‘She must have bloody hundreds like that on there,’ Hallforth said, picking it up, nodding.
‘She took this at two minutes past one,’ Porter said. ‘This one less than sixty seconds later.’ He slid a second across beside it. More of the same, except this time Libby looked like she was blowing a kiss to the camera. ‘And this one a few minutes later,’ he added as a third was laid down beside its companions.
‘OK, how does that help us find her, though?’ he said, looking between the three pictures, unsure what Porter was getting at.
Porter tapped an index finger in the corner of the first picture, and again on the second picture, to the right of Libby’s face. Finally, on the third. He watched Simon’s eyes widen as he took it in, looking where Porter had indicated. Seeing the man in the background. The same one each time, judging from the clothes. Blurry, not quite in focus. Watching. Waiting.
CHAPTER NINE
Pins and needles fizz in his ankles and feet, but he stays kneeling. Hasn’t moved for twenty minutes, maybe more. Today was meant to be a new beginning. The first step to getting his old life back. Instead it’s left him uncertain, confused. Everything is muddied, swirling like pond water after feet dredge up the bottom.
Why had she not recognised him? He closes his eyes, picturing again the confusion on her face. The way her eyebrows pinched in the middle as she looked at him. The way her eyes widened in fear as he’d reached for her.
Light is fading fast, replaced with dusk, settling like a cloak on the city, but here in this oasis of calm, all he can see are green canopies and gnarled trunks. A little over a hundred metres away, green gives way to grey, grass to concrete. The sounds of the city are little more than a backing track here. This place brings him peace, soothes the rapids that sometimes churn in his head. Not today, though. Today, his thoughts are a black whirlpool, drawing in everything around him, dragging them down, and him with it.
He squeezes his eyes shut tighter still, desperately trying to picture her face. It’s fading again already, an overexposed strip of film. Same for his son. Even his wife feels like a figment of his imagination on days like this. A construct, with a connection to a past he can’t dredge up. It’s like he’s walking down a hallway lined with doors, memories trapped behind them, voices whispering to him, just on the wrong side of audible.
When he opens his eyes, pinpricks star the edges of his vision and he blinks them away. Another half hour and it’ll be dark. He rises to his feet, screws up his face as he stamps the feeling back into his legs. Time to leave, for now anyway. He’ll visit again soon, though. He’s a creature of habit, a man of routine. One last thing to do before he leaves. He squats down, pats the dry patch of earth by his feet.
‘Goodnight, sweetheart. Sleep tight.’
CHAPTER TEN
Styles decided to give it one more go. Third time lucky, he hoped, as he rapped on the door again. Marcus Hallforth lived in a fourth-floor flat, less than a hundred metres away from his parents, in the neighbouring tower block. What had made him move out at such a young age? Lots of teenagers clashed with their parents; that was par for the course. Didn’t have to have been blazing rows. Maybe he just wanted his own space, to strike out on his own. Surprising then that he stayed so close.
A lift pinged at the far end of the corridor. A tiny sparrow of a woman came out, dragging a dark green tartan shopping trolley behind her, so full it might even weigh more than she did. She did a double take when she saw Styles, giving him a look that he’d seen more often than he cared to remember. The kind that says, If you’re wearing a suit, and not white, then you must be the defendant. He flashed her his best I’m not a drug dealer smile, but that only seemed to unnerve her even more, and she disappeared inside her flat, heaving the trolley in after her.
He turned his attention back to the door in front of him. Heard the soft rattle of a chain, and the faintest of shadows flickering across the peephole. Definitely home then, just deciding whether Styles was worth answering the door to. A few seconds passed, and just as Styles raised his hand to knock again, the door opened a few inches. Marcus Hallforth peered out through the crack, giving Styles a quick once up and down.
‘Marcus Hallforth?’
‘Yeah.’
‘My name’s Detective Sergeant Nick Styles, Met Police. I’m here to have a chat about your sister.’
No need for long explanations. Ally Hallforth had already confirmed she’d told Marcus what had happened yesterday.
‘Oh, erm, OK, just give me one minute.’
The face vanished, and the door closed. Five seconds passed. Ten. Styles leant forwards, pressing his ear to the door as faint noises drifted through from inside. Hard to make out: footsteps, an occasional thud. He’d only just pulled his head back from the door when it opened again.
‘Sorry, just tidying a few bits away. Place is a state,’ Marcus said, standing to one side, gesturing Styles in. They went down a short hallway and into a living room that looked more like a teenager’s bedroom. Pizza box on the coffee table, next to three empty Coke cans. A large flat-screen on the wall was paused with some sort of gun poking out from the bottom of the screen. First person shooter game.
‘Call of Duty?’ Styles asked.
‘You play?’ said Marcus, smiling.
‘Me? No, but my wife’s nephew is never off the thing. You a fan, I take it?’
‘Homework.’
Styles looked at him, not sure he’d heard right. ‘Homework?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got an internship with Lycasoft. I want to design games, not just play them. Please, have a seat.’
He might live like a messy teenager, but Styles got the sense that there was a fair bit going on upstairs. You didn’t get taken on by software companies unless you had potential. He looked like a younger version of his dad, but without the hard edges. Geek-chic in his skinny jeans, Rick and Morty sweatshirt and messed-up mop of dark brown hair.
Styles shuffled a PlayStation controller out of the way and perched on the edge of a couch that looked older than him. ‘So, first things first. We haven’t found your sister yet,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got dozens of officers and volunteers searching the area around Epping Forest.’
Marcus sat shaking his head. ‘Just all a bit surreal, you know? You hear about these things on the news, but you never think it’ll happen to you. Mum said you’d found her phone. Have you got any idea what might have happened?’
‘Not yet,’ said Styles. ‘We’re keeping an open mind, but it’s really important that we learn as much as we can about Libby. Sorry to have to ask this, but would you mind telling me where you were between noon and two yesterday afternoon? Just gives us a chance to rule you out of the inquiry right at the start.’
‘Here. I was gaming online most of the day.’
‘Anyone who can verify that?’
‘Yeah, my girlfriend, Susie. Susie Lim.’
Styles got her number and address from him to follow up later.
‘Is there any reason you can think of why Libby might run away? Where might she go if she did? That type of thing.’
‘She’s a bright kid. I keep telling her she’s smarter than I was at her age,’ he said, a soft smile creeping in around the edges. ‘She’s not far off beating me on some of these.’ Marcus nodded at the TV. ‘Not Call of Duty,’ he corrected quickly. ‘She’s got her own games.’
‘So, no reason you can think of that she’d disappear herself?’
‘There are a few kids in her class, mainly girls. They’ve been picking on her. Squirting water on her schoolbooks, making other kids ignore her, that kind of thing. I don’t think she’d just up and leave because of that, though.’
‘Do your parents know?’
Marcus gave a low laugh, no humour in it. ‘Dad said she needed to toughen up, fight her own battles.’
‘Is she close to your mum and dad?’ he asked, but that sounded clunky in his head, so he rephrased it. ‘I mean, is she a daddy’s girl, or closer t
o your mum, that type of thing?’
‘Mum dotes on her. Barely lets her out of her sight.’
Except at fairgrounds, thought Styles, but kept that little barb to himself. Maybe it was just the thought of impending fatherhood, Emma being due in a few weeks, but he couldn’t imagine leaving their child for any reason at that age, let alone to grab a bloody coffee.
‘It’s not that Dad doesn’t care,’ Marcus continued. ‘He just does a good job of making you feel that way.’
‘You and he not get on, then?’ asked Styles.
‘Hmmph, that’s one way of putting it,’ said Marcus, his tone leaving no room to misinterpret.
‘Is that why you live here, not over there?’ Styles asked, tilting his head towards the neighbouring tower. ‘Don’t think I got my own place till I was twenty-five.’
‘Let’s just say one of us believes that knocking your kids around is a part of being a parent, and the other one disagrees.’
‘Your dad hit you?’
‘Look, man, it’s alright. I tried telling people at the time, and nobody listened, so I left as soon as I could. Doesn’t happen to me any more.’
The unspoken inference was there. Doesn’t happen to Marcus, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening to anyone else. It had been reason enough for Marcus to up sticks and leave. What would the same treatment do to a seven-year-old girl?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Last night’s follow-up interviews with Libby’s parents had given Porter a lot to mull over. Simon Hallforth, for all his attitude, had looked genuinely worried at the prospect of someone having followed them. The shady figure from Libby’s photos had stunned him into silence for a good thirty seconds. The quality was poor; Libby’s arm must have been at full extension and not steady when she snapped them.
Lorna Shields had a guy on her team who could work wonders with image enhancement, but Porter wasn’t pinning much hope on it with these particular pictures. Styles had called in on his way back from visiting Marcus Hallforth. It didn’t come as any real surprise to Porter that Simon was the kind of man to raise his hands to his kids. There was every chance Ally might have had the same experience. Could still be living with that now. The fact he’d taken her phone, kept it from her, stopped her from reporting their daughter missing, spoke volumes as to the kind of man he was. Coercive, controlling.
Porter made a few calls off the back of Styles’s update. Turned out social services had a file on Simon Hallforth. There had been anonymous reports, three of them, from nosy neighbours maybe, going back ten years. Allegations of violence towards his wife and son. Nothing proven. No action taken.
A team of officers had already carried out a thorough search of the flat and surrounding area. Granted, it was almost eight miles from where she’d been seen last, but his mind flicked again to the Tia Sharp case. He owed it to Libby to make no assumptions, take nothing and nobody at face value.
Simon Hallforth had definitely bumped up a few notches on his list of suspects. Location was a huge problem, though. Most of the roads leading to the visitor’s centre were single carriageway, some even single lane. No CCTV, no ANPR – automatic number-plate recognition. Cast the net wider to get back into a coverage area and the number of cars exploded into the thousands, with no way of knowing which had visited the fair and which were just passing through. Libby could have been in any number of those cars, willingly or otherwise. Proper needle-in-a-haystack territory. He’d make sure it was done, but it’d be a juggling act, sacrificing manpower from a physical search.
A dozen other thoughts bounced around his head like bluebottles against a window. Someone would need to look at her school, the kids picking on her, whether that had been enough to send her running. With missing persons, especially where kids were concerned, it always felt like you were up against an egg timer. Get past a certain point, the sand runs out and chances of a happy outcome drop fast, and hard.
Libby’s brother would need to come in and give a formal statement as well. They’d even need to speak to her younger sister, Chloe. Speaking to a four-year-old, even in the room they had specially kitted out to look less intimidating, was tricky at the best of times, let alone when you’re asking her about her big sister.
The late stint last night hadn’t done him any favours. For all things seemed to be going well with Evie, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d managed more than four hours’ decent sleep, five tops. Hadn’t since Holly died. It had started off as not wanting to sleep, preferring not to see her wandering around his dreams like nothing had happened. It was just par for the course now. He was pretty sure Evie hadn’t noticed yet. He hadn’t thought through what to say if she did, and asked why.
He grabbed a pen and started making a list of everything that had to be done today. Slotting things into a sense of order helped declutter his head. He’d just hit double figures on his list of actions when the phone on his desk rang.
‘Porter.’
‘DI Porter, it’s Lorna Shields.’
‘Oh, hi, Lorna. Wasn’t expecting to hear back from you so soon. Has your guy worked his magic on those pictures already?’
‘The pictures?’ She sounded confused for a second, as if she’d forgotten about them. ‘Oh, no, that’ll take a little longer. There was something else we found, though.’
Something about her tone – grave, serious – reminded him of his own when he was about to deliver bad news.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Blood,’ she said. ‘We found traces of blood on the screen.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Five months later
Porter held up a hand to Evie, indicating two minutes. She gave him a thumbs up and disappeared into her dad’s house.
‘Sorry, mate, you were saying?’
‘Yeah, so Milburn is doing the press conference at three this afternoon. He wasn’t happy when I reminded him you had the day off, but you know what he’s like. He wouldn’t have let you get a word in anyway.’
Porter grunted a half-laugh. ‘Yeah, he’s a proper shrinking violet when it comes to the press.’
Roger Milburn was a mix of many things – part policeman, part politician, part preacher, taking every chance he got to spew out a good sound bite or two. Today’s fifteen minutes of fame was to launch a new community policing charter. Styles was bang on that Milburn would hog the limelight. Porter would have been window dressing.
There’d been an incident a year or so back with a suspect who’d been part of the gang that hospitalised Evie. He’d found the right words to push Porter’s buttons, making a joke of her injuries. Stoked his anger to the point where he snapped back like an overstretched elastic band. Porter hadn’t hit him. He’d only grabbed him, but it had been enough. Passers-by had whipped out phones, and it had been trending on Twitter before you could say ‘police brutality’. Ever since then, Milburn had been even more vocal, if that was possible, about everyone doing their part to boost the image of the force.
‘He’s asked me to take your place, so I reckon that makes it your round next time we’re out.’
‘If you’re that cheap to bribe, I’ll get you to stand in every time from now,’ Porter shot back.
‘This is just a special introductory offer.’
‘What about the hotline? Any calls?’
Five months of chasing shadows, no closer to finding Libby Hallforth, had felt like trying to run a marathon blindfolded. Apart from her damaged phone, there had been nothing, no other trace evidence. It was like a magic trick gone wrong. There one minute, gone the next. At Porter’s insistence, and despite Milburn’s mutterings about budget and manpower better used elsewhere, they had put together a reconstruction of Libby’s last known movements that had been broadcast a week ago.
The results had been disappointing to say the least. Because she’d disappeared in an out-of-the-way location, that cut down on passers-by that could reasonably be expected to have seen anything. Some claimed to have seen her, but were easil
y ruled out because they were regular callers, previously claiming knowledge of anything from the Hatton Garden diamond heist to Madeleine McCann. Nothing that sounded even vaguely genuine.
‘Checked in with the team this morning, but no calls for the last few days.’
Porter closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. As much as he told himself he had done everything he could, still was, it didn’t make him feel like any less of a failure when it came to Libby.
‘Alright, cheers, Nick. Anyway, listen, I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you later to hear how your moment in the spotlight with Milburn went.’
Porter ended the call, but rather than head straight inside, he sat for a minute, staring at nothing in particular. Much as he hated to admit it, maybe this was the last dead end. One he’d just have to let go. The reconstruction had been a long shot, hoping someone, somewhere, would have something jogged loose. Maybe someone from out of the area who’d been there for the fair, and left soon after she went missing. Milburn had already warned that if nothing came of it, it would drop down a notch on his list of priorities. That right there was the reason Porter couldn’t do his super’s job. Wouldn’t want to. Making decisions that badged a missing girl as less important than anything else would stick in his throat like a bone. Even the thought of someone else making it pissed him off. Evie’s head popped around a curtain, peeping out like a nosy neighbour. Porter made a show of putting his phone away as if he’d just finished the call, and headed inside. She’d left the door open for him, and he followed the sound of voices into the living room.
Evie had slouched back into the big leather armchair by the window, and her dad, Alan, sat on the sofa. He sprang up as Porter walked in.
‘Jake, nice to see you again,’ he said, reaching out with an overly enthusiastic handshake, then gesturing towards the chair opposite Evie’s.
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