What She Saw (4 page)

‘Market forces don't apply to criminal investigations,' Rosen answered. ‘I wish I could, but I can't control human—'

‘Nature. Yes, I know. You've told me time and time again.'

Yes and you're the Wizard of Oz
, thought Rosen.
Great and mighty
.

‘There's been an informational development and we need to talk,' he said now, steering Glass away from the recurring argument.

Emily returned her hand to her head and her tears fell faster, her sobbing louder. Inside Rosen's head, stress and pressure rocketed.

He suppressed the words
loan shark
, the memory of his childhood neighbours in Walthamstow crucified by versions of John Glass, and silently recited a simple mantra:
Victim's father, victim's father, victim's father
. . .

‘Go on, Rosen, hit me with your big development.'

The expression on Glass's face told Rosen there was no room for sorrow or sympathy.

‘Mr Glass, the list you supplied of people who know Thomas and who Thomas knows. Is it definitive?'

‘Yes, it's definitive.'

The first thing Rosen had asked John Glass for was a list of names of people who knew Thomas, and he had supplied twenty-three. All of them had been able to provide cast-iron alibis.

‘I need you to do something for me, as soon as you can, please,' said Rosen, holding Glass's hostile gaze. ‘I need you to go through all your contact details and see if there are any names you've missed out.'

‘It's a definitive list.'

It isn't
, thought Rosen.
It can't be
.

‘Mr Glass, I'd like you to supply me with the contact details of everyone you know, both business and personal.'

‘Everyone?'

‘Everyone.'

‘There are people on that list in Glasgow, people who've never been within miles of Thomas!'

‘We need to catch whoever's done this—'

‘It's too late for my son!'

At the sound of his raised voice, Emily Glass lifted her head and turned her face towards her husband.

He took a deep breath and spoke more softly, ‘You're useless, Rosen, worse than useless, actually.'

Rosen focused on Emily Glass, weeping at her child's side.

‘Thomas indicated to the boy who helped him that he knew his abductor and that that person was male.'

As the information sank in, Glass said, ‘I have databases. I'll ask Julian Parker, my PA, to email them to you.'

‘Thank you.'

‘No one I know would do such a thing as this.'

‘You've never been surprised, shocked even, by the action of any individual who you know?'

‘Not to this degree. It's unthinkable, Rosen.'

‘Mr Glass, unthinkable as it is, it's happened. Someone's responsible. I need your help. I've got to nail them. Fast.'

Emily Glass sat up and reached out a hand to touch her son's arm. Her hand hovered over his bandaged skin and then fell back into her lap.

Both men watched the tender moment and Glass looked at Rosen, mystified.

‘She wants to touch him,' explained Rosen. ‘But she's terrified of hurting him.'

In the silence, something shifted in Glass's expression.

‘Why do you make me feel like this is somehow my fault?' Anger welled up in Glass's eyes.

Rosen was amazed by the question and took a moment to get the measure of his tone right.

‘If I've done or said anything to make you feel like that, I assure you it was never my intention. And I'm deeply sorry you feel like that.'

Glass took out his mobile and turned his back on Rosen. Within seconds, he was connected to his PA.

‘Julian,' said Glass. ‘Not good, not good at all. Now, listen, I've been told I've got to submit all our databases to the police – every contact, business and private, right?' He turned and looked at Rosen, his PA's raised voice leaking from the phone.

‘Everything, Julian. Every single contact.' He turned his attention away from the phone. ‘You've got DCI Rosen's email address. Get onto it!'

Glass closed the call down and turned to Rosen. ‘Happy now?'

‘I'm going back to work, Mr Glass.'

‘That's very good of you, Rosen. Thank you, all my cares just lifted away.'

As Rosen walked away, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. The display read: Clerkwell Road Garage. He picked up.

‘DCI Rosen, I've got some news for you.' It was Alan Carter, civilian forensic expert on burned-out vehicles. ‘The entire search isn't over, but we've got some initial findings to present to you on the Renault Megane from Bannerman Square.'

8

2.54 A.M.

I
n the hospital car park, just as Rosen took out his phone to call Bellwood and see where she was, he heard her voice approaching from the darkness behind him.

‘David, I went back and spoke to Stephanie, the nurse on ITU.'

‘Oh, yes?' He recalled the nurse's folded arms, the bulk of her physique, the pugnacious cast of her face.

‘What are you smiling at?' asked Bellwood, perplexed, as they got into Rosen's car.

‘When I was a kid I was a keen amateur boxer – Red Triangle Boxing Club, Walthamstow. My absolute boyhood hero was a British heavyweight, Joe Bugner. Stephanie looks like him.'

Bellwood laughed. ‘I'm glad you didn't tell her.'

‘Yeah, me too. I'd be in A and E myself now. How'd you get on, Carol?'

‘Stephanie had a Damascus moment after you left to speak to Thomas's parents. I asked about the journey from the ambulance to the resuscitation unit. She said he made quite a few noises but nothing they could pin down as speech. After all, how could he be understood? He was hooked up to a ventilator.'

‘But—?' Rosen scented significance in Bellwood's manner but didn't
know whether it was just wishful thinking. If there was a god to which he could have prayed for a crumb of information, he'd have raised his arms and talked in tongues.

‘She said the boy's mood altered on the way to the resus. It was like he'd seen or heard something that spooked him. She thought he was going into heart failure.'

‘Did Stephanie see anything that could have affected Thomas?'

‘She thinks she saw the door to A and E reception close. So there could have been someone else on the corridor, David.'

Bellwood had a gift for making silence comfortable, particularly around witnesses. In every case they worked, she had yielded details that otherwise would have been lost through sieves of memory. The bitterness in Rosen's mouth, left over from the conversation with John Glass, eased off.

‘Do they have CCTV on that corridor?'

‘No, but they've got it at the front in A and E reception.'

A grim possibility formed in Rosen's mind.

‘Then we need to see that CCTV footage and we need twenty-four-hour surveillance in A and E holding and reception. Order the footage; I'll speak to Baxter, ask him to release a couple of DCs. When they're assigned, you fill them in and they can cover the surveillance, twenty-four-seven: four hours on, four hours off. I bet you the perpetrators have already got their beady little eyes on A and E. Let's be waiting for them.'

9

3.24 A.M.

T
here was something about the space between the bare concrete walls of Clerkwell Road Garage that turned the air bitterly cold. The gas heaters, dotted around the barn-like space, did nothing to touch the chill. Rosen clutched at the collar of his white protective suit and Bellwood's breath formed a gentle mist.

‘Come this way,' said Alan Carter, footsteps echoing.

Dead centre of the garage, the burned-out Megane looked tiny. Its charred frame looked like a surreal sculpture, devoid of any of the interior features except the roasted remains of half a steering wheel and a dashboard.

‘They're absolute idiots, you know,' said Carter.

Rosen had noticed before the way Carter poured unwanted attention at Bellwood, and he smiled now at the way she made his admiring gaze drift past her. He guessed it was a skill she'd developed in her teens.

‘Who?' asked Bellwood. ‘Who are absolute idiots?' She guided Carter's attention towards Rosen.

‘Anyone who thinks they can destroy all the forensic evidence in a car simply by burning it out.' Carter, a skinny man with heavily pockmarked cheeks, emphasized his point by jabbing his finger at his temple and then at the car.

A door opened on the adjacent wall and a particularly tall woman in her mid-thirties emerged, white-suited, platinum-blonde hair with a navy-blue parting. Her immaculately applied make-up made her seem strangely at odds with the oil-tainted space.

However
, thought Rosen,
you walk the space like you were born in a garage
.

‘Meryl Southall.' Carter introduced the woman. The name rang a bell but Rosen could make no definitive connection.

‘Hi, Meryl,' said Bellwood.

Southall nodded at Bellwood in dour recognition.

To the left of the Megane there was a long metal table on which sat aluminium bowls full of blackened dust, and a range of sieves with different-sized meshes.

‘We've been through everything that was left of the upholstery, front seats and back, and all we came up with was dust.'

Meryl Southall joined them, her bright red fingernails visible beneath latex gloves.

‘Who is she?' Rosen whispered to Bellwood, uneasy about information being exchanged under the nose of a woman he couldn't place.

‘Meryl's a telecommunications technician from Satellite Forensic Services,' explained Bellwood. ‘Big Spurs fan, like you, David.'

I didn't know we needed her help
, thought Rosen.
And I certainly didn't ask for it
.

As if reading Rosen's mind, Carter said, ‘Mr Baxter, your boss, was down here earlier, seeing how things were progressing. He gave the all clear to bring Meryl on board when we showed him what we'd found.'

Baxter was the duty chief superintendent. In the decades he'd known him, Rosen had never seen the budget-orientated tightwad be open-handed with his own money, or the money he managed for the Met.
The development with Thomas
, thought Rosen,
must've rattled Baxter's
cage for him to have given the go-ahead to employ the services of a pricey outfit like Satellite Forensic Services
.

Rosen's irritation over his intervention and the lack of communication around it was counterbalanced by the prospect of something significant having surfaced in the Megane.

‘What have you got for me, Alan?'

‘Two letters on the chassis – M and C – didn't get blitzed off the metal when the car went up.'

‘Carol, Stolen Vehicles. . .'

She was already on her mobile, finding space away from the group to make the call.

‘So, what's come up from the car?' he pressed.

‘The fire was started inside the vehicle,' said Carter. ‘From the back seat. It wasn't doused on the outside. Whoever did this wasn't taking any chances. He, they, wanted this kid dead. They were careful about where they started the fire, but not so careful about sealing it as they got away – they left the rear door ajar and unlocked. If you notice the pattern of the charring on the rear frame of the car, the densest flames were there. This is where the worst damage was done.'

Rosen looked through the empty windows at the way the metal was twisted in the lower half of the rear of the car, how the structure was blackened but slightly less damaged as it touched the roof.

‘It was lucky the thing blew before the fire fighters got there,' observed Carter.

‘Go on,' encouraged Rosen.

‘Because of this.'

Rosen turned as Meryl Southall spoke. She held out a small metal bowl inside which sat a lump of shrivelled plastic and buckled metal. It was the remains of a mobile phone. ‘If the fire fighters had sprayed the car with their aqueous film-forming foam, it could've got through the crack in this little baby and ruined the electrical circuit inside.'

She picked the phone up with tweezers and turned it round. There
was a gap in the plastic, where the casing for the battery and SIM card had buckled away from the main body of the phone.

‘The casing's useless,' said Southall, ‘but I may be able to do something with the SIM card. I'm not promising, but I've seen worse than this and pulled info from the SIM.'

Rosen was silenced by wild hope.

‘Well, say something,' said Southall.

‘It's a Nokia C2-01, manufactured in early 2010 and on the market that autumn.'

‘How do you know that?' Southall sounded impressed.

‘It's one of the phones Thomas Glass took with him when he walked out of his family home. It's the cheapest of the three phones, the one that mattered least if it got lost because it didn't cost as much as his iPhone and BlackBerry.'

If they wanted him to burn to death in the back of a car, why did they leave him with his mobile phone?
Rosen asked himself.
He could have called for help
.

Bellwood came back, pocketing her phone.

‘Anything?' asked Rosen.

‘Three Meganes reported taken without the owner's permission from the day before Thomas Glass went missing, one of them with the licence plate MC561 KAD. The other two are still missing.'

‘Where from?'

‘Forest Ridge Drive, off Croydon Road, just on the edge of outer London.'

Rosen nodded. ‘That puts the stolen car within five miles of the Glasses' house.' He turned to Southall. ‘How long do you think you'll be with the SIM?'

‘Depends,' she said. ‘Be as quick as I can, but it mightn't be good news.'

‘Thanks, Meryl,' said Rosen. ‘The sooner the better.'

She nodded. Rosen and Bellwood walked away. Then, Rosen
stopped and turned. ‘Meryl, do me a favour?' he said. ‘Drop everything, do that phone and nothing else? Please?'