Play@YSDC

11.50am Friday 12th March 2010, High Wycombe Police Station, Buckinghamshire

Over seventeen hours since Regina Balfour was abducted.

Kris ushers John Balfour into the station while Julie Thomas shouts after him 'where is Regina Balfour?' Jocelyn and Simon arrive in Jocelyn's car and enter the station at the tail end of the commotion.

The desk sergeant whispers to Kris that he has a visitor and gestures to a middle aged woman sitting in the reception area. While they are talking someone familiar squeezes past Kris to enter the station, it looks like Ollie Grey.

OOC,Lots of stuff you could do now, talk to Balfour, talk to Roxanna, go to the incident room and talk to the other detectives, have a little conflab amongst yourselves, or anything else you'd like to do

Once inside, Simon works to get Jocelyn and Kris in a conference room.

"We've learned a few interesting things. Balfour is affiliated with an indigenous group known as Red Trumpet back in Kenya. It seems to be what got him on the watchlist, though we don't know much about them offhand. He first met them 15 years ago on a mission trip from his local fundamentalist church. We may want to investigate this church he previously belonged to, see if their beliefs roughly line up with his own. If not, it suggests some radicalization that may have happened overseas. He also brings in almost a million quid a year in donations, and though it seems entirely aboveboard, it's a rather high amount.

"More importantly, his church predicts the end of the world this Tuesday at sunset. This strikes me as rather too much of a coincidence. Did Lewiston and Peale have access to information that Regina was in danger? Perhaps Balfour intends a mass suicide, or maybe this was the kidnappers way of placing him under greater scrutiny. Either way, I fear he's planning something, and it's vital we find Lindsay,, both for Reginia's sake and any information she can provide us."

He looks at Jocelyn, in case she has anything to add.

"Yes, that about sums it up," says Jocelyn. "My boss called me at seven, and I passed it along to DS Bates. The intel actually came from MI6, but the Sister Service typically shares information with Five. What have you learned since we last spoke?" she asks Kris.

Kris felt somewhat abashed as he hadn’t actually really found out anything new. He’d just gone to sleep... ...

”Em, well, I’ve spoken to Lindsay’s boss and she’s waiting to see me now,” he said, glancing towards the door. He absentmindedly scratched at his arm. He’d worn a dark shirt today because his white shirt had shown bloody marks within minutes of putting it on. “Has anyone else noticed anything unusual?” he asked, without actually specifying what that might be...

"If you mean the itchiness," says Jocelyn, "both of us experienced it too. We both stayed at the same hotel, so it seemed like the place just had bugs, but it seems you've got it too. I'm ready to talk to Roxanna when you are."

”If it was just you and Simon who had the bugs, I’d agree with you, but the fact I’ve got them too... ... I’ll get the Sergeant to give the local doc a call and see if we can’t get it treated. In the meantime, let’s go and have a chat with Lindsay’s boss.”

Kris lead the way back into the reception area, where he asked the desk sergeant to call the doctor’s surgery. He also secured an empty interview room for their chat with Roxanna, whom he went to introduce himself to, and then invited to join them to talk about Lindsay.

"Perhaps that cat had bugs then," Simon says with distaste. "Lewiston was not taking care of it, after all. I had a dream of what I presume was the Passover Angel. But given what we've been investigating it's not all that unusual."

He follows Kris and Lindsay, though asks for a cup if tea if it can be managed.

Kris leads Roxanna Goldfarb to the interview room. She is a woman in her fifties with slightly too much makeup, large gold hoop earrings, and a bright flowery dress.

One of the civilian administrative staff brings in some scalding hot cups of too strong tea for everyone. They're in white plastic cups, teabags still in, cups deforming with the heat.

OOC,Are you leaving Balfour to wait?

Kris paused on the threshold of the room and looked back at John Balfour. ”We’ll be with you shortly,” he said.

He didn’t wait for a reply, but entered the interview room. He asked Roxanna to take a seat, sending a quick text message to Lucy Bates as he did so. ‘Any news on Lindsay Peale’s car?’ He pocketed his phone and introduced Jocelyn and Simon.

“Thanks for coming to see me,” he said. “It seems that Lindsay may be involved in the abduction of Regina Balfour. Is she someone you have been involved with?”

Roxanna gives quite a theatrical sigh, 'Oh yes, we, or rather I should say Lindsay, has been involved with Regina Balfour before. It was about two years ago. Lindsay started proceedings to remove Regina from her parents. She bypassed all the usual checks and procedures and basically sweet-talked a judge into moving forward immediately on unsubstantiated and vague claims of child abuse and Regina was taken into protective care - they turned up at the Balfour's door with the police and took her away. She claimed she was acting on an “anonymous tip,” but no one thinks the tip was anonymous, she was either protecting her source or there was no source. She got several adjournments and continuations of the order, dragged it right out for more than a week, but when it came to court the presiding judge accused her, in effect, of making up the whole thing and the case was thrown out.'

Roxanna leans forward and puts her hands on the interview room table. Lindsay was suspended without pay for a month. I was there at the disciplinary proceedings. She didn't say anything to explain herself, she just accepted the month’s suspension, apologised, said she did what she had to do and that we wouldn't believe her if she explained why she did it, and said she'd never do anything like that again - well, that clearly wasn't true.'

She looks strained for a minute and says, 'The thing is, apart from that, and some harassing "welfare checks" on Regina about three years ago, Lindsay has always been an exemplary social worker. Efficient, calm, level headed, compassionate. It's only because of that she wasn't fired. I stood up for her, and now I'm starting to regret it.'

She sighs and slumps back in her chair. 'I don't know why Lindsay is so fixated on this girl but I have no doubt she's involved.' She stares intently at her cup of tea and then starts sipping it.

"Thank you," says Jocelyn. "Have you any idea where Lindsey might have taken Regina?"

Simon tries his tea, immediately regrets it, and puts it back down.

"Thank you for your information, Ms. Goldfarb." Simon responds after she's done. "Your story confirms much of what we already suspected. Reverend Balfour seems to belong to some sort of fundamentalist sect, and he believes the world will end within a few days. Perhaps Lindsay got it in her head Regina was in danger. We're still trying to determine her full motive, which I suppose we won't have until we question her. But this is frankly secondary-- Regina is very sick, and if she does not get her medicine within a few days she'll die. Do you or any of her coworkers know where Lindsay might go to hide out she needed to get away? He adds to Jocelyn's question.

Roxanna says 'I'm afraid I don't know where Lindsay might go, I presume you've already been to her house?' She thinks for a moment, 'I'm not sure she was particularly close to anyone at work, maybe Annette, I can get you her office number. Other than that I don't know what to say, I can give you access to her work emails, we keep them backed up for legal reasons, perhaps there might be something there?'

After a long pause she adds, 'I saw the Reverend Balfour outside, I'd be careful about assuming there is something wrong with the Balfours, sure their little church is pretty strange but we found no evidence of any child neglect or abuse when we investigated them after Lindsay's allegations, they seemed like loving parents.'

”If we could have Annette’s contact details, that would be very helpful,” said Kris, wondering if she was the person who had left the second message on Lindsay’s answering machine.

“Access to her work email would also be useful,” he continued. “Anything we do to get a lead on where she is. Would we also be able to see her case files for the Balfour case?”

Roxanna gives Kris the number for Annette, it's the same one on Lindsay's answer machine. Kris calls her but she doesn't have much to add, they are friendly at work but not close. She has no idea where Lindsay might go with Regina. Asked how she has been recently she says that Lindsay had seemed extremely stressed and distracted lately, but had not told her why. Annette found her distraught and sobbing in the bathroom earlier this week, but Lindsay waved her off.

Roxanna says that they are welcome to review Lindsay's emails and she will try and get the Balfour case files from the archives. However, they'll need to send someone to Aylesbury to look at either.

Kris looks down at his phone and sees a text message from DS Bates, 'See you in the incident room'.

”Thanks for coming in,” said Kris. “If anything else occurs to you, no matter how trivial it might seem, please get in touch. I’ll speak to you about coming to see the files once I’ve had a chance to catch up with my superior officer.”

He showed Roxanna out and headed for the incident room to find Lucy.

Leaving the interview room Roxanna approaches John Balfour and places her hand on his arm. 'I really hope you find Regina soon.' Balfour's eyes widen as he hurriedly gets to his feet and rushes out the police station.

Somewhat relieved to be rid of Balfour, Kris, Simon, and Jocelyn go further into the station, entering the incident room. It is a scene of organised chaos. The size of a large conference room there are banks of computers and phones down one side. Attached to the other wall are several white boards and a large blue freestanding display board is covered in photographs of Regina, the Balfours, Lewiston, and Lindsay Peale as well as maps of the Eden Centre and the wider Wycombe area. There are boxes stacked around the room, many of which seem to contain pages and pages of computer printouts.

DS Bates is standing in front of a desktop computer with a large monitor, it is being operated by a uniformed officer and she seems to be showing something to a tall, handsome middle aged man with a disconcerting quiff of blonde hair. Kris recognises him as Detective Inspector Malone, the Senior Investigating Officer, and the man ultimately in charge of the case.

Bates sees them and ushers them over. 'You can brief us on what you've found in a moment. I want to show you what else we've got so far.' Bates shows them the computer screen where the HOLMES 2 major incident software is displayed.

'First we've just seen this,' she brings up the image of a handwritten letter. 'Lewiston's daughter received it in the post this morning.'

Letter From Lewiston,[i]"Nicole I'm sorry. By now I'm probably dead. Just understand that I did what I had to do, and that the little girl isn't going to be hurt. When the people trying to profile me see this: Go home. Just go home. Trust me, if you can't go home, then believe this: the Balfours are dangerous and insane, and you can't give their daughter back to them. You wouldn't believe me if I told you why, but it's on your head if you do."[/i]

'We've also got the postmortem on Lewiston, confirmed what we already knew about the hair dye and burning off the fingerprints. Despite what we've heard about him seeming normal up until the kidnapping he'd obviously let himself go, they found an infestation of lice in his clothes and this was causing some kind of skin condition the pathologist couldn't even recognise. But most importantly he had bowel cancer, probably terminal. We're waiting on the hospital to get back to us with his medical records but the pathologist reckons he would have already known about it. Oh, and it doesn't look like Ollie killed him, died from blood loss from the wound to the neck.' She flashes up the post-mortem report summary which confirms what she's just said.

Bates then shows them some phone and financial records. 'MI5 had no joy with Lewiston's computer or mobile phone, he did quite a number on them. But he had a mobile phone contract and we've got the records, lots of calls to Lindsay Peale's mobile phone stretching back years. There have been dozens of calls back and forth between them in the days leading up to Regina being taken but these stop cold three days ago. We also got his email records but nothing of relevance there. His bank account shows he paid off all of his bills a few days ago, in advance. He withdrew £2,000 in cash on Tuesday. Other than that there's not much of interest, he visited somewhere called the 'Happy Cafe' every day according to his credit card records, even weekends, that's up until three days before the abduction when he stopped. We've got Lindsay's bank and phone records but nothing extra there I'm afraid. Nothing in her personal email either.'

Then she takes them over to a large map pinned to the display board showing High Wycombe on one side extending to London in the east.



She says 'Finally, we've had another hit on ANPR for Lindsay's car, last night it was seen heading down the M25. That's on the way to Heathrow Airport but we already had alerts out to all ports so we don't think she's flown out.' She traces Lindsay's route from Wycombe, along the M40, stopping in Beaconsfield, and then heading down the M25 past Uxbridge.

"Maybe we can track Lindsay's mobile phone," says Jocelyn. "If she has any tradecraft, she'll have turned it off and removed the battery or better yet ditched it entirely, but it's worth a try. She did use her own car, after all, so maybe she slipped up. Also, someone tipped her off and left a message on her home phone last night. If we can find out who that is, that will give us another lead. Let's check the phone records to see who called her at that time."

Simon nods in agreement.

"The important thing is this confirms the intent behind the kidnapping. Unfortunately, without her medication Regina's life is in danger all the same. Lindsay surely recognize this. It's entirely possible any plan the kidnappers had was thrown out the window the minute they did not attain her medicine as well. This makes her more dangerous, but also more likely to consider rash actions."

"Quite," says Jocelyn. "That's why I hope we can establish communications with her. She knows Regina needs the medicine, and if we can give it to her, that will keep Regina alive and also get the negotiations started off on the right foot. We just have to locate her first. Did the Balfours ever record a video appeal?"

”By the sounds of it, the Balfours are unlikely to appeal to Lindsay,” said Kris. He thought for a moment. “Can we get a message out to all chemists and pharmacies to be on the lookout for someone urgently needing insulin? Presumably Lindsay won’t have a prescription, so she may be forced to steal it.”

”More importantly,” he continued, ”Why did Lindsay and Lewiston conspire to kidnap Regina? Lewiston’s letter and everything we’ve heard about Lindsay suggests they don’t want to hurt the girl. There’s been no ransom demand; they just wanted to keep her away from her parents. But why?”

Kris scratched at an itch in his armpit and saw specks of blood on his fingertips when he withdrew his hand. “And where’s that bloody doctor?!” he demanded.

"We were speculating about that earlier," says Jocelyn. "It may have to do with their prediction of the end of the world next Tuesday. They could have a mass murder/suicide planned for that day, or at least the kidnappers may believe so, and Lewiston and his niece may have been trying to save Regina's life by keeping her away from her parents until the day passes."

Kris points out the other message on Lindsay's landline was from Annette at her work. He's already talked to her.

Bates says that Lindsay's mobile phone signal was lost on Wednesday afternoon in Aylesbury. She also puts out a notice to local pharmacies, hospitals, and GP surgeries about someone possibly trying to obtain insulin. She looks sceptical when the topic of mass suicides is brought up, 'In High Wycombe? I find that pretty unlikely.'

One of the officers from the front desk pokes his head round the door to the incident room, 'Kris, the FME's here, did you want to see her about something?' He makes his excuses and heads down to the custody suite where the Forensic Medical Examiner Dr Yvonne Sanderson has her clinic room.

In her early fifties, she's a large woman, morbidly obese really, with a serious face and the no nonsense manner of the English public schoolgirl. 'What is it DC Sapru?'

"You may be right," says Jocelyn, "but clearly the kidnappers believed Regina to be in some sort of danger. There's no specific evidence that mass suicide is planned, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility. Heaven's Gate happened in a quiet town near San Diego."

”Hi Doc,” said Kris, taking off his jacket and rolling up a shirt sleeve. “I came down with this yesterday...” He showed Dr Sanderson his arm. “At first I thought it was fleas - I’ve picked those up before in a doss house - but now I’m not so sure. What do you think?”

Sanderson takes a look at Kris's arm and then gets him to expose his chest and back. 'Nasty, nasty. Not too sure what it is, scabies maybe, with a superadded bacterial infection. I'll send some samples to the lab.' She scrapes off some skin and exudate into a vial. She hands him a prescription and a tube of ointment. 'Here's a script for antibiotics. This ointment is triple action, should cover most things, I'll let you know if the lab grows anything. Be more careful in future. And wear gloves until we know what it is.'

"I'm also rather itchy," Simon reports, showing her his own skin. "I think I was infected by something on Lewiston's cat yesterday;; the mangy creature had the worst case of vermin infecting it I've ever seen."

Kris will wait until Simon has been treated and the Doc has left and then say to Simon, ”Do you think there’s something to this end-of-days, plague thing?”

OOC:   If the doc has anything to say I'll retcon a response in here if relevant.

After the doctor leaves and Kris asks his question, Simon laughs. Rather rudely, for several seconds. Seeing Kris not smiling, he sobers up eventually.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were joking, Detective. But suffice it to say, no I don't. There have been thousands of groups and individuals that have predicted the end of days throughout the course of history. Precisely zero of them have been accurate. I hardly think the Lord has chosen to share to share this tidbit with the leader of a fringe church in England."

Still, his gaze softens and his tone grows more soothing. "I don't mean to insult you, please understand. This has been a stressful case. But it's natural for the mind to establish connections between events. If this rash had happened at any other time you would think nothing of it; given what we're dealing with, it takes on new meaning. But you saw Lewiston's home yesterday; the place was a pig's sty. I'm willing to bet the others who inspected the place also have a nasty rash."

"All this said, try to keep things in perspective." He smiles encouragingly.

"We had remarked on the similarities with the ten plagues of Egypt last night," says Jocelyn, "but we came to the conclusion that it was just the power of suggestion. Although, maybe this cult has gotten its hands on some sort of biological weapon. That sort of thing wouldn't be unprecedented. Aum Shinri Kyo used a chemical weapon, Sarin nerve gas, in an attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995."

”Well, that’s reassuring!” said Kris dryly, as he pulled on some rubber gloves.

Sanderson glances at Simon's rash, 'Looks like eczema to me. I'm sure a simple emollient will sort that out.'

OOC,What do you all want to do now?

Kris lead the way to see DS Bates. ”We’ve got a number of leads,” he said, when they found her. “But, if we’re honest, we’re not sure which ones to prioritise.”

“I think our best bet to finding Regina Balfour is to find Lindsay. A check on owned properties turned up nothing so she’s likely to be on the move. Can we circulate a description of Regina, Lindsay and her car, to all hotels, bed & breakfasts, service stations and medical establishments in her direction of travel, to see if we can find out where she is?”

Kris checked his notebook and continued. “We’ve got that woman from the press outside, so I presume the news is out but I’ve not had time to look into it. Can we get someone from PR & Comms to find out what’s in the press and let us know. I know we don’t want them doing our jobs for us, but if word is already out there, let’s use that to our advantage and see if we can’t get the public working with us to find her.”

”It also seems that Balfour’s church has an apocalyptic mindset and think the end of the world is nigh. The impression we get is that Lindsay snatched Regina to stop her father using her in this ‘ritual’. It sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me, but it seems there might be more to it. He seems to have been involved in this cult called The Red Trumpet out in Africa, so we could do with finding out more about them, too.”

“Finally, although her boss and colleague weren’t a deal of use, we can still go through Lindsay’s emails and notes from the Balfour case. I don’t know how useful that will be but I think I’d like to take a crack at this myself. I’d need to go back up to Aylesbury, unless you need me here?”

"I think the work emails are our best bet to find a lead," says Jocelyn. "I can check with MI5 and see what I can find out about Red Trumpet."

Simon frowns. "All good points. Unfortunately, I see no way to predict where she's going-- she may not even know. Seems fair to say the plan has gone awry from the very start. And that makes our ultimate objective of rescuing Regina much harder.

"The only thing I can think of that might mollify her is if Balfour is arrested, and there may not even be anything there we can act upon. Even if there is, it would likely take more than a few days to bring charges. She does not have that long."

'We've already put alerts out to hotels, airports, and healthcare facilities but she was heading down the M25, that opens up all of London and the South East of England to her. We have officers out looking but it's like a needle in a haystack.' Bates thinks for a moment, 'The first priority has to be to find Regina, so I'm happy for you to go check out Lindsay's office in Aylesbury, she's our prime suspect after all. But I can't see what relevance this Red Trumpet has for the investigation, so I don't want you looking into it Kris. You two...' she gestures to Simon and Jocelyn, 'Can do whatever you think is appropriate, that's why you're here.'

Bates points to a young woman sat at a desk along the wall, she is talking animatedly on a mobile phone, 'If you want to talk to our media liaison officer Sophie she's over there. In terms of other leads, we've struggled to pin down Lewiston and Peale's movements in the days running up to the kidnapping. We know Lewiston bought supplies because you found that receipt, but there's nothing on his credit card or other accounts for the last four days, same with Lindsay yet we know she went to work. Lewiston did withdraw a lot of cash, perhaps he was paying with that, which suggests he might not have wanted us to know where he or Lindsay were going, even prior to the abduction.'

”OK,” said Kris. “Let’s talk to Sophie first and then I think we need to split up. I’ll go check out Lindsay’s emails - see if there’s anything useful there, if you guys want to look into this cult that Balfour’s linked to. Does that sound like a plan?”

"All right," says Jocelyn. "Maybe we'll get a new lead from her."

Simon smiles. "An excellent proposition. You may not be able to look into Red Trumpet, but we were never instructed not to."

Kris looked from Jocelyn to Simon and nodded. “Keep in touch and let me know what you find. If I find out anything of interest, I’ll let you know.”

Kris lead the others over to Sophie and made the necessary introductions. ”We were talking to Lucy about the media coverage of events. Can you tell us what’s happening?”

'Ah, yeah, sure, so like we've got kind of like two phases. Last night there was a lot of talk about a terrorist attack, but that all stopped after the press conference.' says Sophie.

She continues in her somewhat irritating sing-song voice, 'So Lewiston's photo is out there but not his name. However, Balfour's done some interviews and most outlets are running with the name Zac Newman. We haven't put out Lindsay Peale's name or likeness but we've circulated her photo to regional police, health care settings, and transport hubs. The overall, like, tone of the coverage is pretty sympathetic to the Balfours, focusing on how sick Regina could become, but there's been a bit of digging around their church and some of the more...sensationalist channels have been talking about their apocalyptic predictions.'

"Ah, like Julie Thomas of GNS," says Jocelyn, nodding. "Many people have predicted that the end of the world would fall on a given date, and they've all been wrong. This lot have made multiple false predictions of the end of the world before. What makes anyone think this time is different?"

"Likely human interest, if nothing else. Daughter of the reverend gets abducted a few days before he believes the world is going to end. I'm sure some also believe it's little more than a publicity stunt." Simon suggests.

"In the media interviews Balfour has done, has he taken the opportunity to preach his gospel?" He asks Sophie.

'Ah, yeah, uh, I don't think the media, like, believe in the prediction, it just makes interesting filler. says Sophie. 'Balfour hasn't really been preaching to be honest, it's more like - "all the unworthy are going to hell" - that sort of thing, but he has been making what sounds a lot like threats to the abductor.'

Kris sighed. Whilst understandable, it wasn’t necessarily going to help their investigation.

”What has he been saying?” he asked.

Sophie giggles, 'Oh, just something about how the Lord's messenger, the Passover Angel I think, how it's going to...smite them, yes, definitely smite, a good old smiting.'

"What else have the reporters been saying?" asks Jocelyn. "Maybe we can get some intel from the statements they made or the questions they asked. If they have sources that know things we don't, what those sources tell them could be driving what they say, and we might deduce something from it."

"Interesting choice of strategy. Though one would think if this Passover Angel was going to smite the kidnappers he'd have done it by now." Simon says with a vaguely amused smirk. "But perhaps it will and do our job for us."

”We don’t approve of vigilante justice, divinely inspired or otherwise,” said Kris, dryly. “If there’s any smiting to be done, that’s our job.”

Sophie laughs nervously, she says to Jocelyn, 'There's not much more information out there than what we've released or Balfour's mentioned. But it's less than a day since the little girl was taken, it usually takes a day or so before the press start to find people willing to sell them stuff they don't reveal to the police.'

"Right," says Jocelyn. "Thank you, that's all I had to ask."

”Thanks, Sophie,” said Kris. “Keep me posted if anything comes up.”

He turned to Jocelyn and Simon. “I’ll head back over to Aylesbury to check out Lindsay’s emails. Let me know if you find out anything about this cult Balfour’s got himself involved in, OK?”

"Understood," says Simon. He turns to Jocelyn. "I believe the best place to start would be contacting a professor who specializes in Kenyan history, see if they know anything about this group."

"All right, let's go," says Jocelyn. "On the way there, I'll contact my boss at Five and see what he can tell us about Red Trumpet. Six must have something on them in order for them to be on the watchlist."

OOC,Yes, and that's also a hard success.

Kris,You're moving here: [url]https://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/pbp/viewtopic.php?f=469&t=7225#p241783[/url]

Simon and Jocelyn,You're moving here: [url]https://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/pbp/viewtopic.php?f=469&t=7224[/url]