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“Where’s David Dickinson when you need him?”
“What about Army & Navy stores?” asked Rawson.
“Worth checking,” said Gardener. “What do you think, Sean?”
Reilly was the only one with any experience in the field. Having spent a lot of time in the RUC, he’d seen all manner of things.
“Go with it. Probably not their style, but you never know. Someone might have taken it in for a valuation recently, tried to sell ’em one.”
“Okay,” said Gardener. “We all know what we’re doing with this one, but I really don’t hold out much hope. For all we know, the bayonet could have been in the killer’s family for generations, one of those things handed down from father to son.”
“Might be easier to find if it is,” said Reilly. “If it was only sold once and stayed in the family, we might have a better chance.”
“Good point,” said Gardener. “If all else fails, widen the search with the Internet.”
Once the dust settled, he asked, “What have we found out about Nicola Stapleton?”
Colin Sharp stood up. “She has something in common with the missing five-year-old.”
Gardener’s heart sunk. He was going to have to tell them the bad news soon. “How so?”
“She’s an MFH.”
“She’s missing from home? Where? When?”
“Nicola Stapleton, whose real name is Stanton, was originally from Ealing Broadway, London. She left home when she was fourteen in 2001. She had a rucksack, and five hundred pounds she’d stolen from her brother’s building society account. Not quite sure when and where she arrived in Batley.”
“How did you manage to find this out?” Gardener asked. “Especially as her name isn’t Stapleton.”
“Bob and Frank were the real heroes. When Morrison’s flat was turned over, we found her passport.”
“Where?” Reilly asked.
“He had a safe,” replied Thornton. “Nothing fancy, one of those with the nine square buttons on the front. Took a while to work out the combination, but we eventually found that on his computer.”
“Any evidence to suggest he had more girls than Nicola Stapleton on his books? Was he running his own empire of prostitution?”
“Nothing so far,” said Anderson.
“Any porn?”
“No,” said Thornton, as if he was disappointed.
“What single man doesn’t have any porn?” Reilly asked.
“One who has a prostitute on tap,” replied Rawson.
“Was there anything else in the safe?” Gardener asked.
“Plenty,” replied Bob Anderson. “But we’ll come back to that later. I think Colin has more to say on Stapleton.”
“He’s not the only one,” said Reilly.
Sharp continued. “Before she died, she’d been spending time at a homeless shelter, asking if she could help out. Seems she spent a lot of time with the matron in charge, a woman called Brenda Killen. Stapleton dropp
ed hints about being unhappy where she lived. She was desperate to make a better life for herself. Brenda Killen figured she was keeping a lot back.
“Anyway, I found three Stantons living in North London, but only one had a missing daughter called Nicola. Using the passport photo and a whole host of modern technology, her parents confirmed it was her.”
