“What about the van itself?” asked Ben. “I’m assuming you checked inside?”
“Yeah. Doors weren’t locked,” the constable confirmed. “No sign of anyone inside. Though, there was a blanket in the back. We thought maybe for a dog, but…”
Logan turned away and jabbed a finger at no one detective in particular. “Get Palmer out there. Helicopter the bastard down if necessary. I want him to comb that van from bumper to bumper. I want to know if the girl was in there, when, and what condition she was in.”
“On it, sir,” Hamza announced, reaching across the desk for the phone.
“So, eh, do you want us to cancel the recovery vehicle?” asked PC Miller.
Logan almost managed to stop himself rolling his eyes. “Yes, son. Cancel the bloody recovery vehicle.”
“It’s just… if he’s already on the way, we’ll still have to pay the call-out charge, so I wasn’t sure…” The ferocity of Logan’s glare killed the words dead in his throat. “I’ll cancel the recovery vehicle,” he announced, then he gestured to DS Khaled. “But I’ll have to wait until he’s off the phone.”
“You could go use the phone in the shop,” Constable Tanaka suggested. “We sometimes do that if this one isn’t working,” she told the detectives. “Which happens a fair bit.”
“Just get it done!” Logan ordered, and Constable Miller hurriedly scarpered out of the room.
Sinead, meanwhile, was bending over the desk, studying the map on the screen. Hamza had dropped a marker pin on the spot that Suzi had pointed to, and a quick zoom in on the area revealed nothing much of interest.
“There’s nothing else there?” she asked. “Just those few houses?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” the PC confirmed. “Most of the people who go out that way are walkers. It’s the start of a pretty popular trek along the shore. Bit strenuous for my liking, but the tourists like it.”
“Right, well, we need to focus the search around where the van was found,” Logan instructed. “I want extra manpower brought in for this. Area’s far too big for us to cover with just us lot, so—”
“This walk,” said Tyler, raising his voice to be heard above the DCI’s barked orders. “Where does it go?”
For a moment, Logan looked like he might unhinge his jaws and bite Tyler’s head clean off his shoulders, but then he snapped his head in Suzi’s direction.
“Eh, just by the shore, like I say.”
“Up or down?” Tyler asked.
“He means north or south?” Sinead translated.
“South,” Constable Tanaka said. She drew a squiggly line with her finger on the screen. “Sort of along here and down there, I think. As I say, I’ve never done it. But I think it ends at—”
“The lighthouse,” said Sinead, her gaze racing ahead of the wandering finger. “It ends at the lighthouse?”
“Yeah. Round about there.”
Sinead and Logan locked eyes, and both spoke at the same time.
“It’s locked up.”
“There’s nobody there.”
“It’s bloody perfect.”
“Mind filling us in here, Jack?” Ben asked.
Logan grabbed for his coat. “The lighthouse is covered in scaffolding. It’s meant to be having work done, but there’s some sort of industrial dispute going on. So it’s locked, and it’s empty, and it’s walking distance from where he dumped his van.”
“God. Aye. Aye, it’s perfect. He’s got to be there, surely?”
“I want a helicopter,” Logan barked.
Hamza hung up the phone, announced that Palmer’s team had been notified about the car, then immediately started dialling again just as a breathless PC Miller sidled back into the room.
“Chopper could take a while to get here, Jack,” Ben pointed out. “Even if it’s available, we’re talking over an hour, maybe two.”
Logan wheeled around to face the two Uniforms, who both drew back like vampires caught out by the sun.
“You two, how long to drive out there with the foot down and the sirens on?”
Constable Miller blew out his cheeks. He was lightly sweating from his sprint to and from the shop. “An hour and twenty, maybe.”
“Nah, less than that,” PC Tanaka said. “An hour and ten.”
“No way you’re doing it in an hour and ten. I’ve never done it in less than an hour and twenty.”