Chapter 5: Every Picture Tells a Story

0910 Thurston Hall Bury St Edmunds

It had gone 9 am by the time Doctor Devereaux and I entered the canteen. A large gentleman wearing a chef’s hat met us at the servery.

“Hello, Micky,” he said. “Is this guy DS Dolihaye?”

“He is indeed, Marcel,” she replied, “and he will be paying for my and Tommy’s breakfast. Can we have a table for two near the band?”

Marcel grinned. “The band left on another engagement but I can seat you at a secluded table with a view over the grounds.”

He was as good as his word and moments later we were seated in an alcove with a view over the rolling parkland of Thurston Hall.

“The grounds were designed by Capability Brown.” Doctor Devereux informed me.

“But the house is Victorian Gothic, built much later than when Lancelot Brown was wielding a mattock,” I replied.

“Very true, Sergeant, and you surprise me with your knowledge of architecture. However, a Georgian mansion once stood on this site but in eighteen sixty-two the house was razed to the ground and this vulgar monstrosity rose in its place. I believe the owner was a sanitary ware manufacturer, and before you say anything I have heard all the lavartorial themed comments regarding Thurston Hall there are to hear.”

Breakfast was a surreal affair. A server brought our food. Doctor Devereaux had orange juice and a mushroom omelette. I had Darjeeling tea and the Full Monty; scrambled eggs, two Lincolnshire sausages, three rashers of unsmoked back bacon, half a black pudding, a large dollop of baked beans, and a fried slice, rounding off with two pieces of toast and honey.

Doctor Devereaux watched me demolish my meal in rapt attention. “Goodness me, Sergeant, you certainly have a healthy appetite.”

“I don’t eat lunch, and my next meal will be this evening at the Goat and Compass before the quiz night begins.”

“I’m in a pub quiz team. Maybe one night we’ll meet across a table.”

“What pub would that be, Doctor?”

“It would be the Flying Fox at Elmswell, Sergeant, and I think it time we were less formal. Eating breakfast together could be considered as ‘on a date’. You know that my name is Michelle and I am generally known as Micky.”

“I was waiting to be permitted to call you by your diminutive name...”

“How very old fashioned, Sergeant, but you are now permitted. How shall I address you? Do you have a nickname?”

“Most people call me by my initials, AJ.”

“And what do your initials stand for, AJ?”

“Ajay Joshua.”

“Your first name is your initials?”

“My first name is spelt A, J, A, Y. My father has a similar sense of humour as Tommy Atkins’ father.”

She laughed. “Ah yes, the humour of fathers is visited upon their sons, and sometimes on their daughters. I was at school with a girl called Teresa Green.”

I didn’t believe her but grinned and riposted. “I was at school with a girl named Eileen Dover.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said with a giggle. “Although I have a very good friend named Ida Down.”

“I went out with a girl called Lydia Dustbin.”

By now we were both spluttering with laughter, each trying to outdo the other in schoolboy and schoolgirl humour.

“In Year Three I sat next to a boy at school named Cess Poole,” she said.

“There was a girl named Emma Royds in my class in Year Five, and I was mates with a kid called Arthur Moe. You may need to try that with an east London accent, where Arthur comes out as ‘Arfer’.”

“Are you from east London?” she asked a slight smile on her face. I expect she had already decided I was a Cockney, which I am not.

“Barking, where are you from?”

“Why am I not surprised that you come from Barking? I come from a small village near Taunton called Stogumber. That’s in Somerset.” Her mobile pinged with an incoming text message alert. She glanced at the mobile’s screen. “I must fly, but we must do this again soon. “.

“Breakfast tomorrow?” I suggested, not thinking she would agree.

“Yes, that would be lovely,” she said with a beautiful smile on her no less beautiful face “And a final name. The most popular boy with the girls at my school was named Ivor Biggen.”

“I felt sorry for a Russian girl in Year Nine at Barking Comp called Norma Tittsov.”

She exploded in a burst of laughter, eventually subsiding into splutters.

“I’ll have to go before I wet myself,” she said after regaining her breath. “I haven’t decided yet what to call you. I don’t want to be like the others and use your initials, but if I call you by your first name it sounds the same. I will sleep on it”

“And I don’t want to call you Micky. You deserve something more than the name of a mouse. I too shall sleep on it.”

We both rose from the table.

“I have really enjoyed our breakfast, Sergeant. I haven’t laughed so much for months.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Doctor.” I held out my hand but she moved in closer to me and flicked her tongue across my lips.

“I love the taste of bacon grease,” she murmured.

Doctor Michelle Devereaux left me standing by the table utterly bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

I was brought back to earth by having the breakfast bill presented me by Marcel. I made to pay him but he threw his hands up in horror.

“I’m the Chef, not the bloody cashier. Pay at the desk!” He pointed to a buxom female sitting in a kiosk at the side of the servery.

“Sorry, Egon. I’m still a bit bemused from meeting Doctor Devereaux,” I said.

He grinned and slapped me on the back. “Happens to all us guys; Micky Devereaux is licenced to thrill.”

As I walked over to the kiosk I scanned the bill and saw along with the food and drink consumed by Micky and me I had been billed for a soya milk yoghurt and a vegan breakfast. At the kiosk, I pointed to the items on the bill.

“We didn’t have these items – “ I peered at the name tag on one of the girl’s prominent breasts, “Vicky.” I did briefly toy with the idea of asking what her other tit was called but wisely decided against it.

“No, you didn’t, but Tommy the Geek from Forensics did, and Micky Devereaux told Chef that you were paying for her and Tommy’s breakfasts,” Vicky replied, giving me a grin and pushing out her chest to give me a closer look at her attributes.

That was true, and I handed over the money. “I didn’t see Tommy come into the canteen...”

“You wouldn’t have noticed if a herd of elephants had come stampeding through the room, you were that taken up by Micky Devereaux,” Vicky said. “He came in and had his yucky yoghurt and his even yuckier tofu and mung bean sprouts, and left while you was still halfway through your Full Monty of a breakfast.” Vicky leaned towards me, and I moved my head back before I got a tit in my eye. “I like a man who has a voracious appetite, if you know what I mean,” she said and winked. She was having a laugh so I went along with her.

“You’d be better off with Tommy the Geek, Vicky. Them vegans are like the Duracell Bunny when it comes to sex. All that fibre they eat gives them great stamina and vigour, and they can keep it up for hours, if you know what I mean. Tantric sex they call it.”

Vicky stared at me. “You mean that geek could give me a seeing to that would last for hours?”

“Stand on me, Vicky. You’ll never want to go back to a meat-eater after experiencing hours of ecstasy with a vegan.”

“Hours of ecstasy? I’m sodding lucky if I get more than thirty seconds from my useless fella!”

I hurried back to the viewing room, guilty at having spent so long at breakfast and wondering why I had not seen Molly in the canteen.

I entered the viewing room and glanced at my watch – 9.45 am. Bill Clark was sitting in the front row of the cinema seats reading a newspaper. He looked up from the sports page and smiled as I slid into the seat next to him.

“Sorry I’m late, Bill,”

He smiled. “Micky has that effect on a bloke, Sarge.”

“What did the DI say about our suspicions that Mel was abducted?” I asked him.

“To tell you the truth she seemed a bit pissed off, Sarge. She is still smarting for the reaming Fuller gave her over Drab Rampley. Fuller blames her for not knowing Drab was shagging an underage girl. The silly twat!”

“I hope that comment was directed at the late Arnold Rampley, detective, and not at our Detective Superintendent?”

Bill grinned. “What can’t speak can’t lie, Sarge, and I’m keeping shtum.”

I took from that noncommittal answer that it was the senior officer he was comparing to female genitalia. I should have reprimanded him but I as I held a similar opinion of our superior I also kept shtum.

Tommy was waiting at the side of the projector to show the rest of the camera files. I looked over at him. “The next time you’re in the canteen you may find it to your advantage to discuss the benefits of a vegan diet with Vicky the cashier.”

Tommy’s face and ears turned a similar shade of red as his Nile trainers, and Bill chortled. “You mean the Vicky with the big...”

“I mean the Vicky who now believes vegans are not only cool but are also hot. You can begin when you’re ready, Tommy, and I am talking in the context of CCTV footage projection just in case you are confused.”

Bill gave another chuckle and moved to the side of the large plasma screen.

The first image appeared. “I’ll talk you through the footage, Sarge,” Bill announced. “This is Linda Rogers leaving her place of work, ‘The Spread Eagle’ pub in Petticoat Lane. She was reported missing on the fourth of January Twenty nineteen. She’s a student and does bar work during the college holidays.” The time/date shown on the footage was 1810.46 3/Jan/2019.

“The next clip was taken by a camera on the service station across the road from the pub. Linda is walking towards the bus stop on Horringer Road, the A143.” He indicated the location on the map pinned to the corkboard alongside the screen. “There’ s a parade of shops by the bus stop all with CCTV cameras and Linda was caught by them all as she waited at the bus stop before boarding a number fourteen bus at eighteen twenty three oh seven. And that’s all we have.”

“Didn’t the bus have an on-board CCTV?”

“No, Sarge, this is Suffolk, not Southwark. Linda shares a house in Bristol Road with three other students.” He pointed to the road on the map. “She would have got off at this stop in Horringer Road.” He indicated the bus stop on Horringer Road, the A143, which was no more than fifty yards from the junction with Bristol Road.

“What number house in Bristol Road does she live?” I asked.

He consulted his notes. “Number forty-three, which is the last house in the street and the furthest from Horringer Road.”

“So, unless she got off before the stop...”

The bus driver said she got off at the stop for Bristol Road.”

“OK, so she went missing somewhere between the bus stop on Horringer Road and the top end of Bristol Road. What distance would that be?”

“About three hundred yards, Sarge. Uniforms searched every inch of the route from the bus stop to the house and found nothing.”

Once again CCTV footage had revealed nothing to work on.

“OK, so who is up next?” I said.

“Kate Hodge...”

“Ah, an outlier. She is thirty-five years old while the other four missing girls are in their mid-twenties. Sorry, Bill, I’m talking to myself. Please carry on.”

“Kate Hodge, reported missing by her employer on the eighteenth of January this year. She lives in Ipswich, and we have no sightings of her apart from this one taken by the camera at her block of flats.”

The screen showed a petite blond, who looked to be about twenty-five years old, leaving the building. The time/date stamp was 0825.55 17/Jan/2019.

“She looks nowhere near thirty-five,” I said.

“Kate Hodge is a beautician; and probably looks older when she takes off her make-up,” Bill said. “She usually drives in to Bury, but her car was in for its annual MOT service so she would have taken the train instead.”

“Are there no CCTV cameras at Ipswich station?”

“Several, but none with any shots of Kate. Nor is there any footage of her walking to the station.”

“I assume Ipswich has street cameras?” I was being sarcastic; pissed off with the lack of any real information on the five cases of missing persons.

“Southern division checked all CCTV cameras on the route from her flat to the station and no sightings were reported,” said Bill.

“Well, she couldn’t just vanish into thin air. Where the sodding hell did she go?” A stupid question as Bill had no more idea than me. “Have we got a map of Ipswich to show me where she lives?”

Bill pulled a map of Ipswich city centre from his briefcase and pinned it to the corkboard alongside the screen/

“Kate lives in a tower block on Franciscan Way. The railway station is here, across the other side of the river.” He indicated both locations on the map.

I traced the route from Kate’s flat to the station on the map with my finger. “She would have walked from Franciscan Way to Princes Street and followed that road to the station. It goes right through the middle of the bloody town, with more traffic cameras than you can shake a stick at. She has to be on one of them!”

“Southern division say they checked all the CCTV cameras along her probable route to the station,” Bill said. “We have to take their word for it.”

“I’m not too impressed thus far with our Southern division colleagues,” I said. “We need to get hold of the relevant camera footage from Ipswich and check it ourselves. OK, run the next film.”