Missing Years ( Part 4)

The two young Police Constables walked into Romford Police Station.

“Well that was a waste of time”

“Well at least we found out that someone called Samuels used to live there, all be it 15 years ago!”

They approached the sergeant’s desk.

“Morning Sarge, no joy on that Ray Samuels visit”

A voice shouted out from another room along the corridor.

“Bloody long time since I’ve heard that name mentioned!”

“Why, what do you know about Ray Samuels?”

A small bearded man came out of an office no bigger than a broom cupboard; he looked as though he had just got out of bed. Hair was uncombed and greasy, he was wearing a shirt that had obviously seen better days and a pair of trousers that at some stage had fitted him, but certainly not now, the belt was straining under the weight of his belly.

“I keep forgetting I’m working with a load of kids, none of you would have been around when Ray Samuels was the talk of this station!”

The two P.C,s and the young Sergeant looked at him rather confused.

“About 25 years ago we had a bloody man hunt on our hands here. A young guy, Ray Samuels, went missing. He was late twenties, good looking lad, went out for a run and never came back”

The young sergeant looked at the older man in a somewhat irritable way “AND”

“And, nothing, we never found him. Disappeared off the face of the earth, no body, no clues, nothing. It was like he disappeared into thin air. We thought at first he’d turn up with some bird somewhere, as I said he was a good looking bloke, there was a rumour he was carrying on with a bird from work, but that didn’t turn out to be true. Then we thought maybe he’d done a runner, maybe he was in debt or something. But nope, he had loads of money in the bank. We searched for him for years, never stopped, there were a few sightings here and there but nothing ever came of them. So in the end we gave up. His missus got remarried about 10 years ago; she’s a mate of my missus. Lovely lady, got a daughter as well about 25 or so now. Cracking looking girl”

“So you never found him and just closed the case?”

“Yeh not much more we could do, kept it open for about three years though, then we just couldn’t justify the man hours”

One of the young P.C,s smiled. “Course in those days you were all bloody dinosaurs, didn’t know what you were doing, probably still using magnifying glasses and sniffer dogs!”

The three of them laughed.

“Don’t you believe it; we had the best down here. We even had special guys down from Scotland Yard, at one stage we even had guys here from the Government, rumour was they were from MI5 or MI6 or something, it was all very secretive. We even thought he might be a spy or something; it was a big case back then. Anyway why you talking about Ray Samuels?”

The desk sergeant looked at his notes.

“Some Station up North were asking about him”

“What did they want to know for?”

The desk sergeant carefully read the notes passed over from the night shift.

He took his time, seemed like he was reading them twice, then he looked up.

“Well according to the notes, Buxton Police Station are holding a man, aged about 30, dressed in jogging gear, says he lives in Romford and claims he’s Ray Samuels!”

Romford Police Station fell silent.