A Killer in the Family by Gytha Lodge

Author:Gytha Lodge [Lodge, Gytha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405947060
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2023-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

33

O’Malley sat back in his chair a little wearily, trying to think of other ways to track down Dara Cooley. Following his ideas on the Cooley boys, he found himself thinking, again, of cars – but this time in relation to Dara Cooley.

ANPR data was typically stored for three years if it wasn’t related to a high-profile inquiry. At that point, data protection laws required it to be deleted, which at first glance sounded like a dead end. It was profoundly unlikely that Dara Cooley was still driving the same car he’d had when he’d left his family and vanished twenty-eight years ago.

A quick check showed him that Dara had driven a Ford Orion, and though he had never sold it or declared it scrapped, he’d presumably just run it into the ground and never notified anyone. Perhaps because keeping it off-record made it – and him – harder to trace.

But that meant he’d probably driven it for a few years after he disappeared, assuming he hadn’t simply taken the plates off. If they could somehow track it to a new location, they might have an idea of where to look for him. And that’s what O’Malley was now thinking about.

ANPR data would have been deleted, but individual reports compiled for statistical analysis wouldn’t have been. These would have been reports into cars pulled over. Some assistant chief constable might ask the intelligence team to compile data into, for example, cars pulled over with illegal tyre treads or faulty brake lights and see if it was a rising trend. All those reports still existed, but although O’Malley could download them, open them up and search them, none of their findings would appear as entries on the database. They were just statistical data rather than deliberately held records of crimes associated with a person or licence plate. So what it came down to was asking himself whether he was willing to waste potentially hours of his time opening up and searching hundreds of records for the chance that Dara Cooley had been pulled over at some point.

With a sigh, he searched for all compiled reports run anywhere in the country from 2 February 1987, the day that Dara Cooley had disappeared, until the same date in 1992. He’d limit himself to five years of arduous searching for now.

The search came back with six hundred and eighteen reports.

He resisted the urge to close the search down again, and opened the first one up, which had been compiled just four days after Dara Cooley had vanished.

‘Just do the first fifty,’ he told himself, ‘and you can have a coffee and a Hobnob.’

It wouldn’t take too long to do each one, he told himself. Just open it, put the licence plate into the search box, hit enter and then close it again.

That first one, a report into tail lights, took him about thirty seconds to search. No result.

He had the second one opened up and searched within a minute. He barely looked at the

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