Lost Girls

by Angela Marsons

  She turned her back on him and nodded for Stacey to resume.

  ‘Got the address for the other family, Guv. It wasn't easy.’

  ‘Send it to Bryant’s phone,’ she said.

  Stacey continued. ‘Still nothing from the phone networks. One has even blocked my emails as spam so I'm guessing he’s got nothing for us. Can't find a lot on the psychic. Got a couple of bad reviews but, hell, even the Rolling Stones get them. Local folks love her shows at the Civic but other than that I can’t find any money-making schemes: no books on Amazon, no audio books, CDs, anything. She charges a fiver entrance fee and donates half of that to the RSPCA. No Facebook, Twitter or any other following. Nothing malicious that I can—’

  ‘Hang on,’ Kim said as her mobile phone vibrated. It was an email from Keats who also appeared to have swallowed the early worm. It was hard to believe they had visited Inga’s crime scene only yesterday.

  ‘Kev, post mortem is at nine.’

  He nodded his understanding. He would attend.

  ‘Anything else, Stace?’

  Stacey shook her head.

  Attached to the email were the crime scene photos. She opened the first one and passed the phone to Alison. ‘Just scroll through to the picture of the tattoo.’ Someone in the room had to know what it meant.

  She turned her attention back to her team. ‘Got a call from Jenny Cotton last night. She's received a message too.’

  A wave of surprise travelled around the room.

  ‘Mr Ward has the phone in case any other messages come. The text is short and direct, asking if she wants to play again.’

  ‘Jesus, that's cruel,’ Bryant said, shaking his head.

  ‘Is it a prank?’ Dawson asked.

  Kim shrugged. ‘No way to tell. The message didn't come from any of these numbers but as he's used a different one each time that doesn't help us.’

  Stacey leaned forward. ‘Do you think it is the same guys we're dealing with?’

  Kim sighed. ‘She's kept that phone for thirteen months just hoping it would ring again. The fact that it has at the exact same time our two girls are missing isn't coincidental. Doubtful that it's a random prank either. No one knows about Charlie and Amy.’

  Dawson caught her eye. ‘Guv, do we think …’

  ‘No, Kev, we don't. If Suzie Cotton is still a factor in this the best we can hope for is recovery.’

  The room silenced. They all knew what she meant. For Jenny Cotton, even that would be closure.

  ‘Horrific,’ Alison said, handing the phone back to Kim.

  Kim nodded her agreement. ‘I think we can safely assume this to be the work of Subject Two. Any further thoughts?’ she asked the behaviourist.

  ‘If he’s known to the police it will be for brutal, violent crimes. He could be a slaughter man or in a profession linked to killing of some kind. You could even be looking at ex-services.’

  ‘A soldier?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Go on,’ Kim encouraged.

  Alison nodded. ‘It's well documented that until recently the most effective weapon in the armed forces was hate. Soldiers were instilled with hatred towards the enemy, to remove the inhibitions of taking a life. If you hate the owner of that life it is easier to destroy.

  ‘Rage and aggression are the staples of military life but to produce an effective killing machine you have to dehumanise it. You have to remove empathy, understanding, forgiveness. Otherwise an enemy pleading for his life might garner a moment's hesitation, which is long enough to get control of a weapon and kill an entire squad.

  ‘It's all very clever until the soldier is released back into society. The mind-set instilled is not a temporary state. It's an altered set of beliefs. But suddenly, where is the enemy? Where is the guidance? Where is the rest of the team united in one clear goal?

  ‘Society then tells soldiers that what they did was wrong. Violence is wrong, killing is wrong.

  ‘You can't just suddenly wipe a mind clear because you now want that person to exist in a “normal” society. The hatred doesn't go away. It just has no clear target.’

  Kim looked around the room. For once Alison had their attention.

  ‘Continue the assumption,’ she said. This man enjoyed killing, as evidenced by the bodies of both Brad and Inga. And he had learned that somewhere.

  ‘If Subject Two was in the services he would have been in his element and probably wouldn’t have left of his own volition.’

  ‘We're dealing with a fucking machine,’ Dawson offered.

  Alison shrugged. ‘Not exactly. He will have vulnerabilities but they will be deeply buried and only in relation to his own feelings. Back in civilian society, this individual is now on unfamiliar territory. He will possibly be confused, bewildered and abandoned. Unfortunately, these emotions will feed his anger.’

  Alison turned to Kim. ‘If I'm right, the girls have much more to fear from him.’

  Kim hadn't needed confirmation of that.

  ‘But won't he feel anything, hurting innocent children?’

  Oh, bless Bryant's eternal optimism. He did like to think that everyone had boundaries that could not be crossed. That he could maintain his naiveté in the job that he did was a constant mystery to Kim.

  Alison shook her head. ‘Not any more.’

  Kim turned to Dawson. ‘Once you're done with the post mortem, continue your other line of enquiry.’

  Dawson nodded, grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. Woody stepped aside but left the door open.

  ‘Inspector … a word,’ Woody said, stepping out of the room.

  Bryant muttered a few notes from the death march under his breath as she left the room.

  Kim caught up with the chief inspector as he reached his car parked on the other side of the water feature.

  ‘You do know that Baldwin is calling me for updates almost hourly.’

  She was tempted to say she would pass that along to the kidnappers but closed her mouth just in time.

  ‘You know what’s at stake here?’ he asked.

  ‘The lives of two nine-year-old girls called Charlie and Amy.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘Sir, with all due respect you are now wasting your valuable time. And mine. There is no greater motivation to me than to see those girls safe and well. Nothing else can inspire me to work faster, harder or more thoroughly than I am doing and if—’

  ‘I can see that, Stone. I’ve just witnessed the balls you currently have in the air and I have nothing to add in terms of your running this investigation.’

  She offered him a conciliatory smile. ‘Sir, you worry about the politics and I’ll worry about the girls.’

  He hesitated for one moment before opening the driver’s door. ‘Just bring them home, Stone,’ he said, shutting the door.

  She turned and headed back into the war room and picked up her phone which had been passed around the room.

  Her thumb hit the screen, which illuminated the last photo taken at the crime scene. Kim tipped her head as she enlarged it to full screen.

  She paused. ‘Stace, you got this email from Keats?’

  ‘Yeah, it just pinged …’

  ‘Get the photos on the screen. Full size.’

  As she tapped a few keys Kim moved to stand behind Stacey.

  ‘Scroll to the last one.’

  Stacey did so.

  Kim pointed to where the Chinese symbol filled the screen. ‘Do you see that?’

  Stacey peered closer and shook her head.

  ‘Zoom in.’

  The symbol grew in size.

  ‘There are lines from one side to the other,’ Stacey noted, looking closer. ‘Jeez, lots of them.’

  ‘Look at the top right-hand corner.’

  Bryant was now behind her looking at the screen.

  ‘Dried blood,’ Bryant said, scratching his head. ‘I don’t get …’

  ‘That is the Chinese symbol for mother,’ Matt said, from her left.

  Kim hid her surpr
ise that he knew that. She peered closer. ‘And the dried blood indicates she has recently tried to scratch it out?’

  They all stood back and stared until Kim broke the thoughtful silence.

  ‘Stace, I want you to focus all your energy on Inga. I want to know everything about her. I think this dead woman still has something to say.’

  Sixty-Two

  Karen picked up the brown teddy bear Robert had brought to the hospital the day Charlie was born. The stuffed animal had suffered every indignity over the years. He'd been covered in vomit, dragged around by his ear and the stuffing had been all but squeezed out of him.

  In recent years he'd been relegated to the top of the bookcase to make way for the more vital necessities of a nine-year-old, but he still remained in view.

  Three weeks ago Charlie had been unwell with a sore throat and a cough. Somehow the bear had made it from the bookcase to the pillow.

  Now Karen sat on the edge of the bed, the bear clutched to her torso.

  This room was her place of safety; where she could be surrounded by Charlie and all her treasures. Everything in the room had a memory: a picture frame from Jamaica covered in shells; a mirror with battery powered built-in lights above her dresser; a brush and comb set bought during a day out in London.

  Here in this room she could feel the presence of her daughter; as if Charlie was only down the hall in the shower.

  It was the one place in the house not invaded by strangers. Her home no longer felt like her home. It was a battlefield, a hotel, a fortress; and yet the feeling of displacement didn't come from the unusual activity in her house, but rather because of what was absent. Namely, her little girl.

  She hugged the bear tighter as a wave of physical pain surged through her. That heartache could translate to physical pain was a revelation to her. Throughout her childhood, the foster homes, the children's homes, the beatings, the abuse – never had she felt the pain that coursed through her now.

  ‘I love you, my angel,’ Karen whispered. ‘Stay strong. Mummy will get you back.’

  The tears stung before they fell yet somehow it eased the pain, just a fraction, to speak out loud to Charlie.

  ‘Hey, sweetheart, I thought I might find you here.’

  In the doorway stood the only person with whom she could share this room.

  She patted the bed beside her. Robert sat and pulled her close.

  She knew what other people saw when they looked at her husband. A tall, well-built man with more than a sprinkling of grey. His nose was sharp for his face and he had ears that stuck out just a little too far. They saw the first few age spots on his hands and the absence of them on hers.

  But they didn't see what she did. If they paid more attention to his eyes they would get it. In them lived love, strength, compassion and a generous nature. And she saw it every day.

  ‘We'll get her back, sweetheart, I promise. Every hour the team is making progress.’

  His voice was gentle, warm and assured. She closed her eyes against his chest, allowing herself a minute in this safe place.

  ‘Poor bear,’ Robert said, picking at its left ear. ‘Do you remember that one time we had to wash it after she'd fed it a jam sandwich?’

  Karen nodded against the warmth of his chest.

  ‘We tried everything to wrestle it from her and when she understood what we wanted she became even more determined to hang on to it.’

  Karen smiled.

  ‘Eventually we decided on a game of Twister because we knew she couldn't keep hold of it. You snuck away from the game and spirited the bear to the washing machine.

  ‘Half an hour later she wandered into the kitchen and screamed when she saw him bobbing around through the portal. She thought we'd tried to kill him.’

  ‘I remember.’

  Robert sighed. ‘That night I lay awake wondering if we'd caused her any permanent psychological damage through the trauma of seeing her bear treated that way.’

  As always, her husband had eased her pain.

  ‘And you call me over-protective?’

  ‘You're my family and I love you.’

  She felt him stiffen against her. He held some traditional views and felt it was his job to protect them both. He felt he had failed.

  Karen took his hand. ‘You couldn't have prevented it, Rob. Neither of us could.’

  Her thumb rubbed the inside of his palm.

  He stroked her hair. ‘We have to get her back, Kaz.’

  She nodded her head. She knew what was coming.

  They had talked late into the night. Their thoughts had formed circles and they had talked themselves dry. Loss had fought with betrayal, friendship with priority, survival against integrity. And at ten past four they had reached a decision.

  It was time to send a text.

  Sixty-Three

  Kim spent most of the journey second-guessing the decision to issue a press blackout.

  She knew they were on borrowed time with keeping it out of the press. The broken appointments and days away from school would soon start to attract attention. Never mind the threat from Tracy Frost. People would talk. Friends would start calling. Extended family would pop round and before they knew it they would be the lead story on Sky News.

  Despite the blackout being in place before she had taken the case, Kim knew that if it proved to be the wrong move she would be the scapegoat and her career would be over.

  Most detectives were able to recall the case of Lesley Whittle, not only for the horror of what had happened to the seventeen-year-old girl but also as a testament to what happened if you got it all wrong.

  Lesley had been taken from her home in Shropshire in 1975. The kidnapper was already known to police as the Black Panther due to wearing a black balaclava during post office raids.

  Nielson had committed over four hundred burglaries and three fatal shootings before he kidnapped the girl and placed her in a drainage shaft at a park in Staffordshire.

  A news blackout had been implemented initially but the investigation was bungled from the outset and two attempts to engage with Nielson's demand for fifty thousand pounds failed.

  Lesley's body had eventually been found hooded and tethered to the side of a shaft by a wire noose. It had never been proven whether she had fallen from the ledge or if Nielson had pushed her. She’d weighed only ninety-eight pounds and her stomach and intestines were completely empty.

  The chief superintendent who led the investigation had been demoted to a uniformed beat officer.

  If that was the treatment given to a chief superintendent, Kim knew she'd be lucky to get a night job guarding a scrapyard.

  The decision to maintain the blackout was based on the balance of gain from public awareness against the detriment of false leads. There would be a staggering level of press interest, attracted by the juicy story of the abduction of two young girls, with countless reporters searching for a story, an interview with the parents, the back stories and past. Both families would have their entire lives laid bare for the world to see, consume and judge. Kim knew that would be a heartily unpleasant experience for Karen alone, never mind the others.

  But there was very little benefit to the case by making it public. There was no area of the investigation that could be enhanced by the press intrusion.

  ‘How much further?’ Kim asked, growing restless. Time spent sitting in the car was not solving the case.

  Bryant glanced at the satnav. ‘Just under two miles.’

  They had long left the built-up hub of the industrial towns and travelled through the first layer of the green belt where rows of houses were strung together, punctuated by the odd shop or pub, but with back gardens looking out on to fields. Now though, they were passing into Kim's worst nightmare.

  The road was flanked by grass on both sides and mobile phone signals were intermittent.

  The unease began in her stomach. Being this far away from civilisation made her nervous. She felt comfortable amongst sprawling housing estates a
nd derelict steelworks. She enjoyed breathing in the mixture of pollutants that reassured her that thousands of other people were fighting to occupy the same space. She was used to waking to car horns and revving engines, not birdsong; shadows formed by tower blocks, not trees.

  The satnav stated their destination was to the right.

  ‘Is she having a laugh?’ Kim asked. A normal postcode covered twelve properties. Out here, that could cover a good few miles.

  ‘We're looking for number four Larksford Lane,’ Bryant said.

  They passed a gate with a number five fixed to it.

  ‘I don't know which way the numbers run so I'll have to carry on.’

  A quarter mile later they spied a number six.

  Bryant drove past and reversed into the paved driveway. He didn't rush the manoeuvre. They hadn't passed a car for miles.

  He drove back to number five and then slowed to ten miles an hour. A six-foot-tall hedge lined the pavement.

  Eventually they were back at a double gated property that stated loud and proud that it was number three.

  ‘Okay, how to go from mildly amused to severely aggravated in about ten minutes,’ she said, as Bryant turned the car again.

  This time they crawled the distance. Kim inspected every inch of the hedge. She understood they were looking for a family that didn't want their home to be found. They had moved house and changed their last name from Billingham to Trueman.

  ‘There,’ she pointed.

  A waist-high gate no more than three feet wide separated the two squared-off edges of the hedge barrier. There was no mailbox and no house number.

  Bryant drove partially onto the pavement and parked the car.

  Through the gate the privet hedge continued wrapping itself around them imposingly. Kim felt like she was in a maze.

  Ten feet in they were greeted by a single wrought iron gate that was the respite between two brick walls. The top of each wall had been finished off with a colourful mosaic of broken glass. Anyone trying to scale the wall would be better off trying to catch the business end of an angle grinder.