The picture juddered for a split-second and then the drama was back on. Samia was picking up her pace slipping between parked cars. In the background, visible but out of focus, the Asian man took something out of his pocket and put it to his ear.
“He’s on his mobile.”
The team watched Samia taking a final look in the direction of the Asian man before dashing into one of the glass-encased stairwells, which gave access to the ground floor car park.
“And finally this,” exclaimed Barry. The image changed again to a low-lit underground car park. The view was wider and longer, taking in a considerable amount of the car park, but the action being played out was clearly unmistakeable. Samia sprinted out of the stairwell like a chased rabbit, looking back over her shoulder. From out of nowhere, in fact a blur at first to the right of the screen, another Asian man, taller and much stockier than the first, steamed into her as if she was on a rugby field, bowling her over onto the concrete floor. He was on top of her in a split-second, straddling her prostrate body, one hand covering her mouth to prevent her crying out and the other in a clenched fist pummelling her upper torso. Seconds later the man who had been initially following her emerged from the stairwell at considerable pace, slipped on a wet patch at the bottom of the stairs, caught himself, re-balanced, and joined in the attack. It was all over in thirty seconds. Samia’s body quickly slumped under the onslaught. The stocky man pushed himself off her and then sprinted away out of camera view, whilst the first Asian man stood over her looking around, but there was no one else in sight. Less than a minute later a white van entered the picture and pulled directly across Samia blocking the cameras view. Barry gazed over the room. He could see that all eyes were fixed; the detectives seemed unable to pull themselves away from the scenes unfolding before them. He turned back to the screen in time to see the two Asian men bundling Samia’s limp figure towards the rear of the van. As if she was a rag doll they slung her into the back. The doors were slammed shut, both men jumped into the front of the van and then it was tearing away.
“All that took less than three minutes,” Barry told them. “The last footage I have is this.” He ran the picture. It was a short snippet of the white van heading towards the exit of the ground floor car park, at the point before it entered the major road system around the Meadowhall Centre. Barry freeze-framed the close-up image, which was obviously below the security camera. Clearly visible were the faces of the two Asian men who had attacked and abducted Samia.
The eyes of the murder squad darted between the e-fit images on the incident board and the TV screen — there was no doubting that the facial features were an exact likeness. Just as important was the index number on the front number plate of the van — it was the same registration as that on the VR 12 vehicle document which had been recovered from the Hassans.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DAY TWENTY EIGHT: 20th September.
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Clicking the remote ‘stop’ button Hunter stood transfixed beside the large TV monitor at the front of the incident room; it had not yet been removed from the department. It had been the third time he had watched the attack and abduction of Samia.
He shook his head as the later, violent images played out again inside his head. He couldn’t help but cringe as he thought about the sheer brutality, which had been meted out to her. Samia was such a slight young woman. She’d not resisted or put up a fight and yet those two men had beaten her mercilessly and tossed her into the back of the van like she had been a sack of rubbish. He also reflected upon what Grace had told him from her attendance at Samia’s post mortem; of the catalogue of injuries inflicted upon her and the violation she had suffered prior to her death.
What he’d like to do to those two bastards.
As he shook himself out of his reverie he found himself trying to squeeze the very life out of the plastic TV remote. He found himself flushing as he glanced around, hoping no one had noticed as he set it back down on the trolley.
Hunter made his way back to his desk, dropped down onto his chair and began to immerse himself in the paperwork which had accumulated over the past couple of days; the majority of it was written off ‘actions’ or reports as a result of his team’s footwork and foraging. As he pored over their content he recounted what they had learned to date.
The MIT teams had not eased up since Barry had discovered the CCTV footage; the investigation was now at the manhunt stage. The blown up footage of the two Asian men had been given to the Intelligence Unit and they had circulated it throughout the South Yorkshire Districts as well as neighbouring police forces. On the back burner was a visit to the Crimewatch studios, but they wanted to exhaust their own enquiries first. The pictures were so good that everyone was confident it wouldn’t be long before they were caught.
Simultaneous checks were being carried out at scrap dealers and car dismantlers for the white Renault van. It hadn’t been found dumped and burnt out after all this time, and therefore experience from other murder enquiries told them that if it wasn’t still secreted away somewhere, these were the usual disposal places for such evidence.
Also, now that they had the fixed time and date parameters of the attack and kidnapping of Samia the technicians at force headquarters had been able to make a quick examination of the SIM card memory and mapping hardware inside Mohammed Hassan’s seized mobile. There the ‘wizards’ had got a crucial breakthrough. From the downloaded data they had discovered activity on his phone within minutes of his daughter’s abduction and traced a name and phone number. On Mohammed’s database they had the name Ari registered in his contact details. They had also confirmed that the same number had been dialled persistently during a number of days following Samia’s kidnapping, with the last call recorded at ten-thirty-three pm on Friday the first of August. Since then there had been no activity to this number and the technicians were reporting that the line was now dead; the phone switched off — but more than likely dumped, especially since the raid at the Hassans.
Hunter recalled what Kerri Ann Bairstow had told them about seeing a white van driving away from the country park either a Friday or Saturday. He had no doubt in his mind that this was the date when they had dumped Samia’s body into the lake, and that meant she had been held captive for almost five days.
He felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickle; the post mortem report had shown that she had clearly been raped and butchered. He couldn’t imagine psychologically what she must have gone through during all that time. Her suffering must have been off the Richter scale he thought to himself.
Hunter continued picking over the reports. He knew from enquiries that the mobile number which Mohammed had contacted was a ‘pay and go’ phone bought in Sheffield with cash, and the details of the purchaser entered on the system were false. Nevertheless from discussions during briefings the murder squad were confident Ari was the real name Mohammed had entered into his contacts register.
Together with the photographs from the CCTV footage Hunter knew this was as good as they were going to get.
“Hunter didn’t you hear what I said?”
Grace calling out his name broke his concentration. He looked up from his paperwork and caught her glaring at him. She was holding the handset of the phone away from face pointing at the receiver.
“Sorry Grace I was elsewhere.”
“Yeah I could see,” she replied. “I just said they’ve found the white van.” There was a high pitched note of elation in her voice. “It’s Communications on the phone. Uniform have found it at a car dismantler’s in Rotherham. A low loader is on its way to pick it up and SOCO are heading out there.”