"… unmarked police cars and watchmen all around the perimeter. Nobody will be able to go in or out without us knowing it." Chas concluded proudly, as he peered over a plan with little cross and arrows, determining where the different officers would be stationed. He looked at the couple standing next to him.
"Sounds good." Dempsey was double checking the map, he wanted to be two hundred percent sure that Tom and Jess would be safe. "Where did you say the guard will be in the back garden?" he demanded.
Detective Sergeant Thompson came forward and went through all the details with him again. He was the detective in charge of the case since Maggie's abduction and he was very capable which was the reason why the superintendant Jarvis had trusted him with the case even if some people might have said he lacked experience. He was now presenting his ideas to Dempsey.
"I think we should start looking for the men who kidnapped Margaret Duncan before going after the brain of this organisation. The henchmen should be easier to locate and maybe they will lead us to their boss."
Dempsey nodded "Why not."
The sergeant went on. "The fact that they knew where to ambush the girls makes me think that their plan was well thought-out. They were masked, and avoided the streets under video surveillance. They knew exactly what they were doing." Thompson exposed his view.
"No they didn't." Harry said matter-of-factly. She wasn't even looking at them. She was sitting, her eyes fixed somewhere on the ground, a finger running on her lips.
Dempsey smiled, this was the Harry he knew. She must have been listening to them for a while thinking about the facts, trying to get things together. And now she had reached her conclusion and he was pretty sure that she would be right again. Thompson was looking at her nervously. After waiting a few seconds he asked with an uneasy laugh "How do you know that?"
She eventually looked up. "Well they took the wrong girl. I mean even if Jessie and…" she stopped a second, it was too hard to say Maggie's name. "...even if the girls dyed their hair a week ago, if the men had been following our daughter for a while they would have been aware of it and in any case they would have recognized her face. No, it seems to me that this was the first time they were seeing the girls."
"So how did they know your daughter was the blonde one?" Thompson felt a bit lost.
"Wasn't" Dempsey reminded him.
"Not anymore but she used to be!" he insisted.
Harry frowned slightly. "I don't know, maybe they got outdated information. If they are part of this New York group in Coltrane's league, maybe they arrived not long ago and asked questions about our children to save time." She suggested. "Think about it, Maggie spent the night by us, so even if they were ambushed to see our daughter when she got out in the morning, they would have seen Maggie and thought it was her. Then I drove the girls near Hyde Park so that they needn't take the bus. If they followed us they had no reason to doubt the blonde girl was Jessica." Harry shook her head miserably. "I should have dropped them off at the door of the college."
DS Thompson smiled sympathetically. "It wouldn't have changed anything. They would have waited for another occasion. There's no way you could have foreseen this."
James could have sworn that Harry's eyes flickered in his direction at those last words, but when he looked at her, she was staring at her cup of coffee. Was she blaming him for what had happened? He gulped but dismissed the idea straight away, he had to keep concentrate.
"I think we should start looking for that snitch whoever he was. The rats are always at the bottom of the organization; once we find him, we'll be able to go up."
Thompson nodded his approval. "Right."
"Airports check on passengers since 9.11. You should start looking for people with criminal records who flew from New York to London in the last two weeks." Dempsey added.
"I'm on it." Thompson launched his computer, happy to have finally an idea so as where to start. "If you're right, we should find something soon. If they're not careful it's only a matter of time before they do another mistake."
A matter of time… Harry checked her watch. "Nearly three." She informed her husband.
"Right, we should be going." he answered.