Jeff tore his gaze from Jones and frowned. ‘What kind of allegations?’
‘We’ve received a report to the effect that you assaulted your daughter on a number of occasions,’ Dean explained.
‘What?’ Jeff felt as if he’d been punched square in the face. ‘I’ve never laid a finger on Skye in my life! Who the hell told you that?’
‘We can’t disclose the source,’ said Dean. ‘We just need to hear your side of the story.’
‘There is no story, ’cos it’s not fucking true,’ Jeff asserted furiously.
‘Is that the same kind of not true as all those times you beat the shit out of Andrea and then made her retract her statement?’ asked Jones, making quote marks in the air with his fingers.
‘Fuck off!’ Jeff glared at him.
A nasty glint sparked to life in Jones’s eyes and he said, ‘Swear at me like that again and I’ll have you in a cell so fast your head’ll spin right off your shoulders.’
‘I take it you’re denying it?’ Dean chipped in.
‘Of course I am,’ Jeff replied sharply. ‘And when I find out where it came from …’
He left the rest unsaid, but his meaning was clear, and Jones said, ‘Don’t even think about using this as an excuse to give her another kicking, ’cos I’m gonna be watching you like a hawk, and if you so much as look at her in a funny way I’ll have you.’
Jeff’s stomach churned. They weren’t supposed to reveal the source of their information, but Jones had just as good as admitted that it had come from Andrea. Stunned, he turned to Dean. ‘This is a joke, right?’
Annoyed with his loose-tongued colleague, Dean shook his head.
‘And you’re taking her seriously?’ Jeff was incredulous. ‘Even though you know she’s not right in the head.’
‘We have to take any allegation concerning the abuse of a minor seriously,’ Dean replied evenly.
‘So when was this so-called abuse supposed to have happened?’ Jeff demanded. ‘And what exactly am I meant to have done?’
Unconvinced by Jeff’s show of indignation, Jones said, ‘Let’s just cut to the chase, eh? Where is she?’
‘Where’s who?’ asked Jeff, his teeth tightly clenched.
‘Don’t play games.’ Jones steadily held his gaze. ‘You know exactly who I’m talking about.’
‘And you know I’ve got no idea, ’cos I was in hospital when she went missing,’ Jeff reminded him.
‘You could have set it up from in there,’ Jones argued. ‘All it would have taken is one phone call telling her where to meet you when you discharged yourself.’
‘She hasn’t got a phone.’
‘She could have called you from a box.’
‘Well, she didn’t.’
‘You won’t mind us checking your phone, then, will you?’
Jeff dipped his gaze at this, and inhaled deeply through his nose. ‘All right, she did try to contact me,’ he admitted, aware of how bad it must sound after he’d just denied it. ‘She sent me a couple of texts, but I was still sedated after the op so I didn’t see them.’
‘And you didn’t think to mention this when we saw you at the hospital?’ Dean asked.
‘I didn’t find them till I got home,’ Jeff told him truthfully. ‘I’d switched my phone off so it didn’t disturb the other patients.’
‘Thought you said Skye didn’t have a phone?’ Jones threw his words back at him.
‘She must have got hold of Andrea’s, ’cos that’s where the texts came from,’ Jeff explained. ‘And, yes, I did try to call her back, before you ask, but her phone was dead by then – and it hasn’t come back on since.’
‘How convenient.’
‘Here, look for yourself if you don’t believe me.’
Jeff passed his phone over and watched as Jones read Skye’s messages before checking the call log.
‘So,’ Jones said when he’d finished. ‘We’ve established that she did go home after she ran away, and that she let you know she was waiting for you there. And then you discharged yourself and went straight to her.’ He paused there and peered at Jeff with open suspicion in his eyes before asking, ‘Is that when you did it?’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Jeff replied tersely, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists. ‘She wasn’t there, and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.’
‘And you didn’t think we’d want to know about it?’ Jones shook his head in disgust. ‘You wanna know what I think happened? I think Andrea stabbed you ’cos she caught you at it with Skye, and you knew she was going to blow you up as soon as she was able to talk to us without you breathing down her neck, so you panicked and got rid of Skye before we could question her. Isn’t that the truth of it?’
‘This is crazy,’ Jeff spluttered. ‘I’ve never touched Skye, and I don’t know why Andrea’s saying that I did. Take me to her,’ he demanded. ‘She won’t be able to lie while I’m standing in front of her – then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ said Dean.
‘Why not? She’s my wife, and I’ve got a right to see her.’
Jones gave a snort of disdain. ‘Come off it, mate. It’s been weeks since she was sectioned, and you haven’t asked to see her once, so you can drop the concerned-husband act.’
‘I was a bit busy having surgery and getting evicted,’ Jeff retorted angrily. ‘But I want to see her now. Which hospital is she at?’
‘None,’ Jones said smugly. ‘She was released two weeks ago, and we got her into a refuge – where you can’t get at her and persuade her to retract her statement.’
‘What?’ Jeff was stunned. ‘How come I wasn’t told she’d been released?’
‘Firstly, because nobody knew where you were until we called round to your old place on the off-chance this afternoon and got this address off a builder,’ Jones told him. ‘And secondly, because she didn’t want you to know. And who could blame her after all the crap you’ve put her through? I knew you were a vicious bastard, but some of the stuff she’s told us …’ He trailed off and gave Jeff a look of pure disgust, before saying, ‘Men like you make me sick to my stomach.’
‘This is bullshit, and you know it,’ Jeff protested. ‘You’re just trying to get back at me ’cos you couldn’t make me say it was her who stabbed me. What did you do – cut her some kind of deal to get her off with it and land me in it instead?’
‘She’s not trying to get off with anything,’ Jones informed him smoothly. ‘She’s standing by her admission, and it’s looking like she’ll get a verdict of self-defence now she’s decided to tell the truth. And the psych docs have said she’s fit to stand trial, so if you were hoping to get away with it on the grounds of her mental instability, forget it.’
‘Get away with what?’ Jeff yelled. ‘I haven’t fucking done anything.’
‘So where’s Skye?’
‘I don’t know!’
The door opened and Shirley marched in, her face drained of colour, her eyes blazing.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Jeff. ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I could hear everything, and I can’t listen to any more of this rubbish.’
She turned to the officers now and said, ‘Whatever Andrea’s told you, it’s all lies. I’ve known Jeff for two years, and he is one of the nicest, gentlest men I’ve ever met. And he would never hurt his child – it’s just not in his nature.’
Jones smirked at her before turning his attention back to Jeff. ‘Hasn’t taken you long to pull the wool over this one’s eyes, has it? Mind you, you’ve only been here a few weeks so she probably hasn’t had time to piss you off enough to get a kicking yet, has she?’
‘Are you serious?’ Shirley gasped. ‘You can’t talk to him like that. You’re supposed to be a professional.’
Jones peered up at her and said, ‘You seem like an intelligent woman, love, but you obviously don’t know him half as well as you think you do. If I was you I’d get him out of here before you find out
why his wife’s in the state she’s in.’
‘You cheeky bastard!’ Jeff roared, leaping to his feet.
‘Calm down, Mr Benson,’ Dean cautioned, also rising. ‘This isn’t helping.’
‘Am I under arrest?’ Jeff demanded through clenched teeth. ‘’Cos if I’m not, you’d best get him out of here right now, or I swear to God I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ challenged Jones, getting up and facing him. ‘Lay one on me? Go on, then, fella – right here.’ He jutted out his chin. ‘Come on, what’s keeping you? Why don’t you try it on with a man for a change, and see what you get!’
‘Right, that’s enough!’ Dean barked, physically pushing his colleague towards the door. ‘Go and wait in the car – I’ll finish up here.’
Aware that he’d gone too far, Jones flashed Jeff a last look of disgust before stalking out. When he’d gone, Dean offered his apologies to Shirley before turning to Jeff.
‘The investigation is ongoing, and we will need to speak with you again, so make sure you let us know if you leave this address in the meantime.’
‘Why bother waiting?’ spat Jeff. ‘If you think you’ve got something on me, you can arrest me right now. Here …’ He held out his hands. ‘I’ll even let you cuff me.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Dean. Then, nodding goodbye, he left.
‘I can’t believe this,’ Shirley croaked, in a complete state of shock. ‘Why would Andrea say those terrible things? And why have they let her go if she’s still pleading guilty to stabbing you?’
Equally shocked, and desperately trying to get his head around this latest turn of events, Jeff was pacing the floor. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going on in that crazy head of hers,’ he muttered. ‘But there’s no way I’m having her say I’ve been hurting Skye. That’s an absolute, bare-faced lie.’
‘Of course it is,’ Shirley agreed, reaching out and touching his arm in a gesture of support. ‘Don’t worry – the truth is bound to come out and they’ll realise you’re not capable of any of this.’
Jeff stopped pacing and breathed out shakily. ‘I can’t leave it to chance. This is too serious. I need to talk to Andrea and find out what she’s been saying.’
‘She doesn’t want you to know where she is,’ Shirley reminded him. ‘The good thing is, they obviously haven’t got any evidence or they would have arrested you. But I think you should seek legal advice nevertheless.’
‘I know,’ Jeff agreed, feeling as if the world was falling down around his ears. ‘That bastard’s had it in for me for years, and it’d make his miserable career if he could get me sent down for this.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure that he can’t, then, won’t we?’ said Shirley.
‘How?’ Jeff gave her a hopeless look. ‘The only one who can tell them the truth is Skye, and we don’t have a clue where she is.’
‘I don’t know,’ Shirley admitted. ‘But I think we should start by taking a look at her laptop. It’s a long shot, but I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t believe she’d have bothered taking it up into the attic to do homework. Teenagers aren’t that conscientious at the best of times, and I’m sure that school would have been the very last thing on her mind in a situation like this.’
‘You’re right,’ Jeff agreed, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.
‘Right, I’ll put the food back in the oven while you look for the charger,’ Shirley said decisively. ‘We can eat while we’re looking for clues.’
Eager to find out if their hunch was right, Jeff reached for her hand as she stepped around him and gave her a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, love. I honestly don’t know how I’d be coping with all this if you weren’t here.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Shirley blushed and, slipping her hand free, pushed him towards the door. ‘That’s what friends are for. Now hurry up so we can get started.’
It took Jeff almost an hour to find the charger, and the floor and the bed were both covered in clothes and personal items by the time he’d finished. He wasn’t looking forward to having to repack it all again but it would have to wait. Right now, he just wanted to plug the laptop in and find out what was on there that Skye had thought important enough to make her take it up into the attic.
As Shirley had said, it was unlikely to be schoolwork because no one in their right mind would think about something like that while they were on the run. And it couldn’t be an online thing, either, because they hadn’t been connected to the internet. So that just left the journal that Shirley had suggested Skye might have been keeping – and Jeff truly hoped that would turn out to be the case, and that Skye might have written something in it which would prove that her mother was lying. He knew he hadn’t spent anywhere near as much time with her as he ought to have over the last few years, but he had never hurt her. So even if she’d been disappointed by his seeming lack of interest, he couldn’t imagine that she would have said anything damning about him.
The laptop came on as soon as he plugged it in, and Shirley, who was sitting beside him on the couch, uttered a jubilant, ‘Yes!’ when the screen lit up a few seconds later.
‘What’s this?’ Jeff frowned when a wall of text appeared.
‘It looks like she was in the middle of something when the battery died,’ said Shirley, leaning forward to read it. ‘Hate to say I told you so, but this looks like a chat-room conversation.’
‘How could it be?’ Jeff was confused. ‘I already told you we didn’t have internet.’
Shirley smiled, and said, ‘You really are clueless, aren’t you? All it takes is for somebody nearby to have an unprotected Wi-Fi signal, and anyone who knows about these things can access it. Skye obviously did, and I’d bet she’d been secretly logging on the whole time you and Andrea thought she was up in her room doing her homework.’
‘Wow, I had no idea.’ Jeff shook his head in amazement and stared at the screen again. ‘Her name’s not on there,’ he said after a moment. ‘You don’t think someone else was using her laptop, do you?’
‘These are just screen-names,’ Shirley explained. ‘People use them to protect their real identities when they’re chatting with strangers on these things. My guess would be that Skye is the one calling herself BlueBabe,’ she went on thoughtfully. ‘And the laptop battery probably died just after she sent the last message, which is why it was still on the screen when we turned it back on. Is that Andrea’s number?’
Jeff snatched up his phone and checked Andrea’s mobile number against the one on the screen. ‘Yeah.’
‘Okay, well, it looks like this QTPye might have been offering her somewhere to stay,’ said Shirley. ‘Just let me see if I can get the rest of the conversation up, in case there’s an address.’
As soon as she touched the mouse-pad, the text on the screen was replaced by a notice informing them that the session had timed out.
‘Damn!’ she muttered. ‘We’ll have to log in to get it back. Don’t suppose you know her password, do you?’ Immediately answering her own question, she said, ‘No, of course you don’t. You didn’t even know she’d been going online.’
‘Is there no other way of getting into it?’ Jeff asked.
‘Probably,’ said Shirley. ‘But I’m afraid my computer skills don’t stretch that far. You could try making an educated guess,’ she suggested. ‘Most people tend to go for the obvious: date of birth, name of a pet – that kind of thing.’
‘We didn’t have any pets, and I can’t remember her birthday,’ Jeff reminded her shamefacedly.
‘Okay, well, the mother’s maiden name is another common one. What was Andrea’s surname before you got married?’
Jeff pursed his lips and tried to remember, but his mind was a complete blank. ‘Christ, that’s bad,’ he said guiltily. ‘I should know these things.’
‘Stop beating yourself up,’ Shirley said softly. ‘It’s not easy to remember details when you’re under pressure.’
Shoulders slumping, Jeff fixed his gaze on
the laptop screen. Shirley was too nice to admit it but even she couldn’t deny that he was a complete waste of space as a father and husband.
‘We could let the police look at it,’ Shirley said after a while. ‘They have special departments for this kind of thing, so I’m sure they’d have no problem hacking into her account.’
‘No way.’ Jeff shook his head. ‘They already think I’m guilty, and if she’s written anything bad on there I’m done for.’
‘Why would she have?’ Shirley frowned. ‘You haven’t hurt her.’
‘I know, but she might have thought I’d been hurting her mum,’ Jeff murmured resignedly. ‘She was always in bed when it kicked off, but she must have heard Andrea screaming blue murder. The neighbours used to hear her, and they all thought it was me knocking her about, so what’s to say Skye didn’t think the same?’
‘I’m sure she knows you weren’t the aggressor,’ Shirley said supportively. ‘And I very much doubt that she’d have gone home and tried to contact you if she was scared of you.’
‘I still can’t risk letting the police see it until I know for sure,’ said Jeff. ‘What if we’re wrong and she’s said something bad about me on there? That’s bound to make them take Andrea’s allegations even more seriously, isn’t it?’
Shirley gave him a sympathetic look but didn’t say anything. She understood his concerns but she just didn’t know what else to suggest.
‘Hayley!’ Jeff said when the name suddenly popped into his head. ‘She’s Skye’s best mate – she might know her password.’
‘She might even be QTPye,’ Shirley mused. ‘Do you know where she lives?’
‘Her mum did tell me when she called round after I got out of hospital,’ Jeff said. ‘I can’t remember the number but I know the road, so I can ask around when I get there. It’s only a few streets from my old place.’
‘I’ll drive you over there when we’ve eaten,’ Shirley offered, pushing his as yet untouched plate towards him. ‘The sooner we get this sorted, the sooner we’ll clear your name.’
Kathy Simms was on her way home from the shops when Shirley drove onto her road a short time later. Jeff cried, ‘Stop!’ when he spotted her.
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