Anything for Her (12 page)

Jessica takes in her reaction, trying to tread delicately.

‘A phone was found, too. We believe it may have belonged to your daughter.’

‘Do you have it?’ Louise asks with a shaking voice.

Dean reaches for the bag by her feet.

Louise waits as the anticipation forces bile to climb her throat. Her entire body begins to shake.

Jessica places a phone encased in a clear bag on the table.

Louise instantly bursts into tears.

Inside the clear bag is Brooke’s phone.

She takes the phone in her hand, feeling it through the bag. She turns it over to find a splatter of blood across the back of the purple case. She drops it in horror, and begins to whine.

‘No!’ she exclaims. ‘This… this can’t be happening!’

Her voice doesn’t sound like her own.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jessica says.

‘Why her? Why us? Why this family?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

‘Girls go missing all the time. It doesn’t mean it’s the parents’ fault.’

‘You’re right. I just meant, maybe you know something that may help us find who did this. Maybe there is a motive to take Brooke specifically, instead of this being a random, spontaneous selection. I don’t like to think of a missing person as an isolated incident, but an indicator of prior events.’

‘So she’s dead?’

‘We don’t know that. We are treating your daughter as a missing person.’

‘How long until you treat her as a missing body?’

‘Mrs Leighton…’

‘How long? How long until you presume my daughter is dead out there somewhere?’ She throws her hand out, pointing at the large window with views of the garden and the rolling hills behind it. ‘Lying in a ditch or chopped up into tiny pieces and buried with the worms?’

Her sentence trails off into whimpers.

Jessica hesitates. She looks into Louise’s distraught eyes, as if longing to look away.

‘About forty-eight hours.’

Louise buries her face in her hands as her whole frame rocks with her sobs.

‘I think it’s important that we begin working on the investigation as soon as possible,’ Jessica says. ‘I’m going to return to London and assemble a team to work on this case. My partner and I will interview your husband and your son. We will return here and officers from the Gloucestershire Constabulary will begin making enquires in the area. Searches of both this house and your house in London will need to be conducted to search for any clues that might help us find her, and to get to know her through her home and personal belongings. In the meantime, we will send off the blood for analysis. We’ll need to know your daughter’s blood type, and take a DNA sample from you to check for a match. This evening, my team and I will hold a multi-agency meeting to assess the situation and plan how to make this investigation run as smoothly as possible – and with as much help as we can get from other agencies – in order to find Brooke.’

Louise nods furiously, tears streaming down her cheeks and falling onto her blouse.

‘Would you like us to call anyone? A relative? A sibling? Your husband? You’ll want to have support through this.’

‘My sister is the one sleeping with my husband, so I don’t fancy calling either of them.’

She wipes her cheeks and exhales deeply. Despite feeling so alone, she is terrified to let anybody in.

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘We don’t talk.’

‘Maybe now might be a good time to talk to them?’

‘I’m fine on my own, Detective Inspector Dean,’ she says sternly.

‘Very well. You will have a family liaison officer assigned to you to help you through–’

‘I don’t need anybody’s help. I’m fine on my own.’

‘Okay. I will need to take recent photos of Brooke with me.’

‘Why?’

‘So we can enquire after her.’

‘How?’

‘The Gloucestershire Constabulary will be going to every house in the village. The media is also extremely helpful in—’

‘I don’t want cameras outside my house. I don’t want to be interviewed. I don’t want any of that.’

‘Mrs Leighton, with help from the media we could find your daughter much faster. Just have a think about it. My team and I will be creating a media strategy for you to consider. I must add that, even without your consent or cooperation, the media may be used to help find Brooke. The most important thing here is to find your daughter, and the media’s input could really increase the chances of that.’

Louise looks out to the garden with a stern
countenance. The tears pouring down her cheeks glisten in the sunlight.

Jessica picks up the bag containing the phone and stands up.

‘I’d best set off,’ she says. ‘Will you let your husband know that my colleague and I will be coming to interview him and your son?’

‘Yes,’ Louise replies, her eyes never straying from the window, imagining her daughter dead out there somewhere, buried beneath the earth of the hills.

‘In the meantime, please consider letting people support you. This is going to be really tough.’

Louise doesn’t reply, but instead walks to the front door and opens it. She hands Jessica her coat from the hook on the wall.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Jessica says, pulling on her coat.

DI Dean leaves the house and walks down the garden path towards her car, just as snow begins to fall.

Louise closes the door, sinks down to the floor and howls.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Michael sits in the kitchen alone, his mobile phone resting on the breakfast bar before him.

It is the first time in three days that he has heard his wife’s voice. He is grateful that she spoke to him, but not for the reason why.

Brooke is missing.

He sits drinking coffee and staring out into the courtyard, while an endless reel of fears rolls over in his mind.

A year ago, their life had been perfect – happy marriage, happy children, and wealth. Everything seemed to be running smoothly.

Just twelve months later, the entire family has fallen apart. He and Louise have separated; Brooke is missing; they have lost every penny they own – and he may face prison. All because of a single night: the night when all of their problems began.

Dominic enters the kitchen with wild hair and sleepy eyes. He struggles up onto the stool and sits at the breakfast bar beside his father. He smells of sleep and fabric softener.

‘Hey,’ Michael says.

‘Hey.’

‘Good sleep?’

‘It was okay. You?’

‘Fine,’ he lies, not having slept a wink.

Michael’s phone vibrates against the granite counter. His lawyer is calling.

He turns it over, screen down, and waits patiently until it falls silent again.

‘Who was that?’ Dominic asks.

‘Work stuff. It’s too early for all that. Do you want some breakfast?’

Dominic nods.

‘Cereal?’

Dominic nods again.

‘Okay, I’ll have some with you.’

The two men of the house chew the hoops and slurp the milk, not speaking or looking at each other, dominated by their own bleak thoughts. Dominic doesn’t know the details of why the family is falling apart. It almost makes it worse.

‘Where’s Brooke?’ he asks. ‘She’s not in her room.’

I can’t tell him. Not yet
.

‘Staying with a friend.’

‘Brooke doesn’t have any friends.’

‘It’s a boyfriend. New guy. From college.’

‘She was here when I went to bed.’

‘Yeah, they went to a late movie.’

‘You don’t have to lie to me, Dad.’

Michael looks at Dominic, who is peering up at him with those large, endearing eyes. Michael sees the
pain within them: he is pining for his mother, grieving for the life he used to know and dumbfounded by his family’s disarray. And yet, despite knowing that his son deserves the truth, Michael fears it will be too painful for him to bear.

‘She’s staying with your Mum. I didn’t want you to feel upset that you weren’t either.’

‘S’okay. They stick together; I know that.’

He slips a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. A stream of milk dribbles from between his lips and swims down his chin. Michael wipes it away with his thumb.

‘Us guys will stick together then, right?’ Michael says.

‘Yeah,’ he agrees, a faint, closed smile creeping at the corners of his lips.

They fall into a comfortable silence, fishing for the last few hoops that are bobbing around on the surface of the milk in their bowls.

Michael’s phone vibrates again. A text. It’s his lawyer.

Michael, pick up the phone. It’s serious. Call me
.

He ignores it.

‘I don’t want to go to work today.’

‘I don’t want to go to school.’

‘Fancy going swimming or something?’

‘Today?’ Dominic asks, excited.

‘Yeah, screw school. Screw work. We’ll have a
father/son day.’

‘Really? But it’s the last day of term before Christmas.’

‘Pointless then,’ Michael replies. ‘Go brush your teeth and get dressed. I’ll grab the trunks and towels.’

Dominic runs off enthusiastically, bounding down the hall, happy for the first time in three days. He runs with the beautiful, childish innocence that we all lose to puberty and adulthood: no worries, no cares, no insecurities – just fun. He runs as though his life isn’t falling apart.

Michael envies him.

***

Michael and Dominic leave the townhouse with their swimming bags on their backs and their winter coats zipped up to their necks.

‘Can we go on the water slides?’ Dom asks. ‘There’s a green one and a blue one.’

‘Of course. Which one is your favourite?’

‘The green one. I can go down with Mum on that one. On the blue one I have to go down alone.’

‘I’ll go on the green one with you,’ Michael replies.

He smiles. ‘Okay.’

They walk down the steps and halt in front of the car.

Michael’s SUV has been attacked. One word has
been repeatedly scratched into the paintwork – one word a ten-year-old boy shouldn’t know exists. On the windscreen, a message has been left, written in red lipstick:

Love, your pregnant whore

‘Dad, what does cunt mean?’ he asks, reading the word several times as he looks over the vandalised car.

‘Dominic,
never
say that word.’

Dominic hesitates before asking another question.

‘Who did it, Dad? Who’s whore?’

Your aunt
.

‘Probably some kids.’

They stand in silence, looking at the destroyed car. Michael is seething.

‘We’ll get the tube,’ he decides, looking down at his son with a contrived smile. ‘We’ll still have our father/son day.’

Dominic smiles back, although clearly confused about the car and his father’s reaction.

Michael reaches over to the windscreen and spits on the glass. He rubs at the words with the sleeve of his coat, smearing the red lipstick into a vibrant mess. He has ruined his coat but he doesn’t care. It won’t be his for long, anyway.

He returns to his son’s side and takes his hand. They walk towards the tube station in silence, both thinking of the car and the
whore
.

Chapter Twenty-nine

‘So what do you think she’s hiding?’ DI Chris Jones asks.

‘I don’t know, but I’m determined to find out,’ DI Jessica Dean replies, as she drives them towards the Leightons’ townhouse.

‘How long has the girl been missing now?’

‘Around thirteen hours.’

‘What does your gut tell you?’

‘That she hasn’t run off for a Happy Ever After.’

‘Do you think she’s…?’

‘I don’t know. But something definitely isn’t right. Whatever the mother is hiding, it has something to do with her daughter’s disappearance. I’m sure of it.’

Jessica hasn’t slept a wink. When she left the country house, she immediately returned to her room in a local bed and breakfast and began writing up extensive reports on both the vandalised car and the disappearance of Brooke Leighton. She put off calling Chris until five a.m. Having startled him awake, she told him to run checks on the family – including the missing girl – and any crimes that had taken place in the village, before she returned to London. She told him to pack a bag: he was coming to the country.

By the time the sun had risen, Jessica had officially
assessed Brooke’s risk and created a lifestyle profile for the investigation team that was not yet in place. She wrote up her investigation paths, and the immediate and long-term plans for the investigation, in order to cater for realistic staffing and the level of resources needed. Finally, she set down the reasons why she thought the case should be dealt with by the Metropolitan Police, and not the Gloucestershire Constabulary, despite the crime being in their jurisdiction.

By seven a.m., she had contacted her superintendent to request that the Metropolitan Police take over the responsibility of finding the missing girl. She had woken the owners of the bed and breakfast so that she could use the fax machine in their office to send over her reports. By midday, the takeover of the case had been authorised.

‘What did you get on the family?’ she asks.

‘Louise Leighton is a therapist, an expensive one. She works from her home address in London. Michael Leighton is the CEO of Leighton Property Development Ltd. He’s run into some trouble regarding tax evasion, insider trading and theft from the employee’s pension plan. The Crown Prosecution Service and HM Revenue and Customs are really going for him. The fines and backlog of tax he has to pay are expected to be extortionate. This family will lose every penny they have. His lawyers are
desperately trying to settle the matter out of court, but it’s not sticking. The investigation is really heating up. The media will go crazy over this.’

‘Serves him right,’ she replies. ‘He’s playing with fire – now he’s going to get burned.’

Chris looks behind him.

‘What’s with the box of birds?’ he asks, his eyes on the clear container resting on the back seat.

‘Gifts from Mrs Leighton’s stalker.’

‘Poor things.’

‘You’re a delicate little soul, aren’t you, Jones?’ Jessica says through a satisfied smirk.