Shallow Waters (23 page)

78

It
didn't take long to come up with an address for Jesse Davids. He was
recorded on our systems with a string of petty theft offences to his
name.

“How does an offender go from theft to child abduction, rape and murder?” I asked the open office.

Harris rubbed his face, “I don't know. It's a big leap. Maybe he's not in it alone. We seem to be up against that a lot.”

“I agree. What's he doing with them once he has them then?”

“He's
taking the girls directly off the street after building some sort of
relationship with them. That takes time. And he's taking them away from
close friends without anyone batting an eye. That takes trust. He's
putting a lot of effort into this, so he has to be getting something
out of it. I'd imagine he's getting a lot out of it. When he was
stealing, it was to feed whatever habit he needed money for, but
there's a lot more risk with the girls, so the pay-off has to be
considerably higher.” Aaron analysed the situation out loud and it made
a lot of sense.

“You think he's being paid?”

“Maybe.
He could be providing the girls for the buyers. Trafficking young girls
is a big market, there's a lot to be made from it, especially when you
get people like Benn and Howard who want the girls, but are afraid to
make any moves themselves,” he continued.

“Well
let’s go and find out.” I rose from my chair. “Let’s bring this piece
of shit in and hope the girl is still with him.” I didn't want to think
about the consequences of her having been moved on already. It made my
head hurt.

My
nerves were on edge as we pushed through the front door of Jesse
Davids’ flat. It was on the top floor of a three storey complex. It was
dirty and smelled worse than my kitchen bin after a few long shifts
where I'd forgotten to empty it. It was dark and dingy. Davids was laid
out on a sagging sofa, his eyes rolled deep into his head. I informed
him why we were there and Harris and Rob searched the tiny three room
flat.

I
reached down to Davids, impatient with the slurred response to my
demands for him to stand. I grabbed his once white tee-shirt by the
neck and pulled hard. His head jerked wildly on his thin neck “Get your
fucking arse up. Where is she?”

He
tried to focus, his face centimetres from mine spewed out an odour that
made me sick. It infused my anger and frustration and I pushed my
gripped fist into his shoulder harder, then pulled back towards me,
making his head rock precariously on his shoulders. “I said, where is
she?”

“Who?” He managed to slur in my general direction. He was high on something.

“The girl you're keeping in a cage. Where?” I demanded.

“Ma'am.”
Rob interjected waving a baggy in the air. “Smack. On the floor at the
side of his bed. It's an expensive habit to keep.”

“Yeah,
and where's he getting the money from?” I shot back as I pushed hard on
Davids’ shoulder, letting go of his shirt as I did so. He fell into a
heap on the sofa I had just pulled him up from. My frustrations
cascaded down in a fury at him. He'd sell his grandmother to get a hit
so I imagined children wouldn't be too much of a leap for him.

“You
mindless piece of shit. Where is she? You tell us where she is or I
swear I will bring hell down on you, more than you can imagine,” I
shouted, my face again too close to his rotten mouth. Rob backed away
and returned to the bedroom where Harris was still going through
Davids’ few material possessions.

Aaron
stepped closer. “Hannah. Back up.” The three of us stood so close. “It
won't help. We'll figure it out. Let’s take him in. Let him come down,
then we can question him.”

I turned to face him, defeat pushing away at the anger. “It's taking too long.”

“I
know. It's all we can do, though. Come on. We can tear this place apart
and then talk to him when we get him back to custody.”

He
was right. I looked down at the jumble of clothes and bones that was
Davids and let out a sigh. Were we going to find the girl? We didn't
even know her name. A nameless child, held in a cage and we still had
no idea where. “Bastard.” I hissed through clenched teeth. He never
heard me. His mind was back wherever it was when we first entered.

79

She
lifted her head as she strained to hear the noise again. The action
pulled on her neck and she winced, putting her hand to the spot under
her hairline and pressing down to ease the cramping pain. She tilted
her head a little, lifting her ear higher. Every noise made her
anxious. She had distinguished a few sounds as some level of normal,
considering the circumstances, and others made her hyper aware and
brought out the clawing animals inside her. This sound was giving her
such a feeling now. It was unusual. Different to the sounds she had
already categorised as
normal.
 
It was very quiet down here, so sound had to be close or particularly
loud to travel to her, she had figured that much out. The silence she
lived in could be deafening and invasive. She strained harder, she knew
she had heard something.

Then
it was there again. Her neck twitched more as she leaned in to listen.
Her narrow fingers pushed in, pleading with the muscles to stop their
complaint. She thought she heard voices. She never heard voices or
conversations. The voices became raised. She shuffled backwards and put
her head down. She didn't understand. Why the shouting? Was it to do
with her? She had done as she had been told. She hadn't argued and
after the first couple of times, she had learned to not complain. She
may have cried, but even the tears had dried up, too scared to make an
appearance. They angered him, made him hurt her more. Why the shouting?
She pleaded in her head for it to stop.

80

We
came away from the flat with Davids' and a few items of property
consisting of a mobile phone, the little bit of his expensive smack
habit he had and some recordable DVDs. He didn't possess a computer.
We'd torn the place upside down looking for one but he just didn't have
one. Not there anyway. We'd searched his car, an old Ford Orion, parked
in a covered area at the bottom of the flats reserved for the use of
residents. It was rusted with mismatched coloured doors and bodywork.
We found nothing but empty bottles of alco-pops, junk food wrappers and
a couple of unpaid parking tickets. Harris contacted the control room
and requested a forensic recovery of the vehicle.

It
took several hours before Davids was fit to be interviewed and my
impatience to get to him pushed the local custody sergeant to his
limit. Eventually he let us in before Davids was fit for interview. I
didn't care. I took the photograph of the girl into the interview room
along with a hot tea for myself. We didn't bother to offer Davids a
drink. The custody sergeant would have looked after his needs. I had no
interest.

He
sat there with a coarse grey blanket around him. His feet looked
ridiculous in a pair of too-large black elasticated pumps, provided by
the custody sergeant because we'd seized his clothing and footwear for
forensic examination. His skinny frame was barely able to sit upright
in the chair. He was rattling, his body in need of another fix. I
pushed him hard knowing he would want the interview to be finished. He
wouldn't be able to take sitting here, still, for very long.

“We know you took Isabelle Thomas, Jesse, we have a witness. What we want to know now is where is the other girl?”

He smirked. I straightened up in my chair. “Which one?” he asked.

Aaron
spoke to counter my rising temper. “We want to know about the girl held
in the dog cage. She looks to be about ten to twelve years of age and
has shoulder-length brown hair. Where is she?” His tone was even and
calm. I took a drink from my cup and silently thanked him.

“I don't own no cage, man.”

“Do you recognise the description I gave you?” Aaron continued.

“Huh. Urm.” He shook in his blanket. “Maybe. I can't remember. I don't. When?”

I
took the photograph from the folder and pushed it across the table
towards him. He pulled the corners of the blanket closer under his chin
and leaned over it to peer at the image. His eyelids dragged shut in
his forward leaning position, then his body vibrated and he sat upright
again. “I don't remember who she is.”

“But you remember her?” I asked. Hopeful.

“Yeah.
Kind of. Alls I do is get the girls, drop em a bit of smack and pass
them on. Whatever happens to them after that ain't none of my doing.”

A chink of light appeared in my mind. “Who do you pass them on to, Jesse?”

“
I... er... dunno, some bloke. He pays me good. All I have to do is get
the girls interested, give em a bit of sommat, then hand them over
where-ever he tells me and jobs done. I get paid.”

“How do you organise this with him?”

“By phone, he gave me a phone. I contact him with me phone.”

81

The
Cambridgeshire Mobile Phone Investigations Unit was small and
restrictive, like it had been a last minute thought. Three men and one
woman were working in the enclosed space. Computers and other technical
looking equipment filled the few available worktops, with adapters and
chargers for every conceivable make of mobile phone hanging from hooks
on the walls. Mobile phones were an ever expanding area of business for
police forces. As technology advanced, so did the crimes and the need
for units just like this one.

Harris
walked to the corner desk and introduced me to Terry Black. Terry shook
my hand then went back to what he was working on when we came in. We
gave him a couple of minutes then I watched as he clicked
save
and closed down the window on his computer. “What can I help you with?” he asked as he swivelled back to face us.

Harris
dropped a secured evidence bag containing Davids’ phone onto the desk
in front of Black. “We want the listed number for the person registered
under the name 'Shallow Waters'.”

“Shallow
waters?” Terry laughed. “They think because they give themselves some
fancy fake names, we're not going to find them. Jerks.”

I
watched as Terry did his thing, extricating the seized mobile phone
from the evidence bag, photographing it then plugging it into a large
computer to access the phone’s information. After a few minutes he
handed me the number listed for Shallow Waters and told me the full
report would be available within the hour.

I thanked him and offered a smile to Harris. We were another step closer.

As
we were out of our force area I didn't have access to any of the
systems here so Harris completed another subscriber request, this time
for the registered user of the phone number we had recovered. This
would supply a result a lot quicker than the email address request
would. Email addresses are notably more difficult and dependant on what
part of the world the email provider was, the result could take more
time.

We
caught back up with Aaron, Rob and the others in the incident room. I
found myself a chair. It was then I realised how drained and exhausted
I was and how this had been a growing feeling since the start of the
investigation. I had let relationships slide. My father was upset at
me, even if he didn't say so. His good natured calls were always a
reminder of the darkness within our family and his constant effort to
pull it all together and right it.

I
had neglected Ethan. I hadn't the time to give him. I didn't know how I
felt about us. A relationship with a reporter as a cop is not an easy
one and it's probably why I had shied away from making a conscious
decision, one way or another. So I stuck my head in the sand. I knew I
needed to talk to him, but it would have to wait until this
investigation had been completed.

As
my thoughts roamed I became aware of a ringing and jumped. Harris
answered the phone on his desk. I listened to the one side of the
conversation I could hear.

“Yes. Right. Okay. Thanks.”

I sat in my chair, picking at the corner of my eyes where make-up was starting to gather from constant eye rubbing.

Harris
dropped the handset into its cradle, stood, stretched and waited a
moment before meeting my eyes. “It's a pay as you go number. We don't
have anything on this guy.”

82

Davids
had been sat in his cell festering for how long, I didn't care. The
only clock I was running to now was the clock against the girl in the
cage and I didn't even know her name. My frustration level was rising.
How the fuck could we be so close, and yet so far away? We had a phone
number but the bastard had used a pay as you go phone and everything
was up in the air again. I was raging and wanted to get Davids back
into an interview room, but he was seriously rattling and was being
seen by the force doctor in the custody suite surgery room.

I
paced in front of the custody desk, which was raised so that offenders
could not jump over and assault the custody staff.  For fairly
short stature officers, like myself, it caused another irritation as we
were forced to raise ourselves on to our toes just to talk to the damn
custody sergeant. I was starting to feel emotional and this wouldn't be
good. I needed to keep focussed. Not just for the girl, but to keep the
respect of all officers, so the investigation could stay on track and
she could be found sooner rather than later. There was an increasing
chance she would end up on one of Jack's tables.

“Drink ma'am?”

“What?!”
I spun and saw a petite female in uniform smiling at me. I looked back
at the custody desk for signs of her being told to get the mad woman
out of their hair, but no one was taking ownership. I looked again at
the officer in front of me.

“Can I get you a drink? You look as though you could do with one,” she reiterated.

“Green tea?” I said, more to be obtuse than anything else.

“Coming
right up.” She turned on her heel and out of a blue door to her right,
before appearing a couple of minutes later with two cups with actual
handles, rather than polystyrene containers, which indeed, contained
green tea.

“Thank
you.” I took the chipped white mug from her and lifted it to my face. I
inhaled. The smell of the tea smoothed away some of the irritation and
brought with it my more level head. “Where did you get this from?” I
asked.

“I
bring it in. I like either this one or Chamomile. You need something to
unwind with after some shifts.” She had a real calm air to her as she
held her own cup in her hands.

I slurped on the hot tea, “What's your name?”

“Chris
Maitland, Ma'am. I'm on attachment to custody for a couple of weeks. As
a new probationer, it gives us the experience of all aspects of the job
we do. You do see all sorts down here. And that's not just the
offenders they fetch in.”

Was
this young probationer cheeky enough to be referring to me? At this
moment in time, I didn't mind. She had brought me down momentarily
while we waited for the go ahead to take Davids back in to interview
and the tea was going down well, “Custody does get some real
interesting people through its gates.” At that point, I saw the force
medical doctor exit her surgery with Davids. “And thanks for the tea,
Chris. It was a perfectly timed pit stop.” I absently handed back my
half empty cup. Now we would find out if we could interview Davids
again and if it would provide us with any more detail.

The custody sergeant turned to me. “Inspector.”

I straightened my fringe out and walked over.

“You're
good to go again.” He tapped at the keyboard in front of him. I waited.
There was nothing else coming. His head was down, his pate shone
through threads of hair still clinging for life atop his head, the
fluorescent lighting easily picking out the bare patches like an old
worn rug. His fingers worked rapidly as he input details I presumed
belonged to Davids following the meeting with the doctor. I had no time
for precious sergeants and do-good doctors right now.

Ten minutes later Aaron and I were, again, sat opposite Davids. He didn't look good. I didn't care.

“I
told you everything, Miss,” he snivelled. Miss. A word that instantly
told me he'd done time in prison. The grey blanket was still wrapped
around his shoulders. Shoulders that were shaking and shaking hard. I
waited. Not a word. Nothing. Aaron tapped rhythmically. No words. 

Davids'
knees bounced, the balls of his feet like small trampolines. There was
nothing about him that was still. “You've got his number. I gave it
you. It's in me phone. Just look. You've got it. You took it off me.
You have it.”

I waited another beat. Aaron tapped.

“Tell me about your meetings with him, Jesse?” I said.

His knees bounced harder.

“I dunno. Yunno. It were dark.”

I
leaned forward. “Jesse, you either cooperate with this investigation or
you don't.  If this girl we're looking for dies before we find
her, you're looking at a lot more time inside than you can imagine
right now.” I leaned back again, giving it room to sink in. Aaron
turned and looked at me. He wasn't going anywhere for a long time
anyway. He was wrapped up in the murder of Isabelle. We couldn't lie to
him about evidence we had, but this wasn't lying. He was too dumb to
realise how much trouble he was in. His body seemed to relax, his
forearms rested on the edge of the table, his head dropped forward. The
shaking continued but I could practically see the cogs turning. I
breathed in and held. The tapping continued. As I could hold my breath
no more, Davids pulled himself up, his grey face looking more drained
than I thought possible. His mouth pinched, lips cracking.

“I want me solicitor.”