge’s discretion.’

  ‘So, we’ve got him,’ Jane said.

  ‘Go, girl.’ Jill reached across to give her a high five.

  ‘It certainly makes it a strong case,’ Pete said. ‘Plenty strong enough to take to the CPS. But the more we can find, the stronger it’ll be.’

  ‘How about I call them and you call Pizza-Hut, then?’ Jane suggested.

  Pete aimed a finger at her and depressed the thumb. ‘You’re on.’

  Jill’s desk phone rang. She picked it up. ‘PC Evans, Exeter CID.’

  She didn’t need to say anymore, her expression did it for her as she listened briefly and lowered the phone as if in a daze.

  ‘What?’ Pete demanded.

  ‘It’s Dave,’ she murmured. ‘They thought they’d stopped the bleeding, so they moved on to try and fix his hip. But the spleen started leaking again.’

  ‘Gimme that,’ Dick demanded, holding out a hand for it. Jill passed it to him.

  ‘Hello? This is DC Feeney. Are you people actually aware that he’s on warfarin? Attending regular clinics in that hospital where you’re standing right now?’ He paused. ‘No? What do you mean, no? You have got his notes there, have you? At least a digital version of them? Well then bloody well read them for Christ’s sake.’ He reached across and slammed the phone down on its cradle. ‘Load of clueless bloody arseholes. If we made half the cock-ups they do we’d get fired out of hand.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Pete put the last date onto the timeline for February 2013 and slipped the papers he’d been working from back into their envelope. Hanson had ended the month here in Exeter, having started it laying a driveway in Stroud followed by two weeks in a village just north of Swindon.

  Returning to his computer, he began to search through missing persons and unsolved murders for that month. It didn’t take long – there were only five female missing persons, and, of the several murders, there were only six unsolved from the entire United Kingdom. He discounted the two from Scotland straight away and was left with nine young women to look at more deeply. One of the murders was in north Wales, another in Manchester on a day that he had proof Hanson was in Stroud. There was a misper in Northumberland, another in the Peak District. Then a murder popped up, the victim disappearing on St Valentine’s day, the body found three weeks later, after ten days of bad weather. She’d lived in Swindon, her body being discovered in woodland between there and Devises, to the south-west of the city – just where you wouldn’t expect Hanson to be. But a witness had reported seeing a green estate car in a parking area adjacent to the dump-site on the night of the15th.

  There was no make or model, but Joe Hanson certainly drove a green estate car.

  ‘I just might have trumped your Cardiff case, Jane.’

&n
bsp; ‘Why? What have you got?’

  He explained briefly. ‘I’ll need to check the details, mind. Let’s see if I can find the witness…’

  He was already logged into the case file. He scrolled down and found the witness’ details, picked up the phone and dialled.

  Moments later, it was picked up. ‘Hello?’ The voice sounded groggy. Pete glanced at the clock and grimaced. Whoops! He hadn’t thought about the time. It was after nine.

  ‘Mr Johnson, sorry for the late call. This is DS Peter Gayle with Exeter CID. I’ve just come across your witness statement about the green estate car you saw back in 2013. I wonder if you could give me any more details?’

  The man hesitated. ‘Well, not really. I told the officers up here all I could at the time. It was dark and I’m not much on modern cars.’

  ‘You didn’t see the driver?’

  ‘No, just the car parked up with its lights off. It’s deep woodland round there so even darker than most places. My headlights picked up the car in a little dirt layby that people use for walking in the woods. I thought it was odd, at that time of year, especially in the snow and it was a bitter night. Must have been well into minus figures.’

  ‘I see. If I could get someone to come round with some vehicle photographs, do you think you’d be able to pick it out? I realise it’s a long time ago, but it would really help if you could.’

  ‘Well…’ he hedged. ‘I don’t know. I could try. But, hold on. My wife’s a bit of a dab-hand on the old computer. Maybe you could send them to us? It might be quicker.’

  ‘Well, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ll pass you over. She knows all the details.’

  The phone was handed across. A female voice said, ‘Hello? You need our email address?’

  ‘Please.’

  She must have been listening to the conversation and got the gist of it. She read out the address and Pete wrote it down on his pad. ‘Right, I’ll compile a bunch of pictures and send them over. It’ll take me a few minutes.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Pete ended the call and opened a new on-line window on his computer, not wanting to lose the case file. He called up an array of images of Peugeot estate cars and picked out several, including one of the same model and year as Hanson’s. Then, for good measure, he did the same for Citroen, Ford and VW. He compiled a page of them in a publishing program and emailed it across to the Johnsons.