The Body Under the Bridge Read online

  The CCTV footage showed her taking a seat right under the camera at the rear of the coach. Gillard paused the video and clicked on another, edited from the coach footage. This showed her getting up and walking the length of the carriage, and through to the next coach. ‘This is carriage seven, where the CCTV doesn’t work. We must assume she continued her journey in this coach because there is no sign of her on carriage six, where both cameras were working.’

  He brought the lights back up, then walked over to the whiteboard on which the train’s movements were detailed from top to bottom. ‘This is the fact that I want everybody to concentrate on. At some point on this fairly busy commuter journey, Ms Ulbricht and her phone parted company. Now it’s conceivable that she left her phone behind, and that somebody else may have dropped it in a bin. There aren’t really any other obvious reasons why her phone would have found its way into a rubbish container.’

  Rob Townsend had raised his hand. ‘Sir, just had the phone contents relayed to us by the service provider. The last text message Ms Ulbricht sent was at 16.39.’ He looked down at his phone. ‘The message was: “On the train now. Just arriving at Clapham Junction”.’

  ‘Okay Rob, so she was nearly into central London. I want to know who that message was sent to, and the thread of any conversation,’ Gillard said. ‘Cross check the time with when the service really did pass Clapham. That could well be the breakthrough we’re looking for.’

  He turned to the others. ‘All right, CCTV people, I want you to concentrate on any platform footage from Clapham Junction and Vauxhall, and leave Waterloo to British Transport Police. Discarding the first dozen stations should save us all some time.’

  ‘What are we saying to the press?’ Claire asked.

  ‘The indication so far is that we’re talking about a missing person. We are worried for her safety, because it would not be normal for her to miss an important concert engagement, but at this stage we don’t have an indication that anyone else is involved.’

  ‘Have we got any good pictures of her wearing the hat?’ This question was from press officer Christine McCafferty. ‘I think it would help to have good pictures of her, with what she was actually wearing, rather than this glamorous publicity pic with evening dress and her hair—’

  Claire interrupted. ‘Before we get to the point of considering her safe, you should know that our Mr Singer, who had offered to put Ms Ulbricht up for the night, was interviewed by Sussex police in 2007 over an incident at the private school where he was head of music. He left the job shortly afterwards.’

  ‘Was he ever cautioned?’

  ‘No. There were allegations but no evidence, a least no evidence the school was willing to put forward. But after eleven years there he left within a week.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gillard said. ‘That’s useful information. But we must stick to the evidence. She seems to have been alive and kicking long after leaving his clutches on Sunday.’

  At this point the chief constable stood up, the full six foot two, and made her way to the front. ‘Thank you for this, Craig, you sound like you are fully on top of it. While it would obviously be a huge relief if Beatrice Ulbricht is found unharmed, I think we should make sure we are not missing any avenues here. If you need more resources, just let me know.’

  Claire Mulholland munched a tandoori chicken and lettuce sandwich as she watched the chief constable depart. Once Rigby had gone, and most of the other officers dispersed, she closed the door and turned to Craig. ‘How many of us are working on this bloody case?’

  ‘Fifty, give or take, if you count the civilians.’

  She nodded and swallowed the last of the sandwich. ‘Do you remember Yvonne Fairfield?’

  ‘Name’s familiar.’

  ‘A nineteen-year-old mixed race woman from Staines. Okay, she’d done drugs, and been cautioned for soliciting. But she’s been missing three years and nine months. She’d been beaten up in the past but wouldn’t identify the assailant, who was probably either a boyfriend or a pimp. We don’t even have a single cop working on her case. I’ve been trying to make enough time to get another look at it. Her mother emails me every single day asking if we’ve made any progress.’

  Carl Hoskins, eavesdropping from another desk, nodded in agreement. ‘I’ve got a case of a bloke injured trying to stop some toe-rag stealing his car on Monday night. Uniforms took a statement but I haven’t had a moment to go and see him in hospital and get a follow-up.’

  Gillard sighed. ‘It’s the Madeleine McCann effect. I’ve had this discussion with Rigby a few times. Press priorities inevitably trump policing priorities because our bosses are politicians.’

  ‘Ah yes, and you have got to curtsy to two of them tonight, haven’t you?’ Claire said, with a laugh.

  ‘Don’t remind me.’ He looked down at his phone, on which an email had just come in from the surveillance team. ‘Hell, I don’t believe this,’ he said.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Latest from the surveillance team. Initial checks on platform CCTV show no sign of Beatrice getting off at Clapham Junction or Vauxhall. BTP says she didn’t get off at Waterloo either.’

  ‘That’s the last three stations. So where did she go?’

  ‘It seems she just vanished into thin air.’

  Chapter Three

  The team’s first attempt to track Beatrice was a skimpy one, hours of CCTV footage scanned on fast-forward, relying solely on cameras covering platform exits. To be certain it required looking in detail at the recordings from many dozens of platform cameras. By four o’clock, the CCTV team and their counterparts at BTP were sure: nobody resembling Beatrice Ulbricht had left the train at Waterloo, nor at the two immediately preceding stops.

  Gillard called in Research Intelligence Officer DC Rob Townsend to get some clarification, and asked Claire to sit in too. Townsend came to the conference room with DI Nigel Duffy from the British Transport Police.

  ‘Rob, you’ve had the chance to examine the detailed cell site timeline, I believe. What can you tell me?’

  ‘Between the time Beatrice got on the train and the final text from her at 16.39 she received fourteen phone calls, none of which she answered. By this time the voicemail was full in any case. There were also eleven text messages received. Only two were answered, both from fellow members of her quartet. The first was Karen Ellsworth’s, sent at 14.46 and answered at 15.58, and the second was responding to a message sent at 13.42, from Teus Zukowski, another member of the quartet.’

  ‘What time did the train arrive at Clapham Junction?’

  ‘It was on time, arriving at 16.40.’

  ‘So just one minute after the last text was sent, saying she was just arriving.’ Gillard looked around the table. ‘The thing that baffles me is that we have two completely different narratives for Beatrice Ulbricht’s movements. We have the one we can see, where she travels for forty-odd minutes on the train and then, poof, disappears. Then we have the electronic story, which has an utterly consistent cell site record seemingly for the entire trip. That includes two texts definitely sent from the train, and then an autonomous trip in a rubbish container to Brentford.’

  They all sat for a minute pondering this conundrum.

  Claire spoke up. ‘Is it conceivable she could have been murdered on the train and someone else took over her phone?’

  ‘There were lots of people around,’ Gillard said.

  Duffy nodded. ‘There is almost no chance. This isn’t like the old days with slam door carriages, when you could conceivably throw a body off the train. On some of the older intercity coaches with droplight windows, where you reach out to externally open the door, you could still do it. But modern commuter train doors will not open while the train is moving.’

  ‘What about the interconnecting corridors between carriages?’ Townsend asked.

  Duffy shook his head. ‘The concertina sections are bordered by glass doors, so someone would have seen. There are no gaps to get a body onto the track.
Besides which, if she was on the track we would have found her by now. As I mentioned in my email, the entire train was searched as soon as we were notified, though it would have undertaken six or seven further journeys in that time. Nonetheless, we also stripped the cover from the seat she was identified to have been sitting at, and have supplied that to you in case you want to do any forensic analysis.’

  Gillard picked up the DI’s defensive tone. ‘Thank you for that, Nigel. We appreciate what you and everybody at BTP have done. Of course, we still haven’t finished going through the miles of CCTV footage on each and every platform for the ten stations between Clandon and Clapham Junction. That might provide us with some answers.’

  ‘Logically, there is only one possibility,’ Rob said, counting off on his fingers. ‘If the phone says she was on the train approaching Clapham Junction, and if the cameras showed she never got off after Clapham Junction, and Nigel here says she couldn’t have been murdered on the train, then—’

  ‘She stayed on at Waterloo and waited to be whisked back towards Guildford!’ Claire said.

  ‘Exactly, but dumped the phone in the bin,’ Townsend added.

  ‘If she stayed on, there will surely be witnesses,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Why on earth would she stay on?’ Duffy asked.

  Gillard shrugged. ‘No idea, maybe she forgot something. We’ll deal with that later. But if she did, then there is a good chance she is still alive, somewhere.’

  * * *

  They were still discussing possibilities in the meeting room when a young female PC came in to tell them that Gillard was urgently required back in the incident room. ‘The German minister is here, sir.’

  Gillard looked at his watch. It was only just after five. He hadn’t expected him until six. DI Duffy smirked and said: ‘Very punctual, the Germans.’

  ‘His daughter is missing!’ Claire retorted. ‘No wonder he’s here early. If it was one of my kids I’d set up camp in the car park, and not shift until she was found. He’s probably beside himself with worry.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Duffy said, hands raised in mock surrender.

  Gillard and Claire Mulholland made their way to the incident room. There was clearly something important going on inside, because an enormous personal protection officer was posted outside, identified by his lanyard as being from the Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz. Another PPO was inside the room. Through the glass door the chief constable could be seen conducting a guided tour for a tall and rather imposing silver-haired man in a grey suit and red tie, and two officials that he guessed were from the Home Office. Rigby was pointing out the whiteboards where pictures of his daughter were pinned by magnets, and the detail of the train journey to Waterloo were noted in marker pen. Rigby turned round as Gillard opened the door, and introduced him to Karl-Otto Ulbricht, finishing with: ‘DCI Gillard is one of our most experienced detectives, and I have faith in him.’ She then turned to Craig: ‘I’ve already told Herr Ulbricht that we have made significant progress, and established that his daughter travelled back to London from Surrey, confirmed by cell site analysis of her mobile phone.’

  That wasn’t quite true, but Gillard wasn’t about to contradict the chief constable in front of Beatrice’s father. There would hopefully be opportunities to put the more nuanced reality to him. Ulbricht shook the detective’s hand firmly, grasping his elbow with the other hand.

  ‘I’d like you to know, sir, that we are doing absolutely everything possible to find your daughter,’ Gillard said.

  ‘I am so grateful,’ Ulbricht said, in barely accented English. ‘For my wife and me, this is the most terrible experience. But we have an enormous depth of respect for the thoroughness, efficiency and expertise of the British police.’

  Gillard wondered if he would be quite equal to that exalted level of expectation. ‘I understand that the Home Secretary will be here shortly, so I was hoping to grab a few minutes before so I might be able to ask you a few questions which would help us get some insight into Beatrice’s state of mind.’

  ‘Yes of course. I believe you have some CCTV footage of her, and I would like to see that too if possible.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Gillard steered the minister back to the conference room he had previously occupied, and brushed down a seat which had somehow accumulated crumbs. The two personal protection officers followed, one staying inside and the other out.

  ‘Forgive me if you’ve been asked this before, but can you think of any reason why your daughter would miss such an important concert?’

  ‘None whatever. This was, as I’m sure you know, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, raising money for refugees. It was probably the most high-profile event she had been involved with to date. I know the entire quartet had been practising very hard for it, because Beatrice told me so.’

  ‘Does she suffer from stage fright or nerves? Had she just broken up with a boyfriend? Anything like that?’

  The minister shook his head. ‘No, she is very focused in front of an audience, and has a steady relationship with a young man she has known for many years in Germany.’

  ‘Has she ever suffered from depression or any other mental health issues?’

  He licked his lips. ‘Well, when she was a teenager she went through a difficult time. She tried to cut her wrists because of some bullying at school, but that was a long time ago. Of course no parent, particularly a father, can ever pretend to know the secret life of their own daughter, but as far as I’m aware she has been incredibly happy to be doing what she loves doing, and by all accounts doing it exceedingly well. Beatrice has such a bright future ahead of her.’ He paused and wiped a paw of a hand across his eye, as if there was a speck there. He blinked a few times, and reached for a handkerchief. The word entschuldigung was muttered as he did so. Excuse me.

  Gillard averted his gaze. The tears of a minister, particularly a minister of justice, must be some of the most rarefied and precious fluids on earth. But then family is in a different galaxy to affairs of state, however heart-wrenching they may be. The detective glanced up at the security man, and saw contrast. A meat-wrapped package of invincibility, expressionless as a wall.

  ‘When did you last speak to her?’ Gillard asked the minister.

  ‘Not for two weeks, to my shame. I have a few week-old text messages from her, which I did not get round to replying to, but answered at length only yesterday. Much too late, of course.’ He looked up, drenched in regrets.

  ‘What did she ask?’

  ‘She wanted me to come to the concert. And then she reminded me in the next message, saying how important it was to her. I was too busy of course. I’m always too busy.’

  Gillard wasn’t going to ask him about those late replies, but the minister’s confessional was not completed. ‘I told her I loved her. I told her that if she ever had any problems we would always be there for her, her mother and I. Always. I asked her to ring me as soon as possible.’

  The two men stared at each other for a moment. Gillard spoke. ‘I take it you have not received any messages which could be construed—’

  ‘No. I am not rich. It would make no sense.’

  ‘It may not be money. A political hostage taker might seek a subtle change in policy, the removal of a clause in a piece of legislation, even the approval of a citizenship request. Or the barring of one. We’ve all read about the strength of the far right in Germany.’

  Ulbricht had clearly not considered all of these possibilities. ‘I will think about this.’

  ‘I don’t want to alarm you,’ Gillard said. ‘It’s entirely possible that your daughter has had some kind of breakdown and does not want to be near anybody at the moment. But it’s very important that if someone has abducted her, you must scour not only your own official and private emails, landlines and mobiles, but ask your family and close friends. A ransom demand could come by post, it could be spray-painted on your garage, it could be placed as a coded advertisement in a newspaper.’

 
The minister nodded, clearly impressed by the detective’s lateral thinking. He consulted the mobile phone which had sat with discreet silence throughout the meeting. ‘Ah, my time has evaporated. I have to catch a flight to Brussels for a conference on refugees. So many of them have daughters too, in as great a danger as my own, if not more. And I haven’t finished writing my speech.’ His briefly raised eyebrows spoke volumes. ‘I will have my meeting with the Home Secretary during the flight.’

  ‘Do you have just one minute for me to show you the footage of Beatrice?’ Gillard asked.

  He hesitated for a moment, but then said, ‘I’m told my officials are waiting outside. Please email it to me.’ He dropped a business card on the desk as he stood, his shoulders groaning under the weight of responsibility. Gillard stood too, and they shook hands firmly and with feeling.

  ‘I will do everything I can,’ the detective said, passing across his own business card. ‘Ring me, any time.’

  The minister nodded. ‘She is our only child. Precious beyond dreams. Our world dangles by a thread.’

  * * *

  Spurred by the exhibition of guilt and shame, Gillard texted his own long-suffering wife, Sam, to tell her that he would not be in until eight or nine o’clock. He had only just finished when the young female PC who had summoned him earlier arrived with a laden silver tea tray, of all things.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ she asked.

  ‘To Brussels on the plane.’ The tray contained two expensive bought-in designer coffees and an entire box of artisan biscuits.

  ‘Oh shit, I’ve just driven in to get them from the deli in the centre of Guildford.’

  ‘They won’t be wasted. Take a seat.’

  ‘Where’s Her Royal Highness?’ she said, looking around as if Alison Rigby could be lurking around any corner. ‘She told me to get them and give her the bill.’

  ‘Schmoozing with the Home Secretary if she’s got any sense,’ Gillard said. ‘She’ll have her hand out for budget. So have a biscuit with me. Take a moment’s peace, because you never know when the next one will be.’