by Joy Ellis
Kate thought about Shauna. ‘What a hallucinogen, or a Rohypnol-type drug?’
‘They don’t know yet, it’s too early to say. Although thankfully there are no signs of sexual interference.’
‘That’s one blessing. Now, Rosie, are you sure enough about the description to allow me to bring the parents to the hospital?’
‘It’s close enough, ma-am. I’m almost certain. The clothes, the hair colour, and her build all seem to tally, but please don’t get their hopes up, just in case I’ve found a look-alike.’
Back in the lounge, Kate carefully re-worded what DC Rosie McElderry had just told her. ‘Now this may have nothing to do with Toni, but I do need one or both of you to come with us. I must just ask you to forgive us if this turns out to be another girl, and not your daughter.’
Both husband and wife jumped to their feet. ‘We’ll take our own car, DCI Reynard. We’ll follow you.’
Jon travelled with them, and Gary with Kate as she sped back towards her home patch.
‘Looks like the lass finally came up against someone tougher and nastier than she expected,’ mused Gary. ‘You can only push your luck so far before it runs out.’ He glanced worriedly at her. ‘And there’s something else you should know, ma’am. For the past year, we’ve been trying to trace an underground drinking club. Sounds pretty soft cell, but it’s far from that. Someone is supplying under-age youngsters with alcohol and God knows what else. It seems that the kids get in free and get free drinks as long as they party themselves silly, and socialize with the paying members.’
A wave of nausea hit Kate. ‘Socialize?’
‘Mm, we’re not sure exactly what form that takes, and no-one is prepared to talk about it.’ His face drew into a dark frown. ‘Whoever runs it is damned clever. They’ve been one jump ahead of us for months.’
‘So why can’t you locate the venue?’
‘That’s the clever part, ma’am. It moves around. We suspect that members are sent a text with a time and location, just a few hours before it kicks off, bit like the old Smartie parties?’ Gary shook his head. ‘We’ve been close, but so far we’ve discovered zilch. And hell, would I like to get my hands on the men behind it.’
Kate slowed down for a red light. ‘Gary, we are investigating the drowning of a fourteen year old girl with alcohol and Foxy Methoxy in her bloodstream. We suspect she was taken to a deserted beach and dumped. The fact she drowned must have been a real bonus for whoever drugged her. Any chance we are talking about a connection?’
Gary nodded quickly. ‘I’d say so, and if Toni Clarkson has a date-rape drug in her system, that could be connected too.’
‘Then we’ve got to find this club and get inside it.’
‘Easier said than done, ma’am.’
Kate accelerated towards the town. ‘No offence, but we have better resources than you, Gary.’ Kate thought of her best resource, i.e. Jon Summerhill. ‘I’m willing to bet we can crack this. What would you say if I managed to swing a temporary transfer? Get you on our team for while?’
‘I’d welcome it, ma’am. Really I would, and…’ He sat back and took a deep breath. ‘Actually things have been pretty shitty over the last year. Sadly I lost my sister a few months back, and although the guys at the station are not a bad bunch, the atmosphere and the working environment is pretty crappy. I’ve been thinking about a change of scenery, but I need to know that club is closed down, and our kids are safe from their clutches before I consider my next move.’
‘Then I’ll put some wheels into motion. I think Saltfleet Division could do with a man like you, PC Pritchard.’
They drove the rest of the way in silence, Gary with an excited smile on his face, and Kate silently congratulating ‘Mystic Meg’ on yet another correct prediction.
They found Rosie waiting for them in the foyer of the hospital. Kate made a brief introduction and she rushed them through to where the teenager was being treated. A doctor greeted them, and then they waited anxiously while he made sure that she was ready to be seen.
‘She’s still very confused, and we are concerned because we have no idea what she has taken.’
The young man looked haggard. His shirt had come adrift from his trousers and he looked to be somewhere around twelve. If it hadn’t been for the stethoscope around his neck Kate would never have known this ‘school boy’ was a doctor. She silently prayed for the return of the white coat.
‘Toni doesn’t take drugs.’ said Ellen Clarkson in a very small crackly voice.
And neither did Shauna. Kate looked at the woman sympathetically and wondered how many times she’d heard that empty statement. The parents were always the last to find out.
‘That’s as maybe,’ said the doctor gently, ‘and no matter how they got there, there are drugs in her system, and some pretty powerful ones from the symptoms that she is presenting.’ He turned towards the door of the examination room. ‘Let’s just see if you recognize her first, shall we?’
They stood back as the Clarksons tentatively approached the trolley on which the agitated girl lay.
Kate realized that she was holding her breath, and then she heard a low cry from the mother, followed by the exclamation, ‘Darling! My God! Whatever has happened to you?’
‘Bingo,’ whispered Rosie with a great deal of relief. ‘Game over!’
Kate didn’t answer. Apart from the fact that they needed to find out exactly what had happened to the youngster, she was experiencing a seriously bad bout of policeman’s nose. Something wasn’t right about all this.
The others moved away, talking animatedly, but she stayed and continued to look through the observation window.
The young woman was still hallucinating. One moment she appeared almost comatose, the next she was throwing herself around, fighting and screaming at anyone who went near her. Her eyes were wide, her pupils contracted to little more than pinpricks, and she obviously did not recognize her parents. For that reason, and to spare them further upset, a nurse quickly led them out and took them to a nearby relative’s room.
‘May I go in?’ Kate asked the doctor.
‘Sure. But keep well back. We’ve already had a syringe of sedative travel like a dart to the far wall!’
‘I just want to observe her.’ She looked at the trolley and large plastic bag beneath it. ‘Her clothes have been bagged for forensics?’ she asked.
‘Yes, they are all there. Although the shoes are separate. They were covered in thick mud.’
As Toni yelled and cursed in an altogether un-ladylike fashion, Kate stared at the clear plastic bag holding her footwear.
‘She was alone when she was found?’
The doctor looked across at her. ‘Yes.’
Alarm bells rang in her head.
Toni’s bare feet thrashed and kicked out at the nurse closest to her. Her feet were narrow, very slim with long toes, but clearly, no more than a size 5. Kate looked again at the plastic bag and saw the pair of mud-covered chunky wide trainers.
‘They are not her shoes.’ she said softly. ‘Why is she wearing someone else’s shoes?’
The doctor blinked a few times. ‘Pass.’ He frowned. ‘Although she does keep calling out for someone called Emily. Maybe it’s connected.’
As if on queue, Toni screamed the name several times, then whimpered, “Where are you taking her?” before shivering violently and curling into the foetal position.
An icy trickle of fear coursed down Kate’s spine.
They’d found Toni, and thank God she was alive, but who was Emily? And what did Toni mean by ‘where are you taking her?’ Did they have another girl to find?
She swallowed hard. She believed that they did, and considering what had happened to Shauna Kelly, whoever Emily was, she was in grave danger.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There was little more that they could do until Toni was able to talk, and as Gary had offered to stay with her at the hospital, Jon and Kate drove back to Saltfleet.
Kate
said very little during the journey, although Jon knew that her mind would be working overtime. They had no choice but to take Toni’s anxiety for a girl called Emily seriously, even though the kid was still high as a kite.
‘Neither the parents or Gary Pritchard can place a youngster called Emily in Harlan Marsh, and Gary’s been working that patch long enough to know most of the little yobs and tearaways.’ Kate sounded tired. ‘Which makes this one bitch of a situation, and I’m not sure where the hell to start.’
Jon slowed down as they approached a roundabout. ‘All we can do is start running the usual checks, hoping that this mysterious girl is known to us in some way.’
Kate nodded. ‘My first job will be to wire Scotty up to his beloved computer and let him do his stuff.’
Jon pulled up in front of the station security gates and swiped his card through the machine. ‘Let’s hope we have more luck than Harlan Marsh, because if we hit a brick wall too, then I guess we’ll have to go back to there and take to the streets.’
‘And I get the feeling that’s exactly what we’ll be doing, but…’ Kate paused before getting out of the car. ‘I suppose there would be no use going to the place where Toni was dumped, and you trying to pick something up? Like with Shauna?’ she asked tentatively.
Jon shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, ma’am. It’s not as if it was the place where she was drugged and held, where she would have felt most threatened.’
‘And we haven’t the foggiest where that was.’ Kate slammed the car door, a little too hard. ‘Oh, sod it. We’d better get started on some basics checks.’
Scott came up with over twenty girls with the first name, Emily. The women, mostly teenagers, were either missing persons or petty criminals that had crept onto police files via a variety of misdemeanours. Sadly a barrage of phone calls to private homes, prisons and young offender’s institutions dismissed all but three names, and one of them had died of an over-dose and the other two were long-term mispers with no specific connection to the area.
Jon hung up the phone on his last call and pulled a face. He really didn’t fancy traipsing the streets of Harlan Marsh, but they needed more information, and that was most likely where they’d find it.
‘Sergeant, finish up there. We’re going back to the hospital.’ The boss was calling from her office door. ‘Gary Pritchard has just rung. Toni’s more or less ready to speak to us. I’ve told him to stay with her and not to let her talk to anyone else, not even her parents, until we get there.’
Jon quickly pulled on his jacket and felt around in his pocket for his car keys. If Toni remembered something specific about Emily it could save them a whole load of shoe-leather.
They arrived at the hospital in seven minutes, and in another two, they were standing looking down at Toni Clarkson’s bruised and tear-stained face.
Gary said, ‘Toni, this is DCI Kate Reynard and her sergeant, Jon Summerhill. Like I said, they are here to help you.’ His voice held the warm tones of a favourite uncle. He’d clearly used the time before their arrival to make an attempt to win over the girl’s confidence.
Jon looked at her and saw a left-over touch of belligerence in the eyes.
He watched as Kate drew up a chair close to the bed and placed herself on the girl’s level, so as not to intimidate her. She then assured her that she was in no trouble, and all they wanted to do was find whoever had hurt her and punish them.
The belligerence in Toni’s eyes slowly disappeared, and only fear remained. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she whimpered.
‘Well, let’s start when you left your friends at the War Memorial, shall we?’ asked Kate softly.
Toni’s eyes darted around the room and Jon noticed her throat constrict several times, but she said nothing.
‘You told your friends that you were going somewhere where you’d be welcome.’
Toni drew in on herself, and even though the room was almost unbearable hot, she began to shiver.
‘Did you go to that place, Toni?’ Kate asked, obviously trying to keep her patience, but horribly aware that, if she did exist, as every second passed, things were looking blacker for Emily.
‘And were you welcome?’ added Jon softly. ‘Were you given alcohol?’
Toni gave a long, shaky sigh, and nodded miserably. ‘There’s always free booze, if you want it.’
‘And where is it?’
‘As if I’m going to tell you lot!’ A hint of the old Toni resurrected itself. ‘They’ll kill me if I grass them up, and anyway..,’ she mumbled cryptically, ‘It’s not that straight-forward.’ She wiped a tear from her cheek and winced as she touched the bruised bone. ‘But I’ll tell you this, there were people there that I’d never seen before.’ She drew the bedclothes up tighter to her and rocked backwards and forwards. ‘They said they were going on to another party.’
‘And you went with them?’ Kate looked directly at the girl.
She nodded again.
‘In a car?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind? Was it a 4X4?’ Kate thought of the vehicle that had driven Shauna to her lonely death.
‘No, just an ordinary car.’
‘And were you alone?’
‘I thought some of the others were going, but when I got into the car, I was alone with one of the men.’
‘Its okay, Toni. You’re safe now.’ Kate placed a hand gently on her arm. ‘Do you know where you went? Did you recognise the place where the party was held?’
‘There was no party.’ Her voice was heavy, the intonation flat. ‘And I don’t know where I was taken. We drove for ages, way out onto the fen somewhere. The place stank of rotting cabbage. It made me want to throw up.’
‘Was it a farm?’ asked Jon. ‘Or some sort of farm building, maybe?’
The girl shook her head. ‘I dunno. I don’t think so.’ She turned and looked from one to the other. ‘It was old and really creepy.’ She frowned. ‘But I could hear music, so I wasn’t scared. We went down into a sort of cellar. It had oil lamps and candles and the seats were old boxes with blankets thrown over them. There were wine bottles everywhere. I thought it was pretty cool to start with…’
But not later, Jon thought angrily, seeing the welts on her face and watching as she clasped her midriff to protect her cracked ribs. He took a deep breath, then looked around uncomfortably. Something didn’t seem quite right. He was experiencing an odd underwater kind of feeling. His ears were popping and rushing head noises were making concentrating on the job in hand increasingly difficult.
He looked across at his boss but Kate had obviously noticed nothing, and from a distance he heard her saying, ‘And how many people were there with you, Toni?’
Jon frowned and tried to both understand what was happening and hear the girl’s answer. It wasn’t easy, but thankfully the strange noises were beginning to back off, but leaving something even more puzzling behind. Singing?
Toni was talking, and he needed to listen. He gritted his teeth and concentrated.
‘To start with, just me and the bloke who drove me there. He said we were early, and others would be along soon. He gave me a glass of red wine.’
‘And you drank it?’
‘Free wine?’ Toni rolled her eyes at Kate as if she’d just said something quite insane. ‘Uh, yeah.’
The noises in his head suddenly subsided and Jon was finally able to get back into the interview. ‘Can you describe the man, Toni?’ he asked.
‘Kind of old, bit like you, I guess. But he had a great hair cut, and trendy clothes.’
‘Tall? Short?’ He enquired, trying not to smile at the accusation of being old.
Toni looked at him. ‘Your height, but he had a hotter body. More muscles.’
Kate was stifling a grin. ‘What about his clothes?’
‘Faded jeans, boot-cut, really expensive. Blue T-shirt and trainers…’ Toni frowned, ‘and a grey zip-up jacket with a hood. Yeah, he was trendy for an old guy.’
Jon trod w
earily. ‘Listen, Toni, would you recognise him again?’
She shrugged, then gasped as her broken rib stabbed at her. ‘Maybe. He was kind of ordinary looking. A bit shy, although he smiled a lot. Oh, and he smelt good,’ she added.
Jon threw a puzzled look in Kate’s direction. Whatever this man had done to her, Toni didn’t seem upset by talking about him. And he didn’t come over as some sinister psycho either. ‘Was he the one who hurt you?’
Toni shook her head. ‘Oh no, not him. When the others arrived, he left. I didn’t see him again.’
‘The others?’
Toni tensed, and swallowed hard. ‘I…,’ She paused, her young brow wrinkled in confusion. ‘Things got weird. I can’t remember anymore.’
Jon’s heart sank. The damned drug must have been in the wine. And now, just as they were getting to the crux of the matter, Toni was slipping off the radar.
‘Can you recall how many people were there?’
‘I don’t know. Not many.’
Kate was regarding at the girl thoughtfully, then she gave Jon a look that said they’d pussy-footed around for long enough. Her expression changed. ‘Toni, when you were brought in, you spoke about someone called Emily? Do you remember her? Was she there with you?’
A look of terror stamped itself on Toni’s face.
‘Toni, who is Emily, and exactly what happened to her?’
A gurgle escaped from the teenager’s throat, and then a loud, low moan, one that Jon sincerely hoped would not bring the medical staff running.
Kate leant closer to the bed. ‘Listen! She may be in grave danger, Toni. You have to tell us anything you can remember, please!’
Tears began to flood down over the livid bruises. ‘I told you, it all got weird. It’s like a bad dream with everything all jumbled up together.’ Toni sobbed. ‘Someone was singing, and then someone was shaking me and asking me stupid questions.’
‘What questions?’
‘Something like, when was I born?’
The age of consent? Jon gritted his teeth. The bastard was checking as to whether she was under age. ‘You mean the year you were born?’