Michael Fowler - Cold Death

As they all made their way back to the incident room for de-briefing Hunter knew the priority was to find the attack site. That would provide them with so many answers and much needed evidence to swing the enquiry.

DAY THIRTY FOUR: 26th September.

Barnwell:

Hunter pulled another bacon sandwich from the pile, which Angie the cleaner and his partner Grace had made. He’d heard the pair chatting and laughing, in the small kitchen next to the incident room, over the past twenty minutes.

Most of the team were in, hugging mugs of warm tea or coffee, munching on the surprise breakfast and gossiping whilst waiting for the early morning briefing.

Looking around the room and listening, Hunter knew that this enquiry had just turned the corner, despite lacking the confessions to Samia’s murder. The implication from Ari that his uncle Mohammed was also responsible for his daughter’s final days and hours was the starter for the day, and with a bit of luck might just be the lever for obtaining the proper story.

Grace walked into the room with another plateful of sandwiches. “That’s it, all the bacon’s gone now,” she said plonking the plate down between hers and Hunter’s desk.

“What muck have you two raked up on someone then? You were going at it hammer and tongs back there.” Hunter bit into the warm bread.

Grace flopped into her seat and leaned across her desk. “You will never guess what I’ve just found out from Angie,” she responded in a hushed voice.

“Go on enlighten me.”

“The boss is only having a thing with that DCI from Scotland.”

“You are joking?”

“Nah, nah. One of her friends is waitressing at the Stables restaurant. The pair have been in there most evenings.”

Hunter shook his head in amazement and grinned. “Well the crafty bugger. I’ll have to give him some rib over that.”

Grace smiled herself and settled back in her chair.

Hunter took another bite of his sandwich. The mention of DCI Dawn Leggate caused him to drift away for a few moments. His parents were still staying with them as Billy Wallace and Rab Geddes still had not been caught. He’d wanted so much to sit down and sort things out with his dad but since the revelation he had not had the opportunity because of the investigation. He had spoken to Beth about it when he had finally fallen into bed the last few nights and she had told him that what she had seen of his father had been a pitiful sight. She said he had been moping round the house like a caged animal and certainly wasn’t eating properly. Hunter’s mum had also taken Beth to one side and told her that his dad was desperate for some time with him to explain everything.

The sooner we put this enquiry to bed, the better.

“You lot owe me a gallon of beer,” announced Barry Newstead, pushing through the incident room doors.

It broke Hunter’s daydream.

“You are going to really thank me for this,” he continued, waving aloft a clear plastic wallet containing a CD disc. He strode towards the large TV, switched it on with a podgy index finger, inserted the disc into the DVD player and snatched up the remote. “I spent most of yesterday afternoon with the neighbourhood team for the Parkhill Flats. Did you know most of it is covered by CCTV?”

The plasma screen fluttered into life.

“There are twenty odd cameras fitted around the outside of the place plus they also have lift cameras at each floor inside the flats. I searched various time frames between the twenty-eighth of July when we know Samia was abducted from Meadowhall right through to the first of August when we believe her body was dumped in the lake and I found this little lot.”

Hunter watched Barry’s face split with a wide grin. He knew from his time teamed up with the investigator over the years that he loved nothing more than to have centre-stage.

Barry exaggerated the starting of the play mechanism by firing the remote at the DVD player as if he was shooting a gun. A grainy image fluttered onto the forty-eight inch screen.

“This was captured at nine-thirty-six pm on the first of August. This camera is looking down on a grassed area in front of one of the buildings.”

Suddenly in the right hand corner of the TV two men in dark hooded tops stumbled into view, struggling with a rolled-up bundle. Barry zoomed in on the hazy images.

One of the men had his back to the camera and was bent over almost dragging along the ground what appeared to be a large rolled up rug.

Although the hoods were up on both men, hiding their faces, Hunter could clearly make out the white lettering on the back of one of the designer hooded tops. The words SEMTEX was visible. He felt a surge of excitement run through him.

The team watched in silence their eyes fixed to the set. The play continued until the two men disappeared off camera with their bundle.

“I also found this footage,” continued Barry.

Another image flashed onto the screen. The pan of the camera focus was a lot wider and covered a larger portion of the complex. Into view came a section of road below a grassy knoll. Along the bottom of the screen was a line of parked cars.

“This is one of the slip roads just below the flats.”

From the top of the screen the camera picked up two fuzzy images, silhouettes at first, but their movement was evident and no one could mistake it was the same two characters, from their attire. And they were struggling with the rolled up carpet. The one at the back slipped and his end of the carpet slumped to the ground.

The team watched as the person humped it back up towards his midriff and then the pair continued waddling down the slope with their bundle until they reached the road.

Barry zoomed the footage again. It was grainy but the images could be made out, though not satisfactorily enough for facial recognition.

The pair pulled the rug towards a white van parked amongst the row of vehicles. The one wearing the SEMTEX designer top opened its rear doors and the pair loaded in the bundle. Both jumped into the front of the van and it pulled away and drove out of camera view.

Barry freeze-framed the shot. In the top left hand corner was the time and date sequence — 9:52pm 01:08:08.

Hunter knew this all fitted. The time to travel from Sheffield to Barnwell Lake was approximately forty minutes. That meant that their witness, the sex worker, Kerri Ann Bairstow had been spot-on with her timings of her sightings of the two men and the white van at the Country Park.

“And for my encore,” he added with a flourish. He re-started the DVD player. “This was captured in the entranceway at one of the internal lifts.”

The image, which flickered onto the screen, showed a floor area with a squashed up section of lift doors at the top quarter of the screen.

There was little doubt in Hunter’s mind that from the angle of the shot this was captured by a camera at ceiling height.

Suddenly into view came the person in the SEMTEX designer hoody. He was bent double dragging the rolled up carpet. Quickly following into the frame, also doubled up, lumping the other end of the rug came another hooded figure. The clarity of these images was excellent and Hunter could see that sections of pattern on the rolled up carpet were a perfect match to those of the rug Samia’s body had been found wrapped up in. He had no doubt in his mind that he was watching the first stages of her being taken away from the place where she had just been raped and butchered.

They stopped by the lift doors, dropping both ends of the carpet and the character in the designer hoody straightened, easing out his back with his hands. As he pressed for the lift he flicked back his hood and stretched his neck. There was no mistaking that face — it was Ari Arshad.