Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(5)
Carter picked up his case and he and Willis walked across to his car, the black BMW parked on the approach to the park. Carter started the engine and reversed at speed.
‘We need to throw everything at this, Eb.’ She nodded. She was deep in thought. Carter was used to being the one who chatted. ‘The father’s story is too vague,’ he continued. ‘Sensitive type, isn’t he? Doesn’t say a lot. He’s really vague when it comes to pinpointing his movements; there’s a missing period of almost forty minutes after he leaves the Observatory. Have you ever been there?’
‘Once.’
‘I’m impressed. Was it with that boyfriend who liked train sets?’
She didn’t rise to it; she’d heard it before. Instead, she reached into her backpack and pulled out her phone. Carter continued, ‘First he attends his famous dad’s funeral, then his son gets abducted. Been one hell of a day.’ In his head Carter was running through the checklist: ports, trains, motorway cameras. Service station, lorry drivers . . . ‘Robbo’s checking for any history on the father,’ said Carter, as he looked about him for a way out of the traffic jam they were in and decided to take a different route. Being the son of a London cabbie, and spending a lot of his spare time sitting next to his dad, meant that Carter’s knowledge of the streets of London was extensive. He also knew where to stop for the best bacon sarnies.
Willis had several things on her lap at once. The police radio was the best for receiving a signal no matter where but it wasn’t good at downloading data quickly. The smartphone was best at that. But for a bigger screen she needed her iPad and then she always had her notebook.
Carter glanced across at her lap. ‘Sort yourself out, Willis, for Christ’s sake.’
They’d worked together for the last four years. They knew one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Carter knew that Willis would have recorded all the facts in her analytical brain. But if he asked her what it was like to lose a child, she would look at him blankly and she’d struggle to put herself in those shoes. Whereas Carter came from a big part-Italian family. Family was everything to them. Willis had grown up with a mother whose cold heart and deranged mind led her to murder easily. Luckily, Ebony had been taken into care for a good part of her childhood.
‘He had a famous father but I doubt if anyone’s heard of Toby Forbes-Wright until today,’ said Willis.
‘Have we got Family Liaison in place? asked Carter. Willis made a grab for her lap as Carter did a U-turn and headed back the way they’d come, then scooted up a back street.
‘Yes, Jeanie Vincent has gone over already.’
‘Great, she’s the best. Any similar incidences, any attempted abductions in this area?’ asked Carter.
‘No, not so far as we know. We may get someone come forward after the public appeal; it’s just gone out on the radio,’ said Willis.
‘We’re going to need the public on this one,’ Carter said. ‘If the father left the belt undone on the buggy, and Samuel wandered off, he could have fallen into a gap somewhere. Jesus . . .’ Carter banged his hand on the steering wheel. ‘My Archie’s just a year older. He wouldn’t last two minutes in this cold. We have to find him fast.’
‘Would Archie ever have got out of his own buggy and run off?’
‘You’re kidding me? First chance he got! You have to have eyes in the back of your head with kids. Tell Robbo we’ll be back in twenty. I’m not waiting in this traffic any more.’ Carter put on his emergency lights and swerved into the bus lane.
The Murder Squad was part of the Major Investigation Team in London. They were based in three locations around the capital and served different areas. From its Archway location, tucked behind the tube station and connected to the local police station, Fletcher House housed three MIT teams and served north London.
It was an inconspicuous concrete box of a building joined by a door linking the buildings at the first floor. The officers in Archway police station said the door marked the entrance to the Dark Side. Carter and Willis worked on the third floor of the Dark Side in MIT 17.
When they got back, they went straight into the Major Incident Room to see if there had been any calls from the public. It was where all the information came in first before being filtered and then farmed out to the other departments. Inside the MIR there were four civilians working behind the desks, manning the phones, and two detectives sifting the information as it came in. A category-A incident – a missing child – drew a full team of both civilian staff and police officers. All leave was cancelled.
Carter approached a desk straight ahead.
‘Anything?’ he asked as he waited for the operator to come off the phone. Willis was checking the screens to see what information had been fed into HOLMES, the central program designed to coordinate major investigations. She gave Carter a sign that she was heading out. He nodded he understood.
‘One sighting of a kid with a snowflake on his jacket, sir,’ the operator answered. ‘But turned out to be a picture the child was holding on his lap. Several new sightings of Toby Forbes-Wright – all confirm the first half of his route.’ The officer from the desk on the left looked through the pages of notes beside him and said, ‘A woman in a café saw him. A man walking his dog on the park. All of them confirm seeing Toby pushing a buggy but no one looked inside it or noticed Samuel after four fifteen.’