Little Girl Lost (Detective Robyn Carter crime thriller series Book 1)

by Carol Wyer

‘Thanks. It’s lousy when you can’t make progress in a case like this. You feel like time is pressing on you.’

  ‘It’s tough. What’s worse, it’s a little kid. A mere baby. I hate cases like this. I have two daughters of my own. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through this hell. The parents must be going spare. I have to go to front desk for a while. Shout out if you need anything.’

  With a sad shake of his head, he left her to it. Robyn pulled out her laptop and downloaded all the photographs of Alice that Ross had emailed her. They were, as he had said, mostly pictures of a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. In some, she stood shyly with her hands behind her back, in others she sat on a large chair grinning happily. Robyn identified her father, Josh, a good-looking man with fair hair and a wide grin. She studied the first photo in which he was making a jigsaw puzzle with his daughter, both hunched over, the same concentration on their faces; the next showed the pair at a zoo by the monkey enclosure where they posed and made funny faces. There was one of Alice sitting on his knee, arm around his neck. It was clear from the pictures that they were close. There was Alice on her first bike, Josh proudly watching as she rode away. There were some of Alice with older people – Jane Clifford and her husband – eating sticks of rock by the seaside. There weren’t many of Christina. Given Jane Clifford had not liked her daughter-in-law, this was not a surprise.

  Robyn paced around the office. Alice had seemed so content. What reason could she have for exacting revenge on the Matthews? She would have to ask Abigail. She returned to the photographs and scrolled through some more, stopping at a picture of Josh with his arms around a blonde woman – Christina – wearing tight white jeans and pouting at the camera like a professional model on a catwalk, Alice in front of them, wearing ribbons in her long plaited hair and a pretty yellow dress with a wide skirt, clutching a doll. Suddenly time stood still. It wasn’t a doll. Robyn zoomed into the picture. It was a toy rabbit – one that looked identical to the rabbit beside Christina’s body. The rabbit had belonged to Alice. The deceased were all linked by these rabbits.

  Robyn examined all the pictures with care, but try as she might, she could not see any connection to the pretty child in the photographs and the photograph she had of Claire Lewis. The eyes were a different colour and so was the hair. Robyn examined the noses of both of them but again could not see any similarity. The child’s snub nose could easily have transformed into Claire’s adult nose with the stud in the side, or not. She gave a sigh of frustration and turned off the laptop before reading through what she’d written. It was an hour later when the door opened and the friendly face of Ross appeared.

  ‘I made good time. Gagging for tea and biscuits though. I missed lunch thanks to searching for photographs and driving miles for a demanding DI who keeps getting these hunches.’

  ‘Am I glad to see you. I keep going around in circles. I feel Claire is somehow involved and then I learn she’s been in Scotland all week and is unlikely to have murdered Lucas Matthews. I also thought she might be involved in the kidnapping of Isobel Thorne but, again, she isn’t here so she can’t have snatched her. And, to cap it all, I can’t see any similarities between her and Alice. Yet something doesn’t seem right. I’ve got the team trying to locate her whereabouts in Scotland and until they do, I’m going to keep an open mind.’

  She fired up the laptop and pointed at the photos set up on it. ‘I think I’ve hit upon Christina’s rabbit. Looks like it might have belonged to Alice at one stage, not that this helps in any way.’ She tilted back on her chair, hands behind her head.

  ‘I wonder if I’m still up to this, Ross. What if I’ve lost my instinct? I’m not certain I should stick at this career. I used to be able to follow my gut and be correct. Maybe losing Davies has changed me.’

  Ross stood behind her and stared at the pictures on her screen. He took a while to reply.

  ‘You have great instincts. Don’t ever give up on yourself. Those of us who know you best haven’t, so don’t you.’

  She swivelled around to meet his eye and sat up. ‘Thanks. Come on. Let me take you to the Thorne’s house. You can see if you can turn up any tracking devices or cameras. What you don’t know about the latest surveillance equipment isn’t worth knowing.’

  61

  Now

  Izzy was amazing. I didn’t need many toys for her. She spent most of the time pulling at her salmon-pink socks and babbling merrily. I passed her a large plastic highchair toy in the shape of a bee with little rattles and beads and things on it. She was fascinated and played with it for ages. Every time I looked over at her and spoke to her, she looked at me with adoring eyes, like she was my baby, and grinned a happy smile back at me.

  Eventually, she dozed off. Her long dark eyelashes curled away from her pale skin and she slept contentedly, holding onto the brand new Mr Big Ears rabbit I had given her. Mr Big Ears the Third looked happy too.

  ‘Nearly at the end,’ says my father. I looked at Mr Big Ears, his large soft ears falling over his knowing eyes.

  ‘It’s been such a long time but I did what you told me to, Dad. I changed my appearance. I evolved into another person and I concealed my hate and cunning.’ He nods in approval. ‘And, I waited just as you advised me to,’ I tell him. ‘I was patient and very clever.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he replies. ‘You’ve been very clever, my dear daughter. I’m so proud of you.’

  62

  ‘Hi, boss. Can’t talk for long. Mulholland is breathing down my neck but I learned something about Natasha Matthews that might be of interest to you. I was searching one of the databases on the PNC and I turned up a Natasha Matthews in 1999. Her name appeared on a clinic register in the south of the UK.’ Anna Shamash spoke in hushed tones.

  ‘Why is that interesting?’

  ‘It was an abortion clinic.’

  ‘She’d have only been about twelve years old. She’d barely have started puberty,’ replied a shocked Robyn. ‘Are you certain it’s her?’

  ‘I am. I couldn’t find any other information on the PNC databases,’ Anna’s voice dropped even lower. ‘Got to go. The station’s all worked up and ready for tonight’s sting. It’s pretty tense here. I’m sending you the link.’

  ‘Hope it goes well. Thanks for that information.’ Robyn mulled over what she had just learned. It seemed implausible that Natasha, now known as Abigail, would have fallen pregnant at such an early age. Robyn sensed the familiar prickling she got when she was close to solving a case. Her phone buzzed.

  ‘You’ve got that look on your face,’ said Ross, sat in the Polo’s passenger seat with a chocolate bar in his hand.

  ‘What look?’

  ‘The one that says you are inches away from sussing out what’s going on.’

  ‘No. Not quite got it. I keep thinking I’m almost there and then it escapes me again. This case is testing my instinct and I have been wrong over a couple of things.’

  They pulled up beside the stone owl. Robyn quickly read the email before getting out of the car. The front door opened. Jackson Thorne looked even more haggard than when she had left him.

  ‘I brought an associate to check out your home. I think there might be something in what Abigail has been saying. Ross here is an expert in surveillance equipment. If your house has been bugged in any way, he’ll find out.’

  ‘Do whatever you need to.’

  He turned and climbed the stairs.

  ‘He’s terribly upset,’ said Abigail from the lounge. ‘He’s had to deal with more than he should ever have had to. He’s not only lost Izzy but he’s learned he never really knew his wife.’

  Abigail was still clutching the rag dog but her tears had stopped. She seemed calmer. ‘I should have told him years ago. Keeping it a secret caused more damage. We’d have worked through it if only I had been brave enough to tell him.’ Her attitude suddenly changed as she became aware of Ross. ‘Why are you here? Have you heard anything about Izzy?’

  ‘Ross is
here to search for hidden cameras and the like, and to confirm your suspicions – that you were being watched. We may be able to trace them back to the person who has Izzy.’

  ‘How can you find them?’

  ‘There are quite a few ways,’ said Ross, unpacking a bag he carried in with him. ‘One low-tech method of finding hidden cameras is to listen. Some motion-sensitive cameras make a soft click or buzz as they turn on when someone walks by. In a noisy, everyday environment, you definitely won’t be able to hear them, but if you can turn off lights, radios, televisions and other sources of sound, you may be able to hear a camera activate.’ He dropped to his knees, still talking. ‘You can find a hidden lens using a torch. You turn off the lights and go slowly, and examine suspicious places from multiple angles. If you see glints of light where there shouldn’t be – areas where there are no mirrors, glass or other reflective surfaces – you may have come across a camera. However, I am going to use this,’ he announced, extracting a small black device. ‘It’s a professional-quality hidden-camera detector. This one uses a method much like a torch or the light on a smartphone to find glints from a lens.’

  He began searching the room, lifting the device to his eye and sweeping the room, slowly and methodically.

  ‘Nothing here. I’ll move to the kitchen.’

  Once he had left the room, Abigail slumped onto a chair.

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve allowed this to happen. I had the power to prevent it. I only had to tell Jackson what happened and none of this would have taken place.’

  ‘Abigail, are you talking about what happened to Alice? I know Lucas attacked her and she stabbed him in the eye.’

  ‘Alice? You’re asking about Alice. He isn’t upset about Alice.’

  Her face puckered angrily, then, just as suddenly, changed. She shook her head sadly.

  ‘I also know about the abortion you had, Abigail.’

  Abigail appeared to shrink in front of her. She chewed on her bottom lip. Finally she spoke. ‘No one believed me. It wasn’t what you may think. However, I was to blame for what happened that night to Alice. Sit down and I’ll tell you everything.’

  * * *

  An hour later, Ross laid out his findings on the kitchen table in front of Abigail and Jackson. He had uncovered a camera in the heat alarm in the kitchen. He pointed at the white box.

  ‘These are quite common. You can pick them up easily online. This one is a sophisticated model and has a hidden HD Wi-Fi camera that can transmit and record video to allow the person to watch using an application on their smartphone or computer from anywhere in the world.’

  Abigail stared at the innocuous heat alarm. ‘It’s identical to the smoke alarms we have throughout the house.’

  ‘They are very convincing. Lots of people buy them so they can keep an eye on their property when they are abroad and make sure it is safe, but, like many things these days, there are people who purchase them for darker purposes. I have no idea how long the person has been watching you but it was unlikely you’d have discovered it unless you’d tried to test it out. I haven’t located any other fake ones in the house and I’ve done a complete sweep of the property. I haven’t uncovered any other surveillance equipment. However, the baby monitors are another story.’ He picked up the audio unit and unscrewed the base and tipped out a small device that he held between his finger and thumb.

  ‘It’s a transmitting device.’

  Abigail gasped. ‘The muffled whispers. It was coming from the baby monitor itself. I thought I was going crazy hearing voices. I assumed they were in my head.’

  ‘More likely from this. Somebody has been playing mind games with you, Mrs Thorne.’

  ‘See, Jackson, I wasn’t fabricating any of this,’ she said, despairingly. ‘I should have been more forceful and had someone check out the place before now. If only…’ The words hung in the air.

  Robyn spoke before the silence became too heavy to bear. ‘We’ll take them with us and see if we can trace the purchaser. It’s a long shot but any shot is worth taking at the moment. The team back at the station is working on every possible lead. What happened to the support officer that they sent here?’

  Jackson looked up, his brow creased. ‘We sent her away. We had things we needed to talk about, and besides, I don’t want any more strangers hanging about. We’re managing on our own. We’ve been asked to do an appeal on television if they can’t find her soon,’ he added. ‘Makes it seem so real. We have to beg a nutcase to bring our baby back. I don’t know if I can. I want to kill the person who has her, not plead with them.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Abigail. ‘I should do it.’

  ‘You have time to consider the TV option. You need to stay strong and stick together,’ said Robyn, wondering if the couple – who stood apart from each other at either end of the table and could hardly look each other in the eye – would make it after this ordeal.

  63

  The police station was quiet but a small team was still in place. Robyn and Ross had spent some time trying to work out where the cameras they had uncovered had been purchased. There were many websites that dealt with these devices and, by midnight, Robyn had given up.

  ‘It’s another dead end.’

  ‘At least we know Abigail was right. Someone was spying on her – most likely the same person who has Izzy.’ Ross turned over the fake heat alarm he had discovered.

  ‘You can find this stuff almost anywhere online these days. Can you believe there is so much of it available? And some of it is pretty convincing. I might have to update my own supply.’

  ‘You get anywhere with the tracker from her car?’

  ‘It’s one of the smallest devices on the market and one of the simplest to set up and use. It has a magnetic base so it can be attached simply to a vehicle within seconds without tools. It’s a GPS tracker so the punter can find the vehicle using a smartphone, PC or tablet. The bad news is you can buy these on any number of sites, including eBay and Amazon, and it comes with a pre-paid sim card so it will be impossible to identify the purchaser.’

  ‘This is proving fruitless,’ said Robyn. ‘I don’t know what I hoped for but I expected more than this. So basically, the perp can be using an app or device to watch Abigail and track her movements, but unless we get hold of his or her phone or computer, we won’t be able to find that out.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Ross replied.

  Just when she was ready to call it a day, her phone rang. Mitz Patel sounded sleepy.

  ‘I’ve just got back from the sting operation so I couldn’t call you earlier. Anna and I have been trying to locate Claire Lewis. No joy with getting a fix on her mobile but we’ve still had a result. We phoned around all the accommodation in that area to see if she had checked in. PC Fowler has left a message to say Mr Jack Bond has called from Cromarty to confirm that Claire Lewis booked one of his cottages – Squirrel Lodge – and arrived Tuesday evening. The owner saw her car outside the cottage yesterday afternoon.’

  Robyn could barely keep the disappointment out of her voice. ‘That’s not what I wanted to hear. Have you got Bond’s number? I’ll follow it up to make sure it is her.’

  PC Patel read out the number.

  ‘Thanks for this, Mitz.’

  ‘No problem. I was too wired to go home anyway.’

  They ended the call. Robyn looked across at her cousin, still studying the devices.

  ‘Go grab some sleep. Hand these in at the front office on your way out and see if the people here have more joy.’ Robyn yawned.

  Ross gave her a look. He knew she would keep gnawing at the problem all night. ‘Don’t overdo it. Get some sleep too. You’ve still got Claire Lewis to interview. That might throw up something. What time is she due back?’

  ‘When she spoke to me, she was at near Inverness, watching for the Moray Firth dolphins. It would take her at least nine and half hours to get here from Inverness, so hopefully she’ll be back sometime tomorrow. That is, if she doesn’t stop
for any sleep. I’ll call her first thing and find out where she is. She’s close to Abigail and Zoe so she might know something that will help us.’ She rubbed her eyes and mused, ‘Abigail doesn’t have many friends, does she? She only really knows Zoe and Claire. You’d think she’d know more people, new mums, for example. There are loads of mums and toddlers groups. She seems a bit of a lone wolf.’

  Ros threw her a thoughtful look. ‘Dolphins. Nice. Has Claire been photographing them all week?’

  ‘She’s been all over the north of Scotland and the Trossachs National Park. I expect she’s photographing all sorts of wildlife.’

  ‘I might take Jeanette to Scotland for a holiday. She likes dolphins. She’d love to see them in the wild. Maybe we could all go. You could invite Amélie.’

  Robyn gave a small smile. ‘That’s a lovely idea but I think she has a family to do all that sort of thing with.’

  ‘You can never have too large a family,’ replied Ross. ‘I’m done now. Tomorrow is another day.’

  After he left, Robyn reflected on his words. Tomorrow was another day. Probably another angst-riddled day for the Thornes. She had to find out who was responsible for killing Lucas and Paul Matthews, because no matter how many dead ends she came up against, she still believed the murders and the disappearance of Izzy were connected.

  From what Abigail had told her earlier, Alice had reason to hate the Matthews. But so did Abigail. In fact, Abigail had more reason. Yet Robyn was convinced Alice had to be behind the murders. But if Alice was not Zoe Cooper and she was not Claire Lewis then who on earth was she?

  * * *

  On the following morning the station in Aldershot was buzzing with activity. There had been a sighting of the man who attempted to steal Abigail’s handbag and officers had been sent to arrest him.

  ‘It’s hopeful,’ said PC Warrington as he pushed past her, a pile of leaflets about the missing baby in his hand. ‘We’re distributing these and the local news is doing a reconstruction. We’re inviting the Thornes to do an appeal too and plead for Isobel’s return.’