The Hiding Place

by Helen Phifer

  He shook his head. ‘It’s a large fully caffeinated latte with cow’s milk, and the bag contains a tuna mayo baguette with cheese and no salad. Good enough, your majesty?’

  She grinned at him. ‘Much better than I thought, thank you. What did you get?’

  She expected him to tell her some disgusting concoction, when he said, ‘Same as you.’

  ‘What? No way. I don’t believe it. Are you having a cheat day, Des?’

  ‘She left me for the guy who owns the new gym that’s just opened on Salter Road, so what’s the point?’

  It wasn’t often that Amy was lost for words but she felt sorry for Des; he looked crushed.

  ‘Gertha is a fool then.’

  ‘Birgitta, not Gertha and not really. She’s a lot younger than me and we work such crap hours. I just really liked her.’

  What unfolded next happened so fast that neither of them saw it coming. They didn’t see the man striding towards them, his face a mask of contorted pain and anger. Des, who was leaning in the passenger window talking to Amy, felt an arm like a vice clamp around his neck as he was dragged backwards.

  Amy screeched, ‘Oh shit’, and managed to knock her coffee all over herself and the driver’s seat as she clambered out. Grabbing her radio off the front seat she shouted down it, ‘Urgent assistance Cedarwood Grove, now.’ She hit the orange emergency button on the top of it for good measure, because she didn’t have time to pass an update to the control room whilst Des got a good kicking off Brett Mosely. Des’s head was tucked under Brett’s arm and his face was going purple. Amy ran towards the two men. Pulling the canister of CS gas out of her pocket she held it up to Brett’s eyes.

  ‘Let him go now. I’m sorry for your loss but this is the wrong fight.’

  There was a steady stream of tears flowing from Des’s eyes they were watering so much.

  Brett looked at her, his eyes black with fury and pain, and Amy knew he’d lost it; he wasn’t going to listen to her. She flicked the cap off the small black canister, aimed for his eyes and pushed her finger down on the red button, releasing a stream of liquid into his face. It took a couple of seconds before he yelled in pain and anger, but he released his grip on Des’s neck, who fell to his hands and knees, coughing and spluttering, taking in gulps of air. Sirens turned into the street and before she could do anything else the sound of heavy boots pounding towards the three of them filled her ears. Two uniformed coppers grabbed hold of Brett, who fought them every step of the way as they tried to drag him towards the van, fighting despite being temporarily incapacitated. Des had his eyes squeezed tight shut.

  ‘Jesus, Amy, did you aim for me or him? I can’t fucking see; my eyeballs are on fire.’

  Amy laughed – too loud – but it was funny in a terrible way. ‘Well, I have third-degree burns on my fanny from that coffee. I spilt it all over myself trying to get out of the car. What did you tell them to do, heat it enough so it would burn my tongue off?’

  Des let out a groan. Despite the pain there was a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. More footsteps as another van arrived. Madds, the duty sergeant, got out along with two more officers.

  ‘What have we got here then, Keystone Cops? You had one job, the pair of you, and look at the mess you’ve made. Have you wet yourself, Amy?’

  Amy grinned at him, tempted to tell him to get lost but she couldn’t. He was right, and although he wasn’t smiling, there was a twinkle in his eye she recognised from her days on section. He’d be telling this tale for weeks to anyone who’d listen.

  ‘I suppose at least you have him in custody and we know where he is now.’

  ‘Is that some kind of well done, Sergeant? And no, I’m not incontinent: I dropped my coffee everywhere.’

  ‘Well done. It’s a disaster, Amy. Do you know how much of a shitstorm this is going to cause? Pepper spraying the grieving dad of a dead child on the front street in full public view? The press is going to love this. It will be on Granada Reports tonight. You and Desmond are going to be famous.’

  ‘If he hadn’t attacked Des, then none of this would have happened.’

  Madds shrugged. ‘That may be, but no one will care about the first part of the story; no one cares if a copper gets a kicking. Get yourself back to the station and get cleaned up. Where’s Ben anyway? Did he think letting you two loose on your own was a good idea?’

  ‘He’s at the post-mortem and yes, actually, he knows that we are quite capable, thank you very much.’

  This time Madds did laugh as he walked back to the van he’d arrived in, shaking his head.

  ‘Do you two want a lift back; you can get in the cage?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘No, we’re fine.’

  Madds walked away, and Des muttered, ‘Blind and a broken neck, is that your definition of fine, Amy?’

  ‘Do you want to listen to him making fun of us all the way back to the station? I don’t; we’ll go back in your car. I’m not sitting in wet coffee either.’

  She helped him to his feet, linking an arm through his and led him towards his car, where the keys were still in the ignition. After guiding him into the passenger seat, she retrieved her tuna baguette and the keys from the other car and locked it. She sent a text to Ben.

  Brett Mosely is in custody, ring me when you can.

  Then she drove them back to the station to get cleaned up and to face the barrage of questions that were about to come their way, and the multitude of forms that needed to be completed. At least their DI was back from his holidays. She’d rather explain it all to Tom and get her bollocking from him than have to face whatever duty inspector was covering for him.

  Twenty-Five

  The station was buzzing; there was a lot of loud, raucous laughter coming from the briefing room where the next shift were being given their orders for the next ten hours. Ben glanced at Morgan as they walked past and muttered, ‘Nice to know they’re so happy. You wouldn’t think there was a dead girl and another missing, would you, listening to that lot.’

  Morgan didn’t say anything. Sometimes dark humour was the only thing to get you through a shift. This job could be a mixture of exhilarating, terrifying and heartbreak all rolled into one. They went upstairs to the CID office. Halfway up, Madds shouted, ‘Ben, a word.’

  Ben looked down at him, and Morgan could tell he wasn’t in the mood for whatever was coming his way. He went back downstairs into the sergeant’s office, and she carried on to their office. Inside was Amy, who was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, and a very red-eyed Des. Morgan didn’t know whether he’d been crying and she’d just intruded on something very personal between the two, but then Amy glanced up at her and grimaced.

  ‘Are you okay, Des?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m blind in one eye thanks to Amy.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, if I hadn’t gassed him, you might be dead and then it wouldn’t bloody matter if you were blind or not, would it, you moron.’

  Morgan felt her mouth open wide as she looked at Amy, then Des, wondering what had happened. Before she could ask, Ben stormed through the door, slamming it behind him. He looked at Amy, then Des, and shook his head.

  ‘Christ, what a mess. Are you okay, Des? Do you need to go to the hospital?’

  Des shook his head. ‘No, my throat’s a bit sore but not as bad as my eyes.’

  Amy threw her arms up in exasperation. ‘Ungrateful. Next time I’ll let you get strangled and save giving myself third-degree burns.’

  Morgan glanced at Ben, hoping he was about to throw some light on what was happening.

  ‘Talk me through it.’

  Amy stood up, and Morgan stared at the dark patch on her trousers.

  ‘Des went for lunch; he was talking to me through the car window and next thing Brett Mosely had him in a headlock, strangling him, I mean he was choking the life out of him. I jumped out, burnt myself in the process then pressed the emergency button for help. I asked him nicely to let him go, but you cou
ld tell he’d lost it, boss; his eyes were black. So I gassed him, accidentally getting Des the drama queen in the process. Patrols arrived, took him into custody and he’s waiting in the cells ready to be interviewed.’

  Ben ran a hand over his head and nodded. ‘Well at least he’s here so we can talk to him. Well done, both of you, you did what you had to do and don’t worry about it. I’m gutted about Charlie and I didn’t know her, so I can’t imagine how he’s feeling, but he can’t go around trying to kill my officers because he’s enraged, and where’s he been for the last twenty-odd hours anyway? What’s he hiding? He hasn’t been honest or frank with us from the start, so he can forget any bloody lawsuit if that’s what he’s threatening. We’ll give him a bit more time to calm down and then I’ll go and speak to him, see how I get on with him.’

  Tom, who had followed Ben in, nodded in agreement. ‘You both did what you had to in difficult circumstances. No one wanted this outcome, and the sooner Mr Mosely realises we’re on his side the better things will be. I’m so glad I came back off my cruise today. You know I don’t even feel as if I’ve been away.’ He winked at Amy, who smiled.

  ‘Glad to have you back, sir.’

  ‘So, have we found the other missing girl yet?’

  He was met with silence. ‘I see, what exactly is being done to locate her? And this is not some dig at anyone, it’s merely a question and I need bringing up to speed with what has and hasn’t been done so far.’

  Ben walked over to the large whiteboard where ‘Charlie’ and ‘Macy’ were written in black marker pen. ‘Macy has an absent father who lives in Scotland. Police Scotland are on with visiting him to see if he picked her up at all. PolSA has taken over the search for her; task force is out; so is the dog handler again. PCSOs are door knocking again, and the area is sealed off until we decide if we’ve finished collecting anything and everything of forensic value. Macy’s home address has been searched from attic to garden and there is no sign of her there. All family and friends have been spoken to. The last confirmed sighting we have of her is when she visited the corner shop last night to buy herself a bar of chocolate. She slipped into the cutting between Friars Lane and Cloisters Lane with her dog, but somehow, she never made it home. Morgan found the bar of chocolate in the weeds just before the exit onto Cloisters. She was so near a place of safety, and it seems she was plucked from the alleyway and taken. The dog turned up at the home address and was whining in the front garden when mum arrived home from work.’

  Tom was shaking his head. ‘Unbelievable, how near is this cutting to where Charlie was taken from?’

  ‘Two hundred yards give or take.’

  ‘Who is our prime suspect? Do we have one?’

  ‘Well, we have Vincent Jackson living smack bang in the middle of Charlie’s address and the cutting; he’s a registered sex offender.’

  ‘I know who he is.’

  ‘He lives with his elderly mother. We’ve brought him in for questioning and taken his car away to be examined, but we have nothing other than his previous record tying him to both girls.’

  ‘Why do we have Charlie’s dad in custody? Apart from the assault on Des, what’s the full story?’

  ‘He was very evasive when asked where he was when she went missing. He was supposed to pick her up and have her for the night, but he told her mum he couldn’t. Instead he went out for a meal with his new girlfriend, and they were so late for the reservation they almost never got seated. He omitted to tell us any of this when questioned the first time.

  ‘We’ve just come back from Charlie’s post-mortem, and the cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head. The pathologist thinks it could have been caused by a 4x4 or a pickup truck with a heavy-duty bumper, which is the kind of car he drives.’

  Morgan added, ‘There’s also the fact that he went out with Macy’s mum, Carol, years ago; he left her for Amanda, Charlie’s mum. Boss, I found out that another girl went missing fifteen years ago.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Eleanor Fleming, certainly did. She ran away to the bright lights. So, he’s good for it if we were going off circumstantial evidence, but is there any motive, anything that ties him to it more than what we have forensically?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid you need to speak to him and get a full account of his whereabouts then he’s going to have to be released.’

  Des looked at Tom. ‘What about assaulting me? He can’t just walk around trying to strangle people because he’s having a bad day.’

  ‘No, he can’t, you’re right. But, right now, at this very moment, his solicitor is going to say he was acting out of character because of his grief and that it’s not in the public interest to prosecute him. We need to focus on finding the other missing girl before it’s too late. Maybe we could watch him discreetly.

  ‘Amy, you can do some digging into his background. Does he have a lock-up, garage or anywhere he could hide a child without the fear of getting caught? Does he have any previous for violence? That kind of thing.’

  Morgan spoke up, ‘When we visited him at home and Philippa showed me Charlie’s bedroom she bent down and I couldn’t help notice she had a large area of bruising on her side. She got very defensive when I asked her about it, so it’s possible Brett is violent towards her.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Thanks, we’ll bear this in mind.’

  Ben walked into his office and came out clutching a handful of printouts. ‘We can make a start with every RSO in Rydal Falls, then extend out to Kendal. I want all of the registration numbers of any vehicles they own or have access to running through the ANPR cameras, to see if they flag up as being in the Rydal area around the time frames that Charlie and Macy went missing. Amy, you and Morgan can go together; Des are you okay to join me once I’ve spoken to Brett? It will give you time to grab a coffee.’

  Des nodded. He looked deflated, and Morgan glanced at Amy, who mouthed, ‘Woman trouble.’ Morgan nodded. She didn’t care who she was with or what she was doing as long as they were doing something productive to try and find Macy.

  ‘Are there many in Rydal? I mean this town isn’t huge like Kendal or Barrow.’

  Amy, who was looking at the computer screen, said, ‘Six here; Kendal is much worse. I think there are seventy in the whole of south Cumbria, but that includes Barrow which is a big town.’

  ‘Sir, what about Eleanor?’

  He fixed his brown eyes on Morgan. ‘What about her?’

  ‘I think she might have been the first victim, that maybe whoever took her killed her. You don’t disappear without a trace at that age without someone knowing something in a small place like this. What if the killer got caught for another crime, a serious one, and has spent time in prison and only just been released? That would explain the huge gap from Eleanor to Charlie. Maybe both girls were in the right place at the wrong time.’

  Tom smiled. ‘Very good, Morgan, I like it, but at the moment we have to focus on finding Macy, then we can see if it all links back to Eleanor Fleming.’

  She felt deflated, but not entirely surprised by his reaction. He was right; of course Macy was their priority. But it bothered her that everyone in Rydal Falls had given up on Eleanor without so much as a second thought. She would make it her mission to discover what happened to her.

  ‘Oh okay, I guess we should make a start then.’

  They walked out of the office and Amy whispered, ‘I’m going to need to nip home and change my trousers.’

  ‘Of course, should I drive then you can jump out at your house?’

  She nodded, and they went out into the rear yard of the small station, where the wind was whipping the fallen autumn leaves from the trees which surrounded it into a frenzy.

  ‘It’s bloody freezing. I think I’m going to put my thermal long johns on. Are you warm enough, Morgan?’

  Morgan looked down at the trouser suit she was wearing and realised that she wasn’t going to be warm enough at all, but she didn’t want to waste time. ‘I’ll be
okay, thanks.’ She made a mental note to change into something more suitable for tomorrow.

  Outside Amy’s house there was nowhere to park, so she double-parked with the engine running and the hazard lights flashing. Her phone began to ring.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Good afternoon, gorgeous.’

  She smiled at Fin’s soft, well-spoken southern voice.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’

  ‘I’m good, thanks, cold, stressed but okay. How about you?’

  ‘Me, I’m great. Are you busy later? I was wondering if you wanted to get a bite to eat, have a couple of glasses of wine and basically let your hair down after our disastrous date last night.’

  ‘I’d love to, but.’

  ‘Ah, there’s always a but with you.’

  He laughed but Morgan detected a hint of annoyance in his tone.

  ‘But I have no idea what time I’ll finish.’

  ‘How about you phone me when you get home. I could pick up a takeaway and a couple of bottles of wine.’

  She saw Amy dashing towards the car with a spare coat draped over her arm.

  ‘Sorry, I have to go and yes, that sounds fab. Any news on Macy?’ She had promised herself she wouldn’t ask him about it, but the words slipped out before she’d had time to think about them, and she hoped he wouldn’t want information back in exchange for anything he told her, because she couldn’t and wouldn’t do that.

  ‘Not at the moment, sorry.’

  ‘Oh, right. Thank you, I was hoping you might have heard something through the grapevine.’

  Amy, who was now inside the car, looked at her. ‘I’ll speak to you later, Fin, bye.’ She hung up.

  ‘Fin, is that your new boyfriend, the reporter who has Ben’s knickers in a twist? I hear he’s really good looking and drives a Porsche, so I guess he’s loaded too.’

  Morgan stared at Amy. ‘How do you know this stuff? You know everything.’

  Amy shrugged. ‘I have my sources and I love to know what’s going on. I can’t help it if I find stuff out. I’m a detective; I’m supposed to know what’s happening. Do you like him then?’