Dead End (30 page)

54

NAME

T
he mood at the emergency briefing was tense. Not only were they no closer to discovering who was responsible for Abigail Kirby's death but now her daughter had been reported missing.

‘We need to question both her father and her aunt,’ Kathryn Gordon said. ‘So far we have just the brother's account and he's only twelve. Is he still here?’

‘DC Everton has taken him home, ma'am.’

‘Good.’

Geraldine went to see Matthew Kirby and his sister, accompanied by a SOCO who had attended a basic computer interrogation course, as both Matthew and Ben had mentioned that Lucy spent hours on her computer.

Matthew Kirby's sister opened the door. Her eyes roamed past them and her face fell. ‘You haven't found her then?’ She sounded irritated rather than worried.

‘We'd like to ask you a few questions about Lucy,’ Geraldine replied.

‘There's no point asking me. I'm lucky if my niece gives me the time of day. It's her age,’ she added defensively.

‘Is Mr Kirby here?’

‘No.’ The answer came too quickly.

‘We'd like to take a look at Lucy's room. It might help us to find her.’

‘She'll turn up when she feels like it, that one,’ Evie replied but she stood aside so Geraldine could enter, followed by the SOCO.

Ben appeared on the landing as they went upstairs, looking pale and drawn and older than his twelve years. His puffy eyes searched Geraldine's face anxiously.

‘Is Lucy here?’

‘Not yet. Can you think of anything else that might help us find her?’

‘Only what I already told you.’

‘And you can't remember who the friend was that she was going to stay with?’

‘She never said any name.’ He looked so earnest and concerned that Geraldine was sure he was telling the truth. ‘You will find her, won't you?’

‘Poor kid,’ the SOCO muttered under his breath.

‘Of course we'll do everything we can to find her quickly. We're going to take a look in Lucy's room. Do you know if she kept a diary?’

‘Check her computer. She's always on there. And –’ He broke off.

‘Yes?’

‘She told me –’Ben hesitated then spoke in a rush, ‘she thinks our dad killed our mother.’

Evie was listening from half way up the stairs. ‘Ben!’ she burst out.

‘It's only what Lucy said.’

‘You don't believe such wicked lies.’

‘No. Of course I don't. It's just what Lucy told me. I don't believe it. I don't.’

Evie pushed past the two detectives and put her arm round the sobbing boy. ‘Come on downstairs with me, Ben. You haven't eaten yet. I'll make us some supper and I expect there's something nice on the telly. Let's leave the police to do their job. The quicker they get on with it the sooner they'll find Lucy and bring her home, safe and sound. And I'm going to call your father. He should be here.’

Ben clomped downstairs behind his aunt, sniffling, and Geraldine went into Lucy's room. The bedroom was tidy. There was nothing on the carpet apart from a pair of pink fluffy slippers and an empty wicker bin. The duvet had been neatly placed on the bed with a pillow exactly parallel to it. No pictures or posters were displayed on the walls which were an unrelieved pale pink broken up only by grey curtains and a small square wall mirror opposite the door. A large desk was bare apart from a laptop computer, and one dirty mug which looked out of place in the otherwise orderly room. Like mother like daughter, Geraldine thought.

Lucy had told her brother she was going to stay with a friend. The SOCO sat down at the desk and booted up Lucy's computer. It was vital they find out who had been in contact with her. It didn't take Geraldine long to search the room while her colleague tapped at the keyboard, but she went through the motions without finding anything useful. If Lucy kept a diary she had taken it with her. Her desk drawers contained a random collection of pens and pencils, rubbers and rulers, tissues and paper clips, nothing personal it seemed.

They heard the front door slam and voices downstairs and a moment later Matthew Kirby entered the room.

‘Where's Lucy?’ he demanded.

‘That's what we're here trying to find out,’ Geraldine answered. ‘Ben reported her missing.’ Matthew flinched at the implicit accusation. ‘Lucy told him she was going to stay with a friend. Can you tell us who that might be?’

Matthew shook his head and ran one hand through his hair, eyes wide in alarm. ‘Lucy isn't a sociable girl. She struggles to make friends. To be honest, she hasn't coped with the move here very well, and I don't think she's settled into her new school yet. And then her mother – they were very close –’ His expression changed suddenly. ‘Oh my God.’

‘Mr Kirby, do you have any idea where Lucy might be?’

‘This is all my fault.’

‘What do you mean? Mr Kirby, if you have any information that might help us –’

‘This is my fault,’ he repeated, staring past her with troubled eyes. ‘I think someone's getting at me through my family. I should've said something sooner – oh my God, not Lucy too.’

‘What do you mean someone's getting at you?’

‘It's Charlotte. There's this man she knows who keeps writing to her and we thought – I thought it was a bit of a joke –’

‘Writing?’

‘Yes. Letters.’

‘Threatening letters?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. Not exactly. He sends her slushy love letters all the time. She told me he's harmless, but –’

‘Who is he?’

‘I don't know. All I know is his name, Ted. Charlotte can tell you who he is. She's known him for years. I think they were at school together. She'll tell you.’

‘Charlotte never mentioned these letters to us.’

‘We never thought anything of it – she didn't think it was important.’

‘It seems odd he would free you from your wife if he wanted Charlotte back, but we'll find him and get to the bottom of this.’ She nodded at Peterson who was already on the phone. ‘It looks as though Lucy's gone to stay with a friend,’ Geraldine turned to Matthew Kirby again. ‘That's what she told Ben, and that means it's unlikely she's come to any harm. Now, can you tell us if anything's missing? If we know what she's taken with her, it might give us a better idea of her plans.’

The SOCO continued tapping at the keyboard while Geraldine and Matthew looked in the wardrobe. Matthew thought some of Lucy's t-shirts and her jacket were missing, but he was vague about whether she had taken any other items of clothing with her. ‘Abigail dealt with all that sort of thing,’ he explained with an awkward shrug.

‘If you can tell us what you think might be missing –’ Geraldine prompted him but he shook his head helplessly.

Ben came up to tell his father supper was ready, and was no more help than his father. ‘She always wears jeans when she's not at school,’ he said, as though that summed up Lucy's entire wardrobe.

‘Have you found anything?’ Geraldine asked her colleague when Matthew and Ben had gone downstairs.

‘There are plenty of nasty comments on her Facebook page.’

‘What sort of comments?’

‘Four eyes, skinny, pinhead, slag – there's loads, gov. It's just kids’ stuff but there's lots of it from a variety of sources. It's a pretty concerted campaign of bullying if you ask me – there are even jibes about her mother.’ He glanced at Geraldine, a frown creasing his young forehead. ‘She's such a cow she drove her mother to kill herself,’ he read aloud. ‘That's terrible. And it goes on.’

‘Who was posting these comments?’

‘I can probably find out where they came from, but it looks like a gang who knew each other.’

‘Kids from her school?’

‘Most probably. Our best bet will be to send the hard drive to Lambeth Labs and let them do the necessary.’

‘Is there anything on her Facebook page that might help us trace the friend she went to stay with?’

The SOCO shook his head. ‘There's nothing friendly here, gov. I've checked her emails and there's nothing there. She's been on instant messenger but the messages have been deleted. We'll need to restore them. I can't do that, it's too advanced for me, I'm afraid. We'll have to send the hard drive to Lambeth.’

Geraldine nodded. ‘We'll take the laptop with us. I'll check the bathroom while you're sorting it out.’

‘Yes, ma'am.’

The basin in Lucy's bathroom was bare and there was no toothbrush or toothpaste in the cabinet. Apart from that Geraldine could find nothing of interest and they left, taking Lucy's computer with them.

‘Take what you like, Inspector,’ was Matthew's response when they told him. ‘Just find Lucy.’ He looked close to tears.

‘She'll be all right, dad,’ Ben told his father, but the boy looked as distraught as his father.

‘She's just being a drama queen,’ Evie said. ‘She's run off to a friend to give you a scare, that's all. It's her age, Matthew. She'll be back.’

Geraldine had the hard drive from Lucy's computer sent straight to the Forensic Science Service lab in Lambeth, and followed up her urgent request with a call. The lab assured her they would give the case priority. After that there was nothing more to do but wait.

‘Call me as soon as you find anything,’ she insisted. ‘A teenage girl's life is in danger and we need anything you can come up with to help us trace her urgently. Phone me immediately you find anything. We're particularly interested in any Instant Messenger chats she's been having.’

The next morning a call came through. ‘We worked on it through the night,’ a voice told her, ‘and we've got everything there is. We haven't done a report yet, but your girl was messaging with a kid called Zoe and they arranged for Lucy to go and stay with her.’

‘Thank goodness for that. Now all we have to do is find Zoe.’

‘In the most recent exchange Zoe said her father would bring her over to pick Lucy up, and they had a code word so they'd recognise each other.’

Geraldine felt a lurch of anxiety. ‘You mean Zoe wasn't anyone Lucy knew? They met online?’

‘It looks that way.’

‘Can you trace Zoe?’

‘We should be able to, but it might take a while. There's something not quite right here. It's probably just a glitch. Leave it with us and we'll get back to you as soon as we have something.’

Geraldine called Matthew Kirby straightaway, but neither he nor Ben had ever heard Lucy talking about her friend called Zoe.

‘She hasn't got any friends,’ was Ben's firm response.

Matthew was predictably vague. ‘Abigail used to deal with Lucy.’

‘It's lucky Lucy's friend was using her real name,’ Peterson said when Geraldine told him. ‘That's all we need, really. Now let's see if we can find Zoe.’

Geraldine nodded. ‘We'll see what we can find out. In the meantime, the FSS are working on it so if we can't find Zoe, hopefully it shouldn't take them too long to find out where she was sending her messages from.’

55

CONCEALMENT

T
hat evening Geraldine called Lucy's form tutor who agreed to see her straightaway. Miss Abingdon had a low voice and a gentle manner, just the sort of teacher Geraldine would have expected Lucy to turn to in her distress.

‘I'm afraid Lucy never opened up to me, Inspector,’ the form tutor said sadly. ‘She was isolated, even before she lost her mother. It's hard for pupils to join an established social group, but Lucy really made no effort to fit in and the other girls – well, they didn't like her to begin with, and then with the loss of her mother she became even more withdrawn. There isn't really anything more I can tell you. I do my best to get to know all the pupils in my tutor group. We're very strong on pastoral care, but Lucy wasn't receptive to the support we offer here. We did try to help her and, in time, I think she would have come round, but her mother dying obviously disturbed any progress she was making socially.’

‘Was she friendly with a girl called Zoe?’

‘Zoe Mason? I don't think they were friends. I don't think Lucy had any friends. She was –’

‘Zoe Mason?’ Geraldine seized on the name. ‘Is she in Lucy's class?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can I contact her?’

Miss Abingdon shook her head. ‘She's not in my group, I'm afraid,’ she explained.

First thing next morning Geraldine went to school to speak to Zoe Mason only to learn the girl wasn't in school that day. Geraldine felt her breath quicken. She made a note of Zoe's address and took an IT trained officer with her.

Zoe Mason lived in a neat little house about ten minutes walk from the school. A clematis grew up a trellis at one side of the door, which must have looked attractive when it was in flower although at this time of year it was little more than a long withered twig.

A tubby woman came to the door, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘Yes?’ She scowled apprehensively when Geraldine held out her warrant card, taking a step backwards, her hand on the door. ‘Well? What do you want? What's this about?’

‘Mrs Mason, your daughter, Zoe –’

‘Zoe's feeling poorly. I was just about to call the school to let them know. There's no way she can go to school, the state she's in. I'll give her a letter when she goes back.’ She started to close the door.

‘Mrs Mason, I'm not here to talk about Zoe's absence from school. I want to ask to her about one of her class mates. Has she mentioned a girl called Lucy?’

‘No. She doesn't know anyone called Lucy, and it's got nothing to do with Zoe if some girl from the school is in trouble with you lot.’ She sniffed. ‘It doesn't surprise me, the way some of them carry on, but Zoe's never been in any trouble and whatever this girl's got herself into, I'm telling you it's nothing to do with Zoe.’

‘No one's in trouble with the police, Mrs Mason. One of the girls in Zoe's class has gone missing –’

‘Missing?’

‘A girl in Zoe's class, Lucy, has gone missing from home and we want to ask Zoe if she can help us to find her.’

‘Well, she can't. She doesn't have any friends called Lucy. I'd know if she had.’

‘Mrs Mason, Lucy has been in regular contact with a girl called Zoe. They've been sending messages to each other online every day recently. It's quite likely Zoe might have some idea where Lucy's gone, so I'd really like to speak to her. May we come in?’