Chloe- Lost Girl

by Dan Laughey

  ‘Were you happy about that?’

  She was thrown by the question. ‘Of course. Callum even apologised to my face, which was a nice touch. He told me the wedding was still on. Not that they were getting married for a couple of years. No need to rush out and buy a hat just yet.’

  Then the tears emerged in full force, Mrs Andrews spreading her hankie over her face like a shield combating the horrors of the here and now.

  Sant kept silent for a minute before continuing. ‘Did your daughter know Chloe’s ex-boyfriend; a young man called Jake Downing?’ She shook her head. ‘And am I right in assuming Chloe didn’t grace your doorstep again?’

  ‘I don’t know; I really don’t. I reckoned at first Kate had erased Chloe from her memory, but I was wrong; they’d become friendly again. I overheard a phone call only a few days back. Kate was talking to someone; arranging to meet them somewhere. And I’m sure she said something like, “Okay Chloe, see you soon.” I was going to ask her about it but she shot off to see Callum and I forgot after that.’ And then Mrs Andrews became transfixed. ‘You don’t think Chloe met my daughter and Callum on that bus and murdered them out of revenge for getting back together, do you?’

  He didn’t think so but his reply was interrupted by a creaking sound. Mr Andrews appeared at the door to the kitchenette, shrugging his shoulders and removing his mud-stained gardening gloves like the journeyman pro.

  ‘I see my wife has taken the liberty to fill you in on our daughter’s unhealthy acquaintances,’ he remarked without a greeting.

  Sant began to speak, only for his words to be drowned out with vitriol.

  ‘Let me tell you, Inspector, that if this useless waste of space here would’ve kept me informed about our daughter’s piss-poor attempt at a boyfriend, not to mention her other so-called friends, I would’ve put an instant stop to these shenanigans!’

  Mrs Andrews started sobbing hopelessly, leaving Sant the reluctant referee in a family dispute he’d witnessed too often before. Fight, bicker, hate, fight some more.

  ‘Discipline!’ piped up Mr Andrews. ‘That’s what society needs more of. Look at the teachers, for crying out loud. They can’t lay a finger on their pupils, so all they do is throw the morons in a classroom and ask them to colour in pretty pictures of farm animals while they watch movies on their phones. It’s a disgrace. The way I brought up my girl, Inspector, was to learn right from wrong. She was a good lass – always was – until a few parasites interfered and turned my Kate rotten, Callum Willis the chief culprit among them.’

  What happened next took Sant by surprise as Mrs Andrews stirred from her grief and turned scarlet with anger, hurling her soaking hankie at her husband.

  ‘Go to hell!’ she screamed. ‘Hell’s where you belong! If you think my own flesh and blood couldn’t fend for herself, then you knew nothing about that girl. Call yourself a father? You’re good for nothing!’

  Sant was ready to step in and fend off blows, but as it turned out, no incident of domestic violence was imminent. Instead, Mr Andrews bowed his head like a beaten boxer and replaced his battered gloves before sluggishly retreating to his green-fingers haven.

  Sant took Mr Andrews’s exit as a cue for his own, thanking Mrs Andrews before hurrying out of the warped front door. He wasn’t so much hurrying from the scene as trying to collect his thoughts as quickly as he could. What he’d heard had confirmed his suspicions; that Kate and Callum had been on that bus by arrangement with Chloe. There was no hard evidence to prove the arrangement, but if Mrs Andrews was right about the call she’d eavesdropped on, one more knot had just been tied in the string linking the bus killings to Chloe’s disappearance.

  What troubled Sant most, however, was Gilligan’s interfering ways. There was no querying the Old Man’s right to interview Mrs Andrews about the death of her daughter in connection with Dryden and the other bus victims, but to follow the Chloe line of questioning without consulting him first was a stab in the back, if not an actual breach of protocol. Something about Gilligan stunk, and it wasn’t his old-fashioned attire.

  Sant was reminded of Holdsworth’s words of warning – he’d have to tread carefully from now on. Replace tread with tiptoe.

  14

  Sleeping. Sleeping. Sleeping.

  Waking.

  Wanting to die. Incapable of death.

  Having conceded defeat on the first photograph, Baseball Cap reached again into the pocket of his jacket, extracted a second photo and placed it alongside the image of Chloe.

  ‘Recognise him?’ he said.

  She peered down at a man in uniform, his face youthful and lean. The glossy black-and-white finish to the print dated it seventies or early eighties. The policeman in the picture would be much older now. Over thirty years older, she judged.

  But age didn’t lie. She knew who the officer was – and why these men wanted him. His name was Tanner. Frank Tanner. At least, that was his name in 1984. A good cop. And what is more, a witness, like her, to wicked men like her captors.

  Here was a witness they’d failed to take care of. A witness who’d evaded, by hook or by crook, the net that ensnares.

  Since, however, she felt little sentiment towards him compared with the girl in the other print, she betrayed her innermost pangs and managed, despite the throbbing pain, to shake her head.

  ‘You’re lying to me, Sheila.’

  Silence.

  ‘Don’t deny you know this man. You’ve known him for a long time.’ He waddled around the room. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, and several dickey birds tell me I’m not, you’ve been in touch with this former officer of the law very recently.’

  Thoughts wormed through patches of fertile soil in the woman’s shattered mind before she cottoned on. Chloe had discovered the whereabouts of this ex-policeman, anticipating future events like the true genius she’d proven to be, and now these men were searching for him – and her – out of fear the twain should meet and conspire against them.

  The woman didn’t try to suppress the Cheshire-cat grin spreading across her bleeding face. Chloe was ahead of the game; that realisation alone gave comfort. Chloe had found her man, and protected him from certain recrimination at the hands of Ray-Bans and Baseball Cap.

  Ironically, that same protection wasn’t afforded to herself. The torture she was suffering bore the prickly truth that her dear Chloe was prepared to put anyone at risk, including her closest guardian, family and friends, in the pursuit of justice.

  But there was no bitterness; no bad taste in the captive’s mouth. Chloe was a true heroine. She’d betrayed no-one and cared for nothing but the ultimate truth. She’d been well trained and was executing her mission to perfection. That was the hope anyway; the ideal good-news-story that might emerge out of this hateful affair.

  Just maybe.

  The voice snapped out, killing her thoughts.

  ‘Where is this man, Sheila?’

  This time she couldn’t be bothered to shake her head or move any part of her body to gratify the piece of shit blocking her line of vision. Let him suffer more blank responses. She would tell him zilch.

  Baseball Cap stooped and poked his nose in her face. ‘I won’t ask you again.’

  Silence. Wonderful silence.

  She let it linger as long as she could bear.

  Ray-Bans had clearly had enough. ‘Leave her to me,’ he called to his sidekick as he rose from his throne and paced across the room before thrusting his red-wine face in hers.

  ‘It’s like this. You won’t tell us where Tanner is. Fine. But you will tell us where the girl is.’ His spindly finger jabbed at Chloe’s photo.

  Play the silence once more, she begged herself.

  ‘I will count to five,’ Ray-Bans announced in strangled tones. ‘One – two – three…’

  Her hand shot up like a rocket.

  Ray-Bans, pleased, said, ‘Say it.’

  No longer able to bear her muted part in this dreary performance, with one almighty intake of scorched breat
h she forced out words in the hope, not the certainty, they would be heard.

  ‘Go – fuck – your – boy – friend – and – then – go – fuck – your – self.’

  Baseball Cap looked on with admiration as his companion’s face turned from red wine to purple rage in the blink of an eye. His sunglasses had even come off. How dare this witch humiliate them?

  With a smooth motion the younger man grabbed her by the throat, lifting her chair over, and now standing astride her, his right foot firmly crushing her rib cage, he wedged the Taser between her thighs and pulled the trigger. Her lower half twisted and threshed helplessly as he gradually guided the stun gun upwards. Then he tilted it ninety degrees before shoving it up her, blood streaming in all directions like some macabre reconstruction of a baby being born.

  The baby cried, cried, cried some more, cried herself silly in her cradle of tangled wood and rope.

  At last, the crying stopped.

  This was no gift of life to the world; just the glorious, signed and sealed, gift of death.

  CHLOE: NEVER FORGET

  Carl Sant Murder Mysteries Book 2

  An off-duty detective gunned down. A woman tortured to death. A student missing, feared dead. And now… a former policeman in search of his past…

  Your name is Nigel Fleming.

  You are seventy years old. A fraction older. Age never lies.

  Once upon a time you were known by a different name.

  A name you no longer use. Or care to remember.

  A name you can’t shake off – lashed to an incident you can’t shake off either. An incident you’ve spent half your life coping with.

  You want to remember. You also want to forget.

  TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.

  You cannot get to sleep.

  All these people – dead and alive – have one thing in common. DI Carl Sant must find out what it is before his superiors lose their rag; and before the bodies start piling up.

  About the Author

  Dan Laughey is a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University where he teaches a course called ‘Youth, Crime and Culture’ among other things. He has written several books on the subject including Music and Youth Culture, based on his PhD in Sociology at Salford University. He also holds a BA in English from Manchester Metropolitan University and an MA in Communications Studies from the University of Leeds.

  Before entering academia he enjoyed a brief career in public relations, became a secondary school teacher, barman, waiter, trader, door-to-door salesman, car park attendant, film extra and convenience-store manager (not quite in that order).

  Dan was born in Otley and bred in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, a hop and a skip away from the Leeds setting of his Chloe novels. He now lives in the Leeds suburb of Guiseley and shares his time between England and Thailand, where his in-laws live. His wife and two sons keep him occupied when he’s not lecturing or writing, and all three are technologically savvier than him.

  Dan’s crime writing was purely academic to begin with. He’s written about media violence and tackled the age-old concern about television and video games influencing patterns of antisocial behaviour in society. After years of research and theoretical scrutiny, he still hasn’t cracked that particular nut!

  He’s also written about the role of CCTV and surveillance in today’s Big Brother world, the sometimes fraught relationship between rap and juvenile crime, football hooliganism, and the sociocultural legacy of Britain’s most notorious serial killer – the Yorkshire Ripper.

  All in all, his work has been translated into four languages: French, Hebrew, Korean and Turkish. He’s presented guest lectures at international conferences in Amsterdam, London, Dublin, Montreal and Bangkok, and has appeared on BBC Radio and ITV News in addition to providing expert commentary for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post.

  Despite all this intellectual stuff, Dan much prefers writing fiction. Making it up is far more fun than dissecting the real thing. As a child, he loved reading detective stories by Enid Blyton and Arthur Conan Doyle, and his crime fiction addiction was rekindled in early parenthood. He is particularly fond of hardboiled American pulp fiction (old and new), spy novels and psychological thrillers.

  Dan’s love of crime and mystery stories has found its way into his day-to-day teaching. He educates students on the history of drugs and gang crime, the emergence of post-war countercultures like the Beats and Hippies, the golden age of film noir, and media stereotypes revolving around Generations X, Y and Z – not to mention those delinquent Baby Boomers. Needless to say, great movies like Gun Crazy and Bonnie and Clyde get screened by Dr. Laughey on a regular basis.

  Dan’s hobbies include hunting for treasure at car boot sales, watching football and playing the occasional (bad) round of golf. He also enjoys running and gambling on the horses (no connection between the two) and can’t get enough of his wife’s Thai cuisine.

  He can be followed on Twitter @danlaughey