Amy Wood, a placid, motherly, dark-haired woman, had twenty years of service answering emergency calls, and was one of the most experienced in the room. She loved this job, because you never knew what might happen in just ten seconds’ time. And if there was one thing, above all else, she had learned, it was that whenever you thought you’d seen it all, you were always going to be in for another surprise. She never cared for Q days so she was always secretly glad when things kicked off. And how, in the past hour! She had answered calls from witnesses to two different road traffic accidents, a man whose girlfriend had been bitten by a neighbour’s dog, someone in Bognor Regis who had just been dragged off his bicycle and seen it ridden away, and someone, who sounded off his face on drugs, complaining that a neighbour across the street kept photographing him.
The bane of her and her colleagues’ work was the constant stream of hoax calls, and the even larger volume of calls from mentally ill people, around the clock. One particular elderly lady with dementia called fifteen times a day. It was a fact that twenty per cent of all 999 calls for immediate police response were mental health issues.
She had one on the line right now. A young man, crying.
‘I’m going to kill myself.’
His hysterical voice was barely audible above the crackling roar of wind.
‘Can you tell me where you are?’ He was phoning from a mobile phone, and the location of the cell tower receiving and transmitting his signal showed up on her screen. It was in the town of Hastings and he could have been in any of a dozen streets.
‘I don’t think you can help me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got problems in my head.’
‘Where are you?’ she asked him calmly and pleasantly.
‘Rigger Road,’ he said and began blubbing. ‘No one understands me, yeah?’
As she spoke she was typing out a running incident log and instructions to a radio dispatcher.
‘Can you tell me your name?’
There was a long silence. She heard what sounded like Dan. ‘Is your name Dan?’
‘No, Ben.’
The whole tone of his voice was worrying her. She completed her instructions with Grade One, which meant immediate response – and to be there within a maximum of fifteen minutes.
‘So what’s been happening this week to make you feel like this, Ben?’
‘I’ve just never fitted in. I can’t tell my mum what’s wrong. I’m from Senegal. Came when I was ten. I’ve just never fitted in. People treat me different. I’ve got a knife, I’m going to cut my throat now.’
‘Please stay on the line for me, Ben, I have someone on their way to you. I’m staying on the line with you until they get to you.’
A reply flashed back on her screen with the call sign of a police response car that had been allocated. She could see on the map the pink symbol of the police car, no more than half a mile from Rigger Road. The car suddenly jumped two blocks nearer.
‘Why do people treat me different?’ He began crying hysterically. ‘Please help me.’
‘Officers are very close, Ben. I’ll stay on the line until they get to you.’ She could see the pink symbol entering Rigger Road. ‘Can you see a police car? Can you see a police car, Ben?’
‘Yrrrr.’
‘Will you wave at it?’
She heard voices. Then the message she was relieved to see flashed up: Officers at scene.
Job done, she ended the call. It was always hard to tell whether would-be suicide calls were real or a cry for help, and neither she, nor any of the others here, would ever take a risk on a call like this one. A week ago she’d taken a call from a man who said he had a rope round his neck and was going to jump through his loft hatch. Just as the police entered his house, she heard him gurgling, and then the chilling sound of the officers shouting to each other for a knife.
Amy looked at her watch. 5.45. Not halfway through her twelve-hour shift yet, but time to grab a cuppa, and see how many others in the department fancied ordering in a curry tonight from a local, rather good balti house, which was fast turning into their latest canteen. But before she could remove her headset and stand up, her phone rang.
‘Sussex Police emergency, how can I help?’ she answered, and immediately looked at the number and approximate location that showed on the screen. It was in the Crawley area, close to Gatwick Airport. She guessed from the traffic noise the caller was on a motorway. An RTC, she anticipated – most calls from motorways were either reporting debris lying in one of the lanes, or else road traffic collisions.
As was so often the case, at first the young man seemed to have problems getting his words out. From her long experience, Amy knew that for most people the mere act of phoning 999 was nerve-wracking, let alone the effect that the emergency they were phoning to report was having on them. Half the people who called were in some kind of ‘red mist’ of nerves and confusion.
She could barely hear the man’s voice above the roar of the traffic. ‘I just phoned her you see – look – the thing is – I’m really worried about my fiancée,’ he stuttered, finally.
‘May I have your name and number, caller?’ she asked, although she could see his number already.
He blurted them out. ‘I think my fiancée is in trouble. I was just on the phone to her as she was driving into the underground car park beneath our flat. She said there was a man lurking in there, he scared her, then I heard her scream and the phone went dead.’
‘Have you tried calling her again, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, I have. Please send someone over there, I’m really worried.’
All Amy’s experience and instincts told her this was real and potentially serious. ‘What is your name, please?’
‘Jamie – Jamie Ball.’
Despite the background roar he now spoke more clearly. Once again she was typing as she spoke. ‘Can you give me the address, her name, and a brief description of your fiancée.’
He gave them to her, then added, ‘Please, please can you get someone there quickly, something’s not right.’
She looked at her screen then at the map, searching for the pink car symbol, then spotted it. ‘Officers are being dispatched now, sir.’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’
She could hear his voice cracking. ‘Please stay on the line for a moment, sir. Sir. Mr Ball? Jamie. My name is Amy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding more composed.
‘Can you please give me your fiancée’s mobile and home phone numbers and car registration number?’
Ball gave the details, but suddenly could not remember the entire registration number. ‘It begins GU10,’ he said. ‘Please ask them to hurry.’
‘Do you have any idea who the person in the car park might be? Have you or your fiancée seen anyone suspicious in the car park before?’
‘No. No. But it’s dark down there and there’s no security. Some vehicles were vandalized there a few months ago. I’m on my way home now, but I’m a good half an hour away.’
‘Officers will be there in minutes, sir.’
‘Please make sure she’s OK. Please. I love her. Please make sure she’s all right. Please.’
‘I’m giving the officers attending your mobile number, sir. They’ll contact you.’
‘I heard her scream,’ he said. ‘Oh God, I heard her scream. It was terrible. They’ve got to help her.’
She typed the details out and sent them by FLUM – a flash unsolicited message – to Andy Kille.
He immediately alerted the Duty Force Gold commander, Chief Superintendent Nev Kemp, and the duty Critical Incident Manager, formerly known as the Silver Commander, Chief Inspector Jason Tingley, that they had a potential abduction.
7
Thursday 11 December
‘PC Rain’, officers called this kind of weather, only partially in jest. Scrotes didn’t like getting wet, and accordingly the crime levels almost always went down in the city of Brighton and Hove whenever there was heavy rain.
Six o’clock on a dark, chilly Thursday evening in December. PC Susi Holliday, with her crew mate, the older and more experienced PC Richard Kyrke, known as RVK, and famed within the police for his photographic memory, were heading west along Hove seafront in their Ford Mondeo estate patrol car. They were passing a succession of handsome Regency terraces to their right, and the deserted lawns, with rows of beach huts, to their left. Further away, beyond the throw of the promenade street lighting, the stormy water of the English Channel tossed and foamed.
They were approaching the end of their shift, with just an hour till the 7 p.m. changeover, and it had been a quiet day. So far they’d attended a minor RTC – a rider knocked off his motor scooter by a van, but without any injury – a call to a chemist near the Seven Dials roundabout, where a man had collapsed in the doorway, from a suspected drug overdose; and, as there was almost without fail on every shift, a call to a domestic incident, which they had sorted, and arrested the live-in boyfriend. It was the fourth time the woman had called the police after being assaulted by this man in the past eighteen months. Perhaps now she would throw him out for good, but Susi Holliday doubted it. The true tragedy for many victims of domestic abuse was that they became so demoralized, losing all their confidence, that they rarely had the courage to chuck their partner out or to leave – or the ability to believe they could make a life on their own.
In a few hours, the downtown area around West Street with its bars and nightclubs would, inevitably, turn into a potential war zone as it did every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, kept mostly under rigid but friendly control through Operation Marble, a massive police presence late into the night. But luckily, on their current shift pattern, they would escape these nights of dealing with constant fights and with drunk, abusive chavs. Although, in truth, some officers enjoyed getting in a good ‘bundle’, as they called it – it was one of the adrenaline rushes of the job.
Susi Holliday was driving in the stop-start traffic, the wipers struggling to clout away the rain, the brake lights of the car in front flaring against their rain-soaked windscreen. RVK was engrossed in a text he was sending. They were both off for the next two days and Susi was looking forward to a quiet time with her husband James, shopping for stuff for the new flat they had recently moved into in nearby Eastbourne, where the property prices were substantially lower than Brighton.
‘What are your plans for your days off, RVK?’ she asked her colleague.
‘Uh,’ he said, and raised a finger, signalling he needed to finish his texting task. After a moment he said, ‘Taking Joey to the football.’ Joey was his twelve-year-old son, whom he doted on. ‘Then we’re going to the outlaws after. You?’
Their radios crackled. Then they heard the female voice of a Resource Room supervisor.
‘Charlie Romeo Four?’
RVK answered. ‘Charlie Romeo Four.’
‘Charlie Romeo Four, we have a report of an incident in the underground car park of the Chesham Gate flats, at the corner of Stanley Rise and Briars Avenue. A woman may have been attacked by an intruder. Can you attend? Grade One.’
‘Chesham Gate?’ Kyrke replied. ‘Yes, yes. We’re on our way.’ Then he turned to Susi. ‘Spin her round.’
Susi Holliday switched on the blue lights and siren and, adrenaline pumping, made a U-turn straight out into the opposite lane and accelerated. Like most of her colleagues, she always got a massive buzz out of responding to a Grade One ‘shout’. Along with getting in a ‘bundle’, driving on blues and twos was one of the great kicks – and perks – of the job. And a big responsibility. The lights and siren were, in law, a request to be allowed through, not an automatic right. And with what seemed like half of all drivers on the road either deaf, blind or just plain stupid, all blue-light runs were fraught with hazards and heart-in-the-mouth moments.
She had one now as a Nissan Micra in front, with apparently no rear-view mirrors or indicators, suddenly switched lanes right into her path as she bore down on it at over 60 mph. ‘Asshole!’ she hissed, missing its rear bumper by inches and undertaking it.
As she drove, Constable Kyrke was taking down details from the supervisor, who read out the make and partial index of the woman’s car and a description of her.
Ninety seconds later they tore over the roundabout by Brighton Pier, thanks to an intelligent bus driver stopping for them, and on up Marine Parade. They made a left, blazing up past the bed-and-breakfast hotels of Lower Rock Gardens. Less than two minutes later, driving up the steep hill before the hospital, they saw the apartment block, Chesham Gate, ahead to their left.
They pulled up beside the closed entrance to the underground car park, climbed out and walked up to the full-height gates. They peered through the bars of the grille into the darkness below. Susi Holliday took out her torch, switched it on and shone the beam through, but could see little other than a row of parked cars, some beneath fitted covers.
‘Any idea how we get in?’ she asked her colleague.
‘I’ll see if there’s a caretaker’s flat,’ he said, and sprinted off towards the main entrance. Suddenly she heard a clank, and the gates began to open. Moments later, she was lit up by the glare of headlights, and heard the roar of an engine behind her. She turned to see a small BMW convertible, driven by a young woman. Raising her arm, she walked towards it and told the driver she wouldn’t be able to enter the car park at this time because of a police incident.
She hurried down the ramp, triggering the automatic lights, and could now see much of the interior, switching her torch off to conserve the battery. She was looking for a white Fiat 500, index beginning GU10, and a slim woman in her mid-twenties with long brown hair. There were about sixty or so parking spaces, most of them occupied, as well as several motorcycles and a cycle rack.
But there was no sign of life. She began working her way along the rows of parked cars, breathing in the smells of dust and engine oil, and all the time keeping a wary eye out for anyone else who might be down there.
She reached the end of the row and turned left, towards a darker section. One light above her flickered intermittently, emitting a loud buzz, and she switched her torch back on. She passed a bike rack, with several heavily padlocked bicycles, and a beautiful old convertible Mercedes, caked in dust and sitting on four flat tyres. Then she saw, neatly parked, a white Fiat 500. The first digits of its index were GU10. The car looked wet, as if it had only recently been driven in here.
She stopped and radioed her colleague. ‘I think I’ve found the car,’ she said.
‘I’m on my way down with the caretaker,’ he responded.
She approached the car cautiously, then shone her torch beam in through the side window. The interior was empty. A discarded chewing-gum wrapper lay on the passenger seat, and there was a ticket sitting on the dash. She looked at it closely and saw it was a pay and display from a car park in nearby Lewes. She checked both driver and passenger doors but they were locked. The car bonnet was warm.
Just then, PC Kyrke appeared, accompanied by a short man in his fifties wearing chinos and a fabric bomber jacket and holding a mobile phone.
‘This is Mark Schulz, the caretaker for this block,’ he said.
‘So what exactly is the problem?’ the caretaker asked.
‘We need to ensure the owner of this car, Ms Logan Somerville, is safe,’ she said. ‘Have you seen her since she arrived back?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I finish at half past five.’
‘Do you have CCTV here?’
He raised his hands with a gesture of despair. ‘It’s not been working for six weeks. I told the management company, but nothing happens.’ He shrugged. ‘What can you do, eh?’ Then he hesitated as they walked towards the stairs. ‘Shall I phone her?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Very nice lady,’ he said. ‘Nice boyfriend. Nice people.’ He held his phone up, scrolled through the display, then dialled. After some moments he looked at the two officers and shook his head. ‘No answer.
’
‘Do you have a key to her flat?’
‘Yes, give me a few moments to find it.’
‘I’ll stay down here and have a look around, and stop anyone else from entering or leaving,’ Kyrke said. ‘You go up to the flat.’
Susi Holliday went up the internal staircase to the ground floor, then waited in the corridor while Schulz went into his flat. He came back out holding a bunch of keys, like a gaoler, and led her into the lift.
At the ninth floor they stepped out into a gloomy corridor with a badly worn carpet and a musty smell. Somewhere, music was pounding out insanely loudly. Susi Holliday recognized it as ‘Patient Love’ by Passenger. She followed the caretaker along the corridor, till he stopped outside a door and pressed the bell.
After some moments he rang again. Then he knocked hard. He waited several seconds then looked quizzically at the police officer. ‘No answer.’
‘Could you open it so I can check if she is there?’
‘I don’t really like to go in, you know?’
‘We’re very concerned for her safety – we need to know if she is all right.’
He shrugged. ‘OK, sure, no problem.’
He opened the door and called out, ‘Hello! Miss Somerville! Hello, it’s the caretaker! I have the police with me.’
They were greeted with silence. The place had a deadened, empty feeling.
‘Do you mind if we go in?’ PC Holliday asked.
He rolled his mouth pensively, then gestured with his hand. ‘No, do go in.’
They entered a small hallway, with two mountain bikes leaning against the wall and a cluster of coats and anoraks hung above them, and then walked through into a bright, airy but untidy living/dining room. It had a modern feel, with a cream carpet, beige sofas, and a breakfast bar dividing the room from the small kitchen, on which lay a copy of the Independent newspaper and The Week magazine. At the rear of the bar was a tropical fish tank, immaculately clean and brightly illuminated, with several tiny fish swimming around.