IC - 12 - Back in the Station - Everyone

[Silver Priest]

ooc,Me either. Happy to speak with either Bates or Balfour.

[Mephistophilis]

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.

[Mr. Handy]

"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."

[Silver Priest]

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."

[Mr. Handy]

"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?"

[Philulhu]

”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.

[Mr. Handy]

"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."

[Mephistophilis]

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?'

[Mr. Handy]

"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."

[Philulhu]

”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?”

[Mephistophilis]

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.'

[Silver Priest]

"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."

[Philulhu]

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?”

[Silver Priest]

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.

[Mr. Handy]

"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."

[Philulhu]

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

[Mephistophilis]

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?

[Philulhu]

OOC,I think we have a few leads to trace - see if we can get updates on Lindsay’s phone, car and any card payments. We should be able to get alerts if any of those are spotted/used. Can we get an alert to all hotels/guest houses in the general direction Lindsay was travelling? Did we find out if her or Lewiston own any other property? We also have the work emails to follow up. Can we find out anything about the sect that John Balfour was involved in?

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,We already looked into property, and they didn't own anything else. We also need to find and talk to [b]Annette[/b].

[Silver Priest]

ooc,I like all those ideas. Especially the idea of alerting hotels and the like, and warning hospitals and clinics to be on the lookout for someone fitting Lindsay's description.And speaking to Annette, since maybe she knows somewhere she'd go. For something we can do proactively, maybe trying to find out more about Red Trumpet, or chase down any of Balfour's church members. Might be hard sells though, as we're supposed to be looking for Reginia.