by Tim Ellis
He sat down on the sofa. ‘When you’re ready?’
‘It started eighteen months ago . . .’ Dixie pointed to the first photograph of a girl with long wavy dark-brown hair. She was pretty with brown eyes, clear skin and had puckered lips as if she were blowing a kiss at the photographer. ‘. . . A brief report about a missing fourteen-year-old girl – Judy Culbert – found its way onto my desk at work. She’d gone missing from Willow Tree Care Home in Knutsford, which is why it appeared on my desk – it was local news.’
‘Kids go missing from Residential Care Homes all the time. Why was this particular girl of interest?’
‘Yes, you’re right. I’d had many similar reports, which I’d either filed or thrown in the waste bin . . . I don’t know why this one made me sit up and take notice, but it did. Like any good reporter, I decided to do a bit of background research to decide whether there was a story behind the report . . .’ She picked up her mug and took a sip of coffee. ‘Yuk!’ she said, sticking out her tongue and pulling a face. ‘You’re right – this is disgusting coffee.’
‘I’ll make the next one.’
‘Feel free.’
‘So?’
‘You’re right: Kids do go missing from Care Homes all the time, but it’s not one or two – it’s hundreds. Did you know that around four hundred young people are missing and councils have no idea where they are?’
‘I didn’t know it was that high, but anyway we’re talking about delinquents, young offenders, drug addicts, prostitutes, and the unwanted and unwashed, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, probably. And that’s exactly why no one cares about finding them.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. The police . . .’
‘To the police and social services these missing children are simply another statistic – they just don’t care.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘And yet it’s true.’
‘Okay – we’ll agree to differ.’
‘Some local authorities don’t even keep records of the children who go missing from the care homes under their control. Since 2000, one local authority has lost a hundred and ten children.’
‘Lost?’
‘It’s like the children checked out of the care homes and nobody did a follow-up interview to ask them how they enjoyed their stay. Missing without a trace. These children are the most vulnerable in our society, and they disappear into thin air. They come from backgrounds where they’ve been psychologically, sexually and/or physically abused . . . and nobody fucking cares about them.’ Tears welled in her eyes and skittered down her face. She ran into the bathroom and closed the door.
He could hear her sobbing, but his empathetic muscle wasn’t very well-developed, or maybe it was simply playing dead. As much as he understood her concern for these children, crying and getting angry wasn’t going to achieve very much. If he did that every time he was faced with the inexplicable, he wouldn’t solve many murders. He picked up both mugs and wandered into the kitchen – it was like a landfill site.
‘Jesus!’ he muttered under his breath.
The bin was overflowing with takeaway cartons. The sink was full of dirty crockery and cutlery. The work surfaces were in desperate need of wiping and disinfecting. God! He thought he was bad, but Dixie took neglect to a whole new level. After pulling up his sleeves, he emptied the sink. But when he ran the hot water – there was none. He boiled a full kettle, cleaned the sink, and then filled it with the remaining boiled water and a dash of washing-up liquid. While everything was soaking he boiled the kettle again and cleaned the work surfaces using a tiny amount of spray disinfectant that he’d found under the sink; he tied up the bin-bag; disinfected the pedal bin and then returned to the sink to wash the pots.
‘I didn’t ask you to do this.’
He turned his head to look at her. She was a mess. Her eyes and nose were puffy and red – definitely not dating material. No wonder she didn’t have a boyfriend.
‘Make yourself useful, take the rubbish to the outside bin.’
‘This is my apartment.’
He grunted. ‘Pigsty, more like.’
‘Who are you to say that? I liked it just the way it was.’
‘You’re forgetting – I’m a detective, I know when people are lying. Take the rubbish out and pretend to be normal.’
She picked up the rubbish and walked out of the kitchen.
He heard the front door open.
Maybe he should renege on the deal they’d shook on. She hadn’t told him about all the baggage she was lugging around behind her. What she needed was psychiatric help, maybe counselling and probably some anti-depressants or tranquilisers – strong ones.
The front door slammed.
She came back into the kitchen.
‘Why is there no hot water?’ he said.
‘The thermostat isn’t working.’
‘When did you last take a shower?’
‘You want to mind your own business. Next, you’ll be saying I smell.’
He finished washing the pots and dried his hands on a tea towel. ‘I’m thinking of going it alone.’
‘You can’t do that?’
‘I can do whatever I want, I’m a police officer. Apart from publishing a story which might make me look bad for a day or two, there’s not a lot you can do about it.’
She burst into tears again.
‘Cry all you want to, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that you’ve let these missing girls burrow their way into your brain. You’re teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and I have enough baggage of my own without carrying your shit as well.’
‘No, please. You’re helping me now. I’ll be all right. I promise.’
‘You’re helping me.’
‘Yes, that’s what I meant.’
He dried two mugs and then made two coffees. ‘I’ll think about it. Why is there no hot water or heating?’
‘My gas has been cut off.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t pay the bill.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no money.’
‘You’ve lost your job, haven’t you?’
‘Eight months ago.’
‘Eight fucking months!’ It wasn’t often someone caught him with a haymaker. ‘So, you’ve been fraudulently masquerading as a reporter employed by the Knutsford Hippogriff, when in fact, you’re unemployed. Instead of honouring an agreement that’s based on a lie, I should arrest you as a con artist.’
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She put her face in her hands and crumpled to the tiled floor.
He felt guilty. ‘But I won’t arrest you.’
‘If you did, at least I’d have a roof over my head.’
‘You’re being evicted for non-payment of rent?’
‘I have to be out of here by Friday.’
‘What a bloody mess.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘I’m not your knight in shining armour.’
‘I know.’ She pushed herself up ‘Leave. Get out. I don’t know what I was thinking asking you for help.’
He knew he should have grabbed his coat and run for the hills, but he didn’t. Why not? He’d be stuck with her if he stayed. And he’d have to help her get her life back from wherever she’d lost it. It was a handful of steps to the front door. Why didn’t he just walk away? He knew he couldn’t.
‘Here.’ He passed her a mug of coffee. ‘That should taste a bit better.’
‘Don’t think I’m going to have sex with you.’
He smiled. ‘Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?’
She half-laughed. ‘Touché. I look a mess, don’t I?’
‘Worse than that.’
‘Thanks for your support.’
‘I could lie if you want me to, but it won’t change what you look like.’
‘No, you don’t have to lie. I’ve been living in here like a Micawber-type creature hoping something would turn up, but it never did.
I don’t think I’d have noticed even if something had turned up. I’ve crossed over the line, haven’t I?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘It’s just that I have to . . . Sorry. We have to find those girls. That’s all I care about.’
‘And that’s your problem. Okay, let’s make a slight detour, shall we? Where are your outstanding bills and the eviction notice?’
‘They’re none of your concern.’
‘Think of it as a loan. When you sell your story to the highest bidder, and they offer you a job, you can start paying me back.’
‘What’s the interest rate?’
‘No interest.’
‘I’m not sleeping with you.’
‘There are absolutely no strings attached. If you were my wife or one of my daughters, I’d hope someone was generous enough to help them if they were ever in your situation.’
‘You’re not as horrible as you pretend to be then.’
‘I am, but I think I’m having an off-day today.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Bills and eviction notice?’
She opened a drawer and a whole miscellany of envelopes and papers jumped out like a jack-in-the-box.
‘Pass me the phone.’
‘That doesn’t work either.’
‘I’m surprised you still have electricity.’
‘That gets cut off tomorrow.’
He spread the bills out on the kitchen worktop and calculated what she owed – three and a half thousand pounds give or take. He shook his head at the enormity of the hole she’d dug herself into. From what he could see, the only thing that had kept her from tumbling into the abyss was the unfinished mosaic in her living room.
‘Go and tidy yourself up again while I sort things out here.’
He rang the landlord first. Arranged for the eviction notice to be rescinded, paid the outstanding amount and also six weeks in advance. Next, he paid off the overdue amount on the gas and arranged for it to be reconnected. He paid the electricity account and stopped the disconnection. The telephone and broadband, water . . .
‘I feel much better,’ she said when she came back into the kitchen.
She’d changed her clothes, put a layer of make-up on and brushed her hair.
‘You look much better as well. Tell me, how have you been living for the past eight months?’
She stared at the floor and shuffled her feet.
‘Give them to me.’
‘They’re in the other room.’ She went through into the living room and came back with a stack of paper.
He went through them. She was overdrawn at the bank by five thousand pounds, and racking up penalties and interest at an alarming rate. She had two credit cards. One was maxed out at ten thousand pounds, the other at seven thousand pounds, and the combined monthly interest could easily have wiped out the debt of a small third-world country. Then, there was her mobile phone account at a thousand seven hundred pounds . . .’
‘If there’s anything else? You’d better tell me now while I’m suffering a mental aberration.’
‘No, there’s nothing else.’
He paid off her overdraft, deposited two thousand pounds into her account and reduced the overdraft limit to zero. Next, he paid her mobile phone bill, and then the two credit card balances, which he closed. ‘Where are they?’
‘Where are what?’
‘The credit cards?’
She went and got them.
He found a pair of scissors in the cutlery drawer and handed them to her. ‘You know what to do.’
After cutting them up, she threw the pieces in the bin.
‘You’d better start writing your exclusive, because two thousand pounds won’t last long.’
‘You don’t know how grateful I am.’
‘Pack a change of clothes and some toiletries. You can come and stay with me for a couple of nights.’
‘I thought it was all too good to be true. So that’s what I’m worth is it – thirty thousand pounds?’
‘It’ll be a couple of days before they turn your gas back on and reconnect your telephone. I have hot water and broadband.’
‘Oh! Sorry.’
‘Right, are you ready to continue? We’ve wasted enough time sorting your life out.’
‘Yes, I’m ready.’
They went back into the living room.
He sat on the sofa again.
She stood at the wall.
He had lots of money in his account. Since Ellie and the two girls had left him last Christmas, what did he have to spend it on? Of the four and a half thousand pounds they paid him each month he barely spent a thousand. The rest had simply accumulated and earned him a small amount of interest. The last time he’d looked, he had forty thousand pounds sitting in his account doing nothing. Without his wife and daughters, money meant nothing to him. The only thing that had any meaning was his job and solving murders. Thirty thousand pounds was a small price to pay to eliminate any distractions.
***
‘I interviewed the people who would talk to me about Judy Culbert, which wasn’t many. People don’t seem to like reporters very much.’
‘I wonder why.’
‘She went missing from the care home on July 17, 2014. The manager wouldn’t talk to me, but I paid one of the social work assistants a hundred pounds to tell me everything she knew.’
‘So that’s where your money has been going?’
‘Some of it. Anyway, she gave me a list of the clothes she was wearing when she left the care home, the jewellery she had on, her social media account details and passwords, and a list of friends.’
‘Was any of it useful?’
‘No.’
‘What about her background?’
‘Her mother had been a heroin addict before she died of an overdose. She was the product of a rape and never knew who her father was, and the mother’s family didn’t want to know her.’
‘Didn’t anybody in the care home know where she was going when she left?’
‘To see friends apparently, but the friends I spoke to said they never saw her.’
‘She disappeared into thin air?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘What could I do? Nobody saw her after she left the care home, there were no clues, no leads to follow, nothing. I’d hit a brick wall. I had nowhere else to go with it, so I put it in my pending tray. Over the next five months the file worked itself down to the bottom of that tray and I forgot all about Judy Culbert.’
‘Until Gail Dell went missing?’
‘No. Until Erica Freeman disappeared.’
They both stared at Erica Freeman’s photograph. The girl had straight blonde hair past her shoulders, blue eyes and a chubby face. She was pretty with a nice smile and dimples.
Dixie pointed to a newspaper cutting on the wall. ‘I saw this tiny article in the Manchester Evening News. It was four lines. That’s all a missing child was worth – four shitty lines. She went missing on December 19, 2014 from Rosewood Court Care Home in Wilmslow.’
‘Surely, lots of children went missing during the five months between Judy Culbert and Erica Freeman, why did you connect those two girls together?’
‘They were both fourteen years old, pretty and had disappeared without a trace in similar circumstances.’
‘A tenuous link at best.’
‘I know. But you’re right, lots of children did go missing over those five months, so I went back over the records and found one I’d missed – Gail Dell.’
Gail had short brown hair that looked as though it had been cut with a blunt pair of garden shears, brown eyes, a pointed chin and the prettiest smile you were ever likely to see.
‘A pretty girl,’ he said.
‘They’re all pretty in their own way. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re pretty or ugly – someone will always want to destroy your life.’
‘You make it sound personal. You must have been one of the pretty
ones at school?’
‘I was an ugly duckling that turned into an ugly swan. The bullies at school picked on me relentlessly.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘The past is best left in the past. So, from the white noise I began to see a pattern. I’d discovered three pretty fourteen-year-old girls who had disappeared from care homes in similar circumstances. The care homes assumed they’d run away. The police weren’t interested. Nobody was looking for them, nobody gave a shit.’
‘Except you?’
‘Except me, but I was chasing my own tail. I interviewed anybody who would talk to me, but nobody gave me any information that was useful. I followed leads until they petered out and became dead ends. I searched the homeless shelters, scoured the red-light districts and woke up the people sleeping rough to interrogate them. I printed MISSING posters offering a reward for information, but apart from the crazies – nothing. Oh, and I lost my job in May of last year. My boss said stop, but I couldn’t. I was the only person fighting to find out what had happened to those girls. So, she sacked me.’
‘Hardly surprising.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘And the girls continued to go missing?’
‘Yes.’ She pointed at each photograph in turn. ‘Erin Jameson from Abbey Rose Care Home in Prestwich on April 2, 2015; Jasmine Troop from Elliott House in Altrincham on June 28, 2015; Christine Lloyd from Tall Oaks Care Home on September 17, 2015; and finally, Jane Thomas from Newgate Lane Care Home in Stockport on November 11, 2015.’
There was an elephant in the corner of the room. It was a circus elephant performing tricks and trying to get his attention.
‘They found another body in the field before I left.’
‘Oh God! What did she . . .?’
‘We don’t know anything about the body at this stage. But I guess you were expecting to find these girls alive, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know what finding Erin Jameson’s body means?’
‘It doesn’t necessarily follow . . .’
‘No, but finding a second body in the same field has increased the odds of the others being found dead as well . . .’