by Wyer, Carol
‘Did she go off alone?’
‘Yeah.’ Holly shrugged like it was no big deal.
Jane wanted to wring more out of her, but there didn’t seem to be any more. Holly speared a chip and ate it. Her grandmother gave the girl a beatific smile, oblivious to Jane’s discomfort. With nothing further to be said, she showed Jane out, allowing disapproving eyes to graze Jane’s tight top and overly short skirt. Jane knew what she was thinking. She’d come across this sort of woman with her petty prejudices before. She gave a polite smile in return and wasn’t surprised when the door shut smartly behind her. She closed her eyes for a second and heard the echo of her daughter’s voice, indignant and upset at the same time. It was her first week at the school – the first and only week she’d allowed her mother to meet her at the gates…
‘What does pikey mean?’
‘Why are you asking?’
‘Some girls told Holly not to hang about with me cos I’m a pikey.’
‘What did Holly tell them?’
‘To get lost.’
‘Good on her.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. What does pikey mean?’
They walk down the road, Jane smoking a cigarette and holding her head as high as she can. ‘Someone who lives in a caravan – a traveller.’
‘Oh. But we don’t. Why would they think that?’
She throws her daughter a look. ‘Don’t listen to them. They’ll get over it.’
Savannah bites her bottom lip and nods.
Jane was used to such taunts. She’d grown up in a tough environment on a council estate in Dudley, and after meeting her husband Lance – Savannah’s stepdad – they had moved about the country with his traveller family for a while before settling in Watfield, only the year before. Their thick Black Country accents had stood out from the Staffordshire dialect of the region. It seemed stigmas stuck and tittle-tattle travelled, no matter what you did to try and better yourself. Holly’s grandmother was one of those who listened to the rumour mill. You could see it in her steely silver eyes.
Jane drove back home via the Aldi car park, where she got out. She pulled up the screensaver photograph of Savannah on her mobile and stopped customers leaving the store. Had any of them seen a young girl with a blonde ponytail, wearing the red jumper and black trouser uniform of the local school? She was met with head shakes and shrugs. She should have come here sooner.
She rang Savannah’s number yet again. No reply. It was now coming up half five. Over one and a half hours late. She scurried past the supermarket towards the Caffè Nero nestled between the fruit shop and a Poundland store and peered through the window. A group of youngsters in the same uniform as Savannah was gathered at the far end of the café. She hurtled through the door and towards them. Savannah wasn’t among them.
‘Have you seen Savannah Hopkins?’ she asked.
The two girls and a boy in front of her were older than her daughter. They looked up from their mobile phones, unglued their lips from striped straws poking out of plastic smoothie cups and shook their heads.
‘Don’t know her.’
‘Here.’ Jane shoved the photograph in front of them.
The girls looked blankly at it. ‘She at Watfield Secondary?’
The boy’s mouth tugged downwards. ‘Fink I seen her yesterday by the science block.’
‘Not today?’ Jane needed to get outside, look for her daughter, not waste time talking to these kids. Her brain was buzzing, the noise drowning out all other sound. She saw the boy’s lips move but didn’t hear him.
She raced outside and along the pedestrianised street, her head swivelling left and then right and left again. Her heart was a leaden weight in her chest that threw itself against her ribcage as she ran. Savannah wasn’t anywhere in sight. She rang the girl once more and still got no reply. She didn’t care that people were staring at the wild-eyed woman in a top that was too tight for her, a short, black-leather skirt and trainers. She had to find her daughter. This was her fault. If she’d been at home at the usual time, she’d have realised Savannah was missing sooner and come looking before now.
She raced down the road, veered left past a block of flats and halted outside the building she hated most in the town. The police station was an old-fashioned brick building, complete with traditional blue lantern and marked with the word ‘Police’ – the sort that might have appeared on a television period drama. She’d been inside twice since she’d moved to Watfield: both occasions were to collect a repentant Lance, who’d been taken into custody for being drunk and disorderly. That was before she kicked him out seven months ago.
She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Inside was an unmanned wooden counter, pitted with age, that separated the public from the station itself. A transparent screen was drawn across. She hammered on it loudly, all sense of reality now deserting her.
‘Hurry the fuck up. My daughter’s missing.’
Two
Tuesday, 17 April – Morning
‘Leigh! Get a move on. I haven’t got time for this.’ Natalie searched about for her car keys.
Her son, Josh, dressed in school uniform with his shirt hanging fashionably outside his trousers and striped green-and-black tie in a loose knot, had his back against the front door and was thumbing his smartphone, backpack hanging from one shoulder. He spoke without looking up. ‘She’s probably looking for her games kit.’
‘Shit!’ Natalie raced up the stairs to assist her daughter, who was tugging willy-nilly at clothes that had been stacked neatly in the airing cupboard and were now in a jumbled pile.
‘I can’t find it. Where is it?’ Leigh asked.
Natalie shook her head. ‘Sorry. I forgot to put on the washing machine last night.’
‘Mu-um!’
‘I know. I got in late and I know I should have but… I’ll get it out again. You can wear it again today, can’t you?’
‘It’ll stink.’ Leigh’s bottom lip stuck out.
‘It won’t. You only wore it for a while for netball, not for a marathon. You’ll be wearing clean socks and pants. I bet no one will notice.’
Leigh stomped into her bedroom, kicking at shoes left on the carpet and making a meal of collecting her socks and trainers and stuffing them into a blue drawstring bag, observed by her mother.
Natalie had no time for histrionics. ‘Look, it would have helped if you’d actually put your dirty washing in the wash basket after the last time you wore it rather than the night before you needed it. You’ll have to take it as it is. I’ll spray it with some deodorant. Now, come on or we’ll be late.’
‘You’ll be late, you mean.’
Natalie was tempted to haul her daughter to task over her sulky comeback but the fact was, it was true. Natalie had a meeting with her team at nine and needed to drop her children off at the school they both attended before she could get to it. Normally, her husband David orchestrated such chores. It was easier for him because he worked from home and had become a chauffeur for the children, along with cook and several other roles when Natalie was involved in an investigation or working late. Today, however, he was on his way to a seminar in Birmingham, hoping to network with fellow translators and get much-needed work sent in his direction.
She pounded back downstairs into the laundry room behind the kitchen and opened the washing machine door. She yanked out the rumpled games kit and sniffed it. Her nose wrinkled. It would have to do. After rushing back upstairs to the bathroom to spray it with some lemon-scented spray David had bought her for her last birthday, she thundered downstairs and shouted again for Leigh, who was still in her bedroom.
‘Leigh, for goodness’ sake!’
‘I’m coming! Keep your hair on.’ The girl sauntered downstairs, took her clothes from her mother and stuffed them into the blue bag.
Josh slid his mobile into his jacket pocket. ‘You ready at last, then?’ he asked.
‘Shut your face.’
‘Leigh! That’s no way to talk
to your brother. Josh, tuck your shirt in.’ Natalie checked around for anything she might have forgotten, made sure she had her briefcase and followed her children out to her Audi. Locking the door behind her, she inhaled deeply. She couldn’t imagine doing this every day without losing her sanity.
Both children were silent on the journey from the village of Castergate, where they lived, to the secondary school on the outskirts of town. Leigh stared fixedly out of the window and ignored both Natalie and Josh, who gave up trying to jolt her out of her mood and went back to staring at his mobile. Natalie also tried to make conversation but, in the end, decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Even Josh was only in grunt mode. Teenagers! For a while she felt grateful to have David to take up the strain then reminded herself why there was strain. If he hadn’t been gambling and lost their savings, she wouldn’t have had to take on the extra responsibilities of working to pay the mortgage. It had been tough recently – tougher than usual: she’d believed David had started gambling again. In early March, she’d not only found out he’d been on a gambling website but that he’d taken out a loan for £5,000. The revelation had been the final straw for Natalie.
‘Natalie, for God’s sake, calm down.’ David’s face is passive. He’s not at all repentant.
She can’t calm down. She wants to hammer her fists against his chest and scream at him. How bloody dare he do this to her again? What was he thinking of, taking out a loan for such a large amount when there’s only her salary holding everything together, and why?
‘Five… thousand… pounds, David. Explain why the fuck you’ve taken out a loan for that amount of money if it isn’t to fund your gambling habit. Go on, you lying heap of shit. I bought your crap about only checking out the gambling site I found pulled up on your computer, and I believed you because, as you pointed out, you hadn’t touched our savings. You were so bloody high and mighty about it all and now… this!’
‘I know what it looks like, but you’ve got it wrong. I took out the money to pay for a holiday to Florida for us all. You’ve been working so hard and I didn’t know what to get you for your birthday, so I thought a family holiday would be the perfect present. Time for each other and the kids. I wanted to surprise you with it. I couldn’t surprise you if I took the money from our bank account.’
She freezes. Is he lying? His face says not. He has tears in his eyes and his slim shoulders have slumped. He is a man beaten – destroyed by her cruel words. He reaches for her hands but her arms hang limply by her sides like a rag doll. Is he telling the truth? As if some silent telepathy has passed between them, he turns and heads for his office to return less than a minute later with a holiday brochure. He hands it over and she sees that the corners of some pages have been turned down. She opens it dumbly and studies the resort near Disney World. He’s circled the hotel name, Sunshine Palace, in red, along with the prices for high season: the cost of the holiday for four is almost £5,000. She closes it and returns it to him.
‘You understand…’ she begins.
He interjects with a weary shake of his head. ‘I understand that you don’t trust me in spite of everything I’ve said and done. I understand that whatever I do, I’ll always be guilty in your eyes for having let you down.’ He turns away and drops the brochure in the wastepaper bin, where it lands heavily.
Natalie has no response. It’s true. Ever since he gambled away their savings, she’s been expecting him to fail. She’s been treating him like a suspect, waiting for him to make a mistake, but on this occasion, she’s been wrong. She’s still angry he’s taken out a loan, even for a holiday. After all, it will be her that foots the bill at the end of the day, but she’s still at fault for thinking the worst. ‘Listen, I’m sorry. Really. You can see how it looked.’
‘What made you snoop and find out about the loan, Natalie?’ he replies. His forehead creases deeply, and along with the grey in his hair, David resembles a man in his mid-fifties rather than late forties.
She opens her mouth but says nothing. They both know the answer: she doesn’t trust him. That’s why she hunted for evidence that would prove he was gambling.
He shakes his head sadly. ‘Will you ever have faith in me again or have we gone past that?’
Her heart begins to thud solidly in her chest. The power is in her hands. Whatever she says next will determine if they can continue as a couple and will affect the whole family. ‘I’ll try, David. I’m naturally suspicious. You know that. It’s who I am. The thought of it all happening again terrifies me so much sometimes, I forget to be rational. I’ll try to be more trusting. I’m truly sorry to have jumped to conclusions.’
The answer seems to satisfy him but instead of discussing it further, he merely nods and moves off to his office.
Natalie joined the line of other taxi mums and dads trying to find a space near the drop-off point. Her mobile lit up and she glanced at it. It was a text message from one of her sergeants, Murray Anderson. She lifted the phone up so she could see the screen and read quickly, all the while trying to concentrate on the bumper of the Volvo in front of her in case the car came to a sudden halt. She was to ring the station urgently.
Leigh was becoming restless, her bag already half on her shoulder. ‘Can’t you just let us out here like Dad does?’ she moaned.
‘It’s not the designated area,’ Natalie replied, mindful of the road markings that indicated she shouldn’t stop until another fifty metres on. The new system had only recently been implemented. It was to ensure the safety of the numerous children dismounting from vehicles but it had certainly slowed down the entire process of dropping off. Leigh, sat next to her, exhaled noisily and rolled her eyes. Natalie ignored the gesture. It was an agonising five minutes before she found a space and Josh and Leigh piled out.
‘Have a good day,’ she called but was ignored as Josh immediately joined a group of lads approaching the entrance on foot and Leigh raced off through the gate, kit bag bouncing against her back.
Natalie checked her mirrors to pull back out into the traffic, caught a glimpse of Josh tugging his shirt back out of his trousers and sighed. It was an ongoing battle with her children. They were becoming fiercely independent and listened to her demands less and less. She’d never stepped out of line at that age, she mused. Frances, on the other hand… She wiped away all thoughts of her estranged sister.
Back in the stream of traffic, she used the hands-free to call Murray.
‘Hi. Got your message. What’s up?’
‘Word’s in that a young girl who went missing yesterday afternoon has been found dead. You need to check in with Superintendent Melody.’
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ She switched on the flashing blue lights that ran along the front of her grille, warning other vehicles of her presence, and accelerated in the direction of Samford.
Samford Police headquarters, a state-of-the-art building built in 2016, was one of only four investigative hubs across the county and contained a criminal investigation department, public protection and forensic staff from the north of Staffordshire, as well as local officers and Natalie’s team. She swiped her identity pass to gain access, greeting the desk officers with a quick wave, and raced up the wide staircase to Superintendent Aileen Melody’s office on the top floor.
Natalie’s footsteps were muffled in the thick carpet. Although the superintendent’s office was directly above her own, and shared the same dimensions, it was obvious only the senior officials were housed on this floor, with its water cooler in the corridor, modern art that adorned the pale-blue walls and leather chairs dotted on the wide landing. Natalie halted outside the door and listened before knocking. Inside, Aileen’s soft, southern-Irish voice had taken on a steely tone and she was shouting at somebody either with her or on the end of the phone. Natalie waited until the ranting ceased and then knocked.
‘Come in.’
Aileen, a slim woman with auburn hair cut short to frame her delicate face and intense green eyes, looked up from the folde
r on her desk, her brow knotted. There were no preliminaries.
‘Thirteen-year-old girl by the name of Savannah Hopkins went missing on her way home from Watfield Secondary School yesterday afternoon. Missing Persons were searching for her. Her body turned up less than an hour ago. I know you’re heavily involved with another case but I’m reassigning your team and I want you to head this.’
Natalie stood with her hands behind her back. Any murder investigation was a challenge, but when it involved children it presented an even greater test: trying to separate emotion from the investigation. Natalie had been involved in several such cases and each one had tested her mettle. She waited for instructions, which came quickly.
‘Get everyone up to speed as quickly as possible and head over to Watfield. This is all we have at the moment.’ She pushed the folder in Natalie’s direction. A photograph of a pale-faced girl with blonde, shoulder-length hair and chestnut-brown eyes that seemed to radiate sorrow was pinned to the front of it. Natalie nodded her assent and took the file, reading through it quickly. There was no need for any further conversation.
As she turned to leave the office, she glanced at the photograph Aileen kept on her desk of her two nieces, both about the same age as this unfortunate girl, and understood why her boss was impatient to find the perpetrator quickly.
Three
Tuesday, 17 April – Morning
Natalie’s unit consisted of three dedicated and gifted individuals: DS Lucy Carmichael, DS Murray Anderson and PC Ian Jarvis. Ian, the most junior and youngest of them, had suffered a serious stab wound to the chest during an investigation in March and had only recently returned to work. She was determined to keep him only on light duties and away from harm.