High-Wired (13 page)

Lauren had the times of death estimated by the pathologist in her notebook and, after Hardy had started the tape, took heed of her nod and asked their ‘guest’ where he had been at the times of both of the killings.

‘No comment,’ he stated with a smirk and what could have been a sideways glance at his brief, but which could just have been a spasm in his mismatched eyes.

Olivia immediately interrupted. ‘Don’t start with the “no comment” routine. I’ve had my fill of that off you over the years, Edwards. Give us some answers that we can check out, or I’ll keep you in custody until the awful tea in here loosens your tongue for you.’

‘Are you going to beat me, Inspector? Ooh, I’m so frightened,’ he concluded in a falsetto voice.

‘Only at chess, you muppet. Now, be a good boy and tell us where you were at the times given to you by DS Groves here.’

Edwards assumed what was, for him, a thoughtful expression, but which appeared more like a threatening grimace. Eventually he reluctantly said, ‘I was wiv me mates. They’ll tell you that’s where I was.’

‘And which mates would these be?’

‘Flinty, The Knife, and Scabby. We was all together. They’ll back me on that.’

‘I bet they will. And just where were you all four together so conveniently?’

‘Dunno.’

‘You don’t know where you were, or you were somewhere you didn’t recognise.’

‘Can’t remember. I was off me face.’

Hardy sighed before continuing, ‘Was it just the four of you, or were there other people who could have seen you?’

‘Can’t remember. I told ya, I was off me face.’

‘What on?’

‘The floor, I fink.’

‘Very funny. Did you have anything to do with the deaths of Richard Dunbar or Douglas Green?’

‘Never ’eard of ’em.’

‘Please look at these photographs and tell me if you recognise the men in them. For the benefit of the tape I am handing
Mr
Edwards photographs of the two murder victims.’

Edwards tossed the photos on to the table with a sneer. ‘Never seen either of them before in me life,’ he replied.

As the photographs hit the top of the desk the door opened soundlessly to let in DC Colin Redwood, a grim expression on his face. He approached Hardy and whispered in her ear before leaving the room. ‘Interview terminated at …’ Hardy wound up the proceedings and asked that Mr Edwards be returned to his quarters. Edwards looked stunned and said in disbelief, ‘Aren’t you letting me go, then?’

‘Not on your life, sunshine. You’re as guilty as hell about something, and I intend to get to the bottom of what it is. You were lying through your crooked teeth the whole time we were being recorded …’

She didn’t get any further, as the solicitor interrupted, saying that he didn’t like her manner towards his client. Woggle-Eye gave a superior smirk, though it disappeared from his face soon enough when he was escorted back to his cell to await further questioning.

As Groves trotted along behind the bustling tubby figure of Hardy, she asked what had come up, and why they were rushing.

‘A young girl, Genni Lacey, has gone missing. Didn’t come home last night, and her parents thought she might be staying with a friend. Even though her mobile was going straight to voicemail, they didn’t worry too much. It was only when she didn’t come back this morning, either, that they phoned some of her friends and it was then they realised there was something wrong. When the friends all came back and said they hadn’t seen her, the mother phoned her in as a missing person. A missing minor: she’s only fourteen years old.’

‘So we’re going to interview the parents, are we?’

‘While Uniform searches the house and garden.’

‘Shouldn’t we carry on with the interviews, though? After all, two men are dead, boss.’

‘Yes, and they’ll be just as dead whether or not we take time off to speak to the distressed parents of the missing girl.
She
might still be alive, and our investigating at this stage could make all the difference.’

‘Message received and understood, Inspector. Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Because you’re not a hard-nosed bitch like me,’ replied Hardy, who then had to blow said nose rather theatrically as the thought of her Ben still lying in the hospital came to mind. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll get Colin Redwood and Lenny to have a go at them all, and we can listen to the tapes later. Colin’s really straining at the leash at the moment and Lenny’s seen everything there is to see. He’s as likely to be intimidated as an egg is to fry in a freezer.’

‘That sounds like a good idea, guv.’

‘It certainly sounds like one to me. I look forward to the results.’

‘So what exactly are we going to do?’

‘If there’s no trace found of Genni at the house, we can try to reconstruct her last known movements, who last saw her, that sort of thing, then we can get a search party organised. No doubt devilish Devenish would like to spruce himself up again for a public appeal.’

‘I hate it when the homes of missing kids are searched, as if their parents are suspected of killing them and concealing the body,’ Lauren said.

‘But how often that turns out to be true,’ said Olivia.

The girl’s family home turned out to be on a new estate of four and five-bedroomed houses. Although the estate was on the very outskirts of the town and the last houses had only recently been sold, already new building was extending further into the countryside. The structures of smaller houses had sprung up beyond the estate like wooden-framed saplings, and there seemed to be no end to the relentless march into what had all been fields when Olivia was young.

They didn’t reach the doorbell to ring it, as the front door was opened to them as soon as they started up the path by a weeping woman with red eyes and a slumped-over posture. She was about forty, and looked as if she usually dressed smartly, but couldn’t quite carry it off today. Her cardigan was buttoned wrongly, her tights laddered, and her hair unsprayed and flying away from what was probably its normally immaculate coiffure.

Behind her was a man of similar age, dressed as if for the office in a suit, white shirt, and tie, but wearing the expression of one who did not want to change into something more informal in case it was bad luck. As they were bidden to enter, a marked car pulled up by the kerb containing the uniformed officers who would conduct the search of the property. They were in luck with it being a modern structure: there were so many less nooks and crannies in which to conceal a body; not that they expected to find one.

Thomas Lacey, the missing girl’s father, directed the uniformed officers towards the attic, where they would start searching the house from the top down, while the girl’s mother, Abi, showed the two detectives into a minimalist and spacious living room, referred to, rather horribly in Lauren’s opinion, as ‘the lounge’.

When all were seated on the comfortable white leather suite, Mrs Lacey asked them if they had any news of their Genni. She seemed to check herself, before adding that the girl’s full name was Imogen, but they had shortened this to Genni, spelling it out for Lauren, who was taking notes oblivious to the fact that Olivia had already brought out her voice-activated recorder and received a nod of confirmation from the parents that it was all right to use it.

‘When did you last see your, er, Genni?’ asked Hardy, trying to look as sympathetic as possible. She had had a case like this about five years ago, when a little boy had gone missing, and his body had turned up shoved behind the panel of the bath – although it must have been moved there after the police search, for he wasn’t there when they had carried it out. The parents had later confessed that his body had been in a suitcase in the overhead beams of the garage, and the officers must have missed this on their search of the property. And they had seemed such concerned parents, too, worried almost out of their wits – and it had all turned out to be a con.

It was Mrs Lacey who spoke. ‘She went out yesterday just after she’d eaten her tea. She always has something when she comes in from school, and we eat later on, when Thomas is home from work.’

‘So did you see her then, Mr Lacey?’

‘No, I haven’t seen her since I dropped her off at school yesterday morning.’ That would need checking, thought Hardy, to see that she actually had reached school, and that the mother wasn’t just covering up for her husband.

‘Let’s get some basics sorted out first,’ Hardy had requested. ‘How old is Genni, and have you got a recent photograph of her that we can use in our search?’

‘She’ll be fifteen in three weeks’ time, and I’ve got her most recent school photograph on the wall unit. I
will
get it back, won’t I?’

‘Of course you will, Mrs Lacey. What did your daughter do when she had finished her meal?’

‘She went upstairs for a while, then she came down in a T-shirt and jeans and with her rucksack. She told me she was off to a friend’s house, and that she’d be back at bedtime.’

‘And that was all right, was it?’

‘She had her mobile phone. We thought that if she could call us and we could check with her, then she’d be fine.’

‘We usually advise parents of young teenagers, especially girls, to ask them for a contact landline number for where they’re going, so that it can be checked that they’ve arrived, then get the child to phone the parents either for a lift home if it’s after dark, or to tell them that they’ll be home within a short time-frame.’

Both parents looked devastated, and Lauren felt that she had to say something. ‘We do realise that it’s very easy to be wise after the event, and if you’ve always been able to trust your child before, you might not have seen the necessity to take precautions like that.’

‘What did your daughter eat for her tea before she went out?’ asked Hardy, trying not to be affected by what seemed genuine panic on the parents’ faces.

‘Why do you want to …? Oh my God, you think she’s dead, don’t you? You think she’s dead, and you’re just not telling us.’ Abi’s face was as white as paper as she said this, her voice shrill and panicked, and Thomas went over and sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders, his hand pulling her head down to rest on him.

‘There, there, Abi, love,’ he comforted her. ‘She’ll have lost her phone and gone off somewhere without a thought for all the worry she’s causing.’

Pulling herself away from her husband, she said, ‘But she’s not that kind of girl at all. She’s always meticulous about telling us where she’s going.’

‘And do you often check?’ asked Hardy, giving them a hard look.

‘No, we don’t. Up until now we’ve always trusted her.’

Hardy remained silent, letting them work it out for themselves. ‘You mean she could have been up to anything, don’t you, and we’d have been none the wiser?’ Abi whispered.

‘To be honest, that’s about the size of it, Mrs Lacey,’ replied the inspector, hard but truthful.

‘Oh, God, Thomas, whatever are we going to do?’

‘What you need to do,’ Hardy advised them, ‘is to stay calm and answer our questions. So, what did she have for tea before she went out?’

‘She just had a slice of pizza and a cup of tea, she has a full meal at school,’ answered Mrs Lacey.

‘Now, I want you to go through her wardrobe and tell me if any of her clothes are missing.’

‘But she was dressed in jeans when she went out. Oh, do you think she might have run away? But why? I can’t think of any reason. I mean, the three of us always get on very well.’

‘She had her rucksack with her when she went. She could have had anything in that. Just check for me, please, so that we can assure ourselves that that probably hasn’t happened. Please.’

‘I’ll go, Thomas,’ said Mrs Lacey. ‘I know what she’s got and where she keeps it.’ She passed the searching uniformed officers on the landing, on their way downstairs to examine the ground floor, the garden and garage; garden sheds and shelters would not be exempt from their prying hands and eyes, either.

Entering the first bedroom on the right, Mrs Lacey opened the door and said, ‘This is Genni’s room. Where shall I start?’

INTERLUDE – FLASHBACK

The girl reached a woozy consciousness sufficient to inform her that her legs were bound at the ankles, her tied wrists behind her back. It was dark wherever she was, but she was lying on a very hard floor and the place smelled terrible. She had no memory of the night before, not after entering the pub and showing her fake ID, and had no idea how she could have got here, or why; or, for that matter, who would have put her here and bound her hand and foot.

One of the last things she noticed was that her knickers were gone and that her already short shirt was round her thighs. She felt a pain between her legs, and had the sinking feeling that something terrible had happened to her. She’d only gone to the pub last night for a dare and, when she got home, she was going to ring the members of her little gang and tell them what she’d done.

Tears stung her eyes as she was overcome by a wave of self-pity. Why weren’t her parents here to rescue her? Then she realised that not only had she never told them where she was really going, she didn’t even have any idea how much time had passed since she went into the pub.

If her hands hadn’t been bound, she’d phone them, and maybe they could get the signal traced, but a quick wriggle around revealed the fact that her phone was no longer in the pocket of her jacket. Although this was undone, as was her blouse, she could make out that there was unlikely to be anything in her pockets at all. They felt completely empty. Maybe there would be other people nearby, and she’d just been left here until somebody stumbled upon her. She took a deep breath and called for help.

Within a few seconds of her voice echoing around the confines of the building, a metal door grated against the floor nearby, and she knew she wasn’t alone any more. She felt paralysed with fear. Whoever had taken her didn’t seem to have deserted her at all. She could hear footsteps in the darkness and the sound of voices whispering, feet descending metal stairs then crossing the concrete towards her.

‘There she is, fresh as a daisy, and just ready for round two. Ready, lads? Put the light on, for fuck’s sake. How are we going to be able to enjoy ourselves if we can’t see her?