‘Indeed. I’ve got a missing person for you to find.’
Featherstone’s words were greeted with disbelieving silence.
‘A what?’ Sean queried.
‘A missing person,’ Featherstone repeated.
‘Must be someone very important to have an MIT assigned to their case,’ Donnelly surmised.
‘Important, no,’ Featherstone told them. ‘Or at least, not to the general public. No doubt she’s important to her family and friends, and certainly to her husband who reported her missing.’
‘Are we talking foul play?’ Sean asked. ‘Is the husband a suspect?’
‘Yes to the foul play, no to the husband. He’s not a suspect.’
‘How long’s she been missing for?’ Sean continued.
‘Best guess is yesterday morning. The husband, John Russell, left her at about eight thirty to go to work and hasn’t seen her since,’ Featherstone explained. ‘He got home at about six that evening and both his wife and her car were missing. Her handbag was there, her mobile phone etc, but Louise wasn’t. Clearly something’s happened to her and clearly she could be at risk.’
Sean didn’t like what he was hearing. Women who ran off with secret lovers didn’t leave their handbags and phones behind. ‘How far have we got?’ he asked.
‘About as far as I’ve just described,’ Featherstone told them. ‘The local uniform inspector who picked up the missing persons report didn’t like the look of it so he passed it up to their CID office who in turn thought it might be something we’d be interested in.’
‘And when or if they find her body, we will be interested,’ Donnelly chipped in.
‘The idea is we find her before it comes to that,’ Featherstone snapped back.
‘That’s not our brief,’ Donnelly continued to argue. ‘We deal with murders, nothing else. Why don’t they give it to the Serious Crime Group or even leave it with the local CID?’
‘Because,’ Featherstone explained, ‘the powers that be, sitting in their ivory towers in Scotland Yard, have decided to trial a new policy with vulnerable MISPERs who at first sight appear to have come to harm. It’s an extension of the murder suppression and prevention programme.’
‘Then why not give it to the Murder Suppression Unit?’ Donnelly refused to back down. ‘Seems tailor-made for them.’
‘Not quite their remit,’ Featherstone continued. ‘They need a suspect to concentrate on before they’ll take a job.’
‘And we need a body,’ Donnelly insisted.
Sean broke the argument up with a question. ‘How old is she?’
‘Sorry?’ Featherstone’s mind was still tussling with Donnelly.
‘How old is the missing woman?’
Featherstone flicked through the file he’d been holding throughout the meeting. ‘Thirty.’
‘Prime running-away-with-another-man age,’ Donnelly sniffed.
‘She hasn’t run away,’ Sally joined in. ‘A woman wouldn’t leave so many personal belongings behind unless something had happened.’
‘Like what?’ Donnelly asked.
‘Like she was taken,’ Sally answered.
Sean sensed another argument was about to flare. ‘We’ll look into it,’ he announced.
‘What?’ Donnelly turned to him, indignant.
‘Look at it this way,’ Sean told Donnelly. ‘If we can find her before something happens to her, we’ll save ourselves a lot of work.’
‘Good,’ Featherstone said. ‘I want to be regularly updated on this one, Sean. The powers that be are keen for a positive result to keep the media off their backs.’ He handed the missing persons report to Sean who passed it on to Sally. ‘There are a few photographs of her in the file. The only distinguishing mark is a scar from when she had her appendix removed when she was a teenager.’
‘Get some copies of this run up please, Sally, and spread them around the team,’ Sean told her. ‘Dave can give you a hand.’
Donnelly looked as displeased as he felt. ‘Waste of our time,’ he insisted. ‘She’ll be home in a couple of days smelling of aftershave and demanding a divorce.’
Sean gave him a hard look. ‘I don’t think so,’ was all he said. Donnelly knew when to stop pushing and left the office in Sally’s wake.
Featherstone waited until they were well out of earshot before speaking again. ‘How’s Sally?’ he asked.
Sean sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘She’s getting there,’ he answered.
‘Bollocks,’ snapped Featherstone. ‘Any fool can see she’s struggling, unsurprisingly.’
‘She’ll be OK,’ Sean assured him, a little disappointed in Featherstone’s lack of faith in Sally’s ability to recover. ‘She needs some time and a decent investigation to take her mind off what happened, that’s all.’
‘Is that why you so readily agreed to take on a missing persons inquiry?’ Featherstone asked. ‘To help Sally.’
Sean avoided the question. ‘I didn’t realize I had a choice.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Featherstone told him, ‘you did have a choice.’ Sean said nothing as Featherstone headed out of his office. ‘Make sure you keep me posted and if there’s anything I can do, give me a call. I know you’re allergic to the media, so if you need me to deal with them, no problem.’
Featherstone was halfway out the door when Sean stopped him with a question. ‘Do you think she’s already dead? Is that why you want me to take this on?’
‘I was hoping you would tell me that, Sean,’ Featherstone answered. ‘And her name’s Louise Russell and she’s someone’s wife, someone’s daughter – and if we do our jobs properly, one day she might be someone’s mother. I think we all need to remember that, don’t you?’
Sean said nothing as he watched Featherstone close the door behind him.
He suddenly felt very alone, sitting in his small warm office, surrounded by cheap furniture and out-dated computers with monitors that belonged in a museum. Even the view out of his window offered nothing but the sight of sprawling Peckham council estates and the travellers’ caravan site on the wasteland next to the police station itself. He started to think about Louise Russell, to imagine what had happened to her and why. Where was she now? Was she still alive and if so why? Had somebody taken her, taken her to do horrific things to her? Should they expect a ransom note? No, he didn’t think so. This felt like madness, as if madness had come into Louise Russell’s life without any warning or reason.
Sean rubbed his face and tried to chase the questions away. She’s a missing person, he told himself. Stop treating her like she’s dead. But he knew it was pointless – he’d already begun. He’d already begun to think like him. Like the madman who’d taken her.
Natural light flooded down the staircase and into the room, its brightness temporarily blinding Louise Russell as she blinked to adjust to its harshness, before the noise of a door being quickly but carefully closed took the light away. Louise’s eyes welcomed back the twilight she had grown accustomed to and looked across the room at Karen Green, who was sinking further