‘Fine. How are you coping?’ she asked.

  He shook his head but smiled. ‘You blew it. Too little, too late, Okeke. Come on, get your arse inside.’

  Minter was looking energised this morning, fresh faced, hair still glistening wet from his post gym-session shower. ‘Morning, boss,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘Morning,’ Boyd replied, dumping his jacket on the back of his chair.

  ‘I’ve got some good news for you, boss,’ Minter said. ‘Facebook… sorry…I mean, Meta have delivered on the data request already.’

  ‘That was bloody quick,’ Boyd said, astounded. These things usually took weeks or even months.

  Minter nodded. ‘Very cooperative indeed. The email arrived overnight. They’ve sent an unlock link to the Facebook page and we’ve got full access.’

  That was also new. The last time they’d applied, Facebook had simply given them a confusing dump of data, cloned from the page, complete with endless strings of gibberish HTML headers for them to pick their way through.

  ‘What, we can just log in and look?’ Boyd asked.

  Minter nodded.

  Boyd suspected that the collective social-media monster was upping its game to appear more cooperative. There’d been plenty of noise in the news recently around making them all – and, more importantly, their CEOs – personally liable for the toxic content that proliferated across their various platforms. The recent revelations about the Met and the widespread exchanges of unacceptable comments and images through Facebook, WhatsApp and the rest had stoked that debate to the point where virtual pitchforks and flaming torches were amassing.

  Of course Facebook was being super helpful.

  ‘Excellent. Well, guess what we’re all doing this morning.’ Boyd nodded at the double doors off the CID floor, leading to the stairwell and the canteen above. ‘Coffee first, though, eh?’

  Boyd waited until after lunch to gather them all into the Incident Room for a mutual show and tell. Minter had taken on Richard Leeder’s Messenger history. Warren and O’Neal had been given his extensive friends list to work through, and Okeke was sifting through the various status updates that ‘Rleeder’ had posted from 2007 when he’d set up his profile until 2011 when it all seemed to have gone quiet.

  ‘Right then,’ said Boyd. ‘So what have we learned about Mr Leeder this morning?’

  Minter began with the Messenger history. ‘There’s a lot of old chatter with various people about investment opportunities – derivatives, futures, sub-prime baskets… whatever the hell those are.’

  ‘Ah,’ cut in Magnusson. ‘So he’s one of those lovely people who helped tank the world stock market.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Minter. ‘But there’s a lot of that stuff and it’s very boring to wade through, I can tell you.’

  ‘Right. Is there anything case relevant, though?’ said Boyd.

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Minter raised a finger. ‘There’s an interesting chat history with one MarkyMark.’

  ‘That’s Mark Meadows,’ Warren said. ‘He’s on his friends list.’

  Boyd nodded at Minter. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It seems that Meadows reached out with a friend request back in 2008, which Leeder accepted. There’s not a lot of exchanges between them in the early days. Just a few “how’re you doing” pokes from Meadows here and there that Leeder doesn’t seem to have responded to.’

  ‘Yeah, that was during the early days of social media,’ said Boyd. ‘I’m not sure any of us knew what to do with Facebook back then.’

  ‘Right,’ said Minter. ‘They would probably have been in touch by phone at that time. Anyway, not much happens in the messages until 2010. Then it gets a little more interesting… This is one dated twenty-first of February, 2010.’ Minter cleared his throat.

  MarkyMark: Rick, we really need to talk about Andy. Urgent.

  Rleeder: What about him?

  MarkyMark: He’s pretty much hit rock bottom.

  Rleeder: Not my concern. He’s a pisshead. I try to have as little to do with him as possible.

  MarkyMark: He’s been tapping me for money.

  Rleeder: Ignore him.

  MarkyMark: It’s not that easy. He’s got a mouth on him.

  Rleeder: So you need to fucking remind him.

  MarkyMark: I have. But he knows I’ve got money. And more to the point, he knows you’ve done particularly well, mate. Just saying…we need to be careful, yes?

  Minter looked up from his notes. ‘There’s no further response from Leeder. Mark nudges him a couple more times in that particular exchange, but Leeder’s silent.’

  ‘We need to be careful,’ repeated Okeke. ‘That’s pretty telling.’

  ‘There’s more,’ said Minter. ‘This exchange is from September twenty-third, 2011…’

  MarkyMark: So, still no sign of Andy. I can’t believe he didn’t turn up for the reunion this time. I can’t get hold of him. It’s like he’s vanished. Has he contacted you? Or Robby?

  Rleeder: He’s probably drunk himself under a bus, the useless twat.

  MarkyMark: You didn’t answer me. Has he contacted you or Robin?

  Rleeder: No. And, look, don’t contact me again. I think I’m about done with these reunions.

  Minter looked up. ‘That’s it as far as messages goes. Mark doesn’t contact him again.’

  ‘Does Richard Leeder have a Robin in his friend’s list?’ asked Boyd.

  O’Neal shook his head. ‘But there were two Robins in that school registration list. We can see if Meadows was friends with a Robin on Facebook, though.’

  ‘Okay, look at that, asap,’ said Boyd. He turned to Okeke. ‘Does Leeder’s profile info give us anything?’

  She spread her notes out in front of her. ‘He’s pretty lean with his bio stuff, guv. He’s male, single, UK based. There’s mention of a couple of previous city employers but nothing about school or uni. It’s pretty much the same stuff as his LinkedIn profile.’

  ‘And what about status updates?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘The usual “how cool am I?” posts, showing off nice cars, nice places, nice bling. But then come 2011 there’s nada. No updates or no responses to any other posts. He doesn’t even share a funny cat meme. From summer 2011 onwards it’s just a dead page.’

  ‘And that was about the same time that Meadows went missing?’ said Boyd.

  ‘Right,’ she replied.

  ‘Okay, thoughts, people, please?’ Boyd prompted.

  ‘He’s body number three?’ volunteered Magnusson.

  ‘He killed Westfield and scarpered?’ offered Warren.

  ‘Maybe Westfield found Richard Leeder, confronted him for whatever reason, then Leeder killed Westfield to shut him up? And he went on to kill Mark Meadows too?’ suggested Okeke.

  Minter looked at her. ‘Maybe he felt that Meadows knew too much? Was Leeder getting twitchy? Maybe he dealt with them both. One after the other. Job done?’

  ‘Then Leeder seems to have vanished,’ said Boyd. ‘Like Magnusson said, he could be our last John Doe.’

  ‘Or he’s left the country,’ added O’Neal. ‘Or just gone to ground?’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Warren reminded them.

  ‘Yes, Warren. Duly noted,’ said Boyd. ‘However, it still leaves us Robin. Okay, Boy Wonder, we have two Robins on the school list. You’re with O’Neal. I want them tracked down asap. All right?’

  They nodded in unison.

  ‘Right, team, if we find the correct Robin and he’s alive and well…’ Boyd shrugged. ‘Then quite possibly the remaining Doe sitting on the slab is Leeder. If we’ve got a missing Robin on our hands… then the more recent body, presumably, is his.’

  He pushed his chair back. ‘So let’s find Robin.’

  32

  ‘We have Robin James Mitchell and Robin Whitehead,’ began O’Neal. He and Warren were standing side by side, both equally eager to present what they had.

  ‘Whitehead’s the interesting one, chief,’ said O’Neal.

  Boyd closed the ‘side effects of chemotherapy’ tab on his browser. ‘What have you got on him?’

  ‘He’s a misper, sir,’ said Warren. ‘And a relatively recent one at that.’

  ‘Reported when?’

  ‘Two years ago.’ Warren indicated Boyd’s computer. ‘Have a look.’

  Boyd pulled up LEDS, navigated his way to the missing persons database and tapped the name in.

  A recent picture of Whitehead popped up. He was a well-tanned man in his mid forties, his sandy-coloured hair whipped up by a stiff breeze and revealing a pronounced widow’s peak. He was wearing a T-shirt with some indecipherable sports logo on it. It looked as though he was sitting in the cockpit of a yacht, a can of beer in one hand, the wheel of a helm in the other.

  ‘Looks like he’s living the good life,’ said O’Neal. ‘Or he was anyway.’

  ‘He’d been living abroad for the last fifteen years or so,’ said Warren. ‘In Qatar.’

  Boyd scanned the report quickly. ‘He was reported missing by…?’

  ‘His sister. Caroline Hussain,’ replied Warren. ‘She lives out there too. She’s married to a local and sells property. Robin had been out there since 2006.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Working for Caroline, selling apartments. According to the report, she said that in 2021 he was offered a job in London. He flew back to start work and she’d not been able to get in touch with him for several months after that, so she reported him missing to the Met.’

  ‘And we know for sure he arrived in the UK?’

  ‘There’s been no follow-up by the Met,’ said O’Neal. ‘It looks as if they just logged it on the system and let it sit.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Boyd grunted. ‘All right, thanks, you two.’ He dismissed them with a nod. ‘Good job.’

  He read through the misper report again. It was light on detail and he decided it would be quicker and more efficient to contact this Caroline Hussain directly. He guessed Qatar was around four or five hours ahead, so it was okay to call, and he dialled the contact number given.

  The phone rang half a dozen times before the call was picked up by a smooth-sounding female voice.

  ‘Good afternoon. Hussain-Whitehead Real Estate, how can I help you?’

  ‘I’m after Caroline Hussain,’ he said.

  ‘Speaking,’ she replied.

  ‘Ah, Hello. I’m DCI Boyd from East Sussex CID,’ he said. ‘I’m following up on the missing persons report you made for your brother.’

  He heard a sharp intake of breath. ‘Well, it’s about bloody time. It’s been two years!’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that, Ms Hussain…’ Boyd began, inwardly cursing the Met.

  ‘Sorry? It’s absolutely bloody disgraceful! I’ve had no updates from you. No one’s reached out, nothing. Not that I’m surprised given what I’ve read about the London police recently.’

  Her accent was a polished version of London estuary, but Boyd noted a few transatlantic vowels creeping in. The American accent, Boyd mused, was like a cold; rub shoulders with too many Yanks and, before you know it, it’s a ‘sidewalk’ and not a ‘pavement’.

  ‘I’m with Sussex Police,’ he replied. ‘I’m not from the Met.’ He resisted the urge to apologise on their behalf. The Met was a mess right now, fighting fires over frequently surfacing reports of misogyny, abuse, racism… and more. ‘As I said, I’m calling to talk to you about your brother, Robin.’

  ‘Have you found him?’ she breathed.

  The third body hadn’t been officially ID’d yet. He strongly suspected it was either Richard or Robin – but… ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘I just want to go over the report with you. Get a fresh take on it.’

  He heard her huff on the other end of the line. ‘It’s a bit late for a fresh take, isn’t it? Have you people done anything to find him yet?’

  Boyd pulled a face. From the look of the case file, not a thing had been done. And, by the sound of it, Ms Hussain was still convinced she was talking to someone from the Met. He doubted mentioning, yet again, that he was calling from a different force would do much to win her round.

  ‘I’ve been tasked with working on a couple of cold cases,’ he lied. ‘Can we review the details of your initial report and go from there?’

  ‘It’s all there in front of you, isn’t it?’ She sighed. ‘Or have you lot lost the paperwork too?’

  ‘No, it’s right here, on my screen,’ he replied. ‘But since it’s been a couple of years, maybe between us, we can pull out some fresh, helpful details? See if we can make some headway?’ He was hoping the collaborative approach might mitigate things.

  ‘Okay,’ she said reluctantly. ‘All right. Let’s do this again. What do you want to know?’

  Half an hour later, after assuring her they were now actively investigating Robin’s disappearance, he hung up and reviewed the extensive notes he’d taken. He’d probed further into the past than the previous investigating officer had, back to Robin’s childhood. Caroline hadn’t queried that; on the contrary, she’d seemed encouraged that someone, at last, was taking her brother’s disappearance seriously.

  ‘Robin Whitehead left Harsham Grammar in 1993 and spent a couple of years doing the gap-year thing and travelling extensively,’ Boyd began. ‘He visited Bali, India and the Philippines before coming back to the UK to begin a business studies degree at Warwick. In ’98 he got a job working as a sales rep for a print supplies company based in Reading. He became an office manager there in 2001… which was all very exciting stuff, but he was getting itchy feet.’

  Boyd looked up from his notes and glanced around the table. They all gazed dutifully back. Satisfied, he continued. ‘He stuck with that until 2006, then he contacted his sister, Caroline Hussain. She’d gone out to Qatar a couple of years earlier and was doing pretty well for herself. She offered to put him up, introduce him to some people and get him a job. So out he went, hoping to better his luck.’

  ‘You can’t go wrong out there,’ said O’Neal. ‘Everyone makes a fortune.’

  ‘Well, he joins her and tries out a number of different jobs before settling on crewing and maintaining luxury yachts, which he did for about ten years…’ Boyd pulled out the misper photo that showed Whitehead helming a boat with the can of beer in his hand.

  ‘So, he’s out of the country when Meadows and Westfield go missing?’ said Minter.

  ‘Right. But,’ Boyd cautioned, ‘we can’t yet rule out that he didn’t go back and forth for a few days during that period. Anyway…’

  ‘We can track his Facebook page,’ said O’Neal. ‘Who doesn’t post about where they’re flying off to, right?’

  ‘I’ll come to his Facebook page in a moment,’ said Boyd. ‘It’ll be going on our action list.’

  So, anyway… according to Caroline, in 2018, he told her he wanted more of a career.’

  ‘Was he nuts?’ O’Neal chipped in. ‘He was living the life out there!’

  ‘Well, he asked if he could work at Caroline’s real estate company,’ Boyd continued. ‘She agreed to take him on but, in her words, that turned out to be a bit of a disaster. He was her employee, but also her older brother, so, as you can imagine, the sibling rivalry kicked in and she says he became difficult to manage. They kept having rows in front of the other staff; it wasn’t working out, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘Then, in 2020, she said an old friend of his had offered him a “decent opportunity” back home in the UK. She said he got a flight to London in July 2021. And he did make a bit of a thing of it all on Facebook, according to her.’

  Boyd glanced down at his notes again. ‘She said he put up a nasty post about how shitty it had been working for her, used some vaguely racist language about her husband and said that he was “itching to come home and make a new start with a proper job”. She was pretty pissed off about that, and quite rightly so.’

  ‘Where was his new start?’ asked Minter.

  ‘She doesn’t know. Just that it was some job in London. A proper one, he told her,’ Boyd said.

  ‘I can see why she was pissed off,’ said Okeke.

  ‘So he packs up and prepares to head back to the UK, posting on his page about a “coming home” party at an Aussie pub in Shepherds Bush: the Walkabout. She said she remembered that because she’d visited it with him the previous time they were both in the country together. The last posts he made on his page were from this party.’ Boyd placed his notes down on the conference table. ‘And that was the last she heard from him.’

  ‘How long after the party did she report him missing, boss?’ Minter asked.

  ‘A couple of months,’ Boyd replied. ‘She said it took her a few weeks to calm down before she tried reaching out to him. When she didn’t get an answer and there were no further posts on Facebook, she became worried and made the call.’

  ‘And the Met didn’t follow it up?’ asked Minter.

  Boyd shook his head. ‘I can understand why. He wasn’t a minor. He wasn’t female. He was clearly pissed off with his sister and therefore not a priority.’

  ‘Just another family row, it’ll sort itself out,’ said Okeke. ‘No further action.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Boyd said. ‘And she said that she’s contacted the Met a number of times over the last two years, but they’ve more or less fobbed her off with similar reasoning.’

  ‘So, sir? What about the new job opportunity?’ asked Warren. ‘Are there any details at all?’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘Our next step will have to be another data request from Facebook. Meta… whatever they are. We need to find out who might have turned up for the gathering at the pub. Presumably those in the know would be on his friends list.’

  ‘What about their parents?’ asked Okeke.

  ‘I’ve got their details. According to his sister, they’re just as worried as she is. They’ve also been nagging the Met and got nowhere. Maybe you can have a chat with them, Okeke?’