by M A Comley
Lorne left the incident room and walked the length of the hallway to the DCI’s office.
DCI Roberts’s PA nodded and smiled when Lorne entered the room. “Go straight in, Inspector. He’s expecting you.”
“Sounds ominous. Any hint of what’s going on, Trisha?” she asked, her stomach clenching into a tight knot.
“No idea. Sorry.”
Lorne inhaled a large breath and let it out slowly before she knocked on her boss’s door. His gruff tone beckoned her into his inner sanctum. His expression concerned her. It was rare to see him so angry. She faltered a little before approaching his desk.
“Sit down,” he ordered without making eye contact.
“Is something wrong, Sean?” She winced over forgetting her place and using his first name instead of his title. Although they were old friends, she chastised herself for being overly familiar with him.
His gaze finally met hers once she was seated. He pushed a family photo across the table towards her. “My dearest friends, Warren and Nerys Lansbury, and their daughter, Emma.”
Lorne delved deep into her memory but failed to recollect the names. “I don’t remember them. Sorry. What’s wrong?”
He sighed and raised his eyes up to the ceiling, not out of annoyance, more as if he were searching for the right words to say next. “Emma went missing yesterday.”
“Went missing? Can you give me more than that, Sean?”
“Not really. I’ve promised Warren and Nerys that I would put you on the case, as you’re my best officer. Don’t let me down.”
“Whoa! Really, my team is a murder investigation team, not a missing persons team, boss.”
“I’m well aware of that, Inspector,” he retorted sharply. “Do you have any open cases on your desk at present?”
“No. But I have a mound of paperwork vying for my attention that I need to get a handle on before it overwhelms me. I was planning on getting stuck into that this week.”
“Another week won’t make the slightest bit of difference, Lorne.” He jabbed his finger on the picture. “I want Emma found ASAP. You and I know what type of bloody maniacs are walking the streets of London. I’m determined not to let her wind up dead on our patch. She’s a good kid. The whole family are devout Christians, and they don’t deserve this.”
“With respect, sir, no one deserves a family member to go missing.”
“Granted. You don’t get it, Lorne. Emma is a caring citizen. She volunteers at a shelter for the homeless in her spare time. She’s a kind soul, and the thought of someone abducting her is blowing my frigging mind.”
“Abducting her? Why couldn’t she have just gone missing, Sean? What makes you think she’s been abducted? If she only went missing yesterday, perhaps she went out with friends.” Lorne studied the girl in the photo. “What is she? Eighteen?”
His lips moved from side to side as if he were chewing the inside of his mouth. “She’s a reliable kid, Inspector, who rings her parents with every step she makes. I’m using my detective skills, which I know you don’t think are up to much these days, but I suspect something bad has happened to her. Now, will you do me the honour of taking on the case or not?”
“Of course I will. It goes without saying if you’re that worried about her. I didn’t mean to appear rude. What else do you know?”
“I’d rather you dropped over to see Warren and Nerys and get the facts from them, if it’s all the same.”
“If you give me their address, I’ll go and see them first thing. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Sean. She probably went out to a party and forgot to tell her parents, that’s all.”
Sean Roberts shook his head emphatically. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Lorne. She’s one of the good girls in this world. I know they’re few and far between these days. I’m scared for Emma. This is totally out of character for her. I’m also aware that we should wait twenty-four hours before starting the investigation, but I just think time is wasting. The sooner the hunt begins for whoever has abducted her, the better. Humour me.”
“Okay, Katy and I will nip over to see the parents and get the lowdown on things now.” He slid a piece of paper across the desk with the parents’ address written on. She left her chair and walked towards the door. Looking back, she told him, “Don’t worry, Sean. If Emma is out there, we’ll find her.”
“Pull out all the stops on this one, Lorne. I’m begging you. Don’t let her become a statistic.”
“I’ll do my very best.”
She marched back to the incident room, deep in thought, wondering if she had been a little too harsh on Sean. After all, without his input into a similar situation involving Charlie, all those years ago, she doubted Charlie would even be alive today. She owed him.
Lorne clapped to gain the team’s attention as soon as she entered the room. “DCI Roberts has asked a favour of me. Hear me out, guys, before you start telling me we shouldn’t be dealing with such a case.”
“Sounds ominous,” Katy muttered.
Lorne perched her backside on the desk nearest to her partner. “He’s asked us to look into a missing persons case. The teenage daughter of his best friends has gone missing. She’s eighteen.”
“Okay, I can understand why he would want us to look into this for him, but eighteen? We’re all aware of what teenagers get up to, aren’t we? When did she go missing?” Katy asked.
Lorne nodded. “You’re not saying anything that I haven’t said myself, Katy. I promise you. Emma Lansbury went missing less than twenty-four hours ago, which raised another niggling doubt with me. However, DCI Roberts assures me that Emma just isn’t the type of girl to go missing without letting someone in her family know where she is. Right, that’s all I know about the case for now. I’ve said that we’ll visit the parents first thing this morning to gather all the facts. Karen, I’d like you to delve into the family’s background for me. Roberts told me that Emma volunteers at a shelter, handing out meals to the homeless, and that’s all I really know about her for now. We’ll know more once we’ve spoken to the parents.”
“I’ll do the usual searches in the meantime, boss,” Karen replied.
Lorne turned to Graham and Patrick Bennett, the new recruit who had been with them for a few weeks. At twenty-three, Patrick was already proving to be an asset to the team and demonstrating that he had an old head on young shoulders.
“Can you two concentrate on clearing the paperwork on the ongoing cases today? The more we can do there, the better our lives will be in the long run.”
“Will do, boss,” Graham said.
Pat nodded his agreement and immediately opened a file on the edge of his desk.
“Okay, if you’re ready then, Katy, we should head off.”
Lorne walked into her office, pulled on her heavy woollen coat and tied a scarf around her neck. She was feeling the cold now as she was getting older and had been sneezing a fair bit in the last few days. She was determined not to spend Christmas day in bed with the flu.
Katy was wrapped up in her heavy coat too and standing by the door when Lorne returned to the incident room.
Lorne smiled at her partner. “Let’s do this.”
~ ~ ~
The Lansburys’ home was in a quiet residential tree-lined street in Hatch End. Lorne surveyed the area briefly before she and Katy left the vehicle. “It seems a quiet area to me. I don’t know around here. Do you?”
Katy shook her head. “No, can’t say I do.”
They exited the vehicle and walked across the road to the detached red-brick house with an integrated garage. Lorne rang the bell and fished out her warrant card from her coat pocket.
A tall man with dark hair that was greying at the sides opened the door wearing a puzzled look. “Hello. You must be DI Warner.”
Lorne smiled and nodded. “I am. Here’s proof of my ID. This is my partner, DS Katy Foster. You must be Mr. Lansbury.”
“That’s right. Please, call me Warren. Come through to the kitchen.
My wife is out there trying her best to keep occupied.”
They followed him through the narrow hallway to a large open-plan kitchen-diner extension at the rear. A woman in her late forties was standing at the centre island, rolling out pastry.
“Nerys, these are DI Warner and DS Foster. Can you leave that?” Mr. Lansbury stood beside his wife and placed a hand on her arm.
She looked up at him, her eyes seeking answers to dozens of questions.
Lorne’s heart went out to the woman, who seemed lost even though she was in familiar surroundings. “Hello, Mrs. Lansbury. If it’s not too much trouble, we’d like to ask you both a few questions about your daughter. It shouldn’t take long. Will your pastry survive that long?”
Nerys looked around her, picked up a tea towel lying on the counter and placed it under the tap. She turned on the tap then wrung the excess water from the material and placed it over the pastry she was working on to prevent it from drying out. Then she walked over to the small seating area close to the picture window overlooking the garden and invited Lorne and Katy to sit down. Her husband sat next to her on the leather sofa.
Lorne cleared her throat. “I know how difficult this must be for both of you, but if you wouldn’t mind telling us what happened yesterday and why you think your daughter has gone missing, I’d appreciate it.”
Warren Lansbury gripped his wife’s hand before he spoke. “We received a call from Jack, Emma’s boyfriend, around one thirty. He was supposed to pick her up at one fifteen, but when he rang the doorbell, there was no answer. He called Nerys to see if she had seen or heard from Emma. My wife rang me at the office to ask if Emma had made contact at all, but she hadn’t. Our daughter tells us where she is virtually every second of the day, Inspector. There is no way on earth she would let Jack down if she had arranged to go out with him. She’d taken the afternoon off work at the library. Why would she do that if she had no intention of going out to lunch with Jack? She wouldn’t. That’s why I rang Sean Roberts. We’re fearful that something has happened to her.”
“I understand. Does your daughter own a car?” Lorne asked.
“Yes. That’s gone too.”
“Maybe your daughter had an accident on the way home. Have you rung all the nearby hospitals?”
“Yes, we thought of that. Then Nerys went upstairs and found the shower had been used recently and that Emma’s work clothes were strewn across the bed.”
“You’re saying that Emma returned home from work, took a shower and got changed and then drove off again?”
Warren nodded. “Yes, but there was no need for her to do that as Jack had made arrangements with Emma to pick her up.”
“Have you rung her place of work? Maybe she forgot something and drove back to pick it up. Perhaps she left her handbag or her phone behind and rushed back to retrieve it.”
He pointed across the room to the dining table. “No, her phone and handbag are over there. She never goes anywhere without them.”
Lorne and Katy exchanged concerned glances before Katy returned to taking notes in her notebook. “I see. Well, that is puzzling. Has your daughter been worried about anything lately? Anything troubling her at all?”
Warren and Nerys looked at each other and shook their heads before Warren responded, “No, nothing at all. She was extremely happy at work, and her personal life seems content enough. We’re at a loss to know why she should just vanish like this.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this. So, your daughter went to work as usual yesterday morning, I take it?”
“Yes, at the local library. About a ten-minute drive from here. We rang, and her work colleague said that she left on time. We know she returned home. What we don’t know is what happened next. There is no way she would have left the house again without ringing Jack to let him know,” Warren said emphatically.
“Or leave her phone and handbag behind. That’s unheard of for her to do that,” Nerys chimed in, clinging tightly to her husband’s hand.
“We’ll need Jack’s details, so we can get his side of what went on. How long has your daughter been seeing Jack?”
“Over six months. They make a lovely couple. We have no doubts about him at all, Inspector,” Warren said.
“I wasn’t suggesting anything untoward, but we do need to question him.”
Nerys stood, walked over to the dining table and opened a handbag. She extracted a phone and punched in a password before reeling off Jack’s phone number for Katy to jot down. She replaced the phone in the handbag then returned to her seat, where she grabbed her husband’s hand again. “That was my daughter’s phone, and yes, I know her password.” As if emphasising the point of how close the two of them were, she added, “She keeps nothing from us.”
Lorne nodded. “And your daughter works as a volunteer. Is that right?”
“Yes, at the local homeless centre. She works there two to three nights a week, maybe more when someone rings in sick. It’s really busy at this time of the year, as you can imagine. She got into that through the church. Our daughter has always put other people’s needs before her own,” Warren stated, a small smile tugging at his lips.
“Has your daughter mentioned if she’s had any form of confrontation recently either at the library or at the homeless centre?”
“No. Not that we’re aware of. She would have told us if anything was bothering her. She’s a normal teenager… well, perhaps not as normal as some folks would imagine nowadays. She has Christian values, so she doesn’t go out drinking to excess and isn’t into drugs. All she’s guilty of is looking forward to having a relaxing Christmas with her family. And now she’s gone.”
“Can you give me the address of the homeless centre? We’ll need to question the people who work there. Maybe there has been an incident, and your daughter didn’t want to bother you about it.”
“I doubt it. I can’t underline enough that our daughter tells us everything. At the end of each working day, we sit around the table and discuss all that we’ve been through that day. Not sure how many families can say they do that,” Warren said.
“I know I don’t have the time. You’re to be admired. Okay, if there’s nothing further you can add, I think we should go back to the station and get on with the investigation. Do you have any objections to me making a plea to the public through the media?”
Warren and Nerys both shook their heads.
“Great. That probably won’t happen until this afternoon now by the time arrangements can be made. We’ll put out an alert on the system for people to be on the lookout for her car in the meantime.”
“Thank you. Sean has assured us that you and your team are the best around and that we’ll be in safe hands. We realise how busy you’re likely to be, but we’d appreciate it if you could keep us updated whenever possible.”
“Of course. That goes without saying.” Lorne rose from her chair, and Katy followed, tucking her notebook into her coat pocket. Lorne shook the couple’s hands. “We hope to have good news about Emma soon. Here’s my card. If you hear anything you think might help the case, please ring me, day or night.”
“Thank you, Inspector. I’ll show you out,” Warren said.
They followed the man through the house back to the entrance, where he wished them good luck.
“We’ll be in touch soon. Take care of your wife in the meantime, Mr. Lansbury.”
“I will. Thank you, Inspector.”
Once she and Lorne were back in the car, Katy asked, “What’s first?”
“I think we should return to base and organise the press conference. Maybe you can get the house-to-house actioned the second we get back. Uniform can do that for us.” She pointed around her. “Quite a few of these houses overlook the Lansburys’ residence. Maybe someone can come up with a different version of events. They’re pure speculation at this point anyway. Then I think we should call the boyfriend in for questioning before we visit the library and the homeless centre. They reckon the first three days are the
most crucial when someone is presumed missing, so let’s hope we can find her in that time. After hearing what the parents had to say about Emma’s character, I don’t mind sharing that I’ve already got a sinking feeling in my gut about this one.”
“As we’re on a time limit… oh no, it doesn’t matter.”
“Go on. You know I hate it when you do that. What’s on your mind?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying it, to be honest with you, but maybe you should ask Carol for help on this one,” Katy muttered, wincing.
Lorne’s eyes bulged. “Crikey! That must have taken a lot for you to suggest using my psychic friend. I know how you feel about all that ‘mumbo jumbo’.”
Katy pulled a face at her. “I’ll keep my mouth shut in the future.”
Lorne dug her in the ribs. “Only joking. Let’s see how things go with the media attention first.”
CHAPTER TWO
“That’s it. The media will be here for three. Let’s see what we can find out about the Lansburys between now and then. Karen, any luck on putting an alert out on Emma’s car?”
“All done, boss. If it’s out there, we’ll find it. Graham has been trying to trace it on the ANPR cameras in the area,” Karen replied.
Lorne crossed over to Graham’s desk and asked, “Anything?”
“Not yet. I think it’s too soon, boss. If I had an accurate time for her disappearance, then maybe that would help.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not possible at present. You’ll have to check the half-hour timeframe we’ve given you.”
“Doing my best,” Graham said, not taking his eyes off the clip that was speeding across the screen in front of him.
“Pat, can you do a bit of digging into the homeless centre for me? See if anything comes up. I’m not familiar with it and will be surprised if anything surfaces.”
“Will do,” he said, immediately tapping at the keys on his keyboard.
“Katy, while I jot down some general info that I can use in the appeal, can you ring Jack Wainscroft and ask him to come in for an interview this afternoon?”
