Chloe- Lost Girl

by Dan Laughey

  The quietness was uncanny. This city – this Roman hill fort carved from dense woods and sloping dales – really did sleep.

  No good trying to search for clues in the dark, Sant told himself. He’d request a team at the break of day. Brushing dirt from his hands, he wondered if he could authorise such a request. For a moment he was unsettled by the doubt. Then he relaxed. Hardaker would give his approval.

  He got up and retraced his steps. Instead of rejoining the main road, he continued along the riverside and passed the main wings of the monastery. Followed the dismantled Abbey Light Railway to the eastern outskirts that culminated in the white stone cross of Kirkstall Cenotaph, commemorating the men of the parish who’d perished in the Great War. Here the river was no wider than a moorland beck and even more out of place amidst the office buildings and industrial units surrounding it.

  A short walk from the bridge over the river stood a Victorian drinking fountain. Sant shone his torch on the inscription engraved in broken stone: DRINK AND BE GRATEFUL. In 1849 the water supply was contaminated with cholera, killing two thousand Leeds folk. In 1865 the city authorities erected the fountain with the assurance that only clean water would gush from its lion-headed iron tap. Forty years later a near-fatal stomach bug was attributed to this supposed source of liquid purity. The powers that be hushed up the affair, the local Bobbies accepting generous backhanders from notable dignitaries as payment for banging a few heads together. DRINK AND KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED would have been a more apt epitaph, Sant reckoned.

  He crossed over Bridge Street and rounded the corner by the junction of Abbey Road and Commercial Road. This was where the real action was, and would remain for days to come. A dreadful spectacle, it was illuminated better than a Premier League stadium. Efforts to move the bus without destroying evidence were slowly succeeding. Sant shook his head, squinting. After all the cutting it no longer resembled a bus; looked more like a colossal toast rack.

  Tempted as he was to duck under the cordon and find out the latest from Dr Wisdom, he decided to wait till morning. Besides, from where he was standing he could see Hardaker handing out instructions to murder-squad detectives, some of whom he knew well. He was meant to be with them now, obeying Hardaker’s every command and delegating duties down the ranks to Capstick and Holdsworth. The urge to join in was a strange, empty one.

  Sant told himself that it should be him, not Hardaker, orchestrating this gig. But for the sake of his colleagues, the public out there, and Dryden and family foremost, he’d stomach Hardaker and Gilligan and Lister. No matter how hard it grated him to do so.

  Exhaustion left him without emotion. A uniform gave him a lift home. He fumbled his keys around in the worn lock of his front door and didn’t even bother to turn on the apartment lights, making a beeline for bed before the idea of a beer became a good one.

  6

  She had never been more terrified.

  Her bedside clock told her it was four a.m. She’d tossed and turned all night, not a wink of sleep. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. What nightmares would greet her if her brain switched off a moment too long?

  Murder. She had murder on her mind. That policeman had been targeted. Assassinated. That meant…

  A plume of flame blinded her, bullet exploding from the gun, knocking her over into numb blackness.

  They were coming for her.

  Wiping her forehead, she stilled her gasps and looked over to the phone. Considered calling the police. How could she even begin to explain what she knew? The risks far outweighed the benefits. She trusted no-one.

  Had anyone followed her on that lonely walk home? Her stare went through the wall, head shaking. They could have struck her down there and then. Her shoulders heaved. A feeling, a sureness, wiped away all the moisture from her eyes.

  They knew where she lived.

  They’d been waiting, toying with her. Monitoring her every move. And now they could pick her off. Easy prey.

  She had to move. Fast. No time to collect her things. Just get out. Lose herself in the crowd.

  She grabbed all the loose money she could find, dashed to the bedside table and knocked the lamp over, hand hovering over a clutter of personal items. She watched her shaking hands, mouth open. Grabbed the keys and left.

  Walked out of her flat – and fell. Hard. Landed with a thud. The agony took her breath away as she pressed hands to ribs. It felt like being impaled by a brass poker. She’d forgotten about the parcel, was looking at it, thinking… My ribs. Bruised or cracked? It hurt like hell. She tried to get up, stumbled, fell again.

  She inhaled deeply, stretched her legs out and used her feet to rein in the parcel. At first she couldn’t budge it. Christ, it could’ve been full of bricks for all she knew. A glance at the address label stopped her breathing once more.

  The name on the box. The name no-one was supposed to know.

  Her real name!

  She gawped and came up for air. Hit herself, hoping this… a bad dream? The punch to the cheek landed home.

  She scanned the corridor, aware of the eight floors of her dingy council block she had to descend, and saw no-one. Nothing felt out of order. She took another gulp of oxygen and tried to get to her feet, but the pain pulsed down her ribcage as she tried to twist it straight. She’d done some damage. Permanent damage. This was bad. It would be three hours before the neighbours got up. Shouting for help would be madness.

  Throat tight with a sob, her watery gaze drifted to the parcel by her feet. What on earth was inside and who had sent it? Only a handful of people alive knew her by that name.

  Tension, vibrating her entire frame a moment before, eased from her face, hands. Could the sender be her precious girl, the most special person she’d had the pleasure to care for? Did Chloe send this? If so, she’d spent a queen’s ransom on the courier service. Sunday paid double if not triple.

  Why the urgency? Welled tears broke and ran, face taut in thought. She suspected what the parcel contained. Knew the importance of it. But why send it now? This was the evidence she revealed to that poor policeman. She’d even written down the address where he could find it. It was meant for his eyes. Or the eyes of someone equally trustworthy. Someone with the power to bring down the infrastructure under which they served.

  She’d promised the evidence to him. Sergeant Dryden… he would never receive it.

  Sprawled on the floor, she tried and failed to lift the hefty weight. Shuffled it closer, inch by inch, until at last she could pick at the seams with her trembling fingers. It took her several minutes to prise away the tape and staples, hampered as she was by the soreness of her ribs, sheer determination keeping her going, desperate to get at what was inside. Its value would be worthless to the unknowing and unaffected, but to those who’d fought against corruption and discrimination in the highest ranks of society, what lay inside was immense, awesome, priceless.

  One final tug of the cardboard casing and she’d be in. She ripped across the upper flaps and wrenched them apart, gripped the rim of the box with both hands outstretched and tipped it slowly towards her.

  Peeped inside. And then she let go.

  Her instincts were right. She should have trusted them. The optimist inside her had been fooled.

  ‘Again!’ She looked at her fist, thoughts of self-harm recurring.

  The box was full of bricks.

  At that moment she registered something in the corner of her eye. She turned and looked up at a man wearing black gloves and a broad smile. But she only saw the gloves as they came down level with her neck, grabbed hold of her, then tightened their merciless grip.

  Sant woke early, shaved, showered, and took coffee with a bowl of fibre-rich bran flakes followed by a healthy dose of cholesterol – four scrambled eggs on thickly buttered toast. As far as he was concerned, with breakfast, the bigger the better. He liked to take his time in the morning, spending a good hour filling his stomach with protein, calcium, carbohydrates. And caffeine. Not necessarily in that
order.

  He felt a sense of urgency as he walked through the living room. His daily tabloid lay on the doormat. He glanced at the front-page headline – DEATH BUS MYSTERY – and cursed. The Sunday editions having gone to print before the bus shootings, Monday’s papers were making the best of a delayed response to the big news of the weekend. Wiping cereal crumbs from his mouth, Sant tossed the paper on the couch and went to dress.

  He grabbed the keys to his Fiesta and started out on the inner ring road towards HQ. Then he changed his mind, thinking about the interview with Mrs Andrews and the way she’d reacted to Chloe’s name. A twitch of the eyelid. Scratch of the nose. Instinct told him Mrs Andrews was aware her ill-fated daughter had known Chloe and, for some reason or other, she wasn’t keen to advertise the fact. If proven, this backed Sant’s theory: the bus murders and Chloe’s disappearance were interwoven.

  He dug out the phone in his trouser pocket and called his partner.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘HQ, sir. Where are you? Hardaker’s called an urgent briefing on the bus murders.’

  Sant cursed his bad timing. Should he turn around and go back? He drummed on the steering wheel, decided to stick with his plans. Hardaker would understand the logic. Following a lead that might connect two high-profile investigations surely justified his absence. Anyway, Holdsworth could fill him in on the Chiefman’s briefing.

  ‘Meet me at Chloe’s mother’s address before the hour.’

  ‘But Hardaker’s – ’

  ‘Never mind him, Capstick. Get your skates on.’

  Sant and Capstick had visited Dufton Approach several times already to consult forensic officers scouring Vanessa Lee’s home. Chloe’s uncle was staying there. He raised no objections so a search warrant was quickly granted. No unusual traces of blood or hair or skin or anything else were laid bare. Nothing linked the property to Chloe’s case, and there was no evidence of any type of crime. Sant favoured a belt-and-braces attitude, though, for peace of mind if nothing else.

  A plaque depicting WELCOME TO SEACROFT was attached to a lump of rock, oddly out of place amidst the pebbledash exteriors of the tower blocks. He shuddered, overcome with trepidation. Seacroft had been his first beat. Although deeper rooted in history than any visitor might imagine, modern Seacroft had been built mid century to accommodate the poor folk of Leeds coaxed out of their inner-city slums; back-to-back terraced houses literally crumbling to the ground.

  Instead of cramped rooms and outside privies, the working classes flooding into council estates like Seacroft could now enjoy the splendour of bathrooms, kitchens at the back, gardens, hedges and nearby parks. ‘Breathe fresh air’ – ‘grow your own veg’ – ‘go for healthy walks with your community’ – such was the paternalism espoused by the architects of an upwardly-mobile socialist sensibility.

  A failure of idealism, Sant supposed. The Seacroft of the twenty-first century was anything but upwardly mobile. Beneath the orderly veneer of tree-lined greenery bubbled a festering underworld of drugs, violence and prostitution. ‘Needle Paradise’ was Seacroft’s other name owing to the heroin and the cocaine. The socialist dream turned out to be exactly that: a mere dream; a blueprint not for a future, but for a drug-induced fantasy.

  Chloe’s paternal home was situated on one of the nicer roads lined with 1930s brick builds, but even so, the other side of the street painted a scene of boarded-up concrete prefabs coated in graffiti and vandalism. The smell of glue, vomit and dope struck a chord with the inspector, evoking memories of bleak nights chasing dealers down smoky ginnels, police dogs in tow.

  He met Capstick’s Punto as it stopped by the roadside, got in to shield himself from stiff November gales.

  ‘What’s the score, sir?’

  Sant shivered, his body regulating to the warmth of the car. ‘I went to Darren Lee’s place last night. Turns out his memory is brighter than his hospitality. He recalls how Chloe became close to a neighbour. Even stayed nights at her house from time to time.’

  ‘She still lives here?’

  Sant shook his head. ‘Moved away about seven years ago according to Lee.’

  ‘Maybe someone remembers her.’

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

  The first door they knocked on, two doors down from Vanessa Lee’s, was answered by an impossibly old woman offering them sausages she was half-way through frying. The inviting aroma made Sant’s stomach growl, but a second breakfast was out of the question. For a split second he visualised the woman as the type of experienced hand a young Chloe could have grown fond of, but reality hit home when the old dear confirmed she’d only lived in her current abode for a year. The previous occupants of the house, she confided in a whisper, leaning towards them, were two men on intimate terms with each other; very intimate terms.

  That explains the homophobic paintwork decorating the garden wall, Sant presumed.

  They knocked on a few more properties before coming to a house six doors down. It looked promising. Until the occupant opened up.

  ‘And who are you?’ barked a woman of twentysomething going on forty, fag in hand. ‘Can’t ya see I got me hands full wi’ bleedin’ kids?’

  ‘We won’t bother you for long,’ Capstick reassured her, showing off his badge. ‘Can we come in?’

  She dropped the rest of her fag on the doorstep and crushed it with her socked foot. Without a word or even a gesture she let them in. They stepped straight into a bland rectangular space doubling as a toy room and flat-screen entertainment palace. Two girls were toddling around with bits of chocolate bar in their hands and hair. One of them offered the rest of her choc delight to Capstick, who declined politely and asked, ‘Do you have coffee?’

  The little girl put a hand to her mouth and laughed, shook her head.

  The woman’s face was worn, whittled out of Jurassic stone with fossil marks to prove it. The dyed blonde hair was dry and frizzy, matching the rest of her embattled features. Any natural charm contained therein had been assaulted by a truck load of cheap makeover products.

  ‘What can I do ya for?’

  ‘We’d like to know about the person who lived here before you,’ Capstick said, looking down at the kids.

  The woman fixed a deep scowl of distrust. ‘How should I know? Achally, come to think of it, I do know who ya mean, so wot’s in it for me if I tell ya?’

  The sweet moment with the chocolate offer passed into one of bubbling anger. Sant said, ‘If you tell us, then it’ll be smiles all round and we won’t pester you again.’

  ‘And if I choose not ta?’

  Sant looked at his watch. ‘No bother, we’ll consult the council records. A waste of our time, but so be it. Oh, and my Inland Revenue friends will keep a close eye on your benefit claims, cash jobs, that sort of thing.’

  The woman made a faint choking sound before clasping a new fag between her chapped lips and putting a lighter to it. ‘Don’t go fretnin’ me, Mr Detective. I say wot I want, when I want. But seen as we’re on speaking terms, I say this. I neva achally met ‘er. She weren’t ‘ere when’t council first showed me round. But I were told it were a woman wot used to live ‘ere and she were on ‘er own.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Who ya think? People – wot have lived ‘ere longer than me.’

  ‘Do you know the woman who lives at number 23?’ Capstick asked, pointing his thumb at her door.

  ‘Ya mean her wi’ daughter wot’s run away?’

  Sant nodded. ‘Her name’s Vanessa Lee. Daughter’s called Chloe. You may’ve seen her picture on the news.’

  ‘Well, I hope ya find her,’ she whispered, as if fearing being overheard at number 23. ‘Quite liked ‘er. Even came round a while back.’

  Two pairs of ears pricked up. ‘When did she visit, Mrs – ?’

  ‘Rhodes, and it’s Miss.’ She took a long drag but no smoke came out, a hidden orifice somewhere acting as a release valve. ‘Not long since. Summatime’

  Sant thought hard.
‘Did she have anyone with her? A friend called Kate?’

  Capstick looked at his boss with a flicker of surprise.

  ‘Nope,’ came the instant reply.

  ‘What was the purpose of her visit?’ asked Capstick, blotting sweaty palms on his pants.

  ‘Just to say hello, be friendly s’pose. Funnily nuff, she were asking after the woman wot lived ‘ere, like you are now. Cunt stop goin’ on ‘bout how charming she were.’

  Sant felt the hairs standing on his head. They were getting somewhere. This morning’s change of course was a gamble paying off. ‘So it was a social visit?’

  ‘Well, I made ‘er a cuppa if that’s wot ya mean, but to be honest I were so busy wi’ babies and washing and wot-not, I cunt exactly spare the time of day. Now don’t get me wrong. I never speak ill of the… missing, but I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t tell ya I thought she overstayed ‘er welcome.’

  ‘Chloe you mean?’

  ‘Who else? She even asked me, and I thought this a bit cheeky; she even asked if she could wander round a bit, ya know, fa old time’s sake.’

  Sant was intrigued. ‘Did she talk to you about this woman?’

  Miss Rhodes took another slow easy drag before tapping ash onto a saucer by her feet. ‘Not to me face, no, but there must’ve been someut funny wi’ their relationship. I mean, it were like this girl had come obsessed wi’ wot had gone on ‘ere in t’past. Let’s face it, it’s not right or proper is it? A young girl, and that’s all she were, sleeping over wi’ a single woman least three times ‘er friggin’ age. Very strange.’

  ‘Did Chloe tell you she’d slept here?’

  ‘No, but gossip on t’street says she stayed ‘ere weeks on end. And the way she started goin’ on, it were like this woman were a long lost lover no less. And to think whatever muckiness they were up to ‘appened ‘tween these four walls. Makes me shudder.’