Free Touch by Mark Sennen Page B

city that Kelly shared with a friend – this was the day before Kelly went missing – but by the time officers arrived it was over. According to the friend it was something to do with Kelly’s glamour modelling. A guy had turned up demanding to see Kelly and she wouldn’t let him in. There was a row in the street and a neighbour called the police. When they arrived a man known to them as David Forester was hanging about outside. He was allowed to leave when Kelly insisted she was not making a formal complaint. Forester had already received a conviction for ABH in late spring of this year. Managed to avoid a custodial, got a CSO instead. Before that he had a caution for possession. Let’s see, yes, registered address is in North Prospect. A right swillite by the sound of it.’
    ‘If he’s implicated there is going to be some serious press heat,’ Riley said.
    ‘Yes, but for once it won’t be on us. Should have been banged up.’
    ‘Go on,’ Savage said. ‘There’s more.’
    Enders continued reading from the notes.
    ‘Seems like Kelly told the flatmate she was going to a friend’s house for the weekend, something she often did. The next day was a Friday and the flatmate came back to find Kelly gone.’
    ‘And she didn’t worry because she thought she had gone away?’
    ‘Precisely.’ Enders pointed at the screen again. ‘It wasn’t until Monday evening that she called Kelly’s parents to ask them if Kelly had been there. They said that they hadn’t seen her and in turn called us.’
    ‘Appears we did bugger all,’ Riley said.
    ‘They were told to call again at the end of the week and did so. Seems like someone then decided the girl had gone off to London modelling. She mentioned something about an agent to the flatmate and in the weeks before she had fallen out with her parents. Further investigation led to the incident being classified as low risk with a flag to review the case and reassess it at a later date. As of today it doesn’t seem as if that has happened.’
    Savage could understand why. The amount of resources needing to be deployed was not inconsiderable. They would need to get search teams into Donal’s property, obtain the necessary permission to access landline and mobile telephone records and bank accounts, check with the ferry companies to see if she had hopped on the cross channel link from Plymouth, maybe even widening that to include all UK points of exit... Now those resources would be forthcoming, but Savage wondered if the officers on Kelly’s case had been hesitant in taking the investigation to the next stage because of cost worries or if the error was down to negligence.
    ‘This is all news to me,’ Savage said. ‘I think I was on holiday at the time.’
    ‘You’d flown out to Brazil to meet your husband,’ Riley said. ‘I remember the sun, sea and sand on the postcard made us all depressed.’
    ‘You shouldn’t have transferred down here if you like the weather sunny and warm.’
    ‘It was a little too hot in London, I was in danger of getting burnt,’ Riley said, without explanation. ‘Anyway, where does Forester fit into all this?’
    ‘I am on the case, Darius,’ Enders said. He typed and clicked and the results of a new search for male mispers came up. He pointed to the screen. ‘David Forester, twenty-nine, of North Prospect. Reported missing by his parents on the fifteenth of August.’
    ‘Damn. Why didn’t that get linked in with Kelly’s case?’ Savage said. The date was several weeks after Kelly’s disappearance, but there should have been some sort of flag in the system to draw attention to the previous incident; a definite mistake on somebody’s part.
    ‘Someone missed the connection,’ Riley said. ‘For a mispers case it doesn’t seem much of an oversight, but now we’ve got a body...’
    ‘Exactly. Forester is now the prime suspect,’ Savage said. ‘Right, we need to generate some action points on this. One, get family liaison to