Human Remains

likelihood of this one being a priority was low.
    The call data for Colin’s own number, the one he’d provided when they’d booked him in to the Custody Suite, was sparse. On that Wednesday lunchtime, after a brief outgoing call to Vaughn’s number, he’d made a call to an 0845 number which turned out to be a Customer Care line for a supermarket. Then, on Saturday – after Audrey went missing – three incoming calls that were not answered – from the number that I’d noted as belonging to the Larches Residential Home. After each one, an incoming text from Colin’s voicemail server. Each of these contacts registered a cellsite location – the first two calls and texts were shown as #WATER TOWER GRAYSWOOD LANE and the last call and text were #CAPSTAN HILL NR BLACKTHORNS.
    I opened up the mapping software. I knew many of the cellsite locations, but these were unfamiliar. Grayswood Lane turned out to be about six miles outside of town, the other side of Baysbury, and Capstan Hill was a long, straight road heading through Baysbury village, where it would eventually form a junction with the main road to Briarstone.
    The first two calls were three hours apart – at 11:05 and 14:18. Colin had been there – wherever it was – for a long time. And the last one was two hours later, at 16:33; it looked as if he might have been heading home.
    I had a closer look at Grayswood Lane. It really was the middle of nowhere, starting at the junction with Capstan Hill and then winding through farmland for a few miles, ending abruptly with what looked like a track and a few buildings. I zoomed in on the buildings, which the software identified as Grayswood Farm. There were just a few houses dotted along the length of the lane, the aerial images showing the telltale bright blue rectangles of swimming pools. Halfway along the stretch between the farm at one end and Capstan Hill on the other was a circular structure in a woodland clearing. The water tower, I assumed. Of course, the cellsite location was hardly what you’d call exact – Colin’s precise location when those calls came in and were ignored could have been anywhere within several hundred metres of the water tower. But the likelihood was that the phone had been somewhere on Grayswood Lane, because where else would he have been? In the middle of a field?
    I did a search on the intelligence database for Grayswood Lane. There had been a burglary at the farm in June – a tractor had been stolen. A call about nuisance motorbikes riding offroad through the woods had come in from a house called Three Pines, Grayswood Lane, in May. A patrol had been sent, but by the time they got there the bikes had gone.
    The voters’ register showed that there were five houses in addition to the farm at the end. They all had names: Three Pines, Newlands Barn, The Old Manor, Woodbank and Pond House. I went through them one by one, looking at the names of the residents, in case something jumped out. Nothing did. They all showed at least two people resident at each address. This was starting to feel like a dead end.
    I updated my log with all the searches and what I’d found, and made a note that I could draw no conclusions from it. Only that Colin’s phone had been in the vicinity of Grayswood Lane, probably for several hours, on the day after Audrey had gone missing. There was nothing whatsoever to implicate him in her disappearance. There was little else I could do. The priority emails I’d sent to the DCI and the DI had still not been opened. I tried both their mobile numbers one last time, just to be sure, and left another voicemail.
    Just before I shut down the workstation, I emailed my log, and my notes, and the list of additional numbers – to Frosty. Just in case. I grabbed my coat and left the police station by the back exit, dialling Sam’s number on my phone as I did so.
     
     
    Half an hour later we were parked in the road a few doors up from Colin’s house, obscured by the slight bend in the road and out of the direct line of sight of the windows.
    ‘I shouldn’t really be here,’ I said. ‘I was in so late as it is.’
    ‘Never mind that,’ Sam said. ‘Call it a late lunch if that makes you happier. And as I keep telling you, you’re still on compassionate leave, or sick leave, or something. You shouldn’t have gone in at all.’
    ‘It’s not that simple. I have to record all my hours, you know.’
    Sam had been telling me all about Cheryl, Audrey’s