The Girls Next Door

by Mel Sherratt

  As soon as all four women had left to go to the park, the house dropped into silence again. Laura sat down on the bottom stair and hugged herself, resting her chin on her knees. She couldn’t contemplate what was happening. They had gone to look for her daughter, who was missing. Eden was looking for her too. She hoped this was just a practical joke.

  Where are you, Jess?

  Was she somewhere that she couldn’t escape from? Laura tried not to think of all the crime dramas she had watched where young girls had been abducted, raped and murdered.

  Then she sat up. She needed some answers, and she knew just where to start. She searched out her car keys and ran out of the house. Ten minutes later, after a deep breath, she strode down the path of 22 Bernard Place and banged on the front door.

  ‘Where is she?’ she said as soon as it opened.

  ‘Where is who?’ Lulu Barker folded her arms.

  ‘My daughter is missing, and I know your boys have something to do with it. Let me speak to them.’ Laura tried to get a foot inside the house.

  Lulu stopped her.

  ‘I want to talk to them!’

  ‘They had nothing to do with those attacks as they were with me, here, all evening.’

  ‘You would say that.’ She stood her ground. ‘Have the police been to see you?’

  Lulu glared at her.

  ‘Jess is missing. I need to know if they’ve seen her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think your boys might know what’s happened to her. There were a few girls attacked last night. One of them didn’t get back until late. She was left to walk home miles because her phone was stolen.’ Laura wanted to take hold of Lulu’s arms and give her a good shake, but she knew it would do more harm than good. She tried to keep calm. ‘Now if your boys have played a trick on Jess, then okay, I get that, but I need to know, because if they haven’t then she’s missing and—’

  ‘Whoa!’ Lulu held up a hand. ‘I don’t want any more police at my door. I’ve had enough of them to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘Tell me!’ Laura pleaded. ‘I need to know where she is.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘About half past five last night.’

  ‘So when did she go missing?’

  ‘I thought she was at Stacey’s house – Stacey Goodwin – but when I checked this morning she wasn’t there.’

  ‘You never checked on her for a whole night?’ Lulu shook her head and whistled through her teeth.

  ‘I was working,’ Laura explained. ‘Jess sent me a message to say she was staying at Stacey’s. I’ve just told you that.’

  ‘You’ve also told me that you’re a bad mother,’ Lulu replied. ‘Who in their right mind wouldn’t ring their child to see where they were until the next day?’

  ‘I did try. . .’ Laura faltered, ‘but her phone went to voicemail.’

  ‘And you ignored that?’

  ‘No! She sent me a few messages so I—’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘No.’ Laura hung her head. ‘I thought she had sent the messages. That was enough.’

  ‘That was enough?’ Lulu tutted.

  ‘I trusted her!’ Laura cried.

  ‘You didn’t think to ring Stacey’s mum?’

  ‘Not until this morning.’

  ‘Some mother you are.’

  ‘How would I know that it wasn’t her?’ Laura saw red. ‘Do you always know where your boys are?’

  ‘Of course I do!’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Two of them are in prison, aren’t they? I suppose they’re easy to keep track of.’ She sounded antagonistic, but she needed answers.

  ‘Now listen here.’ Lulu prodded Laura’s shoulder, enough to make her take a step back. ‘Don’t come round to my house and have a dig at my sons when you can’t even look after your own daughter. For your information, I’m not the bad mother here.’

  Laura didn’t believe her for a second. ‘It seems a coincidence that Deanna’s trial starts on Monday and—’

  Lulu pushed Laura away with all her might.

  Laura landed on her backside. She scrambled away as the woman came towards her, almost baring her teeth.

  ‘You have no right to mention her name,’ Lulu spat. ‘It’s going to be a tough few weeks for us.’ She pointed to the window of her home where there was a poster of Deanna, the word ‘justice’ printed at the bottom in large white capital letters. ‘That’s my girl there. I miss her so much.’

  ‘Then you’ll know how much I need to see Jess,’ said Laura. ‘There were people attacked last night, and I don’t know where she is. I just need to know if you, or anyone else, knows her whereabouts – that’s all.’

  Lulu paused for a moment. Then she seemed to drop her attitude. ‘My boys are at the police station answering questions,’ she said.

  Laura stood up quickly. As she turned to leave, Lulu grabbed her arm.

  ‘I don’t know where Jess is, but I do know that my boys have nothing to do with her disappearance. They would have told me when the cops came calling. They said they knew nothing about Jess or Cayden, and I believe them. I can tell when they’re lying.’

  ‘And the other girls?’

  Lulu shrugged. ‘They’re not perfect. But my boys wouldn’t do anyone any harm unless they had it coming to them.’

  ‘But my daughter is missing!’

  ‘At least she’s still alive.’

  Her words cut Laura to the core. She was beginning to feel the anguish of losing a child, just an inkling of what Lulu and her family might have gone through. And she couldn’t even be sure if Jess was alive. She couldn’t be sure of anything.

  With people out on their steps taking in everything, Lulu marched back into her house with a slam of the door.

  Laura went to her car. There were no new messages on her phone so she started the engine and drove away. As she stopped at a junction, she banged a fist on the steering wheel. She would have been better staying at home for all the information she had gleaned. And what if Jess had tried to call her on the landline? She pressed her foot to the accelerator.

  She had to get home.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Eden and Sean had just come out of interview room one after talking to Travis Barker. Travis had claimed to know nothing about the attacks on the three girls and was strongly denying any involvement with Cayden Blackwell and Jess too. They’d left him to stew while they caught a breath before going to speak to his brother.

  ‘What do you think, sir?’ asked Eden as they walked up the stairs together, back to their office on the first floor.

  ‘I’ll pass judgment when we’ve spoken to Damien too,’ said Sean. ‘One of them will slip up.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Or else they really don’t have anything to do with Jess’s disappearance. You need to brace yourself for that.’

  ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’ Eden went cold again.

  Sean opened the door to the office and she stepped in first as he held it for her. A buzz of activity greeted them as people around them worked on the case. Amy was at her desk, Jordan was on the phone and there was a group of officers sitting around the desks nearby.

  ‘So we’re talking to staff at the supermarket, hoping for sightings of Jess from yesterday,’ said Sean as they walked. ‘Maybe someone saw her on her way to the supposed meet-up with Cayden. I’m going to organise a press conference – just routine but necessary I think. Okay, Eden?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll let Laura know.’

  Sean nodded. ‘For now we’re still going along the lines of a practical joke gone wrong, but if we can’t get one of the Barker brothers to confess to anything then someone might have seen Jess somewhere last night. Keep checking in with press and radio, and social media.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Eden sat down. Amy looked across at her.

  ‘Anything good on that list?’ Eden asked, knowing full well that there wouldn’t be. Amy was l
ooking through Laura’s contacts on her phone.

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ Amy replied. ‘I’ll email you what I have first rather than print it out.’

  Eden frowned but opened her email inbox and waited for an envelope to appear. She clicked on it when it did. A spreadsheet full of names and telephone numbers appeared on her screen.

  ‘Anything pop out at you?’ she asked Amy, as she scrolled down the boxes.

  ‘Not necessarily, but you check.’

  Eden glanced down the list of names, reading them slowly, one by one, to see if any of them meant anything to her. They seemed to be mostly female, friends of Jess’s she guessed, a few that she knew and some she didn’t. Then she checked through the lists that Laura and Sarah had given.

  She froze as she spotted a familiar number. That’s why Amy hadn’t wanted to print it out straightaway. It was her husband, Danny’s.

  Why would it be on this list? But before she had time to panic, she realised it could have been on there for years. After all, she had kept it on her phone. Whereas she hadn’t deleted his number because she’d wanted to keep it, perhaps Laura had kept it and not even known she still had it stored.

  It took Eden by surprise when a rush of feelings washed over her at the thought of Danny. She looked along the line that held his details to see if any messages or calls had been recorded between them recently. Thankfully there were none. And Danny hadn’t answered any messages or emails that she had sent to him since he had gone.

  She continued to look through the list, chastising herself for allowing Danny to infiltrate her thoughts again.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Before they went in to interview Damien Barker, Eden picked up her phone and rang Stockleigh News crime reporter Ryan Copestake to give him an update. He’d left her a voice message earlier, and she’d tried to ring him a few minutes later, but he’d been engaged. Ryan had reported on a few serious cases since she had met him, but more often than not you’d find him in Stockleigh Magistrates Court reporting on benefit frauds and shoplifters, burglaries and anti-social behaviour, mostly from either the Hopwood or the Mitchell Estate. He was always moaning that it was rare he could get his teeth into something – he always seemed to be reporting after the event.

  Eden had known him for many years, and even though they didn’t see eye to eye when he let out a little more information than she would have liked every now and then, most of the time they got on well. Ryan would often call in to the station, along with several housing officers, to glean information or intelligence on certain people. She’d share what she could and sometimes a little of what she couldn’t and vice versa. The housing officers, police and press needed to get on. They were on the same team, serving the general public.

  ‘I know we’ve been retweeting tweets, but do you have a higher resolution version of her photo that you can send to me for the print edition?’ Ryan asked once she had told him more about Jess. ‘Obviously I’ll still keep sharing it across our social media channels too. We have nearly 50,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. You’d be surprised how many times locals will retweet this type of appeal. They like to look out for their own.’

  Eden had seen this several times. Mostly she disliked social media because difficult situations were shared online quicker than it took to blink an eye. Lots of people wanted to film the police hoping that injustice would be done. Their job was hard enough without people interfering.

  But to her knowledge there had only been one occasion when a person hadn’t been found alive after a campaign like this. He had been a man in his eighties with dementia who had taken himself for a walk along the canal. They’d found his body in a lock a few weeks after.

  ‘Yes, I’ll get it to you as soon as possible,’ Eden replied. ‘Jess’s sister, Sarah, has been rallying all their friends and sharing it too.’

  ‘Can I see your sister?’ Ryan wanted to know. ‘Is she up for it?’

  ‘We don’t want to blow this out of proportion.’ Eden wanted to protect Laura for as long as she could from media intrusion. ‘Jess has only been missing for a few hours, and we don’t want to cause any controversy and have people link it to the case of Deanna Barker.’ There. She had given him something.

  ‘Ah, understood,’ Ryan replied. ‘Although I’ll be the first to know when anything is happening?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eden told him. ‘But please keep this to yourself until then.’

  She heard him snigger. ‘You don’t expect me to sabotage anything? It’s the Barker brothers I want, and you know that.’

  Eden knew only too well. She disconnected the call and stood up. Time to see if Damien Barker would give them anything. But she’d barely taken a few steps when her phone rang again. It was one of the housing officers, Josie Mellor.

  ‘I’ve just heard on the two o’clock news, Eden. I’m so sorry.’

  Eden pinched the bridge of her nose.

  ‘I’m on my way in.’

  ‘You don’t have—’

  ‘You think I can sit at home now I know what’s going on?’

  Eden didn’t know what to say. It was so brilliant to have a group of people who wanted to support her, do their little bit in the search for her niece.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m here to help,’ Josie continued. ‘Just tell me what you need me to do.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Eden went in to interview room one behind Sean. Damien Barker and the duty solicitor, Martin Dinnen, were already seated at a desk. Dinnen was a reed of a man, with long hands and fingers, a head of thick dark hair, and red socks showing beneath his grey and white pinstripe trousers, part of a three-piece suit. Round frameless glasses made his blue eyes much larger. Eden didn’t much care for him, having gone into battle with him on several occasions now. He was a ruthless character and far too smarmy for her liking.

  She set everything up for the interview and pressed record on the player. She went through the usual requirements and asked Damien to confirm his name. Once that was done, she sat back and let Sean start the questioning.

  Damien Barker was slightly taller than his brother, Travis, and two years older at nineteen. His hair was sludge brown, and he wore a ring through his right eyebrow. With dark and moody eyes, he had the demeanour of a rat, the persona of a snake. But if he thought he could live off his older brothers’ reputation, he was wrong.

  ‘Damien,’ Sean started, ‘where were you during the hours of 5.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. last night?’

  ‘I told you, innit. Me and my bro were at home with our ma. We watched American Sniper.’

  ‘Good, isn’t he, Christian Bale?’

  ‘You trying to trip me up? Christian Bale isn’t in American Sniper.’ Damien sat back and folded his arms. ‘That’s American Psycho.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Sean nodded. ‘My mistake.’

  Martin Dinnen flicked his pen on and off at great speed.

  Eden glared at him when it became annoying. Dinnen caught her eye and stopped for a few seconds before starting up again. She wondered if it was a habit he wasn’t aware he had.

  ‘So we won’t find your car on CCTV footage anywhere in the city?’ Sean continued.

  ‘Not unless someone else was driving it,’ said Damien.

  ‘And were they?’

  Damien shrugged. ‘Not sure. I can’t remember it going from outside of the house.’

  ‘Do you always drive it?’

  ‘Yeah, because I’m insured, innit.’

  ‘Innit?’ snapped Eden. ‘How old are you, Damien? Ten?’

  Dinnen stopped flicking his pen enough to glare at her this time.

  ‘I was in all night,’ Damien repeated. ‘So you have nothing on me – or my brother. If you had, you’d be dealing your cards.’

  ‘If you thought we had, you’d be saying no comment, wouldn’t you?’

  Damien smirked at her. ‘I would.’

  ‘So tell me, how did it feel to tip paint over someone’s head?’ she asked. �
��Make you feel like a man, did it?’

  Damien sniggered. ‘It weren’t me, but I bet it was funny.’

  ‘Damien, can you write me something down?’ Sean pushed a piece of paper and a pen across the desk to him.

  He looked at Dinnen. ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Humour us,’ said Eden.

  He picked up the pen with a sigh. ‘What do you want me to write?’

  ‘How about. . . keep your mouth shut.’

  Damien looked up and shook his head.

  Sean leaned forward. ‘Not to worry. If you sit here for a few hours longer, we’ll be back with the CCTV footage that puts you in the frame for the kidnap of Jessica Mountford.’

  ‘Wait!’ They had his attention now as he sat upright. ‘I don’t know anything about that!’

  ‘It’s plain and simple, Damien. If you’re saying you were at home and didn’t attack Stacey Goodwin, Claire Mornington or Ruby Peters last night, then you would have been free around the time that Jess Mountford went missing. If I find out that you’re lying then I’ll want to know why.’

  ‘But surely if my client was home when those girls were attacked,’ said Dinnen, ‘then he would have been at home when Jessica Mountford was taken.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ smirked Damien. ‘I don’t know owt about no kidnap.’

  ‘You’re denying being anywhere near Jess Mountford last night between the hours of six p.m. and ten p.m.?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How about Cayden Blackwell? Do you know what happened to him?’

  Damien shook his head.

  ‘He was beaten up. When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘I haven’t attacked him either!’ He looked at Martin Dinnen again.

  Eden could see desperation in Damien’s eyes as he began to squirm. He was going to wrap himself up in knots if he didn’t think about what he was saying. She loved Sean’s interviewing techniques. She had seen him do this so many times. He’d get the suspect to deny something and then ask them where they were instead. It often put them in the frame for something without them realising it.