Secrets and Lies Part V
02 Jul 2017Jellicoe
Jannine Slaney was in a cold fury as she bolted down a sandwich and her millionth coffee of the day, they had missed him by minutes, literally minutes. His car had left the hotel just five minutes before the first police units had arrived on the scene, ten minutes later there quarry had ditched that car and hijacked another. The camera network had picked him up entering a stage costume shop twenty minutes after that, then nothing. The trail was cold and a Federal spy was on the loose somewhere in New Rossyth with a disguise good enough to fool the camera network. If those wankers at AIS had called the police in as soon as they'd lost their man she'd have had him in a cell by now she thought savagely, instead they'd pissed about for over five hours doing fuck knows what and even after all that she'd still nearly got the bastard. Slaney had extracted some small measure of satisfaction from torturing the woman this Jellicoe had seduced into giving him a bolt hole for the night. When it became clear that the vacuous creature was far more concerned about her husband finding out what she'd been up to that a potentially dangerous foreign agent being on the run Slaney's temper had snapped and she had threatened the woman with all manner of charges, she was still half tempted to press some of them, though the woman had known nothing of any use her prevarication and demands for secrecy had wasted valuably time in an investigation where every second counted. Slaney smiled coldly at the memory of the weeping, nearly hysterical wreck she had left in the interview room. The costume shop owner had been little more help, yes he had served the man in question, no he couldn't remember what he had bought. He was lying but it didn't take a genius to work it out, the fact that the man had vanished told her it had to be facial enhancement packs and quite possibly some body pads as well."Nothing at all on the camera's Jack?" She asked her surveillance expert.]]"No. A lot of the camera's around there are on the blink, I've got programs and people trying to pick up anything from what there is but it'll take time I'm afraid."
"Time is something we don't have." Slaney murmured half to herself. "Any ideas Deena?"
"I still don't think he'll be off world. He'll need ID or a contact for that and he hasn't any we're not on to. He's clearly very analytical and emotionally very cold, the way he seduced that woman hours after leaving his girlfriends flat just to get himself a hiding place for the night shows that, I'd say he's borderline psychopathic." The profiler said.
"Oh great." George Owen interrupted. "Not just a spy but a psycho on the loose."
"Most psychopaths don't kill for the sake of it or for pleasure." Deena replied. "This man clearly doesn't. I don't think he'll kill unless he has no choice but if he has to he won't hesitate, so if you do end up facing him with a gun I wouldn't wait to shoot first."
"Where do you think he'll be?" Slaney asked impatiently.
Deena breathed deeply and thought hard, profiling was not an exact science and she could be wrong, she knew that Slaney and the rest of the team knew that but in an important case and with all other tools failing she knew her opinion could make or break the investigation.
"He'll be looking for somewhere he can blend in, somewhere new arrivals won't raise any eyebrows and somewhere his accent won't stand out." She took another deep breath. "If I had to go out on a limb I'd say Merewick, that's where the migrant labour and ship crews with a few days to kill tend to stay.
"Okay." Slaney said decisively. "Get on to your snouts, we're looking for a man with a Fed accent, Earth if they recognise it, about 6'3" tall who arrived yesterday. Not much to go on but it's a start. Jack focus on anything you can do with the cameras in that part of the city and get uniform on it, highly visible presence with a lot of stop and search. Let's make it as hard as possible for the bastard."
The room began to empty. "George have you got a minute?" Slaney asked her deputy.
"Guv?" He asked when they were alone.
"Talk to your people George, I want a result on this one."
"My people Guv?"
"You know what I mean George." Slaney replied impatiently. "You're the best informed officer in this city because yo u know the major villains, you talk to them, you drink in the same pubs, even grew up on the same street as one of them. Put the screws on them, let them know I'm not pissing about with this. That's all."
Alone again Slaney leaned back in her chair, took a swig of her coffee, lit a cigarette and thought. She remembered her first day on CID and the advice her inspector gave her. 'Never ignore your instincts.' He had told her. 'However much technology you have there's always a place for a coppers nose.' Right now her nose was telling her that this case stank. A top Federal spy had been on the run for around sixteen hours? No way. He'd have put in a call to his handler and been picked up within hours, it was simply inconceivable that he had just been abandoned like this, then there was the initial bungled arrest by AIS, foreign agents were not picked up like that, they were used to feed disinformation to whoever their employers might be. She flicked through Jellicoe's file, it was painfully thin but what there was simply didn't fit the profile of an intelligence agent, spies were grey men, unremarkable and unlikely to attract attention, not at all like the flamboyant playboy she was looking at. She pushed the thought aside, questions for another time, and however much she might dislike them she had to admit that the intelligence service were very good at their job.