Chapter 22: Chapter 22

Gina’s phone buzzed. She hoped that it wasn’t Hannah with another annoyed message. She exhaled as she saw it was Jacob, telling her that he’d got her something exciting, punctuated by a laughing emoji. She got in her car and drove to the station.

‘Morning, guv,’ Jacob said, sitting with his head in hands at the main table in the centre.

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked.

‘About half an hour. There’s no point lying in when you’re on your own. I woke up hungry, grabbed a buttie on the way and thought, why not, I’ll come in early, show willing.’ She spotted the sandwich bag on the table, grease absorbed into the paper.

‘I hope you got me one.’

‘That’s what’s exciting. Fried egg.’ He grabbed the bag and passed it to her. ‘Slathered in ketchup.’

‘Yum.’ She pulled the sandwich from the bag and bit into the cold sandwich, yolk running out of the sides. She was sure it would have tasted better half an hour ago. ‘Thanks.’ She

noticed Jacob’s tie looked a bit wonky and one of his buttons had been pushed into the wrong hole. He’d made light of his break up with Amber but she knew deep down he was missing her. Maybe when the case was over, she’d see if he wanted to go for a beer, maybe they could all go for a beer and Gina might get another chance to try and blend in, act like a normal human being, enjoying a drink with colleagues.

‘My arm and hand are red raw from climbing over that fence. How are you?’

Gina rubbed her arm. She had a bruise and a few scratches from the bush she landed in. ‘No serious damage. I think I’ve survived the splinter. After the last case, this seems tame. At least no one’s trying to murder me.’ She took another bite of the sandwich and looked away as she recalled the attack in her home. Her attacker’s red mask flashed through her mind as she remembered her airways being restricted. As she swallowed a lump of mulched up bread, it wedged in her throat. She tried to gasp, failing and panicking.

‘You okay, guv? Need the Heimlich manoeuvre?’

Shaking her head, she tried to swallow and her eyes began to water up. It wasn’t going down. She dropped the sandwich on the table and darted to the ladies, almost choking as she heaved the sandwich into the bin. Shaking, she stood up and stared at her smeared reflection and kicked the bin. How dare her attacker and Terry still make her feel like this? She kicked the bin again and wiped her eyes before straightening up. There was a knock on the door. ‘What?’

‘Just making sure you’re not choking to death.’

‘I’m good.’ She burst through the door, almost crashing into Jacob. ‘I just got a bit of bread stuck in my throat. I’m okay now. Coughed it out.’

He followed her back to the incident room. Wyre and O’Connor were just turning their computers on.

Grabbing a tissue, Gina cleared her throat and wiped the grease from her fingers. ‘As you know, we found Westley during our drugs bust last night. You probably saw the email I sent you. He knows Christina, one of our missing girls. The last he says he saw of her was when he left her in Birmingham. Smith will be along in a moment to update us on the other interviews that took place last night. Darren Mason was also arrested as a buyer. Another couple were pulled in, along with a woman. All buyers, only one buying heroin.’

Smith entered. ‘That was a long evening. I did manage a few hours’ sleep. Lovely to be back so soon.’ He rubbed his eyes, rustled in the pocket of his fluorescent jacket for a mint and took a seat at the table.

‘How did the interviews go?’ Gina grabbed the rest of the egg sandwich, scrunched it up in the bag and threw it at the bin, missing. She’d pick it up later. ‘I still can’t help but feel there’s some connection to our case. Darren Mason and Westley Young turning up has almost sealed the idea for me. Tell me about the others.’

‘The woman is giving us real trouble.’ ‘Which one?’

‘The one who was buying alone. She seemed a bit spaced out, refusing medical assistance and not speaking. We don’t know her name and she isn’t on our database. We ended up just having to leave her in a cell for the time being. I’m going to try interviewing her again this morning. If she carries on like this, I’ll have to ask the Superintendent for an extension.’

Gina picked at the sore flap of skin on her hand, where the splinter had been. ‘Have we offered her medical help? If she is on heroin, she may be withdrawing soon.’

‘She’s as cool as an iceberg, definitely not withdrawing. I did offer though. She just shook her head and said she was fine. She didn’t even make her phone call when it was offered.’

‘How about the couple?’

‘Ellen Simpson cracked. She’s prime carer for her elderly mother who is completely immobile and has dementia. They live at the big house at the end of King Street, the one with the large garden on the far corner. She said all she wanted to do was get her mother ready for bed and chill out and we’d apparently ruined her evening. Aaron Dunn virtually lives with her and helps her a lot too. The woman was constantly in tears, kept saying that she’s never been in trouble with the law and she just needed a little pick me up.’

‘Has she been in trouble before?’

‘Yes, fight in a nightclub when she was eighteen.’ ‘So she lied about that?’

Smith leaned back. ‘She did.’ ‘How about Aaron Dunn?’

‘Works in a biscuit factory on Cleevesford Industrial Estate. Seemed calm under interview and kept going on that all he had was a bit of coke for personal use and that we were being tossers for bringing them both in.’

‘Does he have a record?’

‘Yes, an incident in his twenties. It looks like he once had everything, a good position in the family business, some small

chain of computer accessory shops, until he fell out with his dad. His first wife divorced him and he ended up on the scrap heap, working for one of these awful companies that sell orthopaedic chairs to elderly people and refuse to leave the house until they’ve signed their savings away. The company he worked for got closed down, Trading Standards were involved. As for his criminal past, yes, he’s had a minor run in with the law when he bricked the windows of his parents’ house.’

‘Nothing bringing him back to the girls?’ ‘Nothing as yet.’

‘Keep me and the system updated every time you have new information.’

Gina checked her emails on her phone. ‘Right, Bernard has messaged. He’s hoping to come to the next briefing to talk over his findings. He and Keith are searching for a match for van girl’s dental records. Here’s something for you to work on, O’Connor. I know you and Wyre have been narrowing down a list of missing girls. Apparently our van girl had a broken finger that had long healed. Liaise with Bernard to narrow your list down.’

‘Yes, guv. The list is only standing at just under sixty now. We’ve been researching each one in turn until new information came in. All brunettes with red tones, and red heads. We have to consider that some people dye their hair. How many of the blonde or mousy haired girls had dyed their hair? This could take our figure back up.’ O’Connor tapped his left foot on the floor. Gina tried to ignore it.

‘I know it’s a tedious task but it needs doing. Any other information?’

Wyre looked up from her pad. ‘We’re on it, guv, the tasks I mean. It’s just taking a long time to go through everything. There has been nothing useful from the door to door interviews or the CCTV.’

‘Okay, have all the samples gone to Bernard from the drugs bust?’

Smith nodded. ‘All completed last night.’

‘Right, back to it. I need results,’ Gina replied. ‘Jacob, you and I can head over to speak to Simone Duxford’s biological mother.’

All the different strands of the case weren’t coming together at all. Something needed to give. Once the unravelling began, she knew it wouldn’t stop. She just needed to find the starting point and hope that she wouldn’t unravel with it. She coughed again, making sure that her throat was still clear.

FIFTY-THREE

Gina pulled up on the narrow road at the back of Redditch Town Centre and backed into the tiniest of spaces. A young boy, with what appeared to be chocolate smeared over his face, lifted the net at the window. Another child, a girl with pigtails climbed up to the ledge and pushed him out the way. As they knocked on the door, Gina could hear what sounded like a newborn baby screaming.

Cassandra Duxford wrestled with the door, eventually managing to open it. ‘Come through,’ she said as she twisted her greasy looking blonde hair into a makeshift bun. ‘Crystal, Kyle, get off that bloody window ledge. Kids!’ A man stood in the galley kitchen, holding the baby against his greasy overall. The newborn screamed, almost wriggling out of its small nappy. As the man held the bottle to the baby’s lips, it began gulping the milk.

‘I bring new life into the world just before I find out my daughter has died. She’d have been better off with me but no, they dragged her from my arms and out of her home. Do you know, I never saw her after that? They said she didn’t want to see me but I know that can’t have been right. Those bastards robbed me of my chance to be her mother.’

Gina wasn’t going to get into the ins and outs of why Simone had been removed, she’d seen the girl’s file. She’d seen the photos of her bruising. She’d read about the extent of abuse the girl had endured. Jacob squeezed into the tiny kitchen. The bathroom door stood open. The older houses around this way quite often had bathrooms coming off the end of kitchens. The smell hit her, first urine, then faeces. Her gaze stopped on the stained carpet surrounding the toilet. She wondered how the family could cook in the kitchen, knowing that their bathroom was that filthy.

‘It’s cosy in here,’ Jacob said as he pulled out a notebook and stood behind the boyfriend. ‘Sorry, your name is?’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’ the man asked.

‘Please just tell us your name,’ Gina replied, wondering why the man seemed so uptight.

‘Steve Bell. Mechanic. I have a garage just two streets back. Thirty-two years old. These are my kids and I love them. I’ve been with Cassie for five years. Enough?’

‘Thank you,’ Jacob replied as he shifted the pan of cold beans to make room to write.

‘Steve, can you take Matty into the other room for a minute, so we can talk?’

The man nodded and left the room. ‘Don’t you upset her.

She’s been through enough!’

‘Miss Duxford, we’re not here to upset you. I know the news about Simone must be hitting you hard but we want to find out how she ended up in a shallow grave in Cleevesford. Do you know how she might have got there?’

Cassie Duxford wiped a tear from the corner of her red puffy eye. She grabbed a cigarette with her chubby fingers and

lit up. ‘Do you mind? I need a smoke.’ Gina shook her head.

‘I didn’t want to lose my daughter but back then…’ She paused and looked away, taking a deep breath. ‘Back then I was a different person and in a really bad place, not like now. There was a string of men, I admit it, and drugs were a problem. I would have done anything for a fix. I did do anything for a fix but I always protected Simone, as much as I could anyway.’ The woman sobbed and stubbed the barely touched cigarette out in the sink. ‘I found out my boyfriend at the time had been abusing Simone. I told him to go but he wouldn’t. Eventually he wouldn’t allow me to go out, even pimped me out to his friends. I didn’t know what day it was back then.’ She paused and inhaled on the cigarette, blowing smoke into the small room. ‘I barely remember the raid. That wasn’t me back then. I don’t know to this day how I became that woman. I wanted him to leave but I ended up being his prisoner. The thing that hurt more than anything was when they took Simone. I swore I would get off drugs and get her back, but she didn’t want me, refused to see me.’ The woman broke down, tears spilling onto the pile of dirty plates in the sink. ‘I’ll never see her again. Never get the chance to make things up to her.’ As the woman sobbed, she hyperventilated.

‘I know this is hard, Miss Duxford, and we’re so sorry for your loss.’ Gina paused for a moment while the woman blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘Do you know where Simone may have gone when she left her foster home? Could she have gone looking for her dad?’

‘He was a waste of space. I was fifteen, he was about twenty-five when we met. We used to meet in Redditch at the weekends. His name was Gareth. Simone knew his name was

Gareth, I never hid that from her. She knew he was from Cleevesford. Has that bastard done something to her?’

‘We don’t know that. Do you know where he lived?’

‘King Street, just off the High Street. I don’t know the number. He never took me home to see his parents. I don’t think I was posh enough for them. I think they had money. Bastard dumped me. He didn’t even know he had a daughter and I never told my parents his name.’

‘Do you know his surname?’

She shook her head and wiped her eyes with a piece of kitchen roll. ‘I was with him three weeks. We had sex a couple of times in his car. After that, he didn’t want to know. That was the end. He got what he wanted and left.’

‘Did you ever tell anyone?’

‘No. I told Simone he was my boyfriend and his parents didn’t want us to be together. I also told her it was a long time ago and I hadn’t seen him since, and I haven’t – that was the truth. Back then I went to Cleevesford, hung around in the pub there. Not once did I see him. I even went to the road he lived on and looked for his car. This was when I was pregnant. I didn’t see it. Maybe he’d lied about living there. Either that or he sold his car. I wasn’t going to humiliate myself any more and start knocking on doors. He didn’t want me and I had some pride left. After that, I eventually told my parents about the baby. Couldn’t stand the lectures any more so I ended up in a mother and baby unit in a hostel, then got a flat in Redditch. My life slowly went down the pan after that but I’m clean now. I love my children and I love Steve. I’ve changed so much. Please don’t let anyone take my other children.’

The woman looked broken – a teary mess that could barely stand, leaning over the sink sobbing.

‘Are you okay?’ Steve called from the other room. The children began running around, playing a loud game.

‘I’m fine, love.’

Gina imagined what might have been going through Simone’s head. Maybe she’d been looking for her father. Had she found him or had he found her? She sent a quick message to O’Connor as the woman composed herself, asking him to get onto the council and find out anything he could about anyone named Gareth that had been registered as living in King Street. It was a long time ago now but Simone may have found something out and gone looking for him. She followed the message to O’Connor with another.

Contact the press. Put Simone’s photo out there. See if anyone has seen her in Cleevesford. We need people to come forward. There may be a connection to King Street in Cleevesford.

‘You’ve got to find out who put her in that grave. Please find out.’

Gina wanted to find out but not solely for Simone’s mother or her foster parents. She owed this one to Simone.

FIFTY-FOUR

The fans whirred away in the incident room. Briggs and Annie sat at one end, smiling as they whispered words back and forth. O’Connor and Wyre sat at opposite sides of the table and Jacob sat between O’Connor and Bernard. Gina stood in front of the board. One of the walls was taken up with the map, showing the original route that Darren Mason had taken in his van. That same map had been plotted with the shallow grave that they’d found Simone in. She could see clearly that the route Darren taken hadn’t been close to the grave.

She grabbed another pin and placed it in the middle of King Street. ‘We have to consider that Simone Duxford may have come to Cleevesford to look for her biological father. After speaking to Cassie Duxford, we know that Simone’s father, a man called Gareth, lived on that street. That is, unless he lied to her. Have you started the ball rolling, O’Connor?’

‘Yes, guv. I called the council after you messaged. They are looking into it and calling me back in a bit.’

‘For heaven’s sake. Haven’t they got all this information at hand?’

‘They said it was on a previous computer system and they’d have to delve into the archives. They managed to tell

me that no one called Gareth has lived on King Street over the past ten years.’

Another stumbling block. Gina began to pace. ‘We need some officers to get down to King Street with a photo of Simone. Maybe she knocked on someone’s door asking for Gareth. If any of you can cancel any plans this evening, I’d be hugely grateful. I know you all have a life but we need to get to the bottom of what’s happening and that’s going to involve a lot of groundwork. Has the other press appeal gone out?’

‘As soon as O’Connor came to me, we prepared it and sent it out. It should be on the news this evening and is probably already online,’ Annie replied, twisting her hair between her fingers as she doodled over the page, waiting for further instructions.

Bernard cleared his throat and perked up, presuming he would be asked to speak next.

‘What have you got for me?’ Gina asked.

‘Keith has just messaged me. We’ve identified our van girl. Erin Holden, aged sixteen. Her dental records match and she is registered as having broken a finger as a child. Also, the cut to her side was made by a tool in Darren Mason’s van. Traces of her blood were found on this. The wound appears to be accidental. It looks like she scraped across it, probably as the van took a corner. We know who she is. Yes.’ Bernard punched the air and dropped his pen on the table.

‘That name is on my list of missing girls,’ O’Connor said. ‘I was almost getting to her. She left home just before Christmas with a lad. Her mother is from Kings Heath in Birmingham.’

‘I need to speak to her. Who’s coming?’

Jacob looked up and smiled.

‘At least I can lose the list now and get on with the door to door on King Street,’ O’Connor said as he closed his notebook and turned back to his computer.

All the other families she’d been speaking to had been devastated but this time, she would be the one to deliver the bad news. Her phone rang and she walked towards the window. ‘Hello.’

‘I know the name of the girl my daughter hung around with on the streets. Her name was Erin,’ she heard Julia Dawson say. ‘And there’s more, the girl who I’ve been speaking to said Erin and Christina had been approached by a man, probably in his fifties and he was trawling Birmingham recently with a woman. She hasn’t seen the girls since.’

They were after another girl. Gina knew it. She grabbed her pad as the woman began relaying all the details.

FIFTY-FIVE

The maisonette on the main road of Kings Heath stood back, behind a clump of unruly trees. After spending several minutes struggling to find a space to park in, Jacob and Gina settled for a space five minutes down the road. The heat hit like a wall and the petrol fumes from the rush hour traffic was nauseatingly thick. The smell of weed filled the air, a smell Gina was coming across more often over the past couple of years.

Belinda Holden eventually opened the door. Her sunken eyes and slight frame almost shook Gina to the core. She had no idea how the woman was still alive. Her wrists can’t have been thicker than a tube of toothpaste. Belinda wobbled as she stood aside, staring into space through glassy eyes. Gina could see she’d given up a long time ago. She glanced back at Jacob as they stepped into the stuffy hallway, so dark their eyes had to adjust. She wished she hadn’t seen the masses of cobwebs, the piles of clothes and empty takeaway wrappers that filled the hallway. That was where the stench was coming from. A large bug fled behind an old wooden unit as they entered the living room.

‘Why are you here?’ the woman mumbled.

‘Please sit down, Miss Holden. I’m DI Harte, this is DS Driscoll. Can my colleague get you a glass of water?’

The woman went to sit and almost missed the edge of the old torn settee. After recovering her position, she shuffled back until she was safely seated. Greasy strands of dirty blonde hair stuck to her lips and mingled with the sweat on her face. Gina watched as the woman tried to wipe them away but missed each time. She could see why Erin had left. ‘I don’t need water. I need to know why the police are here bothering me. I haven’t done anything. You lot are always on my case.’

Gina had taken a quick look at Belinda Holden’s record. She’d been arrested on numerous occasions for soliciting, drug use and anti-social behaviour. The last she read was that Belinda was meant to be on a programme for users to get clean.

‘We are here about Erin, Miss Holden.’ Gina sat on a chair opposite. Jacob remained standing beside the door frame.

‘Erin? She left. I often wonder about her.’

Wonder about her! Is that all Miss Holden did? Her sixteen-year-old daughter had run away from home and this woman was doing nothing to find her. She thought back to all that Mrs Dawson was doing with the posters and asking people on the streets. Gina was aware that people had their issues, but they were talking about her daughter, her flesh and blood. She bit her lip. ‘I’m really sorry, Miss Holden. You may have read that a girl had been found in Cleevesford and had been taken to hospital after falling from a van. It’s been on the local news. We don’t as yet know what happened to her but she was in a bad way and has subsequently passed away. Our tests have come back and we’ve identified the girl to be Erin. I really am sorry.’

The woman stared blankly at the curtain-covered window and wiped her eyes. ‘You mean Erin’s dead?’

‘I’m sorry. Can we get you a drink?’

The woman shook her head and pulled a half bottle of vodka from under a cushion. Unscrewing the cap, she took a long swig. ‘I’m never going to see her again, am I?’

‘Is there anyone we can call? Do you have any family?’

‘I don’t want any of them.’ The woman took another swig. ‘Can you tell us about when Erin left? You reported her

missing last November.’

‘And what did you do? Stuff all. People like me, like us, don’t matter. Just piss off out of my home.’ The woman grabbed the cushion and threw it to the floor.

‘It’s important that you tell us if you know anything. We need to catch the person who did this to Erin. Can you tell me how things were when she left?’

The woman took another swig of alcohol. ‘Are you going now?’

‘Can we offer you any support?’

‘I’ve got all the support I need,’ she said as she held the bottle up. Her sleeve slipped. Gina caught site of all the open sores and track marks on the woman’s scrawny arm. Poor Erin had no chance in life. She swallowed, choking back her emotions. Maybe the system had let them down somewhere along the line. How Erin had been left in a hovel like this made her want to punch something.

There was a knock at the front door. The woman dragged herself up and staggered along the hallway. A man wearing

glasses followed her in. ‘Belinda?’ he said. Gina leaned forward to get a closer look.

Belinda grabbed his arm and led him into the kitchen. ‘Just wait a minute. You here for a good time?’ She thought that Gina and Jacob couldn’t hear from the living room. Her skin began to crawl. Had Erin seen all this going on?

‘A friend?’ Gina asked as Belinda re-entered.

‘Yeah. What of it? We’re good friends. I want you to both leave now so I can grieve. Get out.’ Belinda held out a shaky finger and pointed towards the front door.

‘If you remember anything when we’ve left, give me a call. If you need any support, I can put you in touch with the right places. You can get help. We’ll be in touch when your daughter’s remains are released.’ Gina placed her card into the woman’s hand.

‘Goodbye.’ Belinda screwed up the card and opened the door, watching as they made their way down the path before slamming the door. Gina wondered if the woman would arrange a funeral for her daughter or even attend if one was arranged for her.

‘It’s no wonder some kids run away. Imagine having to live like that?’ Jacob said as they took the long walk back to the car.

Gina kicked a lamp post and flinched. ‘You okay, guv.’

‘No, I’m not. Erin didn’t stand a chance in life.’ Traffic zoomed past, horns beeped as drivers took liberties, not waiting their turn. This wasn’t one of her favourite places to be in rush hour and today wasn’t one of her best either. ‘I wonder if she was on drugs when she left the household or if

she started using when she began life on the streets. I somehow think we’re not going to get any more from Miss Holden. I don’t think she’s capable of giving us anything further. On another note, I called Christina’s friend. The one Mrs Dawson told us about. Her family are back from their camping trip late tonight. I’ll call her parents later, see if they can come in first thing to speak to us. I know we have found Westley Young but you never know, she may be able to give us a bit more of an insight into Christina’s life.’

Gina’s heart rate picked up. Dare she hope that Christina would turn up safe and sound? They’d identified their two dead girls and neither were Christina. Her mind wandered back to the Norths. Mrs Dawson mentioned a couple, a well- turned-out couple. She needed to get home and get the laptop on, check out the updates.