20. Icebox
DCI Mayhew was waiting for them in the corridor outside the interview room. Her face was cold slate.
"With me, now," she said, then turned and stalked across the bullpen.
Sally followed in a kind of daze. Mayhew's apparent anger didn't touch her. She only had room in her mind for multiple lights, bobbing on the ocean at night. Coming up Dungeness beach on the high tide.
Two or three boats. The victim already on board.
Mayhew flung her office door open with a resounding bang. "Inside."
Sally and Liam entered. The room was plain and functional, only a desk, chair and computer with a plastic plant in a big pot and several filing cabinets. It was almost completely devoid of personality, bar a single framed photograph facing away and a poster on the wall showing Niagara Falls.
Mayhew shut the door behind her and for a moment just looked at them.
"You conducted an interview under caution without authorization," she said. "You ignored a direct order to hold. And you did it in my station, with my suspect."
Sally met her gaze. This anger felt very petty next to the things they'd just learned. "He was our arrest, DCI," she said calmly. "We followed procedure."
"No, you did not. I watched almost all of that, Officer Rogers, after racing here from the Rooks' farm. You made threats and you offered enticement. It was not an interview run under PACE guidelines, and his solicitor knows it. You have contaminated the process."
Sally felt the heat rising in her chest. She'd studied the Police And Criminal Evidence Act closely over the last three months. "With respect, ma'am, we kept well within the broad legal guidance of PACE, which is all that's required. Further, it worked. You heard what we got at the end?"
"And with respect, Officer Rogers, what the hell did you get?" Mayhew's voice tightened. "A fishing crew out at night? Maybe the same crew of traffickers coming back for more? Some cold-water plungers gone for a pre-dawn pick-me-up? You got nothing!"
Silence dropped between them.
Liam shifted slightly. "Ma'am, the admission of multiple boats by Rook is telling. It will inform everything we do going forward. Plus, it redirects the inquiry to the brother, Jerome. He had a better view of the boats."
Mayhew stabbed a finger back toward the interview room. "That Rook boy is running you round in circles! It's all the Rooks ever do, waste police time, and I won't have you–"
"We're not under your direct control," Sally interrupted. "DCI. You've clearly got strong feelings about this case, and about the Rooks. So do we. This is a break, and we need to pursue it. If you're finished, we'll–"
"You'll know when I'm bloody finished!" Mayhew spat. "You violated procedure in there, Officers, no matter how you justify it now. Everything Rook said in that room is vulnerable. Any decent brief will tear it apart. You've just handed him reasonable doubt before we've even placed a single charge."
Sally said nothing. The disagreement was plain. There was no use arguing further. "We're going to work the lead now, DCI."
"No you're not. Not in my station, anyway, not with my assets. You're off the board until I sort this out."
"Ma'am–"
"That's not a suggestion." Mayhew's eyes hardened. "You will not speak to my suspect. You will not access my records. You will not interfere with my investigation in any way until I say otherwise." She stared at them a moment longer, then pointed at the door. "Get out."
Sally turned and strode out. Liam followed.
"Shit," was all he said.
"Come on." Sally led the way back to the training room.
Their files remained spread across the table, leads already exhausted. Their old coffees were cold and gray. Rain hammered steadily on the skylights, a dull, constant drumming.
"I guess we leave?" Liam mumbled. "She'll be calling McMaster now."
"McMaster's not an idiot." Sally surveyed the space. "We're not getting kicked off for this."
"I wouldn't be so sure."
He started gathering their papers, but Sally stepped over and put a hand on his arm.
"Mayhew's got history with this case. I don't know what, and it's making her twitchy, but it doesn't change anything.
We didn't overstep. She's just pissed we didn't wait for her.
But it's not our job to ease her ego or carry whatever chip she's got on her shoulder.
We're here to solve a brutal murder, and we just got our best lead yet. "
Liam looked at her, then let out a heavy breath. "OK, good point. You want to stay here, then? Camp out?"
She offered a faint smile. "I'm not working out of my car. You've seen the state of it."
"Is that a joke?"
"Maybe. It's also a fact. Mayhew doesn't want us to interfere? Fine. We've got plenty here. We've got the records already. Squads are out in force hunting the rest of the Rooks. By the time they find Jerome, we'll be ready to ask the relevant questions."
"OK. But, these records?" Liam pointed at the files. "I've looked at them. They're ancient history. Well-trodden, nothing fresh, because they never had a real suspect."
"So we read between the lines. We focus on right now."
"Sure. And we have got these boats, but without Jerome Rook, we haven't got any suspects either. I don't know where we–"
"We have got suspects," Sally said, and stepped over to one of the whiteboards, her thoughts churning and her calves throbbing. What they had was thin, but it was something. She felt the boy on the beach watching her with those sightless, cold eyes. Judging her.
"Who?"
She picked up a black marker pen and wrote a single name at the center of the board.
Reginald Rook.
Liam frowned. "Right, but he's dead. Any connection he's got is decades old. And Gabriel just essentially confirmed all his brothers were out running those girls last night."
"Maybe they were, maybe they weren't." Sally added more names in a list.
Jerome Rook: lookout for the Crab Shack from the power station scaffold, saw 2-3 boats on the water around 3 a.m.
Gabriel Rook: saw the boats from the Shack
Roarke Rook: Reactor Logistics allowed access to the CCTV. Led human trafficking through the Crab Shack.
Silas Rook: …
She tapped the pen on her teeth. They had nothing specific on Silas or Roarke Rook yet. The two eldest brothers. Where they were, what they were doing.
"They're criminals, yes," Liam said. "But there's nothing tying them to the victim. They're witnesses at best."
Witnesses. Sally's thoughts kept turning. She returned to the board and wrote out three large capital letters.
MMO.
Liam snorted. "OK. Back to 101. They've all got Means and Opportunity, like you said in there. But there's no Motive. And without motive, we're nowhere."
"You're worse than nowhere," came a sudden, deep voice from behind. "You're in the same shit we were."
Sally twitched and turned. An older but vigorous-looking man stood in the doorway to their suite, tall, with short-cropped silver hair and bright brown eyes. He wore jeans and a snug khaki cardigan, carrying a steaming mug in one hand.
"And you are?" Liam asked.
"Sorry, rude to barge in on you like that," the man said, placed his mug down by one of their file stacks and reached one hand out. "Jack Mercer. Nice girl called Chakrati showed me in. I heard you wanted to talk to me."
Sally stared at him for a moment. Ex-DI Jack Mercer, from the podcast and the case notes. A ghost from 30 years ago.
Liam shook his hand first, then Sally followed. Mercer's hand was warm, dry, firm.
"NCA Officer Sally Rogers," she said. "Mr. Mercer, thanks for coming in."
"Not a bother, and it's Jack, please. Mr. Mercer was my Dad." He smiled, then sobered. "I wish I could say it was a pleasure. This place was quite different in my day, of course." He looked around, his gaze settling on the whiteboard. "Some things never change though."
Sally looked at the board. Reginald Rook and his sons were all they had. An active investigation. She felt the urge to cover the details up, but Mercer was police; maybe their best link to the original case, and she wanted his take on it all.
"Please, have a seat, Jack," she said. "You've already got a drink, or I'd offer you one."
"I could make one for you too, if you like," Mercer said, eyes twinkling. "Still know my way around the old place. Before they added that bloody great barn out there."
Liam laughed. "The extension."
"This man knows," Mercer said, wagging a finger at Liam.
"I'd just come back from the Met, three years or so back, when they put that monstrosity up.
Big plans to make Rye a command hub against small boats, I heard.
Then some Whitehall politician wet his pants and the rest of the budget went to Dover. " He shrugged.
"It is a nice bullpen," Liam allowed.
"And who said we can't have nice things?" Mercer grinned. "Now. You want that coffee, or shall we sit down and have this out?"
He gestured to the table. Sally watched him.
He seemed happy, amused even, despite the circumstances.
She'd seen a lot of old cops, but few managed to maintain that kind of skip in their step, especially after retirement.
The job took a toll, then left a hole. When it didn't, those people usually had a strong foundation of some kind.
Family, friends, another purpose beyond the police.
They were resilient, and that kind of resilience was very appealing.
"We're caffeinated enough, don't you think, Liam?" she asked.
"I've bounced off all four of these walls already."
Mercer chuckled. "I know that story. OK, then let's get to it. It won't take long."
He pulled out his chair, looked to Sally once more for confirmation, and she nodded. Not a necessary step for him to take, but a decent one.
"Let's," she said, and sat.