I matched up the phone records with the existing ones—so now I had the rest of Colin’s call records, for all his other SIM cards.
And very quickly I spotted what I’d hoped to find.
As well as the outgoing calls from Colin’s SIMs to the phones the police had found with the bodies, there were other numbers, with the same calling pattern, going back to the earliest date of the statements. More people out there, then, that we hadn’t found. I started jotting them down. How many were out there still? I made another note to apply for earlier data, too. He’d been doing this a long time.
And then I noticed something else—the outgoing calls to the victims weren’t the only calls he made. There was a landline that featured on three sets of the billings, and when I put it into an Internet search it revealed itself to be the number for the Rising Sun Chinese Takeout Stafford Road, Briarstone. Another landline, with one outgoing call, turned out to be a number for the Larches Residential Home in Baysbury. There was a cell number, too; the same number came up in two different billings, with outgoing calls. The fact that the number featured on more than one set of statements was relevant. Whoever owned the phone was a real live person whom Colin was prepared to speak to. And the latest phone contact was on a Wednesday lunchtime. Whoever they were, they were probably still alive.
I put the number into the Internet search first, and drew a blank. Then I put it into the crime database and came up with nothing. Finally, only half paying attention because I’d already decided that this wasn’t going anywhere and I still had twelve sets of statements to look at, I fed the number into the incident database.
There was a match. Incident log 13-0189, dated today. The number looked familiar, and when I clicked on the link I knew instantly why:
AUDREY’S BOYFRIEND CORREX EXBOYFRIEND IS VORN BRADSTOCK LIVES IN BRIARSTONE TEL NO 07672 392 913
It was Vaughn’s number. Colin had been so officious about swapping his SIMs, but he couldn’t be bothered to do it all the time. He’d used his phone to call Vaughn.
I started a log for all my searches and queries. It was true I wasn’t on the case anymore, but if I was ever going to be asked to justify my behavior I wanted a record of my thought processes to be able to hand over to someone. I wasn’t doing this out of idle curiosity, or for any sort of personal gain. I was doing it because of Audrey. Despite this justification, my heart was still banging in my chest as I logged on to the telephone inquiry page of the intranet, keeping my fingers crossed. The operation was still in my list of queries. They hadn’t removed my authorization here, at least! Thank goodness. I went to the list of results and checked that there hadn’t been any more since Frosty had e-mailed them to me.
Nothing. I’d been hoping for the forensic report on Colin’s phone, the actual handset, which would have been seized when he’d been taken into custody, but if they’d ordered a report it wasn’t back yet. Sometimes these took weeks, depending on the backlog of cases and the level of urgency. And, as Colin had been released without charge, the likelihood of this one being a priority was low.
The call data for Colin’s own number, the one he’d provided when they’d booked him in to the Custody Suite, was sparse. On that Wednesday lunchtime, after a brief outgoing call to Vaughn’s number, he’d made a call to an 0845 number that turned out to be a Customer Care line for a supermarket. Then, on Saturday—after Audrey went missing—three incoming calls from the number that I’d noted as belonging to the Larches Residential Home went unanswered. After each one, an incoming text from Colin’s voice mail server. Each of these contacts registered a cell site location: the first two calls and texts were shown as #WATER TOWER GRAYSWOOD LANE and the last call and text were #CAPSTAN HILL NR BLACKTHORNS.
I opened up the mapping software. I knew many of the cell tower locations, but these were unfamiliar. Grayswood Lane turned out to be about six miles outside of town, the other side of Baysbury, and Capstan Hill was a long, straight road heading through Baysbury village, where it would eventually form a junction with the main road to Briarstone.
The first two calls were three hours apart—at 11:05 and 14:18. Colin had been there—wherever it was—for a long time. And the last one was two hours later, at 16:33; it looked as if he might have been heading home.
I had a closer look at Grayswood Lane. It really was the middle of nowhere, starting at the junction with Capstan Hill and then winding through farmland for a few miles, ending abruptly with what looked like a track and a few buildings. I zoomed in on the buildings, which the software identified as Grayswood Farm. There were just a few houses dotted along the length of the lane, the aerial images showing the telltale bright-blue rectangles of swimming pools. Halfway along the stretch between the farm at one end and Capstan Hill on the other was a circular structure in a woodland clearing. The water tower, I assumed. Of course, the cell site location was hardly what you’d call exact. Colin’s precise location when those calls came in and were ignored could have been anywhere within several hundred meters of the water tower. But the likelihood was that the phone had been somewhere on Grayswood Lane, because where else would he have been? In the middle of a field?
I did a search on the intelligence database for Grayswood Lane. There had been a burglary at the farm in June; a tractor had been stolen. A call about nuisance motorbikes riding off-road through the woods had come in from a house called Three Pines, Grayswood Lane, in May. A patrol had been sent, but by the time they got there the bikes had left.
The voters’ register showed that there were five houses in addition to the farm at the end. They all had names: Three Pines, Newlands Barn, the Old Manor, Woodbank, and Pond House. I went through them one by one, looking at the names of the residents, in case something jumped out. Nothing did. They all showed at least two people resident at each address. This was starting to feel like a dead end.
I updated my log with all the searches and what I’d found, and made a note that I could draw no conclusions from it. Only that Colin’s phone had been in the vicinity of Grayswood Lane, probably for several hours, on the day after Audrey had gone missing. There was nothing whatsoever to implicate him in her disappearance. There was little else I could do. The priority e-mails I’d sent to the DCI and the DI had still not been opened. I tried both their cell numbers one last time, just to be sure, and left another voice mail.
Just before I shut down the workstation, I e-mailed my log, and my notes, and the list of additional numbers—to Frosty. Just in case. I grabbed my coat and left the police station by the back exit, dialing Sam’s number on my phone as I did so.
Half an hour later we were parked in the road a few doors up from Colin’s house, obscured by the slight bend in the road and out of the direct line of sight of the windows.
“I shouldn’t really be here,” I said. “I was in so late as it is.”
“Never mind that,” Sam said. “Call it a late lunch if that makes you happier. And as I keep telling you, you’re still on family leave, or sick leave, or something. You shouldn’t have gone in at all.”
“It’s not that simple. I have to record all my hours, you know.”
Sam had been telling me all about Cheryl, Audrey’s friend. She’d been reluctant to talk, having only just been interviewed by someone from Major Crime—which was a great comfort to me. It meant they were taking Audrey’s disappearance seriously, at least. She had left Audrey around midnight in the town center. Audrey lived just up the hill, about a mile away, and she hadn’t wanted to wait to share Cheryl’s taxi. So she had gone off up the Baysbury Road, protesting that she always walked home, it wasn’t far, and what was going to happen on a brightly lit main road? And that was the last time Cheryl had seen her.
In return, I told him about the ANPR results. I should have kept quiet about it, probably.
“You know Colin works for the city?” Sam said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“I guess it might have been a convenient place for him to steal license pl
ates.”
We sat in silence for a moment. My head was starting to ache.
“Did Audrey seem OK, when Cheryl said good-bye to her?” I asked at last.
“Apparently. She was a bit drunk, but they all were. Not staggering, Cheryl said. A bit tipsy. Anyway, after that I went to see Audrey’s ex.”
“You went to see Vaughn Bradstock?” I asked. “And?”
“He wasn’t there. The receptionist told me your people came and asked him a load of questions, and after that he was all upset and went home. I went to his house but there was no answer. No car outside.”
We stared in silence at the road ahead, a mother with a stroller and a toddler making slow progress past Colin’s house and toward the town.
“He’s got her,” I said.
“Who? Vaughn?”
“No. Colin.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” he replied.
“I just feel it,” I said. “And you know he won’t be giving her access to any food or water. How long do you think she’ll last, Sam?”
He looked at me. This wasn’t exciting anymore. “She wasn’t depressed, or lonely. You heard her friend, this morning. She was happy, looking forward to going on a night out. He’s only ever gone for—well. You know.”
“I just think the fact that he knew her is too much of a coincidence, don’t you? I think he’s got her somewhere. He’s waiting for her to die.”
I’d been thinking about telling Sam what I’d found out this morning, about Colin’s apparent visit to Grayswood Lane on Saturday, but that would have been crossing a whole new line beyond the one I’d already crossed by performing unauthorized searches on the system. Besides that, Sam had just given me an idea. Audrey wasn’t depressed, not the way I had been—without even fully realizing that I was that bad, without even giving it that name. It had been the shock, really, but also the loneliness and the frustration at work and the feeling that I was slipping away, beginning to disappear. It had been like evaporating, as though I were going to cease to exist and nobody would even notice. And seeing Colin, outside his house, had brought back memories of things he had said to me. The words he’d used—release, choice, acceptance. It had been my decision. He hadn’t made me do anything I hadn’t already considered, already wanted to do. I had wanted it all to go away, and he had said that was all right; it was a decision I could make. He gave me the guts to do it I think. Permission, if such a thing was needed. And he told me it wouldn’t hurt; it would be peaceful, quiet, on my terms. He told me I could sleep and wait for it to happen and that I would not be afraid.
If anything, Sam had been the one in the wrong. He’d hauled me back from a place I’d gone to willingly. But now, of course, I knew he’d been right to do it. There were still moments, though, when I thought of being alone, of closing the door, and waiting for the quiet and the stillness and the word he used a lot—transformation. Becoming something better, more beautiful, with no striving or effort. Just peace.
It still crossed my mind that maybe he was an angel after all.
The only thing that really made a difference was the thought of all those other people he’d done it to. They couldn’t all have been suicidal. And, by the sound of it, Audrey wasn’t—she hadn’t chosen his path, had she? He’d taken it upon himself to shove her down it, for whatever private gratification he was going to get. And how had he felt, when he realized I hadn’t transformed at all? When there hadn’t been a news report about me? When he realized that I’d escaped? Had he been pissed off, annoyed, upset?
And how would he feel if he saw me again? Would he even recognize me?
“If he comes out . . .” I said out loud, and then didn’t finish my sentence.
“If he comes out what?”
“I want to talk to him.”
Sam looked at me, alarmed. “What? No. I don’t think so.”
I turned to him, trying to make sure I had his full attention. “I’ve got an idea, Sam. I know how we can find Audrey.”
“How?”
“He can take me to her.”
“What? What do you mean?”
I hesitated, wondering whether to tell him, what he would say if I did. And in that moment’s hesitation the chance passed, because Colin Friedland came out of his house and shut the front door firmly behind him. He got into a dark blue Fiesta that was parked in the driveway and reversed out into the road.
Sam had already started the engine. He waited until the Fiesta got to the end of the road and helpfully indicated left toward the town center, and pulled out to follow.
“Don’t start,” he said, even though I’d said nothing. “I just want to see where he goes. All right?”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“Really?”
Once we were on the main road, a white van was between us and the Fiesta. We slowed down at the lights and I could just about see the side of the car, and Colin’s side-view mirror.
“Don’t lose him, whatever you do,” I said.
“I won’t,” Sam said, with a sigh that suggested I was starting to get on his nerves.
We were both privately hoping that he was going to lead us to Audrey, but a few moments later he pulled in to the Co-op’s parking lot. Sam drove straight past, up to the traffic circle and back again.
By the time we drove in, Colin had parked and was walking toward the supermarket. He was carrying a reusable Co-op shopping bag.
Sam reversed into a space in the row behind the Fiesta and cut the engine. I undid my seat belt.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “We can just wait for him to come back . . .”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to talk to him.”
“What?” Sam said. It was the closest I’d ever come to hearing him shout.
I was rooting through my purse for my cell phone, just a cheap prepaid one that Irene had given me—an old one of hers, I think—because the one Colin had taken from me was still in some evidence bag somewhere. I had considered buying a nice new one, but now I was glad I hadn’t; this would be ideal. It was small and lightweight. I found it at the bottom of the bag and to Sam’s surprise I undid the top three buttons of my shirt and pushed the phone inside my bra.
“What the fuck?”
“Look,” I said. “I’m going to sit outside the Co-op, and when he comes out he might recognize me. You know? He might want to—have another try.”
“Are you actually fucking crazy?” Sam’s eyes were wide. I’d never heard him swear once, never mind twice. “He was trying to kill you, Annabel. And you want to let him have another shot?”
“Not really, no. But things are different now, aren’t they? I know who he is, what he is. I’m not vulnerable now. I know what I’m doing. But he doesn’t know that, does he? That gives me an advantage.”
Sam was frowning now.
“You are crazy. Seriously. What the hell are you thinking? And in any case, surely your people will have him under surveillance or something?”
“They’re all deployed to other jobs. I asked someone. Look, we don’t have much time,” I said. “He might only have gone in to buy a paper. I don’t even know if this will work. He might not see me; he might avoid me. But if he has got Audrey, it’s not at her house or his house, is it? So where is she? He might take me to the same place, wherever it is.”
I opened the car door and Sam went to grab my arm, missed, and got out his side instead. It was raining, a dull soft drizzle that made everything look out of focus. The clouds overhead were dark gray, the wind picking up and cold.
“Wait. Just wait a second,” he said, standing in my way. “What if I can’t follow you? What if we get separated?”
“I’ve got my phone. You hold on to my bag. I don’t think he’ll search me, or anything. If he does take me somewhere, it won’t be far. Get hold of DI Frost and tell him. When I get a chance, I’ll send texts, so they should be able to find me.”
“And what if they can’t find you? What if you can’t get a si
gnal? What if he kills you right away? Annabel, this is insane . . .”
“He won’t kill me,” I said, cheerfully, setting off across the parking lot, through the puddles, in the direction that Colin had taken. And I was a little bit crazy, I thought. But Sam knew that all along, didn’t he?
I glanced back at him. He was following me, jogging to catch up.
“Annabel,” he said, breathless. “Just hold on a sec. Stop.”
I stopped. We were on the ramp leading up to the arcade of stores, the entrance to the Co-op around the corner. I had already spotted a bench outside where I could sit and wait.
“I’m going to look in the Co-op and just make sure he’s in there,” he said. “After that I’ll come out and wait in one of the other stores where I can see you. Just in case he takes you somewhere on foot. All right?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised at the wave of relief. “Thanks. Don’t . . .”
“What?”
“Just don’t interfere.”
I left him then and plonked myself down on the bench. It was tempting to watch Sam to see where he went, but now I was in full view of the Co-op and if—just if—Colin had caught sight of me, I didn’t want to ruin this enterprise before it had even started. I kept my head bent low but chanced a brief glimpse up, at the door.
For this to work, I had to look right. The rain was helping a good deal, soaking my hair already and plastering it to the sides of my head. I’d left my coat in Sam’s car and I was sitting on the bench in my blouse and cardigan. I looked down at the wool and saw the rain settling on the fibers, tiny droplets that sparkled in the light from the store window. I closed my eyes slowly and opened them again, and when I raised my eyes I saw the automatic exit doors of the supermarket slide open, and the figure I recognized as Sam coming through. He walked past me and if he acknowledged me I didn’t see it, just his legs, his stride purposeful. He went out of my line of vision. I thought of the CCTV footage, of the camera that was positioned somewhere behind me and to my left, no doubt pointing in another direction. I thought of the way I’d looked. I let my shoulders sag.