During a conversation that takes just over an hour, Ch Insp Julie Wheatley describes the disappearance of the children?s writer Helen Bailey as ?unusual? 10 times, ?perplexing? five times and ?a mystery? three times. As she explains the lines of inquiry that the police have taken, without uncovering any trace of either Helen or her dachshund, Boris (who went missing at the same time), she apologises for circling around the same words over and again.
?Can you see what I mean? It is quite perplexing. I use that word a lot. It is really perplexing,? she says, pushing her glasses to the top of her head and swivelling on her chair in frustration.
It has been seven weeks since Bailey was last seen, walking her dog near her home in Hertfordshire. Her partner, Ian Stewart, called 101 in the evening on Friday 15 April to report that Helen had been missing since Monday.
Stewart ?said, and I?m summarising here, ?I am concerned. My partner has been missing. She left a note to say that she just needed some time to herself, and she was going to Broadstairs [where they have a holiday home],?? Wheatley says, weaving her own explanations into her account of Stewart?s call. ??I respected her decision,? but as the time passed and he hadn?t heard anything, he said, ?I?ve been to Broadstairs and I?ve checked the property myself. She?s not there. I?m so concerned about her safety, I am reporting it now.??
Wheatley says they are still pursuing the theory that she ?made herself disappear? as their key line of investigation. The idea is fuelled by a passage in an article she wrote about the experience of being widowed, on her blog Planet Grief, where she recounts a desire to walk out on her first marriage and vanish. I ?announced that I was going to disappear,? she wrote. ?I?d seen a programme about people who just vanish to start a new life under a new identity, and bolting appealed to me.?
The sentence, a fleeting (and light-hearted) anecdote in a long series of blog entries, has kept officers focused on the possibility that the writer is quietly holed up somewhere new, getting on with her life, perhaps writing a new book, but they are puzzled that they have found no trace of her.
Her bank account has not been touched, nothing has been sent from her email account, and her phone remains switched off.
Helen Bailey and her partner Ian Stewart in 2015 (left)
?We?ve got no financial footprint. As far as we know, she hasn?t accessed any of her bank accounts. She didn?t take out big sums of money before, if she had planned to disappear ? There is no digital footprint, no social media, and this is from a woman who was quite hot on social media. There is absolutely nothing,? Wheatley says.
?We have got nothing to say that Helen has come to harm; we have no suspicion of third-party involvement. Could she have just taken herself off and made herself disappear? Possibly. It?s really difficult to speculate ? We have no sightings, no financial evidence; we?ve got nothing. It?s really, really unusual.?
Because there have been no developments, reporting of the case has tailed off, which is why Wheatley is happy to talk through the details of the investigation, hopeful that a renewed burst of media attention may bring Bailey?s picture in front of new eyes. But she acknowledges that it is very odd for a missing person investigation to stretch out for such a long period, an admission that undermines the prospect of a positive outcome. ?We deal with lots and lots of missing people every day. Most people are returned safe and well, or we know what has happened to them, within the first 24 to 48 hours. This is unusual, for someone to be missing for this period of time.?
Helen Bailey, 51, is best known for her children?s books, cheerful early-teen fiction about a girl called Electra Brown (her dad is having a mid-life crisis, her little brother has been caught shoplifting, even the ?guinea pig?s gone mental. But despite life going pear-shaped around her, all Electra can think of is whether green eyeliner complements or clashes with blue eyes!?).
Over the past few years, she had developed a parallel, very different audience with Planet Grief, where she described in honest detail her struggle to cope with the sudden death of her husband, John Sinfield, when he drowned during a holiday in Barbados in 2011. Her memoir of her progress through grief, When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis, was published last year, and it also recounts how, through writing about the experience of being widowed, she met and fell in love with a widower, Ian Stewart, whose wife had died suddenly in 2011. Two years ago, she moved to live with him in Royston, Hetfordshire.
Initially, police classified the inquiry as medium risk, on the basis that adults are allowed to go missing, and on Stewart?s report of a note saying she needed some time. Over the weekend, however, police officers spoke to her brother and her mother, who said this behaviour was very unusual and out of character, so the case was raised to high risk. ?High risk means that it is deemed to have elements of criticality,? Wheatley says. This allows police to put a trace on her phone, and track any texts being sent and calls being made (the content of the calls and texts is not available, but the times and numbers are). ?It is only if there is an immediate threat to life that we can get that data fast.?
The phone has not been found at either her home or at the seaside holiday home. It has been switched off since the afternoon she went missing and no calls have been made; the last place it was used was in Royston.
It is a quiet spring afternoon, and there is no one else around on Wheatley?s corridor at Hitchin police station, a 10-minute walk from the train station, hidden along a side street, behind a wooden church hut, where the Hitchin Our Lady Catholic Scout and Guide Centre holds its meetings. The whole station, a square Lego model of a police station, feels very deserted; the automatic visitor doors do not open when you stand in front of them, and it turns out that the reception has been closed for several years. If you want to report a crime, you have to do it online or by phone. The only sign of life is a friendly, well-fed black cat, who belongs to the station. Wheatley emerges from a back door and leads the way to her upstairs office, where she sits in charge of about 140 officers.
What is remarkable about her account of the investigation is how incredibly labour-intensive the process of looking for a missing person is. Once the inquiry was raised to high risk, huge amounts of police resources were allocated to the investigation. Wheatley had between 20 and 30 detectives and uniformed officers searching the area, looking in particular at the routes where Helen walked her dog. The house where she lives with Stewart and his two adult sons was searched ? the garages, the outbuildings and the outdoor swimming pool; the septic tank was drained
Both her cars were left behind at her home, but police believe it is possible that she might have gone to her Broadstairs home by train. A team of about five officers at the force control room in Welwyn Garden City are still working through train station CCTV footage, an incredibly time-consuming process. Officers have also gathered CCTV from neighbouring houses from the day she disappeared, and digital media investigators (trained to view CCTV quickly) are trawling through that. Local taxi firms have been interviewed, to see if anyone drove her away.
Police have searched her home in Broadstairs, and remain uncertain about whether or not she actually visited it.
They have examined her wardrobes in both homes to see whether clothes have been removed, but Wheatley says: ?She is a woman of many, many clothes,? and her partner isn?t sure what is missing, although he says there is a space in Broadstairs where some clothes might have been.
Her green coat is still at home, as is her passport, and no suitcases have been removed.
Aware that she was particularly fond of Brighton, they have contacted all the hotels in the city that allow dogs to stay, and done the same in Northumberland, where she grew up (cont'd ...)