Chapter 24: Chapter 24

SIXTY

Julia paced back and forth across the kitchen floor and flinched as the door slammed.

‘What is it, what’s happened?’ Roy asked as he placed his arms around her.

‘I know something happened between you and Christina and I want to know what. I search for her, I talk about her and I think about her all day, every day. You… you just get on with life like it’s perfect. She wouldn’t just leave the way she did and, as it happens, I don’t trust you. What did you do or say to her? She wouldn’t do this to me, she just wouldn’t.’ She sobbed into her hands as she pushed him away.

‘Why do you always blame me? She was the one who started all the rows in the house, not me.’

She coughed and spluttered as her nose began to fill. ‘And you didn’t help. Did you know she was being picked on at school? No. You never asked or cared. I know she acted out but she needed our support and I failed by listening to you all the time.’

He kicked the chair as he headed into the dining area. ‘I could never do anything right. She hated me.’

‘You made her hate you, always on at her. She was a child and you were the adult.’ She walked over to him as she wiped her face with the back of her hand. ‘What did you say?’ She pushed him. He held his hands up and looked away. ‘What did you say? Why did she run away? Tell me,’ she yelled as she brought her open hand back and slapped him across the face.

He grabbed both of her hands, pushed her back against the worktop and stared into her eyes, his face reddening. ‘You really want to know?’

She nodded as she expelled a loud cry.

‘I told her the truth, that she was a spoiled little cow and that she was making us miserable. I told her the best thing that could happen was for her to get out of our lives and I didn’t mince my words. That girl made my life a misery with all that she put us through. I thought if she left, we could be happy and live in peace. I thought she’d plan to move in with a friend after her exams and get a job, not run away with some stranger.’

She fought against his strength, wanting to hit and punch him but he had her hands pinned to the worktop. She writhed and wriggled until she ran out of steam. ‘I want you out of my house. Get out.’

He let go, allowing her to slump to the floor in floods of tears.

‘No problem. Just remember one thing, you let her come between us. You were too soft on her. All this is your fault.’

‘How dare you. Just get out of my house. I never want to see you again. Ever. I hate you.’ As she sobbed, she heard the front door slam and his engine revving as he sped down the street. Knowing her daughter had been driven out of her home

by the man she thought she loved was too much to bear. She needed to find her, tell her she loved her and wanted her to come home.

SIXTY-ONE

‘I said eat. Come on, just a little bit,’ he yelled at Jackie. Miley listened to the sounds emanating through the walls. Jackie began choking on whatever he was feeding her. The sound of a plate slamming on the chest of drawers made her flinch. ‘I said I’d get the best for you and I let you down.’ He cried as the woman wheezed and then gasped for breath. Jackie was okay, this time. Even Miley knew that Jackie could only take in little amounts on a spoon and quite often struggled to swallow. ‘I’m so sorry, my love. Why did this have to happen to us? Why?’

Miley lay on the floor. As she listened to the chaos unfolding outside her locked door, she had a vision of her mother standing against their front door refusing to let her out. She remembered the names she’d called her as she stormed back up to her bedroom. She only hoped that one day she’d get the opportunity to apologise and go back home. She remembered the last words her mum’s boyfriend had said to her. Did her mum still love her? ‘Can I go home?’ she whispered. She didn’t have the strength to yell.

She smiled as she thought of her grandma and grandad. Maybe she could go and live with them. Grandma Emilia, whom she was partly named after. It seemed silly to shorten it to Miley the more she thought of it, but she had been a fan of

Miley Cyrus since watching re-runs of the Hannah Montana

series. She had so wanted to become Hannah Montana.

When she was about nine, her grandparents had taken her to a farm in Evesham to pick strawberries. She ate most of what they’d picked as they walked around and her grandma had turned and said, ‘Christina Emilia Dawson, what a mess you are!’ Just after, Grandma licked her embroidered hankie and began to wipe the stain, only making it worse. Miley began to weep as she thought of all the lip she’d given her lovely grandma and grandad. They were always so kind and loving towards her, but she’d pushed them away too. She wanted to go to Grandma’s and go strawberry picking again. She wanted to hear her grandma call her Christina Emilia again.

A wave of nausea swept through her. She wiped the sweat from her brow. ‘I need my medicine,’ she tried to yell. There was a bash on her bedroom door as he passed and went down the stairs. ‘Please,’ she called. Yelling as a cramp doubled her up, she began to shake so uncontrollably she smashed her frail wrist on the corner of the wardrobe.

He’d refused to give her the medicine she needed. He’d locked her in her room to die. ‘You’re killing me,’ Miley cried.

She lay there, thinking she might not even survive the day let alone escape her living hell. The crawling sensation under her skin returned. A little beetle emerged from the gap in the skirting board. ‘Hello,’ she said as she began to claw at her flesh, rolling on the floor in her damp clothes. Her heart pumped so fast she thought it would suddenly stop, become all used up. She had once thought that every person was born with a specific number of heartbeats. She didn’t know if it were true or not but if it were, she was fast running out of

beats. She closed her eyes and imagined her heart was a ticking clock, getting faster and faster. She gasped for breath as her muscles went into a spasm. It was happening, her end was near.

She opened her mouth to speak and the moth flew in. The moth was back and it was choking her. As she caught sight of the sun-drenched window, the moths emerged through the vent, filling the room, entangling their wings in her hair, rubbing their tiny scales onto her body, scuffing her skin. She coughed and spluttered, trying hard to shift whatever was choking her. The moths were everywhere. She knew they couldn’t be real but they looked and felt real. Her fear was real. Her itchy raw skin was real but her eyes were deceiving her.

SIXTY-TWO

Gina sprinted across the car park, watching as they wheeled their mystery woman into the accident and emergency ward. Smith pulled up behind the ambulance and caught up. As she turned to enter through the main hospital entrance, she almost bumped into a girl with a dressing on her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said as she stepped past and walked through the main door. A woman sitting by the reception desk glanced up. ‘DI Harte, I’m looking for an Elisa Stanford, brought in yesterday.’

‘She’s my daughter,’ the woman said. ‘We’re just waiting for the discharge papers.’ The woman stood up from the plastic seat and threw her empty styrofoam cup into the overflowing bin.

‘Would it be okay if I spoke to her? I know she’s had a tough night but it’s important that we find whoever chased her in the woods.’

‘Bastard, I hope you catch him quick. She was so upset when I arrived. After a tough night, she’s calmed down a lot now. She’s just outside, said she hated the hospital smell. It was making her nauseous so I told her to wait out there while I got her papers.’

‘Mrs Stanford—’ ‘Gillian, please.’

‘Gillian, shall we go outside to speak, if that’s where Elisa’s comfortable?’

The woman nodded. Gina followed her out, into the sunshine. She caught sight of the shimmering horizon over the houses in the distance. The girl she’d almost bumped into was staring at the ambulance across the path. ‘This is Elisa.’

The tiny girl only looked about thirteen but Gina knew from her notes that she was actually seventeen. Her petite features made her seem even more delicate than the dressing to her head did. ‘I’m DI Harte. Sorry for nearly bumping into you a moment ago. Are you okay to talk about what happened yesterday?’

The girl nodded and sat on a bench beside the sliding door. Every time Gina took a step back, the door opened. She stepped into the sunshine, away from the annoying sensor, and grabbed her notebook.

‘My mum messaged me to say she’d be late so I messaged back to say I’d walk home. I wanted to get back so I could get ready to go out with Ethan—’

‘Ethan is Elisa’s boyfriend. I don’t approve when he races off our drive in his souped-up car. I do worry.’ Gillian Stanford pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag and lit one up. Gina remembered having the same worries when one of Hannah’s first boyfriends passed his driving test and whizzed off their drive.

‘I understand. Could you please tell me what happened next? You started walking home?’

‘Yes. I was listening to my music and I didn’t hear him pull up. It was just before I reached the woodland. As soon as I spotted the car, a silver Mercedes, I got scared. I’d heard

something on the news about a girl being found in a shallow grave in the woods and I ran.’

‘Did you recognise this person?’

‘Yes, he’d come into the shop before and creeped me out. He was just walking around, not really looking at what was on the shelves. He asked me if I worked there alone. I just wanted him to leave. I was working alone in the shop but one of my employers was upstairs. I remember hearing the printer chugging above. It wasn’t the first time the man had come to the shop. I spotted his car on the drive a couple of days before. Do you think he’d been watching me?’

‘We’re not sure yet, that’s what we’re trying to find out.

Did he buy anything?’

‘He bought a few jars of honey. He overpaid too and didn’t want his change. Really odd. He looked me over before leaving. Creep.’

Gina almost gasped. Her mind flashed back to the photos that Wyre had shown her, from the Norths’ house. The jars on the side were jars of honey. They had been so easy to spot as the rest of the house had been uncluttered. Along with the description that Elisa had given them, she was now even more certain that the man who had chased her was Stan North. ‘So you ran, what happened next?’

‘I almost reached the scary house, the one near where the girl was found buried. We all think it’s scary anyway as the old woman was found dead there not long ago. Everyone says she had been left there ages and was all scabby and mouldy. They say that her ghost wanders the grounds, looking for souls to devour. I know it’s just a scare thing but it still freaks me out. When it first happened we used to go up there and dare each other to stand in the garden alone and try to conjure her spirit.’

Gillian Stanford pulled a grimacing face as she sucked on her cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘Elisa!’

‘Sorry, Mum, we were just mucking about.’

‘You were running and—’ Gina wanted to bring the girl back on track. For someone who looked so poorly, she could talk and Gina wanted to hear what she had to say.

‘He kept telling me to stop. There was no way I was stopping in the middle of the woods so that he could rape or kill me. I saw the house and the police tape.’ She paused in thought. ‘I lost concentration and was wearing those stupid flat dolly shoes. They’re no good for running in. I lost my footing and went flying into a tree trunk or something, hitting my head. I blacked out for a while, possibly only a couple of minutes. When I came round, he was gone. Another man was calling me and said his name was Bryn.’

Gina recalled that Bryn Tilly had gone over to the property and found the girl. It was at least forty-five minutes after Elisa finished work. Gina had seen the call logs. Maybe Elisa had been unconscious for longer than she’d thought as there had been at least a twenty-minute time gap that hadn’t been accounted for.

‘I heard him calling an ambulance too. I called Mum from his van. Then he took me to the hospital, my mum met me here and that was it.’

‘You’ve been really helpful, Elisa. Thank you for speaking with me. Here’s my number if you remember anything else.’ As Gina handed her card to Gillian Stanford, the receptionist came out with Elisa’s discharge papers.

‘Thank you.’ Gillian stubbed her cigarette out on the wall, took the papers and placed them in her bag. ‘Right, home we

go and it’s straight to bed for you, young lady.’

Elisa smiled as her mum placed an arm around her, obviously enjoying the loving attention she was receiving after her injury. ‘Can I just see if Mrs Hanley is okay?’

‘We’re not dropping by the farm shop today, sweetie. You’re just going to have to call in and tell them you’re not well enough to work for a couple of days.’

‘No. You’re not getting me, Mum. I just saw her being wheeled into A & E. Something’s happened to her. I wondered if she was okay.’

‘When did you see her?’ Gina asked, her heart drumming away.

‘Just as you bumped into me. The woman that was being wheeled out of the ambulance. That’s Mrs Hanley, my manager at the Taste of Nature farm shop. I just hoped she was okay and wondered if Mr Hanley knew as he wasn’t with her.’

‘You’ve been really helpful, Elisa. Take care. You’ll be hearing from us soon,’ Gina said as she hurried across the car park, phone in hand. Their mystery woman had been identified and Gina knew where she worked. O’Connor answered her call. ‘Find out all you can on Mrs Hanley, the one who runs or owns the Taste of Nature farm shop. Our mystery woman is only Mrs Hanley.’

‘I was just about to call you too. A car registered to a Mrs Hanley was ticketed in Cleevesford. She’d parked in a resident’s only space. It has been there since the drug bust. I’m on it now.’

‘Any news on Stan North?’

‘Nothing. He’s completely off radar. He hasn’t made any phone calls or been home. His car hasn’t shown up anywhere

and Mrs North is still calling every five minutes. She’s doing our heads in with her whiney voice and patronising tone. She called me an incompetent muppet.’

‘She sounds a handful. I’ll be back in five. Gather in the incident room, I’m leaving the hospital now. Call everyone in.’ As she ended the call, she noticed a missed call from Bernard. He’d only call if he had forensics results.

SIXTY-THREE

Flinging her bag to the floor, Gina hurried to the boards at the one end of the room. Sunlight filled the room. Gina pulled the blind across, blocking out the sun and heat. The fan whirred behind her, wafting the musty smell around.

‘As you probably all know, we have identified the mystery woman as Mrs Hanley, co-owner of the Taste of Nature farm shop. On the way back, Bernard called. We also have a match on the hair that was found on Erin Holden’s clothing. As well as Mrs Hanley’s prints being found on something connected to Erin, we now know that the hair found on Erin also belongs to our Mrs Hanley. I called Smith. Last he heard, she was receiving treatment and our Doctor Nowak had pushed him out of the room. Let’s just hope she doesn’t have a heart attack and peg it. In the meantime, we need to make a plan of action. What did you find out about Mrs Hanley, O’Connor? Wyre?’

Wyre draped a stray hair behind her ear and O’Connor tapped his foot on the floor as he flicked through the pages of his note-filled pad before speaking. ‘She co-owns the shop with her husband. They were easy to find, their house is about a ten-minute walk down the road from their shop. Clover Farm, it’s called. It hasn’t been a working farm for over forty years. Their full names are William and Jaqueline Hanley.

William is fifty-nine, Jaqueline is sixty-two. There was something else—’

‘Spill it out,’ Gina replied.

‘Jaqueline Hanley has late stage Huntington’s disease and from what the doctor at Cleevesford Surgery said, she can’t communicate any more and is totally incontinent. He didn’t recognise the photo of our mystery woman that I emailed over. Shall I go back to calling her the mystery woman?’

‘This is all we need. Didn’t we say that traces of blood and faeces were found on Erin’s clothing and that they didn’t belong to Erin?’

They all glanced over at the board. ‘Yes, guv,’ Wyre replied.

‘What if the bodily secretions belonged to the real Mrs Hanley? Who is this woman and why is she purporting to be Mrs Hanley?’ Gina began to pace in front of the board. ‘We need to get a warrant for that house. Wyre, make it so. We still have a missing girl, Christina Dawson.’

‘I’ll do it now.’ Wyre swivelled her chair to the side and slid across the floor to her computer.

Briggs entered, holding a takeaway coffee. ‘Any updates?’

‘It’s all happening, sir. I think we’re onto something and it’s all leading back to Mrs Hanley and Stan North. We need a search warrant. As soon as we have it, I’m sure we’ll have the answers.’

‘There’s another thing, guv,’ Wyre said as she did a half turn in her chair, her ponytail slapping her shoulder.

‘Go on.’

‘If you look at the map and all the points I pinned.’ Everyone’s gaze was on the map.

Gina walked over and pinned Clover Farm and the Taste of Nature farm shop. ‘I see. Erin could have come from Clover Farm, run across this field, alongside the brook, over the style, through this gate that leads to the pull in parking place, which is just a short drive from the garage. Darren Mason said he stopped at multiple places and this was one of them. It would have been hard for her considering what a state she was in but she did it. Let’s run this through. She’d have got into the van while he was arguing with his partner, Callum Besford. Darren also said that the van may not have been locked. She simply opened the back door to the Transit van, climbed in and waited for him to drive off. She must have been scared to death, hoping to get as far away as possible. He drove for a while. Maybe she was clinging to the back door of the van and the door flew open at a bend, which is why she may have fallen out. Who was she running from? And what has the fake Mrs Hanley got to do with all this?

‘I’m grabbing a quick drink and I want all the paperwork in order to go to the farm and the shop. Get back-up units on standby. I want you all ready to go and storm the place but we must tread carefully.’ She paused. ‘Erin wanted us to help someone. We don’t want to put her at risk by storming in too hard.’ Gina stomped over to her bag, popped a paracetamol into her hands and swallowed it down with Wyre’s glass of water. Her head was beginning to throb as more information filled it. ‘Were the others taken to replace Simone? Why? Erin was found in dirty clothes, not all secretions her own. Julia Dawson said the girl she’d spoken to on the streets had been approached about a job, the same job that Erin and Christina

had left the streets of Birmingham to do. What was that job? Care work, domestic work?’

‘Domestic slavery, guv?’ Wyre said.

Gina grabbed a marker pen and wrote domestic slavery on the board and stabbed a full stop at the end before flinging the pen onto the table. ‘Yes! The heroin is used to control them. They don’t necessarily always need to be careful about locking the doors, at least they might not have thought so, until Erin ran away. William Hanley has a wife who, from the sound of it, needs round the clock care. She’d need feeding, toileting, and washing, everything that she can’t do herself any more. Is our mystery woman his live-in lover, taking Jaqueline Hanley’s place? Maybe they just couldn’t cope any more.’

‘Where does North fit in with all this?’ Wyre asked.

Gina paced back and forth. Her heart rate began to pick up. Excitement or anxiety? She couldn’t be sure. She began to breathe in and out, trying to intercept a potential anxiety attack before it forced her to leave the room. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think. Damn it.’ She balled a fist and slammed it on the windowsill, her hand shaking.

‘Guv?’ Wyre said as she stood.

Gina exhaled and wiped her brow. ‘However hard I try, I can’t think how North fits into this, I just know he does. I want to know what he’s hiding. If he wasn’t hiding anything, he wouldn’t have absconded the way he did. I’m missing something. We’re all missing something.’

Jacob stood and left the room to take a call. They all awaited his return. ‘Stan North’s car was spotted by a mobile camera unit on the carriageway that runs from Alcester to

Stratford-upon-Avon, the A46. He’s been pulled over and they’re bringing him in as we speak.’

‘Yes,’ Gina said as she punched the air and swallowed. She turned, took a final deep breath and discretely checked her pulse. It was normal. Everything was fine. She was fine – wasn’t she?

Briggs flung his cup in the bin as he finished his coffee. ‘Good job team. Let’s hope our theories are right.’ Gina looked across and caught his eye. He smiled as he left the room.

‘Be ready. As soon as the warrant is granted, we have to leave. I’m heading off to the interview room to wait for Stan North’s arrival. We’re going to nail him, and when we do, we’re going to find out once and for all what he’s been hiding.’