Lost Souls

by Chris Merritt

  It was experiences like these that were driving him now. He didn’t want others to end up in debt, like he had. He needed to save them before they reached that point. He could see the ones who were teetering on the edge, ready to fall into the abyss, down towards hell.

  The encounter with his next angel had gone well today.

  It would soon be time to save her.

  To give her wings.

  Thursday

  7th January

  Eighteen

  As her work computer booted up, Lucy Berry yawned long and hard, rubbed her eyes. She’d got used to turning up early for work on a few hours’ sleep when Pip and Kate were newborns or teething and up half the night. Fortunately, these days they both slept through – most of the time, including last night. She only had herself to thank for feeling a bit like a zombie this morning.

  When the kids had fallen asleep, she’d stayed there for a while, watching them. Two little lambs, blissfully unaware of how bad the world could be, how dark it could get. Since she’d been given the PhD report on missing people – highlighting a pattern of children disappearing in south-west London – her own two seemed somehow even more precious to her.

  After dinner, Lucy had read the entire document and, even when she’d gone to bed at around two a.m., her thoughts lingered on Pip and Kate. And on the hundreds of young people who’d been lost over the past twenty years, never to be found. Whose names were relegated to an annexe of a PhD study where they’d simply become data points. Lucy loved data as much as the next girl, but this time, something had made her look beyond the numbers, to the people behind them and what they’d been through. And it had shaken her.

  Despite her late night, Lucy had forced herself out of bed in order to help her husband get the kids ready for nursery before coming in early herself. She wanted to be at Jubilee House before the MIT got going in order to catch Dan. While she waited for her databases to load and completed the sign-ins for them, she spotted her boss marching across the open-plan office. Lucy was up and out from behind her desk and had intercepted him before he’d even taken off his jacket.

  ‘Morning, Dan,’ she said, clutching the report to her chest with both arms. She was the only one in the team who called him by his first name. While most of MIT 8 used ‘sir’, ‘boss’, or some variant of ‘guvnor’, civilians didn’t need to call officers by honorific titles or ranks. She sensed that Dan actually preferred her using his name; he always seemed a little uncomfortable with hierarchy.

  ‘All right, Luce?’ he replied. ‘You’re in earlier than usual.’

  ‘Yes, um, I’ve been reading something.’ She rotated the report, held it out to him.

  Dan shrugged off his jacket, threw it on the back of his chair. He read the cover and frowned. ‘What does that mean, then?’

  ‘Oh, it’s, well, it’s a project by a PhD student at UCL who’s been analysing large datasets on missing people in London over the past two decades.’

  Lucy noticed him freeze slightly at those words, his sharp eyes losing focus for a moment. She knew that Dan’s wife had gone missing almost twelve years ago; though he never talked about it in the office, everyone was aware of it. There had been media coverage at the time, which was still accessible online and, of course, most coppers liked a good gossip. Though there was nothing but sympathy in MIT 8 for what Dan had been through.

  ‘OK,’ he said cautiously.

  She outlined the premise of the report to Dan. The anomaly in south-west London. A statistical deviation identified by the algorithm. A higher than average rate of disappearances among children in the care system in three boroughs, including Wandsworth, where they were based.

  ‘Right,’ he replied. ‘So, apart from the fact that it’s about missing people – including children – in our part of town, and we have a murder case of a child who’d been missing… why’s it come to us?’

  ‘I think it’s, um, possibly that the PhD student, Marshall Hanlon, thought we were the best people to investigate it.’

  ‘You know we don’t do stuff like this, Luce. Missing persons, maybe, but only cases where it’s a presumed murder. And even those don’t come our way that often. It’s interesting, but surely it’d sit better with the Missing Persons Unit, or even local CID down the road?’

  She’d anticipated his question. ‘I’ve contacted them already. They say it’s speculative and they’ve got too much on currently to follow up.’

  Something in her voice must’ve betrayed her emotion because Dan paused, studied her.

  ‘And what do you think?’ he asked.

  She blinked. ‘I think there’s something in it.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ he replied, ‘there probably is.’

  Lucy flushed a little at the praise. She knew Dan rated her as a good analyst. Now she needed to draw on that support if she wanted to do something about this.

  ‘I’d like to find out more about it,’ she said. ‘Meet the student, perhaps look at his original data. Find out who the children are that fall into his “statistical anomaly” and see what we can find out about them in our systems. Perhaps there’s something on record that links them, which Marshall doesn’t have access to.’

  Dan didn’t say anything immediately.

  ‘Also,’ she added, ‘he’s only dealing with the bulk data, he’s not analysing individual cases. And he’s certainly not investigating them. He’s just doing a PhD.’

  ‘Luce.’ Dan spread his hands, and she could tell an apology was coming. ‘I’m SIO on the murder of Donovan Blair. He’s one of twelve active cases we have right now, including attempteds. We don’t have resources to spare.’

  ‘But, I… I really think this could be important.’ It wasn’t like Lucy to stand her ground; she usually shied away from any kind of confrontation. But something about this was driving her, making her behave differently.

  Dan passed a hand over his hair. Pursed his lips. Then said, ‘Hm.’

  ‘I’ll do it outside of my regular workload,’ she blurted.

  He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nostrils. ‘OK,’ he said.

  Lucy felt herself smiling, her heart beating a bit faster at the prospect of working on this.

  ‘But,’ he added, holding up a finger, ‘I can’t pay you any overtime for it.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said hastily.

  He nodded. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She turned to leave.

  ‘One last thing,’ said Dan.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When you’ve had a good look at this, if you really think there’s something in it, you let me know. We’ll go by the book, pass it on to the relevant people. But if they don’t want to do anything about it,’ he paused, met her eye, ‘then we will. I promise you that.’

  ‘Right.’

  Lucy carried the report back to her desk, suppressing the urge to do a little skip. She’d contact Marshall Hanlon during her morning coffee break and go from there. It was on.

  Nineteen

  ‘Right, thanks very much for your time, Ms Griffin.’ Smith rang off and stuffed the mobile phone into her jacket pocket. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she muttered.

  ‘What did she say, then?’ asked Khan, giving her the briefest of glances before returning his eyes to the road ahead. He was driving them to the headquarters of Youth Rise Up, the charity which Lockhart discovered had been in contact with Donovan.

  ‘Sod all,’ replied Smith.

  ‘Really?’ Khan sucked his teeth. ‘His social worker can’t tell us anything useful about him?’

  ‘Alison Griffin sounded as though she probably couldn’t tell anyone much about anything. She literally didn’t give a shit.’

  Khan shook his head in disbelief. ‘That’s mad. What’s going on? She’s supposed to be looking after him. And other kids besides.’

  ‘I know, it’s crap. But thirty years of graft can wear people down. Especially when you see the situation getting worse and worse. There are mo
re care referrals now than ever.’

  ‘It’s not right.’ Khan’s jaws worked at some gum. ‘So, is she at least gonna give us his file?’

  ‘I’m not even sure we’ll manage that.’

  ‘What?’

  Smith shifted in her seat. ‘Yeah, apparently their computer system went down some time last year, and the upgraded replacement promised by the council never came. They were recording stuff on paper, and she can’t even find his case notes. Not that it seemed she’d looked particularly hard.’

  ‘You’re not letting her get away with that, are you, Max?’

  ‘Course not. I’m going to become her newest problem until she gives us what we want about their contact with Donovan.’

  ‘Sweet.’ Khan checked the map on his phone, clipped to the dashboard. ‘Should be just up here on the left.’

  They were in Stockwell, a mixed area typical of central south London where run-down estates abutted upmarket Georgian townhouses. Smith had already clocked the cafés of Little Portugal and made a mental note to grab refreshments after their visit. And a bag of Portuguese custard tarts for the troops back at Jubilee House.

  A minute later, they were greeted at the door of Youth Rise Up by a smart middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Susanna Chalmers, the director. She wore jeans and a cashmere jumper under a Barbour jacket, her neck swathed in a scarf. Her hair was elegantly styled in a long bob, whispers of grey just visible among the dye. She reminded Smith of actress Joanna Lumley, who lived in this neighbourhood. A posh woman slumming it with the kids, Smith thought, before catching herself. Who was she to criticise someone’s choice of working for a charity, just because they looked as though they had some money behind them?

  ‘Come in,’ said Chalmers. ‘Apologies in advance for the temperature. Our boiler’s on the blink.’

  Smith and Khan entered the small, cold office. Desks and chairs appeared scattered at random, the walls covered in posters for helplines, educational courses, employment agencies and addiction services. Behind these advertisements, the dirty paint was flaking badly, and Smith even noticed a smattering of black mould in one corner of the ceiling. They clearly weren’t spending their funding on the premises and Smith hoped it was going into projects rather than salaries for their well-dressed staff.

  ‘Thanks for taking the time,’ said Smith. She and Khan took the chairs they were offered.

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Chalmers. ‘We were so very sad to hear about what happened to Donovan. I mean, it was just horrible. I’d met him. Maisy’s new here, so she hadn’t.’ She gestured to a young, friendly looking woman with blue hair, sitting at a computer, who sketched a wave at Smith. ‘But Kieran knew him best, didn’t you?’

  A young man on the opposite side of the room, who was biting his lip, nodded. ‘Yeah. I worked with him.’

  ‘This is Kieran Meade, our project manager. I’d suggest you talk to him about Donovan, if that’s all right. I mean, I’m not sure exactly what you’d like to know…’

  ‘Thanks.’ Smith produced a notebook and shuffled her chair over to Kieran’s desk. ‘May we join you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Meade was Khan’s age, she guessed: mid-twenties, give or take. He had a pleasant, open face with a smattering of freckles. His dark, curly hair was cut short and neat. The lines and bags around his deep brown eyes, however, suggested he hadn’t been getting much sleep. He was wearing a zipped-up padded jacket whose furry hood seemed absurdly large. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Can you tell us a bit about Donovan, please, and how you worked with him?’

  ‘Yeah, so…’ Meade picked up a biro, twirled it in his fingers. ‘He found out about us through Social Services, I think. Sus, is that right?’

  ‘I believe so,’ replied Chalmers. ‘We’re not always sure how young people come to us. But our leaflets are all over children’s services in south London. And even though we’re quite small, we’ve been around for years, so a lot of people know us.’

  ‘He was moving between foster placements,’ continued Meade, ‘so our job was basically to hook him up with some things to do around where he was going to be living. Activities and that. He came here with his old foster parents and we chatted through some options. Stuff he liked doing, whatever. We tried out a few different things.’ His eyes flicked from Smith to Khan and back.

  ‘What sort of things?’ asked Smith.

  ‘What did we have?… There was a gaming session you could go to at a youth club, you know, to play PS4 or Xbox or whatever, if you didn’t have your own console. But that was a no. Judo and karate – a lot of the boys like martial arts – but he wasn’t really up for that, either. And he didn’t fancy the art group.’

  ‘Tricky getting him to settle, wasn’t it?’ said Chalmers.

  ‘No doubt. He was a quiet kid, not one of those who’s all jokes and making friends left, right and centre. It was hard work getting him to give stuff a go.’

  ‘But he went for the football in the end?’

  ‘Yeah. He got into that. I think he liked the coach there. We used some funds to cover the cost of his first few weeks. The plan was that he’d make some friends and that’d help him settle in better.’

  ‘And did he?’ Smith thought about the bullying. ‘He wasn’t having an easy time at his new school.’

  Meade scratched his chin. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. He didn’t come and visit us again. We can’t save everybody.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Just an expression.’

  ‘He means, we do as much as we can to help the young people we see,’ interjected Chalmers, ‘but it never feels enough.’

  ‘Mm.’ Smith imagined that was true. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about Donovan that might be useful, Kieran?’

  ‘Like what?’ he asked.

  ‘Like, whether he mentioned any difficulties he was having, anyone he was in contact with that he was worried about, perhaps?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Meade unzipped his jacket, tugged at his top underneath. Smith spotted a small gold cross around his neck. ‘I mean, we chatted, but not really about personal stuff like that. Obviously, if he’d disclosed any risk issues, I’d have reported them.’

  She and Khan asked a few more questions, but Smith had the sense this was another dead end. As they stood to leave, she pointed to his gold cross. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, are you religious?’

  He fingered the chain. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Smith. ‘Just curious. You don’t see so many of them these days.’

  Meade seemed to relax a bit. ‘Yeah, as it happens, I am.’ He stood up straight and smiled for the first time since they’d arrived. ‘I was saved.’

  Twenty

  Charley Mullins was buzzing as she pushed open the restaurant door. This was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to be doing. She was wearing full make-up, she’d straightened her hair with the ghds, and teamed her new trousers up with a pair of heels. She noticed the guy at the front counter check her out before he greeted her. She confidently told him she was meeting someone, and he ushered her through.

  This was what teenage girls did; they went out to shops and restaurants, met friends, even went on dates. But this wasn’t a date… she didn’t think so, anyway. The guy had seemed much more like a friend when they’d chatted in H&M and he’d invited her out for some food. Said he wanted to hear more about what she was up to. And there was nothing creepy about him, not like the way some of the boys in her home talked to her. Show us this, suck on that. This man was even more mature than the seventeen-year-old Charley had lost her virginity with last year. It confirmed what Charley had already suspected: that older guys were not only cooler, they were gentlemen, too.

  At first, she couldn’t find him inside, and a spike of fear hit her; had he lied to her? Was it a prank? She’d seen a programme about catfishing last year which had really scared her… but this was
n’t like that, she told herself, as she rang his number. She’d met him IRL – in real life – and she knew where he worked, too. He wasn’t just some random. He was who he said he was. It was OK. Her call went to voicemail, and she rang off immediately.

  Then she saw him at the back and breathed a sigh of relief. He was wearing one of those Peaky Blinders-style flat caps, and he’d had his head down until a moment ago. She raised a palm in greeting and he waved back as she walked over to his table.

  ‘Charley! How are you doing?’

  ‘Good, thanks.’

  ‘Love the trousers!’

  She couldn’t help but giggle, then stopped herself; that was what girls did. She sat and he slid a menu towards her.

  ‘Have whatever you like,’ he said. ‘I’m buying.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course.’ He grinned, and pointed to her menu. ‘The burgers are amazing.’

  She wasn’t going to say no. The meals weren’t bad in The Beacon, but they limited the junk food. Healthy body, healthy mind, the ‘parents’ said. Also, it was a Thursday, so the older boys would be cooking, and that probably meant dinner would be late, or burnt, or both. She chose a Korean chicken burger, fries and a smoothie. And she already had an eye on the gelato for dessert.

  While they waited for the food to come, he asked her more about living at The Beacon, about what stuff she was into, what plans she had for the future. Charley told him about wanting to be a fashion influencer, like how Tanya Burr had started out, then maybe go into acting. She had an idea to get a proper camera so she could make some decent lookbook videos, post them online. He seemed impressed by that, told her that she had great style and that he reckoned a lot of other people would want her advice on what to wear. She felt herself blushing.