Fern took a loaf of homemade bread from the barrel.
‘Typical, I suppose I expected the gossips to reach that conclusion.’ Meadows winced as he rubbed in the tincture.
‘So, it wasn’t the girl?’ Fern asked as she sliced through the bread.
‘No, we found a skeleton of a three-month-old child but–’
‘Yes, just between you and me.’ Fern smiled. ‘Sounds like that house is cursed. Do you think there’s a connection?’
‘Don’t see how there could be, looks like the poor mite has been there for twenty to thirty years. Maybe longer. You don’t remember any babies going missing, do you?’
‘We kept to ourselves in the commune, didn’t even bother with the newspaper. I do have a vague memory of a child being snatched from a hospital, Cardiff I think, must have been twenty-five years ago.’ She placed a plate of bread and cheese on the table. ‘It might not be a missing child, you often hear of teenage girls who get in trouble, manage to hide it and give birth alone.’
‘Yes, but they leave the baby somewhere, not keep it for three months and bury it in the garden.’
‘No, I guess not, but people do strange things.’ Fern grabbed a slice of bread. ‘Did you run into Daisy?’
Meadows felt the heat rise in his neck. ‘Yes, but you shouldn’t listen to Edris.’
‘Oh, I’m not. It’s obvious you like the girl,’ Fern said.
‘Well even if that’s the case I’m not sure she likes me, she was a little off today.’
‘I expect she has a lot on her mind. Who wouldn’t like you?! You know that girl from the cake shop, Marina, I think she might be single. Lovely girl.’
‘Mum, stop trying to set me up, I’m fine as I am.’
‘No, you’re not, you need someone to love. Someone you can go home to and offload your troubles. Not that I mind your visits. I look forward to them. I just want to see you settled before I go.’
‘You’re not going anywhere for a while,’ Meadows said.
Maybe she’s not well and she wants to prepare me. The thought knotted his stomach.
‘Are you feeling okay?’
‘I’m fine. I take it you have no leads on the missing child.’
‘No, it looks like the mother may be involved but was drugged up at the time so doesn’t remember anything. I’m fairly certain the boyfriend had a hand in the child’s disappearance, but we have no solid evidence. There are things that don’t add up and I feel like someone is playing games with us.’
‘I’m sure you will work it out, you always do.’
‘I hope so and that someone doesn’t dig up another skeleton twenty years from now.’
Chapter Sixteen
Meadows walked into the office feeling clear-headed and fresh after a night of rest. The crisp spring air still clung to his clothes and the early morning sun shone through the window, lifting his spirits. Lester was sat at his desk looking anything but refreshed.
He should take his own advice and get some rest, he must be feeling the pressure from the media to get a quick result. I wouldn’t like to walk in his shoes.
Meadows smiled as he approached the desk. ‘Morning, sir.’
‘Morning.’ Lester looked up from his paperwork. ‘I’m afraid the night didn’t bring any developments. The financial reports and computer analysis you requested are on your desk. Nothing more was found in the garden and the search of the woods proved fruitless. Search and rescue are now extending the search to surrounding fields and the mountain. I don’t hold out much hope of bringing her home safely. It’s been three nights if we go with the assumption that she was taken during Sunday night.’
‘There’s still the possibility that she was handed over to someone, then she could be anywhere in the country. Any more sightings reported?’
‘No, the phone calls have tapered off. I’ll have to make an announcement to the press regarding the remains that were found in the garden. I’m hoping that the attention on the house will keep the missing child in the forefront of the public’s minds.’
‘I agree, it will keep people talking. We need to move fast to identify the child; once the news breaks there could be some anxious parents out there hoping that they can finally have some answers. I’ll make a start looking at missing babies over the last thirty or more years. There can’t be that many but we’re likely to get an influx of calls once the news spreads. On the other hand, someone with a long-buried secret is about to get rattled.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ Lester said picking up his jacket. ‘Keep me updated.’
Meadows grabbed a mug of tea from the kitchen and carried it back to his desk. The first thing he noticed was a set of photographs showing the skeleton taken from different angles. He laid them to one side and started reading through the reports. As he sat absorbed in the contents, he became aware of voices drifting into the room as the team filtered in looking fresh faced and full of the usual banter.
‘Great timing,’ Meadows called out. ‘I’ve just finished reading through the reports on Natalie’s finances and Ryan’s laptop.’ He swung his chair around so he was facing the group. ‘It seems that Natalie is heavily in debt. She has CCJs for non-payment of council tax and water rates which resulted in an attachment of earnings. This takes a chunk out of her wages, which given the hours she claims to work doesn’t add up to very much. She is maxed out on credit cards, catalogues, and has payday loans that are spiralling out of control. There are no large payments, just cash withdrawals, twenty or thirty pounds at a time but taken out most days.’
‘So, if someone was to offer her a large cash sum for an illegal adoption, looks like she might be tempted,’ Paskin said.
‘Yes, I guess that could be a motive,’ Meadows agreed. ‘But if it is a staged abduction it wasn’t well thought out.’
‘It’s not like they have many brain cells between them,’ Blackwell said.
‘The buried clothes could’ve been put there to distract us I suppose,’ Meadows added. ‘There are also weekly receipts other than her wages that come from a company called Serenity. I haven’t had time to check them on Companies House yet.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Blackwell said. ‘It’s a knocking shop fronted as a massage parlour.’
‘Regular visitor, are you?’ Edris grinned.
‘Ha, bloody ha.’ Blackwell gave Edris a scathing look.
‘Better check it out; want to go, Edris?’ Meadows said.
‘I think it would be better to send one of the girls.’
‘Pussy.’ Valentine laughed. ‘I’ll go. I’ve always wanted to have a look around one of those places. I’ll bring you back a whip, Edris.’
‘Thank you, Valentine. Make sure you take someone with you,’ Meadows said. ‘Okay, back to the reports. Forensics didn’t find any indication that Ella sustained any form of injury in the house. There were various drugs found within easy reach of a child, so we can’t rule out the possibility that she accidently took something, and Natalie panicked. All of this is just supposition. We only have the witness statement that places Natalie in her car the night Ella went missing, there’s nothing to tie her to the clothes found in the woods. Our main suspect is Ryan given the match to the footprint found in the woods. Unfortunately, it is not sufficient evidence and no jury would convict him on the footprint and circumstantial evidence alone. He’s due before the magistrates on assault and drug related charges this afternoon.’
Meadows continued, ‘The technicians found some fairly hard-core pornography on his computer, and although he appears to like his eh… actresses young, they do appear to be of legal age. There were also several home movies, one filmed on Sunday night which involved Natalie, Dan, Claire and Jamie.’
‘You mean an orgy?’ Paskin asked.
‘Yes. The film was checked for any visible or audible signs of Ella, but none were found,’ Meadows said.
‘Basically, we have fuck all,’ Blackwell grumbled.
‘We have to keep digging. In
telligence is looking into known paedophile rings. Ella’s face is all over the newspapers, and posters are on every lamppost. If someone has her, they aren’t going to be able to keep her hidden for long. There are now over a hundred officers involved in the search, plus search and rescue. Every outbuilding is being searched and uniform are extending house to house enquiries. If she’s still in the area, we will find her.’
‘If she’s still alive,’ Paskin said.
‘Yes, but until there is no hope, we keep looking and putting pressure on Natalie and her friends. In the meantime, we have this little Miss or Mr who deserves our attention.’
He picked up the picture from his desk and walked over to the incident board and pinned it.
‘We don’t have a lot to go on. Daisy is working on a DNA profile and a timeframe of how long this little one has been in the ground, could be thirty years or more. This is a three-month-old child, so it’s unlikely to be a young mother who is trying to hide the birth of her baby. This little one must be missed by someone, so start by looking for missing babies, work backwards to say forty years. Also, we need a list of all the previous residents of the house. I’m going to see Natalie this morning, so I will call on the neighbour, he’s lived there a long time. He may have some useful information.’
‘Surely you can’t think the cases are connected,’ Blackwell said.
‘No, but then again’ – Meadows ran his hand across his temple – ‘it’s quite a coincidence that it’s the same house. What if the person that buried the child in the garden had suffered a breakdown? Maybe they couldn’t cope or the child died and they panicked. Something triggers them all these years later, they get confused, think of Ella as their own child and take her.’
‘That’s a bit of a stretch,’ Paskin said. ‘We don’t know how long the skeleton has been hidden in the garden. If it’s forty years, then it would put the mother in her sixties.’
‘But if it’s twenty years the mother could be in her forties,’ Edris said.
‘That’s assuming whoever buried the child was the parent,’ Valentine said.
‘That’s why we need to look for missing babies. If someone took a baby twenty or thirty years ago and got away with it they may have tried again and taken Ella,’ Meadows said.
Blackwell huffed. ‘We should be putting all our effort into finding Ella.’
‘We are doing everything that can be done to find Ella. Until search and rescue find something, or we have something solid on Ryan and Natalie, we have hit a dead end. I think that this is our best line of enquiry, it’s all we’ve got.’
‘There’s always the chance that someone will come forward with new information, especially given the media attention on the house,’ Paskin said.
‘Yes, there’s that too and if there is any chance there is a connection between the two cases, no matter how small, we have to look into it,’ Meadows said. He turned to the board and pointed to the tiny skeleton. ‘This one deserves to have an identity, a decent burial, and maybe a family can gain some peace.’
‘Yeah alright,’ Blackwell grumbled.
‘Good.’ Meadows grabbed his coat before heading out of the office with Edris.
* * *
‘You should just send Blackwell out with the search party, get the miserable sod out of our way,’ Edris said as they drove towards Natalie’s house.
‘He’s just frustrated that we haven’t found Ella, I can’t blame him.’ Meadows’ attention was caught by the posters that were pinned to the lampposts, all showing a smiling Ella with the words ‘missing’ printed in bold letters. ‘Someone knows where she is.’
‘Well there will be plenty of people who will want to dish the dirt on Ryan if they think he has anything to do with Ella’s disappearance. I get the impression he’s not well liked.’
‘Yes, and most of the valley will know that he’s being questioned. He better hope, for his own safety, that the magistrate doesn’t grant him bail. The last thing we need is a lynch mob taking matters into their own hands.’
‘Yeah, well it would serve him right if he’s done something to that little girl,’ Edris said.
‘That’s a big “if”. We don’t have any proof. I’m not even sure myself anymore. Besides, I would rather see him convicted by a jury and made accountable for his actions.’
‘And what does Ryan have to do with the skeleton in the garden?’
‘I don’t know, probably nothing.’
‘It’s gotta to be him. He was there, and we matched his footprint,’ Edris said.
‘Yes, remember what Mike said about the print being weighted at the front. Ryan doesn’t appear to have a limp or any problems walking. All the footwear taken from the house was the same size, so the trainers weren’t too big.’
‘Maybe he was staggering, he was off his face,’ Edris said.
‘Or someone took his trainers to implicate him.’
‘But who? Natalie? She’s been trying to protect him the whole time.’
‘Or is that just a cover?’ Meadows stopped the car and sighed. ‘I don’t know, I’m not sure what to make of her. She seems genuine when she says that she doesn’t remember what happened that night but doesn’t appear to feel guilty. Most mothers would be frantic with worry and full of remorse if they’d got off their face and their child went missing.’
‘Yeah well, there’s something wrong with that one, wheel is spinning but the hamster’s dead, I reckon.’ Edris grinned.
‘You have such a way with words.’ Meadows laughed. ‘Come on, let’s see what George can tell us about his past neighbours.’
There was no answer at George’s house. Meadows stepped back and looked at the upstairs windows.
‘Curtains are open so he must be up, he said he slept in the front bedroom. Maybe he’s popped out for a paper.’
‘Or he’s done a runner.’ Edris nodded to himself. ‘Yeah, for all we know he could have buried that kid in the garden and now he’s spooked. He probably snatched Ella as well, he did have a key.’
‘You think George snatched a baby, jumped over the garden fence, dug a hole, then laid a patio? Still, you never know.’ Meadows smiled. ‘We’ll call back later.’
Raised voices could be heard coming from the sitting room when Brianna opened the door.
‘They’ve been at each other’s throats for the past half an hour,’ Brianna said.
Meadows entered the sitting room and saw Nia sat in the armchair, her face was flushed and her lips set in a hard line. Natalie was sat on the sofa puffing on a roll-up.
‘There have been no new developments overnight,’ Meadows said as he took a seat in the remaining chair.
Edris walked a little further into the room but remained standing. Brianna took a seat next to Natalie.
‘See, there’s no point me sitting around here, it’s driving me mad.’ Natalie glared at Nia.
‘Nat wants to go back to work. I told her it’s a ridiculous idea, what will people think?’
‘I don’t give a shit what people think,’ Natalie seethed. ‘I need the money, we don’t all have a husband and savings in the bank.’
‘I go out to work,’ Nia retorted. ‘I’ve taken leave to support you. If one of my girls was missing the last thing I would think of is work or bloody money.’
She’s got a point.
Meadows leaned forward. ‘I understand your frustration, Natalie, but I don’t think it’s a good idea at the moment. I’m sure your workplace will give you paid compassionate leave. Besides, we are going to need you to be available for further questioning. I have to inform you that we’re still treating Ryan as a person of interest and we still can’t rule out the possibility that you went into the woods on Sunday night.’ He glanced across at Nia.
Maybe she can knock some sense into her sister. Let’s see what she makes of Natalie’s blackout.
‘By your own admission you can’t remember what happened that night.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nia looked at Meadows
then turned to glare at Natalie. ‘Were you that pissed, or did you take something else?’
‘I… what does it matter? I can’t remember what happened Sunday night.’
‘You stupid bitch!’ Nia fumed. ‘Well, you can forget going back to work, you can focus on remembering what happened. I’ll drag you to a bloody hypnotist if I have to.’
That’s a good idea, let’s hope she carries out her threat.
Meadows looked at Natalie, her fists were clenched, and eyes narrowed.
‘Why don’t you just piss off,’ Natalie said. ‘I’m fed up with you and Leanne telling me what I should do and who I can see. I’m surprised she isn’t here sticking her nose in.’
‘I told her there was no point in coming over until there was any news. You can’t expect her to drag Eli along and sit around waiting.’
‘You’ve no right to decide, maybe I want Leanne to come over.’
‘Fine.’ Nia threw her hands up in the air. ‘Give her a call and ask her.’
‘I’m not asking her for anything, I can manage on my own.’
Nia shook her head in frustration. ‘Whatever. Maybe she should come, perhaps she can talk some sense into you.’
I wonder how she would react if she knew Nia and Leanne had reported her to social services.
Meadows could sense that Nia was close to losing her temper and walking out. He wanted to see Nia’s reaction when asked about Serenity, but thought it best to calm things down a bit first.
‘Why did you start pulling up the patio slabs in the garden?’ Meadows looked at Natalie.
‘What?’ Confusion creased her face.
‘Most of the patio slabs had been pulled up before the officers searched the garden,’ Edris said.
Natalie scowled. ‘So now you think I buried that child in the garden.’
‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ Nia snapped.
‘We just need to know if there was any particular reason,’ Edris said.
Natalie’s face relaxed. ‘It was Nia’s idea.’
‘The old slabs were crumbling and dangerous for Ella, so I thought I would give Nat a hand to clear the garden and organise a new patio to be laid. Not that she took much interest.’
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