The truth was that Gaby had no idea what Ellie Fry was doing in the company of Janice and Ronan. She also had no idea why she’d run but she was determined to find out.
‘Let’s get back in the car and radio the station. The annoying thing is that we probably passed them on the way.’
Chapter 46
Ronan
Tuesday 4 August, 1 p.m. A55
The journey back from Caernarfon was quicker and far more comfortable than the journey out. It hadn’t taken his mother long to convince them both that returning home was the right thing to do. Ellie wasn’t talking, not that he could blame her. He knew of old that his mother was one of those people that had to take charge. In the battlefield she’d have been promoted up to the role of general and if politics had been her thing, she would have made prime minister, no question. As it was, she’d made partner in her firm within only a couple of years of joining the practice.
She wasn’t a bad mum, he mused, tuning out of the relentless chatter she’d started up within seconds of putting her foot down on the accelerator. But he’d always had the feeling that having children was something else that she had to excel at, only to fail simply because she tried too hard. It hadn’t mattered to him which school he’d gone to or that he didn’t have the best bike or a designer label on his trainers but she couldn’t see that even after everything that had happened to their small family.
He’d opted to sit in the back to keep Ellie company, not that it made any difference to her stony silence. After her brief outburst in the kitchen, Ellie hadn’t said another word. She’d only nodded briefly when his mother had taken it upon herself to explain that it was better to hand themselves in before the police turned up on their doorstep and she’d waited silently in the hall while he’d gathered together their stuff. Ronan felt a deep pain beginning to form somewhere in the vicinity of his breastbone at the fruitlessness of her situation. There was nothing he could do to protect her. Whatever happened next was completely out of his hands.
Instead of spending the short journey going slowly mad, he decided to use the time to try and unravel what he wanted to do with his life. There had to be a next step because he’d come to the decision last night, when he’d sat and watched over Ellie, that his life had to change. The problem was he’d never known what he’d wanted to do at school. Choosing A levels was the worst kind of hell – he’d only ended up deciding on maths, further maths, biology and chemistry because that was what he was good at. But as for a job … He knew what he didn’t want to be and that was either a pharmacist or a lawyer, like his parents, but that’s as far as his thoughts had taken him.
Now, of course, with one A level to his name, and that only because he’d managed to sit maths in Year 12, university was out. The other option open to him – to move back home – held all the attraction of a faun in the presence of a starving lion, but he couldn’t seem to think of what else to do. He could try for a job but who’d employ him and where would he live? The Great Orme was all very well but it would be winter in a few weeks. What then? Whatever his issues, he felt he had more to offer than being labelled a homeless social statistic.
The housing estate up ahead was a new experience for someone who had been protected for most of their life. Ronan had learnt a lot during his time on the streets, not least that most people lived very different lives to the privileged one afforded him by two parents in well-paid jobs. The sight of the disused shopping trolley, lying to rust in the corner, cemented this fact. He’d thought he’d seen it all – far from it.
Ellie reached out her hand across the seat between them, palm upwards, and with that gesture he knew that she was scared of what she might find inside. He squeezed her fingers gently, his gaze on the unassuming property, plain white net curtains pulled against neighbours’ prying eyes. He couldn’t offer her any assurances because he had none to give. But what he did offer her was a silent promise that, despite what his mother might say, he wouldn’t leave her unless he was happy that this was the right place for her.
Chapter 47
Gaby
Tuesday 4 August, 1 p.m. A55
‘The ANPR has just picked them up at Llanfairfechan, which means that we’re not far behind. I still have no idea what they’re up to.’
‘Or if Ellie is even in the car, remember. Just because you found the toy and I noticed that the remaining water in the kettle was lukewarm means nothing,’ Owen said, increasing his speed.
‘Don’t remind me but we have to do something.’
‘What make did you say the car was again?’ Owen said after a couple of minutes’ silence.
‘A grey Saab. Belonged to her husband. I thought you’d have remembered?’
Owen grunted. ‘Like the one two cars ahead?’
Gaby squinted out of the window screen, excitement starting to build.
‘Exactly like that one even down to the numberplate,’ she said, checking her phone. ‘Keep your distance. She’ll recognise me in a heartbeat.’
‘Do you want me to pull them over?’
‘I’m not sure if I’m honest. We don’t know for definite who’s in the car, do we?’ she said, staring at the one head she could see in the back seat.
‘And the last time we went in without backup …’
‘Someone nearly died. You don’t have to remind me. Okay, let me alert the team to what’s happening and keep as we are.’
After calling it in, she picked up her bag and, rummaging down the bottom, pulled out a pair of large sunglasses.
‘There’s a sun hat in the glove compartment if you think it might help?’
‘Bates, I’ve seen your taste in sunhats and I don’t really think that …’ She pulled out the khaki safari hat with a grimace and, shaking out the sand, popped it on her head. ‘There!’
Owen twisted away from the road a second, biting down on his lower lip. ‘Very fetching. Even your own mother would pass you by in the street.’
‘Ha-ha, very funny.’ She flipped down the visor and stared at her reflection in the mirror only to slam it back into place with a deep shuddering breath. ‘I barely recognise myself.’
‘And it’s unlikely they’ll recognise me! Sadly amazingly handsome, bearded Welshmen aren’t that uncommon while …’
‘While sexy Italian women are like gold dust? Is that what you were about to say?’
‘Of course it is, dear.’
She slapped his arm. ‘There speaks a man who has no idea of how to talk to women.’
‘What? But …’ He threw her a second look. ‘What’s wrong with giving a woman a compliment?’
‘Nothing, Owen. Nothing at all. Genuine compliments from genuine friends are very welcome. They raise a woman’s self-esteem and make the world seem a much happier place. But when the aforesaid woman appears to be wearing’ – she flicked a finger at the brim – ‘something found among Tarzan’s castoffs, that’s a completely different animal.’
‘I’ll never understand women.’
‘And that’s your problem because you’re not meant to.’
‘Harrumph,’ he said, bringing the conversation to a halt, which was so typical of him that she struggled not to pass comment.
They were in the middle of an escalating situation and yet the banter between them was the best it had ever been. Some coppers grew silent when situations reached danger point. Owen and Gaby cracked jokes. It was time to worry when the repartee stopped.
‘Okay. If I’m not allowed to compliment you or question your decision-making, what about that timeline? What does it tell us?’
Gaby grinned, pulling out the folded paper from her trouser pocket. ‘Darling, whatever would I do without you?’
‘You can cut out the soft-soaping crap for a start.’
She smoothed out the creases and scrolled through the columns, taking a moment to frame a suitable reply. ‘I have no idea how or even why Kate puts up with …’ She paused, her fingers clenching and almost digging a hole in the paper, her attentio
n on the car up ahead.
‘What? What is it?’
‘It’s where this game gets very interesting, very interesting indeed.’ Gaby positioned herself next to the window, all trace of their earlier banter forgotten. ‘Tell me again about those interviews you carried out yesterday in relation to that problem over at the Memorial Gardens.’
‘The interviews?’ he said, adjusting his sun visor. ‘Well, there was Martin Penrose first back at the station, but you know all about that and you were with me when I visited him again and met with the boss, Trevor Beeton. Now there’s a right sleazeball if you ask me. Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I’ll bet you a fiver that he gives Martin the boot for coming to see us.’
‘Not a bet I’m prepared to pick up. Sadly there’s no betting about it. Is that all?’ She stared down at the list, her brow furrowed as she read the amendment at the bottom, which included all of Anita’s cleaning jobs. ‘And interestingly, thanks to Mal, we now know that Fry worked for Beeton at the Memorial Gardens but how does that link in with Ellie running away?’
‘It doesn’t unless she used to take Ellie there. She’s on her school holidays so maybe she didn’t have anyone to leave her with and abandoning her on that housing estate probably wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t like to be left there and I’m thirty-six!’
‘But can you really see Beeton allowing a kid in while the mum’s cleaning?’ Gaby lifted her phone from her lap and within seconds was speaking to the man himself. It didn’t take her long to settle her mobile back on her lap, her hands wrapped loosely around the case. ‘It’s as we thought, she asked and he turned her down flat which, if I’m honest, was the right thing to do. The thought of a child sitting so near all those dead bodies gives me the creeps.’
‘But other employers might have been more amenable?’
‘Or might not have even known if they were out at work.’
‘So, are there any other interesting names on the list then?’
‘Hold on a mo,’ Gaby said, her attention on the sign up ahead for Colwyn Bay. ‘I need to let the team know where we are.’
Chapter 48
Ronan
Tuesday 4 August, 1.30 p.m. Colwyn Bay
Ellie didn’t have a key, which was hardly surprising. Ronan remembered his own rite of passage in that regard when he’d reached twelve and was allowed out on his own for the first time, not that he’d had anywhere to go. He still had the keyring it came with, the thought of the flashy Welsh dragon making him relax his facial muscles, but only briefly. For all Ellie’s grown-up mannerisms, she was very much a child.
What was surprising was that no one answered the door. He watched his mother from the safety of the back seat, Ellie’s hand clasped within his as they waited for what seemed like an indeterminate length of time, his worry levels skyrocketing. If his mother was to be believed, and he couldn’t for a minute think that she had anything to lie about, then the whole of Wales was on high alert. So where was Ms Fry and, more to the point, where were the police? Surely she should be pinned to the sofa with the weight of her worry, her mobile making huge inroads into the tender flesh of her palm. That’s what he’d be doing in her place.
‘Do you think she’s gone out, maybe to work or something?’ Janice said, sliding back behind the wheel, drumming her long slender fingers against the dash. After numerous attempts of ringing Anita’s mobile, her phone was now discarded on the passenger seat beside her.
‘I don’t know. Even if she’s out she always has her phone with her.’ Ellie’s bottom lip trembled, something Ronan was starting to recognise with all the finesse of a new dad with a baby in possession of a full nappy.
‘Okay, don’t cry. It will be all right,’ Ronan said when he was starting to suspect that it would be anything but. ‘She’s probably dropped off to sleep or something. What about a spare key?’ he continued, remembering back to the one that lived under the third plant pot to the left of their back door. Not the most original of places but then Llandudno wasn’t the crime capital of anywhere.
The key wasn’t under a plant pot because there weren’t any pots, or any plants, in Ellie’s tiny front garden. Surrounded on three sides by a rickety fence that had seen better days, the straggly patch of green had far too many weeds to accept the term grass lightly. But they didn’t have to waste time searching for the key because when Ronan tried the handle the door opened under his hand.
Chapter 49
Gaby
Tuesday 4 August, 1.30 p.m. Colwyn Bay
‘What are we doing here again?’ Owen said, staring out of the windscreen at Ellie Fry’s house, his expression inscrutable.
‘We’re waiting.’
‘But why?’
‘Look, Owen, we’ve only been stopped all of five seconds. They certainly can’t escape now you’ve blocked the entrance,’ she added, suppressing a laugh at the way he’d slewed the Honda across the narrow road. ‘It’s a good job Jax is already here or he’d have had no chance of joining us. And anyway, the only reason that this would be the wrong thing to do is if Janice Stevens was involved in Ellie’s original abduction. If that’s the case why wasn’t she on any of the CCTV footage? We’ll give them another minute before we go in.’
‘I still don’t like it.’
‘No. Well I didn’t think that you would but softly, softly is how I want it played. Remember there isn’t one but two traumatised children in there,’ she said, focusing on the two heads that were now visible in the back of the car. ‘Ronan might be eighteen and therefore legally an adult but a very immature one. Why don’t you use the time to check if you have any messages?’ she continued, flicking through her phone.
‘Good idea. There’s that list Marie was going to send me from St Gildas.’ He pulled his mobile from his pocket and started searching. ‘Ah, here it is. It doesn’t look as if Katherine Jane was into jewellery but there’s possibly some silver photo frames and a fine selection of crystal unaccounted for and all impossible to trace. Oh, this is more promising – her retirement gift. Not a clock this time, the stingy beggars. Only a slimline pen. Looks to be gold,’ he said, squinting down at the photo that had accompanied the list.
‘Engraved?’
Instead of replying, he shut off his phone and flung it on the dashboard.
Gaby glanced across, noting his stony glare and flared nostrils. ‘What is it? Something about the pen you recognise?’
‘Yes. How could I have been so bloody stupid—’
‘Stop a mo. It will have to wait.’ Gaby grabbed his arm, her gaze drawn to the scene unfolding across the road. ‘Why doesn’t Anita open the door?’
They both watched Janice return to the Saab before heading back to the house, this time with Ellie and Ronan by her side. Gaby jumped out of the car and started to run. She’d already reached the gate of the property by the time Ronan had pushed open the front door with the flat of his hand.
Gaby’s home was her safe place but a locked door with the security chain fastened was the thing that made it secure. Ystâd golygfa’r môr estate was a world away from her little home in Rhos-on-Sea and for the Frys it must have felt frightening at times. As a parent, Anita had done everything possible to protect their safety, Gaby recollected, thinking about the industrial-sized Yale lock and thick security chain. There was no way she’d ever forget to lock her front door.
There hadn’t been many times in Gaby’s career when she’d felt in need of more protection than her brain, the only thing available to her right now apart from Owen’s brawn. There was no reason for the sudden fear turning her belly to an ice-cold mass or for her bowels to rumble. She knew the science but understanding the role certain chemicals had on both her mental and physical state was of little help with her heart bounding underneath her Marks and Spencer’s plain white blouse, her fingers starting to shake.
She raced up to the entrance, Owen matching her stride for stride, and was poised on the threshold when she heard the scream. But the scream didn�
��t stop. It continued, one long, high, thin wail that ripped through the air, tearing her emotions to shreds and her muscles to blancmange. Had she got it wrong, yet again?
Chapter 50
Ronan
Tuesday 4 August, 1.40 p.m. Colwyn Bay
Ronan was the first to see the blood, the handprint positioned in the centre of the wall like some new art movement. Ellie, still clutching on to his fingers, was the second.
He pulled her towards him, his thin arms around her back, with no thought of how much he disliked being hugged. But no hug could stop the scream gathering momentum in the back of her throat just as no ear defenders were man enough to dim the piercing squeal by a single, solitary decibel.
The hall felt crowded all of a sudden and, glancing up from where he’d been awkwardly patting Ellie’s back, he was almost glad to see that short detective, whatever her name, standing in the doorway, only partly obscured by his mother.
It took one look at the bloodied handprint on the wall and she’d taken charge. His sense of relief was intense as she passed them over to a colleague. There’d be questions that needed answering, lots of questions. But all he was bothered about was Ellie, who’d flopped in his arms as if the effort of standing was suddenly too much, her scream changing to a low, heart-breaking moan.
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