Little Girl Gone

by Stephen Edger

  ‘Did you?’ Jodie asked evenly.

  ‘No!’ It was barked, rather than offered calmly.

  ‘Do you enjoy your job?’

  ‘Does anybody?’

  ‘I like my job,’ Jodie replied honestly. ‘Ray? You enjoy yours, right?’

  He didn’t answer, watching Delilah’s reactions.

  Delilah looked from one to the other again, before glaring at Jodie. ‘Mr Papadopoulos is a good boss; he lets me take time off when I need it without much of a fuss. I wouldn’t do anything to see him off bad.’

  ‘How long have you worked for him?’ Jodie asked.

  ‘Three years now.’

  ‘That’s a long time to stay with one employer these days. You must have a good understanding of the place and his routine?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess so. I trust him and he trusts me.’

  ‘So you’d know if anyone had a grudge against him? Maybe an unhappy punter? Or someone else who doesn’t get on with him?’

  Delilah glanced at the door, like she was expecting someone to burst in at any moment. It remained closed. ‘I don’t know. We have lots of regular customers; none that I think would do something like that.’

  Ray studied his phone as it buzzed with a message.

  It’s Isla Murphy. Please call me urgently. An arrest has been made.

  17

  Alex felt like the rug had just been pulled from beneath her feet. ‘They’ve found her? They’ve found Carol-Anne?’

  ‘It’s best if we go and sit down first,’ Isla suggested, taking Alex’s arm to support her.

  Alex pulled the arm away. ‘No! Tell me now!’

  ‘Please, Alex, I really think it would be best—’

  Alex could feel her face burning up, desperately fighting the growing dread starting to shadow her every thought. ‘No! I know how these things work. You – police, doctors – you’re all the same; you all have to deliver bad news while the recipient is seated. What’s happened to Carol-Anne? Just tell me!’ She hadn’t realized she was shouting, and lowered her voice. ‘Please?’

  Isla looked up at the ceiling, as if appealing to some higher being, before eventually sighing. ‘Nothing has happened to Carol-Anne; at least nothing that I’m aware of. I have no news on her specifically. Please, can we just go and sit down and I’ll try to explain what DI Trent has told me?’

  Alex’s watering eyes studied Isla’s face, looking for any tick or tell to suggest she was lying just to get Alex into a calmer place. The wrinkles around the older woman’s eyes remained fixed.

  ‘Fine,’ Alex said reluctantly, ‘I don’t need you to lead me; I’m not incapable.’

  Isla lowered her hands and headed towards the living room, leaving Alex feeling the edges of the walls for support. For all her bravado, her legs were like jelly, and she thought she might topple at any moment, but she had to remain strong. Her daughter deserved that.

  When seated, Isla made a show of flattening her palms against her legs, a technique she’d learned to show she was speaking honestly. ‘One of the team just called to advise they have made an arrest. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t share such information so early in a case; however, given Ray is on the job, and DI Trent can’t control rumours, she thought it better if you heard it from her first.’

  ‘Who is it? Someone we know?’

  Isla’s eyes apologized for her. ‘I’m not at liberty to give any names at this stage.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What’s the point in saying anything then? And why don’t you have any information about Carol-Anne? If someone has been arrested, surely they’ve found her too, haven’t they?’

  Despite years of training and experience, it was clear Isla was struggling just as much with the limited details she’d been fed. ‘DI Trent said the person they arrested is known to them – the police, I mean – which is our way of saying he’s someone with a criminal record.’

  Alex blinked several times, the walls of the room somehow seeming to close in around them. ‘A person with a criminal record? For what? They’ve done this before?’

  Isla’s lips remained tight, though her eyes were speaking volumes.

  Alex’s hand shot up to her mouth. ‘You mean a paedophile, don’t you? Oh Jesus!’

  Isla was quick to shake her head and deny the inference, but the nervous edge to her voice failed to convince Alex.

  ‘They’ve arrested a sex pest, haven’t they?’ she said from behind her hand, willing Isla to vehemently deny it. ‘Please just tell me.’

  Isla looked at the wall, as if trying to get her own thoughts straight.

  ‘So if you’ve arrested him, where’s my daughter?’ Alex continued.

  ‘I have nothing more I can tell you right now. An arrest has been made and, as far as I am aware, Carol-Anne has yet to be located. Please try to stay calm, Alex. This arrest doesn’t necessarily mean this man is connected to the abduction of Carol-Anne.’

  Alex was struggling to contain her rage. If Trent had made an arrest, why wasn’t there any news on Carol-Anne? If this person had taken her, where was she now? Had he killed her?’ Alex shuddered at this thought. Had he just abandoned her somewhere, fending for herself? Or had he passed her on to someone else as sick as him?

  Closing her eyes, protecting herself from the possible answer, she took a deep breath. ‘In your experience, why would they arrest someone if Carol-Anne wasn’t with him?’

  Isla frowned, thick crevices forming in her forehead. ‘It really isn’t helpful for me to speculate, Alex. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you to do. I need to understand what is going on, and my brain just can’t process why they would arrest someone but not know anything further about where Carol-Anne is. You have to help me. That’s what you’re here for, right? To help? So bloody help!’

  Alex knew it wasn’t Isla’s fault that she didn’t have the answers, and she didn’t like taking out her frustration on a virtual stranger, but with Ray absent, who else did she have?

  Isla stood suddenly. ‘What I’ll do is try and phone DI Trent back and see if there’s anything else she can tell me. I’m afraid that really is the most I can do.’

  It wasn’t the answer Alex was craving; she didn’t want to alienate the only person who genuinely seemed to be on her side. ‘Thank you.’

  Isla remained where she was, studying Alex’s reaction.

  ‘Does Ray know?’ Alex asked, wondering whether he was privy to information that she wasn’t.

  ‘I sent him a message, asking him to call me, but he hasn’t replied yet. Can I ask you a personal question?’

  Alex nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Well it’s more of an observation than anything else … you and Ray, is everything okay between the two of you? I mean before what happened yesterday.’

  Alex didn’t know how to begin answering that question. ‘We’re fine.’

  Isla didn’t look ready to accept such a non-committal response. ‘Have the two of you talked about yesterday?’

  ‘We spoke at the car park. Why?’

  Now it was Isla’s turn to be evasive. ‘It’s nothing … well, not really … it’s just … in my experience of these situations, the shared loss and fear usually brings couples closer together. And yet with you two …’ She allowed her words to trail off, maybe hoping Alex would fill in the blanks.

  Alex wasn’t ready to discuss her marital issues with a perfect stranger, though, especially when they had nothing to do with getting Carol-Anne home.

  Isla remained where she was for a moment longer, until it became apparent that Alex wasn’t going to share anything further. Then, excusing herself, she headed into the kitchen to call Trent, closing the door behind her, leaving Alex alone with her thoughts.

  Alex moved across to the portrait frame hanging on the wall next to the doorframe. It was a picture Ray had taken almost a year ago that he’d had blown up onto a large canvas so it could hang in that very spot. They’d been in Marseille, soaking up a week’s su
n, while back home the country had been hammered by storms. Closing her eyes she could remember the smell of the hotel and feel the plastic bars of the sun lounger pressing into her shoulders. She hadn’t cared about the discomfort: Carol-Anne had just fed and fallen asleep in her arms, the warm glow of sunshine falling across the two of them. Alex’s face had been clear of make-up, having only recently woken, and at first she’d been cross that Ray had taken the snap, but it had turned out to be better than she’d anticipated. He told her he loved the picture; now, though, for her, it was a painful reminder of what could have been.

  Having just announced she was pregnant with their second child – a son, they would later discover – everything had seemed so perfect. Then the bubble had burst.

  The pregnancy with Carol-Anne had gone so smoothly: Alex had had few cravings, limited discomfort, and Carol-Anne had even been born on her due date. Looking back on that nine months, Alex couldn’t recall a single moment where she’d felt like she couldn’t cope. After this particular photograph had been captured, she couldn’t remember a day when she’d felt she could cope. The pressure of the miscarriage was self-inflicted, she knew, and yet it didn’t seem to matter how many times she was told it wasn’t her fault, she still relived every day of that pregnancy, evaluating whether she could have done anything differently to alter the course of events. Had she drunk more water, or rested more, or just taken more care of herself, rather than taking the pregnancy for granted. Carol-Anne’s delivery had gone so well, so why wouldn’t the second one?

  Alex forced herself to look away from the portrait, suddenly needing to busy herself. Grabbing the pile of laundry that had been sitting on the dining table for three days, she marched upstairs, not even stopping to eavesdrop on Isla’s secretive conversation in the kitchen.

  Once in her bedroom, she separated the pile into three, leaving Ray’s pants, socks and shirts on his pillow for him to put away on his return. She didn’t mind washing and folding his clothes, but he was a grown man and more than capable of putting fresh laundry where it went. She then folded her own tops and squashed them into a drawer, once again reminding herself she really needed to go through her clothes and throw away or donate to charity anything she no longer wore. There had to be plenty of clothes she’d kept from her thinner days that with the best will in the world she would never squeeze into again. To undertake such activity now would probably result in her throwing away virtually everything. After all, what good were clothes without her daughter around?

  Her eyes fell on Carol-Anne’s bibs and tiny vests. Each one so petite compared to the other piles of clothes. And each one sparking a different memory of an occasion when Carol-Anne had worn it. The T-shirt which had looked so large the first time she’d slipped it over her daughter’s head that she hadn’t been able to imagine it ever fitting. The last time she’d struggled to squeeze Carol-Anne’s head through the opening, realizing how much her little girl had grown.

  Pressing the T-shirt to her nose, she could still smell Carol-Anne’s fresh scent on it, and her cheeks were suddenly wet as the flood of tears she’d been so desperately trying to keep at bay broke free. And then her knees went, unable to sustain her body beneath the weight of emotion. She collapsed onto the mattress, the pile of Carol-Anne’s cloths softening the blow. Each fresh tear felt like a wasp’s sting against her face. As much as it hurt to accept her own vulnerability, she was powerless to stop the tears.

  Then she heard a noise that made her blood run cold – the unmistakeable sound of Carol-Anne giggling.

  Opening her eyes and pushing herself up, she raced from the bedroom into her daughter’s room, straining to find the source of the sound. Only silence greeted her.

  Moving swiftly to the window she stared out, looking for any sign of a child who could have made the noise; the street was empty and both windows closed and locked.

  Spinning around, she checked every inch of the small bed. The still faces of the stuffed toys stared back at her.

  She had definitely heard Carol-Anne’s unmistakeable laugh. Definitely.

  It was impossible. Carol-Anne wasn’t here.

  Maybe Ray was right. Maybe she was losing her mind.

  18

  Ray took the stairs two at a time as he charged up to the third floor, trying the door to Major Incident Room-1. He wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Procedure meant Trent would have allocated a new PIN code to the door, but that didn’t stop him trying the last one they’d used only a week before. The door remained closed, and with the small window in the door frosted, it was impossible to see inside. The whole point in having a secured area for developing major cases was to keep unwanted eyes from the room.

  Jodie was parking the car, and he was supposed to be meeting her on the next floor up where she’d set up the smaller MIR-2. He hadn’t told her why he’d been so keen to get inside, though she wouldn’t need to be much of a detective to figure out it related to his missing daughter.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, sarge,’ Owen said, shaking his head as he approached the locked door. ‘Trent will go ballistic if she catches you within a hundred yards of this room. Or within a hundred yards of me for that matter.’

  ‘Who’s been arrested?’ Ray said, ignoring the warning. ‘That’s all I want to know. Who and how are they involved?’

  The lack of information in Isla’s text message was enough for him to safely conclude that Carol-Anne had yet to be found. An arrest meant they were narrowing the net.

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ Owen replied, looking up and down the corridor as if Trent would somehow be able to sense Ray was too close for comfort.

  Ray fixed him with a pained look. ‘Please, Owen. What would you do in my situation? Imagine if you had children, and then imagine if one of them was snatched out of thin air. You’d be going out of your mind with worry.’

  Owen took another glance down the corridor. ‘I could lose my career if anyone sees us talking here.’

  ‘Then meet me elsewhere,’ Ray pressed. ‘Please? I didn’t want to do this, but you owe me, Owen.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Remember?’

  Owen’s cheeks flushed. ‘Jesus! I can’t believe you’d even think about bringing that up.’

  Ray shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I’m desperate. We both know you’d never have made it through the interviews without me feeding you the answers. I only helped you because I knew you had the potential to be a great detective. Help me now.’

  Another check of the immediate perimeter was followed by a guttural sigh. ‘Give me twenty minutes and then meet me at the Wetherspoon’s in Ocean Village. I’ll tell you what I can, but if you drop me in it, I swear—’

  Ray wasn’t listening to the rest, practically skipping down the corridor as he raced away, hoping to get the keys from Jodie before she’d signed the car back in.

  Ray was starting to think he’d been stood up when there was no sign of Owen after twenty minutes, when the young DC eventually darted in through the door, picked up the orange juice Ray had bought for him and headed for a dark corner of the small bar. They would be less likely to be disturbed here by the men poring over the racing pages of the newspaper, nursing their fourth or fifth straight pint.

  Owen’s hand was trembling as he sipped from his glass, clearly wishing he hadn’t agreed to come. Every time the door opened, his head shot up, as if expecting an armed response unit to storm the place and drag him away in handcuffs.

  ‘Just relax,’ Ray encouraged, as he squeezed himself into the booth and put his own glass of juice to his mouth.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ Owen said, clearly debating whether to leave before he breached anymore of the rules he’d sworn to uphold.

  ‘I’m grateful you did,’ Ray replied. ‘What can you tell me? Have they found any further forensics in the car?’

  Owen shook his head. ‘Forensics is a virtual dead end. Alex said the car was valeted the day before, right? Well the only prints on the door handle are Alex’s and
the only fibres inside the car are a stray hair belonging to Alex, and saliva that has been matched back to Carol-Anne. The team will keep searching every nook and cranny. If someone else was in the back of that car, they did a great job of covering their tracks.’

  ‘What do you mean if? Of course someone else was in the back of that car. Where else would Carol-Anne be?’

  Owen apologized quickly. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it; I’m just telling you what the evidence is saying. You know what it’s like, we have to explore every possibility and assume nothing.’

  Ray was struggling to contain his rising ire. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Shit,’ Owen said, ‘I didn’t want to be the one to say this.’

  ‘Say what?’

  Owen took a long gulp of his drink, his hand still trembling as he lowered the glass. ‘The only evidence we have that your daughter was anywhere near that car park is your wife’s statement. There is no camera footage that we have as yet identified—’

  ‘You think she’s lying?’ Ray interrupted.

  ‘No, I don’t, but we have to consider everything. Listen, if it’s any consolation, I drove Alex back to your house last night, and if she was making up the events, she’s a world-class liar. I’m as certain as I can be that it happened as she described. I’m just telling you what’s going on.’

  ‘So what do they think happened to my daughter if she wasn’t taken?’

  Owen drained the rest of his drink. ‘I don’t know, mate. Maybe something else happened prior to Alex arriving at the car park. I really didn’t want to be the one to say that. Listen, that’s just one angle under consideration. Of course, we all believe Alex wouldn’t lie about what happened.’

  Ray was angry Trent would even consider the possibility that Alex had invented the abduction to cover up something else, and now he couldn’t think about anything else. ‘Who’s been arrested?’

  ‘Terry Thornby.’

  Ray recognized the name; though he had never come into direct contact with Thornby, he knew him to be one of a number of registered sex offenders. Reaching for his glass, he was desperate for anything to steady his nerves. ‘Go on.’