The shock of the statement is like a punch to Cody’s gut. ‘Ma’am, that’s . . . I mean, you can’t possibly . . .’
‘Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, I don’t know. This case is getting under my skin. I’m not being objective, and that means I’m not doing my job effectively. The team deserves someone who is. Those two young girls deserve it.’
Cody takes a deep breath. ‘If I can speak frankly, ma’am, what those two girls need is someone who cares. What’s obvious to me – what’s obvious to the rest of the team – is that you care about this case more than anything. What you also need to know is that your determination is infectious. Every person in that incident room sees how you act, and it makes them want to be just as dedicated, just as involved. It reminds us how important these two young lives are. If you want the best out of your team, you need to stay.’
Blunt drops her gaze while she thinks about this, then she smiles at Cody. ‘Well, this is a right turnaround, isn’t it? I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be getting behavioural therapy from you. I’d always thought you’d be the one ending up in the psychiatrist’s chair.’
Could still happen, thinks Cody.
‘All right,’ says Blunt. ‘You’ve convinced me. But if that lot complain they’re getting a rough time from me, you can tell them they’ve got you to blame.’
Cody smiles, but doesn’t move.
‘Something else?’ she asks.
‘I just thought . . . well, maybe you’d like to hug it out?’
Her eyes widen. ‘Fuck off, DS Cody. What kind of place do you think I’m running here, a fucking hippy commune? Now get back to work before I throw you through that door.’
When Cody turns and leaves, it is with a huge grin on his face.
30
‘Morning, girls!’
Harriet flutters in like a mother bird returning to the nest. She is carrying a tray of breakfast cereal and juice. As always, Malcolm stands guard at the door while she fusses over her pretend family.
‘Rice Krispies today. Plus some toast. And I’ve got some new DVDs for you to watch. I’ll bring one up later. How does that sound?’
A movie is always presented as a special treat. The television isn’t connected to an aerial. Daisy knows it’s to prevent her from finding out what’s going on in the outside world.
‘Great,’ says Daisy. ‘It’ll be nice to have something new to watch.’
She wonders if she sounds a little overenthusiastic. For a moment, Harriet looks at her suspiciously.
‘Right,’ says Harriet. ‘Well, eat up! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.’
She bustles out. Malcolm stares at them for a few seconds before he too departs.
Daisy herds the other girls to the table. There is a lump in her throat, because she knows this isn’t going to be as straightforward as it ought to be. Having breakfast shouldn’t be an ordeal. You sit down, you eat and it’s done. Only it won’t be like that, will it? It will be exasperating and stressful. Everything is stressful now.
She picks up the jug of milk, pours it onto each bowl of cereal.
‘Look at that,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t that look good?’
Poppy gives her a puzzled look. ‘It’s only Rice Krispies.’
Daisy glares at her, then turns back to Ellie. ‘Can you hear them, Ellie? The snap, crackle and pop? Would you like some juice to go with it? It’s nice and sweet.’
She pushes the glass closer to Ellie. Then she picks up a spoon and puts it in Ellie’s hand.
‘There you go. Dig in now. You must be starving.’
Poppy is already tucking in. She brings spoonful after huge spoonful of cereal up to her mouth.
‘Please,’ Daisy says to Ellie. ‘You’ve got to eat. You’ll waste away. You’ll get ill. You’ve—’
She realises she is crying. This is too difficult. It’s too much responsibility. Life shouldn’t be this much of a hardship when you’re ten years old.
Poppy stops eating. She stares open-mouthed at Daisy, masticated food visible on her tongue.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asks.
Daisy jumps out of her chair. She marches across to the wall and, raising her arms, leans her face against them, like she used to when she played hide and seek all those years ago. When she had friends. Real friends. Not these two strangers, these cellmates, these children who are dependent on her to keep them alive.
She wants to play hide and seek now. She wants to close her eyes and count to ten, and when she turns around the other children will be gone. The adults will be gone. This house will be gone. There will be just her, out in the open, and she will run and run and run, because there will be no walls to stop her, no people to hold her back.
‘What’s the matter, Daisy?’
Poppy, at her side now, tugging on her cardigan.
Daisy whirls around, sees how it causes Poppy to flinch.
‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t help you. We’re all going to die in here.’
Poppy blinks in sudden fearfulness. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s true. You won’t help me. You keep getting angry. She won’t eat. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to help you if you won’t help me back? It’s not fair.’
She buries her face in her arms again. Her body begins to shake as she sobs silently.
It’s a while before she notices Poppy pulling at her cardigan again.
‘Daisy! Daisy!’
She pushes away from the wall. Sniffs as she looks down through blurred eyes. ‘What?’
Poppy turns. Points. ‘Look.’
Daisy follows her gaze. She wipes her eyes to get a better look.
It’s Ellie. She is eating.
It’s slow at first. The spoon moves at a glacial speed from bowl to mouth. But gradually, as she becomes reaccustomed to it, she speeds up.
A bark of hysterical laughter escapes Daisy’s lips. Slowly she walks across to Ellie and sits opposite her. Ellie doesn’t even seem to notice. She just stares at the table as she fills her mouth with food.
It’s for me, thinks Daisy. She’s doing this for me.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you, Ellie.’
31
The call takes Webley by surprise.
She’s at her desk, but it’s not her police extension that rings; it’s her mobile. She reaches into her pocket and takes out the phone. Sees that the call is from Parker.
Shit.
She debates rejecting the call. Or at least letting it go to voicemail. But people are looking at her.
She thumbs the answer button. ‘Hello.’ She keeps her voice flat, emotionless.
‘Hi. It’s me. Long time no see.’
It’s me. Well, that’s a dumb opening. And ‘long time no see’ is stating the bleeding obvious.
I’m angry, she thinks. But then I’ve every right to be.
‘I’m on duty, Parker. What is it?’
‘I . . . I was hoping we could talk.’
‘What about?’
‘Well . . . us. We’ve hardly spoken since before Christmas.’
‘No, we haven’t. And whose fault is that?’
‘I . . . You were pissed off with me. I thought I should let you cool down a little.’
Let me cool down? As if I’m the one at fault here?
‘I can’t talk now, Parker. Believe it or not, I’ve got some really serious matters to deal with.’
‘No, I understand that. I’ve called at a bad time. But . . . I’m really missing you, Megan. It’s not the same without you.’
Now why’d you have to go and say that, Parker? Why’d you have to go and tug at my heartstrings?
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’ She looks around her. None of her colleagues is staring at her directly, but she knows that ears are wagging.
‘Say that you’ll meet up with me, so that we can talk about this properly.’
; ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not? What harm would it do to talk? Was what I did really so bad?’
A good question. Was it so bad? He didn’t sleep with another woman. He didn’t steal money from her account. He didn’t beat her up.
So was it so bad? Or was she just eager to grab at the first excuse that came along to end a relationship in which she wasn’t entirely happy?
Yes, he overstepped a mark, but wasn’t that simply because of his jealousy? Is that something she can’t forgive?
‘I’ll think about it,’ she says.
‘You will? Seriously?’
‘I said so, didn’t I? Look, I need to get back to work. I’ll text you.’
‘Okay. Great. When?’
‘Soon, all right? Don’t pressurise me.’
‘No. You’re right. Okay. Just let me know.’
‘Bye, Parker.’
‘I love—’
She hangs up before the rest of his sentence can reach her.
*
‘Cody!’
He thinks that almost everyone in the building must have heard his name being yelled. Blunt wouldn’t need a megaphone to do crowd control.
He gets up from his desk.
‘You should take a notebook,’ says Webley.
‘Why?’
‘To put down the back of your pants before you get your spanking.’
He gives her his best ‘We are not amused’ look, but still he wonders why he is being so emphatically summoned.
When he gets to Blunt’s office, he sees that Grace Meade is there. She gives him a coy smile.
Blunt wastes no time with such niceties. ‘Tell him,’ she says to Grace.
‘Well,’ says Grace, ‘I’ve been looking into past cases of missing children, trying to find any similarities with the current ones. Until now, I haven’t had much luck.’
‘Until now? You’ve found another one?’ The thought horrifies Cody. Two is bad enough.
‘I’m not sure, but it’s a possibility. It doesn’t follow the same pattern. It wasn’t in the local area, it didn’t involve a break-in, and it wasn’t at night.’
Cody senses he’s missing something. ‘So . . .’
‘The white van. An anonymous caller said that they saw the girl being forced into the back of a white van.’
‘Which case are you talking about, Grace?’
‘Daisy Agnew.’
The name rings a bell with Cody. ‘Daisy Agnew! That was over two years ago, wasn’t it?’
‘Three.’
‘And it was in North Wales, right? I thought the father was the main suspect.’
‘He was. The parents had split up, but he wanted Daisy to live with him. When she disappeared, he was the natural suspect. The Welsh CID looked into it, but couldn’t pin anything on him. The girl still hasn’t been found, but everyone in the community believed he did it. He had to move away in the end.’
‘And he drove a white van?’
‘Yes. He was a plasterer.’
Cody weighs up the information, and finds it lacking in substance. ‘I don’t know. Seems a tenuous link to me. For one thing, it’s a completely different MO. And then there’s the huge separation in both distance and time. Why wait three years and then switch your focus from Wales to Liverpool? There’s also the anonymous phone call. Why wouldn’t a witness to something like that come forward? Unless, of course, they didn’t want to get caught lying about the father’s part in it.’ He looks at Grace. ‘You’re not suggesting that Daisy’s Agnew’s father might be responsible for the latest abductions too, are you?’
‘No. He started a new life in Spain in the end, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to confirm he’s still there. But what if he really didn’t have anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance? What if it was another white van driver – the same one who took Poppy and Ellie? Daisy was seven at the time she went missing – not so different from the other two.’
Cody is still sceptical, but Blunt heads off his objections.
‘I want it looking into,’ she says. ‘Send someone over there. Talk to the investigating officers and re-interview any witnesses. In particular, get the mother’s story. But whatever you do, don’t get her hopes up. Any case involving a child missing for three years is unlikely to have a happy ending.’
Cody looks at Grace again. ‘Remind me of the details.’
‘Daisy was having a picnic on the beach with her mum and her mum’s new partner. She went up to play in the sand dunes with another kid. A few minutes later, the adults realised that the second kid had rejoined her family, but Daisy wasn’t with her. That’s when they started to worry. They searched the dunes for ages, but there was no sign of her. I remember something similar happening to me when I was little: climbing up on some sand dunes and then losing my bearings. I cried my eyes out when I couldn’t see my parents. It didn’t seem such a big deal to them, but to me—’
Cody interrupts: ‘Where exactly was this?’
‘I think we were somewhere in Cornwall. We—’
‘Not you. Daisy Agnew.’
‘Harlech. It’s got a beautiful long beach. There’s—’
Cody turns to Blunt. ‘I need to go, ma’am.’
Blunt eyes him up. ‘I’ve seen that look before, Cody. What is it this time?’
‘I’m not sure. There’s just something I need to check out.’
‘In Harlech?’
‘No, ma’am. Much closer to home.’
32
‘That nice Italian restaurant on Dale Street?’ says Webley.
‘Nope,’ Cody answers.
‘The Indian on Water Street?’
‘Stop thinking about your stomach.’
‘You said you were taking me to one of my favourite places. I happen to like those restaurants.’
They’re in the car, Cody driving.
‘Guess again.’
‘All right,’ she says. ‘John Lewis?’
‘Nope.’
‘Hotel Chocolat? No, wait, that’s my stomach again. Boodles?’
‘Nope.’
‘A clothes shop? A flower shop? A bar?’
‘No, no and no.’
‘I give up. Tell me.’
‘What, and ruin the surprise?’
She doesn’t have to wait long. It comes to her as soon as Cody turns off towards the entrance of the Mersey Tunnel.
‘Oh, pissing hell, Cody. Please don’t tell me we’re going to see Quigley again.’
He turns, smiles.
She slaps him on the arm. ‘Why didn’t you say? At the very least I’d have changed my shoes.’
‘Hey, I’m the one who ended up looking a right state last time. You hardly even smudged your lipstick.’
‘Yeah, well that just shows what a superhero I am, doesn’t it, seeing as I’m the one who caught him.’
He lets her fume for a minute, while he drives into the tunnel that will take them through to the Wirral.
‘So why do we need to talk to Quigley again?’ says Webley.
‘I just need to check something out.’
‘Good. Well, that’s clarified that one. You need to start holding things back, Cody. I’m drowning in all this information you’re giving me. Loose lips sink ships.’
Another pause. And then it seems as though Webley has decided to launch a counter-offensive.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages,’ she says. ‘What is it with you and Blunt?’
He gives her a puzzled look. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Don’t act daft. There’s something between you. A special relationship.’
‘What, you think I’m getting it on with our boss?’
‘No. But there’s something. She doesn’t talk to the rest of us in the same way she talks to you. And before you say it, it’s nothing to do with rank. It’s like when we were at the McVitie murder scene. She looked at you like you both knew a secret – like you were in the Masons or something. And wh
en she threw that wobbler in the incident room, none of us would have dared go near her. You did, though. You knew she’d open up to you.’
‘That’s because I have charm, tact and diplomacy.’
‘And modesty. Don’t forget modesty. Seriously, though, what’s going on between you two?’
Cody shakes his head. ‘To be honest, I’ve no idea.’
‘Come off it.’
‘No, really. I’m not trying to dodge the question. She’s been that way with me ever since I joined. At first I thought it was just because of what I went through when I was undercover, but I think there’s more to it than that.’
‘Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Are you kidding? I may get on all right with her, but I’m not stupid. Anyway, speaking of relationships . . .’
He feels the full force of Webley’s glare. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You and Parker Penn. What’s the latest?’
‘His surname isn’t Penn, and it isn’t Carr either. And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes you do. That was him earlier, wasn’t it? On the phone.’
‘Might have been. None of your business.’ She pauses. ‘Okay, it was him.’
‘Is it back on, then?’
‘Not at the moment, no. He wants to meet up. To talk things over.’
‘Are you going to?’
‘Haven’t decided. Do you think I should? Actually, don’t answer that. It’s none of your business.’
‘Well, since you asked – yes, I think you should. He’s a nice bloke, despite the ridiculous name. A bit possessive maybe, but then who wouldn’t be jealous of a guy like myself?’
She stiffens in her seat. ‘You know what, Cody?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Drive. And I hope you end up in the sea again.’
33
Cody raps on the caravan door. Gets no response.
‘Gavin, it’s us again. The same two police officers you spoke to before.’
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