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  “My mum. I live with my mum. We had a bit of a row, me and Millie. She was miffed with me, we were both tired and stressed. But she wouldn’t just have gone off, she just wouldn’t.” She tried to hold back tears, but they overflowed and rolled down her cheeks to be wiped away with trembling hands.

  “Okay, look, what I’d like is for you all to go and get some rest, this has been a long and difficult night for you. I’ll arrange for someone to come and speak to you later today. In the meantime, if we find out anything we’ll let you know immediately. Honestly, the best thing now is for you to be at home. In case Millie tries to contact you. In case she turns up.”

  “You know something we don’t,” said the brother, straighter now in his chair, suspicion in his eyes. “What is this all about?”

  “We don’t know anything yet. It’s too early. We are just worried, as you are. From what you’ve said, there was no reason for Millie to go missing, we are taking this seriously. If I hear anything I will let you know personally.”

  There was no way becoming involved in a heated back and forth would accomplish anything so, with a nod to the uniforms, Charlie turned to Sue, flicked a glance towards the door, stood and walked out.

  When she joined him a few minutes later she confirmed they had arranged escorts for them all to go home and for members from the team to visit them after lunch to take official statements and bring back recent pictures and anything else that might help.

  “Bloody hell, Charlie. What is this?” She didn’t expect an answer.

  Chapter 12

  When the call came from Bob Scunthorpe’s office Charlie had been expecting it, really just waiting to be called in, and he knew it wasn’t going to be for congratulations. He had his notes prepared and up to date, his plan outlined. He didn’t feel out of his depth, but he was frustrated and anxious. Another woman missing, and they were no nearer to tracing the first one. It wasn’t good.

  Glenys ushered him straight into the office, “Do you want coffee, Detective Inspector?”

  He shook his head.

  The Chief Inspector stood and came around the desk, shook his hand and then turned to the slim young woman who had also left her seat and taken a couple of paces forward. “Charlie, this is Detective Inspector Miller, Tanya.” Charlie saw that she was older than he was, but not by much. Slight but fit looking, long fair hair and blue eyes. Her face was serious. Her grip when she shook his hand was strong. She nodded at him, gave a small smile that was really not much more than a twitch of her lips, then, when Bob Scunthorpe moved back to his seat, she sat down leaving Charlie no real option but to take the other chair. He already knew what was coming.

  Bob cleared his throat, “I’ve read the reports. Another woman missing from the motorway services. We are not having much luck with finding Ms…erm.”

  Charlie interrupted, “Dickinson, sir. Sarah Dickinson.”

  “Right. Now I think we can use a bit of help here. This is no reflection on you, Charlie. I promise you that, but Inspector Miller has worked in missing persons, and also been involved in several unlawful deaths recently. I think that she could have a lot to offer. She’s been seconded to us from Cheshire, though she worked with us until she was promoted, before your time here. We are short-handed as you know, hah, not that they are any better further north, but…” He stopped and waved a hand in the air over his blotter. “No point getting into that now. Charlie, I’d like you to help her feel at home, work together on this, and see if we can’t move things along. Of course, we are all hoping that these women will turn up alive and well but, realistically, that might well not be the case and I don’t want to be caught napping. Do you have any questions?”

  He had a myriad, his mind swirled with them, but he had to be professional. Charlie swallowed hard. “We’ll be sharing an office, will we, sir?”

  “I think that’s best. You’ve got room I think?”

  “Yes of course. I have to ask, sir, is Inspector Miller taking over the case, what I mean to say is…” He paused, didn’t know how to phrase his question.

  The Chief Inspector was sympathetic but there was no time for pussy footing, “Detective Miller has seniority. I don’t want you to feel in any way that you’ve been side-lined, but someone has to be in charge and naturally…”

  Charlie nodded. “Thank you, sir. Did you want me to update you about the new woman?”

  “I have it here thank you, Charlie.” He held up a slim file folder, “But, I’m sure Inspector Miller would appreciate a thorough run down of everything.” He nodded towards the woman who was already bending to retrieve the leather bag that stood on the floor at her feet.

  She stood, ready to take care of business, “I’ve read the reports already, but yes please, Inspector, that would be useful. Shall we go and get on with it?”

  Charlie led the way, past the secretary, out into the corridor. He was struggling, disappointment and anger battling with the overriding attempt to appear unfazed. They walked in silence along the narrow space. Just before they reached the squad room he paused, turned to look down at her, “Do you want to meet the team now, or would you rather get settled in the office first?”

  “Let’s meet the team, get that bit done. Can I call you Charlie, or would you prefer to keep things formal?” She knew when she asked what the answer had to be, they had to be on first name terms, anything else would be ludicrous.

  “Charlie’s fine, and you?”

  “Tanya.” She smiled, “I know you’re feeling pretty miffed about this, I would be, but honestly I just want us to find these women. There’s no time for turf wars, let’s try and make it work?”

  Charlie nodded at her and opened the door to the incident room, stood back to let her enter first. He bit back the bile. It wasn’t her fault, she had been sent here, probably hadn’t had a lot of choice, but it smarted, it really did.

  “Okay guys, can I have a minute?” The team looked up, Sue frowned at him, “This is Detective Inspector Miller, Tanya. She’s been brought in to give us a hand.”

  Tanya nodded at them all. “I’m going to be working closely with Charlie, I have some experience that might be useful. It’s no reflection on what’s been achieved up to now, just more help with this case. It seems that it could be bigger than was first thought. Charlie’s sharing his office with me, that’ll make things easier we think.”

  She’d been considerate, he appreciated it, but it still stung. He showed her into the small room in the corner, there was a spare desk. He had taken the bigger one when he’d moved in. He saw her glance at his and then without another word she pulled open the drawer of the smaller one and pushed her handbag inside.

  “Right then, let’s get on with it shall we?”

  They could hear the team in the outside office, could imagine the conversation but there were more important things to discuss than pecking order and Charlie took a deep breath, he’d handle this.

  For a while they were stiff, awkward with each other, but as they went through the evidence, discussed options, the atmosphere started to thaw.

  After an hour they went back to the incident room for Tanya to address the team about their tasks moving forward. She would need to lay any residual awkwardness to rest quickly, they didn’t have time for personality clashes. She would face it head on.

  “Okay, I know you’re possibly a bit confused about what’s going on. Probably you feel a bit miffed, think I’ve put Charlie’s nose out of joint. Please let’s just move past that. It’s not true, you all have been doing a great job. It’s just thought that my particular skill set has something to offer for this situation. Does anyone have anything they want to say? Let’s get it out of the way up front.”

  Nobody said anything for a while and then Sue stood from behind her desk, “So, we’re to report to you now, are we?”

  “Charlie and I are sharing an office, we’ll be working together. If I’m not there, then of course anything you need to share can come through Charlie. Is that clear?”<
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  The younger woman nodded, sat down and began fiddling with the papers on her desk. Tanya turned and walked out of the room, back to the office.

  Charlie followed her. This had happened, it was time to get back to work.

  Chapter 13

  Tanya left Bob Scunthorpe’s office and stalked to her own, smaller, shared one, flopped onto her desk chair, and let out a huge gust of a sigh.

  Charlie moved over to the table in the corner, switched on the kettle and spooned instant coffee into two mugs.

  “Well that could have been worse.” She smiled at him as he handed her the drink. He managed to grin back at her.

  “Right. Apparently, the new woman’s family want a televised appeal, the Chief Inspector is not happy, he feels it takes the attention away from Sarah and she’s been missing longer, arguably it’s more urgent that we find her, though of course they both matter just as much. It doesn’t look good does it? One so soon after the other, so similar. That’s the other thing, the panic. We don’t want to start people talking about serial abduction, well we don’t want people to talk about anything much until we get a better idea of what’s going on, except the ones who have something useful to say. The second girl, Millie, she disappeared from a place crawling with coppers. How the hell did that happen?” She sipped at the drink, “Yuck. I need my sugar on a day like this.” She stirred in a heaped spoonful and took a big gulp. “It’s possible, isn’t it, Charlie, that they’re not connected. Just coincidence. Two women?” She stopped when she saw the look on his face, no way he thought it was coincidence, neither did she.

  The reports the team brought in during the next couple of hours told them nothing new, not yet. The CCTV footage was still being examined, the services staff who had been on duty the day before had been questioned. Nobody had seen anything happen, nobody had been aware of a woman in distress, no struggle, no argument.

  “She went voluntarily, didn’t she?” Tanya swung round on her desk chair. “Millie just went off. So, did she go on her own or did she meet someone. Let’s go next door, Charlie, see how things are going with the video. It was inside, we’ve got to have it recorded.”

  Before they had the chance to move, the door opened, it was Sue, she took a step towards Charlie. Tanya held out a hand. “Thanks, what’s this?”

  “Screen grab from the vid. We can see Millie at the table and someone, a man, talking to her. You might want to come through and watch though. She goes off with him no problem. She doesn’t look entirely happy, but she just gets up and goes out.”

  They gathered around the monitor in the incident room. All of them, leaning in to get a closer view. They ran the short sequence again.

  Charlie turned away, took the print out and pinned it on the new board they had set up. On the top was Millie’s holiday face grinning down at them, tanned and happy.

  “Right,” Tanya waved a hand towards the computer as the image froze. Two people walking away from the table, out towards the car park where they had seen film of them rapidly disappearing around the corner of the building, behind the walls of the hotel. “So, that’s it then. She chose to go with that bloke. I mean he didn’t touch her, not even a hand on her arm. What else, what do you see, people?”

  “It was a relatively long conversation for a stranger.” As DS Paul Harris spoke, Tanya nodded.

  “Yes, more than just ‘hello, are you on your own?’ There was quite a back and forth. What else?” Nobody answered; were they hesitating because they weren’t at ease yet? There had already been enough time for them to become a team. She had to find a way to get them to work with her at the head and there wasn’t time to just let it build.

  Charlie was speaking, filling the silence. “She seemed comfortable, not stressed but not exactly friendly. I don’t think she knew him.”

  “He uses his phone doesn’t he, just before she gets up to go with him.” Sue spoke this time.

  “Yes, and there’s that other thing.” Paul waved a hand towards the screen. “He shows her something. If you wind it back, you can see they are both looking down at something in his hand. Is that his phone or something else?”

  “Can we zoom in on that?”

  They leaned closer, played the sequence again.

  “Shit,” Paul muttered. None of the others spoke. Sue reached into her pocket, dragged out the wallet holding her warrant card, held it up.

  “Nah, it can’t be.” Charlie said, shaking his head.

  Tanya’s throat had dried, this couldn’t be happening, it was the stuff of nightmares. No way this could be one of them, someone on the job.

  She crossed her arms in front of her, “Hold on, I know what that looks like but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There are lots of other jobs, lots of other situations where that happens.” She stopped, she knew it was true but for the life of her she couldn’t name one right then.

  Sue spoke up again, she was readier than the others to put herself forward, risk being noticed. Tanya knew that she had been working closely with Charlie; maybe she was finding it hard to relinquish that small feeling of being favoured. She understood, if you didn’t work at it then you fell by the wayside, especially as a woman, even today. She nodded as Sue voiced her thoughts, “It could be a civilian.”

  “Yes, carry on.”

  “Well I was just thinking, charity workers, those people who are deaf, trying to sell you something, they have i.d. don’t they?”

  A couple of the group nodded, “Check with the services, see if they’d approved anyone like that. More, give me more.”

  “Security.” This was Dan. “The services have their own security don’t they, they’d have i.d., and the parking people? Even the AA and RAC guys touting for business by the doors, they would have a card.”

  It felt like movement, a step forward but as she asked for print outs of the two of them talking at the table, arranged for copies to be emailed to the services, the HR department, she knew, they all knew, the image they had seen had been so familiar, they all did it all the time. Introduced themselves, showed their i.d. It was second nature, they didn’t even think about it.

  As they left the incident room she leaned in to whisper to Charlie, “Tell me this isn’t what it looked like, Charlie.”

  “No, course not.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  Chapter 14

  She was playing catch up, coming in when things had already happened, Tanya had to become familiar with it all, until she knew as much as the rest of the team. She’d gone over the paperwork again, looked at the stills, been through and run the video. In the incident room everyone was still fielding calls from the appeal for information about Sarah Dickinson. There was nothing. Nothing to take them any nearer. Sue’s call to the service area management had brought up no charity workers, not ones there with approval anyway. She’d reached out and asked for details of all the police personnel who would have been at the services for the hour before and after the time that Millie and her friend were dropped off, whether they were involved in the search for Sarah or not.

  At some point she would have to go through and tell Bob Scunthorpe what they thought they had seen. Before then she wanted to turn over every stone in the hope that she could say she didn’t think it was an officer. Right now though, she couldn’t. They had enhanced the image as much as possible and it hadn’t helped to set their minds at rest. The thing in his hand looked like a warrant card, even the way he had flipped it open had been familiar. He was clever about the cameras, they still had no clear image of his face.

  The office door opened, she looked up. “Kate, what have you got?”

  “I did a quick Google search and, well I don’t know whether this is good news or not, but you can buy warrant cards on line.”

  “What? You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I was, but no. It was really easy, they are memorabilia things, for fans of cop shows and for theatre props, you can get lanyards as well, they look pretty convincing, the badge and all. It would be
no problem for someone with a bit of skill with an imaging programme to put their own picture in there. You could probably even use something like your driving licence. Thing is, the general public, unless they have dealings with us regularly, would they have a clue? I mean if you’ve never seen one before, if you were taken by surprise say, or just not on your guard, maybe a bit embarrassed. Well, I reckon you’d be fooled. He took it out of his pocket, gave her a quick look and then away again.”

  Tanya pursed her lips, Charlie had joined them at the desk. He spoke, “So, if that’s the case then this low life is deliberately going out to fool women into thinking he’s official. That’s why they go with him.”

  “If that’s what he’s done maybe we could find out who’s bought them.” Even as Tanya said it she knew it was impossible. They would never have the manpower to do that sort of search, starting from nothing, and Morse, Lewis, Frost, well there were fans world-wide, any of whom would possibly like an imitation warrant card. She shook her head. The policewoman was turning away, her shoulders slumped, “That was a good thought though, Kate, it gives us more information and at least I can tell the Chief Inspector that it’s very possible it’s not someone in the force.”

  * * *

  There was protocol to follow and tried and tested routines, Tanya had done all that she could, she had been over everything. There was nothing to show for her first day. The trail was going cold, the chance of solving this would slip away quickly. She poked her head round the door of the incident room, told them all to wind up what they were doing, get some rest. Maybe tomorrow would give them a breakthrough. Hey, maybe tomorrow the women would turn up alive and well. Nobody looked convinced.

  Charlie met her in the corridor, she looked up at him, “So, you’ve got a new baby? That must be hard, on top of all this?”

  He nodded at her. “Actually, I could do with an afternoon off tomorrow, well a couple of hours anyway, any chance? Carol wants to go out with her sister. She hasn’t been very well and I’m trying to help as much as I can. It’s rotten timing I know but I’ll make the time up and come back if anything breaks.”