DS Casey gives in grudgingly.
“You’ll have to allow us to do our jobs, Mr. Hadley. It’s important we move quickly.”
“Ruiz can look after him,” I say. “He knows how it works.”
DCI Drury arrives alone. The rest of his team have stayed at the scene, manning roadblocks and searching the surrounding fields. Several officers bring him up to speed. Drury is staring blankly at the floor. Something has gone horribly wrong. He can’t explain how or why. He wants today over again or at least a second chance. He goes into his office, motioning me to follow.
Opening a bottom drawer, he produces a bottle of whisky, cracking the seal and pouring himself a slug in a coffee mug. He swallows it and squeezes his eyes shut as the liquor scalds his tongue and the warmth explodes in his empty stomach.
He raises the bottle.
“No thanks.”
He pours another shot and screws on the lid, replacing the bottle in the drawer.
“How?” he mutters. “It was a private road. There can’t be more than twenty cars a day. A member of the public would have called us by now. So who picked her up?”
“He must have been following her.”
Drury rests his elbows on his desk, pressing his thumb pads into his eyes.
“The mobile phone that Piper used was purchased from a Vodafone shop in south London eighteen months ago. It was registered to a Trevor Bryant, an alias used by a local drug dealer called Eddie Marsh. We raided some of Eddie’s properties a few months back.”
“Where is Eddie Marsh now?”
“He jumped bail. In Marbella according to his ex-girlfriend.”
“Does Marsh have any history of sexual offences?”
“No.”
“What about links with the men you’ve charged with assault?”
“We’re looking.” Drury changes tack. “Emily Martinez isn’t answering her phone and her father didn’t show up at work today. What can you tell me about him?”
“He matches the psychological profile.”
“I can’t base an arrest on a profile.”
“He has the intellect, the experience, the knowledge and the motive.”
“Still not hard evidence.”
“You’ll find it. You’ll match his DNA to the farmhouse or you’ll find his fingerprints.”
The DCI looks rueful. “It’s easy to have faith when you don’t have to wear the failure.”
There’s a knock on the door. DS Casey appears. “Phone call, boss.”
Drury picks up.
“Where?… Who owns the property?… You’re sure? Check again.” Strange bright fragments of possibility are firing in his mind. “Is there a caretaker?… Yeah… OK, contact him… I’m on my way.”
He looks up at me.
“We’ve found where he kept the girls.”
45
On the journey south to Culham we pass through two police checkpoints patrolled by officers in reflective vests, waving motorists to the side of the road. Car boots are searched. Trucks. Trailers. Caravans.
Drury flashes his badge. A glowing wand waves us through. Less than half a mile further on we turn off onto an unmarked road that is guarded by a single-bar gate counterweighted with a metal block, padlocked in place. A wooden notice reads: PRIVATE ROAD—NO ACCESS.
Continuing along a muddy track, weaving between potholes, the road almost disappears in places, surrendering to the undergrowth. Other vehicles have forged a path. We come to a line of parked police cars and a white van. The doors open and two police dogs bound out, sniffing at tires and trees.
Ahead of us, an abandoned factory or warehouse is partially illuminated by headlights. Most of the buildings are single-story although exhaust stacks and flues suggest larger structures might lie below ground. The surrounding chain-link fence has collapsed in places under the weight of dead vines and trees felled by past storms.
The main gate cants drunkenly on wooden posts that have rotted to crumbling stumps. Immediately beyond, the road disappears beneath a mass of tangled brambles and spindly vines, grown to shoulder-height in places. A path has been hacked through the foliage.
Torches swing from building to building, lighting up small sections. Graffiti stains some of the more prominent walls, but the evidence is aged and faded. Windows are boarded up or broken. Doors are sealed or gape blackly open.
“It was abandoned in the eighties,” says Drury. “Before that it was an emergency relocation site for the government—some sort of shelter in case the Ruskies launched a missile strike on the Harwell reactors. There were half a dozen complexes like this one.”
The DCI shines a torch on a wall of rock that rises almost vertically above the compound.