Never Forgotten by Jay Nadal

Author:Jay Nadal [Nadal, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-09T22:00:00+00:00

30

Karen made her way through the desks in the incident room, stopping with various officers to find out what they were working on, and to offer any advice to speed up the process. One of her team confirmed that Annette Buckley had been the victim of an attempted break-in three years ago that had been disturbed when Annette heard the back door being forced.

Other than that, there were no other reports on the system of Annette Buckley being a victim of any other crimes, and for the time being Karen would keep an open mind as to whether that was connected to her death. On the face of it, it appeared to be nothing more than an opportunist burglary, the likes of which happened up and down the country every day.

“How are we getting on, Jade?” Karen asked as she shunted aside stray paperwork on Jade’s desk and sat in the empty space. She knew the team worked tirelessly to chase down every lead and snippet of information. Glancing around, many officers appeared to be glued to their phones, and the rest stared at their computer screens.

“We’ve got seven officers out and about doing door to door and following up lines of enquiry. But we have already gathered information on the children’s home. Annette Buckley was in charge. She had a manager reporting into her, and there were between two and three assistants present at all times.”

“And how many children?” Karen asked, jotting down the salient points in her notebook.

“No more than twelve at a time. In total they housed sixty-four children over the time that they were open.”

Karen grimaced. She knew every one of them could offer a potential insight into Annette’s life and may have witnessed something that eventually led to her death.

As if reading Karen’s mind, Jade continued. “We’ve traced most of them. Unfortunately, five are deceased, sixteen are overseas, thirty-one moved to other parts of the country, and only four remain in London. We have eight that are unaccounted for, but we are trying to find them.”

Karen pursed her lips into a thin line and nodded slowly as she crunched through the numbers.

“Let’s start with the London names first, and then have others in the team trace and contact the thirty-one that moved to other parts of the UK. We can focus on the overseas search later. It’s a bloody big job. Let me know if we get stretched, and I can ask the DCI for a few more bodies to help us.”

“Do you think it will help?” Jade asked. “After all, many of them only had contact with Annette whilst they were kids. For all we know, Annette may have preferred the hands-off approach?”

Karen agreed with Jade’s theory. It was often the staff who had day-to-day contact with the children, so it would be key to track down Annette’s staff. “Have we uncovered anything else to help us build a picture of Annette’s life?”

“We are working on it. I’ve got someone looking at her husband. He had a colourful background.

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