Chapter 19

Coming back to reality, he looked at the second email. This one was about yesterday's missing person, James Lockedon. It was from the communications department, informing him that the misper's parents had been in touch asking if they could have an update. He sighed, as there was no update to give. Hopefully, the bloke would turn up today and save everyone the grief. With that in mind, the next application up on the computer was Guardian. The trusty domain of all things police. Everything was logged on this system: crime reports, missing persons, evidence location, intelligence checks and addresses of anyone reporting almost any type of incident. It was both the most useful tool he used and the most frustrating. It had the potential to make policing easier by putting all the information in the same place, but for some reason had been designed to be the most clunky, unintuitive, slow piece of software he had ever used. It looked like it had been created in the 90s but was, in fact, quite new. An IT contractor had probably charged a fortune to create it, and continued to charge a fortune to fix it.

James Lockedon's details popped into view, and it was clear that nothing had been added since the Inspector signed it off yesterday. Refreshing his memory, he read through it again to see if anything came to mind to help him find the man. He was again struck by the lack of criminal record attributed to the haggard gardener, Gerald. He just looked so dodgy, and acted so shifty, that surely he was known to the police. Time to start digging further.

He put Gerald's details into the system and tried to link it to any piece of information: a traffic ticket, a named witness, an old address or a stop-and-search form. Nothing came up. He decided to go back and speak to him or the house occupants again. Even if he did not know where Mr Lockedon was, he had to be dodgy in some way, and he did not believe that the old couple were on holiday. Maybe they just said that to Gerald to stop him bothering them. He also wanted to make sure Mr Lockedon's car was in a safe spot, considering that it might be there a while. If someone ended up crashing into it, Jain would undoubtedly be the one blamed for not getting it moved.

He walked across to the duty inspector's office, wondering who was in the throne today. Knocking on the door, a gruff man's voice responded.

"Yep. Come in."

"Hello sir, I need a form signed for a misper investigation."

"Alright Saj, no problem, what's the deal?" Asked the inspector.

Saj, short for Sajid of course, and pronounced like Sarge, always gave his colleagues ammunition for a joke. He was a Constable, albeit a DC, and not a sergeant. However, every day, everyone who knew him called him Saj (emphasising it as Sarge) and it had become common for those a bit cheekier to just call him 'boss' or 'guv'. On the streets, it caused a little confusion as the public heard him called Sarge and, with no markings on his clothes to suggest otherwise, assumed he was a more senior officer, therefore bombarding him with their questions. His colleagues did it on purpose to avoid being questioned themselves. "Ask sarge," they would say. Being a bit of a jobsworth also added to the nickname's potency.

"A misper from yesterday," Saj began, "should have been at work, but had called in sick. His girlfriend tracked him on her smartphone app and saw his car was not where it should be. He was also not answering any calls or messages. She drove to the supposed location of his phone and found his car, locked, but no-one inside. He hasn't been heard from since and his phone is either turned off or out of signal. Custodies, hospitals, friends and family checked, but negative on the responses. No houses nearby, except one, which is currently unoccupied. I want to do a financial check to see if he has withdrawn any cash or used his debit cards."

"Sounds a bit strange." the inspector said as he looked at the authorisation form. He signed with a scrawl and handed it back.

"It is a bit strange. I met one old guy, the gardener, apparently, of a huge house nearby. It's the only house for miles. He claimed not to have seen the misper, and claims the house's occupants are on holiday. The only thing was, and it's not based on anything, but he just seemed dodgy. He was a bit shifty. Didn't want to answer questions. But, he doesn't have any PNC record and wasn't committing a crime, so couldn't really push him on anything."

"It is terribly annoying when people don't have a criminal record." The inspector said, without a hint of humour. "Oh well, let me know what happens with the bank checks. We'll have to do media if he doesn't turn up today. Not much else you can do. He's probably cleaned his accounts out and buggered off to Spain."

Jain smiled. He liked this inspector. His name was Inspector Ian Banks, but was happy to do away with the formalities and was knownwhen inside the stationas Banksy. On the streets, it was strictly 'Inspector Banks' or 'sir', but in the confines of the cop's closed world, he was Banksy. Not only was his name 'Banks', but the famous street artist whose name he shared was also known to come from the local areathe police knew the graffiti artist's actual name, which was not anything like 'Banksy'so the monicker stuck with the inspector, and he was often seen sticking inappropriate post-it notes on the station walls in solidarity with his subversive, artistic namesake.

Now that the form was signed, Jain faxed it directly to the HSBC processing centre, picked up a set of CID car keys and walked back down the stairs to the car park. Getting into the car, it was clear that the previous occupant was a smoker. Police cars were, technically, a place of work so despite being unprofessional, it was also illegal for an on-duty officer to smoke inside one. That did not stop some people though, especially plain clothed detectives who could drive around without being noticed, happily puffing away. The smell of stale tobacco was sickly, so down came all the windows. He pulled away from the rear of the station and headed, once again, to Neates House.