Syn (The Merseyside Crime Series Book 2) by Malcolm Hollingdrake (best authors to read TXT) 📕

‘Jesus Christ!’ Snatching the phone, she answered it, the action instantly silencing the ringing. There was no one there. She grabbed her bag and removed her phone. Pausing she turned to look at Carlos. She had one missed call. It was from Carla and it had been received moments earlier. Her phone had been on mute whilst she worked.

Carlos had been warned by the police that this might happen. He took the phone back and slipped out the card he had been given. Even though he had been prepared, the sight of seeing the name appear still brought a sickening flush to his stomach. He knew now she was dead, and his upset turned to anger. He dialled the number April had given him.

It took eight minutes for the call to be connected to April’s phone. She listened, assured by the calm in Carlos’s voice. Noting the time and location, she thanked him, requesting he pass her number to Nicola. She asked them to contact her immediately should either receive another call. She informed the technical officer who had been working on tracking the phones. Again, there was nothing from live track to say Carla’s phone had been active.

April quickly moved through to the Incident Room. There was a lot of activity but there seemed little progress. A collection of photographs removed from the three missing phones had been accessed from the cloud. April had tried to grasp the mechanics but had given up, believing it to be too abstract for her to understand fully. The contents of the phones taken from Rodgers and Sutch had also been added to the gallery. Those images containing one or more of the deceased had been collated and place and time had been configured. The decision to view all photographs for the year had also been taken. Although it meant trawling through a plethora of images, it provided a clearer picture of the group’s social interaction. She sat at a computer and played through a slide show of the last known meetings to include Jennings, Sharpe and Groves.

Each image had been allocated a unique reference number. She added one of the numbers to the pad if the shot contained anyone in the background who seemed to be taking an interest in the group. It was her hope that when they were assessed, facial recognition software might identify someone known to the police. She knew it to be a long shot but at this stage when lives mattered, she was grasping at straws and prepared to use all of the resources at her disposal.

Skeeter admired the police drone that was placed on the work bench. It was the size that impressed. ‘Bloody hell, Steve, I could get to Ibiza on that for my hols this summer!’

‘Firstly, it’s not a drone as such, it’s a hexicopter. Count the prop arms. It can stay airborne even with a number of the propellors damaged or stopped owing to battery failure, making it safe to fly above crowds, built-up and sensitive areas. Litigation being what it is, you don’t want this thing falling from a great height into crowds. It has multi-uses for crowd control, car chases, locating suspects and search and rescue. We use it to monitor concert crowds as it has the ability to work in both day and night situations. Not too happy in the rain, however, but we have a new one on test that will be! This one can lock onto, and follow, a subject using a number of clever, technical components. These three domes,’ he pointed to the concave cups positioned on the three stalks that sat on the top of the machine, ‘allow it to link to a number of satellites and is accurate to a centimetre. It knows where it is in the world at all times and so do I when it’s flying out of sight. Back here at our base, all of that information is logged in real time and analysed to enable me to guide it.’

Skeeter raised her eyebrows as she looked carefully around the machine.

‘This camera here,’ he pointed to what appeared to be a small black box, ‘is a Z30 meaning it has a thirty times optical zoom. I’ll demonstrate later. This is an XTR thermal imaging camera, it’s radio metric …’ He stopped as the confused look appeared on her face. ‘We can pick people and animals out in the dark. Come on, we’ll fly it. You need to see it for real.’ He tossed her a high visibility jacket, a hard hat and some safety goggles. ‘Elf and safety. It’s the law!’

The copter stood on a spot marked ‘H’, a dedicated pad used for checking and calibrating. Skeeter watched as Steve conducted a pre-flight check before returning to the control panel. Slipping the straps over his head the panel sat on his chest.

‘You see the red flashing lights?’

‘Yep.’

‘It’s going through a sequence checking all its systems before flight. When they turn green, Amy’s ready.’

‘Amy?’

‘I’ve called it after Amy Johnson, the British aviatrix. Nice eh?’

‘She died on her last flight from Blackpool. Probably flew over where we are now if my history serves me correctly. Brave woman.’

‘I didn’t know that. Knowing that now, maybe I should change its name.’

The copter climbed effortlessly into the air and the undercarriage lifted two stork-like legs to the horizontal making Skeeter chuckle before it hovered above them. The sound was not as intense as she had expected.

‘We have to be conscious of Liverpool airport. This building is on the old airfield site but otherwise we can go to four hundred feet. It’s got its own transponder and those in air traffic can see and identify it as ours and therefore know it’s legitimate.’ He removed his hands before waggling them and grinned almost childlike as the drone hovered freely. ‘Well, not always! It will stay there until the batteries nearly run out and then