No clues other than that last sighting of him at 22:03, no contact by telephone, no use of his bank card… and no reason why anybody should be hiding him. On balance, it seemed he had been taken, with no clues as to his location or his kidnapper.
A dog found the knife. A five-month-old scatty Cavachon puppy who liked to walk on her hind legs instead of all four, and who believed excavating her way to Australia was the normal thing to do, dug her second hole of the day near the pond at the bottom end of the playing field.
‘Mabel,’ her owner called, ‘come here. You’re filthy. For God’s sake, Mabel, you’re a white dog!’ Mabel looked back at her owner, and returned to her important work. This was an easy hole, because the soil was nice and loose. She dragged out the knife and laid it to one side, to be investigated further when the primary task of reaching the Sydney Opera House had been accomplished.
Her owner, a lady who had fortunately recently had her nails done, picked up the knife carefully by the tip in order to avoid damaging the pristine beauty of her nails, and then quickly dropped it when she saw the blood.
‘Oh shit.’ She took out her phone and rang 999, explained the situation and sat down with a thump on the grass as she realised what the blood probably meant, which crime it was potentially related to.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ the operator said. ‘Name?’
‘Mabel.’
‘Surname?’
‘Mabel the dog, I suppose.’
‘No, ma’am, I meant your name.’
‘Oh, sorry, it’s Philippa Taylor.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. Someone will be with you in a couple of minutes. Please don’t touch the knife any more than you may have done, and remove Mabel from the area of the hole.’
‘I will, but she’ll not be happy. Oh, there’s a policeman running across the grass.’
‘Thank you, ma’am, I’ll leave you in their capable hands.’
Mabel ignored the arrival of the officer, of the two officers who followed, and the crime scene tape laid on the grass. She was really annoyed, however, when she was removed from her hole, and glared at the spoilsports putting the pretty tape around the pond. What did they expect to find in there? A body?
The calls started to come in within a minute of the broadcast finishing, with nothing of consequence until a woman rang in to say she had had a mask exactly like the one shown, but it had been stolen from her washing line. Matt had taken the call and he carefully noted down the details before signalling to Holly he had an item of interest.
Holly read the form, and then looked a little perplexed. ‘Did she say why it was hung on a washing line? It’s not relevant to anything, I know, but why would you hang a mask on a washing line?’
He grinned. ‘It seems she bought it for her thirteen-year-old to wear for a masked ball at school, but her five-year-old had filled it with baked beans. The woman washed it and hung it on the line to dry, but forgot to bring it in. The next day it had gone. This was three days before the murders. She can pinpoint it because of this school event.’
‘Awesome,’ Holly said. ‘And look at the address. Two minutes away from our two husbands.’
‘And two minutes away from our missing boy.’
‘You think it’s connected?’
‘I’m a PC, DS Jones. I don’t think, I follow orders. I only think when I’m away from work, but when I get home tonight, yes, I’ll probably think it’s connected.’
Holly nodded and walked back to Tom’s office with the completed phone message form. ‘Look at this.’ She picked up a pen and drew a small map showing the proximity of the washing line to the two homes.
‘You’re saying?’
‘I’m saying nothing, simply pointing this out to you. If you speak to young Matt, he might say something. Like how close this is to the two homes, but there’s more than Kenny West lives in that one, there’s our missing boy.’
Tom was silent for a moment, digesting what Holly had said, thinking Please don’t suggest that sixteen-year-old boy killed his own mother.
‘Let’s go and talk to this lady who owned a mask, see if it’s actually a match for ours before we jump to any conclusions. It might be a Pennywise mask for all we know. And let’s see if there’s any news on that knife. Let’s hope there’s some DNA on it apart from dog saliva.’
The mask that had gone missing from the washing line was a perfect match for the one used in the murders. A photograph of the thirteen-year-old who had been going to wear if for the masked ball event had been taken, with him posturing for the camera.
The one he eventually wore because his mum had been unable to replace the rictus grin mask was a Pennywise one. The five-year-old was still being blamed for the substitution of the original mask with Pennywise, which apparently wasn’t as cool as the rictus grin.
They went back to headquarters with a copy of the photograph on Holly’s phone, and headed up to the briefing room. There was a quiet buzz about the place, everyone pleased that at least something good had come out of the broadcast; the identification of the missing mask. All they had to do was find it.
‘I want search warrants preparing for the West home and the Andrews home, for tomorrow,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t expect to find anything, because these two men are too clever to leave anything incriminating, but it will serve a purpose, this search. It will let them know they’re not in the clear, either of them, and my God, wouldn’t it be a bonus if we did find something.’
Holly looked at her watch. ‘We’re not going to find anything out about the knife tonight, so let’s call it enough for now. We’ll leave two lines manned in case, pull somebody from the nightshift to answer any random calls till tomorrow morning, and look at things afresh then.’
The two young PCs left to man the phones congratulated themselves on getting an easy job, and a silence descended. It was a long night for them, with one call to the dedicated lines from some drunken yobs, who didn’t realise their phone number and ID showed up on the screen.
It was only when the PC said, ‘Thank you for your call, Mr Garside,’ that the yob panicked and disconnected.
The quietness returned, and the two PCs made paper aeroplanes, then played Scrabble before moving on to Solitaire. One of them slept for an hour, then woke to give the other one an hour’s break.
At six o’clock, people drifted in, shifts changed, and the station came alive to the general public once more. The two men left to man the phones, although pretending it had been an ace job and they’d had a really easy night, secretly decided it had been bloody boring, and they wouldn’t want that shift again.
Tom and Holly came in their own cars, from the same house. They were in their offices by seven, with search warrants ready for use by them as the lead officers who would be heading up the searches.
Tom decided to take Kenny West’s home, and gave Holly the warrant she needed for the Andrews’. Tom left instructions he was to be notified as soon as anything forensic came through on the retrieved knife, but if it only said dog saliva he didn’t want to know.