Behind Closed Doors (12 page)

‘And the rest of the text? That she was going to go for it?’

‘Means she was going to try to get off with him.’

‘Do you think she managed it?’

‘I don’t know, because I haven’t heard from her since,’ and suddenly breaking into sobs she buried her face in her hands. ‘It’s not my fault I don’t know where she is,’ she wailed. ‘I wish I did, but I don’t so stop picking on me.’

Deciding they probably had enough for now, Andee got to her feet. ‘I’m sure we’ll be wanting to talk to you again,’ she told Estelle as they reached the door. ‘In the meantime, if you think of anything else, or if you hear from Sophie I want you to call me right away.’

Taking the card she was being offered, Estelle said, ‘I will, I promise.’ Her eyes came pleadingly to Andee’s. ‘Do you think she’s all right, wherever she is?’

‘I certainly hope so,’ Andee replied, and after thanking Mrs Morris she followed Leo to the car.

‘So what did you think of all that?’ she asked, as she got into the passenger side.

‘Well, first up I’d say we need to talk to these two blokes.’

‘That’s a given. Find out if any of the uniforms have already interviewed them. If they have it’ll be interesting to know what they’ve said they were up to last Sunday night.’

‘Won’t it just. And whatever it was, I’ll put money on the fact that it won’t include associating with a fourteen-year-old girl. Where now? Back to the station?’

‘Via the campsite office. I want some details for this Tania, and the maintenance bloke. While you’re doing that I’ll take a wander over to the pool, see if I can have a little chat with Gary Perkins.’

However, when she got there it turned out Gary Perkins was on a day off, and a brief stop at his flat over Alfie’s Pie Shop told her he wasn’t at home either. Nor did his sister seem to know where he was, if she was to be believed, and Andee wasn’t really sure about that.

‘I hate being cynical,’ she commented to Leo as they drove back through the Cove, ‘but when you’re lied to more times in a day than the surf hits the shore, it’s hard not to be.’

‘Are you thinking of Suzi Perkins now, or Estelle Morris?’ he queried.

‘Both, but more of Estelle. Fourteen-year-olds are notorious for the lies they tell, and something’s not sitting right with me about her. I can’t tell you what it is yet, but we definitely need to keep an eye on her.’

After a while he said, ‘Do you reckon there’s a link between this Tania disappearing and now Sophie?’

‘We can’t rule it out.’

‘But you’re not convinced?’

‘Not yet, but what I do know is that we really need to step this investigation up, because the longer Sophie Monroe is missing the less chance we have of finding her.’

Gould was waiting as Andee and Leo walked into the CID suite, and it was evident from his expression that he wasn’t happy.

Before Andee could speak he gestured to his office and followed her in, closing the door so the rest of the team couldn’t hear. ‘I cut you a lot of slack, Andee,’ he began, ‘but you’re . . .’

‘Sir, I know, and I appreciate it . . .’

‘. . . going too far,’ he growled over her. ‘I’ve just had Jimmy Poynter on the phone demanding to know what the hell’s going on at his campsite, disrupting his punters . . .’

‘Sir, a girl’s gone missing . . .’

‘I’m aware of that, but uniforms are on it, and
you
should have been checking out those robberies, not spooking everyone at the caravan site into thinking this is a bigger deal than it is. She’s a runaway. We’ll find her . . .’

‘If you’d hear me out . . .’

‘What’s more,’ he said over her, ‘if you’d done as I asked, and focused on the robberies, you’d know by now that three Blu-ray players just upped and walked out of Hunt’s Electricals this afternoon, and there were two DCs in the place when it happened.’

Not quite sure what to say to that, Andee opted for a dynamic refocusing. ‘We have reason to believe that Sophie Monroe has been associating with men much older than herself,’ she declared, ‘and that she isn’t the only girl to have gone missing from that camp.’

Now she had his attention.

‘There’s another girl, Tania Karpenko,’ she continued, ‘who, as far as we know, no one’s seen or heard from in the past month. She’s eighteen, so she doesn’t have to give an account of her whereabouts, but we’re checking now to find out if any other girls have, quote vanished unquote, from Blue Ocean Park, or any of the other campsites. If they have . . .’ She let the sentence hang. He’d know how potentially serious the situation could be if it turned out Sophie’s wasn’t the only disappearance.

‘Did the two girls know each other?’ he asked. ‘Sophie and this Tania? They must have.’

‘According to Sophie’s bestie, Estelle, who we’ve just spoken to, they were good friends with Tania in spite of the difference in their ages. Take a look at this,’ and whisking out her phone she opened up the email she’d forwarded from Estelle.

Gould’s frown deepened as he watched it. ‘Where the hell would a girl her age learn to dance like that?’ he growled.

Andee’s eyebrows rose. ‘It’s called twerking,’ she explained. ‘Try Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna . . . In fact, look at most pop videos these days, they’re way more explicit than this.’

‘So what are you trying to say?’ he asked, handing her phone back.

‘The best friend’s denying it, but I reckon someone else was there when this video was shot, or maybe they sent it to someone, like Tania, who might have shown it to an interested party.’

‘By interested party, you mean some sort of pimp?’

‘It’s possible, still hypothetical of course, but the best friend showed us a text she received from Sophie last Sunday night. In it she’s saying she was with a man called Gary Perkins, who’s a lifeguard at the site’s pool. There’s also mention of the maintenance bloke, Tomasz Sikora, but we’re not sure yet whether she was actually with him. Apparently, apart from being a plumber, he’s also a bit of a wow in the cabaret room.’

Gould frowned.

‘He sings,’ she explained.

‘Where’s he from? The way you’re saying the name doesn’t sound English.’

‘According to the site’s records he’s from Poland, but we’ve yet to verify that. Tania Karpenko told Estelle and Sophie she was from the Ukraine, but her staff file has her down as Slovakian.’

‘Why would she lie?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ She took a breath. ‘Going back to Tomasz Sikora, apparently he’s been multitasking for the Poynters for the past three years.’

‘So you’ve spoken to him?’

‘Not yet. He wasn’t around when we were over there earlier, and apparently the uniforms missed him when they were going door to door.’

‘What about this Gary Perkins?’

‘No sign of him this afternoon either, but Dan Wilkes was supposed to be running a check on him,’ and opening the door she called out to ask if there was any news.

‘Right here,’ Dan Wilkes replied, getting to his feet. ‘You’re going to love this, but not a lot. Your bloke’s on the sex offenders’ register.’

Andee blinked in astonishment. A lifeguard at a holiday camp was on the sex offenders’ register! How the hell had that happened? She turned to Gould. ‘We need to bring him in right now,’ she declared.

Not arguing, Gould said, ‘Find this Polish bloke too.’

‘Andee, there you are,’ one of the admin assistants greeted her as Andee returned to her desk. ‘Gavin Monroe rang about ten minutes ago, asking to speak to you.’

Wondering why he hadn’t tried her mobile, Andee said, ‘Do you know if he’s heard from Sophie?’

‘All he said was he wanted to talk to you.’

Picking up the phone Andee pressed in Gavin’s number. ‘Send a couple of uniforms over to the camp to bring in Perkins,’ she instructed Leo, ‘he can’t be allowed to stay, no matter what. Mr Monroe? DS Lawrence speaking. You were trying to get hold of me?’

Sounding clogged, as though he’d been crying, Gavin said, ‘I was just . . . Heidi and me were wondering if you’d heard anything yet?’

Quickly pulling back from his despair, she replied, ‘Nothing that’s telling us where she is.’ Should she mention the older men? Perhaps not yet, and certainly not over the phone. ‘Has anything else occurred to you that you think might be helpful?’ she pressed.

‘Not really. I just wish there was something we could do. It’s terrible just sat here, waiting, fearing the worst, thinking of all the things I should have said or done.’

Having been in that very place, Andee was only too aware of how torturous the waiting could be. It still was. ‘You mustn’t give up hope,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure we’ll find her.’ How could she be sure when they’d never found Penny?

This was different.

How?

She didn’t know, it just was. It had to be.

‘Before you go, is it possible to have a word with Heidi?’

‘She’s popped out with the baby. Shall I ask her to ring when she gets in?’

‘If you don’t mind. Or maybe you can tell me. Does she do the hiring and firing at the camp?’

‘As far as I know she sits in on the interviews, but I think the final decision is usually Jackie Poynter’s.’

‘OK, thanks,’ and deciding not to distress him with anything about Gary Perkins being hired, apparently in spite of his conviction, she assured him she’d be in touch as soon as there was some news, and rang off.

After reading through her emails she brought the case notes for Sophie up on her screen to begin checking through everything that had been added in the past few hours. Scrolling down, she saw that Slavoj Bendik, also known as Shrek, had seen Sophie on the beach on Sunday night, but she’d run away when he’d tried to approach her.
Ended up getting chased on beach by Shrek
, the text had said. However, it had gone on to say,
With G now. My hero
. So presumably Shrek hadn’t caught her. Or maybe he’d been with G too.

Deciding to get everything more thoroughly checked out, she reached for her mobile as it rang and clicked on.

‘Hi, it’s me. Is this a bad time?’

She turned so her back was to the office. ‘I’m afraid it’s not good,’ she replied, wondering if the sound of Martin’s voice would always throw her into turmoil.
Only when it caught her off guard
. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine, I guess. Bit shocked, but maybe I shouldn’t be.’

‘I don’t think we’re ever prepared for the loss of a parent.’

‘No, I suppose not. You know he thought the world of you.’

‘The feeling was mutual.’

He took a breath. ‘The kids seem to be doing OK. They’re upset, obviously, but they’re being great with Mum. It’s good for her to have them here.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

‘No, probably not. She was glad you made it over last night.’

She knew he was going to ask to see her, and that she’d have to agree. Why was she feeling reluctant? Because of Graeme and the new beginning she’d finally started to carve for herself? Or because of how unsettled she was over everything right now?

‘We need to talk,’ he said.

Need
to talk? Of course, about his dad. He’d want to relive the memories, and as she shared so many of them . . . ‘We’ve got a missing girl,’ she told him. ‘Things are looking . . . They’re not straightforward.’

There was a pause before he said, ‘Are they ever in those situations?’

‘Not really. She’s fourteen.’

‘I see.’ He would be thinking of Penny now, and perhaps remembering that he was the first person she’d really spoken to about her missing sister when she’d started college. Oddly, it was part of what had brought them closer together, and had helped to form a bond between them that had lasted for over twenty years. He’d understood how tormented she was by never having any answers, and though they almost never spoke of it now, she knew he’d never stopped understanding.

‘I’ll call, soon,’ she promised.

He didn’t say anything, and a moment later the line went dead.

Feeling terrible for turning him down Andee toyed with ringing him back, and might have if she’d known what to say. Since she didn’t she picked up the phone again and called the officer who’d interviewed Shrek – aka Slavoj Bendik. It turned out the site warden had admitted chasing Sophie, not to harm her, he’d said, but to find out why she was crying. When she’d shouted at him and run off he’d decided to let her go and had gone on to play poker with friends, where he’d spent the rest of the evening. The friends had confirmed this.

A while later, with the case now categorised as high risk, and the press already running the story thanks to Perkins’s involvement, she said to Leo, ‘If we don’t have it already we need the camp’s CCTV from last Sunday, and any information we can find on forced prostitution and trafficking in the area.’

Leo cocked her a look.

‘We can’t ignore it,’ she told him. ‘You’ve seen the way she danced, we know there are Eastern European girls coming and going from the camp and she was friends with Tania. We need to know if she’s got caught up in something like it. Does anyone have anything to share on prostitution and trafficking?’ she called to the office at large.

‘We had a case a year or so back,’ Karen, one of the other DSs, told her. ‘The girls were mostly Somalian, being run by an Iranian in a house on the Temple Fields estate. Immigration ended up taking it over.’

‘Anything since?’

‘Not that I’ve heard, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.’

‘I’ll get on to it,’ Dan Wilkes offered.

‘Any reply from the maintenance guy’s mobile yet?’ Andee asked Leo.

He tried again and shook his head.

‘OK, we’ve got an address so let’s go over there,’ she decided, and getting to her feet she was about to start for the door when Gould came out of his office.

‘I just heard Dougie Stone died yesterday,’ he stated.

She nodded. Gould and Dougie had been golfing partners. ‘Sorry, I should have said something.’

‘It’s all right. You know, if you want to take some time off . . .’

Suspecting it might be a ruse to get her off this case, she said, ‘Thanks, but it won’t be necessary. The children are with their father.’

He nodded, and turned back to his desk. ‘Let me know if you change your mind,’ he called after her as she left.