Human Remains

that the log hadn’t been updated since – I looked at it again – 9.15 this morning.
    Something else was bothering me, too. Keith Topping had said they hadn’t got very far with the Automatic Number Plate Recognition database because there weren’t cameras in the right places, and the time window was just too big to provide a useful dataset. But this window of time was much smaller… and there was an ANPR camera on the main road heading away from the Market Square.
    I opened the ANPR software and started filling in a query. The field for the vehicle registration number I left blank. I isolated the cameras to be included down to just one – Baysbury Road, northbound. And the time – what time had Cheryl Dann said goodbye to her?
    I pulled out my mobile phone and sent a text to Sam.
    Ask Cheryl what time she left Audrey and where.
Urgent. A.
     
    While I was waiting for a response I put in an experimental time period for the search just to see what came back: 11pm to 12 midnight. Just one hour, one camera, and the system reacted as if I was forcing it to do manual labour. The processor on the workstation started whirring alarmingly. I opened up the Police National Computer in another window and performed a search for vehicles linked to Mr Colin Friedland of Briarstone, giving DI Frost as my authorising officer.
    It seemed he had a Fiesta, blue in colour.
    A minute and a half after I’d started the ANPR query, it came back with 1,759 hits. I put the registration number of Colin’s Fiesta into the search results box.
    No results.
    My phone bleeped with a response from Sam.
    Midnight, she was walking up Baysbury Rd. Why? S.
     
    I didn’t bother to reply. I felt cross that Colin’s car hadn’t been on the Baysbury Road that night when I’d fully expected it to be. And yet… there was something else. I felt so close to it, the thrill of being right and the possibility of finding something that might be useful. Something that might make a difference…
    I went back to the query and changed the time parameters to ten minutes either side of midnight.
    This time the data came back quite quickly: 259 results. Still a lot, but the likelihood was that, if Audrey had got into a car after leaving her friend, it would have gone past that camera.
    I added a filter to the results for vehicles that had any alerts on them. This was unlikely to bring up anything interesting, after all, but the alternative would be to look through each of the 259 vehicles one by one in the hope of coming up with something. Fifteen alerts. I scrolled through them: No Insurance… No MOT… No Tax… several were flagged by the main office, so were likely to be linked to known offenders. Some of them probably with a curfew that meant they shouldn’t have been out at that time of night and were therefore most likely up to no good.
    Theft of Number Plate.
    I clicked on the crime report number and to access the details. The owner was identified as Mr Garth Pendlebury, and the theft had taken place in Wright’s Way, the road that ran behind County Hall. Mr Pendlebury worked at the council, and had noticed the theft when he returned to his car after finishing work on Thursday evening. No suspects. No other vehicles targeted in the area. The vehicle was identified as a white Volvo V40 estate.
    I went back to the ANPR results and clicked on the link to the image from the camera. The car relating to the alert had passed the camera heading north, at 00:07. I waited for the picture to load, knowing that it would be dark and impossible to tell much from it.
    But I was wrong. The camera was under a street-light and just for a change you could see quite a lot of the car.
    It wasn’t white, it was very definitely dark in colour, even allowing for the effects of the street-light. But, more importantly, it certainly wasn’t an estate. It was much smaller. I couldn’t tell exactly what the car was, but it looked a lot like a Fiesta.
    I put the screen lock on the computer and stood up, walking past Kate and out of the office, heading upstairs to the MIR.
    I knocked on the door and then opened it and went in. The room was full of people, busy, on the phone, but they all ignored me. The DCI’s office was empty, and there was no sign of Frosty either. I felt panic starting in my chest.
    ‘You OK there?’ a woman asked me.
    ‘Do you know where DI Frost is?’ I asked. ‘Or the DCI?’
    ‘The DCI’s gone to a meeting at HQ,’ she said. ‘I don’t