Lost Girls (22 page)

Kim could see she was never going to get to Emily alone so she had to take what she could get.

She nodded her agreement.

‘The money was to be dropped on Wednesday at twelve into a grit bin on Wordsley High Street.' She frowned. ‘But you should know that. You still have my old phone.'

Damn it, Kim realised too late that she had slipped up. If they were investigating the old case like she'd said, she would have already checked the evidence – which was still in storage as the case had never been solved.

‘I was just checking that was the last communication you had,' Kim said, quickly.

Mrs Trueman nodded her confirmation.

The second she left this house she'd be instructing Dawson to pick up the phone.

Kim took out a card and placed it on the hallway table. ‘If you think of anything else that might help please give me a call.'

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell her that Jenny Cotton was desperate to bury her daughter. But she didn't.

Bryant headed to the car but Kim stepped back.

‘Look, I understand you want to protect your child but this is too much. You're stifling her. She needs to be around other people. She needs to run and laugh with kids her own age. She needs to build positive memories before she can let go of the bad.'

The woman's face was set. ‘Thank you but I think I know what's best for my daughter.'

Kim shook her head. ‘No, this is what's best for you. She'll develop into a nervous, anxious kid who's frightened of everyone she meets.'

‘Inspector, I'm keeping my child alive.'

Kim looked around at the complete absence of joy.

‘Yeah, but it's not much of a life, is it?'

The heavy oak door started to close in her face, but not before Kim saw a shadow pass by the top of the stairs.

E
mily closed
her bedroom door quietly and sat on the bed.

She should be opening her geography book next but she couldn't face it.

Although she was schooled at home her mother was a stickler for keeping proper school hours. She was at her desk by nine o'clock with four equal lessons throughout the day.

What she missed about school was the racket: the chatter, the shouting and squealing.

Out here in their new house there was nothing.

The wall and the hedge deadened the traffic noise from the road. She never heard sounds from their neighbours whose houses were a ten-minute trek from her own. She had no clue if there were children her age anywhere close by.

Even the house was silent. On weekdays her mother moved around downstairs cleaning and tidying but there was never anything in the background. No radio, no television. It was like her mother was constantly listening to the sounds of the house, waiting for anything out of place.

Only with the deafening sound of tyres on gravel did the house come alive. When her father returned from work her mother's anxiety was released and for a few hours each evening they would pretend to be normal.

Emily missed a lot of things from her old life, but mainly she missed her friend.

She reached beneath the bed and took out the half-filled scrapbook. The first page was a printed-out picture of Emily and Suzie beaming above a heading of 'Our Travels'.

The scrapbook held page upon page of the two of them on holidays, in go-karts, on fair rides, in the sea and their last one at a Justin Bieber concert.

She looked at the blank page opposite, still not able to believe there would be no more. That the memories she had were all she was ever going to get.

She stared at their last picture, hard. Suzie had been so proud of her 'belieber' T- shirt. All the way home from the NEC arena in Birmingham they had laughed, swooned and argued about who was going to marry their idol. They eventually decided they would share him; much to the entertainment of their mothers in the front seats.

Three days later they'd been snatched.

Emily looked into the eyes of her friend; so full of fun and mischief. So different to when they'd been pulled from each other that last time. Suzie's face began to blur before her as Emily's finger touched the face that still lived in her dreams.

She constantly remembered the ordeal, as though it had happened last week. During the day she suffered the guilt of having lived when Suzie had died. At night the fear returned in her dreams. Especially of that last day.

She remembered the man's arms around her stomach as he pulled her away from her friend. She remembered the feel of his bony chest against the back of her head as he'd pulled her across the room. She remembered the sensation of trying to grip Suzie's cold hand. She had thought that if they both held on tightly nothing could force them apart. But she'd been wrong.

A punch to the side of Suzie's head had sent her tumbling to the ground and Emily had been unable to hang on. Within a second she had felt herself being grabbed around the waist and lifted. She had screamed at Suzie to wake up but she'd remained where she was on the ground. And she'd never seen her friend again.

The vision hit her in the stomach anew and the tears began to fall.

She wiped a droplet from the face of her friend and clutched the book to her midriff as the sobs ripped through her body.

‘Oh, Suzie, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'

‘
W
hat's bugging you
, Guv?' Bryant asked as they got back into the car after leaving the Truemans' house.

‘Piss off,' Kim said, aggravated he knew her that well.

‘You look like a kid on Christmas morning who got a stocking full of coal. Actually, that probably wasn't …'

His words trailed away as he started the car.

‘It's all about logic,' she said. ‘My brain is happy to dismiss something once it understands the logic and yet there's something that won't go away.'

‘Like what?' he asked.

‘Maybe I should have listened,' she said, staring out of the window.

‘Well, that'd be a first, but you're gonna have to narrow it down.'

‘Eloise.'

He switched the engine off. ‘You've got to be kidding me. You're considering changing a lifetime habit for a crackpot, psychic, medium … whatever she is?'

Kim realised how ridiculous it sounded but Stacey's findings about the woman were not what she'd been expecting. She'd anticipated the woman would be a self-serving, manipulative charlatan preying on the vulnerabilities of others. At the very least a book or two.

‘She told me that he wasn't finished with the others and last night Jenny Cotton got a message asking if she wants to play again.'

‘Coincidence,' he said, dismissively. ‘Did she offer anything else?'

‘Yeah, the number 278. She repeated it and told me to remember it.'

‘Anything else?'

Kim shook her head. She would not share the third observation about Mikey.

She remembered Eloise's words as Helen had dragged her away. ‘She did say something about someone close to the …'

‘I think you're giving it too much thought. She's some kind of crook and we're just waiting for the punchline.'

‘But what did she have to gain?'

Bryant shrugged. ‘Involvement on a high profile case would have done ticket sales the world of good. Maybe an occasional appearance on
This Morning
. Who knows?'

‘But that's the problem. Why hasn't she gone to the papers or the radio trying to make something out of it? Why is there no money-making scheme here at all? Until I understand it I can't forget it.'

He glanced sideways. ‘That look ain't budging.' He sighed. ‘You can't seriously believe she has anything useful to offer us to find Charlie and Amy? And if she did say anything, can you honestly tell me you'd believe her, let alone act on it?'

Kim counted about three questions there and the answer was no to every one of them. And yet Eloise had said that the other game wasn't over and the things she'd said about Mikey…

Damn it, no one could have known about that.

D
awson checked
the address on the paper in his hand. Yep, it definitely said 42 Rosemary Gardens. And that was the address he was looking at right now. The house lay in a cul-de-sac that branched off the Amblecote Road in Brierley Hill. The differences between this and the properties on Hollytree were not synonymous with the one mile that separated them. Relatively speaking, this house was on another planet.

Dawson wondered if Shona was having a bit of a laugh at his expense. Sending him on a wild goose chase. Girls who lived in Rosemary Gardens didn't voluntarily enter the Hollytree estate and if they did they needed to be locked in their rooms.

After his conversation with Dewain's family, this was his logical next step. He hoped to leave here with a lead on who had informed Lyron that Dewain was still alive. Someone had leaked it to the gang leader and the boss was entrusting him with the task of finding out who.

He'd worked his own cases before but this was not like an armed robbery of a petrol station or a GBH or even a domestic assault. This was a case that had affected his boss deeply. He'd heard that she had even pinned Tracy Frost to the wall in a gym somewhere. He had no idea if that was true and he knew he'd never hear it from her. But it wouldn't have surprised him. There was something in that kid that had resonated with her. He had no idea what it was.

But when they had stood beside Dewain's bedside, observing the artificially induced movement of his chest, he had seen her right hand touch lightly on the boy's wrist as it lay motionless above the crisp white sheet.

This was a case she would have worked herself if she hadn't been trying to save the lives of Amy and Charlie. And she had passed it to him. He could not let her down. He would not let her down.

He approached a spacious front porch that displayed a selection of green, leafy plants in jardinières. The doorbell sing-songed in his ears.

The front door opened to reveal a girl in her late teens. Her legs were clad in Fair-Isle leggings covered by a slip of a black skirt. A plain pink T-shirt dropped off her left shoulder. The aroma of Reckless by Roja Parfums reached out towards him. He recognised it immediately as the fragrance he had bought his fiancée for her birthday. She had joked that he only ever bought her expensive gifts when he'd done something wrong. And that perfume had been
expensive
. Too bloody expensive for a teenager, he mused.

‘Lauren Cain?' he asked, holding up his badge.

She didn't look away from his face to acknowledge the identification before opening the door, just stepped back and stood in the doorway.

‘Come in,' she said, with a smile, and a tilt of the head.

Dawson stepped in, taking care not to brush against her, and stood just inside the hallway as she closed the door behind him. He had the sudden, inexplicable desire to open the door back up.

‘Go through,' she said, pointing to her right, exhibiting impeccable manners.

He entered a lounge that stretched the entire length of the house. A spacious garden preceded a view down into the basin of Lye and across to the Clent Hills.

‘Sit down, Officer,' she said, tipping her head.

As he did she looked him up and down and made no secret of it.

He quickly assessed her. A square nose kept her face the wrong side of pretty but Lauren was a girl who made the most of what she had. Her hair was dyed an attractive blonde and her make-up had been perfected. More obvious was the sex appeal that hit him before her perfume.

Despite the abundance of chairs she sat right next to him on the sofa. Her knee rested against his. He moved it away.

‘I need to talk to you about Dewain.'

Her eyebrows lowered briefly in a calculated, questioning look.

Irritation surged through him. ‘Dewain Wright. Your ex-boyfriend. The one that died last week.'

If she heard the edge to his voice she ignored it.

She squeezed his upper arm as though he was a toy she didn't quite know how to work.

‘Nice muscles,' she said, tipping her head to the side.

‘Thank you,' he said, moving his arm away and shuffling as far as he could to the left. ‘Can you tell me what you remember about the day Dewain died?'

He'd deliberately asked an open question to see if she admitted to receiving the text message from Shona.

She sat back against the sofa and crossed one leg over the other. Her ankle brushed his shin.

Dawson stood and moved towards the fireplace. This girl was not getting the hint.

‘I don't really remember it all that well. Sorry. Are you married?'

‘That's not really your business,' he replied, tersely. He needed to ask his questions and leave this teenager to her little games. ‘How did you find out about the attack?' he pushed.

She shrugged. ‘I honestly don't recall.'

Dawson could see from her expression that she was no longer trying.

‘Lauren, I need you to—'

She stood. ‘I don't have a boyfriend, you know.'

‘Did you know he was in a gang?' he asked, ignoring the suggestion in her voice.

She rolled her eyes as she took a step towards him. ‘Duh, of course.'

Dawson took a step back. ‘Was that the attraction?' he asked, openly.

She shrugged. ‘I don't really …'

‘Remember,' he finished for her.

Her expression didn't change. She regarded him coyly and tipped her head as though they were playing kiss chase in the playground.

‘Were you told he'd died after the knife attack?'

‘I think so.' She nodded. ‘Yeah, definitely told he was dead.'

Thank goodness she remembered something.

‘And you got a text message from Shona?'

‘Yeah, I got something from her. An hour or two later, I think.' She took another step forward, twirling her hair. ‘My parents won't be home for hours.'

It wasn't so long ago Dawson had been a teenager full of raging hormones, but he couldn't remember the girls acting like this. Back then he would have loved it but right now it just turned him off.

This flirty, over-sexed girl was nothing more to him than a witness. A person of interest in a crime he needed to solve.

‘Lauren, I have a fiancée and a child and what I need from you are answers.'

‘Doesn't bother me,' she shrugged. Dawson realised too late that he had allowed the conversation to divert from the death of Dewain but there was a determination in this girl's eyes that was beginning to unnerve him.

‘Did the text message tell you Dewain was still alive?'

She shrugged. ‘I think so. I'm on the pill,' she blurted out, leaning towards him.

Okay, enough was enough. The potential for this situation to become hazardous to his career progression was sounding warning bells in his head.

He stepped past her and headed towards the front door.

She followed closely behind. ‘I can tell my parents you did, you know,' she hissed. Clearly, Lauren had finally got the message. Her sudden mood change was more suited to a toddler refused sweets.

The precariousness of the situation was not lost on him. He was alone in a house with a kid who had all but pinned him to the floor and he had done everything by the book. At nineteen years of age he didn't need parental consent to question her but what he did need was a witness. For his own safety.

Dawson waited until he was outside the door before he turned and asked the only question that mattered.

‘Tell me, Lauren, did you tell anyone at all that Dewain was still alive?'

She smiled at him coyly and he could recite the words before they even left her mouth.

She couldn't bloody remember.