Chapter 13 : A Three Pipe Problem - May

It's 6 Months; 202 Days After Jenny's Disappearance

Detective Chief Inspector Grantby stands at lectern at the front of the room. To his right a computer projector displays a slide show, summarising the essentials of the case, the web of personal relationships, photographs of the missing woman and her associates and a map of Central London annotated with the limited number of things that they knew about her whereabouts on the afternoon she disappeared. It's the fourth unsolved missing person case he's reviewed today. It's not unusual in London, sometimes it seems people come there to disappear.

He opens a folder and turns to the group of police officers variously standing, sitting or perched on desks around the room. "OK," he says, "Mrs Jennifer McEwan. Just before we begin, let me introduce for those of you who do not know, our colleague from the Warwickshire Force, Detective Inspector Ackroyd who has been in charge of the enquiry in Warwick, where Mrs McEwan lived."

The uncomfortable shuffling in the room has nothing to do with their visitor and tells him all he needs to know...

Grantby sits down and Ackroyd takes Grantby's place at the lectern to address the meeting

He runs through the facts of the case in a laconic style, his midlands accent standing out amongst the Londoners. "The facts are fairly straight forward," he says. "Mrs McEwan parts company from her husband in Fitzroy Square at 13.45 on Tuesday 10^th November 2009. They talk on the phone about five minutes later and sometime after that, she was seen at the west end on New Cavendish Street talking to another woman. Since then we haven't found anyone that has spoken to or seen her."

"Her husband says she intended to visit the library at the Royal Society of Medicine but there's no evidence of her going there. She also had an appointment at The Marylebone Leather Company in Marylebone High Street at 2:30pm, but never arrived. All the locations are in reasonably easy walking distance of Fitzroy Square. Her last contact was a mobile phone call to her husband a few minutes after they had parted, which was cut off abruptly. According to mobile phone records, she was crossing Portland Place, consistent with McEwan walking along New Cavendish Street, where she was sighted speaking to another young woman."

"Since then her husband, family, friends or colleagues at work have had no further messages from her. No phone calls, letters, texts or emails. Mr McEwan left the country for the Far East later the same day. He was a member of a team of engineers travelling to a project in South East Asia. Mrs McEwan had a return rail ticket to Warwick but she did not appear on the station CCTV recordings at Warwick or Marylebone."

"Nothing on CCTV around Fitzroy Square, or any of the locations where she had appointments?" asks Grantby.

"Not on CCTV, but two women were seen by a Metropolitan police patrol walking down Cleveland Street shortly after Mrs McEwan left Fitzroy Square. One of the women answers Mrs McEwan's description but unfortunately we do not have a clear description of the second woman and so we do not know if she is the same woman who spoke to Mrs McEwan in New Cavendish Street.

Akroyd continues. "Various items were missing from her house, suggesting she had returned later and removed them as a preparation for going away, but she wasn't seen doing so by neighbours, or friends or colleagues."

Grantby listens as Ackroyd goes on.

"The McEwans are to all appearances a happily married young couple with rewarding jobs and under no particular financial pressures - in short, no debts they could not manage. Her husband was a civil engineer with a job which often took him away for a month or two at a time"

That, as far as Grantby is concerned, can be a problem in a marriage if it goes on too long. His own wife ... Well, that's another matter.

Ackroyd has paused. Grantby looks up.

"There's nothing to suggest there were any marital difficulties," Ackroyd says carefully. He has been warned by his London colleagues. He doesn't want to say anything that might allude to the DCI's own unhappiness.

"Her job was pretty demanding too. It looks like they had to manage their time together carefully. She worked at home when her husband was back in the country; things like that. No suspicions amongst close friends of serious domestic unhappiness. Absolutely no suspicion of physical or psychological domestic violence: no tearful episodes at the office, no occasions when Mrs McEwan came to work with injuries caused by 'walking into doors' or other such nonsense."

"Tell us about her job?" Grantby asks.

"Mrs McEwan was working towards a PhD and making good progress according to her friends although her boss, Professor Dawney rather damned Mrs McEwan's efforts with faint praise." Grantby looks across to the projector screen to refresh his mind. Oh yes, the "bluestocking". "There's a personal history there but nothing recent. McEwan's research was into the psychology of adult play behaviour." Grantby's eyebrows go up. Had these academics really nothing better to do with their time?

"The next bit is a bit sensitive. The main focus of the research was aspects of BDSM play. You can imagine the fun that the tabloids would have with that."

Grantby nodded. Maybe this had the sniff of something that might lead to a motive? He was pleased and surprised too. Ackroyd obviously ran a tight ship in Warwick. It wouldn't have helped if this had been all over the "News of the World".

"You've decided not to brief the press?"

"That's right. Frankly we thought the fuss would outweigh the opportunity. And none of us," he looked around at the group of men and women supporting him, "were keen to waste time fielding the more excitable members of the third estate."

Ackroyd goes on. "There's nothing to suggest that she had any other partner. She was not, for example, a member of any BDSM clubs in the West Midlands and had only made regular contact with managerial team at Inward Bound, according to the statements made by interviewees there. Inward Bound is an organization which provides what you might call 'adventure holidays' for people into BDSM."

Ackroyd's description provokes more chuckles.

"According to Mr McEwan," Ackroyd pauses to regain the attention of his audience before he reviews the most startling findings of the investigation, "whilst Mrs McEwan was conducting her initial research at Inward Bound, she was arrested by a group of men who claimed to be representing the US Govermnent. Corrine Aimes the CEO at Inward Bound confirmed the story of the arrest and Mrs McEwan's return after questioning a couple of days later. Mr McEwan claims his wife told him the American agents were mainly interested in someone known to Professor Dawney. Professor Dawney also admitted, somewhat reluctantly, that she had also been arrested and interrogated about a Russian known to her, called Anatoly Kustensky."

Grantby already knows about the CIA business. The story of her arrest and interrogation by the 'CIA', provided by Mr McEwan repeating, he said, what his wife had told him was quite simply astonishing. Grantby hoped at first that it was pure fantasy, but perhaps not entirely...

"Special Branch were asked to take this further. They received 'complete and unequivocal denials of any CIA operations in the UK at that time', they said."

"So if the CIA are actually being reasonably open on this occasion, what do we think was going on?"

"I think they were being 'economical with the truth' and trying to have us believe that questioning someone was not the same as an 'operation'."

"An Operation. That's shooting people is it?" offered Grantby, his joke greeted by sniggers from the rest of his colleagues

"Yes" continued Ackroyd" I'd say that was about it"

"However, Special Branch did turn up a couple of things. When she was younger, Professor Dawney had been involved with the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp so they had a file on her and especially because she had become the companion of a KGB agent who was there keeping an eye on the protesters. The KGB man – Mr Kustensky - is now a very rich and successful businessman and is still in touch with the Professor.

"We think that the CIA probably did have Mrs McEwan in for questioning because they have become more interested in Mr Kustensky once more and wanted to find out as much about him as they could. Perhaps he has significant business interests in the United States now?"

"Bit heavy handed wasn't it?" Asks Grantby

"Well, it was during the Old Administration. The Americans have changed their tune a bit now, what with the new president and all" adds Ackroyd. He continues, "Anyway, we think it's actually a red herring for our own investigation."

Ackroyd ploughs on. "Turning to her personal circumstances, Mrs McEwan had no medical history of physical or psychiatric illness which could explain her disappearance as due to physical collapse of some sort of psychological crisis. There were some inconsistencies concerning the items removed from the McEwan's home if they had been taken by Mrs McEwan herself and as I said, the girl had a return rail ticket home, but there's nothing to show her returning to Warwick.

"No calls were made from her phone after the one that was cut off and no money taken from the couple's account. She had been writing a journal for since last Christmas which was left, but her diary and address book were missing. Her laptop was missing and the hard disc of the desktop computer had been completely erased."