The Falcon Assessment

The first thing I noticed was that somebody, contrary to Health and Safety regulations, had jimmied the windows in Leominster nick so that they opened all the way out. Given the inquiry offices were all on the first floor, they got a surprising amount of breeze – I figured that, and a truly stupendous amount of caffeinated beverages, was all that was holding the MIU together. I seriously doubted the vibrating chairs were making much of a contribution.

Edmondson and Windrow were waiting for me in the Learning Zone again. They asked me to sit down and offered me some cold water – which I took gratefully. I resisted the urge to rub the bottle against my forehead.

‘How are you finding it?’ asked Windrow.

‘Sir?’ I asked.

‘The operation,’ he said. ‘How do you think it’s going?’

Nothing unnerves a junior officer quite as much as having a much senior officer stare over a desk and ask your opinion on something. It’s always tempting to fall back on that strangled mixture of cop-speak and management-ese that has proved the modern police officer’s friend when he wants to talk a great deal and say nothing. Still, from the look in Windrow’s eyes, blurting out that I thought that West Mercia Police were taking an aggressively proactive approach in line with best practice as laid down in national guidelines was not the way to go.

‘As well as can be expected,’ I said, which was almost as bad.

Windrow nodded benignly – a gesture I’ve seen interviewing officers use on suspects dozens of times.

‘What’s your impression of the Marstowes?’ he asked.

‘They’re hanging in there,’ I said.

‘There’s no possibility that they might have orchestrated the disappearance?’ asked Windrow.

God, I thought. But as a theory it certainly had its attractions.

‘Is there some evidence that they might have?’ I asked.

Windrow shook his head.

‘Oh, congratulations by the way,’ said Edmondson. ‘You’ve made the papers.’

He passed me a copy of the Sun which had pushed the page three girl all the way back to page eleven in order to devote more space to MISSING GIRLS. Since they didn’t know anything we didn’t, and we didn’t know anything, they had a lot of pictures to cover up the lack of text. In the upper right-hand corner of page five was a good one of me and Dominic standing by the village hall. We were obviously talking and, fortunately, both of us were looking suitably grim and intense. The caption read ‘ALL HANDS ON DECK: Police from all over the country are involved in the search for Hannah and Nicole.’

‘Sorry about that, sir. They must have used a telephoto lens.’