The Girl Who Came Back (22 page)

Johnson was shaking his head. ‘A check was run on both girls as soon as your call came in, nothing on either.’

Kian rejoined them. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, handing Jules back her phone.

‘Fuck all as far as I can tell,’ Danny snarled.

‘How’s Joe?’ Jules wanted to know.

‘Worried. He wants to come over, but I told him to stay put for now, at least until we know she’s missed the flight.’

Unable to let herself even think of it, Jules watched Barry Britten punch in the code to close the gates. ‘You can’t stop looking for her,’ she begged him, ‘please, she has to be somewhere and we need to find her.’

It was just before eight the next morning, following the worst night of Kian’s and Jules’s lives, that they saw acting DC Leo Johnson arrive at the pub. PC Barry Britten was with him, but remained in the car while Johnson went into the bar where he found at least two dozen people, who’d clearly been there all night, waiting for news. After acknowledging them, but not engaging with their hostility, he followed Kian and Jules upstairs to the flat.

‘I’m presuming,’ he began a little hesitantly when they were in the kitchen, ‘that you haven’t heard anything overnight?’

Kian’s eyes were glassy with fatigue, his jaw tight with stress. ‘If we had we’d have let you know,’ he responded tersely.

‘No, we haven’t,’ Jules said more gently. If he was the best they could get on their side, he was certainly better than no one.

‘So are you going to continue the search today,’ Kian demanded, ‘or is she still not important enough to be considered at risk?’

‘We should be on our way to Heathrow by now,’ Jules added brokenly. For Daisy not to have come back in time for the flight meant there was no evading the fact that something was seriously wrong.

Johnson’s eyes were full of pity as he said, ‘Have you checked to see if her passport is still here?’

Jules looked away as she nodded. ‘Yes, it’s still here,’ she mumbled. This felt like the worst imaginable nightmare, one she desperately needed to wake up from if only she knew how.

‘I don’t want you to think nothing is being done,’ Johnson continued kindly. ‘Barry, the PC you met last night, and I are hoping to go back to the Quentins’ house at some point today to carry out a more thorough search, and Amelia’s car registration number has been circulated throughout the Dean Valley force.’

‘And if she’s taken Daisy out of the area?’ Kian prompted, checking his mobile as it rang. His eyes went to Jules as, with a brief shake of his head, he clicked on. ‘Dougie, what can I do for you?’ he said abruptly.

Dougie? The mayor?

As Kian listened he put a hand to his head, and for one awful moment Jules thought he was going to cry. ‘That’s great, thanks mate,’ he managed in the end. ‘We really appreciate it. Yeah, Jules is here, I’ll tell her.’

After ringing off he said, ‘He got the call about Daisy an hour ago … He’s working on getting us all the police cooperation we need …’ As his voice fractured to nothing Jules put her hands over her face.

‘This is good news,’ Johnson said quietly. ‘With the right sort of manpower and resources it shouldn’t take us long to find her.’

He was almost at the door before Jules remembered to thank him. ‘Did you call the mayor?’ she asked.

He coloured slightly. ‘Not personally, but I spoke to someone who has his direct number. He’s a good bloke, I was hoping he’d make a difference.’

Jules’s mind wasn’t working properly; she couldn’t think what to say when she was once again trying to process the fact that this was about Daisy and the fact that
she hadn’t come home all night
.

‘You should have a family liaison officer soon,’ Johnson told them, ‘and you should prepare for more questions …’

‘Not from the bloke who was here last night,’ Kian protested. ‘I don’t want him here again.’

‘Field’s a good detective,’ Johnson assured him, ‘just a bit jaded now he’s coming to the end.’

‘Then let him go and be jaded with somebody else,’ Jules retorted. ‘We want someone who actually believes there’s a problem, who cares about finding my daughter …’

‘We all care about that,’ Johnson promised, turning as Barry Britten came into the room.

‘I’m the FLO,’ Britten told him. ‘Field’s outside in his car waiting for you to go with him to the Quentins’ place.’ To Jules and Kian he said, ‘From now on it’s my job to keep you informed of everything that’s happening, but I need to bring myself up to speed with what’s going on at the station. Give me five minutes and I’ll know more.’

As both officers left Kian turned away, pushing a hand roughly through his hair. Jules watched him absently while listening to the voices downstairs. She should go and tell the others that they had police support now, that they weren’t being left to their own devices after all. She didn’t move. It was as though a giant hole was opening up inside her. It was making her feel sick. They were turning into one of the families they saw on the news, the parents who spoke to their children’s abductors through the media, begging them not to harm them and let them come home. She didn’t want this to be happening. She had to make it go away and bring their world back to normal.

‘Marco rustled you up some breakfast,’ Aileen announced, carrying in a tray of eggs and bacon. ‘You need to keep up your strength.’

Kian didn’t turn around; Jules simply looked at it as though she had no idea what it was.

After making fresh coffee and preparing another tray for Marsha, Aileen said, ‘I’ll go and see to your mother. She’s probably awake by now.’

Jules tried to think about her mother, what she needed, how she might be this morning, but she couldn’t get her thoughts to make any sense. She said to Kian, ‘We should go and look for her ourselves.’

Taking out his phone he started to dial.

‘Who are you calling?’

‘Quentin. No way should he be allowed to carry on sitting there in Italy while his daughter’s playing God only knows what kind of games with Daisy … Anton, it’s Kian Bright. There’s still no sign of them and we’re worried out of …’ As Quentin broke in Jules watched Kian’s face turning white. Suddenly he shouted, ‘You can’t be fucking serious. Of course I gave the police your number … I don’t give a fuck what it’s … No, you listen to me, you supercilious bastard, your daughter tricked mine into going to meet her … Yes, that
is
what happened. I was here, I saw the text. She said she’d found her mother …’

Jules snatched the phone. ‘Does Amelia know her mother’s dead?’ she shouted down the line.

‘Of course she knows,’ Quentin snapped back, ‘which is why it’s nonsense for her to have said she’d found her.’

‘Well that
is
what she said, I saw the text myself, so what the hell is going on,
Mr
Quentin?’

‘How the hell am I supposed to know when I’m here and they’re there …’

‘Except they’re
not here
,’ Jules raged. ‘Amelia’s taken Daisy off somewhere and we need to know where that might be.’

‘As far as I’m aware the police are looking, so what more do you think I can do?’

‘Have you given the police the addresses of your other properties?’

‘Not yet, but I will when they ask.’

‘We need to know now,’ she barked, rummaging for a pen.

‘I’m afraid it’s not convenient right now. We’re about to go out for the day,’ and the line went dead.

Jules stared at the phone, dumbfounded. Had that really just happened? Had he truly treated her like some irritating mosquito he was trying to bat out of the way when he knew how distressed she was? ‘He hung up on me,’ she told Kian. ‘That bastard just told me he was going out for the day …’

As Barry Britten returned, Kian said, ‘You need to speak to Anton Quentin, get the addresses of his other properties …’

‘Don’t worry, it’ll be done,’ Britten assured them.

‘But when?’ Jules cried furiously. ‘You should already have that information, and that monster of a man should be made to come back here … Jesus Christ, this is a shambles. Just because she’s seventeen doesn’t mean she’s any less vulnerable … She’s just a child, my child, my baby …’ As she started to break down Kian pulled her into his arms.

‘We’ve got to try and stop making things worse for ourselves,’ he said gently. ‘I know it’s hard, but there could still be a reasonable explanation …’

Jules pushed him away. ‘Then give me one,’ she challenged hysterically. ‘Tell me something, anything, that even begins to make sense …’

‘We’re exploring a number of possibilities,’ Britten interrupted, ‘and there really isn’t any reason to start looking on the black side yet.’

‘Yet?’ she echoed wildly. ‘So when do we actually start? What is it precisely that triggers the black side, if taking my daughter under false pretences isn’t enough?’

From the door Aileen said, ‘I’m sorry, Jules, but you need to keep your voice down. Your mother can hear and she thinks someone’s here to harm her.’

Turning away, Jules closed her eyes as she tried to force down the raging swirl of emotions. She longed to go to her mother, not to calm her, but to shake her back to her normal self so she could seek comfort and reassurance, hear her say everything would be all right, because she was going to make it so. She didn’t understand what was happening to the people she loved. Where were they? Who was taking them away? Her mother couldn’t come back, but Daisy could, and would … It was just going to take time and patience … She needed to trust the police, to remind herself that they dealt with cases like this all the time. But how could she believe in them when the detective leading the search had practically accused Kian of being involved in the disappearance?

There were so many prejudices, mistakes, delays, and all the time Daisy was being held somewhere by Amelia who was very probably not right in the head …

It was around lunchtime when the mayor himself arrived to check on progress. The pub was closed, the bar staff were outside turning people away, though of course they let Dougie through, while the kitchen staff rustled up coffee and food for the family and friends who were still there. It largely went untouched.

As Kian talked to the mayor Jules wandered back upstairs, avoiding Daisy’s room where a forensic team was going through everything. She didn’t look out of the windows, either, to where a dozen or more officers and several of Daisy’s friends were combing the beach. Heaven only knew what they were looking for, when everyone knew that she’d gone to Amelia’s and hadn’t come back.

They’d been told to expect further questioning, but it hadn’t happened yet. She might actually welcome retelling what she knew in case she’d somehow missed a vital piece of information, though she dreaded how it was going to be for Kian. Would they try once again to twist things around to make him look, feel, even behave, as though he had something to hide? No one who knew him would ever suspect him of trying to harm his daughter, but DS Alan Field didn’t know him, nor did DS Alan Field care how devastating his questions and insinuations might be in his quest to get this inconvenient
misper
as he no doubt called a missing person, out of the way before his retirement.

Kian would be seen as collateral damage.

Unless Daisy turned up right now, unharmed, unafraid, and bursting to tell the craziest story of what had gone wrong, where they’d been, why it hadn’t been possible to get in touch.

Joe came through on her FaceTime as the forensic team was leaving.

For one irrational moment Jules allowed herself to think that he was going to tell her that Daisy had got the flight after all.

‘I’m sorry, there’s still no news,’ she had to confess. ‘The police are taking it more seriously now, or so we’re told, but I’m not sure exactly what that means.’

‘I need to be there,’ he said gruffly. His dark, velvety eyes looked sore and scared, his complexion the palest she’d ever seen it.

‘Just wait a while,’ she cautioned. ‘She could turn up at any minute and if she does everything will go back to normal and we’ll get her on the next flight.’

‘I guess no one’s heard from Amelia?’ he ventured.

‘Not that I’m aware of. Her father was very difficult with me earlier …’

‘Do you think he knows where they are?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I’m sure the police have spoken to him by now, so if he does …’ She was losing track of her thoughts.

‘You look beat,’ he told her. ‘How’s Kian holding up?’

‘We’re OK, but we’ll be glad when it’s all resolved and we can put it behind us.’

‘Sure. I’ll second that. I’m going crazy here. I just don’t get what’s happening.’

‘None of us do.’ She turned away from the camera. ‘I think someone’s just arrived downstairs. I should go and see who it is.’

‘Let me know if it’s her, won’t you?’

‘Of course. If it is, I’ll get her to ring you herself.’

It wasn’t Daisy. It was a detective by the name of Hassan Ansari who asked to speak to Kian alone.

When the interview was over Kian came to find Jules in the kitchen. ‘He took my phone,’ he said shakily. ‘He questioned me about the call I made to Daisy yesterday afternoon when I asked if she wanted a lift home. He wanted to know where I thought she was when she answered. I said I assumed she was at Amelia’s, where I’d dropped her, but I had no way of knowing that for certain. So he asked if I was sure that was all we discussed?’ He looked so dazed that Jules could tell he was losing all sense of reality.

‘Did they say why they wanted your phone?’ she prompted gently.

He looked at her blankly, then said, ‘I should have asked. I didn’t think … Maybe they’ll be able to trace where she was when she took the call … Can they do that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

This was tying them up in so many knots, tearing them apart in ways they could find very hard to repair if it didn’t stop soon.

At the sound of someone climbing the stairs they stopped talking, and watched Danny come into the kitchen.

‘Stephie and her parents have just turned up,’ he told them. ‘Apparently Dean hasn’t been home all night either.’

As a jolt of confusion hit her, Jules turned to Kian.