‘Yes, guv.’ Wyre tucked a loose strand of black hair behind her ear and sat poised with her notebook. Ever efficient Wyre, the most attentive of her team.
‘That list of Facebook friends in common between Dale and Susan, try to find out if any of them live on Beech Street. I appreciate that that won’t be an easy task as people use maiden names, married names and even fake names but give it your best and see what we come back with.’
‘On it, guv.’ She swivelled back to her screen and took a bite from her apple. Everyone else had almost finished the cake off but Wyre, Gina knew, only ate cake on rare occasions. Gina gazed at her, feeling a slight pang of admiration wash over her. She wished she could be fitter, healthier and more in control of her emotions, but that wasn’t how she was built. Her emotions were either her weakness or her superpower. She let out a little laugh, she definitely wasn’t sporting any superpowers. She grabbed one of the last slices of sponge that had been wrapped in a serviette.
‘I’m going to dry off a little, then I think I owe Mary another visit. I still don’t feel I know the family and I want to get a feel for the dynamics. I want to find out what they’re not telling me. Get a family liaison officer on standby. They might garner more than I can.’
O’Connor nodded as he turned his electric heater on.
‘Keep trying Dale Blair too, organise for uniform to keep popping by. He’ll have to surface at some point.’
O’Connor put his thumb up as he turned away and opened his email.
Dale and Susan had been shouting in his kitchen. What about? Susan hadn’t been seen since. She needed more on Dale. They needed him to call or they needed to be able to search his house but she knew all she had was speculation and that wasn’t enough for a warrant. They could have been jokingly arguing about her rates or it could have even been his television making all the noise.
Don Fellow’s wife heard someone leave Dale’s house. She assumed it was Susan. No one actually saw Susan leave Dale’s house. And where was he? ‘Smith, will you also organise a door to door on Dale Blair’s street. I need to know if anyone saw Susan Wheeler leave. We are struggling to get an accurate time of her arrival too. Any information will help but we need to get out and talk to the neighbours.’
‘I’ll get Kapoor onto it. I know they’re all stretched but I’m sure a couple of officers could get over there.’ He grabbed his phone.
She took a bite out of the cake. Cake for breakfast and cake for lunch – not a good food day. If Susan had needed a bit of space or had some sort of breakdown, Gina was sure that someone would have heard something. The area had been well checked, especially in some of the known spots where… Gina didn’t want to think about those areas. The bridges mostly, the trees in the woods, the places where people go when they feel they can no longer face life. Where people go in their darkest day, hour, minute, second. Coughing, Gina wrapped up the rest of the cake as she shifted the crumbs in her throat.
Gina looked down and tried to will away the chill that was running down her spine. Maybe Susan was just better at hiding than the others, like an animal, crawling under a rock to die. No – she had to be alive. She had no reason to believe anything bad had happened to Susan – not yet. Her hand gripped the cake and it oozed out of the tissue. She wouldn’t be finishing it anyway.
Twenty
Phoebe ran down the cut through at the back of the school field still fed up with the text her dad had sent.
Running late at work, be fifteen minutes max. Wait for me. Dad. Xxx.
Her dad was always running late and the past couple of days he was constantly popping out and telling her to look after her sister. Her mum would never leave them alone. She wasn’t to tell her mum though, her dad had made her promise. Important things, that’s what he’d called them, like she and Jasmine weren’t important enough.
She wished her mum was back. ‘She’s just having a little break. She’ll be back soon,’ they kept saying but Phoebe didn’t believe them – she heard her dad talking on the phone to her Aunty Clare on a few occasions about something that they must keep a secret. She’d tried to listen in to their conversations but he’d slammed the door on her and scurried off into his bedroom. They all treat her like she’s five, not eleven. She knew what was going on. Her mum had abandoned them. She had known something was wrong at home when she sat in her bedroom every night, listening to her mum sobbing.
She checked her phone again. Text after text that she’d sent to her mum had been ignored.
She wished Jasmine was with her so that they could talk. Since her mum and dad had split, they’d become closer. They’d fought mostly up until that point but Jasmine had started sleeping in her bed when she’d started getting the nightmares. They weren’t like her mum’s nightmares where she’d scream the house down and thrash the bedclothes everywhere, they were more like bad dreams. It didn’t matter that Jasmine always wore her clothes or used her favourite hair conditioner, not any more. Her poor little sister really thought their mother was never coming back.
Her father wasn’t worried though and Phoebe chose not to worry either. She understood that sometimes, adults were just complicated. Complicated was her mother’s favourite word.
Her phone lit up and she answered, ‘Jasmine.’
‘Got here safe. Tell Dad that Bryony’s mum will drop me off around eight.’
A pang of jealousy hit her as Jasmine ended the call. Phoebe’s friends never invited her over any more. In fact, she wondered if they were still friends as they’d taken to ignoring her at lunchtime. They’d huddle on another table, glancing her way and giggling. She’d had it with trying to get in with the popular kids. Tomorrow, she’d head back to the ‘losers table’ with the other geeks, where she belonged.
She pulled a strand of hair and began sucking it as she read the graffiti on the old battered seesaw. It was the ‘f’ word, the one she’d never be allowed to say. She said it once when she tried to get in with the cool kids but failed to look cool in the same way they do. She simply looked awkward as she checked to see if any teachers were listening. That was the day they’d planted chewing gum in her curly hair. She didn’t tell her mum even though she asked why a chunk of her hair was missing after she had to cut it out.
She took in the ‘c’ word written in luminous pink. Her mother hated that word with a passion. Phoebe had heard her father call her that when they’d argued. She’d thrown a cup at him and he’d never used that word since. Her smile turned into a frown as she remembered the last time her father had a swearing fit at her mother, back in the spring, around the Whitsun holidays. Her mother had been dragged along the hallway covered in blood, but not her blood. Her father had slammed the kitchen door and she’d held her hands over Jasmine’s ears to block out the crying and shouting coming from the kitchen. Most kids were upset when their parents had split up, but not Phoebe, she was glad her father had gone. For once they didn’t have to tread on eggshells. She wiped a tear away. She wanted her mum to come home, she needed her.
She pulled a little make-up mirror from her bag and stared at her frizzy hair. Maybe the girls at school would like her more if she were prettier, or walked like them, like a model. She blew her nose then pranced up and down the park like a catwalk model would, throwing her head high as she posed for her adoring fans, before swiftly turning back around, hands on hips. She glanced around, suddenly feeling stupid and glad no one had seen her.
Ambling over to the swings, she lay back and stared into the darkening sky, hoping that the next ten minutes would hurry up and pass. She wished Nanny Mary was looking after her and Jasmine. She had taken Rory in, so why not them?
She almost slipped off the swing as she heard a crunch in the bushes coming from behind. Heart racing, she feared she might lose her breath completely. Letting go of the swing, she snatched her bag. Clutching it to her chest, she took a step back, not taking her eyes off the spot where the crunch had come from.
‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing,’ she whispered under her breath, then it happened again. Almost tripping, she darted back to the cut through, onto the school field, past the school entrance, finally reaching the car park. Doubling over and gasping for breath, she stared up and down the road, glancing behind her then back at the road so fast she almost lost her balance and toppled over. ‘Hurry up, Dad,’ she whispered as she shivered. The air was cooling and short puffs of white vapour clouded the air in front of her before dissolving. In a matter of moments dusk had turned to night. Darkness had fallen and it was swallowing her up. A tear trickled down her cheek. She just wanted her dad to hurry up. She glanced back and all she could think about was the person in the bushes. She knew someone had been watching her. Her heart pounded as the car approached, its lights almost blinding her. She should run, but she couldn’t. The man in the bush had come for her.
Twenty-One
