Deep Hurt - Eva Hudson Page 0,87
skirted around the little town.
A whole team of detectives and uniformed officers were there to meet them. Ingrid and Gurley were forced to wait around while DCI Radcliffe was debriefed by his opposite number on the Hertfordshire force. When the conversation passed the five minute mark, Gurley lost his patience. He strode over to the two men and stood between them.
“Sorry to break up your cozy chit-chat, detectives, but wouldn’t it make more sense to say everything once?” He turned to Ingrid who had followed him over. “After all, my colleague and I are going to be asking you the exact same questions.”
The Hertfordshire cop looked at Radcliffe, who gave him a nod.
“What do you have on the ground?” Gurley asked.
The cop stuck out a hand. “DCI Strickland.”
“Major Jack Gurley, this is Agent Skyberg, FBI.”
Strickland shook Ingrid’s hand too. “Pleasure.” He gave them both a little smile. Ingrid could sense Gurley’s impatience increasing. “We’re conducting door to door inquiries on the High Street—where the convenience store is situated. We’ve got officers—in plain clothes—patrolling the local bus and train stations. Plus a dozen squad cars cruising the vicinity.”
“Any new sightings from the public?” Ingrid asked.
“Nothing that’s proven particularly reliable.”
“What resources do you have in the air?” Gurley asked.
Strickland glanced up at the darkening sky. “Traffic have put a helicopter at our disposal for the rest of the night. It’s equipped with powerful searchlights and infra-red equipment. At the moment we’ve got it flying low over open ground within a five mile radius of the last confirmed sighting.”
“Has anyone spoken to the owner of the convenience store?” Gurley asked. He pushed up his sleeves.
“We’ve interviewed him extensively.”
“Did he tell you why he hung up? Did Foster threaten him?”
“Nothing that extreme. Apparently a couple of schoolboys were acting suspiciously at the back of the shop. The owner’s had a lot of trouble with shoplifting of late. He rang off so that he could deal with the two lads.”
“And you believe him?” Gurley didn’t seem convinced.
“I’ve no reason to doubt him.”
“Have you searched his premises?” Ingrid asked.
“We did. Nothing to report.”
“What about roadblocks?” Gurley was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, glancing around the park, finally fixing his gaze on a large clump of trees.
“We can’t close the roads,” Strickland said firmly.
“Why not?”
“Foster’s not exactly a threat to the general public.”
“What if he’s armed?”
“What makes you say that?” Radcliffe suddenly started paying attention. “Is he?”
“I think Major Gurley is just saying that we don’t know that he isn’t,” Ingrid interjected. She attempted to change the subject. “You’ve got a trace on the cell phone Foster used to call us earlier?” she asked Radcliffe.
“There’s no signal. Presumably he’s started using a new burner phone and switched the other one off.”
Gurley glanced back at the trees. “What if he’s gone to ground? You have a lot of woods round here?”
“A fair amount.”
“The chopper won’t help you find him there. Are you using dogs?”
Strickland let out a snorting laugh. “We really don’t have those kind of resources. If we knew where to start looking I could get a couple of dog handlers involved. But without an approximate location they’d be totally wasting their time.”
“Jesus.” Gurley walked away.
Strickland looked at Radcliffe who shrugged back at him. They both looked at Ingrid. “He’s a little frustrated right now,” she said, unsure why she was making excuses for his rudeness. “He feels personally responsible for getting Foster back.” She gave both detectives a weak smile and hurried after Gurley. “You can’t speak to them that way,” she said when she caught up with him. “We’re all on the same side here. Doing our best with the resources we have.”
“We’re looking for a man and an eight-year-old boy. How hard can it be? If it were Foster alone I could understand it—the man’s been trained to evade capture. But Tommy must be slowing him down, holding him back.”
“We must work with the cops now, or risk getting shut out of the investigation completely. They still have access to intel we need.”
Gurley rubbed a hand across his face. “Foster’s probably miles away by now. Headed God knows where.”
“We don’t know that. We have to accept the local cops are doing everything they can.”
“It’s not enough.”
Ingrid could quite easily have slapped Gurley across the face. What did he think could be gained by bitching about the cops? It wasn’t as if he was coming up with a better strategy of his own.
Out the corner of her eye, Ingrid noticed some