THEIR LOST DAUGHTERS a gripping crime thriller with a huge twist

by Joy Ellis

  ‘Hagrid meets the Incredible Hulk.’ Andy swallowed. ‘I’m going to have nightmares thinking about that face, and did you see the calluses on his hands?’

  ‘I did, and I certainly wouldn’t want to meet him in an alley on a dark night.’

  Andy stared down at the tatty dog-eared card that he held in his hand. ‘Shall I give this Broome bloke a bell?’

  Kevin slowed down at the gatehouse then pulled out into the deserted lane. ‘Not much point. I get the feeling that the big guy will probably have already contacted him about our visit.’ As he accelerated away from the desolate old property, he frowned. ‘But I will make sure the boss knows about this place. I can’t say that I’m really happy about it, are you?’

  Andy let out a whistle, ‘Want me to be honest? I’ve never felt so spooked by a place since I was a cub scout and someone shut me in the churchyard at dusk.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Shit-scared, my friend, that’s how I felt. Shit-scared.’

  * * *

  Back at the station, Jackman went to check for any messages from forensics. Clive, his office manager, flashed a cheery grin and began to root around in the masses of untidy paperwork on his desk. He located the correct memo sheet in seconds, something that always amazed Jackman.

  ‘One of the SOCOs rang us from the scene, boss. She reckoned there were enough bodily fluids floating around in there to crash their computer’s DNA file, but unfortunately the tests take time. It will be over a week before we get the results.’

  ‘Sod it! How about prints?’

  ‘A shedload. She’ll stick them on the database as soon as she gets back to the lab. If there’s any matches they’ll come up straight away.’

  ‘That sounds a bit more promising. Keep me posted, will you?’

  Jackman went back to his office, where Marie joined him. ‘Marie? I suppose you don’t know if we’ve ever bumped into young Nicholas Barley before — in an official capacity.’

  ‘He’s had his collar felt a few times,’ said Marie. ‘Unfortunately it was nothing bad enough to warrant taking his dabs.’

  ‘No matter. We’ll take them anyway.’

  ‘I’ll get that sorted,’ said Marie. ‘By the way, can I run something past you, sir?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Do you think Toni Clarkson would be up to going to the old chapel, to see if she can remember if that was where the so-called party was held?’

  Jackman nodded. ‘I think she’s got the nerve, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Shall I go over to the hospital and ask her?’

  Jackman shook his head. ‘No offence, but why not ring Harlan Marsh nick and get Gary Pritchard to do it. He seems to have a way with that kid.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll contact him. And I’ll ring that friend of Ethan’s too.’

  Jackman walked back out to the CID room and saw Rosie, Max and Charlie all gloomily staring at computer printouts. ‘I guess from your faces that we’ve nothing more on Emily?’

  Rosie looked up. ‘Sorry, boss. We are running out of options to explore.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder if that drug messed with Toni’s head. We could be hunting a hallucination.’ Max pulled a face.

  ‘We can’t rule that out, but the kid is remembering more every time we speak to her. I’m sure Emily exists. Sorry, guys, just keep looking.’

  Marie joined them. ‘Ethan’s friend isn’t answering his mobile, so I’ve left a message on voicemail. Let’s hope he gets back to us.’

  ‘And Gary?’

  ‘He’s on his way to the hospital now, and he was certain that he could get her to visit the chapel.’

  ‘Excellent. We’ll meet him there, and then go back to the chapel with Toni. If she recognises that cellar, it will tell us something definite. And we’ll ask her if she can remember any more about Emily.’ Jackman straightened up. ‘Right, time to move. Rosie, you check our own records and see if we have anything logged here in Saltern-le-Fen about illicit parties or drinking clubs. Keep me updated on anything you unearth, and Max, you and Charlie keep digging regarding mispers, and listen out for this call from Ethan Barley’s friend. Get as much as you can from him about the Emily he chatted up in the pub, okay?’

  Max nodded. ‘Wilco.’

  ‘Then go to it. We have to find out what happened to Toni Clarkson, and particularly whether we have another missing girl. We need something to corroborate Toni’s story about the beautiful Emily with the long dark hair.’

  * * *

  Jackman tossed Marie his keys. ‘You drive. My phone’s ringing.’

  He pulled his mobile from his pocket and walked around to the passenger door.

  ‘DI Jackman? I’m sorry, but I need to understand something.’

  It took him a moment to realise it was Ethan Barley. ‘Sure, Ethan, fire away.’

  ‘Can you assure me that it really would help my brother if he spoke to you? I mean, it’s not some kind of trick on your part, is it? I know a bit about entrapment and shit like that. It does happen, so don’t tell me otherwise.’

  ‘I wouldn’t lie to you, Ethan. That sort of thing does go on, but not with my team, okay? If Nicholas knows something, and he comes to us freely, it will go well for him. Likewise, if he knows something and hides it from me, I’ll hit him harder than a speeding lorry. Is that clear?’

  The line went quiet for a long time. Finally, Ethan said, ‘Then I think he needs to talk to you.’

  ‘If he needs a bit of persuasion, Ethan, you can tell him we have lifted an awful lot of fingerprints from that cellar. If his are there, on a bottle maybe, and he denies knowing about the party . . . I guess your father won’t be too pleased to see his younger son in handcuffs.’

  ‘I’ll bring him down.’ Ethan sounded scared.

  ‘In two hours, okay? I’ll meet you at the front desk.’

  ‘Yeah. Oh, and forget the girl my friend chatted up, I’ve just heard from him and she was a blonde with spiky hair.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Well, thanks to a little arm twisting from big brother, young Nicholas is about to pay us a visit.’

  Marie smiled. ‘Perfect. Could save us a lot of legwork.’

  ‘And if Toni recognises the crypt, then everything could fall into place pretty quickly.’

  But Jackman sounded more confident than he felt.

  * * *

  Marie managed to persuade the Clarksons to wait in their car while she and Jackman showed Toni the chapel. She would probably be much more willing to talk if her parents weren’t hovering in the background.

  Toni held onto Marie’s arm as she led her along the gravel path, and Marie felt her growing more and more tense with every step.

  She patted the girl’s hand. ‘You’ve nothing to fear, Toni. Just tell us whether or not you recognise the cellar, and then we’ll get you out of there straightaway.’

  ‘I hate not being able to remember everything. It’s so scary. I mean, those freaky perverts could have done anything!’ Toni winced and touched her side with her free hand.

  ‘But they didn’t, Toni, hold on to that.’ Marie stopped, took the girl by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  ‘It’s bad enough that they hurt you, but they never sexually assaulted you, okay?’

  Toni nodded, and mumbled, ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

  They walked to the top of the steps and looked down. ‘Okay, let’s get this over with.’ Toni stepped down, touching the wall tentatively with her fingertips as if she were reading Braille.

  Gary was waiting at the bottom, and he held out his hand to her.

  ‘Good lass. Well done,’ he said. ‘Just a quick look round, and then we’ll get you on your way home, okay?’

  Toni stood at the entrance to the crypt and stared about her. She wrinkled her nose as the smell hit her.

  ‘No, this wasn’t it. This smells even worse than cabbages, it stinks like piss.’

  ‘Are you sure, Toni?’ Jackman had been so certain that this was
the place.

  ‘Yes, this is bigger, and well, it looks like part of an old church. That place I was in,’ she gave an involuntary shiver, ‘it was a proper cellar, you know? Like there was old stuff around. Boxes and cases, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you see anything here that reminds you of where you were taken?’ asked Gary.

  The girl walked further in, then stopped and looked around her.

  ‘There were bottles with candles stuck in them, like those.’ She pointed to a stone shelf lined with empty wine bottles with candle stubs in their necks. She walked towards them and picked one up.

  ‘Emily showed me this label! She thought it was funny, and we laughed at it.’

  ‘Put it down, please, Toni,’ said Marie. ‘We may need to check the prints on it. Are you saying you were offered the same type of wine?’

  Toni nodded furiously. ‘I wouldn’t forget that name, would I?’

  They leaned over her shoulder and saw the label. Old Tart.

  ‘There was one called Old Git. We laughed at that too.’

  Jackman shrugged. ‘People buy the label not the wine, I suppose.’

  ‘Actually they are deceptively good wines, sir. One’s a Sauvignon blanc and Terret, the other’s a Grenache/Syrah,’ Gary said.

  ‘I had no idea you were a connoisseur. Are they hard to find?’

  ‘No, sir. A lot of the supermarkets stock them.’

  ‘They would, wouldn’t they?’ Jackman muttered.

  ‘Can I go home now? This minging place is making me want to hoop up.’

  Marie put an arm around Toni’s slender shoulder and smiled at her. ‘Of course. I feel exactly the same. Thank you, Toni, you’ve really helped us.’

  ‘Have you found Emily yet?’

  Marie’s smile faded. ‘Not yet. But when you’ve settled in at home, we really need to talk to you some more about her.’

  ‘Sure. Although I don’t know what else I can tell you. It’s all so fuzzy.’

  Marie tried to sound positive. ‘Hey, you just remembered laughing over the wine labels, I’m sure other things will start to come back to you.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Toni glanced towards the doorway, where her father now stood, anxiously shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘I hope so. Emily was really nice.’

  * * *

  Gary and Toni drove away. Jackman needed to call the station so Marie slid in behind the steering wheel, started the engine and waited while he strode around trying to find a signal. She yawned, tapped her fingers on the wheel, and then eased the car round to face the road. When she looked up again, Jackman was hurrying across the grass towards her.

  ‘Rosie has found two incidents reported in the last few months where youngsters attended underground parties and finished up the worse for wear.’

  ‘Right. They were local?’

  ‘Local kids, but the venues were out of town. That’s all she knows. She’s still digging. Right now, we need to go interview the Barley boys, so put your foot down, Marie. I can’t wait to hear what baby brother has to tell us.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Whatever Ethan said to Nicholas, it had a profound effect. The boy was spewing out information like a broken tap.

  ‘I thought it was cool to start with. Make a load of wonga for getting a shitty key copied? I mean, who wouldn’t? It wasn’t till later that I got scared,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Shame you didn’t think it through first, dickhead,’ murmured his brother. ‘What did you think they were going to do down there? Hold prayer meetings and plan World Peace?’

  ‘I didn’t care what they did! The place is a craphole anyway.’

  ‘So what was the story they gave you, Nicholas?’ asked Jackman.

  ‘They had crates and crates of booze and were happy to share it with us if we kids just hung out with them. No strings.’

  Jackman’s gut twisted into a small, painful knot. ‘And what sorts of activities were involved in this hanging out?’

  Nicholas shrugged. ‘Just drinking, dancing together. Bit of a feel and a snog.’ He bit his lip. ‘Though I think some of them went further.’

  ‘We saw the condoms, thank you.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know that was going to happen, did I? The old guys, well, they just looked, didn’t they? I mean, they never touched us or anything like that. They just sat in the shadows and watched us.’ Nicholas stared down at the table. ‘Some of the kids wanted to give them their money’s worth. Kind of shock them, show them what they could do.’ He turned his acne-spattered face towards them.

  ‘It was the drink, wasn’t it? Most of them were hammered by that time.’ His eyes returned to the table. ‘I split when I saw one of the men had a camcorder in one hand and his di—’ he grimaced and pointed to his crotch. ‘If you catch my drift?’

  ‘Sorry, Nicholas, but we need to be clear on this, one of the older men was touching himself as he watched the youngsters?’

  Nicholas nodded. ‘Wanker.’

  ‘You realise we have to stop this, don’t you? Before one of these kids gets . . . God knows what could happen to them.’

  ‘Yeah, but there were no names used.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll tell you all I know if you can keep it from Dad.’

  Jackman saw the consternation on Nicholas’s face. The good reverend must have something of a temper, he thought. The lad was terrified. ‘Tell us all you know, and I’ll keep most of it from your father. And I’ll make sure he knows you helped us.’

  ‘Just tell them, arsehole! And thank your lucky stars you are getting let off so easily,’ hissed Ethan.

  Twenty minutes later, they let the boys go. They had descriptions, locations and best of all, Nicholas described the exact spot in the cellar where the “main man” had sat. Any DNA evidence found in that immediate area could be traced to him.

  Jackman closed the interview room door, and exhaled loudly. ‘I can’t wait to tie this up with what Gary Pritchard has already got. We can’t waste a moment in getting these perverts into the custody suite.’

  Marie nodded. ‘Bastards! Just the thought of those slimeballs watching young kids makes me want to heave.’

  Jackman thought of his nephew. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  Two uniformed officers were walking hurriedly towards them.

  ‘Sir? Could we have a word, please?’

  Jackman nodded and said to Marie, ‘Go check on the others, would you?’ He turned back to them. ‘Sure, lads, but make it snappy.’

  ‘We were asked to check out a place called Windrush for you, sir,’ said the older of the two.

  It was PC Andy English, a good copper who’d worked with Jackman on numerous occasions. ‘Yes, so did you find anything?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir,’ said the younger officer, PC Kevin Stoner.

  Jackman looked at him with interest. PC Kevin Stoner was a bright young copper, and Jackman had recommended him for the CID examinations. However, Stoner had decided that as he had a really good crewmate, he would do a few more years in uniform.

  ‘The thing is, sir,’ continued Andy, ‘we spent a lot of time there, and when we left we wrote it off as a no-no, but now we’re not so sure. We think it warrants a second look, but with a lot more feet on the ground.’

  ‘What’s worrying you, Andy?’

  Andy adjusted his heavy equipment belt and frowned. ‘Hard to put a finger on it, sir, but I reckon it’s the bloke that showed us round, more than anything.’

  ‘We think he directed us to where we needed to go a bit too carefully, sir,’ added Kevin. ‘I’m certain we saw just what he wanted us to see and no more.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Micah Lee, and he looks like the kind of man you wouldn’t want to upset.’

  Andy sniffed. ‘I’m pretty good at reading people, sir, and that man was hairspring taut. He was well angry when we showed up unannounced, but then he put up a good show. Nice as pie, but underneath . . . boiling, he was, sir. Absolutely boiling.’
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br />   ‘And he’s the owner of Windrush?’

  ‘No, he’s the caretaker. It’s owned by a man named Benedict Broome. Lee wouldn’t say what was going on there, but he opened up a bit as we walked around, and he told us that Broome has massive plans for the place. Micah Lee seems to be working his socks off down there. And, hell, Windrush is one scary dump.’

  ‘And dangerous,’ added Kevin. ‘It needs bulldozing and starting again.’

  ‘What are these great plans?’

  ‘Broome wants to turn Windrush into a retreat, somewhere for people to go and get away from life for a while. A remote spot where they would eat well, sleep well and relax. Lee was going on about water gardens, covered courtyards for silent contemplation, a garden of tranquillity, reading rooms, music rooms, quiet rooms, you name it. You’d have thought Broome had millions to spend.’

  ‘Maybe he does.’

  Kevin laughed. ‘Well, he’s not spending too much on labour! You didn’t see Micah Lee, sir! He’s out there on his own with an old digger, a bloody great shovel and a barrow, no sign of any other workmen or helpers. It looked like he was doing it alone.’

  ‘It was odd, sir,’ agreed Andy. ‘But you could see that some major clearing work had been done.’ He frowned. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing the plans and the planning permission reports.’

  ‘Then get them, Constable, as soon as possible, and bring them straight to me. Meanwhile,’ he took the scruffy card that Kevin Stoner offered him, ‘I’ll have a word with this Benedict Broome, and perhaps we’ll pay Windrush another visit.’

  Jackman watched as the two constables hurried down the corridor, and felt a chill of apprehension. Over the years, Jackman had learned never to ignore these feelings of unease. It could prove costly.

  He walked slowly back towards the lifts, deciding that Marie’s Windrush guided tour might come in useful after all.

  * * *

  Jackman walked into the CID room and beckoned to Marie. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  Marie grinned at him. ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘Probably. But the fact that we have had no time to even look at the Kenya Black case is really starting to worry me, especially if her mother is planning a major media campaign in the near future.’