Play@YSDC

7.20pm Friday 12th March 2010, High Wycombe Police Station

Nearly twenty five hours since Regina Balfour was abducted.

Jocelyn drives them back to the station, pulling up in the visitors' car park. They go in through the night entrance and find the station quiet. In the incident room there is one detective going through what look like witness statements and a uniformed officer at a computer. DS Bates is not there.

Seeing them enter the uniformed officer tells Kris that Balfour has been taken home and Bates has asked him to arrange to return Balfour's car.

Simon,[b]Simon[/b] notices a few spots of what could be blood on [b]Kris[/b]'s shirt, it reminds him to sneak a look at his forearms which are now feeling unbearably itchy. His arms seem a bit red with scratch marks but not too concerning

Simon frowns, reminding himself to pick up a cream on the way home. Bloody thing reminded him why he preferred to work behind a desk.Still, he brightens up at the opportunity for further research.

"You said the book was in the car?" He asks Kris. He looks like a child just before Christmas at the prospect of getting back to work at unraveling its secrets.

"Any luck with the IP addresses?" asks Jocelyn. "I think we should compose that email and send it off to Lindsay without delay. Then we need to sew a tracker into the backpack's lining. Time is of the essence."

Kris fetched the keys for Simon so he could go and fetch the book. Making sure to remind him to lock Balfour’s car. He didn’t want that going missing!

Turning back to Jocely, he said, ”The IP addresses for her email were a dead end. Nothing since Wednesday and nothing that might link her to wherever she’s hiding out. Emailing her might be a good idea, though. What do you think we should say?”

"If she hasn't checked it since Wednesday, then she's not likely to see it," says Jocelyn, "but it's still worth a try. We can tell her that Regina has diabetes, and that she will die without her insulin, which we have. We can then ask her to please respond so that we can work out arrangements for delivering the medicine to her."

Kris nodded. ”OK, let’s put something together but we’ll need DS Bates to approve it before we send it. Do you want to do the first draft while I get someone to check out the card that Lewiston used at the cafe?”

Kris went over to the PC using the computer and gave her the card number they had got for Lewiston. ”Can you get me a full report on that, ASAP? If it’s been used, I need to know where and when.”

While he was waiting for the PC to start her search, he looked over to the detective reading the witness statements. “Anything new to report?” he asked.

Simon heads off to the car and retrieves the book. While the others faff about with writing the email he gets to work trying to break the code.

"Dear Ms. Lindsay Peale," Jocelyn types into a text file. "We know you have Regina Balfour, and we know you have taken her out of concern for her welfare. We are as concerned as you are. You may be aware that Regina is diabetic and needs insulin, but the backpack with her medicine was left behind at the scene. We have collected it, and we need to get it to her very quickly, or she will die, and none of us want that to happen. Please respond to us so that we can discuss arrangements for delivering it." She will leave it to DS Bates to decide from whose email address to send it and the contact name to give to Lindsay.

Kris recognises the officer looking through witness statements, he's an old hand, plodding but reliable. The officer shakes his head, 'Nah, nothing new, just going through the Eden Centre statements, you know what doesn't make sense to me? This guy was police, he could have got away, I just don't understand it.'

The other officer is young and keen, it doesn't take her very long to track down the card. 'It's actually a prepaid credit card loaded with over a grand a few days ago. There are only two transactions. The first is a large bill for Tesco supermarket in the Eden Centre on Thursday. The second is a pre-authorisation from Enterprise car rental agency in Heathrow Airport, also from Thursday.'

Studying Balfour's book Simon is able to obtain the final numbers from the code. He notes that rather than Lewiston's cheap paperback of The Book of the Passover Angel, Balfour's is leather bound and hardback. It seems to be roughly the same as the paperback but with the addition of a reprint of the book of Jeremiah.

Simon,How is Simon going to break the code? See here for what he knows already: [url]https://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/pbp/viewtopic.php?f=469&t=7146&start=60#p239689[/url]

OOC,You actually have two email addresses (or even three) for Lindsay, her personal one, you got the address from her 'friend' at the flats, her work email, and the email account that Kris discovered.

”Car hire?” said Kris. “That’s got to be it! Can you get details of the vehicle and start running some ANPR checks? We need to find that car!”

"Right!" says Jocelyn. "Once we identify the car and get an idea of its approximate location, maybe I can use MI5's satellite imaging resources to try to find out precisely where it is. Of course, that won't work if it's in a garage, but she probably doesn't think we can tie the car to her, so she might not hide it if she was sloppy enough to use her own car at first."

OOC,Once we get approval to send the email, we should probably send it to all three addresses to increase the chances of it getting to her.

Finding an unoccupied desk, Simon chews on a pencil as he examines the code. He briefly considers asking for help, but dismisses the notion-- this is a puzzle he wishes to solve on his own. He starts by isolating the various numbers and seeing if he can discern anything from them. Do they have any significance to the various star charts and occult drawings Balfour seems to have been fixated on? Once again, he also tries to gauge the man's mood.

Psychoanalysis 26%,[dice]0[/dice] That's a hard. :) Hopefully it helps, as Simon is a bit smarter than myself.

Simon finds the star charts, pictograms and other bizarre content of the fourth chapter completely impenetrable. He reckons it would take weeks to understand, if that were even possible.

He is unable to find any relationship with the sequence of twenty six numbers except that they are all different and all less than or equal to twenty six, he can't see an obvious pattern.

Revisiting the text of chapter three however, he does find some odd inconsistencies in tone, it seems like some sections were, well, if not written by someone else then at least written by Balfour when he was in a different frame of mind. Most of the text is clearly the product of religious obsession, delusion Simon would call it, but some passages seem more lucid. These clearer passages are mostly present in the sections that recount Balfour's initial youth mission to Kenya and become less frequent and then eventually absent after he recounts meeting a 'prophet' there. The later, more lucid passages seem almost tortured, talking about the high cost to bringing about the will of the Lord. Simon thinks Balfour is perhaps more conflicted, more nuanced than he first appears.

----

The officer makes a call and they can see her having an animated conversation, 'DC Sapru, do you want to speak to the car rental place while I get on to traffic about ANPR? They've given me the number plate, 2010 black Ford Focus, prepaid by a man over the phone but rented to a woman around 9.30pm Thursday, name is recorded as Lindsay Peale.'

-----

While Kris is talking to the female officer the male policeman answers the phone and waves towards Jocelyn and Simon, 'I've got DS Bates on the line, checking in, anything you want to tell her?'

Kris took the receiver from the female PC and said, ’Hi, this is DC Kris Sapru. What can you tell me about the hire vehicle? I don’t suppose it was fitted with a tracker, by any chance?”

"We sure do," says Jocelyn, passing on a message to DS Bates about what happened at the cafe, her theory about low-grade biological or chemical weapons, their discovery of the rental car, the incident with Balfour, the recovery of his book, and her email idea.

Simon is initially rather frustrated as he realizes he will need to consult outside help after all. He makes plans to consult with the Maths department at the university; perhaps one of them could help crack the code. The subject had never been his strongest suit. Still, that gives him another avenue to explore; Reverend Balfour's educational background. Somehow he doubted these concepts were anything a layman could devise. So either he had advanced knowledge or someone was helping him with it. His prophet?

Finally being in a quiet place gives him an opportunity to get into his state of mind, and it proves most enlightening. His reluctance seemed obvious, suggesting he was to some extent not entirely a true believer. It also made it more likely in Simon's estimation that the man was participating in some sort of terrorist attack, though clearly not the mastermind. This "prophet "again may have been indoctrinating him, but he had enough misgivings to know to some extent that whatever he was planning was morally repugnant. Perhaps they could try to explore that angle with him, though he suspected any attempts to reason with the man would likely only have a chance when they returned his daughter to him. Hopefully that might show they had God's favor and get him to reveal more of what he was planning.

He returns to the others and reports what he's found when an opportunity presents itself.

"We've got cryptanalysts at Five who could have a go at that code," says Jocelyn when Simon tells her about it.

"A grand idea, we'll get in touch with them." The pace in which the investigation is progressing seems encouraging to Simon; he suspects they are close to a breakthrough.

Kris talks to the man from the car rental place. 'Uh, no GPS I'm afraid. I've given your colleague the number plate. It's a new black Focus. Prepaid by a guy a few days prior to collection, the lady presented a license in the name of Lindsay Peale, she was nervous, hesitated to show us it actually, I had to explain any car rental would need to see her license. We have CCTV, I'll see if I can pull a picture. She came in on foot around 9pm and left in the car about 10pm. I know this is about that Balfour girl, I didn't see any sign of her.'

After a few minutes he sends a CCTV still by email:



Kris compares the image to the picture of Lindsay Peale from her aunt:



-----

DS Bates gives her assent to emailing Lindsay although she seems pretty sceptical about any theories suggesting biological or chemical weapons.

OOC,Jocelyn could contact MI5 and pass on the code but she suspects it might not be until tomorrow that anyone would take a look. Kris is aware that he has Balfour's copy of the book illegally and he ought to return it, along with the car. Simon still has a water damaged copy of the book

”Ok, thanks,” said Kris, studying the photo. He was pretty sure it was the same woman but the stress of her situation made her look tired and drawn. “Once we’re in a position to let you know about the car we will, but we may need to hold onto it for a bit longer once we’ve found it. Evidence, you know.”

He rang off and asked the female PC to check the licence plate through the ANPR system to see if it had been picked up. As he did so, he messaged DS Bates to update her on progress and to get authority to share the updated vehicle details with B&Bs, hotels & guesthouses in the search area.