Stranger Child (7 page)

Tom hadn’t slept well. Thoughts of Jack and the dead girl were enough to disturb his sleep, but on top of that he and Leo had discovered something in his brother’s papers the previous evening and he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that it might be significant.

He hadn’t wanted to go through Jack’s documents last night, but when Leo had arrived home she had encouraged him to stop putting the task off indefinitely.

‘Procrastination, Tom.’

‘Yes – I know. It’s the thief of time.’

Leo had given him a smug look. ‘I wasn’t going to say that – I was going to say makes easy things hard, hard things harder.’

‘Have you just made that up?’ he had asked with a smile.

‘No – but the threat of these documents is always there, hanging over you. Until you know if there’s anything worth finding – or any evidence that something’s already been taken – they’re going to grow into a bigger and bigger burden. Come on – I’ll help you. Let’s get the job done.’

He had looked at Leo, dressed in one of her monochrome outfits of black jeans and a loose black-and-white striped shirt, and thought about what he would rather be doing. In the end, though, he had caved in.

‘Okay, you win. I’ll get the boxes.’

It had seemed like a fairly mundane task to begin with – nothing more exciting than documents detailing Jack’s presentations to prospective clients. None of Tom’s fears of being assaulted by memories were realised until Leo had discovered an SD card, trapped under one of the cardboard flaps at the bottom of the box. She had wanted to load it onto her laptop there and then, but Tom had hesitated, fearing that it might be a video of Jack playing his guitar badly and singing along to Def Leppard. He hadn’t been sure he could cope with that, so he had suggested they had done enough for one night and put the card to one side.

It was no good, though. The damned thing was burning a hole in his pocket. The best option by far would be to take a look now in the privacy of his office and just
deal
with whatever was on it. He pulled the card out and slotted into the side of his laptop.

There was one file. SILVERSPHERE.xls. Tom stared at the screen. An Excel spreadsheet – and he recognised the moniker Silver Sphere only too well.

It was Jack’s hacker alias. As a teenager Jack had started hacking for fun, to show that he could beat the system. He had truly believed that nothing could defeat him.

Tom clicked on the file to open it. Nothing happened for a second. Then a box popped up.

Please enter your password
.

Tom stared at the screen for a moment, and then with a disappointed sigh he ejected the card and put it back in his pocket.

*

Tom was on his second cup of coffee of the morning when he looked up and saw Becky hovering near the door. His spirits lifted slightly as, not for the first time, he was struck by how much she had changed. There was no comparison between the person in front of him now and the one who had arrived in Manchester a few months previously. Gone was the pale, almost haggard face of a young woman fighting to recover her confidence at the end of a doomed relationship. Now her cheeks were pink, and her eyes glittered with a genuine interest in life. She had regained all of her natural ebullience. Today her outfit matched her smart and sassy personality; her black trouser suit was well cut with a jacket that showed off her slim waist and under the jacket was an emerald-green shirt and a slim gold chain at her neck. She had grown her hair out of its neat bob, and it bounced shinily on her shoulders.

‘Okay if I come in?’ she asked. ‘Only you looked miles away. Ooh – I see you’ve found your pig.’

Tom had to think for a moment. What pig? And then he followed Becky’s gaze to the doorstop.

‘Ah yes. The missing pig. Our good friend DC Tippetts had borrowed it.’

‘What the hell did Ryan want with your pig?’ Becky asked.

‘Don’t ask. I didn’t believe his excuse for a second. Anything of interest in the calls on the missing girl?

Becky pulled a face as she sat down.

‘Not really. As you might expect we’ve got a stack of names to sort through because people are saying that their sixteen-year-old only looks twelve, or are we sure the girl was white, etcetera. But we’ve had some news from Jumbo. He’s writing the report now but wanted to give me the heads up.’

Tom pushed the crime statistics that he had been studying with little interest to one side and leaned forwards.

‘What’s he got?’

‘They did a fingertip search in the pile of soggy leaves around where she was found and unearthed a syringe.’

‘Oh no,’ Tom said, his chest feeling heavy with sorrow for the child. ‘Do they think the poor kid did it to herself, or did some bastard take her there and give her too much of the stuff?’

‘They’re not sure. It may even be unrelated. We won’t know until we get her tox results, and even if we put a rush on, they’re going to be a couple of weeks. As you may have noticed, though, that lovely tunnel held all sorts of delights – including the odd syringe if I remember rightly. It could just be coincidence that there was one near the body. Anyway, Jumbo’s team are collecting evidence from the tunnel too.’

Tom pulled a face.

‘They’re going to struggle to get any fingerprints from the body, but there are some on the syringe. No match to anybody as yet. They couldn’t find any footprints – but then they didn’t find the girl’s either. Everything had been blown about a bit in the weather for the last couple of days.’

‘Do they know what was in the syringe?’ Tom asked.

‘Ketamine.’

‘
Ketamine?
I wasn’t expecting that. What theories have we got, then? Some bastard knocked her out so that not only had he bagged himself a kid, but a comatose kid into the bargain?’

Becky winced.

‘Ket’s an unusual choice, I agree. But even if she was injected, it might only have put her into a deep sleep. So she’s just as likely to have died from hypothermia. She had zero body fat from what I can see on the photos. You were away last week, but before we got all this wind and rain it was bloody freezing. They reckon it’s been the coldest March in Manchester since 1962, and the temperature dropped to minus six overnight.’

There was a tap on the open door and Tom glanced up to see DC Ryan Tippetts standing in the door.

‘Boss,’ he said. ‘It’s Natasha Joseph.’

Tom looked at Becky’s face as she grimaced at the thought of passing on the sad information to the girl’s father.

‘Thanks Ryan. That’s confirmed is it?’

The detective looked confused for a moment, then his face cleared.

‘Oh. I see what you mean. No, the
body
isn’t Natasha Joseph. She’s turned up at home. Just walked in the door, apparently. Yesterday.’

‘Yesterday!’ The word burst from Becky’s lips as she spun round to face DC Tippetts. ‘Why the bloody hell didn’t they tell us?’

‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ Ryan said, holding his hands up. ‘That’s all I know. Oh – except that the kid’s refusing to speak to the police. She says that if we’re involved she’s going to do a runner.’

Becky shook her head in disbelief. ‘Oh that’s
great
. Thanks, Ryan.’ She turned back to Tom. ‘Well, bugger me. That’s a bit of a turn-up. What are you thinking?’

‘I’m wondering where the hell
she’s
sprung from after all this time. We find a body we think might be hers, and then she suddenly comes back? That’s quite a coincidence!’

Nothing about this felt good to Tom. The Joseph girl had been missing since she was six years old, so somebody had been sheltering her. Why had they let her go now?

‘How do you want me to play it?’ Becky asked.

‘You need to pay the Josephs a visit. We need to be certain she is who she says she is. If she refuses to speak to you, tell the Josephs we’ll give her a couple of days to settle in, but then we’re going to have to talk to her. And take a family liaison officer with you – one that’s been trained to interview kids. We need to know where the hell she’s been, who’s been hiding her for all these years, and why.’

12

It felt safe in the bedroom now the door was barricaded shut again with a chest of drawers. She hadn’t known if she would be strong enough to shift such a big piece of furniture, but somehow she had managed, and it got a bit easier each time. She had found somewhere to hide stuff, but she still couldn’t risk them coming into the room whenever they wanted.

David – he wanted her to call him Dad but he could dream on – had given her an old mobile of his so she could ‘call her friends’. That had almost made her smile. It was a bit of a crappy old thing, but he seemed very pleased with himself for his thoughtfulness.

She wished he wouldn’t touch her. It made her flesh crawl.

She knew Emma had searched the pockets of her duffle coat when she had finally taken it off the night before. She had slammed her bedroom door but sneaked out to watch Emma glancing guiltily over her shoulder as her hands delved deep into the pockets of the coat where she had hung it in the hall. Emma probably expected to find a phone. As if Natasha would have been stupid enough to bring one into the house yesterday.

Emma wouldn’t have told David what she’d done, though. He would have thought it was a terrible thing to do. But Emma didn’t trust her. And that might be a problem.

Last night, when everybody was in bed, Natasha had crept downstairs. She had switched a lamp on and looked at the painting in the hall. She had forgotten what her mum looked like.

How could she have forgotten?

She was beautiful. And she had loved Tasha so much. Tasha could just about remember how that had made her feel, but she hadn’t felt like that in a very long time.

Now David had called the police and she was going to have to think on her feet. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She knew there were policemen who would pass on anything that they were told to, and she knew that would mean trouble. She had tried every trick she could think of to make David change his mind, but Emma wouldn’t budge.

David would have been easier to manipulate on his own. He was a man with guilt hanging over him, weighing him down. She might have managed to persuade him to keep the police out of it. Emma was much tougher. She said they had to tell the police because of the girl – the dead girl. Tasha stifled a sob. Could it be …? No. She mustn’t even
think
that.

Emma had won the battle, though, and convinced David to make the call. Emma thought she knew the difference between right and wrong.

She might know about right, but she knew nothing about wrong. She hadn’t the first
clue
about wrong.

Tasha smiled to herself. It was only a matter of time.

13

Becky looked at the open fields surrounding David Joseph’s home. The red-brick house itself was attractive in a solid kind of way, but she wouldn’t want to live out here. The idea of living in the countryside didn’t appeal to her at all, and if she ever changed her mind it would have to be for a house with stunning views. This was all a bit flat and featureless for her taste. And as she was a city girl, the vague whiff of manure didn’t do much for her either.

The front garden of Blue Meadow House looked pretty much like all gardens in March – generally quite drab but with some cheerful yellow daffodils offering a promise of the warmer months to come. In spite of their burst of colour, as she surveyed the shadows cast by the dark clouds that had chased away the brief morning sunshine, it seemed at this moment that Grey Meadow House might have been a more appropriate name. At least it had stopped raining.

Becky pushed the doorbell, glancing sideways at the quiet, confident profile of Charley Hughes, a young DC who was specially trained in questioning children. She had cropped blonde hair and her features appeared to have been skilfully sculpted, with sharp cheekbones, wide-set hazel eyes and a generous mouth. It was one of those faces that on first sight seemed merely attractive but which became increasingly interesting.

‘I’m really keen to see how you handle this one, Charley. It’s hard to believe Natasha Joseph has been missing for over six years, and nobody has seen hide nor hair of her in all that time.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Charley responded. ‘But I gather she doesn’t want to talk to us at all, so we may get no further than checking that she is who she claims to be.’

Any further conversation was brought to a halt as a woman with a pale face who looked to be around forty opened the door. Her eyes had the haunted look of a person under stress.

‘Good morning,’ Becky said. ‘Mrs Emma Joseph? I’m Detective Inspector Becky Robinson, and this is Detective Constable Charlotte Hughes.’

The woman nodded. ‘Please come in.’ She held the door open so Becky and Charley could step into the wide hallway. At the far end was a beautiful antique wooden table with a bowl of fresh flowers adding a touch of brightness against a pale beige wall. But it was the portrait above the flowers that drew Becky’s eye. It was a painting of a lovely young woman, little more than a girl really, sitting on a chaise longue with her feet tucked up next to her. Emma Joseph intercepted Becky’s gaze.

‘That’s my husband’s first wife, Caroline. Tasha’s mother.’

Becky glanced at the woman standing before her in the hallway, looking to see if there was any trace of resentment that the portrait of the former wife was still hanging in pride of place, but she saw none. Just a hint of sadness.

‘Tasha’s with her father. I’ll take you to them.’

Becky didn’t move. ‘Before we meet her, Mrs Joseph, can you fill me in on yesterday? I gather you just found her in your kitchen? ‘

Emma Joseph lifted her hand to tuck away some stray strands of hair that had escaped from a loose ponytail behind her ears.

‘It was very odd. I’d been upstairs with Ollie – my little boy. I came down to the kitchen, and there she was. Standing there, saying nothing.’

‘How do you think she got in, Mrs Joseph?’

‘She must have gone round the side of the house and come in through the back door. I never lock that door when I’m in all day. Maybe not the brightest decision, stuck out here, but …’ She shrugged as if to say ‘That’s just the way it is.’